A Call To Worship

A Blessed New Year to you! How did you spend your New Year ? Did you make any resolutions? Have you set any priorities for the year 2013?
On New Year's eve, I prepared a three course meal for the family and a guest, and I'm happy that the food turned out well.  This is what I cooked.


                                             Scallops With Pancetta & Cauliflower Puree
                                        Balsamic Chicken With Roasted Vegetables & Mash                                                     
                                               Vanilla Panna  Cotta With Mango Gelee

I have done the starter before, refer recipe here.  The main and dessert were my first time and I was quite nervous about preparing dessert with gelatin.

Scallop With  Pancetta & Cauliflower Puree

Balsamic Chicken With Roasted Vegetables
Adapted recipe from Alysha, junior contestant,masterchef 
Serves 6


Ingredients

6 chicken marylands
1 each, red, green, yellow capsicum 
2 red onions, cut into thin wedges
250g white button mushrooms
12 cloves of garlic
2 teaspoons thyme
250g of cherry tomatoes

Marinade

11/2 cup balsamic vinegar
10 tbsp olive oil
10 tsp brown sugar

Mash

6 russet potatoes
50g butter
150ml milk
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

• Whisk vinegar, oil and sugar in a bowl until sugar has dissolved.
• Drizzle half the mixture over chicken and leave in chiller for at least an hour.
• Cut the capsicums and onions. Preheat oven to 200C.
• Bake the chicken with the onions and mushrooms for about 25 mins, then add in the capsicums and cherry tomatoes. Bake for another 10-15 minutes. Retain pan juices for sauce.
• For the mash, cut potatoes into chunks and cook in boiling water till tender.
• Drain and return to saucepan, mash potatoes chunks until smooth. Add butter and milk. Season with salt and pepper.
• For sauce, place remaining marinade in a saucepan with the pan juices. Stir over low heat until thickened.

Vanilla Panna Cotta With Mango Gelee
Recipe adapted from here
6 small cups
Ingredients

Vanilla Panna Cotta

200ml whipping cream
40ml milk
40g castor sugar
3g gelatin powder
1/2 tsp vanilla extract


Mango Gelee

1 mango, to make 100g puree
30g diced mango
30g caster sugar (more or less depending on the sweetness of mango)
2g gelatin powder

Method

• Pour milk into a small bowl, stir in gelatin and set aside. 
• Place cream,sugar and vanilla in a saucepan, bring to boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat, add gelatin mixture and stir until gelatin dissolves.
• Set aside to cool for 15 minutes. Strain mixture and pour into prepared cups.  To make the "angle" effect, arrange the cups tilted in an egg tray.
• Refrigerate for an hour until panna cotta slightly set. Prepare the mango gelee
• Blend mango and strain puree. Add sugar to half of the mango puree and warm over low heat until sugar dissolve. Remove from heat and stir in gelatin until dissolves. Add the remaining puree and stir well. Add in the diced mango and let the gelee cool to room temperature.
• Pour over set panna cotta. Chill to set at least 4 hours.

I have never made any New Year's resolutions, or made plans for the year,  but after listening to last Sunday's sermon, "Priorities for the New Year" by the church pastor, I pray I can set these essential priorities right. The three priorities outlined are:


Worship the triune (trinity) God  Do not let our worship grow mundane, It will affect our lives, for worship is the furnace of our response to Him.

Work for Jesus  Work for Jesus, you will be rewarded.

Witness for Jesus  Sharing your faith is talking to people about Jesus. Pray for an opportunity to share.

A Call To Worship
Psalm 95

'Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.
For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him, The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.
Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
Today, if only you would hear his voice, "Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me; they tried me, though they had seen what I did.
For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, 'They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.'
So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.'"