Gin and the wallpaper

If anyone tells you that peeling a dozen quail eggs is easy, they have probably never peeled a quails egg before. Okay, if you manage to pick up the membrane then it’s all easy peely but, if you don’t, it’s no picnic for grown up fingers. I would suggest, if you have a five-year-old with nimble fingers in the house, get them to do it.

When I was on the Retreat, where I first came across the recipe that includes them, they came ready peeled. Okay, now I realise it wasn’t exactly cheating but was, in fact, expedient. It would have taken the 12 of us a lot longer to prepare the meal if peeling was involved.

And the reason for quail egg peeling was because of the Retreat. Tonight was the evidence of my learning, the test of the teaching, if you like. Something I was tempted to call The Geraldine Leverd Tribute Dinner, given everything I prepared was her idea.

(For clarity, the amuse bouche was a Turkish tea cup filled with Geraldine’s refreshingly chilled zucchini and pea soup.)

To be fair, the whole meal took all day to create, along with a bit of yesterday afternoon for the strawberry tart pastry cases, but it was extremely rewarding. It was also not something I would do every day. Which probably explains why I have never had any aspirations to be a chef. I reckon that would be a good way to spoil something I love.

Of course, I didn’t just make it all for Mirinda and me. I had invited Nicoline, KSP and Jonas to join us for the feast. I had also invited Louise next door but through a bit of Gary organisational stupidity, she couldn’t make it. Suffice it to say that Mirinda claimed it was the fault of both parties and we should just let it go.

Not that we didn’t include Louise in a number of ways. Firstly and again due to my weird brain, I still made six of most things. Secondly, and more importantly, we gossiped about her. In the nicest possible way, of course. I mean, we’re not monsters.

One of the great topics of Louise goss was her relationship status. Or, rather, statuses. With one chap a painter/decorator and the other a dab hand in the manufacturing of alcohol, we christened the pair Gin and Wallpaper. Jonas and I thought it would make a great name for a band while Nicoline thought it was a perfect blog post title.

While we may have discussed Louise for a bit, there was, of course, the meal.

I changed a few little things from what we did at the Retreat. For one thing, rather than make the little filo crunchy tuna things flat like an envelope, I formed them into something resembling the money bags that Mirinda’s family used to order from the Thai restaurant in Dural so many years ago. I also served them, as a finger food entrée, with Geraldine’s French mayonnaise.

The mayonnaise was very popular with Nicoline. She kept her little brown bowl next to her for the entire meal calling it her comfort food.

I was very happy with my confit byaldi which I cooked in the stuga oven because the one in the kitchen was fully occupied. It just shows you how spoiled I was with my kitchen in Farnham that I feel a bit lost without a double oven. A very first world problem.

And my hachis parmentier (or shepherd’s pie, with duck instead of lamb, in English) was presented in perfect little towers. I was well pleased with them. The rings lifted off perfectly, making me very happy.

Well, apart from mine which lost it’s browned top but, hey ho, there you go. And, at least it was just mine. In retrospect, I could have just swapped it out for the one I prepared for the invisible Louise. Not that it made any difference to the taste.

KSP was driving so she and I were the only sober ones. I will always find watching people get slowly inebriated around me while I remain sober, immensely entertaining. It’s sometimes comical, other times mystifying, always enjoyable.

Naturally, there was a lot of chat about how much we all love each other as we headed full on towards midnight. (I was going to write the witching hour but I think that’s slightly earlier.) And plans were made for when we head back to the UK later in the year. There were almost tears. But that may have been because it was well passed Nicoline’s bedtime.

Finally, everyone left me with a mountain of washing up, which I, in turn, left for the morning, hoping that the witches would do something magical in the early hours, sort of like the brooms did in Fantasia for Mickey Mouse but without the mayhem. Obviously.

That looks like some serious chat accompanying the cheese course. I’d like to say they were discussing something very French and philosophical as first discussed between Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre at the Café de Flore in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, but I think it was more likely about the difference between ‘friend’ and ‘acquaintance’ in everyday Swedish.

It really was an excellent night. As Nicoline said, we should do it five times a year.