Cannibal Feast?

After about two years, we finally did Chef of the Month again on Sunday. We thought four entries was pretty good for starters, and we are confident that the competition will be much fiercer at the next Chef of the Month, in October. We elected Corrie as our judge, however we may look at enlisting some more judges if things start to get really serious - if the TAB get in touch with us asking to list our competition on their books for instance...

We had two categories; mains and desert.

Mark's bacon and cheese muffins were great: it was the bacon that made them a winner. I didn't get to taste them, but they looked pretty darn good. There were none left when I came (late) to lunch, so that's evidence that other people share my view.

Andy's pasta: disaster struck with this little number, I had it cooking on the hot element thing during the Lord's Supper. I had some pretty queasy feelings about it while we were finishing off church, and when I went back to stir it, it was completely stuck and burnt on the bottom. Sorry about the burnt pot mum. But hey, the rest of the pasta was fine and even carried off first prize. The only thing it lacked, Corrie told me, was a bit of green. It was a bit boring looking Andy, but it tasted great. Which just goes to show, burning things is fine so long as noone knows.

Beautifully presented, this huge plate of fairy bread got 2nd prize in the desert category. There was just the right amount of hundreds and thousands on it, and not too much butter. Zephaniah, who didn't seem so enthusiastic at first, had a second look at the bread and took a peice. There were a lot of comments about the fairy bread, it seems that it's not just a kid's thing. In fact, the adults were quite happily tucking into it. It seems that making fairy bread is potentially hazardous: Ellie says she spilled hundreds and thousands on the floor, and it would have been pretty dangerous if anyone had tripped on them.

It was close on 10:30 pm and I was using the Kenwood Chef to make the meringue for the lemon merinue pie, trying to dissolve the sugar like you're supposed to and getting jolly impatient. The noise was like an airoplane taking off and there was this annoying thumping of the metal blade that accompnied it. Andy was ostensibly chopping up onions for his pasta, but he actually had a spoon in his hand and was hovering over the meringue mixture as it spun round. When I wasn't looking, he quickly stuck the spoon into the mixture. Unfortunatley, the diabolical machine wrenched the spoon from his hand and kept on mixing with the spoon in the meringue. The noise at this point was like a car factory blowing up. Andy was jumping up and down, horrified I suppose. I turned off the machine and dug out the spoon, and then we licked it, because meringue tastes a whole lot better uncooked. Anyway, the pie won first prize in the desert category. If there were more entries it wouldn't have that's for sure, because the pie ended up looking, as I remarked to Ellie, like the remains of a cannibal feast.

Corrie said that Mrs. Pollard's smoked chicken sandwiches would have taken first prize for the mains category, had they been entered into the competition. They had relish and mustard in them and were fantastic.

All said and done, the quality of this church lunch was great... but it would be even better next time if we could get some of those competitors from a couple of years back cooking again, and some new competitiors?