Our sort of Italian dinner

Once again the weekend came and went like a passing shower on a humid summer afternoon. Lately (it's been a while so "lately" is more of a figure of speech), I've going through a restaurant funk. I can't blame restaurants for the lack of manpower and good service but that doesn't mean I'm happy to pay the 10% Service Charge. Food-wise, I would rather try out new recipes in the kitchen though sometimes at the expense of our houseguests. Whoops. 

Come Saturday evening, I was more than happy to have the Gardenia hood come over for dinner. 

My younger sister, our budding litigator delivered a platter of cold cuts, consisting of lamb and dry aged proscuitto, Mortadella ham, artichokes, red peppers with cream cheese, honeydew, blue cheese and burrata. 

To keep up the green (or red) quotient, I made a red cabbage salad with walnuts, and raisins, lightly dress in a honey mustard sauce. I keep forgetting that half a head of red cabbage is more than enough as now I have half a head left in my fridge, resembling a girl sitting in one corner, waiting for someone to ask her to dance.

Google 'risotto' and Jamie Oliver's basic risotto recipe comes first among all the search results. We added peas instead of celery (gag) and it was a marvelous risotto though I admit I'm terribly biased towards whatever the Mister whips up.

Meat the family - beef brisket which I threw into the slow cooker, alongside onions, before leaving for class. It was so good, I forgot all about the grilled mackerel that I was supposed to prepare for my health-concious dad - even he missed out on that! It was ridiculously tender 10 hours later and more than generously coated in homemade barbecue sauce. Definitely the sort of dish you hope to have leftovers of.

My elder sister brought over some precious Japanese fruits and we cleaned out the leftover ice cream.

After dinner, most of them stayed back to watch 10 minutes of Skyfall (because it was quite rubbish), an episode of Suits and Running Man. A deadly mix of food coma and project work fatigue made me hit for the sheets at 10pm.

Lovely times.