A Very Special Visitor

[ailbhe]

We are having guests to dinner tomorrow and in a bizarre quirk of fate they are the people who run our co-op market where we buy all our food.

We will have to buy some of the meat elsewhere but obviously I'd like everything else to be from the market. Which deals in local, organic, fair-trade, seasonal etc. Unpackaged dry goods, bring your own container. And we haven't planned ver well for this, either.

So here's what we've come up with so far.

To start, bacon and tinned pineapple in juice, probably baked together with brown sugar (Muscovado) and then put on warm plates. If things get hectic, we'll skip the starter, because they tend to confuse Rob anyway. They complicate timings.

Main course: some kind of meat (we'll go to the Proper Butcher tomorrow unless I find co-op or Waitrose vouchers; they both do organic certified meat) and potatoes (probably mashed with the nice mayonnaise, and roasted in the meat fat). Carrots and parsnips mashed together. Celeriac and squash, possibly. Peas. The sauce depends on what kind of meat we get - apple sauce? gravy, anyway. Bread sauce for most of us if it's a bird. And various things might come with stuffing, which C will have to just not eat.

Dessert: that's the hardest part, because we have one egg intolerant who doesn't like chocolate, one wheat intolerant, three dairy intolerant, and a soy intolerant, all of whom can tolerate small amounts of whatever it is but not much. So here goes nothing. I'm soaking raisins, sultanas, and currants, and little bits of dried apple, in hot water and mixed spice tonight. Tomorrow they should be all soft and squooshy. We'll spoon them into half-peaches (bottled) in ramekins, and bake them until all hot. Then we'll pour oat-based cream-substitute around them OR if we're VERY organised vegan soy-free custard-substitute. If I'm very clever the cream will go under the peaches properly and we'll get yellow ramekin, white cream, orange peach, dark dried-and-soaked fruit. We'll have hot apple-and-cinnamon to drink with it.

Then tea, coffee, crystallised ginger, and nuts.

They've had the Pat Kight curry several times already because it travels so well in the trike (in the slow-cooker wrapped in a towel) so we take it to market and they eat while they're working.

(In other news, I baked two loaves of plain white bread today, using the kids' step as a counter, because I was so depressed by the state of the kitchen I had to cook. They came out ok).

Comments

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

You're way more creative than I am. In that circumstance, my dessert choice would be fresh fruit alone.

[ailbhe]

We have one apple and five bananas. I considered it, but no. It's not fresh fruit season here. So there's very little fruit around and what there is is expensive - the bananas were only 20p each (imported, obviously - imported is always cheaper) but the apples are more than 40p, and not very good. There were oranges too but they were quite poor. So in winter it's bottles and tins for us...

Miche got cherries at the farmer's market today.

[hypatia.livejournal.com]

Winter fruit is very limited if you want anything fresh that actually tastes. Stored apples, pears and oranges with frozen or canned to supplement are about as good as it gets without living off imports. That said, freezing like mad in teh summer means a steady supply for smoothies, compotes and puds in the winter.

I also use dried fruit and nuts a lot - I love a lot of Middle Eastern food and find that a dash of rose water or orange blossom water goes a long way, as does tahini. Have you come across Khosaf - I love this and I don't even have a sweet tooth. I make it with almonds rather than pistachios but its different in every country.

[hypatia.livejournal.com]

And btw, I've never come across oat cream - is it like soya cream?

[ailbhe]

Except that soya cream makes me sick, yes. It's heavy and good in coffee.

(The soaked-dried-fruit-on-peaches-and-baked served with cream went down very well, as it happens).

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

I like your dessert - very creative! If you've got eggs and it's not too much hassle, maybe cover the cooked half peaches in a nice thick sweet meringue and grill until just brown and gooey? Or do you not want the one egg intolerant person to feel left out?