So …. the royal baby arrived safely. Before she and Prince William became
engaged, Kate Middleton suffered the indignity of the press and public calling
her ‘Waity Katie’, as their relationship dragged on without being ‘formalised’,
as it were.
Now, I delighted in seeing her turn the
tables, keeping everyone waiting for the birth of her child. And with the babe
tipping the scales as a healthy 6-pounder-plus, it was really a case of ‘Weighty
Katie’. Congratulations to the young couple - may their son have a life that
is, indeed, happy and glorious!
Here summer continues and we attempt
to strike a balance between getting chores done and relaxing in the summer
heat. We particularly enjoy having visitors, offering them our produce fresh
from the garden, trying out new recipes.
Our neighbours have bantam hens and their cute
little eggs are ideal for today’s recipe of Scotch eggs. Strangely enough, despite the name, there seems to be
no connection with Scots, as the recipe is said to have been created by
London’s Fortnum and Mason store in 1738.
Given that the East India Company, by the end of the 17th
century, was importing huge quantities of Indian cotton to Britain, and had
bases in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, it is very likely that this was an
adaptation of the Moghul dish, nargisi
kofta. This translates as ‘Narcissus Meatballs’. Who can resist a recipe
for a meatball that has fallen in love with itself?
It really is a simple procedure :
First
boil your eggs : for bantam ones you need no more than 3 minutes in boiling
water.
I use about 300 gr of beef/pork
mix mince, add a finely chopped onion, half a cup of breadcrumbs, oil, salt and
pepper to taste, some chopped parsley or mint and mix all together well.
Shell the eggs and cover them
with a thin coating of the mince mix; coat them in lightly salted flour, dip into beaten egg, then give
them a final coating of breadcrumbs.
You then fry your eggs in oil for about 20 minutes, until golden brown,
turning regularly to ensure the meat is cooked through, then drain on absorbent
paper.
Recently two friends were
discussing how their 4-year-old-grandsons both had a predilection for making scatological remarks – either in
response to questions such as : ‘What did you do/eat today at school?’ or for
replacing the words of a song with the Greek word skata – no translation required!
Incidentally, I strongly suspect this
is evidence of nascent criticism: the former on the boring predictability of regularly
posed questions, the latter rather more literary, constituting a caustic
comment on the quality of the lyrics of the original song!
Thankfully they outgrow this
phase, but kids can still be greatly attracted to the gross. Our recent little guest, Athanasia, batted not an eyelid on
hearing that our supper dish (the Scotch eggs as above) was to be ‘Hedgehog
pane’; in fact, she bit into it delightedly.
As seen below, each egg was
served with crisp lettuce salad, filled roasted aubergine, a chunk of bread and
a chilled white wine- mmm!
Young visitors always enjoy
kitchen pitching-in, especially if chocolate, in any form, is involved.
Here is
Athanasia at work decorating the chocolate cake for dessert.
In the rich choccie filling were ‘knobbly’
bits – cognac-saturated chopped prunes – or, according to my assistant, pieces
of cockroach. I’m afraid that as she decorated the cake-top with chocolate
hundreds-and-thousands, she reverted to that four-year-old-scatalogical phase,
declaring them to be pieces of ‘‘roach crap’!
Hard work in the kitchen should
always be followed by exercising bowl-licking privileges and if we can also
give Uncle a big sticky kiss, then so be it.
It’s great to combine
entertaining loved ones with celebrating a special event.
Here we are helping
our neighbor to blow out the candle and, of course, eat that cake.
Happy
Birthday, Anna!
And we did say that we try to
strike that balance, so after all that hard work of cooking, decorating and
eating, it’s time to hit that pool and
r....e.......l……….a…..a……a…..…xxx.
