Although we’ve cooked for a few friends since moving into our new house, all of these meals have been pretty easy affairs — the kind of things that don’t require more than a few hours of puttering around our new (dream) kitchen. This past weekend, however, my darlin’ wife S and I entertained the architect who designed our house, plus a slew of serious foodie friends. We knew that cooking up a simple stew and tossing together a salad, no matter how delicious, simply wasn’t going to cut it. The menu we put together required a day and a half of prep work — and one dish had to be done in stages over 3 days. As S put it during our frenzied preparations, “We’re finally breaking this puppy in!”

For our first course, we served a duo of scallops (pictured up top). Both scallops were brushed with a soy-butter glaze and grilled under a hot broiler for a minute or so. One was then topped with a Japanese herb dressing (the recipe for this comes from Jane Lawson’s awesome Yoshoku). The other I topped with a miso-beurre blanc and some avruga caviar.