CDWM: Lauren’s starter

17 July 2010

While we were nibbling our nibbles and then talking about them Lauren was busy at the stove preparing our starter. It’s so nice being a guest at these evenings. You get to just kick back and watch someone else work. Maybe that’s why restaurants sometimes have open kitchens: to really underscore the patrons’ enjoyment of “it’s not me who has to wash up”.

The starter was roasted tomato, red pepper and saffron soup, which was decidedly yummy – no Heinz tomato soup from a can here. The saffron had apparently been a bit troublesome, tasting too much like flowers for Lauren’s liking, but she completely saved it with a splash of tabasco. As someone who is very sensitive to anything spicy/hot, I found the tabasco very interesting in that its heat was not accumulative. While a dish with chili gets hotter on me the more I eat, the soup had a zing to it that wasn’t tiring.

Accompanying the soup were home-made bread rolls – full-size versions of those we’d had as nibbles. Seriously, Lauren made everything herself for this meal. It wouldn’t surprise me if she set the table with cutlery she’d forged herself next time.

I hope you’ll excuse all the heavy breathing and complaining in that video. I’ve always approved of the layout of Lauren’s townhouse: you enter on the same level as the living room; kitchen and garden are downstairs, bedrooms and bathroom are upstairs. Great, you get home and you don’t have to go far to collapse on the sofa. Except when we were there the living room was being the plasterboard and power tools room, so we went from the kitchen to the top of the house to record our video – which, when you’re stuffed full of food, is very hard work. Perhaps Dave could install a lift for us as his next DIY project?

Posted in: CDWM, food, friends, photos, video

Comments

One Response to “CDWM: Lauren’s starter”

bethany actually
17th July 2010 @ 5:53 pm

I laughed out loud at “It wouldn’t surprise me if she set the table with cutlery she’d forged herself next time.” Then I went back to copy and paste it for this comment, and I laughed again. I’m so looking forward to meeting Lauren next month when she’s in Virginia. :-)

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