I am Very Tired today after a very heavy weekend, which has made me realise how far short of hardcore I actually fall. I've taken Friday and Monday off, as the weekend began with a Thursday night Thanksgiving meal at the astonishingly inept Bodean's. We went there last year as well, and after a memorable meal involving a two hour delay on our table, tin foil in the soup, absolutely no available waiters, no apple cobbler (leading to one very sad American man), we recieved a big discount off the bill and left slightly less annoyed than we would have been otherwise. This year, I gave in to my fear of being left out of anything, no matter how little I may actually wish to go, and for some reason agreed to pay the evil crones at Bodean's another £30 for mediocre, microwaved food, bad house wine, unbelievably appalling organisation (another two hour wait for our table in spite of having paid a deposit of around £100), more missing apple cobbler (poor, poor American Adam), a charge of £1.40 per portion of cake that we'd bought as it was our friend's birthday and as a final touch, such slow service that Fish and I missed the last train home. To anyone reading this - avoid it. Pay more, go elsewhere, make your own Thanksgiving dinner if you too happen to have an American friend who flies over once a year. Or simply wait for Christmas. On the good side, I've now got a few ham bones with which to make stock, and from there potentially some yellow split pea soup.
Anyway, to continue with my weekend of epically drunken proportions, the next day I met my lovely friend Adam for lunch at a great little Turkish restaurant in St Christopher's Square, which after googling I've just discovered is a secret chain (alas) - Sofra, where we had two very nice bottles of wine and then wandered off, very late, to our evening things. I missed the 'Suprise!' bit of my surprise celebration drinks, while he missed meeting his work friends at the event he'd organised. Still, it was yummy, and worth it (lamb and hummous...mmm...). Several drinks down (the surprise drinks were in a rum bar), and I found myself in some roof gardens, which were pretty. Adam had returned....then it's hazy, but there were burritos. It was a great night actually, until I woke up when Fish got back from his Friday night gig at 7am (he is more hardcore than me) and realised I was about to die. Fast forward to that evening when the Thanksgiving group (more Fish's friends than mine, for the most part and I'm always slightly nervous around them, however they are really fun so once I do manage to relax it's usually worth it!), and Fish and I were both feeling pretty horrendous. It's now Sunday, and we got back at 6.30am this morning. Suffice it to say, I'm too old for this. The club night was called EPIC, and though it was pretty, it also felt mostly like an excuse for taking drugs. I'm uncomfortable with the drugs world. The effects might be lovely, but I hate the language, all the secrecy and the self-conscious, faintly icky 'waiting' for it to kick in. It always feels to me like a tacit admittance that it's not possible to survive the night while straight. Of course alcohol is exactly the same, it just often feels more sociable and less pretentious. Maybe that's not the case if you're a teetotaller though! Anyway, by the end of last night it looked like there'd been some sort of natural disaster. Everything was quite quiet apart from the thumping bass and all around Alexandra Palace were casualities, head in hands. It was sort of cool actually. I wandered through it at 6am, feeling like an explorer on a new, strange planet, floating a bit ( ;) ) and with a great sense of pride at being a survivor!
I do realise, looking at the above outings, that I have a rather lovely life, even if I'm living miles beyond my means, there's never going to be a better time to do that. :) Last weekend we had a George R.R. Martin feast, in honour of his Game of Thrones series - if you like fantasy at all and haven't read them.... well, then, you are silly and I suspect your fantasy-loving credentials, so please correct this immediately - he's a beautiful writer who loves food. After being made hungry by his books for six years, I came across this beautiful, beautiful website. Immediately, we had to have a feast. I'll do a proper blog about it with pictures, but it was absolutely delicious. Quails drowned in butter got my vote, though the duck with orange, chilli and honey sauce was a strong contender, as were Lucy's brilliant Elizabethan Smallcakes. Mmm....
Finally, looking back at my last entry, I'm rather ashamed. Fish and I are now much better, as is our wont (though he's not able to sleep after his weekend of clubbing and so is currently staring red eyed at Assassin's Creed. He's punching out very bad Minstrels at the moment - it's an odd game), however we talked a bit and I'm withholding judgement. He's pretty nice really, I suppose, even if we do keep having rows about the electric bills. The current plan is to look at buying houses in about a year, so we're being adults and everything. However, I feel much meaner about my dad, and might need to go back and edit that a bit, except that it feels like cheating. One of the things I've learned, writing over the years, is that you can almost never tell which bits of your writing you will look back on and shudder at and which bits suddenly stand out as natural, honest and elegant. It's as though my voice wheels through various pretensions before settling down and ringing true for a moment, but I can't do that on purpose. Meh.
Now, I'm both running out of battery on this lap top and pretty near falling asleep, so will leave you with a delicious, really simple breakfast that I had for my last Work At Home day (love this editorial perk!), that's also a great hangover cure, if, hypothetically speaking, you knew you were working at home so had lots of wine when you went out for dinner the night before...
Peri peri eggs
You'll need:
- Two very fresh duck eggs (just try to buy them from anywhere other than a supermarket. Come to Finsbury park and visit the Eggman in Nags Head market on the Saturday. You'll never go back to Tesco. Unless you want eggs some other time than a Saturday. *sigh. Hen eggs will do fine, they're just less creamy)
- Two slices of Tiger bread (or other yummy, firm bread with some taste to it)
- Mature cheddar cheese, enough slices to cover both bits of bread
- Extra hot peri peri sauce
- Worcestershire sauce
- Smoked paprika
- Salt & Pepper
How to make your eggs
- Preheat your grill to about 180 degrees. Pop in your two slices of bread in a grill pan/baking tray/whatever's to hand
- Boil the kettle and pour boiling water into a saucepan big enough to take two poaching eggs. Add a touch of vinegar if the eggs aren't that fresh and bring to just below simmer
- By then one side of the bread should be brown. Turn it over and layer with the cheese. Put back under the grill
- Crack your eggs separately into two small container of some kind (whatever is to hand - it's just to give you more control as you put them into the water).
- Very gently slip one egg then the other into the water. If it's not bubbling, they shouldn't spread too much. Leave them alone for a couple of minutes.
- Meanwhile, check your cheese - it's probably melted. On top of the cheese, spoon peri peri sauce (spread with a knife for more even coverage), then add several drops of Worcestershire sauce. Put them back under the grill (if they are already looking very done then turn the grill down
- Once your eggs are cooked to your liking (about 2 and a half minutes usually leaves the whites done while the yolks will be beautifully liquid), take out the cheese on toast and put on a plate, remove the eggs with a slotted spoon and place on top
- Season to your taste with salt and pepper (remember both the peri peri and the cheese are already quite salty), and sprinkle on some smoked paprika. You might want some extra peri peri sauce to dip the bread into.
- Eat immediately and feel the (hypothetical) hangover recede...
