When you live abroad, life works a little bit differently. Your friends become your family. Even those obscure acquaintances you once met at a family BBQ when you were four, are now the closest things you have to remind you of home. They are the ones you phone in the middle of the night when your wife goes into labour, they are the ones that hold your hand when your children are sick in hospital and they are the ones who dry your tears when you drop your mother off at the airport after a visit. You spend Christmas with them, you go to all their children's birthday parties, you help organise weddings and choose wedding dresses, approve or disapprove of prospective spouses and you cry your eyes out when one of them leaves to go back home or move onto another country. The only bonus of is that Christmas is usually rather uneventful and does not include a family fight. When you live over here, these are the people you lean on for everything. Even your relationship with your husband and wife is a bit different. We tend to do everything together here. When you do not know any one, your wife becomes your golf buddy and your husband knows far more than he should about your latest hairdresser. It is a strange situation, nice, but rather strange.
So with that in mind, you can say that we spent the whole weekend with family. Our Fat Saturday was spent dining on Moules and Frites at the Bakers. I have never in my life seen so many mussels in one place at one time. The only boys were a little outnumbered ( 2 boys between 6 woman) so it was obvious that they had the job of de-bearding and washing 5 kg of these little suckers. Not that they complained, it was either that or playing dressing-up with the girls.
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De-bearding Mussels |
Sometimes simple meals are the best. You just cannot go wrong with eating seafood and chips off newspaper. There is something about the newspaper that makes the seafood taste instantly more seafoodie. Fish and chips wrapped in newspaper just tastes more fish and chippie, mussels and frites eaten off a newspaper covered table, just tastes more delicious than dishing them up on a plate. You may think that 5 kg of mussels is a bit of an overkill, but there was not a single one left. I am not sure which recipe the Bakers used although I know it included banana shallots and garlic. I include
two links to
similar recipes that I am sure will work out just as nice. I must however stress that the recipe does not call for any "finger tips". Mark did not seem to read that part of the recipe as he almost lost his in the process of cutting up the shallots. His mussels did turn out delicious, although it meant almost loosing a finger. Thanks Mark for putting yourself through so much pain for our pleasure.
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Mussels, mussles everywhere... |
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This is what 5kg of Mussles look like before you eat them... |
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This is what they look like after... |
I was in charge of dessert and as I am still upset with Mr. Oliver for calling his son Buddy Bear, I refused to make one of his recipes. Like I have said before, when wanting something chocolaty or fattening, who better to consult than the queen of calories? Nobody can make a
chocolate cheesecake quite like Nigella can. I tried her chocolate one this time, which was much less time consuming than her New York version. I am so glad that the dinner was not too heavy, because the dessert surely was. Mine was just not as pretty as hers, but it still tasted good. Mind you, it is hard to make chocolate, cream cheese and Castor sugar taste bad!
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The great Nigella Cheesecake
(with a few chocolate splatters for effect) |
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Mmmm...chocolate! |
On Sunday we had another wonderful family lunch, with the Louws and ended up getting home late last night. Thanks to everyone involved for making our Fat Saturday so Fat and our Sunday so lazy. It was good to spend a weekend with people we love and although we miss our families greatly, it is good to have friends like you around to make the pain a little more bearable.
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