Day: September 17, 2006

Yet another weekend update

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In two weeks and a day, I will get married. This is starting to scare the living crap out of me. Not for the decision or the act, but for the fact that I want everything to go well! I have nightmares that our guests will not enjoy the food or the music or will call us cheap bastards for not having a live band or an open bar. This is what I get for reading those bridal magazines.

The last details are starting to fall into place, thank god. We met with the catering chef from Chilford last friday night. He's a lovely man, and is even more paranoid about allergies than I am, which is saying a lot. In a sense though, I'm really happy about that. Even though he can't guarantee that the food will be 100% allergy friendly (mostly because a lot of stuff if subcontracted out), I know that he's going to try his damndest to accomodate everybody. He's going to make a special menu for one of our guests who is lactose intolerant and has IBS. I mean, yay! We didn't expect them to go that extra mile, but they are. Chalk one up for good customer relations! At first, he was worried that we'd have too much food, then later, not enough. In the end, it's going to work out that we're going to have canapes with the toast round, then a buffet, then cake (provided by our cake decorator), then another buffet serving around 7pm.

All in all, we hope to be eating and drinking from 2:30 to 10pm. This makes us happy :)

In other news, Katy's dad has been here since last thursday doing the finishing touches on the painting we'd started over the summer. We hired a stairwell access scaffold tower so we was able to paint the walls in the stairwell, do the bathroom in total and finish off all the woodwork with gloss. The apartment looks really nice, but smells of paint :) The good thing is that the cat is not covered in paint, even though he was trying his damndest to help out. The last bit we want to do this year is to paint our cupboard downstairs and get some shelving done (though that will have to wait until after the wedding).

I'm going to Nottingham for a meeting from tuesday to thursday. I so can't be arsed. I'm leaving for 3 days to give a 25 minute powerpoint presentation and demo. Joy. Ah well, after that, there's only one ore week before people start arriving :D

I can't wait.

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[recipe] Hungarian Goulash

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INGREDIENTS:

* 1 kg beef brisket, cut into 1-inch chunks
* salt and freshly ground black pepper
* tabasco sauce, to taste
* 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
* 3 tbsp olive oil, divided use
* 5 medium sweet onions, sliced and separated into rings
* 1/2 cup sweet red wine
* 1 cup oxo cube broth
* 1 tin chopped tomatoes with juice
* 4 tsp cup sweet Hungarian paprika (see Note)
* 1 cup sour cream

PREPARATION:

Place beef chunks in a large bowl. Sprinkle liberally with salt and freshly ground pepper. Toss with the flour.

Heat a heavy Dutch oven over medium high heat and add 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Place beef chunks in a single layer and brown on two sides. Season with tabasco. You will probably need to do this in batches. Do not crowd the meat or it will boil instead of brown. Remove browned beef chunks to a bowl.

Reduce heat to medium-low. To the drippings in the Dutch oven, add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil, onion rings and onions. Toss to coat with the olive oil. Cover tightly and sweat the vegetables, stirring occasionally, until onions are limp but not browned.

Add red wine to the vegetables and cook 2 minutes. Add broth and paprika. Return beef to the pan. Stir until well-combined. Cover tightly, reduce heat, and simmer on low heat for 1-1/2 to 2 hours, stirring occasionally, until beef is fork-tender.

Remove Dutch oven from heat and wait for boiling to subside. Taste and add additional salt if necessary. Stir in sour cream until completely incorporated into the gravy.

Serve Hungarian gulash over hot buttered noodles with chopped parsley or over plain basmati rice.

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