Today's theme ingredient is garlic
That's right. Garlic. Allium sativum. With two 'L's in allium, or allio in italian. It seems inconsequential at first, afterall, people know what you mean, right? Wrong. Back in the day where books were copied by hand, a scribe made the mistake in transcribing 'alio' as 'allio'. The most unfortunate thing is that this mistake set back science at least a century. 'Allio' still made sense in the text. The text was about magnetism, and coincidentally, garlic was believed to have magnetic powers that affected circulation. 'Alio' meant something like 'and'. You try attracting iron fillings with garlic.
The menu from Thursday's dinner was as follows:
[o] Chicken and tofu skewers with satay sauce
[o] Tricolour gnocchi with bacon, mushrooms and zucchini, in tomato-cream sauce
[o] Pan-fried butterflied lamb leg with corriander, cumin and garlic marinade
[o] Garlic Potato gratin
[o] Potato pancakes with tabbouleh and raita yoghurt
[o] Spanakopita
[o] Stirfried garlic chives and asparagus, with chinese sausage
[o] Chocolate death cookies
[o] White chocolate and coffee panna cotta
[o] Cherries
The winelist includes bubbly in normal, and pink varieties. Also, muscato dessert wine.
1 yellow, 2 pink.
So, lots of food. Lots of food on the table, in my fridge, stacked in the freezer. But people just keep on giving, it's fantastic. I now have more drinks than I can finish, a box of tofu, leftovers from Elle and Margu, leftover panna cotta, half a melon, bacon, and a bakillion green apples.
Where do I start?
"'What is food?' Saki, you don't have to go that far back." True story. =D
Let's start with the entree of delicious peanut-y skewers. Brought to you by Sharon.
Those are chicken skewers, then some tofu skewers. Then there was mild satay, then very-gingery satay for those who didn't want the back of their throats on fire for the rest of the evening. Food on skewers always tastes better. Maybe it's the pan-frying process. Maybe it's the marinade. Maybe it's the novelty of eating off a skewer. Or all three. The skewers were polished off very quickly. Thank you to whoever set some aside for me.
Next up, the sizzling goodness of bacon.
That's Rae there. Isn't she adorable? Just keep stirrin'. Just keep stirrin'.
I met up with Rae for lunch, after setting groceries from the markets down. (Also, making marinade for the lamb took a while.) We had yoyogi for lunch, then headed to the market (I like the markets, so it fun anyway.) I love the smell of the deli. That's where we found our dessert wine. Apparently the wine has a chocolatey note, but I don't understand any of that. It just tastes like melons and other fruit to me. The muscato tastes very good with rockmelon, by the way. Ace post-breakfast pick-me-up. I've never had gnocchi before, until now. It's lovely and soft. Delicious. (I'm also a big fan of garlicky tomato-cream pasta.)
Ellenator and Margu arrive bearing food and Wii.
Elle made spanakopita (spinach and feta filo pastries). Spinach and feta tastes so good together.
Margu made the potato cakes with tabbouleh and raita yoghurt. It's her signature dish, of sorts. =)
Then, the sizzling goodness of lamb.
I've never made this before. There were two kinds of the lamb. Same marinade, but some of the sliced lamb was reserved for re-frying with a generous squeeze of lemon. (It sounds like that was intentional, but it really wasn't. The lemony-to-be lamb was just too raw for my liking. Lamb tastes okay rare, and maybe a little raw in the middle, but these slices were just seared then raw all the way through. How? Varying thicknesses.) It could have done with more marinade, and flavour in general. More garlic, too.
Speaking of garlic:
You heard him. Eight cloves of garlic. I've never had potato gratin either, but it was delicious. I think Paul wins the garlic contest for today.
Just when you thought your stomach would distend into the point of no return:
Then cookies were abundant throughout the entire evening.
I wonder what I'm missing...
More sugar!
There was going to be a fruit coulis, but we got lazy.
Then more wine.
Drinking until drunken stupor. Well, not really. The angle of this picture does not reflect how much I've had to drink, I just have absurdly bad camera aiming skills.
Cannot. Go. On.