Spanish Feast

One of my good friend loves throwing dinner parties. The effort that she exerted conjures up images of superheroes multi-tasking. There were many dishes that drew "Wow"s and "Ohhh"s. We had a variety of homemade tapas - simple yet delicious.

I made the chicken paella in a Scanpan.

Plenty of white wine and red wine based Sangria to let the teeth have a break.

Dessert were decadent fruit kebabs and sugar dusted churros with Lindt chocolate from the awesome chocolate fountain.

Envious right!

Barca

We had the privilege of being invited to the Sophie Lui boutique opening on High Street, Armadale yesterday. So prior to that, we decided to have dinner around Armadale. Using the Your Restaurants website to search for a good restaurant around the area, we came across Barca Food & Wine. I haven't had Spanish food for awhile so we chose this restaurant.

It was quite an unexpected experience actually. All the Spanish restaurants that I have been to so far have a cottage feel to it. This place was slick and loungy, which completely threw me off. The spanish influence is very understated but the atmosphere - refined.

There are grazing platters to nibblies available for entree but we had the oysters and crayfish ravioli to begin with and finished with their signature dishes - the paella, with Moreton Bay bugs, pipis, prawns, calamari, chorizo, peas and fresh herbs; and the crispy-skinned duck breast served on creamy shallot and truffle-infused potato mash with broccoli and blackberry sauce. The duck was absolutely delicious but the paella, although filled with seafood, was more like a saffron risotto rather than a paella.

Being a Spanish restaurant, I was surprised that there were no Churros!?! How can this be?? But there were strange desserts include the 'Barca bomb' - a blend of Jagermeister or Belvedere vodka and Red Bull sorbet.

On a very very full stomach, we throttled along to the Opening for more sugary champagne. Always a great night when there's good food and alcohol.

Barca Food & Wine
1007 High St
Armadale 3143 VIC
03 9822 8515

Perfect Paella

My sister came over for dinner and I saw an article a few days before about how to cook the perfect paella, so I thought I would give the dinner a Spanish theme.

On the Menu

Pan Fried Saganaki Haloumi

Garlic Brown Mushrooms and Chorizos (with lots of extra virgin olive oil)

Spanish Omelette

Chicken, Chorizo and Mixed Seafood Paella (about 20 saffron strains )

All the ingredients were bought from the DJ Food Court. We followed The Age recipe with some creative liberty.

We cooked the paella in my sister's scanpan. Fantastic tool, got to get me one of those. I should have put the seafood just before I put the paella in the oven.It took us 2 hours to cook but then I am a slow cutter. Hopefully it will take less time next time. A great success - yum!!!