Prog Chefs Unite!!!

My wife’s sister is here with her boyfriend ("boyfriend" sounds odd; they’ve been living together for many years and are more like husband and wife). They rent a quite big flat with a beautiful back garden in the red light district (!) in Rhodes old town. Yesterday we had a barbeque in their garden and invited five friends. We served:

1. A big salad with lettuce, rocket, tomatoes, cucumber, spring onion and bell peppers, dressed with olive oil, balsamico and honey.
2. A nice quiche with leek, onion, spring onion and garlic, sprinkled with parmeggiano.
3/4. Sole fish baked in aluminium foil with carrot, leek, tarragon and butter. (It’s very tasty and easy to make — just make one package for each fillet and bake them at 200º C for 15—20 minutes.) Served with lemon and potato wedges with garlic, which also went well with the meat.
5. Grilled beef and lamb.

Then I grabbed the guitar and played:
1. Vision (Peter Hammill)
2. A Vision of a Mission (my own)
3. Night (also my own)
4. Kajsas sang (Ole Paus)
5. Fragancia (Evert Taube)
6. Arnisi ("Denial", Mikis Theodorakis/Giorgos Seferis)
7. Oi Hartaetoi ("The Kite", instrumental by Theodorakis)
8. Synnefiasmeni Kyriaki ("Cloudy Sunday", Vasilis Tsitsanis)
9. Giati me Xypnises Proi ("Why did you Wake me up Early", Tsitsanis)

When I started with the Greek music, the old lady living next door (I don’t think she’s one of the hookers) came out on her balcony and hummed/sang along. We had already given her a box of chocolate to apologise in case we would be too loud, but she seemed perfectly happy.

One of our guests had brought some delicious cakes that served as a dessert together with grapes (and coffee and whatever else we chose to drink). My wife and I were the last ones to leave. The sun was already up, Greek people were walking their dogs or going to work, but we were free to go home and sleep until four o’clock. No time for work today, but we had a great time, so, No, je ne regrette rien.

Home made mango chutney with poppadums, chicken massala and lentil curry with naan yesterday evening. Yum! Almost a prog curry...

We've only got one j plant this year but is fierce and productive.  You need balance, but still you really need the heat sometimes. 

jammun wrote: Triceratopsoil wrote: Is the Joy of Cooking book the one that has all sorts of rodent/vermin recipes?   It's '60s vintage.  Does have an Opossum recipe and rabbit and squirrel, which I suppose ain't quite vermin.

pretty sure I have that one around somewhere too

tacos tonight, American style in a hardshell with ground pork&beef, chipotles in adobo, cheese, lettuce, tomato, sour cream and a healthy shot of hotsauce

Spent three weeks in England, and came home with our mandatory cook book souvenir. This year the book HIX Oysters and Chop House got the honours. Bought me a fresh batch of oysters to experiment the day after we came home.

Dean wrote: jammun wrote: I'm going to smoke a brisket for Labor Day.  Tried out the only test I could find (corned been point) yesterday.  It made some seriously bad-azz corned beef sandwiches.  True test will come next weekend.  I've done the salt-beef stage a couple of times but never done the final smoking to take it to pastrami. Are you hot or cold smoking it?

For the corned beef did a relatively high heat smoke.  Will probably do the same for the brisket tomorrow.   There's nothing like brisket cooked to perfection, which is to say a fork goes into it with no resistance.  

There are roughly 18 ringed-neck pigeons in my backyard.  Looking at my Joy of Cooking book they would be good eating.  My only weapon is a Ruger .357, which obviously is not appropriate, provided I could actually hit one of them (not likely).  There'd be nothing but feathers and bones left.  The freakin' lazy cats are too complacent to help me out here.  I'm no good with a spear.  Looks like it's frozen pizza tonight .

Used up the last of my home grown tomatoes yesterday - 2kg of spiced chutney now maturing nicely in the larder

just finishing off some homemade seafood pizza, heavy on pizza sauce, heavy on chile and heavy on garlic....heavy on calories