For several months I have been wanting to start a group that is dedicated to making and sharing really good meals.  These should be special meals, with interesting, quality ingredients, new techniques, and a bit of gourmet flair.  This is a club for people who love to cook.  With the agreement and participation of two other foodie couples from our ward, last night the Finer Foods Club was born.  We will be meeting about once a month.  Last night was an incredible meal, due in no small part to our great friends who really went the extra mile and made incredible, delicious dishes.  Each month we will rotate the host and the host picks a different theme.    We chose a theme of “southeast asian” to start the club off.

My partially assembled and not-too appetizing looking marinade for the chicken satay (served with yellow curry sauce and peanut sauce).

Lonica is having fun learning to use our new camera.

 After picking up ingredients at the asian store, we figured out we had more than enough banana leaves to wrap the sticky rice, which was served with Thai green papaya salad (Som Tam).  Lonica used this huge banana leaf as a table runner.  Along with an elephant we got in Thailand, limes, chilies, a plant(some kind of flowering succulent), and candles decorating the table, I had to tease her about making a Sandra Lee style “tablescape.”  It was very southeast asian and made the meal feel a little more fancy. 

 Our friends the Dotsons brought pork wontons and Thai lettuce wraps, along with some great sauces. It was so good I almost missed getting to take a picture before being devoured.

The Beazers were not messing around. They brought a Vietnamese soup (Pho Ga) that was very fresh and had a good kick to it, as well as some delicious ginger-lime cupcakes with meringue.

The whole gang (minus me playing photographer) after a delicious, fun meal.

Hopefully we have many more nights like this to come.

Posted by Scott Rowley on Sunday, February 8th, 2009 at 2:44 pm.