30th Birthday Dinner

My wonderful brother from another mother, Eric, made me and my friends the most amazing birthday dinner. It was an amazing night - everything was homemade. We began with a fish cake appetizer. Above were the dipping sauces for the fish cake. The red sauce was a sweet chili sauce (homemade from scratch!) and a cucumber relish...

These are fish cakes made of flounder with green beans, Thai basil, chili, red curry paste (with smoked whiting, shrimp, onion, garlic, glangal root, and a bunch of other stuff). They were amazing! I ate 3 of them! They were also spicy and super flavorful - there was no holding back on flavor in tonight's meal.

The table was set and ready to go with the salad course. So pretty! :)

Smoked Whiting Salad with cucumber, tomato, crushed peanut, mint, cilantro leaves, green onion, Thai chili. The dressing was made of rice vinegar, pickled ginger, sugar and cilantro roots, along with lime juice, soy sauce and a few other secret ingredients.

Here it is again on a black plate. The table had alternating black and white plates. :)

We had three entrees and two side dishes. One side dish was jasmine rice and the other was Chinese vegetables (shown above): cabbage, bell pepper, bock choy and Chinese celery in a cola and soy marinade.

All the entrees were served family style. This was chicken breast with Thai basil, green beans, bell pepper, garlic, Thai chili, and krachai. The sauce was chicken stock, oyster and fish sauce and sugar.

This gem was the pork shoulder. It was cooked with fermented bean curd, yellow bean paste, low sodium soy sauce, thick sweet soy sauce, sugar and hoisin sauce. It was my favorite.

This was the monk fish. (It had a texture like lobster - so soft and yummy!)It was cooked with cilantro root, black Chinese vinegar, pickled ginger, soy sauce, birds eye chili, garlic, ginger, and sugar. This was my second most favorite thing.

We drank a lot of champagne...it was fabulous....

And my lovely bestie Alicia made me a chocolate pound cake from scratch. She even made the icing. It was so delicious! In closing, I would just like to add that I have the most amazing friends ever and I'm so lucky. Turning 30 with them will always be etched in my mind as one of my favorite moments. :) Love you guys...