Dinner at Feeling Nibblish's chef's table!

Dinner at Feeling Nibblish's chef's table! 

It's not often that you're invited to a recipe blogger's kitchen for dinner, so I made sure to bring my empty stomach and imagined what feast would await the boy and I. Isabelle described the meal as a "Chinese inspired meal" and I couldn't wait. We opened some beers to cool down from the scorching weather outside and settled in.

The Chinatown Gyoza were dressed in a refreshing soy, chilli, ginger and coriander sauce and were the perfect starting point for an Asian themed night of food. The fillings, including prawns and pork, worked perfectly with their sauce and I couldn't get enough of these. Because I'm a little bit obsessed with strong flavours, if I were making them I would have upped the chilli, ginger and coriander in the sauce, however, if you're serving food for a few people you have to be careful not to overdo these kinds of flavours. And I'm only saying this because when asked at the end of the evening by Isabelle, I had extreme difficulty in offering any negative feedback. I'm definitely going to try this recipe because making gyoza is always a lot of fun and you can be very creative with the fillings (although I have a tendency to overstuff every gyoza I make). The gyoza were soft in the inside and crispy on the outside from being panfried. The perfect combination. You could easily eat an entire meal of these.

It's always fun being around someone else who takes photos of the food they eat. I think the boy is getting use to waiting until he sees the flash of a camera before he's allowed to eat. That's foodie bloggers for you! But it's also great being able to talk food over great food, both home cookign and new restaurants that have opened up.

We've started on a bottle of red by this point and can smell the next course simmering away. It's beginning to smell amazing. Isabelle has prepared as much as possible before we've arrived, so that she isn't away from the conversation for too long. This is always a juggling act when you're the cook for the night, but Isabelle does this seamlessly.

The next course is Chick - Corn Soup, which is a delicious combination of chicken, corn, Shao Hsing wine, coriander and more. There really is something about chicken soup that makes you feel like you're eating something that's really good for your body. I could have eaten a whole pot of this because it's so moorish. Chicken soup has that ability to make you extremely comforted when you eat it, warming you up from the inside out. This is a bit fancier than the usual variety served to you by your parents when you were feeling ill, and the Asian twist, such as the coriander (one of my favourite ingredients at the moment), lifts the flavours in the soup.

A few more bottles of wine and a lot more talk of blogs and food later, the three of us are are served a Quick & Fruity Slice by Isabella. It's the perfect light dessert to finish off an Asian inspired meal, as it's not too heavy. Even though I'm not often in the mood for desserts, this is a nice and light way to finish the meal off. It has puff pastry crunch and is topped with fresh strawberries, raspberries and custardy goodness. I find it a bit difficult to break the pastry with a spoon, and I think that if I were to do it again, it might be easier just to pick with my hands and eat it that way!

By this point, it's time to call it a night. The boy and I have extremely satisfied stomachs. His only feedback to Isabella involves putting more chilli into everything (well, maybe not the dessert), because, like me, he's a little chilli obsessed. But if that's the only feedback that we can give, you know it was a great night of food. I hope that we're invited back to the Chef's table in the Feeling Nibblish kitchen some time soon!