You call that a dinner party?

Well this, my friends, is a dinner party. My good friend Chef Radish and his wife pulled out all the stops to show how all you need to demonstrate first class, five-star cooking is a tiny little kitchen in Elwood and a helluva lot of talent.

There were four of us for dinner at Chef Radish’s house when he cooked me my birthday present – a five-course meal Shannon Bennett would be proud of.

The first course was a palate refreshener; tomato water with truffle oil and watercress. It was served out of a Japanese teapot, using small sake cups. The problem was that it was so utterly divine that we started guzzling and the small portions didn’t last long. Luckily, Chef Radish had catered for several refills!

The first properly course was an egg net filled with fish and coconut cream, poached yabbies and mango salad. The dish had the most phenomenal warmth in the flavours, accented by the fresh crispness of the mango salad. The yabbies were perfectly cooked and married with the coconut in the net wonderfully.

The next course was cured ocean trout with avocado, fennel salt, shiso shoots, honey, daikon pickle and japanese citrus. The trout was cured but not cooked and was almost like a sashmi. The teensiest spash of honey on the plate cut through everything and gave a rounded sweetness that was a really fascinating combination with the daikon.

Third up was coral trout with pan fried coconut, coconut rice and lime. If you’re not a fan of coconut, this isn’t a dish for you. If you are a fan of coconut, this dish is better than most kinds of sex. It was a creamy coconut joy, but with the texture of the shredded coconut providing a crispy juxtaposition to the soft, fluffy rice. Again, perfectly cooked fish was an absolute piece de resistance.

Lamb chops with rice, eggplant, spiced yoghurt, pomegranate and a tomato reduction was a complete about-turn, with a much more aggressive flavour.The lamb was tender and of course a completely traditional pairing with the yoghurt, but the pomegranate gave a twist, as did the tomato, which moistened the whole dish and made it all come together.

Dessert was provided by Chef Radish’s beautiful wife, who made a chai mousse, served with two kinds of chocolate, one being lavender, the other being ginger.  After so much amazing food (not a morsel was left of any course and quite a few second portions were dished out) a light, fluffy dessert was welcome relief! But what the dessert wasn’t by any means a shrinking violet – it was light in texture but had a fantastic flavour and the chocolate, acquired on a recent trip to Tasmania, was the perfect bed-partner.

And if you thought THAT was good, you should have heard the conversation!