Gourmet Girls: August 2013

On May 21, 2013 five of the gourmet girls (we missed you Andrea & Lynley) met at LS's place for a delicious dinner! LS invited her friend, Jill Clawson Smith who is a food stylist, to give us some tips & tricks for high quality food photography. Jill does beautiful work - I'm getting hungry just looking through all of her food pictures on facebook! Our appetizer was Coconut-Crusted Shrimp (Martha Stewart) by Raquel, then a delicious Asian Cabbage Salad (Our Best Bites) by Lara and Fabulous French Bread by Jodi. LS's fabulous main dish was Kalbi (Korean Barbequed Beef Short Ribs). She served a Brown Coconut Rice on the side. I, Bridget, did a Chocolate Trifle for dessert; sort of a made-up recipe. Once again, a gourmet success!

LS's Table

Lara & Jodi

Raquel, LS and Bridget

Coconut-Crusted Shrimp

Asian Cabbage Salad

Fabulous French Bread

Kalbi (Korean Barbequed Beef Short Ribs)

Brown Coconut Rice

Chocolate Trifle

I'd never heard of a raclette until Andrea brought this idea to our attention, but it was super cool! The gourmet girls met on April 30, 2013 for a raclette adventure! Andrea provided all of the meat (steak, chicken and shrimp). Each of us brought veggies, fresh herbs, cheese and bread to complete the meal. We also had some different dipping sauces, including a balsamic reduction, which was amazing! Raquel made a very cool pineapple dessert to finish off the night. Thank you Andrea for introducing us to such a fun way of cooking!

Meats and veggies are placed on top to cook and you put cheeses in the little trays underneath to melt. As you can see, Andrea had the raclette in the middle of the table and these cool plates with divided sections to help organize your different items (kind of hard to see on the white background).