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| Yuzu and honey meringue pie |
So, this week was my first (hopefully of many) supper club
hosted in the little lounge located adjacent to the little kitchen. Although I’ll
start supper clubs up more regularly come 2014, this was a bit of a run through
with some hungry guinea pigs friends. And thank goodness there was a run
through. My oven, for some incomprehensible reason, always manages to cunningly
detect pressure of a dinner party ahead, and this time it blew its fuse three
times on me during the evening.
Other than that hiccup, the evening seemed to pass by well. However,
the morning of the supper club, I did have the most absurd ‘first world problem’
that sent me into a bit of a fluster in Waitrose. I was picking up some
groceries – one of which was a tin of lychees to make the cocktails (the mere
mention of Waitrose, fluster, lychees and cocktails is already screaming of a
first world problem, I admit). I went back and forth in different sections
trying to locate the damn thing. Was it in world cuisine section, Oriental or canned
fruit and vegetables aisle – who knew? Doing a trolley slalom between the grannies
aimlessly loitering over what tea and biscuit selection to choose from, I soon
gave up, looking miserably at a can of mandarin slices I thought could
substitute. I couldn’t get too upset over the lychees, but it had left me in a
somewhat deflated state. Until I saw the ‘cooks essential ingredients’ section,
where a little bottle of yuzu juice sat waiting for me. What sort of
supermarket sells yuzu as an ‘essential ingredient’, but fails to offer
lychees? The latter almost seems like a pauper of fruits compared to yuzu, but
there was no time to waste, it was time to get people drunk on special
cocktails.
The silver lining of this fluster was that I now know where
to get yuzu. It’s a beautiful citrus fruit originating from China, however widely
used in Japanese cuisine. The taste is a sharp zing like you get in grapefruit,
but with an ending warm overtone of mandarin and oranges. It’s one of those
tastes which you’ve never had before, yet there's a familiarity about it that leaves you intrigued. If you see this, or ponzu sauce/dressing, in a Japanese
dish – try it out. It’s great for salad dressings, however I was left with half
a bottle after the evening and felt inspired to put my own spin on things.
