Spanish Dinner

It was a Spanish meal for the dinner club. There were a few wrinkles involved in this one as one of our member couples has split and we have interest from both sides in attendance, making things sometimes a bit hairy. However, as we are a rag tag group without regularly scheduled timing, things can be a scheduled and reschedule\d and we can work things out.

We have been eating together for at least 12 years.
This evening included the addition of the “new girlfriend”, setting things all a twitter. Who was she, what was she etc., although no one of us were worried, it was all just a mystery.

The focus is the dinner. We were loud, obnoxious and all had a great time and the dinner was fantastic.

I started with Spanish beer quickly moving on to Rolling Rock.

The appetisers brought by one couple were two kinds of chips with a wonderful mango salsa that I was told was great but since I am allergic to mangoes, I declined. That’s how I knew about the two kinds of chips, that’s what I had. As well, there was an amazing stuffed mushroom cap filled with chorizo or something like that with bread crumbs and maybe even some cheese. I have no idea, but it was hot from the oven and delicious.

At some point Peter, as it was his house and he and his new girlfriend were the hosts, began to fill strange bowls on the table. The small bowls were filled with red wine which I later found out were wine cups to drink from and I did. The other two, long ceramic bowls has a strange ceramic covering of ceramic rack, I guessed. He filled those with vodka and later tried to light them, which failed. We asked his girlfriend (I am leaving out names to protect the innocent here) and she said they were from her girlfriend and she told her to use cheap booze. We suggested brandy instead, which Peter found and poured out the vodka to use later and filled it with brandy. It was then decided to go and get a small soldering blowtorch as the matches didn’t do the trick.
It turned out (blowtorches work!) these were trays to cook chorizo, both the sweet kind and the hot kind.

Chorizo is a term encompassing several types of pork sausages originating from the Iberian Peninsula.

Chorizo can be a fresh sausage, in which case it must be cooked before eating. In Europe, it is more frequently a fermented, cured, smoked sausage, in which case it is usually sliced and eaten without cooking. Spanish chorizo and Portuguese chouriço get their distinctive smokiness and deep red color from dried smoked red peppers (Due to culinary tradition, and the expense of imported Spanish smoked paprika, Mexican chorizo (but not throughout Latin America) is usually made with chili peppers, which are used abundantly in Mexican cuisine. In Latin America, vinegar also tends to be used instead of the white wine usually used in Spain. Traditionally, chorizo is encased in natural casings made from intestines, a method used since the Roman times.

Chorizo can be eaten as is (sliced or in a sandwich), grilled, fried, or simmered in apple cider or other strong alcoholic beverage such as aguardiente
Spanish-style tapas bars that serve traditional-style chorizo have gained in popularity in recent years, and now appear in many large cities throughout North America.

We cooked the already smoked sausage which we had along with chicken made of the grill with a wonderful spicy flavor and pork tenderloin and pork rib-lets made in peri-peri sauce. With this was had small roasted potatoes and a large bowl of Spanish rice. The salad which we brought and was served first consisted of red onion, fennel and orange slices in a Spanish dressing.

The dessert was a large tray of berries and homemade white fudge and chocolates made of agave flavored coconut covered in chocolate, also homemade by one of the other guests. She also announced to the “new girlfriend” that she had promised me a blow job on the 100th birthday, which you may remember from a previous post. This news I figured may have been startling (we were quite lubricated at that point) but she seemed to take it all in good stride. The same young woman announced when the sausage was served, “I don’t think I can get my lips around that one!”, and we knew there was a theme here.

Late in the dinner, all of which was done outside, a disembodied voice came over the fence in the backyard wishing my wife a good night and hoping she was having a nice time. This came from the neighbor in the back who is also my wife’s piano teacher and a friend, although not quite a friend of our home owner. It was strange.

One hell of a dinner and for once, although I seldom say this, I was meated out!