Wicked Weekends (1)

November has been a busy month and its not even half over yet! One of the main reasons for this is that Paul and I have ever weekend pretty much filled up.

November weekends started deliciously with a trip down to Vincentia (Jervis Bay) for a "cook-off" weekend with some of Paul's friends. The basic concept: each couple produces a meal, preferrably three courses, which is then rated on the KB scale. Being newbies to the club we felt that we needed to produce a memorable meal, I was pretty confident that we'd be up to the challenge.

The first couple had Friday night, a tricky one as we all headed down the coast after work - they pulled it off well though. The bar was set with an entree of baked dates stuffed with blue cheese and wrapped in proscuito, a main of Paella, and dessert of saffron and vanilla poached pears, with Sangria to match - a delicious start to the weekend.

We had saturday night, so to get the ball rolling I started dessert (lemon tart) after breakfast - as it required the most preparation and didn't need to be hot. I got to work on the pastry and it thankfully came together well, a good start to a great tart! The tart was cooked in time for us to head out for lunch at the Husky pub followed by a round of Golf. Paul had mentioned to me on a number of occasions that Golf was not his favourite sport (if indeed it should be even considered a sport) so wasn't quite sure what to expect! Luckily for all involed, perhaps, we hired a golf cart which provided much entertainment, though on occasions (and I hadn't thought it possible in a golf cart) I did find that we were going a little fast for my liking. When not speeding round the course Paul put some lovely shots down the fairway. I had fun trying out my new clubs and was really getting the hang of my fairway woods by the end, though I need to eliminate my slice drive if I'm going to start getting my scores down.

After golf we headed back and got down to business in the kitchen! With pretty good team work we produced Prosciuto salad wraps for entree (mostly made by Paul) and mint and chilli rack of lamb with tamarind roast vegies (joint effort) for main. Both went down very well, the lamb especially - its a cracker of a recipe from Delicious magazine! The lemon tart was also well recieved with a couple of second helpings! Needless to say I think we suitably impressed our other diners with our culinary efforts.

Proscuito wraps


Tamarind roast vegetables


Mint and chilli rack of lamb

After dinner the girls took on the boys at trivial pursuit and after a very close game and much to the boys changrin came out ahead! Woohoo!

The weekend was topped off with a wicked brunch of totilla wraps of smoked salmon and jalapeno scrambled eggs served with a rocket anf balsamic roast tomato salad - yum! Then a trip to the local beach where I braved the cold water (it wasn't actually that bad once you were in) and went for a swim, before joining in the classic catches on the beach.