I mentioned in an earlier post that I actually had the pleasure of performing my first “solo” catering gig, that is one where it was not part of some other promotion, and very much beyond simply cooking for friends, and as a bonus, it actually tied in pretty neatly with one of the purposes of this blog, that is being a cook for geeks.

I didn’t go too much into it last time, but I’ll rectify it with this post.

When my host, Steve, described the campaign, which placed a large focus on both human hegemony and an elven rebellion. While he wasn’t sure that I would be able to tie in the campaign content with the menu content, I think I did a pretty good matching up food to themes.

Between what I’d consider hearty human food and a slightly more exotic leanings from what I would surmise to be in elven cuisine I detailed the following menu (which admittedly pulls quite a bit from tried and true standards):

• Wild Mushroom Pancakes
• Serrano Pepper Hummus
• Two batches of No Knead Bread, one with dried cherries and roasted almonds
• Curried Lentil Soup
• Fry Bread Tacos, with fajita style beef or spicy marinated tofu and pico de gallo
• Sweet Yam Curry and Naan

To provide an interesting finish, I thought that a slightly exotic twist on a straightforward dessert would really do the trick, and so I opted to make a strawberry sorbet, augmented with basil from my garden.

Had I known Steve was such an aficionado of spicy things I might have went with the white pepper variant instead! But then again for some reason the thought of basil in dessert seemed to mesh better with my perception of “elven” sensibilities.

Maybe I’m totally wrong there.

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