Last night I had my brother and his girlfriend came over for dinner. I use them as an excuse to make something special and generally try something new. Last night, for no particular reason, I decided to go French. I think the direction actually came from the desire to have seafood. I'm not overly confident with cooking seafood as I haven't done it much before, but I found a recipe for a french style seafood soup and thought it looked pretty easy. So, for dinner I made Seafood Bouillabaisse w/ a Capsicum Rouille. The Bouillabaisse was eaten too fast to even get a picture, however I can describe it - a deliciously warming soup with lovely chunks of seafood, a small kick from the rouille and some crunch from the crusty bread (also perfect lapping up the remaining flavours).
Dessert was chocolate cake. This recipe is from a basic French cooking book I've had for year. It is so easy and has minimal ingredients. It's also gluten free, so I like to think that means it's a healthy cake. To make it even more healthy, I wanted to add blueberries, which I had bought yesterday morning from the markets. The cake is so fudgy and rich though, I didn't want to make it too complex by adding the berries to the actual cake, so instead made a creamy topping, which helped balance the richness of the chocolate.
Needless to say, dinner was a hit. Peter and Nadia brought two amazing bottles of wine and as always, we had a great catch-up. Thanks guys and hope you enjoy the left over cake I made you take home.
