I'm not sure this counts towards Janathon's "run/exercise everyday in January" pledge but I feel "My Cooking Marathon" should: Cooking for 14 people takes stamina, lots of prep, regular hydration!! and ultimately a massive leap of faith. Yesterday, after buying Waitrose's entire stock of salmon, tomatoes and coriander, among other ingredients, I set about making Nigella's Irish bread, Zested Salmon with Tomato and Parsley Couscous and Coffee Meringues with Toffee Sauce (with double cream and blueberries as I was worried there weren't already sufficient calories in the meringues alone!!) Voila:
Thankfully the gentleman I accosted in Waitrose helpfully indicated what stout was in layman's terms
My attempt at couscous resembles Nigella's photo is the background!!
Coffee and Nut Meringue Tower - ALL MADE BY ME. ONLY took twenty minutes with an electric hand whisk to make these - if that doesn't count as an arm workout, it really should!
An example of the finished product - the low kcal version (i.e. without blueberries!!)
Just as with my running, last night's supper party taught me that I need to improve on my timings - sadly I jumped the gun and cooked the bread a bit early so it no longer had that 'just out of the oven' warmness and just the school meal quantity of couscous made, meant that keeping the couscous warm, without just turning it to mush was nigh on impossible.
However just like races, the finish is the most important and fortunately Nigella's meringues - even made by me - were BEYOND amazing. Everyone agreed on this - and loved them so much there was rumours circulating that I couldn't possibly have been the creator of these beauties!! Want to feel my biceps from all the whisking?!
One thing I've discovered about Nigella is that she seems to use A LOT of INGREDIENTS. Our fridge is full of left over cream from the meringues (even despite only whipping up half the quantity Nigella advised). Plus last night's guests didn't leave empty handed - they all went home with a bag of fresh coriander - with mix feelings I should add!
Post supper, to attempt to burn off the 6,000 kcals from the meringues, we attempted to XBOX our way through some games. After some slight technical difficulties, including getting SUPERjade to stay quiet long enough for the box to calibrate itself!! - (This was harder than it seems and took Jade AND the box three attempts!!) - we got down to the serious business of making ourselves look seriously idiotic. For the record - I would just like to say my attempt at hoola hooping does not intentionally resemble a rabbit on heat or any sort of dry humping! Though it's true John Prescott made an appearance during the dance game (Rob!!) Plus there were some certainly illegal moves going on during white water rafting:
SUPERjade and SUPERjo doing their best not to fall out of the water raft!
Our titchy TV just about coped with Xboxing
All in all a GREAT night. ALL THANKS to my brilliant guests, Nigella and Waitrose.
Despite Rob's face, nobody was actually sick - yay!! xx
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