International Potluck Night

a.k.a. - Serious food orgy! :)

Waaaay overdue post! A few weeks ago, I think Autumn and Lisa came up with this idea of doing a potluck where we all cooked food from cuisines that we hadn't really cooked much from before. Such a great idea. So we planned it out, May 19th was the day - at Daria's place, perfect way to warm her new house (and take her cute kitchen apart! :))

This is how we did it: each person/couple wrote out a country on a scrap of paper and we then drew lots. Daria got Vietnam, T&A got Russia, C&L - Costa Rica, A&J - Indonesia, us - Japan. And Jeremy picked Switzerland for dessert (apparently his initial choice - Australia is not sweet-friendly! :) and we picked Italy.

It was fun! And super yummy! And we kind of ended up with a good assortment of food. We tried to replicate the famous Dark Army from Vij as the drink of the eve. It turned out pretty decent, but could be better.

Basic Recipe:
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A shot each of lemon-ginger juice, simple syrup, mango juice, lime juice. Muddle these up with 1-1.5 shots of amber rum. Serve on ice. Sprinkle with a pinch of freshly ground garam masala. *hic*!

We started off noshing on these yummy baked plantains with guacamole and a blackbean dip (Costa Rica). The Russian entree was beety borscht along with this dark rye-like bread (lame! I've already forgotten what it actually had!). The borscht was really flavorful and smooth. The Vietnamese salad was awesome - it had mangoes, it *had* to be awesome! :) The noodle salad was super yummy too - the spicy limey dressing was seriously tasty - I was ready to drink it up! The tilapia on a bed of rice/beans/oranges/veggies was really light and flavorful.

And we made sushi - our first attempt! Obviously, spicy tuna rolls (we couldn't really find any other sushi grade fish at Whole Foods!). The tuna was so tasty - almost melting in the mouth. We marinated it in a sauce of the Snappy Dragon spicy sauce (*so* good!) along with a little wasabi. After marinating for a few hours, we rolled it with scallions, avocados and some stealth wasabi. The rolls came out looking *okay*, they definitely got better as we rolled more. And Pupp's rolling was *way* better than mine! :) But it was fun, we loved it and we'll do it again!

Dessert was this great chocolate cake with a mop of frosting - very yummy! We made this Cassata alla Siciliana - it was a serious flop! *so* sad! Firstly, the pound cake from Whole Foods was awful - dense and lifeless. And we could not find any candied fruit, so we used chopped dried fruits - NOT the same. *bleh*. I'll have to rework this recipe sometime.

Anyway, Daria's house was well-warmed (and a minor mess!). *happy*