My cousin Alan from Missouri (well, Scotland, but living in Missouri), me old Mum and me old Dad, and a couple of family friends (a lovely Irish couple who are my second family and very dear to me) joined me for a belated celebration of my parent's 41st anniversary.
It was an imperfect meal - I ran out of time to create the rosemary potatos and the waldorf salad with pear. But what was left went down well. The menu was:
- Phylo pastry filled with goat cheese and cranberries (tasty!).
- Phylo mini-quiches with smoked Gouda and ham (ditto).
- Round of drinks: Waterloo Dark, the Gerwurtztraminer wine, a Waterloo Dark, a Steam Whistle, a Rye and Ginger Ale, a Laphroig Quarter-Cask (cut with a small bit of Evian) and me drinking a Ginger Ale.
- A spinach salad (spinach and field greens, some orange bell pepper, some radish and alfalfa sprouts, tomato, some poppy seed, and a dressing of the users choice - creamy dijon, raspberry vinagrette, or zesty italian (made a separate salad with iceberg lettuce instead for Dad as he's no fan of spinach).
- Wine with Dinner: Pinot Noir and the Gerwurtztraminer.
- Main course was Beef - two outer eye of round roasts (no bones, trimmed of fat, each about 2-2.5 pounds) done in beef stock and Guinness, with Worcestershire, Browing Fluid, a hint of Tobasco, Montreal Steak Spice, powdered Garlic (lazy!), a touch of Cumin, fresh ground pepper, a touch of sea salt, and with half of a purple onion for the roasts to rest on in crock pot. Also made a lovely gravy from the juice.
- Long grain wild rice (microwave sort... but it was pretty good).
- Steamed carrots and broccoli.
- Irish Soda Bread and Becel (thanks Toni!)
- Pre-Dessert Course Drinks: More Laphroid and a nip of Evian, some Irish Breakfast Tea, more wine.
- Some date squares to hold the diners over until dessert was ready (from the Antrim Truck Stop bakery - good!)
- Dessert, about fifteen minutes later: Black forest cake (with candles notionally arranged to look like the number 41, although allegations of them looking like a 9 were made by certain cheeky cousins) and home-made Coconut Ice Cream (500 ml 18% table cream, 1.5 cups unsweetened coconut, one can (400mL) coconut milk, 250 ml of 3.25% homo milk, 3/4 cup of sugar (and 35-40 minutes in the new Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker).
It was generally agreed the home made ice cream was a success and that coconut was another worthy flavour (the first batch was vanilla with raspberries).
The clean up will take probably 3-4 dishwasher loads in my dinky little apartment dishwasher and there will be leftovers to recycle into new salads and other meals, but the result was overall a smashing success. Setting the Crock Pot probe cook mode to 140F was a good choice - it left the roast a bit pinkish with a wee bit of blood inside (I think it got a bit overcooked last time).
Over all, a good night. My cousin met my second family and vice versa. I got to hang out with some good people and the work was worth it since everyone seemed replete when they tottered out.
And then I took the weight off of my feet and killed some Zombies on Left 4 Dead for a couple of hours and had a beer myself. A good day.
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