Cooking for a friend....

I'm going to be posting this to BOTH my farm and dog blogs AND facebook because its THAT amazing. Seriously. My mentor in cooking and one of my best friends, Briony, has helped me learn to cook for the better part of a decade. When she visits we do more gourmet food that us northern midwest folk may not be always accustomed to. :)

We take photos of our meals and then comment on them. Good memories. Unfortunately these photos do NOT do them justice. My newer digital camera has lost its screen. Meaning it went blank. I can't see what I shooting and I can't change the settings really more than between action, flower and auto. It bites. So please excuse the fuzzy photos. Also the date is wrong on the camera I see now also, after uploading the photos. it really happened today. the 27th of July, 2010. Honest!

I was not trying to impress my dinner guest, but I wanted to make something that I could make easily, in a short amount of time and still spend most of my time with my dinner guest.

I was in the grocery store for nearly an hour trying to decide exactly which direction I wanted to go. No Corinne I wasn't lost, I was on the phone with Briony. I had a set idea I wanted to do: lamb chops, baby red potatoes and asparagus, and then wine and salad and maybe some fruit.

I prepped most of what i could and this is what i came up with:

Munchies: fresh watermelon and cantelope and home brewed Ice Tea.

Salad: Spinach with Feta cheese, sliced almonds, fresh sliced strawberries and a blush wine vinegarette dressing. It was simple and fantastic! Photo is below.
Oh yes. We had a white wine before the meal also, and a nice red wine with the meal. And ice water. Hey it was hot out. Lightly toasted sourdough slices of bread with locally made butter...soft gooey inside with a crisp crust. I love bread so could eat this all the time.

Shetland lamb chops that were marinated for a few hours with some malbec red wine, smoked and sliced garlic and soy sauce. Then they were grilled briefly on my grill and served pink in the middle.

Baby red potatoes pan fried in natural olive oil with sea salt, black pepper and thyme and pimentos, and the 3" pieces of asparagus were added the same time as the pimentos after being started as steamed in the microwave. Maybe took 8 minutes to cook and serve everything. Honest.

Below is the table setting and all the goodies. My friend told me that I was an amazing cook and that he'd eat my food everyday! Success! He also had never had lamb or asparagus or Feta cheese (or a salad like that before) and they were all amazing. He said the lamb was the best meat he had ever tasted bar none and that really made my day! He also said he hasn't eaten a 'gourmet meal' like that ever before, or eaten that well in a long time. Cool, huh?

Open invite to those of you who read this to come over for supper! I love to cook and have house guests. you bring the wine and I'll supply the food and we'll be good to go!