First Thursday, 2013

For nearly a decade, I have spent Thursday nights in the company of two other gentlemen.  We have wined, dined and entertained each other, through thick, and through thin.  In the face of broken romances, work pressures, financial woes, relocations, and great successes, new joys and good times,  we have found the time to commune together.  Some weeks, it's all Grand Baroque and home preserved, duck meat,  shot by the fair hand of the chef, other weeks, it might be homemade pizza or a menu inspired by travels or imagination.  The running theme has always been an opportunity, just once a week, to enjoy the company of others, the pleasure of someone taking the effort to prepare a proper meal, and the adventure of trying something new, for what you know will be an appreciative and supportive audience.  Otherwise known as "Survivor Night", because originally we started out by arranging to watch the foresaid reality TV show together, it has evolved into a very different "Survivor Night", and it is truly a highlight of each and every week for me.
Since I feel unable to invite you to join us for dinner of a Thursday (which is an honour very rarely bestowed), I plan to at least record the key culinary highlights of each week for our 10th anniversary year.....what, with my new camera and all (thanks Davey!)

Here was our Bill of Fare for Thursday, January 3rd, 2013:

Cocktail - sparkling rum and pomegranate punch (for this I can take no credit....thanks Davey (via CHOW).  Easy, very "more-ish" and readily adaptable for the grape-allergic (substitute sparkling cider for the sparkling wine - equally delicious.)
Soup: Cream of Celery - courtesy of BBC GoodFood.  Well received, and well presented - SUPER EASY!  Definitely one to make again. If only I had the foresight to make a delicious 1 hour, soft pretzel to go with it....need to ask Andrea for the recipe!).

Delicious Celery Soup, with a sparkling rum and pomegranate punch in the background ( just to set an edge on the appetite, you understand.)

Main course:  A classic, which we have enjoyed together several times before.  Fruity lamb tagine (again, see BBC GoodFood, with a few customizations based on what was to hand....i.e. substituting left over Christmas dates for the apricots, stewing beef for the lamb).  Served, this time, served with bulgar wheat, because no couscous was to be found.

Dessert: after all the over-indulgence of the last couple of weeks, I thought fruit salad might be welcome.  Persimmon, grapes, kiwi, banana, pomegranate and out of season rasps made for a palate-invigorating mix.  I managed to restrain myself from topping it off with some vanilla ice cream from Sweet Olenka's.  Maybe next time.

Ham, eggs and homemade tomato ketchup

I was on a pickling, canning and bottling frenzy this weekend.

Ham steak and eggs for breakfast this morning - not a normal Monday breakfast for me, but definitely a good one for a long weekend.  And the real highlight?  Tasting the homemade tomato ketchup that I made on Saturday!  It was surprisingly little effort (although it didn't half make the kitchen hot!!), and the results are amazing.  I can highly recommend it if you have access to some good, ripe tomatoes.  I followed a recipe from delectablemusings.com, which was a real cinch.  I may make another batch on a cooler weekend in the fall to give away as presents.

Following a tip on delectablemusings.com, I broiled my tomatoes to remove the skins, before canning them.  Much easier and quicker than the boiling water method.

I was also very pleased with a previous auction purchase this weekend.  A year or two ago, for no particular reason, I bought a massive copper pot in an auction.  The interior tin lining is still there, but probably not intact enough to be safe to cook in directly, and it's so gargantuan, it didn't seem worth the money to have it relined because I don't intend to boil 10 chickens simultaneously at any point in the near future.   However, when I discovered that my normal process of using my stock pot as a boiling water bath when canning wasn't going to work with quart jars because they are just too big, I suddenly remembered that old copper pot.  It weighs a ton, and by the time I had filled it with water, it took two of us to get it on the stove, and about an hour to get the water to a rolling boil, but it did the trick admirably.  I knew I must have bought it for a reason!

I don't know how many litres this copper pot holds, but you could boil about 10 chickens in there, and probably half a sack of potatoes as well.

For a sense of scale, to the left is my standard stock pot, which I normally use when canning....don't normally do anything larger than a pint jar.

Off season chutney making

Currant tomatoes from my garden

Last summer, I grew a few currant tomatoes from seed, and raised the plants in a couple of pots and urns on my patio.  They did quite well, despite not getting too much attention from me.  The plants produced a fair amount of fruit, although they did start to succumb to fungus as the summer progressed.  By the time Thanksgiving came around in early October, the plants were definitely past it, and I had to gather quite a crop of green tomatoes.  At that point in time, I was just embarking on my bathroom renovation, and living elsewhere for a few weeks, so all I had time to do was freeze them.
Finally tonight, I'm doing a bit of out of season chutney making, since my last batch of green tomato chutney was a big hit.  Too bad I couldn't remember where the recipe came from!  This time, I'm using a recipe from You Grow GirlTM, albeit with a few additions/substitutions of my own invention.  Right now the house smells of hot vinegar, a smell that always reminds me of summer as a kid, when my Mum would make soused herrings!  Hopefully the finished chutney will be worth the pong!