6-course menu

Last week, two friends of ours came for a visit an my boyfriend and I were just in the mood for serving more than only one dish. Well, in the end it turned out to be six dishes.

1. A little 'something', inspired by a sushi book I got for Christmas
2. Caprese
3. Salad
4. Fish, rice and sweet peas
5. Self-made strawberry ice-cream
6. Red currant yoghurt cake

1. For the 'amuse gueule' (the first course) you need

ca. 40 g sushi rice (it sounds too little, but it really is not)
a bit vinegar
half a cucumber
wasabi
soy sauce
up to four slices smoked salmon
4 salad leaves
sunflower seeds

Wash and cook the sushi rice. When it is done, add a bit vinegar to taste. While the rice cools down, cut the cucumber into rings that are roughly 3 cm thick. Peel (skin?) the cucumber and spoon the seeds out carefully with a small spoon. Then, mix one teaspoon full of wasabi with the same amount of soy sauce and spread some of the mixture on the inside of the cucumber slices. Then put one slice onto a little plate and stuff the cucumber with the rice. Do that with all the slices. When you are done with stuffing them, cut half circles into the salad leaves and arrange them around the cucumber. Then, take the slices of smoked salmon and cut each slice lengthwise into two parts. Roll two 'salmon straps', so that they form a rose. Position one rose on each rice filled cucumber slice. When you are finished, sprinkle some sunflower seeds over your dish. 

Oh, by the way, my boyfriend also decorated it with a slice of cucumber and tomato :)


2. Ok, the second dish was simply mozzarella with tomatoes, both sliced, and a bit of balsamic vinegar. Nevertheless, I forgot taking a photo.

3. The third dish was this kind of salad:

Salad leaves, cucumber, tomato, eggs, onions, red bell pepper, rocket, cinnamon-salt-croutons, mustard sauce,...


4. The fourth dish looked like this:

Redfish with lots of dill, sweet peas and djuvec rice. Made by my boyfriend again. Yummie :)

5. The fifth dish was made by me again (2-4 were made by my boyfriend). It was self-made strawberry ice-cream.

You need:

500 g strawberries (pureed)
4 egg yolks

120 g sugar
200 g single cream

Mix the egg yolks with the sugar until well combined. Then, add the pureed strawberries. Mix again. Beat the cream until stiff, then fold under the strawberries. Pour into a bowl or into silicon muffin caps and put them into the fridge until it is frozen. I do recommend a bowl because it is rather much ice-cream in the end.



6. A cake again. This time it was a no-baking cake, or a fridge cake, or whatever you want to call a cake that has never seen an oven from the inside :)

You need:

300 g lady's fingers
100 g butter
2 sachets (for 500 ml each) jelly (jello) powder
200 g sugar
500 g yoghurt
3 tbsp. lemon juice
200 g red currant
400 g single cream

Crumble the lady's fingers into pieces as small as possible. Melt the butter and mix it with the crumbs. Grease a 24cm baking tin (spring form) and fill it with the crumbs. Push the crumbs onto the bottom of the tin evenly, so that they form a cake base. Put the tin into the fridge to allow the cake base to set.
Meanwhile, mix the jelly powder with sugar and 250 ml water. Yes, 250 ml water altogether. <miss piggy mood> Trust me! </miss piggy mood>. Allow the powder to soak in some water and while it does so, pour the joghurt into a bowl and stir in the lemon juice.
Now, heat the jelly and water until all the powder and sugar is melted. Do not cook! Then, leave it to cool, stirring occasionally. In the meantime you can wash and pluck the fruits. When the (still liquid) jelly has cooled down a bit, pour it over the yoghurt and stir it in with a spoon until you get an even pink mass. Whisk half the single cream until stiff. Then, fold into the yoghurt cream until the cream gets an even soft pink colour. Fold in 150 g red currant as well.
Pour the cream into onto the cake base and leave it in the fridge for at least four hours.

When the cream is set, whisk the remaining single cream until stiff and cover the whole cake (take off  the frame of the springform pan, first) with whipped cream. Decorate the cake with the remaining red currant. Yummie :)