Anniversary Dinner

Today's our anniversary, and in an unusual fit of ambition fueled most likely by self-deception, I am trying three new recipes---unless you count each component, in which case it's six new recipes---for one dinner. Thankfully, more than half of them are at least partially make-ahead, which helps tremendously. Two are from CI's Restaurant Favorites, and one is from Epicurious, which I bookmarked a while back thanks to a thread on Chowhound where at least 5 people in a row named that as one of their top 5 favorite recipes of all time. So, it's about time we tried it.

Appetizer: Crispy chicken dumplings with sweet-and-sour sauce. These are deep fried with a homemade sauce. I therefore trust that they will be good. I don't currently have a food processor so I'm not looking forward to mincing everything in the filling rather than having a machine whiz it around for 10 seconds, but I'll deal.

Main: Pan-seared tuna steaks with ginger-shiitake cream sauce. I don't think I've ever bought fresh tuna or shiitakes before. When I stopped by Fresh Market this morning I was pleasantly surprised that a) the few shiitakes they had left were on sale, and without weighing I picked out the last ones that looked good and had exactly enough for my recipe; and b) the sashimi-grade tuna was only $11/lb, which I wasn't expecting. I'll serve this over soba noodles.

Dessert: Asian poached pears with ginger pastry cream and spicy shortbread chopsticks. I have to say that it costs me something to make a dessert that does not contain chocolate in any of its parts, but I thought I should give Mike a break from my obsession already. Besides, this recipe looks really intriguing. I already made the delicious pastry cream last week (sans the ginger) for my cream puffs, so it's technically not new. I made the version with ginger this morning, and now I am waiting for the pears and poaching liquid to cool down before I run out for an errand. They smell delicious. I didn't splurge on Asian pears, as CI promised that regular grocery store hard-as-a-rock pears work great. It took mine a while longer than estimated to become tender, but I think the liquid wasn't quite simmering when I put the pears in. You would think by now I'd be fairly confident as to what simmering liquid looks like, but it's not the first time it's happened. Probably more a function of impatience than incompetence. The chopsticks look a bit daunting, but I think they'll add a nice textual and visual contrast.