Too clever for my own good?

Last night my husband and I went to dinner at a friend's house.  The plan was that she would make the main course and I'd do the pudding, so I had made the coffee torte with layered morning coffee biscuits, which I think I mentioned in "The competitive spirit..." post.  She also kindly said she would pick us up, so we could both have some wine and get a taxi the five miles home at the end of the evening.

On the way there though, she admitted that she was nervous cooking for me as a guest.  This was the second time this month that someone had said this, and now I'm starting to get a little worried!  I really never considered that anyone would actually think I was that good a cook to be bothered about what I might think of their cooking.  What if this puts people off inviting us to dinner? That would be a shame.  On the other hand, I was quite flattered.  As you might have already read, I've had my fair share of disasters.  A recipe went in the bin only the other day...  I've still got a lot to learn.  The friend I was going to dinner with is in my opinion just as good a cook as I am, in fact we spend a fair amount of time talking about food and swapping ideas.

As it was, she need not have worried.  I always concentrate on the good points (unlike my Dad who always has to find something to say: "As a counsel of perfection....").  I might suggest an improvement, but I'm happy enough that someone has put in the time and effort to cook for me, and wouldn't insult them by insulting their food.  Even the husband, who is my harshest critic and has even been known to denounce a dish as "disappointing!" before he has even tasted it - afterwards being forced to quite literally eat his words - is not critical of anyone else's home cooking but mine.  Anyway, the friend's main course was a delicious Moroccan dish with spiced minced lamb in filo pastry with poppy seeds, accompanied by a carrot salad and pitta breads; and there were clean plates and compliments all round.

In other news, Lidl have got various treats in store for the Christmas season including cooked frozen lobsters and frozen macarons.  I had to buy the macarons to see what they were like and to be honest if you don't fancy making them, they're not half bad.  We bought a lobster as I had never prepared one and fancied a challenge.  My son kept asking if "Lobby" the lobster was defrosted yet as he really wanted to help me prepare him.  I used a cherry stoner/olive pitter to crack the claws  and once we had got the meat out of the claws, arms and tail (all in one piece on my first go) we made a herb mayonnaise and had the lobster with it on bread with a sprinking of red chilli. I even eat the liver and kept the pieces of shell to make stock with a view to some kind of lobster soup for the husband's birthday.

 



Today I'm going to make the 100th new recipe of 2012, jam roly poly.  You might be subjected to some statistics at the end of the year, I've slowed down a bit so I'm not going to break any records, but it's nice to still break 100.

Thank you for reading, more soon, the Christmas dinner plans are coming on well.

Caroline x

The Quest for New Ingredients

A few weeks ago I somehow managed to invite ten family members for Christmas dinner, which with the four of us will make a total of fourteen.  I am quite looking forward to it and will write a post on the planning and outcome at a later date.  One of the things that sprang to mind was the possibility of a black forest trifle for a Christmas dessert,  I have been researching it and decided to include cherries in kirsch, allegedly available in Sainsburys.  However, the procurement of said cherries has not proved easy...

One of the few good points of living in a city for me would be the easy availability of any ingredient you could wish for, probably even key limes.  Living in a small village means that sometimes even in the nearest large towns I can't find what I want, so I have to search online and pay postage and wait for ages for whatever it is, or travel to a city, or substitute for a similar, but usually less successful ingredient.  If I do go to London or somewhere, I look out for shops which might sell interesting ingredients, rather than looking for clothes as the average woman might...

Going back to the cherries - I tried ebay with no success at all.  I tried Amazon, who had them but you either had to buy six jars at once, the postage cost was more than the cost of the item, the availability was stated as "four to six weeks" or in one case the customer review said they were bitter and went in the bin (which after today's experiment with radicchio... but we won't go there at the moment!)  So I had the bright idea of asking my friends on facebook to have a look for me if they happened to be going to a large Sainsburys or a Waitrose (who always seem to have all kinds of things you didn't even know you wanted and make you spend a fortune). Two of them kindly offered to help, and at the time of writing one has looked with no success and the other hasn't got back to me.  I feel I might need to resort to Plan B - either getting some fresh cherries and cooking them in Kirsch and sugar, or just cheating and mixing tinned cherries with the liqueur.  Either way, I get the rest of the bottle to play with!

 

 

Speaking of liqueuers, they ARE well worth buying online.  I've discovered a wonderful website called drinks direct who sell virtually every liqueur known to man.  A trifle makers heaven!  And they often have special offers on.  It was there I purchased the vanilla galliano for the first of my designer trifles.  I also got white Creme de Cacao, which was unavailable in Asda; and a gorgeous lychee liqueur, which has been half drunk already without being used in any recipes at all!  I was going to add a splash of it to my celebrated lychee cava cocktails: liquidise a tin of lychees in syrup, freeze in ice cube trays, then pop one in a flute and top up with cava or champagne.

Despite my lack of success with the cherries I have managed to get quite a few ingredients online. Liquid glucose, membrillo (quince paste - which I cut into chunks and had on sticks with manchego cheese but didn't like it as it tasted too much like honey), matcha green tea powder - used to make green tea icing for cupcakes, Japanese panko breadcrumbs.  Wing Yip is an online Chinese supermarket I have used in the past, when my sister was alive we used to combine orders, and buy things like five spice powder in bulk and share them.  Another friend of mine sometimes goes to Leicester and gets me massive packs of garam masala and cumin seeds from Indian supermarkets.

I have this happy vision  of my retirement that I will live somewhere near the sea, and I can spend my twilight years finding lovely fresh fish and other ingredients on a daily basis, forgetting the menu planning and shopping lists, having time to browse in a market and see what's available without being in a rush, and having the time to play around in the kitchen inventing recipes...  one day...

Thank you for reading,

Caroline x :-)