El Andalous - First Dinner Guests

Il Gusto

A bit like when I organised my party, I was also a bit rash in deciding to invite my first dinner guests round. As you know, Holger is over for a month and now Snejana and Dmitri are here for ten days, so it seemed like a good opportunity, and a manageable number, for hosting my first dinner.

I’d forgotten, though, somehow, that I am in Egypt and it’s not really so easy. For a start, I didn’t have a dining table and chairs, well, not proper ones at any rate. Still, it was a good kick in the backside for me finally to clean thoroughly my glass table that lives on the balcony and to bring it inside, along with the four chairs; of course, this left my balcony devoid of any furniture at all.

The “dining” chairs are quite large and lean slightly back, so aren’t really ideal for sitting up at a table. It was also difficult to know where to place the chairs so that they didn’t block space around them; in the end the fourth chair had to be brought manually to the table and taken away afterwards for there to be enough room to move about.

In the light of this, I’ve decided that my study area/spare bedroom will also be a dining room; my study table (when I get one) can double up as a dining table. I just love multi-functional spaces! The only problem will be locating the furniture and getting it to my flat… no doubt a future blog on that one!

I decided on roast chicken for the meal – relatively easy, assuming that potatoes were available in Spinneys (which they weren’t last time). Starters was planned to be carrot and ginger soup, also relatively easy, especially now that all my cooking equipment had arrived. However, I ran out of time (how is this possible when I'm not even working??) to prepare a dessert.

At the time, I looked in Spinneys and thought about baking a cake, but decided I needed to experiment with the flour here first (I also found the flour in Switzerland puzzling with so many different varieties). I contemplated ice cream and chocolate sauce (basically a Coupe Denmark), but wasn’t sure what the chocolate sauce was like here. Also, I had not yet located the ice cream. I wondered about a banana split, but then thought Holger may freak out at having fruit over here. Moreover, at the time I was shopping, Esmat’s cousin was outside waiting for me and he was, I felt, rather stressed, so I didn’t have the time to deliberate as much as I would have liked. In the end, in my indecision, I completely forgot to get anything at all.

I’d also forgotten that my cooker was a bit idiosyncratic as I’ve adapted to it for cooking for myself, but hadn’t thought that there would be extra demand on it when cooking for more people. First of all, I forgot to switch it on (how more basic can you get than that?) because in my head I was originally going to switch it on when people arrived. However, Snejana and Dmitri were delayed due to Esmat cancelling his taxi service because his father was in a coma in hospital (which just shows us that we often moan about trivial things when we should be happy and grateful for what we have when we can). Meanwhile, I forgot to rethink my timing of putting the chicken on and foolishly continued to wait for them to arrive before starting it.

Then I forgot that the fuse goes each time that I cook something on the hob at the same time as having something in the oven. Consequently, even though I turned the oven on, for a while, it still wasn’t cooking due to the fuse going. This repeated itself at various points in the evening. I think my guests were near starvation level by the time it was ready.

For dessert, I made do with coffee and chocolates, but I’d failed to notice that I was running out of coffee; it was just something I assumed I had. In the end, the rest of the coffee bag was just enough for the four of us, but it was a close thing!

Nevertheless, it was rewarding for me to see my flat in “hostess” mode and all furnished (of sorts). I enjoyed the company and the chat; it made me miss having all my old friends around me, realising that this was just a one-off fleeting visit from those present. However, I’m sure I’ll fully establish myself here in good time. All the food went, which is either a good sign (they all liked it) or a bad sign (they all left still hungry). I will need to practice making some desserts for a future occasion!