Dinner for 10!

My lovely boyfriend and I thought it would be great to have a dinner party before the baby arrived with some friends we hadn't seen properly in ages even though they live really nearby. I happily invited them without really thinking of numbers and our small flat with our 6 person table. Counting them up we had 10 people..at this point I was much more worried about seating them than feeding them! But when I reached the supermarket to buy all the ingredients and was trying to work out how many vegetables it would take to feed 10 it all became clear that this would not be a walk in the park. Luckily a few weeks before I had 2 friends and my sister (who I also consider a friend!) round for dinner and had done a 3 course meal that went down really well so I thought I would do the same as I hadn't blogged about the starter and the main before but change the dessert as that time we had bakewell tart which I have written a post about previously.

So the menu was:

Starter: Marinated tofu, red pepper & red onion skewers (and some cheating vegetable spring rolls in case people were not a fan of tofu) with a homemade peanut satay sauce (and also some ready-made plum sauce and sweet chilli sauce). If I had the time and money I would have made everything from scratch but being almost 8 months pregnant (read completely knackered) I decided to give myself a break.

I used recipes I found from about.com for the Satay Sauce and the Tofu Skewers. (I would just like to add that I have just added to my blogging skills by being able to do those links!!)

Tofu Skewers before they went under the grill

I have to say I was quite worried about how tofu would go down with some of the guests (I was the only vegan) and that was the reason I cooked some ready-made vegetable spring rolls as well but everyone LOVED them...seriously loved them! Everything was eaten and even marinade eaten off the serving plates once they were gone. The peanut sauce is also the best peanut sauce I have ever eaten (and I love my peanut sauces)- it may look like a lot of ingredients but I would seriously recommend you try it. Now everytime I make it I have to make extra to give to my sister!

Main: Thai Green Curry. Once again I used a little cheat by buying the Green Curry Paste but I went specially to an oriental supermarket to get something really authentic (minus the fish sauce of course- you need to watch out for this) and got one which just had the ingredients I would have put into it myself- i.e. none of the additives I often see on jars, just fresh ingredients (the one I used is from the Lotus brand) . I didn't particularly follow a recipe for the Thai Curry other than from some guidance on the side of the jar. I used about a jar and a half of the curry paste (each jar being 210g)  and 3 tins of coconut milk. To this I added some Fry's "chicken pieces" (although I prefer it with just the vegetables) and sweet potato chunks. After the sweet potato was getting soft I added carrot pieces, cauliflower pieces and courgette pieces and then nearer the end I also added sliced mushrooms (the reason for the order is how long the vegetables need to cook- in general add the hardest ones first and the softest last). I ended up using 2 pans (one of which was absolutely huge!). I served this with rice.

Sorry this picture isn't particularly appetizing but I forgot to take a
nice picture of it in the bowls so this what was left in the pan!

Everyone liked the Thai Green Curry but I would have liked to have had a bit more of the paste in it- probably adding both jars. I also prefer the curry to have only vegetable in and not fake meat but I think that's just because I am not particularly a fan of the chicken pieces but wanted something to satisfy the meat texture for the others. But Thai Green Curry is very good for a dinner party- I would definitely recommend it- it's not too difficult and you can have it cooking while people eat the starter. I had cut up all my veg in advance so all I had to do was chuck it in and check on it once in a while. There are plenty of ideas of recipes online with lots of different vegetables listed- pretty much everything works with it!

Dessert: Maple Pecan Pie from "Vegan Pie In The Sky". I did use some walnuts instead of all the pecans because the pecans were about twice the price and it was already getting expensive to feed the masses but next time I would definitely like to try it with pecans only as you could tell it would really make this pie amazing! I think this is my favourite dessert I have cooked so far. I hadn't delved into "Vegan Pie in the Sky" yet- I have the other two in the series ("Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World" and "Vegan Cookies Invade your Cookie Jar") and they have both been used quite a few times but I am now going to make an effort to make more from this book as I was truly impressed. One thing I would mention which the book doesn't is that when you pour in the mixture it seems really liquidy- I was expecting a more viscous mixture and was worried I had done it wrong. I persevered however and the pie came out beautifully. I served this with some soya cream and every scrap of it was eaten.

Not showing it in it's best light but people were desperate for dessert
so I didn't have time to retake.

I also discovered this non-alcoholic drink made from hops and citrus so it tasted like a citrus beer. I have never been a fan of beer and never had what this drink is meant to replicate so I can't comment on how good an imitation it is but I really enjoyed it and might try an alcoholic version in the future!