The smell of burning cookbook filled the house

For the dinner part I am not allowed to have what I had last year. Which is a bit tricky because I can’t really remember what I had last year - but I think it was probably my quite special Hungarian goulash soup – followed by  my really special honey chicken with Australian bush spices and the Turkish potato dish that I make with olives.

I have never made a dessert in  my life so probably bought some Viennese cakes and we would have had some nice cheeses - certainly some Grana Padano, Roquefort, Brie and hard Austrian mountain cheeses. They do these really well.

So I have been trying out some new recipes from Bill Granger who is an Australian chef of whom I am very fond. He does simple and exciting food and I have been experimenting  - and indeed so has Cate.

Indeed she tried cooking one of his books. She did not intend to do this – in fact she rarely cooks - but she was trying out one of his recipes and she put his cookbook on the hotplate that was on and the saucepan on the hotplate that was off.

We managed to save most of the cookbook and with some diligence I managed to get most of the gunk off the hotplate.

Dinner turned out quite nicely although it took days for the apartment to lose the smell of burning cookbook.