Tonight was a dinner for Hai and Yen, whose birthdays are one day apart on April 4 and 5. Donny also came by and contributed the wine.
Here is the menu:
Strawberry Spinach Salad with Honey Sesame Dressing
Home Sauteed Potatoes with Bacon and Carrots bits
Filet of Beef with Ginger Shitake Mushroom Sauce and Asian-Style Sugar Snap Peas
Cappuccino Cake
2006 Yellowtail Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon wine
This dinner was meant to have a Spring theme to it. I also made a lot of bacon since Hai loves to eat it. Both the salad, beef and sugar snap peas were from internet recipes. The potatoes I did myself. It was my first time peeling potatoes and carrots, it was easier than I thought. The potatoes came out very nice, given that it was sort of an impromptu dish.
I had meant to go outside a bit on the recipe and add the bacon to the beef filets. But the oven broiled the beef before the bacon was ready, so I transferred the bacon to the potato dish. That consequently had a bad effect on the beef, as I kept the filets in the oven for about 2-3 minutes too long in hopes of getting the bacon ready. Once again, the beef was too well-done for my liking. I usually make my beef medium-rare when I cook for myself, but whenever guests come over I have to cover too many areas and tend to overlook the right time to end the cooking of the beef. I also tried to do a new recipe for beef, and this time it wasn't as successful as I hoped. The sugar snap peas came out pretty well, and the salad, while a bit simple, was fine.
Dessert was store-bought from Whole Foods and with the quantity served, maybe a bit too much for everyone even though it was pretty good.
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