Sushi Party

{All images from Author's personal collection}

My favourite Foods I

{Images from Author's personal collection}

Goats Cheese Toast with honey & salad has to be one of my favourite foods. Melted goats cheese with a little brown sugar and honey; the crunch of the toast; the crispness of salad with a lemon, oil and balsamic vinegar dressing... this dish has all the right flavours and textures.

In fact, I like it so much that we ate it for supper last night with asparagus and then I had the leftovers for lunch today.

This & That

Our house guests might have departed but reminders of them remain; I used my clothes brush to remove an entire fistful of fur from the arm chair in the sitting room and every time I sneeze at night previously invisible hairs rise off the bedspread in a cloud. A freshly washed, ironed and clothes brushed pair of navy suit trousers still covered in white hairs. Stray pieces of litter behind the wine boxes in the hallway, a remnant of Louis' over excited digging; a discarded biscuit behind the bin in the kitchen.

Our feline house guests may have departed but it was a busy weekend for human ones. A quiet roast dinner on Friday evening with BestFriend turned into her sleeping over on the sofa. We spent a companionable Saturday morning cleaning and turning chicken bones into stock before she departed for some flat hunting mid afternoon. As one guest left another arrived, this time for a dinner party we hosted in honour of a university friend leaving to join his girlfriend in Stockholm at the end of the month. M cooked a beautiful if time consuming beef in borollo dish. Sunday saw him turn the stock from Saturday into demi-glas which has now been frozen in an ice cube tray - the basis for many more lovely meals in the future. Another dinner on Sunday, this time at someone else's house and an opportunity for M to finish watching The Wire in preparation for the delivery of the OC (series 4) this week. Tonight M is watching football and I shall be hiding in the bedroom for The Apprentice followed by as much OC as I can fit in before bed.

How to Feed your friends Supper

I have been reading a lot recently about the return of the dinner party. Perhaps not the dinner parties of the past of which I have never been but heard all too much about but instead simple supper parties amongst friends at the weekend. These articles all seem to express surprise at the 'return' of the meal enjoyed between friends, as if they somehow think that all 20 somethings are out wining and dining every evening.

Today, in the Times there was an article about Joanna Weinberg's latest book How to Feed your Friends With Relish. This is actually a book that I had considered buying (or asking for on my Christmas List) but now I'm not so sure.

Weinberg divides people into the following types of hosts:

Hostess with the mostest

Checklist
You have time to take a bath and do your make-up
You keep a store of scented candles
You make playlists for all occasions
You have an account at the florist's
You label and stack everything neatly in the freezer
You hire extra help for the next day

Chaotic bachelor

Checklist
You always have one chair too few
You overshop for food, not clear what will go with what
You often find yourself eating burnt or cold food
You feel pathetic gratitude for the invention of ready meals
You believe that most things are solved by crisps and ice-cream
You spend three times more on wine than on food

Hassled parent

Checklist
You hide toys in the washing machine in a bid to tidy up
You serve puréed vegetables more often than you mean to
You find that Annabel Carmel's recipes are fine for grown-ups, too
You put candles out of harm's way
You gratefully down three glasses of wine without coming up for air
You wish that you'd had time to wash your hair

Natural host

Checklist
You have an instinctive sense of when pasta is al dente
You know where to find unpasteurised cream
You don't give a fig for matching dinnerware
You remember when the farmer's market is on
You have dimmer switches on all your lights
You serve wine in huge glasses

I know that this is not something to be taken seriously but it did rather irritate me. Who fits into those sort of categories and where are the categories for 'normal' people? Why does everything have to be sanded down to such a level that we fit into boxes even in relation to our supper habits.

We have friends round all the time for supper. We occasionally prepare something in advance and we usually manage the shopping in advance but mostly M or I will cook with friends standing in the kitchen or outside with a cold beer or glass of wine and we will chat until the meal is cooked. The evening is not all about the food nor is the food the least important part. We cook fairly simple but healthy dishes (including portion size) all from scratch and usually sourced from the local shops – butchers, greengrocer, bakers etc- roasts, chilli, pasta and so on and usually followed by some kind of homemade pudding – crumble, pie, rice-pudding, chocolate mousse, profiteroles or cake. We drink lots of wine and sit around the table and chat. Sometimes there are only 4 of us, usually more like 6 or 8 but last weekend there were 14 (well, it was the rugby – and I didn't make any pudding). We always have enough chairs, we have beautiful matching but old turquoise dinnerware which we inherited from M's grandmother, the glass situation is occasionally hit and miss and we always spend far more on wine than food because good wine is expensive. Someone usually produces an i-pod and we have adequate speakers. Last weekend when the rugby was on was the first time that our television has been switched on when friends have been over. People pile in and out of the garden for occasional cigarettes and the gathering usually disperses in the early hours in taxis bound for various parts of London.

I do not consider myself a 'Shef' (Stay at Home and Entertain Friends according to the Times). It is simply what we have always done on the nights when we do not go out. And have done since the very start of university. I also found it irritating that Weinburg implies that being organised is the same thing as competitive or the same thing as striving for domestic perfection. She suggests a little less of this and it will seem more like a real home. She also suggests that few but the very organised have time to bake. That's the biggest load of rubbish I've heard – it hardly takes long to whip up a quick pudding and put it in the oven whilst people are eating the main course.

I think what I find so frustrating about this kind of 'lecturing' is that it is off putting. People don't fall into such obvious categories in reality. And if people are told that only the very organised bake then to someone who has never tried it before will think it is a lot of hard work. Yes, some puddings are time consuming but there are plenty are that are really easy. Scones take less than 30 minutes from start to finish which includes the cooking and the washing up. Perhaps not a traditional pudding but there are others which can be done just as easily.

RMT & The Nigella Express

Managed to finish work at a decent time last night. My aim was to make my way to the September WI meeting on the New King's Road. Usually I get the tube but due to RMT industrial action there were no tubes. There were buses alright though, so I went to Fleet Street to catch one. I stood by that bus stop for over 50 minutes. 2 buses stopped. Those buses were only going as far as Waterloo. In the end I had to call and give my apologies and go home. The picadilly line was limping along with severe delays and we sat in the tunnel outside Russell Square for about 10 minutes waiting for trains to get out of the way at Kings Cross.

I was, am still am, furious. I am fundamentally opposed to strikes as a way to make a point or achieve decision making. They are, in my mind, akin to a toddler tantrum. I see no reason why the paying London public should have to suffer three days of misery because maintenance workers previously employed by metronet would like cast iron assurance that their pensions will remain in place and that there will be no streamlining by the administrators. Assurances have been given. TUPE no doubt applies. They are not the first workers to be facing this issue and they won't be the last. Jobs are not always as secure as we would like them to be. Striking does not really hurt Metronet; it is the paying passengers that suffer yet again. We suffered the effects of Metronet's appalling lack of ability to maintain the tubes, falling behind with repairs, allowing material to fall from roofs and impair lines. Derailments have occurred due to their incompetance. And now, the strikes.*

So I finally made it back to the house at about 8.15pm. I had not planned any supper because I had thought I would be at WI so I decided that salad and cheese scones would be the nicest supper. So easy to make yet so delicious, the way that the butter melts across the spongy surface of the hot scone, accompanied by ripe vine tomatoes and crisp gem lettuce, cucumber and spring onion, drizzled in the balsamic vinegar that we brought back from Italy. And I ate my food curled up on the sofa, watching television. A flick through the channels and settled on Nigella Express. I watched her going about her strange pretence of a busy lifestyle which involved taking taxis everywhere, including to the supermarket, but it was actually rather enjoyable to watch and the recipes looked fantastic. I think I will try and get hold of a copy of the recipe book to go with the series. I especially wanted to try the croissants and caramel sauce dish which she makes into a sort of bread and butter pudding and then curls up in bed to eat, clad in a black silk dressing gown. I imagine that there are many males who are not watching the series for the cooking.

*UPDATE - It seems that Gordon Brown agrees with me - that the strikes are completely unjustified. He even tells them to get back to work.