Okra and the angry lesbian

I had a couple of days off last week which were largely spent wandering around aimlessly in a flu medicine induced stupor. Despite this, I got quite drunk a couple of times and spent more money than I have in my bank account. Which is not surprising given I am in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and how quickly all the hidden costs add up. I invited my good friend Claire over for dinner as she cooked for me the night before - she made some weird pork concoction called uccelletti, which are essentially pork and anchovy patties wrapped in bacon, served with fricasse-style stew of fennel, carrots,mushroom, white wine and a shitload of cream. It was a delicious meal, to be sure. One that I knew I couldn't top given my lack of inspiration and internet to research recipes at the time.

Claire - one of my best friends and easily my closest confidante in London - is a name that will be bandied about regularly in this blog. She is a closet lesbian with violent tendencies and an affinity for oversized mens flannel shirts. Just kidding, she's not a lesbian. Since I've arrived in London, we've shared some delicious meals, many a bottle of wine, and the occassional night posing in a tiny alcove shelf on my stairwell. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of wine and puts me to shame in matters of vino on a regular basis, and annoyingly knows the lyrics to every song in the history of music. I recently also learned to never, ever take her to a gay bar. Ever.

After getting trapped on the tube for an hour and sitting in a never-ending management meeting at work, I came home to spend an hour on the phone to BT in order to sort out the internet connection. An hour and a half later and Claire was a mere 40 minutes away. Not really enough time to plan a meal andget to the supermarket and back. So I skipped the planning part and went anyway. As I stood in the checkout queue 20 minutes after I told Claire to be at my house, with her screaming down the telephone for me to hurry the fuck up, I realised I could have planned better.

We will shortly be joined by Clea, who is arriving next week after spending the summer working in some camp in the middle of nowhere in the US. I don't know Clea quite as well, but she did gift me an iron when she left NZ and the difficulty of making proper friends in London will no doubt bring us closer together. She will surely be part of our increasingly-difficult-to-schedule dinner nights, what with our busy London lives and such. Clea is what I like to refer to as a functioning clusterfuck - bad things always seem to happen to her, hilariously bad things at that. But to be fair, they are largely self inflicted.

So anyway, I decided that I would buy some steak, which I would attempt to cook medium rare, served on a chilli-butter bean mash, with potato gratin, steamed baby corn and ... okra. Okra, also known as 'lady's fingers' is a vegetable originating in Africa best known to me as a component of gumbo in the US. I saw the okra on the supermarket shelve, and decided it would be a fun new side dish to add to our dinner. It's something I've seen on occassion but have limited experience with. When I was in Malaysia, one of my travelling companions ordered it as a side on our last night together. It was served lightly steamed with a garlic and soy marinade. Pretty fucking delicious all in all. So I was confident that my version would be wonderful.

The vegetables were ignored until everything else was near completion as I didn't want them

to get over-cooked. I asked Claire to remove the slightly browning ends of the okra, at which point we commented on its unexpected furry and prickly exterior. I steamed the okra and corn in salt water for about 4 minutes, then removed the water and added some butter. The okra became mushy and the corn stayed particularly firm. The butter took on a disgusting stringy, gooey consistency, obviously a side effect of the okra being overcooked. Nobody warned me this would happen. Once plated and presented, Claire politely tried to eat the okra but then confessed, rather diplomatically, that it wasn't for her and that she really didn't want to finish it. Which I graciously accepted. The rest of the meal was delicious, if rather filling, and after eating a ridiculously cheap orange and carrot cake Claire and I watched some Golden Girls while nursing our bloated bellies.

I learned a couple of things from this culinary experience. 1) Try not to keep Claire waiting, as she is well scary. 2) If you're going to serve steak, spend the extra money on a good, fresh cut from a butcher, because supermarket stuff is incredibly plain, even when heavily seasoned and cooked moderately successfully. 3) Okra is fucking weird and best when not prepared by me. Finally, I learned I need to centre food on the plate when I am going to photograph it, and to balance the colours of my dishes, as there is a whole lot of beige going on here.

We finished the night off with some homemade raspberry lemonade that we had prepared earlier. I can't really remember why we made this, I may have seen it on a cooking show. We prepared this by pounding and simmering about 3 large lemons in a cup of water and a shitload of muscavado sugar, and then added a punnet of raspberries. When cooled, we strained off the lemons and bits that we didn't want in our drinks and I (sneakily) added half a bottle of vodka and a bottle of soda. The boiling of the lemons gave the lemonade a strange, medicinal taste but we drank the jug quite easily before Claire realised it had any vodka in it.

Moderate success!