If you lived here, you’d be full by now.

For all my joy in partaking of restaurant food forays, I have to say that I am also inordinately blessed to have a partner who is a very gifted cook. Most of my eating out is at lunch, because we almost always have dinner at home and Brian does a good job of always making sure the cupboard and fridge are well stocked. I’m a lucky guy.

I was reminded of this again on Saturday night when our friend (Brian’s friend and my new friend) Fayda had her posse over for a gourmand’s evening. Brian was executive chef and did almost all the prep in our more humble kitchen. Other folks pitched in too (making appie and desert courses) and the whole meal was gorgeous and very, very delicious. Here’s what we had:

Starter nibble was mezze of hummous, baba ghanoush and mouhamara, all prepared by our hostess. I have to give a huge shout-out to Fayda for all of these since these were the pre-meal snacks (with raincoast crisps for dipping- now THAT is luxury!) that tend to take a back seat to the sit-down part of the meal. Fayda really, REALLY knows her dips. They were all maginificent.

First course: salad of butter lettuce, baked goat cheese, apple, dried cherry, and walnuts with a savoury dressing with roasted shallot and garlic.

Second course: prawns and ground-shrimp shiu mai in a Thai-inspired broth made with duck and shrimp broth, red chili.

Third course: Cod cakes with potato topped with steamed spinach, in a puree of pea and leek, parsley and mint.

Fourth course: Duck breast sous vide (yes, Brian did sous vide) on a ragout of mushroom (oyster, cremini and enoki) in duck broth, lemongrass and truffle oil.

Fifth course, first dessert: Vanilla panna cotta with blueberry coulis, blackberries and raspberries.

Sixth course, second dessert: Fresh fruit and chocolate fondue.

Seventh course: Cheese plate, assorted crackers, nuts, quince jelly.

I didn’t have many wine pairings because I was Brian’s designated driver, but I did taste a nice Sancerre with the salad, a Riesling with the soup and my fave, a Moscato with the panna cotta. Oh, and a gorgeous deep red Ontario icewine too. Hmmm, rather a lot of wine.

No, we don’t eat like this everyday, but cooking together was part of what cemented our relationship those many years ago, and though my place in the kitchen is basically that of Linguini in Ratatouille (if you still haven’t seen this, shame on you), I still feel part of it. And as we learned in that wonderful film, every role in the kitchen is tres importante.

If I can get pics from one or more of the attendees I’ll post a thread to my facebook page. What a great evening!