Birthday Dinner

My dear husband had a birthday this week – now we are both in decade #3. I fixed him an extra-fancy dinner.

Teriyaki Salmon with soba noodles and broccoli:

Tuna Rolls; four variations on the tuna theme with avocado, shitake mushrooms, carrots, and radishes:

This was the first time I’d made sushi with raw fish. It was delicious! Yay for Newman’s Fish Co.

For dessert, I had been plotting for months to make coconut ice cream. At Christmas time we’d been handed down a Cuisinart ice cream maker from J & M who had two of them. We tried it out once while we were in San Jose but it hasn’t really been ice cream weather so we hadn’t used it since then. I was wanting to try making ice cream with only coconut milk, but after scouring the Web I decided to play it safe and use some dairy, since I wanted to make custard-style ice cream with eggs. I followed a recipe I found online for Thai ice cream, which called for coconut milk and heavy cream – I swapped and used whole milk and coconut cream (unsweetened, from the Asian market.) I mashed some fresh ginger in my garlic press and stirred the juice into the warm custard.

It came out quite delicious. A bit overly sweet, though – next time I will use less sugar and probably go all-coconut milk. I want to try other flavorings, too, like lemongrass, lime, mango, pineapple…

My very favorite way to eat any kind of ice cream is with toasted coconut on top. The crunchy, nutty topping is super-yummy.

We have started to get some really nice sunsets: