Mid-year feast 2015

For the last five years we’ve brought together some of our food loving friends for a great feast. It all started off as a way to re-create the excesses surrounding Christmas… seeing as Christmas in the South falls in the middle of summer this is not a natural time to over indulge so we moved it to the middle of the year instead. The first installment was, predictably, a recreation of more traditional fare – turkey, gammon, Christmas cake, etc. Fun though this was it didn’t really get the creative juices going so we changed it to a multi-course meal around specific themes.

Time to indulge

Our most recent theme was Re-invent You Favourite, but over the last few years we’ve done The Seven Deadly Sins, The Seven Modern Wonders of the World, Citrus in the Garden and Blind Date (a seven course blind tasting). Below is a sampling of this year’s results.

Brendon and Heidi got us off to a great start with the re-invention of a Mexican pot pie as a soup with a pie crust on top, served with some great Mexican beer. (Unfortunately I was a bit late with the camera!)

Second course (Salad) – Orange and mint salad cucumber and bloody Mary and a caprese salad with balsamic balls (Neil and Karen)

Third course (Fish) – Salmon tartare with gooseberry egg and shrimp chips served with a single malt and tequila cocktail (Mike and Nikki)

Fourth course (Fowl) – Roast chicken with a light red Pinot Noir (Andrew and Cara)

Fifth course (meat) – Lemon and white wine ox tail with a Semillion and Chardonnay blend (Sarah and Hendrik)

Sixth course (dessert) – Peppermint crisp tart as an ice cream with bubbles (Lynn and Mike)