I was lucky that a few students could not come for their piano lessons today so that i could prepare a surprise dinner for my hubby this year. Not on his birthday but the day before.... Oh well can't complain coz i don't have the luxury to take time off anymore from teaching. Getting so busy lately!
The theme is Japanese this year and as usual, I prepared too much food that 6 people could be fed! I was lucky to have made arrangements that we could have candlelight dinner alone sans kids :)
I made a menu for him hehe.... Nothing fancy but all Japanese...
I had to start teaching at 3pm so i rushed out at noon to get everything... When i came back it was already 1:45pm! Back into 'high stress' mode trying to get everything done plus a new student starting at my studio today that I had to prepare for. My kitchen at 3pm was like a tornado!!
I called hub to tell him to drop off HT and come home for dinner at 6pm, when he was at school with HT. He sounded surprised :)
After my last student finishing at 7pm, I did had to get his help to fry the tempuras so we could only start our dinner at 7:45pm. Need to manage my time better next time!
Onto the food....
Tako Wasa from Hokkaido.
His comments: THIS is the real deal! It really is. Very Wasabi, very flavorful. But a little really goes a log way. Should have portion it smaller for each.
We opened a bottle of Izumi sake which is brewed in GTA. It was only so-so.....
Three types of oysters...
There were Blue point, Virginica and Beach Angel. I think the winner was beach angel and the weakest was blue point (also the cheapest)!
Miso soup (organic white and red blend) with wakame, tofu and okra. My typical soup.... He loved it :)
Chawan mushi with crab meat and mushrooms. Again my typical dish so no surprised but i sneaked in some chived minced fish and Vince thought was a nice touch!
THE Sashimi platter!
Ok i do not have to make this :). There were organic salmon from Ireland, Torched tai, Ika 'thick' somen, scallops from hokkaido, Yellowtail from Japan, hirame, sweet shrimp. It was quite a lot and we could not finish all. I think vince is packing his 'chirashi' lunch for tomorrow in the kitchen now haha
How can you have sashimi without REAL wasabi? :)
Tempura platter with giant shrimp, squid, lotus root, sweet purple yam, burdock and carrot.
Served with homemade tsuyu and grated daikon
To finish off, we had some Japanese mountain rice.
We finished our dinner at 8:40pm and picked up the emperors after. Although it was short, i think his satisfactory level is higher than eating outside, which you only get a dinky amount of food and had to stress about parking and so on..... I am dead tired though and i left all the cleanup for him to do LOL!
Happy Birthday old geek!