guests or guinea pigs?

Last night was our turn to host our church supper club group.  Each quarter, we are grouped with two other couples and take turns hosting, with each couple hosting one night during one of each of the three months.  We get new groups every quarter.  This gives us opportunities to meet people from church that we normally would not have chance to spend more time with. 

Dan and I like to use our guests as guinea pigs try new things when we have supper club.  Last night was no different.  In April, our hosts served Shrimp Gumbo over rice and bread pudding for dessert.  This seemed to get the ball rolling with a Cajun theme, so we ran with it.  Our menu for May included:


Appetizers
Crostini with fresh mozzarella and bruschetta
Bacon-wrapped miniature turducken * with Cajun avocado dip
Main course
Crawfish Etoufee with white rice
French bread
Dessert
Bananas Foster crème brûlée *

Let me fill you in on our items that we had not prepared before (those annotated with *). 

Bacon-wrapped miniature turducken with cajun avocado dip
Dan came up with the idea of making a turducken appetizer.  Usually, a turducken is a deboned hen inside a deboned duck inside of a deboned turkey.  Dan decided to use strips of chicken thighs, duck breast and turkey breast, sprinkled with a special Cajun seasoning, roll them into pinwheels, cover with a strip of bacon and broil.  We added a dip adapted by adding some Zatarain’s seasoning (see recipe below).  Some of our guests ate them without the dip, others with the dip, but everyone loved them and deemed this a success.  I think they were happy to be guinea pigs:)

1 medium avocado
1/4 cup sour cream
1 T. lime juice
1 ½ T. Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing Mix
1/2  T. regular Zatarain’s seasoning
½ t. garlic powder
1/2  t. black pepper

Bananas Foster crème brûlée
We love crème brûlée and we love Bananas Foster, so Dan thought we could combine the two and have a great Cajun-theme dessert.  I started by making a simple vanilla crème brûlée (without adding the final brown sugar) the night before, giving it time to cool overnight.  Then, right before our guests arrived, Dan added the first layer of raw sugar and hit it with his trusty torch (grabbed out of the garage…who needs a special tiny torch?).  This would provide a crunch under the bananas.  Then, he added a few banana coins (bananas cut in round slices, not strips), with a sprinkle of cinnamon and brown sugar (to give more of that bananas foster flavor) before torching again.  UH-OH.  We found out with the first dish that brown sugar burns!  Yuck.  So, we quickly removed the bananas and started all over with new bananas, cinnamon and more raw sugar.  After the third torching, they looked great.  Dan covered with a paper towel until time for dessert.  Unfortunately, the heat being covered caused it to become more of a syrup instead of a dry, crunchy topping.  Or, so we thought.  When we began to dig in, there was still lots of crunchiness and they were delicious. 

It reminded me of the first time I ever experienced Bananas Foster.  After an evening at the National Symphony Orchestra at The Kennedy Center in 1986, Dan and I headed to Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia for a late night dinner at Two Nineteen (a New Orleans-style Creole restaurant).  Dan suggested we have Bananas Foster, a dessert I had never even heard of.  How surprised I was when they showed up at the table and set the dish aflame before my eyes!  When they added the flambéed bananas concoction to the vanilla ice cream, it was to die for.  It definitely added to the beautiful evening with the man I love.

Following our dessert Friday evening, we were joined by the children (who had been playing in the living room) and Max serenaded us with a few songs.  Our little friend, Nolan, loved playing with Max’s electric guitar and then we moved upstairs to the music studio boy’s room.  Desi held Nolan and helped him play his drums while Max gave Nolan’s dad a few lessons on the guitar.  We are definitely going to miss this sweet family when they move to Mississippi next month.  We are so happy that we had this opportunity to get to know them better before they move.

"When God's people are in need, be ready to help them.  Always be eager to practice hospitality."

Romans 12:13 (NLT)