My Sunday Dinners is a tradition I started two years ago, where the family gathers around the dining table for a meal together. In this day and age, it’s not as simple as it sounds, especially with teenage children who have their own activities. 

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My son’s 19^th birthday celebration was a special one! Just the four of us spending time together over delicious food, good wine, honest conversation, and music. What was I going to cook for dinner that would be befitting of the occasion but did not require me to be in the kitchen for long?


This is the conversation I have with myself when planning a menu:

1. What does everyone like to eat, and is easy to make so that I can spend time at the table with the family? Steak! Quality steak with good marbling only requires simple seasoning for the beefy flavours to come through.

2. What goes well with steak? Potatoes! Cheesy potatoes! I can pre-boil the potatoes, then mash and season while they’re still warm. In fact, I can add brown butter, shallots, bacon bits and cheddar into the mash. Better still, I can put the mash in a pool of cream and cheese, so that it forms a cheesy custard when grilled.
   

3. Some greens…maybe beans! Par-boiled then fried with butter in the same pan as the bacon … yumzz. Plated with the steak for a less-guilty pleasure!

4. For the starter, I was inspired by a recipe I saw on a cooking show. It had a dollop of yoghurt on which to rest the poached egg. I’m thinking of cream cheese, shallots and fresh tarragon to add to the yoghurt! Poached egg on top, decorated with fried cubes of cured lard, home-made pesto (easy to make ahead from fresh herbs), and mentaiko in my freezer.

5. Dessert! Since I have yoghurt and cream from other dishes, I will make frozen yoghurt. Just three ingredients (500g yoghurt, 120g cream, 165g sugar) whipped together then frozen. This will go perfectly with a sticky date pudding (made one day before), as the tangy yoghurt will balance the sweetness of the pudding and toffee sauce.

We had a great time together! Patrick helped me to poach the eggs, while the hubs and Jill helped to decorate the eggs and take beautiful pictures.The kids played us their favourite playlist, and showed us what was trending on the videos. Too many cocktails, and two bottles of wine later, we were ready for bed… zzzzz

_{This post was first published on Intimate Suppers blog and has been reposted on Executive Lifestyle with the permission of the author. Images from Celina Tan}

_{Edited by Nedda Chaplin}

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