A while back, a friend had a 50th birthday. As his birthday present, we offered to cook him his most favourite meal, to be selected by him as being THE best of each of 3 courses of food he had ever eaten in his entire life. Given that he is a top foodie and winie, I looked forward to hearing exactly what it was that he came back with.
I expected, given that he rates the likes of Lebrina and Marque IV amongst his "norms" of food and wine, that we would be presented with days and days of backbreaking slavery to pander to his unreasonable demands, in an effort to retain credibility, not to mention having to mortgage the house to pay for it all!
Imagine my surprise when his requested birthday dinner party menu for 8 was:
Entree: Garlic Prawns
Main: Chateaubriand
Dessert: Bombe Alaska
Well! The Garlic Prawns was easy-peasy. All Grade 1 kids must learn that as they enter the school portals!
The Chateaubriand ditto. Get hold of your trusted butcher and you're home and hosed!
But - the Bombe Alaska - another matter! Luckily we thought we'd better make a few test runs of this first.
Six trial Bombes later, we had perfected the method - but it really was something I wouldn't have wanted to do given the chaos that pre-empted the final successful one on the night.
On the first trial, we managed to pour the warmed & flamed brandy over the bombe, sitting fresh from the oven majestically on the table , and overflow it onto the immaculate, white, starched tablecloth beneath - shit! The family guineapigs all immediately leapt to save the house from burning down!
It worked well on the night, but the menu gave me great cause for thought about food.
I have more to say on that, but will continue at a later time about it.
Thursday, 1 March 2007
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3 comments:
I think that's a great menu. Last night on Food safari they were doing tapas, and when those prawns hit the boiling oil and garlic....I could almost smell them. YUM.
My M-I-L is the only person I can remember doing a bombe, but it too was memorable (although not for table cloth reasons)
looking forward to your food ruminations
Bugger - I hate it when people phone just before the beginning of one of my (favourite) cooking programs & I get to miss most of it! That's how come I missed the tapas episode last night.
I'll bet your M-I-L did her usual fantastic chef-ing on the Bombe. How long ago was that?
The menu our friend selected was great, I agree. I'd just expected him to select more up-to-date type food than that older, more dated menu. But - he did what we asked when all's said & done, and requested his 3 favourite things in the world.
A wonderfully special idea for a gift. Congrats.
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