Food And Friends

Having heard so much about T's culinary skills, I finally got an invitation to have a taste myself last night. It did me good to get out of the shoebox on Thursday night and be with nice company as the day was a frustrating, irritating event at the office when I wasn't even supposed to be there.

So back to more pleasant stuff. We started with a lovely, crusty loaf of no-knead bread. I loved how the innards of the bread was elastic and mealy. It was really good, I might be convinced to try my hand at making it myself, having read about no-knead bread from my fave foodblogs for about a year now. But the idea of having to wait 15 hours for it to rise was just not a lesson in patience that I felt I needed. Hence the resistance thus far. We had the bread with 3 different types of cheese. I liked the vintage cheddar best, cheddar is still my fave cheese, I'm not sophisticated when it comes to cheese and will never be convinced that feta, choice of the chi-chi group, is any good. But I did succumb to a glass of red wine, it didn't make me sick and tasted rather nice. I might get used to it in due course perhaps?

Next was the rocket salad with pomegranate-molasses dressing. The rocket was just the right touch of bitter balanced with crunchy pomegranate with a tinge of sweet dressing.

The main course was an apricot-glazed chicken stuffed with really yummy spiced carrots and pumpkin with chilli. Finger-licking good! The 6 of us demolished the chicken in record time, with the folks who really need their carbs, dousing steamed white rice with the leftover chicken gravy and savouring every last drop of the gravy.

And finally dessert. That was a pomegranate and cranberry tart topped with a meringue and served with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream. The portion was just nice and the crunchy pomegranate and cranberry filling was a good contrast in texture with the soft meringue topping.

And as a sort of palate cleanser of sorts, we snacked on the sweet persimmons and the grapes that I brought. A refreshing end to a yummy meal in enjoyable company.

Food and friends - 2 of my favourite things and always a happy combination in my books!