Ages ago, Mirinda said she wanted her two favourite Chez Gaz menu items for dinner tonight. This meant I was in the kitchen for most of the day making, first, cardamom buns and, second, mousaka. Both turned out very well. In fact, I think the cardamom buns were the best I’ve made.
As I said to Mirinda, they reminded me of the ones we had at the Fotografiska (Photographic Museum) the first time we visited. They almost dripped with the syrup, which is how things should be.
Mind you, they all had to go by the end of the day. In order to help get rid of them, we sent some next door to Neighbour Dave and Gail.
While I worked away, Mirinda took herself off to the Watts Gallery. On her return she said that the house had been open so she popped inside for an explore. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t open in order to celebrate her birthday but let’s just pretend it was.
Meanwhile, at home, I was preparing the mousaka.
It shouldn’t take three and a half hours but, the recipe I follow is a Michelin starred one and, therefore, quite complex and fiddly. Mind you, I do draw the line at grating the garlic. Still, it is always delicious. And today was no exception.
While it takes three and a half hours to work on it, there are a few bits and pieces of time where I can clean up as I go, in order to clear space. Which also means that by the time it gets to washing up before bed, there isn’t that much. Except today, that did not happen.
I was about to wash up when I realised the kitchen sink wasn’t draining. There was about six inches of water just sitting there. I thought (hopefully) that the plug had accidentally been pushed down. But, no, sadly that wasn’t the case.
There then ensued a removal of everything under the sink and the pulling apart of pipes in order to get to the S bend. There was a lot of black water and slimy stuff of unknown providence, as you’d expect but, the problem was jammed inside the pipe.
I took the S bend into the laundry and hit it with some very hot water. The sink was suddenly full of bits of cauliflower, left over from the last time I made cauli-mash. It exploded from the pipe like so much shrapnel. In future, I’ll sieve the water.
In the meanwhilst, Mirinda had taken Emma up to the park while Freya watched me, intrigued with whatever I was doing. I managed to clean up and have everything back to normal before Mirinda returned.
And the mousaka turned out perfect.
Of course, we had a green salad with it and, as usual, there’s enough leftover for me to have some for lunch tomorrow.
An excellent, though at times stressful, day at Chez Gaz.
