It was Poop's birthday party at the weekend. He had sweeties, jammie dodgers, jellies and a Fifi Flowertot birthday cake. He's a most enormous fan of Fifi.
The grown-ups had more sophisticated fare. Today's Big Bumper Edition of Flaming Pie lists all the recipes you need for a simple summer party.
Chilled Pea Soup.
Boil up some vegetable stock with some onions. Throw in some frozen peas and a couple of mint leaves. Allow to cool. Liquidise thoroughly. Adjust the seasoning. Just before serving, throw in lots of ice cubes. Serve with a spoon of sour cream and a sprinking of chives.
I love the German word for chives: der Schnittlauch. Literally, 'snipping leeks'.
Tomato, Olive and Basil Tart.
Preferably, make your own shortcut pastry:
Half the weight of fat/butter to plain flour. Rub together (or food-process). Add just enough water to bind. Wrap in clingfilm and chill thoroughly.
Take a flan dish. Grease and flour. Tip: Shortcust pastry is very hard to deal with. One way is to roll it between two sheets of clingfilm. Another is to grate it into the dish and just squash it over the bottom and sides. However this doesn't work so well with store-bought pastry, which tends to be more elastic.
Bake the pastry case blind. Either cover it in rice/ dried beans/ pebbles and bake, or cover with kitchen foil, pressed to conform to the shape, bake a little, then remove and bake some more until it dries out a bit. Either way - you don't want to cook it thoroughly yet.
Now take the best, vine-grown, small tomatoes you can find. Cut into quarters and scatter, skin side down, in the pastry case. Chop up a few black olives and instersperse amongst the tomatoes. Tear up a good handful of basil leaves and do the same. Drizzle with a tiny amount of olive oil (don't overdo it). Sprinkle with a little sea salt. Bake in a low-ish oven.
Curried Rice Salad
This was the surprise hit.
Cook some boiled rice. Mix up with mayonnaise, mild curry powder (one containing fennel/anise for preference), finely chopped red pepper, chopped spring onions/ scallions/ syboes, some almonds, some raisins, some chopped banana, salt to taste.
Cucumber Sandwiches
Peel a cucumber or two and slice as thin as you can. I used a mandolin (but I'm sure a banjo would do just as well). Put the slices in a colander, sprinkle with salt, add a little vinegar and leave for about an our. Pat them dry on a clean teatowel. Add a few twists of black pepper.
Butter some sliced bread (ideally Hovis, failing that wholemeal) with unsalted butter. Spread with a thin layer of cucumber and make a butty. Press firmly together. Slice off the crusts and cut either into triangular quarters or fingers. Chill before serving.
Lettuce
My Stalinist approach to salad.
Take a nice lettuce or two (Cos, Romaine, never Iceberg!). Tear it up (It's a French thing. Apparently the French never cut lettuce). Simply dress with olive oil, a little vinegar (I used the kind that Delia Smith pronounces 'Boar's Mick'), a little sea salt, a little freshly ground black pepper.
Fruit Salad
For the first time in ages, I managed to score some decent nectarines...in Asda, of all places. For starters, thety were actually ripe. They had deep red skins and white flesh and a wonderful, perfumed taste. They made a great fruit salad, along with watermelon, honeydew melon and Packham pears.
The Italic Bits
According to the US State Department, suicide can be regarded as 'a publicity stunt'. Do you reckon that Max Clifford might pick up on this for his celeb clients? Here's hoping!
Open Source is a great idea. You can get Open Source Software...which means that you'll never again be stuck for something to do with your spare time...even Open Source Beer and (provided you can read Japanese) OpenCola. And coming soon...Open Source God. It seems that a bunch of geeks are getting together to make instructions on how to make a God Helmet publically available: a clever arrangement of magnets that allows people to...er...see god.
Radio 4's 'I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue' continues to deliver outrageous lines into our homes in the early evening. Two recent examples from Humphrey Littleton concerning the scorer, the ever-delectable Samantha:
"Samantha has to shoot off to meet her new gentleman friend. She says he's going into business growing scrumpy apples. If his predictions are correct, he's going to be very big in cider."and
"Samantha has to go and by a birthday gift for her gentleman friend. He likes to play with model boats in his bathtub. She's thought about him long and hard and wants to give him a little tug."Ahfangew!
More Samantha smut here.
No comments:
Post a Comment