Memasak, Makan & Kawan-Kawan

Tonight's dinner was specially cooked to the theme of 'super low salt'. The man took it as a tiny challenge to produce a dinner that is low in sodium, and still be delicious. Since everybody just did their medical and had no issues with cholesterol, the taba ng talangka in the crab meat linguine wouldn't be a problem. Neither would loading lots of white wine and vodka into it affect anything. Heh. Lightly-seared scallops low in saturated fats provided the calcium, iron and protein to go with the rich pasta.

We decided to skip the soup and made an appetizer with white asparagus. The simplest way of just lightly boiling it and serving it with hollandaise sauce and poached eggs. We had plenty of good eggs, so instead of buying hollandaise sauce in a bottle, he opted to make it. The blender was utilized to churn out a smooth creamy sauce. He then stirred the saucepan to make perfectly poached eggs to go with the crunchy white asparagus.

We stood by various options of sea salt, pink salt and whatever salt for the rest of the food. On a whim, the man bought a pack puff pastry sheets to bake it over the Irish stew that had already been done a day earlier. He used a combination of beef and lamb. The end product was low on salt, but it had alot of body. Without the salt to overpower everything, the flavors were enhanced by Guinness. It was quite hilarious how everyone liked this low sodium version and nobody opted to sprinkle more salt over their individual portions. Stew went great with basmati rice.

Besides the company, the best part, the friends gifted us with a bottle of Hine Rare VSOP. It's a blend of eaux-de-vie with Grande and Petit Champagne. Quite a fine cognac, I must say. In spite of its spicy hints, it's quite fruity. Gentle too. The friends are hilarious- they were inspired by the 'Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon', of which they said, spotting this bottle of Hine Rare VSOP and the bottle of Bushmills were the 2 high points of the whole movie. Heheheh. The cognac was well complemented by these cans of Guinness which had been brewed in Dublin with a good head of foam. We love a tasty draught of Guinness, a bit of laughter and lots of love.