I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.
10:36 a.m.
Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008 - 10:45 p.m.: Actually, I only gave myself tiny servings, but I am so full right now, I feel as though my poor distended stomach is on the verge of bursting. I literally spent the whole day slaving over a hot stove. Okay, not the whole day, but a very good chunk of it. Except for the salad, which was a conglomeration of whatever vegetables I happened to have in the crisper plus a tomato and almost overripe avocado on the kitchen counter, I pulled my recipes from M0llie K’s Vegetable Heaven. I hadn’t made any of them before and I used my guests as guinea pigs, as I often do. The experiment was totally successful.
We started off with cheeses and crackers. Then Hubby got everyone moved into the dining room (he actually cleaned off the dining room table--quite a feat!) and we had lentil soup with bits of dried apricot, which gave it a sweet flavour that was really very nice. That was accompanied by a fresh baguette Hubby picked up for me this afternoon on his way back from playing tennis.
The soup was followed by something called golden rice pie, which wasn’t strictly speaking pie. You make a mixture from cooked brown basmati rice, yogurt, an egg, lemon juice and zest, half of which you spread into a large casserole dish. You top that with a sauté of onion, garlic, spinach and seasonings (cumin, coriander, cinnamon, nutmeg), then pack on the remaining rice, cover and bake for almost an hour, the last 10 minutes on a lower rack, then turn it out upside down onto a serving platter. That was hard, as my casserole dish was enormous and very heavy. Ms. Piano helped me with it. It was delicious.
There was the aforementioned salad of course, and for dessert I made a tart tart: shortbread crust covered with a lime-grapefruit custard, topped with pink grapefruit sections, served with vanilla bean ice cream. My god, it was fantastic. We washed it down with oolong tea.
Much wine was drunk, including a bottle of Niagara ice wine which we’d been hoarding for a while. Hubby played some guitar for our guests afterwards and I attempted to sing a couple of jazz tunes, but was too full. We cleaned up, put the leftovers away, stacked the dishwasher, and now I’m ready for bed.
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