New Years Eve Cookfest, Rockfest, Eurofest

New Years Eve Starter, originally uploaded by epredator.

I tired a few more recipes for our new years eve party. Both ones that I had not done before.
The starter was from a Gordon Ramsay book and featured a flattened puf pastry base, a pureed onion relish (slow cooked onions and some single cream blitzed down) then topped with artichoke hearts, blanched asparagus, tomato, red oinion a vinegrette and the special extra quails eggs (cooked for 2 min 10 to provide a slighlty runny centre to a hard boiled egg). I had never cooked quails eggs before and they proved to be trickier to peel, even when rolled to crack them, I got the hang of it finding the layer under the shell was the secret, catch that and the shell fell away, I only broke one being a little rough :)
The main course was this

A very fancy fish cake, fancy in that it had ginder and lime steamed salmon, mixed with chillies, coriander, anchoivy essence and breadcrumbs. Dipped in flour, beaten egg, more bread crumb coating and lightly fried. It was on a bed of new potato creme fraiche, lemon and mint mash. I was supposed to make it perfectly round, but was more keen to eat it. I also cooked the same salmon cakes for the predlets and their guests but without the chillis.
I think it all worked well. I enjoyed making it, and everyone seemed to like it :)
We had a lovely home made raspberry pavlova that our guests brought.
The rest of the evening involved the odd tipple, 4 player guitar hero world tour (Yay for the killers Human, linkin park , for what i've done and metallica cyanide).
We then moved on to singstar on the ps3. In particular the Abba expansion disc.
We finished the last song and saw Jools Holland seeing in the new year, the extra leap second helped in that turning all the AV kit to the right thing right after the some ended left us with 5 seconds :)
Then it was back for more Singstar. Its fair to say Emma shows us all up as she is the only one who can actually sing.
/me elemming and predlets waves at Emma and Gary and the kids. A great night and hope for a great 2009 for all.