Come dine with me finale!

One of my favorite parts about living in England was the ridiculous television that isn't exported. I'm not talking about The Office or Downton Abby but true classics like Don't Tell the Bride (where the groom plans the wedding over three weeks) and my favorite Come Dine With Me.  The set up of Come Dine With Me is five strangers meet and each night for five days, one hosts a dinner party complete with a three course meal and entertainment.  Seriously these parties get boozed up and out of control. At the end of the night during their taxi ride home, each visiting member of the dinner party gives the host a score between 1 and 10. At the end of the week all of the scores are tallied and the winner is presented with 1000 pounds. (You can watch a "best bit" reel from an episode in Leeds here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PetMjfFoUac). Each episode runs at about dinner time monday through friday.  This was definitely easily agreed upon dinner entertainment at the flat. 

It wasn't long until we decided we needed to start our own little competition.  The rules were a bit different and the winner just got bragging rights, but we all love a little healthy competition and the shit talking before hand. 

Emma tackled this first: Her starter was a lovely proscuitto cream cheese asparagus wraps, followed the main which was rack of lamb, some sort of cheese potato loveliness and some veg (peas and leeks).  Our pudding (british word for dessert) was a white chocolate mousse with raspberries.  Here are a few quick photos I managed to capture! 

 
 

Eilidh was second. She cooked a massive meal for six of us on Burns night (It's a scottish thing.. you can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burns_supper).  The whole bit was done from the haggis to the totties to the neeps. The Scotch flowed and much poetry was recited. It was confusing and delicious. Mostly I tried not to think about what the haggis was and how much it was sticking to my teeth.. Her pudding was delicious but required a bit of flambé which was absolutely terrifying. Unfortunately it doesn't appear any photos exist..

Finally after much ado, my turn coincided nicely with a farewell dinner for my girls!  I've been dying to try the Queen PW's Penne a la Betsy (named for her sister) for ages and I finally had an excuse! You can find all the lovely details and beautiful photos over here at the Queen PW's website.

This was my first experience cooking shrimp. After I threw them into the pan I started to panic about de veining them.. They were quite little but it didn't look as though it had been done. In a true mark of scientific brains, Emma and I rationalized that shrimp were filter feeders and there probably wasn't much in their intestines that would really ruin dinner (we found out later that they were deveined/ didn't need to be due to their size).

I'm a firm believer that wine and really only improve your cooking. Both the adding it to the food and drinking it. As long as you don't burn down the flat.. 

Beautiful marbling when the cream was added. 

Bubbling goodness.

Here the process got a little weird.. Long story short Emma went for more wine and dinner had to simmer for longer than expected. Thankfully this didn't appear to ruin anything. 

I make this dressing all the time, but I rarely seem to capture this moment.  I've started adding dijon more frequently to my balsamic/EVOO dressing like my friend Sabrina over at Bean Eats which really jazzes it up a bit. 

Since my dinner was so heavy I skipped serving a starter and instead served a nice salad along with dinner. I passed this off as a very American thing to do.. I'm not sure it's an America thing or just a my family thing.. 

Please excuse our laundry and the Olympics in the background! 

For pudding I wanted to make something super American. I realized early on in my year in England that cookies were always a massive hit! I decided on these cream cheese m and m cookies from The Girl Who Ate Everything.  They were massive as most of my cookies seem to be and gone by breakfast the next morning! I will most definitely adding this to my list of crowd pleasers!