THK8 - South Africa

Laduuuuma!!

D&G’s long awaited trip home for Christmas provided the ideal opportunity for D to designate THK8 “Proudly South African”. It was always going to be a difficult task to choose a typically South African dish from a country with 11 official languages and the largest Indian population outside Asia. D nailed it with his choice of bobotie.

Wikipedia says of it: “Although not particularly spicy, the dish incorporates a variety of flavours that add complexity to the dish. For example, the dried fruit (usually apricots and raisins/sultanas) contrasts the curry flavouring very nicely. The texture of the dish is also complex, with the baked egg custard on the top complementing the milk-soaked bread which adds moisture to the dish.”

I was the wildcard and Dian asked me to make geelrys, the traditional accompaniment to bobotie. It’s an aromatic yellow rice, cooked with cinnamon, tumeric, raisins and sugar. It worked well with D’s dish…so well so Joanna noted that this was the first THK without any leftovers. The tupperware definitely stayed put.

Matt had started us off with a garden salad sprinkled with bacon, surprisingly healthy and I suspect atoning for an earlier indiscretion involving something deep fried…

Our 3 course meal was rounded off by John and his dessert. His attempt at a milk tart didn’t quite work out as planned and in true Ready Steady Cook style he was onto plan B in a flash, serving us crepes drizzled with honey and cinnamon with a dollop of vanilla ice cream.

THK7 - New Orleans

john to update

THK6 - Lebanese

dian to write up

THK5 Thai

THK5 - Thai Night

Hard to believe that we're into our fifth month of THK! It was our first without M & J who are away for a month. THK5 will be remembered for several reasons, not least of which was the "BIG NEWS" which came up quite accidentally in conversation :)

We were chuffed to have the soon-to-be-leaving Swopes join us for the meal. Jack was a wiz with the dishes afterwards and made sure that this husband's kitchen, while not as spotless as Geraldine normally has it, was not the scene of utter carnage that it usually is when we're done. Thanks Jack.
We found out that Larisa doesn't eat seafood, except maybe the poor chicken that drowns while attempting to flee a yacht (hypothetically, of course). The Chicken that Tasted Like Fish and the Curious Incident of Carrot-Cake at the Ambassador's Soiree were only 2 of the wonderful stories from Vicky who kept entertained all evening. Lucas withdrew from our somewhat boring adult company to the pleasures of PlayStation once his Shadow had to go to bed. Said Shadow was in a particularly good mood yesterday...sadly it was all before my fried banana dessert (more of that later) so I can't claim credit for that. Bummer.

Onto the food. A logistical mix-up meant that we'd no official starter course. Fortunately there was Sam - Dian’s visitor and stand-in Husband for THK, who at really short notice whipped up a noodle + shrimp stir-fry to save us from starter hell. It went down a treat with the punters, except Larisa who had none (since it wasn't the chicken that drowned in the sea).

By then we'd waited 3 hours for the main, and elsewhere this may have resulted in an "incident". Not here. It was worth every second of the wait. John made green chilli chicken in coconut broth served on a bed of rice. Yummy! Recipe here. I managed to get a tiny bit of seconds when I saw Dian hovering over the buffet and came up alongside his shoulder. This timely action secured me a few remnants that would otherwise have ended up on his plate. Yeah, it was that good.
John told us that the chicken benefited from a particularly long marinade. It was quite spicy but not to anyone's discomfort, being tempered by the lemongrass. Dian pointed out that every main we've had has been spicy which is interesting.

This left us with dessert. Being the wildcard, John had asked me to take care of dessert. I chose to make Thai fried bananas with chocolate caramel sauce and ice cream. I modified this recipe here. The bananas were dipped in rice flour + coconut milk batter before deep frying. For the caramel sauce I melted choc caramel candy in milk and butter and added Schwarz powdered caramel sauce.

We (S&B) will be away for the next THK which means the main will be passed on to next in line and I think that’s Matt.

THK4 - Caribbean

THK 4 Caribbean
(update coming soon)

THK3 - Mexican

THK 3 Mexican
(update coming soon)

The Husband's Kimchi...a look ahead to THK2

it's my turn to play the Great Meal Chooser and so i've chosen korean to be the theme of our next dinner. a google search for "korean cuisine" returned 2,550,000 pages so i'm sure there's something there that will be difficult for me to get wrong...and for whoever is doing the dessert.

i read that a full course meal is known as a hanjongshik. in it's simplest form it is made up of boiled rice, soup, kimchi (highly seasoned veg) and 3, 5, 7 or 12 banchan (side dishes). we'll probably do 3, but they'll be really good, promise:). unfortunately this time it won't include spicy boshintang - i'd hate to be the one to pop over to the butchers in stillorgan and ask for labrador fillet.

dian, i think you're the 'wildcard' this month so could i ask you to make one of the banchan? we'll have to decide which one so there's no overlap. all that's left is to fix a date...matt+joanna i think we'll leave that to you since you've the busiest calendar around our scheduled date.

THK1 - Oh what a night!

What a night! With hours of planning, thought and prayer (could the food really be that bad!?) the first meeting of The Husband’s Kitchen (THK1) took place on the 4th Feb 2006 at Dian + Geraldine’s (or is it Caleb and Hannah’s?). According to our founding charter, it falls to whoever’s doing the main dish that month to decide or propose the theme, and John’s inspired choice of theme was Portuguese.

We’re as much novice cooks as we are novice food critics so there won’t be much flowery language in my descriptions. Going by how little of the tons of food cooked was left over it was a great success and we look forward with great anticipation to the next meeting. However, back to our Portuguese night…

Matt was charged with preparing the salad, which of course had to go along with the theme of the evening. He was well up for the challenge and made his own version of a tossed Greek salad that was a great counterbalance to the spicy food that made up most of the evening fare.

John’s main was grilled butterfly chicken. To our great delight, he made two whole chickens, one rather fiery and the other a mild herbal flavour. Both were grilled to perfection even though they took a half an hour less than the expected 2hr oven time. From what we understand, his recipes were partly traditional – based on typical spices that would be used in Portuguese cuisine, and partly a result of his creative input. Both were equally popular and complemented each other very well. John also made mushroom sauce and a garlic butter sauce to go with his dish.

I (Selu) was the ‘wildcard’, which means John could use me to help with his main dish selection. Use me he did, asking me to make a spicy chicken liver sauce (his recipe) and aromatic rice with raisins. The chicken livers were blistering hot and could only be eaten straight by the most daring of us. They were a great accompaniment to the toasted garlic bread and to the grilled chicken itself.

Dian made a delightful lime pie to round things off. It was hard work, with no shortcuts taken in obtaining the lime juice and every attention to detail taken. After some technical difficulties with the pastry base things went rather smoothly and the pie turned out well, just sharp enough to tingle with a sweet after kick. Sort of what lemonade ice-cream might taste like. Great job, Dian!

Joanna had baked a cake to celebrate Dian’s birthday which fell a few days before THK1. This wasn’t really part of the menu but deserves mention. It had chocolate junkies among us in bliss with its almost impenetrable sweetness. Dian just about managed to blow out all his candles and to our dismay decided to keep his wish to himself.

The theme for THK2 has yet to be decided, but our monthly rotation means that the courses will be allocated as follows:
Salad - John
Main - Selu
Dessert- Matt
Wildcard – Dian

It appears there was some confusion surrounding the role of the girls at THK...we though that they were supposed to provide entertainment for the evening, I think they took that to mean they should provide entertainment for themselves for the evening. They spent a few happy hours chatting in the living room while we sweated it out in the kitchen only to find that that there was no after dinner entertainment! By consensus of the guys, the girls have been reassigned to providing pre-dinner snacks for THK2. Now we just need to find someone to tell them…

THK1 Menu
Greek salad
Hot spicy Portuguese chicken
Grilled lemon & herb chicken
Chicken livers in peri-peri sauce
Aromatic rice with raisins
Mushroom sauce
Garlic butter sauce
Lime pie