Friday, June 18

Cooking with Toy ~ A Lesson in Good Eating




Toy Townsend, a local chef, will come to your home and cook for approximately twenty people, including lessons, recipes, humor, wines and a goooooood meal to boot!

Click to enlarge.








He cautioned us to wet each spring roll wrapper separately, otherwise they will clump together. Place all ingredients in the center and wrap! Ingredients include Napa cabbage or hardy lettuce, rice noodles, grated carrots, Thai basil, grated ginger and sesame oil.




Here's the platter of completed spring rolls, and the peanut dipping sauce. They were really good!


This is the type of spring roll wrapper he used; available locally at Harris-Teeter.






Vanessa (Toy's intended) makes Chinese Chicken Salad; including chicken, celery, romaine, Napa cabbage, carrots, bean sprouts, bell pepper, green onion, cilantro, sesame seeds, slivered almonds, fried wonton noodles and somen noodles (cooked and drained). The salad dressing included fresh ground ginger, mayo and several Asian ingredients. This was a wonderful salad, and I wish I had taken a larger portion!






The finished platter of salad. Don't you want to dig in? We also ate Teriyaki Marinated Pork Loin skewers and Asian Shrimp Beggar's purses, which were excellent. I could have eaten 10 of those!!








Toy checks the jasmine rice in the cooker.























Our hostess's centerpiece, consisting of her many varieties of hydrangea.







The desserts were wonderful! And luckily, Toy made two extras. Names were put into a hat and I won one pie and my friend Pam won the other one. Weren't we lucky!!?
















Toy and yours truly. Our hostess always goes to the MAX to insure a full theme to the party - she provided hats for everyone.









If you are within shouting distance of the Research Triangle, call Toy to have your very own custom meal and cooking lessons!

9 comments:

Darlene said...

Wish I had him here. I would have one last hurrah!

srp said...

That chicken salad and those pies look fabulous!!!

Evil Twin's Wife said...

Wow - what a fun idea! Everything looks delicious, too. Mmmmm.

Grannymar said...

I am drooling, just looking at the photos!

Olga said...

That's a great party idea. Everything lokked scrumptious.

Arkansas Patti said...

Rats, I am not even in bull horn distance. That is my kind of cooking, especially for summer.
Congrats on the whole pie.
Loved the cute pic of you two.

Pat said...

It's a while since I had Chinese. I'm feeling the urge.
Your hair looks nice.

OldLady Of The Hills said...

What a great idea for an evening of Fabulous Food! It all looks and sounds wonderful, Judy!

One Woman's Journey - a journal being written from Woodhaven - her cottage in the woods. said...

Wish he were here. I would have a party. The food looked wonderful.
You have made me hungry.