A Mega Fish Supper

So today was a very different Sunday for us.  I had arranged that Mum would spend time with Lilian so that she was not on our own and that enabled us to spend the day with the 23.

We had planned a fish barbeque.  In the UK Sally runs a business called Sally's Fish Camp and she gets super excited about fish and cooking it.  We had gone yesterday into Polis to see what we could find which would be a change from the norm.  

John and I had already got Sea Bass and Red Fish (Boops-Boops we think) and I was poaching the Sea Bass with Thai style spices and Sally was working her magic on the Boops!  

For a pudding John went off to get fresh figs which I was going to poach in some rum with fetta, mint, cinnamon and honey which was being served with a dollop of the amazing vanilla ice-cream that they make at Da Vinci's in Prodromi.

John had set up a work station for Sally in the shade under the gazebo but we ended up using the work surfaces in the kitchen - I am not great at sharing kitchen space - we actually bar visitors from coming in- it isn't a huge space and I normally end up all entangled with the interloper which is a bit of a pet hate!

As a compromise we worked opposite one another.  Here on the left Sally is preparing the squid she got from the fish market and I am cutting up the octopus which had been steamed in the pressure cooker for 15 minutes and which when extracted was cooked perfectly and not at all rubbery (which is the usual complaint about octopus).  These were then put on the barbeque to finish off.

We started with sardines and boops-boops and barbequed prawns (which had come from Ecuador of all places).

Sally, John and Charlie (apparently) manned the barbeque and did an absolutely fabulous job even though the coals were beginning to loose their heat because we had stretched the meal out.

We didn't actually get round to the Sea Bream until about 9.30pm because we had been playing a game called The Salad Bowl which is a bit like Taboo in that you write down 10 words on a piece of paper and put in a salad bowl and split into teams and then in the first round you have to describe as many of the words as possible without actually saying them and then put the words back in so that in the second round you can act them out and then put them back and finally in the last round you just use one word to describe the word.  It all became rather riotous but the trick is to try and remember all the words from the first round which then makes subsequent rounds easier.

I have absolutely no idea what time we eventually got to eat the figs, I do know that sometime after midnight when the 23 were about to wander back to the Corner House Sally enquired whether or not we should go swimming.  We persuaded her that it wasn't the greatest idea she had ever had!!!!  

Boy did I miss a dishwasher - it took John and I some time to get things tidied so we did not get an infestation of ants or give anyone food poisoning in the future!