Wednesday 11 June 2014

A Wonderful Afternoon

Well, I had a wonderful day today. I had lunch with my friend Lyle, a top bloke with whom I have not caught up in far too long. I went over his place and he cooked quite a meal.

For entrée, Lyle cooked up a recipe that I'm going to have to try sometime. He started with a fry-pan with butter and some bacon rinds for flavouring. He then chopped up a black-pudding into reasonably large pieces, fried the pieces, then fried some large scallops. He then placed a scallop on top of each piece of pudding and a slice of apple on top of each scallop. The flavours of the pudding, scallop and apples went surprisingly well together. If you want something a little different to serve for an entrée to a nice meal anytime soon, I recommend trying this.

For main course, he made a dish consisting of small fillet steaks, each wrapped in a strip of bacon (held in place by a toothpick) with a small strip of pate placed over the steak (where it quickly melted) and then a large, fried, mushroom was placed over the pate. Again, great food (served with asparagus spears and potatoes) and something I'm keen to try making myself.

What made today something that just had to go on the blog, however, happened at the end of the afternoon. After lunch, Lyle and I spent the afternoon talking about philosophy, religion, politics, you know the stuff. As the afternoon was starting to turn into evening, we were talking about my blog and I showed him my post from last week about cocktails. I was (pleasantly) surprised to discover that he had some Apple Brandy (not actually Apple Jack, but close enough) and that he was rather enthusiastic about making up a Jack Rose. So, thanks to Lyle, I have now tried all six of the "Standard Cocktails"

So, the Jack Rose:

Embury calls for a recipe of eight parts Apple Brandy to two parts lime juice and one part Grenadine syrup. We didn't have any Grenadine so Lyle made up a substitute by mixing pomegranate molasses with raspberry cordial. The three ingredients were mixed in roughly the ratios given above (we actually ended up putting slightly more syrup than was called for but not by much). This was then shaken over ice and served neat.

The results: The sidecar's position as my favourite among the big six is no immediate danger, but I certainly found it a pleasant drink. Lyle shared my enjoyment, although his wife found it too sour. It did have a rather sour taste, with only a slightly bitter aftertaste. Having said that, as I noted last time, I'm more of a fan of sour drinks than most; if you are planning to make one of these yourselves and you don't share my love of sourness, you might consider a higher ratio of syrup.

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