Sounds like it will be a great evening. I'm sure the chef will be thrilled! This is very nice and can be made ahead of time as well. The Tannery’s Crab Crème Brûlée with Pickled Cucumber and Melba Toast adapted from Paul Flynn via The Afternoon Show and Paul Flynn: Irish Food Serves 4 as a starter “Any time you have something creamy, you need something sharp to offset it. This is why we serve pickled cucumber with this dish. You need something to cut through the cream, and the pickled ginger is the starting point of that,” says Paul Flynn. One of the keys to this dish is its lovely creamy consistency, so keep an eye on your oven temperature: “You put it into a low oven because you don’t want the eggs to soufflé, you want them to gently set, like a custard.” 400 ml (1 3/4 cups) cream 1 egg 2 egg yolks 1 garlic clove, peeled and finely chopped (or grate it directly into the custard mixture with a Microplane grater) 2 tablespoons pickled ginger, drained and finely chopped salt and freshly ground black pepper 150 g (1 cup) picked white crab meat, finely chopped 50 g (1/2 cup) freshly grated Parmesan pickled cucumber, to serve (see recipe below) Melba toast, to serve (see recipe below) lemon wedges, to serve Place the cream in a bowl with the eggs, garlic, pickled ginger and some salt and pepper and mix well. Add in the crab meat, ensuring there is no shell, and mix well again. Cover with cling film and place in the fridge to allow the flavours to infuse for at least 30 minutes, but ideally up to overnight. Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F). Ladle or pour the mixture into the ramekins, making sure you get an even amount of crab in every ramekin, as the crab tends to fall to the bottom. Place the ramekins in a roasting tray. Fill the tray with warm water until the water comes halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Place this bain marie in the oven and cook for 45 to 60 minutes (check after 40 minutes). When cooked through, the mixture should be set but still have a slightly wobbly consistency. Remove the ramekins from the bain marie and allow to cool ��" the crab crème brûlée should be served at room temperature. When ready to serve, sprinkle a very thin layer of Parmesan on top of each ramekin and brown under the grill. Serve with pickled cucumber, really thin Melba toast (“sort of a retro addition that you don’t see very often”) and a lemon wedge. “So there you have it,” says Paul. “The Tannery crab crème brûlée ��" my classic.” Pickled Cucumber 1 cucumber pinch of salt 50 g (1/4 cup) caster sugar 50 ml (1/4 cup) white wine vinegar 1 teaspoon sweet chilli sauce Slice the cucumber as thinly as you can (a mandolin or food processor’s slicing attachment is perfect for this job). Place the sliced cucumber in a bowl and sprinkle with a little salt. Set aside. Bring the sugar, vinegar and chilli sauce to the boil and reduce for 30 seconds. Take off the heat and allow to cool completely. Once it’s cool, pour the liquid over the cucumbers and stir gently to coat them all. This will keep in the fridge for 2 or 3 days ��" any more and the cucumber loses its colour. Melba Toast Toast slices of white bread and remove the crusts. Slice the bread laterally to make two slices that are half the original thickness of the bread. Rub off excess bread from the untoasted side, then cut diagonally into triangles. Place the untoasted side under the grill until the edges curl. The Tannery Restaurant

This is a mustard glaze recipe posted by steelmagnolia2007 - I have used it for every ham I have made since she posted it in 2007 -- and it is so delicious & easy. It definitely has a slight mustard taste. I cook my ham the normal way I always do-and start applying the glaze 30 minutes before the end of the cooking time. 1 cup dark brown sugar, packed 3 T Dijon mustard 5 T Balsamic vinegar Score top of ham. Cook as you always do and apply glaze 30 minutes before end of cooking time. Mix glaze ingredients well in separate small bowl. Slather generously over all of the exposed ham. Continue cooking, uncovered, another 30 minutes, basting every 10 minutes. Mixing pan juices with a little bit of the glaze makes a fab gravy!

Just finished up mine. Very traditional - cranberries, grated orange peel, orange juice (and the chopped up remains of the grated orange) sugar, cinnamon and a bit of grated ginger. No booze in this one - too many kids at the dinner. It smelled so good cooking and tastes even better. btw, I made spiced poached D'anjou pears for dessert for family Sunday dinner this weekend. They were a huge hit ;-)

I figured out a way to use my strawberry cranberry jam--it turned out good on a graham cracker spread with Hershey's chocolate spread and then the jam on top of that. Good with one of our favorite wines, "Old Vin Zin" (fandel). It was a very good taste combination, the chocolate and the cranberry and the wine counterbalanced each other. I don't think that "charcuterie" is for wine tasting per se because yes, you are not going to really be able to "taste" the wine if you pair it with other strongly flavored things. But I like to drink wine with food too. I think any type of snack with wine is for sitting and enjoying both wine and food. And if you are winos and foodies like we are, you are going to want to do that a LOT, and not just with friends. So what I was thinking of is little easy peasy wine snacks that aren't necessarily formal of fussy and can easily be put together when the mood strikes. Could also work really with cocktails. We just came back from two days at a beach town. Alcohol and small bites "al fresco" are big right now. People don't want to be inside anymore in the summer. Honestly, unless it is cold and rainy, I am totally on board with this trend!! It could just as easily be called "tapas" I guess, although for me, tapas is something a little more involved. The best foods I found from our meager samplings were plain stuff but with high quality ingredients and simply prepared. We had some deep fried breaded portabella mushrooms strips which were excellent. Just a simple take on the bar standard of deep friend mushrooms, but with the more flavorful portabellas and a home made breading so not the salty, soggy cloying stuff that is basically thawed from the freezer and fried at most bars. I won't be making that at home any time soon, although I might give my marinated mushroom salad another try. I had it once at a restaurant salad bar and liked it so much I got the recipe. But that's not really a "poof" or "poop" (pantry) kind of thing, but definitely a good tapas food, anything with mushrooms. I used to keep the phyllo cups in the freezer. I maybe can again, but right now gonna have to put on hold as I am desperately trying to clear out our freezer so I can clean it before I have to fill it with summer harvest things . . . Those phyllo cups make any type of thing taste gourmet. I used to make jam tarts with them all the time . . . absolutely a poof item since they do not hold up well once filled, they get soggy. I once served them at a party filled with store bought spinach dip and topped with a sliced water chestnut and I got raves. No one at the party had ever thought of that before . . .