Dinner Party

 A dinner party is a great way to inspire me to try new recipes and clean the house!  The morning of the party I ran a 10 mile trail race, and managed to pull a calf muscle during the 2nd mile.  Walking after the race was difficult, but thanks to Sophie's I managed to hobble around HEB and gather the ingredients.  There was a brief moment of panic when I thought I might have to go back for ginger but we found it in the garage fridge.  The starter was a cold asparagus/leek soup with garam masala--as you can see from the color the asparagus got a bit overcooked.  Had to substitute sour cream for cream fraiche as a trip to Central Market was out of the question.  The salad dressing was awesome...have you ever had the carrot/ginger dressing at a Japanese restaurant?  This was similar if not the same, and the Vitamix made easy work of pureeing the carrots/ginger with nary a fiber or chunk.  I did lose a few slices of prosciutto to the oven---making "prosciutto bacon" to top the salad--burnt beyond a crisp but luckily at $19/lb I didn't lose it all.  Not sure if it really added much to the salad and would likely just use regular bacon in the future.  Soup could have used a crouton as well--recipe called for pappadum which are not a staple at HEB either.  Wimped out on the salmon and just marinated with Soy Vay (the best bottled teriyaki sauce EVER) and cooked in oven--perfect!  Dessert was a strawberry tart with rye crust (subbing for apricots) and lemon buttermilk ice cream which was surprisingly awesome for a low fat item.  Got to use the Korean pottery, lots of good wine and sparkling conversation.  Plus Ian did the dishes :)