New Year's celebrations - a New Year's menu with 8 small dishes

It was a New Year's menu with 8 small dishes at our friends' home. What a New Year celebration, and what a fantastic dining experience! Here is a picture gallery from the evening's dishes.

New Year celebrations with our friends

We celebrated the new year at the home of our friends Lennart and Beata. They live at a reasonable cycling distance from us, so it was perfect to take the electric bikes there. Since Peter has a large box on the back of his bike, we could also bring a lot of food with us. We had together planned and prepared a New Year's menu with 8 small dishes (or actually another one, but we had to modify and choose during the evening).

We met already at 15 o'clock, and then it was a long evening with both talking and cooking together. Or well, it's mostly Peter and Beata who cook. I (Helena) and Lennart are mostly assigned simple tasks like serving wine or chopping some vegetable, haha.

New Year's menu with 8 small dishes

When preparing a New Year's menu with 8 small dishes, it is important to make sure that the dishes are really small. You don't want to be stuffed after the first two dishes, but continue to be a little hungry throughout the meal. We succeeded well not really with this. Nevertheless, it was very good, and the dishes were enjoyed for many hours. The crusts were offered at 15:00, and the dessert was only served after 12:00 ... So wow, what a fantastic dining experience it was!

1. Crusts with shrimp scrambles

Beata first offered small crusts with shrimp scrambles. A delicious start! The small rye crusts on the left were a novelty for us. Very good and crispy!

2. Lobster soup

We then continued with Peter's magical lobster soup (you'll find the recipe in the post about the Starters for New Year). This time, however, he added a little extra touch and put pieces of filleted tomatoes (without the seeds) and some fried cabbage in the bottom of each bowl. It fit nicely in the soup!

3. Hot prawns

Course number 3 was provided by Beata: large prawns fried in oil and spices. I can't explain the recipe, but I think it included garlic, chilli and fennel. Delicious!

4. Scallops in champagne sauce

For dish number four, Peter seared scallops. We like to serve them in pea puree, but this time we varied it with a "champagne sauce". The sauce is made from onions (which are then strained), fish stock, white wine, cream and cornflour. Just before serving, you pour in a little sparkling wine to make it bubbly, and decorate with red rum and chives.

5. red rum

Now it was Beata's turn again! They had been inspired by a restaurant visit and served toast with red rum, creme fraiche, red onion, chives and lemon. What a smart and tasty starter!

6. Foie gras with apple

A week before Christmas, while cleaning out the kitchen cupboards, we found a tin of foie gras that we had forgotten we had. What to do? Eat it on New Year's Eve of course! We served it with buttered bread, fried apple and a glass of Hungarian tokaj wine. Luxury!

7. Roe deer fillet with chanterelles

There weren't supposed to be any main courses on the menu, but we have to admit that this dish was a little too big to qualify as a "small dish". It was fantastic anyway! Deer fillet with asparagus, chanterelles, Peter's delicious game sauce and potato gratin flavoured with chevre.

8. Cloudberry pannacotta

The last dish on the menu was a cloudberry panna cotta (you can find the recipe in the post about the Desserts for New YearThis was served after and was a good finish, even though we were very full by this time.

12 stroke

What about 12 o'clock? We simply went out onto Lennart and Beata's balcony and watched the fireworks from there. We were actually surprised that it was so... very fireworks this year. An opportunity to toast and hope for a better year ahead!

A few hours later it was time for us to cycle home to Pampas marina. Oh how we appreciate our bikes! It is such a freedom to be able to get home easily at night, without being dependent on trying to hunt down a taxi or similar.

How did you celebrate the new year?