My good friend Chris is ditching America for England. He got offered some crazy promotion through his software company, and decided to TAKE it and leave us all?! Psshhh. Apparently he loves riots and looting? Good times, Chris.
Naw, just kidding, he’ll do great over there. We are all excited for his great adventure, yet sad to see him go. (The part I’m saddest about is that he’s getting rid of a lot of his kitchen stuff before he goes, yet he did not donate any of his Le Creuset to me. WTF dude.) Despite this great injustice, I had him (as well as our bestie Katie, who I actually met through Chris) over for dinner on Tuesday. Chris is a very talented chef so we figured we’d send him off doing what we love most: cooking a ton of food and drinking a ton of wine. Done and done.
I made the cover recipe from the new September issue of Food & Wine, Thai Chicken & Watermelon Salad. Two of my favorite things, Thai food and watermelon! You can’t go wrong with this one.
Instead of serving it on little Chinese spoons (please, like that’s going to be enough) I tossed it with fresh greens and extra dressing, so we could have gigantic portions instead of baby spoon portions. The lemongrass grilled chicken was awesome. Word to the wise, if you don’t feel like dealing with whole lemongrass stalks (ugh, time consuming) get that lemongrass paste tube in the produce section of your market.
I have to say that Chris’ contribution trumped mine, though! He also picked a F&W recipe, Mexican Corn Salad (he didn’t do the scallops with it as the recipe indicates, since we already had a ton of chicken). God. This was GOOD.
I don’t care what anyone says, grilling the corn really does make all the difference. Also, instead of normal ancho chile powder, Chris utilized something called “fiesta chile powder” and it really did amp up the flavor party. Good call, Chris.
We decided if we were to name the theme of the evening, it would be “cilantro Asian-Latin fusion” because… what else can you call it? I don’t know, but weirdly the two recipes really complemented each other. This was a perfect late-summer, healthy meal (if you don’t count all the wine? But, antioxidants, right? Whatever). I’m bummed Chris is leaving, but can’t wait for Katie and I to visit England, eat an intense amount of fish & chips and beer, then drunkenly trash his apartment (where we’ll obviously be staying FOR FREE Chris!). I mean… maybe that would happen. I guess we’ll find out.
