I bumped into my neighbour an hour before the dinner and invited him and his wife along too! Only because I have a habit of wanting to include anyone and everyone as I don't like the idea of anyone feeling left out. Months ago, when I cooked hospitality lunch, I ended up over-inviting people and a few also invited themselves along (how un-English of them).
When my neighbours said yes, the dynamics suddenly changed from having friends over for dinner to having people over for dinner! And I panicked, as I always do when the thought of people waiting for me to finish cooking. My mind literally blanked out and I stood in front of the frying pan saying, "I'mpanickingI'mpanickingI'mpanicking." And couldn't function for what felt like ages.
Thank God for Shanx2 because when she came, she helped me make the shrimp dumplings. She's a fantastic cook, so her helping calmed me down.
The menu for the night was Kong Po Kai Ting (chicken with roasted cashew nuts and dried chilli), drunken clam (sounds fancy innit!), shrimp and chives dumplings, some Chinese vegetables and rice. It actually all tasted quite good. Anyway, I did want to take pictures that night, but I was panicking so much while cooking and anxious to get everyone into the food when I was done I forgot.
I had an Australian, two English people, an Italian, a Hongkie, and a Korean as guests that night. It was the sort of right mix of characters that made sure the night was never short of conversation. The only problem I suppose would be that there were so many outspoken people at the table sometimes it felt like everyone was fighting for air time!
Today I thought I better cook the food in my fridge while I remember and have the time before the food go bad and turn to waste.
Cooking is much less stressful without worrying whether it'll be good enough for someone else. Truth be told, I rarely disappoint myself. Either I'm still astonished I can cook at all and everything taste miraculous or I'm not too bad a cook after all!
I let my instincts guide me this time tonight with my Kong Po Kai Ting. After having it for dinner I thought it was restaurant-worthy!
My, I-don't-know-what recipe. I got too lazy at this point to cook I just threw in whatever I thought would do. It didn't taste that bad, but not fantastic either. Just edible. It's for dinner tomorrow night.