BJ loves cooking, as do I, thus we found ourselves trawling the opening specials at recently relocated ‘Taste’ and bagging a few of our much coveted kitchen enhancements, quality knives for him, plate up rings and Donna Hay tea towels for me, fabulous timber chopping boards for our shopping buddies.
Test drove the rings today…junior Master Chefs watch your backs! (Recipe below)
Need (serves 2):
- 1 avocado, peeled, seeded, finely diced
- 2 tomatoes, halved, seeded, finely diced 2 spring onions, finely chopped
- 10 cooked prawns, 2 put aside, rest peeled, finely chopped
- 10 drops Tabasco sauce
- 1 tablespoon whole egg mayonnaise
- 6 Capers, finely chopped
- 1 Lime, cut into wedges
- Dash olive oil
- Sea salt and cracked pepper
- Cucumber ribbons and celery tops to garnish
Create:
Throw avocado, finely chopped prawns, mayo, capers, shallots, a big squeeze lime juice, pinch sea salt and grind of pepper into a bowl and gently blend
Throw tomatoes, olive oil, Tabasco, a tad of salt and cracked pepper into a separate bowl and gently blend
Shave ribbons of cucumber using peeler or mandolin, pluck a few celery tips, put these and the whole prawns aside for garnishing
Place ring in center of a large plate, pop a layer of avocado mix in, press down, add a tomato layer, another avocado layer and repeat until filled, finishing with tomato mix
Lift ring up and away from stack and repeat exercise with next plate…looking impressive?
Now place cucumber ribbon curls and an unpeeled prawn on each stack, tuck a celery tip and slither of lime wedge in and finish with a grind of pepper. Yum!
Serve with a crisp chilled white wine.
Sip ‘Aperol Spritz’ (Prosecco, Aperol, soda water), appears de rigueur, tastes like Campari (gak!) and settle in to admire sunset (and hoover complementary chips and focacia cubes, cheap nosh)
One of the buzzwords on the internet is ‘dream.’ Make your dream come true, visualise your dream, indulge your dream. There are programmes, foundations and projects called Dream as well as Rebuild the Dream, Dream Hotels and Dream Travel. The focus now on making your dreams come true is incredible. So to coin a lyric from Les Miserables, I dreamed a dream and joined the Dream Team…I created my dream job.
Several writers, along with a British Creative Writing teacher that I have worked with in the past, agreed to join me for five days of lectures. We learn in the morning, write in the afternoons and have guest speakers at night. As time goes on, more writers and creative writing teachers have joined my team.
