The First Saturday Soiree

If anyone has not yet figured out my secret, I enjoy cooking greatly; cooking for others, even more so. I also think that cooking with others can be a lot of fun. Last Saturday a good friend, "J" and I got together to cook up a special dinner to celebrate the end of the week, and to simply unwind a bit. After much sifting through recipes and serious deliberation, we decided upon a menu.

The First Saturday Soiree Menu

Okra Marsala

Kimchi Jun (kimchi pancake)

Butter lettuce salad

So the menu was a bit all over the map that night, but it ended up going together quite nicely!

Taking pictures was the tricky part, I really must get a new camera, and some decent lighting in my apartment. My regular camera is awful when it comes to night/dimly light photography, and so I actually end up taking many of my foodie photos with my cell phone! This time, I enlisted the aid of my cooking buddy, so while I clicked away with my phone, she held our one (floor) lamp aloft in order to give me a bit more lighting! It was really quite silly, and also proves that J is both very awesome, and very patient :)

Later that night we were joined by another friend, and we dug in! Both dishes were hits, I am a humongous okra fanatic; and have an intense love of pickled things (i.e. kimchi!). Conveniently, J. is pretty much the same on both fronts. Neither of my friends had had kimchi before, but we all loved the pancakes! The only revision we decided would improve them would be a greater ratio of kimchi to flour.

Kimchi Pancake recipe can be found here: allrecipes.com

I thought the okra was good, but could use a bit more flavor, however, this was a bit to be expected as I was missing a couple of the Indian spices the recipe calls for...ah improvisation!