Rooster. Very delicious rooster at that.

 We bought a very cheap and very lean bird.  It looked like one of those incredible jobs.  It was the sort of bird we don’t get in Dubai and certainly not in NZ. Was it a chicken? No.  A Guinea fowl? No.  A partridge or whatever? No.

It was only upon deconstructing this winged creature that I realised.  The bones big.  The skin had very very little fat.  The meat on the legs dark.  The tendons fierce (I did manage to cut off most tendons as effectively as I could.) This winged creature, we discovered, was in fact a rooster 

Strange maybe but we'd never happened upon a rooster.  

We made a pea puree.  We cooked celeriac in the fat from the skin and crispy cooked extra skin taken from the carcass. We made a sauce from the carcass. The sauce was left in Andy’s deft hands.  Bones cooked down with the usuals of wine and aromatics.  Balanced with salt, sweet, acidity at the end.  Utterly scrummerly.  The extra coq skin was oven baked until crunchy.  The celeriac pave was cooked in the coq fat until meltingly tender. 

The bird was 3euro.  And by god it was tasty. 

I love the satisfaction that comes from boning joints.  To do this with a cheap male rooster was so damn awesome.

 Yeap.  A little beaut of a bird.   And all for $5NZ.  I also have, in my fridge even more leftover bones to cook additional stock and make another gorgeous meal.

QUEENSTOWN

When we were down under (a last minute trip to get our French Visas!!) we thought lets go to Queenstown.  And so we did.

We stayed in a good small hotel, walked and walked and walked.  Drove all over the place (Wanaka, Clyde, Glenorchy etc) and ate mainly Japanese because we found the most awesome little restaurant tucked around the back of the main drag.

We had spectacular weather which was a bonus and the other bonus was evening drinks included which happened to be damn good central Otago Pinot Noir and they kept topping up those glasses......

Yeah we had fun in Queenstown.  It was a blast and it was awesome making the most of our trek down under.

And then there's the wine

HABLA Number 01.  2005 Cabinet Sauvignon

Habla Number 01.  I weighed this thing and it clocked in at 1.8kgs.  The density of the glass being the weight.   Then there's the quality of the cork, with "No 1" ingrained.  There's a reason Spain doesn't go screw cap.  They have access to the best possible cork.  Again, keeping the best to themselves.  Admirable, but financially crippling.

Habla is from Extremadura.   This was a 2005 and being No 1 means their elite Cabernet Sauvignon  range.   It's daft, I know.  To keep a wine simply because it's prised.  At the end of day, it ain't gonna get much better.  Just drink it!  Which we did....last night, 49th bday.  It was as smooth as silk and a complete dream.  

Main course birthday dinns

My favourite Indian dish.   I just simply love it.  I had the marinade in the freezer and the marinade  takes the longest to prepare.   Considering the exhaustive methods involved in this dish it is a complete pleasure to eat it without having to do it from scratch (being my favourite dish and all...).  The sheer ingredients alone that go into the marinade take time to even get out of the cupboard!!

Joey, Wag and Katya have eaten it.  I think K might have been generous.  It's a full on dish after all, being hugely complex with the mix of spice.

Anyway, a very delicious main course.  Yes it was my birthday, and yeap I (sort of) cooked it. It was like eating at the best modern Indian but of my freezer.  Andy wanted to cook but I have a focus, to get rid of all my freezer sauces.  

My bday dinner continued..... Indian lamb samosa, lamb consume....

I am using my freezer stores.  A beautiful lamb consume.  Spiced lamb samosa cooked crispy.  I'll never recreate this dish.  It would be far too time consuming.  But I had the separate components in the freezer from different dishes.  This is as good as a light yet complex Indian entree gets.  Absolutely sublime.    

My 49th... Nibbles

We are in packing mode, so a chair sufficed for a coffee table.  

Cucumber with Raji (my friend from the supermarket) chutney.....  

I KNOW!  The plating is amazing.  I'm stoked with this dish.  

RETIREMENT DINNER

Prawn bisque sauce, crispy prawn heads (from the prawns after last night's lovely dinner party), grilled salmon, roasted tomato and a Greg Malouf rouille recipe (i.e., French rouille with middle eastern slant).  Gorgeous.  Served with T110 sourdough and Terra Tanga 2007 Rolo.  A wine we'd been keeping (but did not know this would be the occasion!).  Ummmmm,   Yummmmmm....!!!