The best bad birthday meal

I love cooking for someone’s birthday; preparing their favourite meal with their favourite wine or drink, and a delicious something sweet to end... The thought and care that goes into it is my display of love and happiness to celebrate that person’s special day. But, and this is a big but, I am a perfectionist- and everything must go according to my plan.

Last night I was designated chef for my gran’s 86^th birthday. My gran is a ferocious little old lady; despite nearing 90 she’s still a demon on the road, goes about her old lady business independently, and will never turn down a glass of champagne- diabetes and all. This birthday dinner had to be an extra special one. I planned a seafood feast, each element perfectly aligned to the next with varying degrees of healthyness and decadence, and I sent my dad off with the shopping list.

Now my dad is a man who has spent easily 3 decades of his life fishing. His trophies used to line the fireplace mantel, and I have very vivid memories of Sunday braais sitting between my ouma and dad eating the catch of the day, hot off the coals. As you can see in these pictures, he was a consistent champion fisher, despite his sense of style waning over the years:

I thought there was no better person to buy the seafood than my dad. I sent him with a very simple list: prawns, calamari steaks, mussels, and gurnard. And one simple request: everything fresh, NOTHING frozen.

He came back with everything frozen. Rock hard, solid ice, frozen.

Now I know very few people will share my frustration, but getting frozen seafood instead of fresh is devastating. It’s like being promised a motorbike and you get a scooter- it’s not the end of the world, and it does the job, but it’s nowhere near as good or exciting as you had hoped. And at some point you want to kick it.

And then it got worse. The prawns were not only frozen, but SHELLED and BLANCHED L L this is reason enough for me to have a mini panic attack. Imagine going to a bar and ordering a draught, and instead you get a drink in a bottle, AND it’s alcohol free. Okay, so maybe that’s not the best analogy- but I don’t know how to stress the degree of this problem! Prawns are made to be eaten out of their shells, with all the juices caught in the nooks and crannies between the shell and the meat, the head twisted off and sucked out, you should be covered in delicious sauce up to your elbows at least, and a prawn whisker should be stuck to your neck. That is how prawns are meant to be enjoyed.

After a fairly long lecture (and argument) about my father’s dismal failure in his task, he attempts to make it up to me by cutting me some watermelon slices- which I am only allowed to eat outside, on the lawn, and not near the pigeons’ seed table.

He then shares with me all his secrets to stealing watermelons from the shops in Central. While this information is invaluable, and the next time I’m at Charlie Superstar I will be sure to look out for a watermelon to steal, I still had several kilograms of frozen seafood to deal with. So I finish my slice while listening to stories of the watermelon fights in the park (which was why they obviously had to steal them), and I contemplate how on earth I can fix this. As I turn to walk inside, my dad stops me to tell me something very important, according to him. I’m hoping he has some advice for defrosting calamari.

“Lauren, you know, no one can get naar with you if you gooi them with a watermelon peel.”

Marvellous. I want to freaking throw the watermelon at his head and see how naar he feels!

But I digress, back to the food. Originally the menu was moules mariniéres (aka mussels in a creamy white wine sauce), cajun calamari curls, coconut, chilli and coriander thai prawns, soda batter gurnard, with savory rice, salad, and warm rolls to dip in the sauces. I scrapped the gurnard, since there is no way to get that perfect crispy batter with frozen fish. Mussels are supposed to be resilient little buggers, so I went to work on them first.

A lot of people turn their nose up at mussels. Sure, they’re no scallops or clams, but there is nothing more delicious than a pot of creamy mussels and fresh, warm buttery bread as a starter. And the good news is that it’s ridiculously simple to make.

Chop up an onion and lots of garlic (and some celery if you like), and sauté in butter until soft. Throw in a glass or so of white wine and some thyme, toss in the mussels, pop on the lid and steam until the mussels open- this means they’re cooked. If you’re using half-shell mussels, it takes about 10 minutes. Then stir in about 250ml of cream, and leave back on the heat for another 5 minutes or so. Depending on how runny you like your sauce you can either leave it as is, cook it for longer to reduce, or stir in some flour or white sauce powder to thicken it, and then cook for another 5 minutes. Finish with freshly ground black pepper and salt, and voila- moules mariniéres!

The best part about this dish is that the chef is entitled to finish whatever wine is left over in the bottle.

Mussels

+ wine

+ more wine for chef

= delicious mussels mmmmm :)

Calamari can be defrosted fairly quickly by soaking it in some warm water, but the problem is that it always ends up a bit watery in the end. It seems that once you’ve frozen fish, no matter how you defrost it, there’s just a permanent increase in water content. So if you are using frozen calamari, I suggest that you do not batter and fry it, or even pan fry it, as the water seeps out and leaves everything in a bit of a damp/soggy mess. Score the calamari diagonally across both ways to create squares (this helps keep the calamari very tender, and when it’s nice and fresh, will make the calamari curl up into spirals that look and taste amazing) and grill on a griddle pan so that any liquids are caught below the calamari, and it still gets a beautiful colour and flavour.

As far as the prawns go, I admit defeat. I cooked them, they had coconut, chilli and coriander flavours, but they are nowhere near as good as the real thing should be. See below:

They should look like this (this is from a Thai dinner night a few weeks ago):

and not like this :(

But somehow the feast was a roaring success; everything was polished off, plates wiped clean (fresh rolls are essential for seafood feast for precisely this purpose), seconds and thirds had, and lots of happy chitter chatter for hours after. Perhaps I plied them with enough champagne before hand, but I reckon that with mussles and that sauce, you can hide any number of culinary oopsies ;) I left my dad alone in the kitchen and came back to find him sitting dead quiet (which is a VERY rare occasion) licking out the mussels bowl.

And in even better news, my father and the parrot have reconciled to a point where they are civil, and Popeye was even allowed to join the celebrations through a gift of the champagne cork to play with.

xxxxx