Man, did I have a weekend full of food!! I think by the time we finally get too Christmas I’ll be as stuffed as a Turkey. Saturday  night was without any doubt a night I will remember my whole life (although some parts got washed away with lots of wine). Saturday we had a Friends Christmas party at my friend Stijn’s house… Although when I entered it seemed more like Santa’s workshop :-), Everybody was doing something , besides me, as I had already prepared my dessert at home.

The plan of the Christmas celebration was that we had teams of 3-4 people each making a course, as otherwise the same people as always would be cooking. I really like this concept, as this way people who don’t know how to cook are actually forced to help and maybe thanks to this night feel like cooking more, even after this evening  🙂 (mmm, not sure who this message is for 😉 )

We started with some bubbles!!  (What else?) For people who want to know, we had the ‘Sierra Salinas’ cava. At first I actually thought we would have more than enough bottles (was I wrong); The appetizers was the task of my lovely girlfriend Delphine and the charming Saskia, who had really outdone themselves, as they served us a wide variety of verrines , toast with paprika caviar, tapenades,  spoon bites, etc…  A real success!! Good job ladies

The first course was a creation of host Stijn (that you might remember from one of my previous posts) and his team. This team even did some show cooking 🙂 they had salted a salmon themselves … and as everybody knows at some point you’ll have to wash off the salt from the fish, now this was some showcooking!! Don’t try this at home kids!! The fish was too big for the sink, so the next best thing was the bath  🙂

I can assure you that the result was yummy and a feast for the eye!

And so the night continued in harmony and I might even say crescendo! Now it is up to my buddy Laurent and his merry men :-). They prepared a Jeroen Meus classic ‘Chicken stew prepared with old Geuze beer’. And Yet again my friends surprise me with their skills and finger liking result!!  To accompany this dish, my friends served a Cabernet Sauvignon Terrapura

The moment supreme was without any doubt the dessert 😉 😉 no no, just kidding. For the dessert I was really lucky to be able to work with 2 lovely ladies!! We decided to make ‘Speculoos cheesecake in a jar’ where I replaced the red fruit with caramelized apples and pears. Amandine made an apple turnover according to a family recipe (but maybe I can convince her to do guest cooking on my blog to see how she makes it?). And last but not least Stephanie made some yummy looking cupcakes!!

We also exchanged gifts! The fun part about that was that nobody knew for who they were going to get a present… I had to buy a present for my friend Carlos, and I must admit that I‘ve been sneaky to find out what he wanted. Let me explain, I was already planning to buy wine, but to know what kind he liked I took him to a wine tasting (but he didn’t know at that moment that I was his secret Santa).  I received a beautiful wine decanter!!

I really had a WONDERFUL evening!! Thank you, you guys rock!!