Monday Supper

[rhythmaning]

F. and her beau, K., were up in Edinburgh. I think they were here for the weekend, seeing friends and looking around; but they had arranged to come to supper with us on Monday night. This was good; this enabled me to get over my hangover.

I wanted to cook salmon; we have a great fishmonger near us, and fish seems to keep most people happy (though I was instructed by F. not to buy anything endangered. As if…). So I had staggered out – with a hangover but no headache – to buy some fish, guessing how much four people might want to eat (and a guess – I got about 2lbs, based on the size that I was shown when I asked for 3lbs, which was far too big; it wouldn’t have fitted in our oven, so that would have been a bit pointless).

On Monday evening, I cycled home – this is now the cycling season, and it is great (although subject to random features such as rain, alcohol the previous night, that sort of thing) – I hurried home, showered (I am so clean when I cycle: I shower twice a day – once at work, once at home – it irritates me to think that my colleagues might smell me in a better sense than my wife!) – and started cooking.

What I cooked:

• salmon – done in the oven for maybe thirty minutes (a little overcooked, but don’t tell F. & K., it was fine) with lots of garlic, a dash of white wine and lemon juice, and a few herbs
  
• tabbouleh – an amalgam of recipes from Nigel Slater and Arabella Boxer: lots of parsley and mint and lemon juice and tomatoes and bulgar wheat (there is a slight problem: all the recipes I have read for tabbouleh tell me to soak the grain cold water; but the instructions on the packet – it may be organic, but it comes in a packet – say it has to be cooked in boiling water for fifteen minutes. So I do that, just in case. I’d hate it to be inedible)
  
• roast vegetables- courgette and peppers and garlic (and more garlic – I like garlic) and aubergine – though I cut the aubergine thin, and it cooked to a crisp, tasty but burnt

What else we had:

• some cheese from Ian Mellis…
  
• some Lanark blue
  
• some Gorgonzola
  and the gorgonzola was just scrummy – I mean delicious; the Lanark blue I find a bit strong – perhaps too salty – but the gorgonzola was dolce.
  
• and some Grenn & Black’s chocolate eggs

I ate the chocolate eggs by nibbling; F. said this was deferred gratification, kind of strange coming from someone who files their food. Personally, I just think small bits of chocolate rather nicer – something to savour. (Which sounds a lot like deferred gratification, I guess.)
What we listened to – a handful of CDs grabbed from the sitting room:

• Colin Steele – The Journey Home
  
• John Scofield – Quiet
  
• EST (Esbjorn Svensson Trio) – From Gagarin’s Point of View
  
• Bill Evan’s Trio – Sunday Night at the Village Vanguard

(A story about the Bill Evan Trio: this record was recorded live at a club – the Village Vanguard, of course – in June of 1961; I was one year old, though that is of no matter. This gig represented the key point in Evans’ life: it was a triumph, the high point of his career: he had finally found the drummer and bass player who made his piano make sense, who could interpret what he was trying to say. A few days later, the bass player, Scott LaFaro, was killed in a motorbike crash and Evans went into depression and didn’t record for a couple of years. There are two records – “Waltz For Debby” and “Sunday Night at the Village Vanguard” – which were recorded on the Saturday and Sunday nights of a week’s appearance at the club.

One of the tracks on “Sunday Night at the Village Vanguard” by LaFaro is called “Jade Visions”. When Evans started recording again, he later used a bass player called Marc Johnson, whose wonderful new record – it has been out for a few months – is called “shades of Jade”. I am sure it is co-incidence – but…)

What we drank:

• so F was moving on to a new job, and so I wanted to celebrate – and toast – so we opened a bottle of champagne. (Why celebrate? It is only a white wine, for god’s sake, just a wine that has bubbles. I have often felt champagne overrated – but I still like to drink it)
  
• then we opened a bottle of Planeta’s Alastro, a lovely Sicilian blend of chardonnay and grecanico, a golden amber colour, which by chance K. had also bought at V&C’s (so he was keen to try it, too!)
  
• and the second half of a half bottle of Brown Brothers’ Late Harvested Noble Riesling, a delicious sweet wine which was really good with the cheese
  
• and a couple of glasses of Laphroig from the SMWS – “a dram of dreams”, they said about it
  
• and a couple of cups of coffee
  
• and some mint tea – in a teabag for F. and the real stuff, a few sprigs of mint that hadn’t made it into the tabbouleh stuck in a cup of hot water for K.

It was a lovely evening, very relaxed and chatty – a little bit of shop talk, but mostly just chatting.

F. & K. bonded a bit further with our cats, K surprising them by reaching higher than they were used to – so the cats’ hideaway on top of the kitchen cupboards was suddenly not such a hideaway.