Fun weekend. Yesterday, we had eleven people over for dinner. We’d only meant to invite a fistful, but figuring that we’d previously had about a 50% rate of return, we invited about 12, and they all could make it. Oops.

We ended up cooking a whole mess of stuff. We started out with the French Laundry’s Salmon Coronets, which were pretty darned good. We made a “test” batch last weekend, and the cones were thinner, because Ei-Nyung used a different mold for the rounds. This weekend’s batch had cones that were slightly thicker, and less delicate. Still tasty, but just a little bit shy of the “full experience.”

I had struggled with what to make for about two weeks. I was going to make Jamie Oliver’s “Simple” lasagna in ravioli form, but I couldn’t really figure out how to make it work. I’d wanted to do a “double decker” ravioli, with the butternut squash and parmesan in one layer, and the meat ragu in the second layer, then top with a cream sauce, to make up for the creme fraiche that I’d have left out. I guess I probably could have done it, but thought it was going to be structurally a pain in the butt.

I ended up deciding that morning to do a Japanese curry ravioli, on a dollop of mashed potatoes. The thought was to have the ravioli contain the sauce, so that when you cut into it wiht your fork, it’d spill sauce all over the potatoes, and then you could just eat it like you would regular Japanese-style curry, except with potato instead of rice.

It actually ended up being more or less like that, but the *problem* was that I made them too much in advance, and with such a liquid center, the ravioli bottoms got really soggy, and as a result, really, really delicate. What I should have done was frozen the curry into ice cubes, and made raviolis around those, which would have defrosted while cooking the pasta. Instead, I needed to quickly firm up the pasta, so I ended up frying them in a really non-stick pan. It made them less delicate, which was a shame, but it needed the structure, or it would have all gone to heck. It also gave them some color, which was also really necessary, as most of the dish was basically white – white ravioli, white potato on a beige plate.

Also, since the sauce was really liquidy, I couldn’t get all that much actual sauce into each rav, so it was a bit drier than I would have hoped. Still, flavor-wise, it was alright, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.

The third thing we served was a couple slices of smoked duck breast, which I’d gotten from the farmer’s market earlier in the day, over some random salad greens, with a balsamic vinegar we’d reduced a while ago, and some really nice olive oil. Simple, but really, really tasty.

Ei-Nyung made a take on her Korean short rib dish, and it turned out wonderfully. The meat was really tender, the potatoes were perfect, and we’d made some chive oil to go along with it, which really complemented it well.

The last thing was the molten chocolate cakes, which I’d only ever made small batches of. It ended up turning out really well – the cakes were each exactly the right texture. I’d made the French Laundry’s creme anglaise earlier in the day, and was hoping to sferify some raspberry sauce, but not having ever tried anything that acidic, I had no idea how much of the sodium citrate to add, and with no way of testing for pH, just guessed. I probably severly underestimated, as I didn’t want to add too much, and as a result, the raspberry sauce, when dropped into the calcium carbonate bath wouldn’t maintain any sort of shape. Alas. I ended up using the syringe to dot the creme anglaise with the raspberry sauce, and it ended up looking (and tasting) quite nice.

Sadly, I don’t think we managed too many pictures of the food. Everything was really hectic, trying to get 11 plates out at the same time was really just chaos. A couple of the people we invited ended up helping out, getting plates washed in between courses and such. It was nuts, but fun, and satisfying, even if things didn’t turn out perfectly. Good times with good friends. Couldn’t ask for much more than that.

I ended up passing out around 1. I have no recollection of what happened, but I woke up the next morning on the couch, where I’d clearly fallen asleep.

Today, we went to lunch with an old friend who was in from out of town at Vik’s Chaat, in Berkeley, came home, cleaned up, rearranged the living room, and then went over to UV’s for dinner, where she made some awesome chicken, asparagus, and squash. Delicious.

The room is finally in the “Right” configuration. It always takes us a couple iterations before we figure out how a particular room “should” be laid out, and we’ve probably rearranged our major living space on the order of 10 times since we’ve moved here. Admittedly, a lot of those were becuase our primary living space changed location four times or so, but this is the one that works. It’s immediately apparent when you see it.

Anyway. Good times.