JoanA wrote:
Perhaps it's the shock of them both giving you such high praise about your food, especially after the past year you've gone through, it was too much for your brain to fully absorb.
Normal business will be resumed in due course.
Joan i'm glad you understood the humour i intended behind my last post, i wasn't sure if that would be understood here but ran with it anyway
My wife is used to my cooking and rarely comments on it, when she goes quiet during eating it can go one of two ways... either she loves it , or hates it, i never really know until i ask her, even then i sometimes still wonder! LOL
My sister on the other hand is not used to my cooking, until her partner passed away we've not really had any contact since we were teenagers, leading our own lives i guess and didn't need to rely on each other like we did when we were young?
Anyway, we are spending more time talking on the phone and in each others company now... so when i invited her to come up for dinner i wasn't sure what to make for her...
That takes me back to my first post in this post where i searched for a butcher that normally supplies the trade market...
I had ordered a 500g pack of pre-cooked pulled pork from the butcher, bear in mind that i have never cooked pulled pork before let alone had any idea what to do with it when it turned up (i've eaten it but had had no idea what to do with it now i had it!), anyways i decided i'd do something with the pulled pork but ask what i should do with it before i prepared it.
I'd already bought a bottle of BBQ sauce but wasn't sure whether to reheat the pork in the sauce or to pour the sauce over the reheated pork... i was firmly in the camp of pour the sauce on the reheated pork but both my wife and sister were firmly in the camp of reheating the pork in the sauce.
Long story short, i went to the kitchen and opened the container with the pork and tasted it... OMG it tasted so good, so good in fact that drowning it in a sauce that none of us had actually tried would've been criminal, so i took the pack through to them and asked them to try a bit of the pork before i did anything... all of a sudden they both agreed that i re-heat the pork and they add the sauce to their tastes.
It was probably one of the simplest dinners i've ever cooked, choice of sourdough baguettes or brioche rolls, pulled pork that was reheated in a pot with a little vegetable oil, sides were BBQ sauce, french fries, coldslaw... and they absolutely loved it!!
Then again it might have been the finishing touch that won them over, the cheap and nasty store bough trifle
Fwiw, i think but am not sure, the BBQ sauce might have originated in the US?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0003290ME/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_DRHY5A6DR9B8Y8E7N69F?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1Personally the BBQ sauce was too sweet for my liking but when you're cooking for other people that doesn't matter...
What seems to matter is finding good quality produce at an affordable price, it really does make all the difference.