Recent Culinary Goodness

About a week ago, on a rainy Sunday nite after Thanksgiving, I was invited to a party full of food and new friends.

One being, namely, Jaime Oliver.

OK, that part is pretty cool.

Sit down to a great meal cooked by 2 AWESOME ladies(I will be getting to that) and rap to a damn fine chef with heady opinions about the state of the American kitchen and being a New Yorker who tries to do a fare share of cooking in a tiny kitchen. Oh, and maybe get my mug on TV to boot.

The dinner was an "underground" supper club. SUNDAY NIGHT DINNER (SND) is hosted by Tamara and Zora 2 great self taught chefs who invite an eclectic mix of folks to their homes to have a several course meal. The nite is usually held together with a theme and tonite was LAMB! Now, there was a big master plan for this dinner since Jaime was coming and the reason for his presence was to film a show. The lamb was to be picked up, butchered and brought back for roasting on a BBQ. Well . . . it rained, plan changed. The ladies threw together a killer meal with lamb 3 ways. One of which being chicken fried lamb chops! HOLY CRAP! There was a wonderful butter lettuce salad with a vinaigrette and CANDIED BACON. They would not budge on releasing the recipe but did say it was a lot of trial and error to get it right. Certainly an experience I WILL be enjoying again after the new year.

The Jaime thing. Cool guy, just like you think he would be. On and off camera he was genuinely interested in what your ideas and opinions were. It was nice to get opinions and arguments from some I admire as a chef. I particularly was taken aback when he was impressed that I would go to culinary school "just for the knowledge". Nice bloke.

The more I think about it, it really is a LOT to put on my shoulders to "just learn". But isn't everything you do to better yourself hard in one way or another? If sit-ups didn't hurt, everyone would do them! Me included. I could spend the next 20 years picking apart recipes, teaching myself technique to full this passion OR I could give up some weekend time to cram 20 years into 9 months. Easy for me to figure that one out.

This is going to be a good time indeed.


Here are the Ladies:
Tamara: oneasskitchen.blogspot.com
Zora: blog.rovinggastronome.com