Ok, so 9, yes 9 for dinner tommorow, what do you think of this menu?

[Carmenere]

Dp has a colleague from Japan coming to stay with us and it is his birthday so dp has invited a few? mutual friends over.

Basically I have a really small kitchen but am a pretty good cook and have devised the menu below:

Samosa?s and bahji?s(bought) for starters served with raita and chutney(home made)

Goan king Prawn curry
Bengali chicken with mustard seeds
Spinach and chickpea curry
Goan coconut chutney
Steamed rice (all home made)
Naan bread(bought)

Chocolate birthday cake(home made)

All served with lots of beer

My reasoning is that I can make most of the curries in advance and I can buy good quality samosas and bahjis in the local asian wholesalers, and it will be easy to serve.

But would anyone mind if the starters were bought?

well it was 11 not 9 and I diddn't know until the last minute So it rapidly turned into a buffet style dinner rather than a sit down dinner party.
I was really glad that I'd chosen curry instead of a roast as it was much easier to stretch than they blardy Guinea Fowl I had been considering.

It worked really well but I got a bit fed up with Madhurs recipes so I improvised here and there. I honestly don't think that anyone there realised that the chicken recipe wasn't as authentically Benghali as it was supposed to be.

The cake was great, really easy and I laced it with baileys which was scrummy.

The only problem was that I ended up running around like a blue arsed fly and diddn't have enough time to relax(or even swig enough wine)

But it was fun and I would reccomend doing that type of menu for large amounts of folk.

Fab. Know what you mean about being a blue arsed fly.
I hope someone else did the clearing up for you!