Bernhard, 22/11/21
The founding members of this little club of ours are seriously taking liberties, throwing the rule book every which way.
First it was Dorottya with her audacious Quarantine dinner for Q, and now it’s Bernhard, electing a US State rather than a sovereign country for his T dinner!!
Well, I’ll be darned! Hold on to your horses, folks: we’re goin’ to Texas! Yeehaw!
(And no, despite all it’s pomp and posturing, the Lone Star State is not a sovereign country. It does offer some rather delicious foods, though, aside of some questionable policies)
Now, some of you may remember that Bernhard’s home country is Austria (the dinner I was not invited to, ehm.). He does, however, consider Texas to be his second motherland, having spent 7 formative years of his youth there, in Dallas (I wonder if he knows who killed Bobby??). So he was keen to show off his BBQing and smoking skills, and introduce us to some of his old favourite dishes.
As well as his home football team, the Dallas Cowboys:
So, to business: assembled friends: Dorottya, Lianne, Idit, Bernhard & yours truly, and a friend from work and his lady – Luiz & Anna.
To get us all in the Texas atmosphere we all got cowboy hats, as well as some great paraphernalia on the table:
Dorottya got into the spirit of things with an amazing outfit – I wish I had a better pic:
But I totally flaked it (due to a crazy week at work), even though I have all the right gear at home! (I rode western many years ago, was a dab hand at barrel racing, if I do say so myself)
Anyway. This is no time for harping on the past: we’re fixin’ on eatin’ here! so let’s get to it:
This being proper man food, there were no frilly little starters. Just a main, and a few hearty sides.
Obviously, the main event had to be meat, and specifically – Texas smoked ribs. But as it’s a tad difficult to fit a smoker in a London apartment, Bernhard had to find a work-around, which he did to great success; He came up with a combined recipe, involving 4 mouth-watering hours (!!) in the oven, during which I almost resorted to chewing the furniture…
They were brilliant, and oh, so very plentyfull! But to most of us, the (lone) star of this meal was the Mac n’ Cheese, which again, B and I made using two recipes – partly because B intended to, and partly coz I didn’t realise I was reading from two different blogs on two separate screens… ;-D
It was a rich and heavy dish, but SOOO delicious, with it’s specs of cilantro and chilli.
Besides that we had sweetcorn, which we simply boiled and then tossed in butter and salt, and string beans, which played the part of the traditional Collard Greens – and got the same treatment as the corn.
Man-food though it was, and easily more than you can shake a stick at, we couldn’t do without dessert – so we made a Texas Sheet Cake: a moist, flat, chocolate cake topped with chocolate glaze and crushed pecans. Even after we halved the sugar content it was quite sweet, so went Very well with coffee / dark tea and whipped cream.
I’ll defo be making this again, as it’s sure to be a kids’ favourite. (please note we used half the sugar for the cake mix, and didn’t toast the pecans; I think this was really the right thing to do – it’s lighter that way).
Naturally, this was all accompanied by lots of Mexican beer and a bit of bourbon, so by the end we were all thoroughly stuffed and all but immobile… I would not eat like this every week… but every now and then – Yes’sir, please!
Oh, and as Oliver (Idit’s hubby) had to stay home with their little girl, we were sure to pack him a goody bag!
