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http://gallery.me.com/jnutt#100418
Last Thursday I had a trial POP UP restaurant in my living room. I decided to invite all the couples that i know on my street. After 2 days of prepping, cooking, sweating and aching they all arrived on time together. I had been to Ikea to buy some napkins, tablecloths, candles and plates etc and transformed our living room into a rather asian looking restaurant. White tablecloths with bamboo table mats and dark brown plates. Lots of candles. It looked much better than normal and in fact, I have left it like that. My kids think they are eating in a restaurant every night....
For starters we had minted pea soup with lemon thyme cream, baked marinated goats cheese, roasted violet garlic and black onion seed crackers. This was followed by Nasi Goreng (indonesian rice) with prawns and chicken, vietnamese carrot and courgette salad and bean sprout egg foo yung (sort of omelette). I overcooked the rice and had to refry it which was v time consuming and annoying but think i bought the wrong type of rice...next time will use basmati. And for my piece de resistance......pudding was boiled eggs and chubby soldiers!!! actually not boiled eggs - these were meringue top with a creme diplomat inside, combined with mango puree and passionfruit curd. The soldiers were pineapple batons which were rolled in lime infused sugar. Absolutely delicious and a real party piece. The recipes came from this brilliant book called Terre a Terre which is a fabulous restaurant in Brighton.
Anyhoo it went very well and my guests seemed to enjoy the food. There wasn't a scrap of food left on the plates and no left overs either much to my children's disappointment. Think i will do this once a month or so and see how it goes...watch this space my one follower........
