And following on from Bessie’s birthday, we have the lovely Don’s quite close behind!

We ducked out for a quick lunch of a very, very good bowl of pho at Quyen – the brisket, so tender! First visit, definitely will return.

cute squealer from the bottleshop a couple of doors up from the restaurant

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Don’s chosen birthday dinner was comfort food – Italian traybake from Nigellissima.

This is incredibly simple to make and spectacularly good. I chucked a few unpeeled cloves of garlic in which made it even better.

Un-pictured because, well it doesn’t photograph particularly well and we had cooking issues which distracted me from capturing it by the time it came to eat.

About 3/4 of the way through cooking the oven decided that it found cooking really rather tiresome and died completely. It had only ever done this for bread before, so this was a little unexpected. I calmly covered the tray and cooked it for a bit on the stovetop. After 15 minutes the oven was cooled and good to go again. Must get this attended to (or get another oven – but that is a vicious circle of should we redo the kitchen so we can get a bigger oven &etc).

Fortunately we did manage to eat before midnight and fortunately I’d already made the dessert!

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For dessert Don chose Italian Apple Pie (Cake) also from Nigellissima.

This is the first time I’ve used the food processor to make cake batter (per instructions). It was amazingly quick, but a little more challenging to scrape into the cake tin than from a bowl.

pretty!

slightly less pretty, but still a bit pretty

From a cursory glance at the recipe, we assumed this would be much like our beloved kerry apple cake – how wrong we were! This was very different – light and fluffy with just the right amount of sweetness.

Will definitely cook again (despite ExtremeFrugality, need to obtain apple corer – I’m not dexterous enough to use a knife at all well)

xxx

Now we have a small respite until Joe/Frank’s birthday in late February. Time to ponder the epic tablescape!