So my starting point was mum’s dinner party planner, which she started in the Bahamas in 1967, when she and dad, and my brother and I, moved there for a couple of years.
Looking through the first 4 pages, they seemed to be having a dinner a month, with just one, or later two, couples per time. Mum recorded things simply, just one option as starter, main and dessert, no comments on extras or veg. Starters and desserts seem to be repeated quite a lot, while mum rang the changes with the main courses a bit more.
Having looked at the plans, and worked out what got repeated the most, I was able to decide that the dessert should be trifle...although ‘cheese pie’ seemed to be a strong contender...
And the main course could have been almost anything, because mum was only occasionally repeating something.
And that the starter should be conch fritters, whatever they were...
...I’ll come to that later!...
Dad reminded me that where they lived in Nassau, mum was being influenced by American foods and traditions, so he thought what she was calling cheese pie was actually what we call cheese cake. Mum had so many recipes for that, and served it throughout her dinner party career, that I decided to leave it, and serve trifle, an old fashioned recipe for which I found in her recipe box. I have so many memories of trifle from when we were kids, and having ‘bits’ on...hundreds and thousands to the rest of you!
Conch fritters...well, the conch is a sea snail shell, and the meat of the creature that lives inside it is edible, eaten raw in salads, and cooked in other dishes. You can’t get it in England; I tried, honestly! So starter choice number 2 came into play: curried coconut crab.
Mum obviously did this a bit, and so the recipe says ‘fry onions and tomatoes in butter, add the crab. Add curry powder, put coconut on top and grill’...not particularly useful in amounts. Dad said the coconut was desiccated, so that solved one problem, and a food technology teacher friend suggested amounts (Thank you, Diane!) and so a trial run was necessary.
Well, it was alright, but it didn’t really taste like crab! So back to conch fritters, but made with king prawns instead. Nice, tasty, really amazing dip, of which more in a bit, but to fry the fritters took so long, I can’t imagine making them for my own dinner party...and then dad said they used to buy them in the market, so ditched that idea...back to pate as a starter.
I decided the main course would be fondue, but not a cheese one, so beloved of the 70s and 80s. No, I’m doing an oil based one: we had it often as a treat when we were children, and the time in the Bahamas was the first trials.
Having looked at dad’s original fondue set, I decided to use an electric fondue set...to be honest, I was scared I was going to burn my house down with the original!
So I’m set, all dishes tried out, guests invited...watch this space...
Comments
Post a Comment