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I am easily halfway through the latest BookBusters volume. It is about fungus and how everything flora is connected. It is a fascinating book which I am enjoying a lot. And, as a result, I think, I am seeing a lot of it about. Of course, that could also be because of all the rain we’ve been subjected to lately.
What the book hasn’t told me yet was which ones I could eat. Therefore, they have remained in the ground.
Mind you, this morning, I did think I saw a bunch of chanterelles in our front garden only to have my joy dashed when I discovered it was just an Autumn branch sticking up from the ground.
Not that there were many mushrooms involved in my day today. It was more about preparing for dinner tonight. I had said I would make moussaka and learned a while ago that it is always better when prepared ahead of time. It sort of sets so is easier to apportion; it doesn’t fall into a sloppy mess on the plate.
So, from around 9am until 13:30, I was in the kitchen cooking away. The rest of the meal could wait until our guests arrived. Mind you, I did make the crème brûlées yesterday so they only needed blasting with my new blowtorch. The scallops, on the other hand, went into the pan shortly after they arrived. The guests, I mean, not the scallops.
To accompany the scallops, I made a savoury sabayon created by Rachel Khoo which worked really well. Mind you, standing whisking non-stop for ten minutes over a bubbling bain-marie, was a bit time-consuming. Worth it, though and, apparently, Jonas LOVES scallops.
I feel I should mention here that one of the beaters from my hand mixer broke while I was making the brûlées yesterday. There was the risk that a small piece of black plastic was buried deep inside one of them. I had to come clean before we started dessert. I felt a bit like Monica in Friends but, I explained, I didn’t really want to throw them all away and start again.
As it turned out, no-one had a little bit of black plastic in their crème brûlée…or they swallowed it without realising.
Our guests, KSP and Jonas, were with us, making up for the cancelled meal last week. The chat was pretty much non-stop with bouquets and barbs flying in all directions. At one point Jonas declared that KSP was a very good wife except he didn’t. He was misquoted. Turns out there was no ‘very‘.
Oh, how we laughed.
Actually, there was lots of fun, laughter and devouring of food. It was a great night.
And my moussaka turned out beautifully.
It should be noted that I used the blowtorch to brown off the lighter bit on the left. It is because my oven cooks unevenly, and I’m an inattentive cook who forgets to turn things round halfway through. I can just hear Geraldine saying “Could do better!“
Apart from that, the night was a delight.
