Guests: Jim, an old colleague of Big T's, plus Archie and Effie
whom I've described before - Archie the cantankerous Armenian,
Effie forgetful and frail since she took a fall a couple years ago
and fractured her skull, never having fully recovered; Effie met
Big T at their mutual friend Gail's also in the 40-to-50-years-ago
time frame. Turhs out that Jim, Effie, and Gail all had worked at
one time or another at the Globe, another point d'appui. Five more
invitees weren't able to make it, so there were leftovers.

I made dinner, starting at about 11 with cutting up and marinating
the meat, did the echo, only there was no echo to do, made
cracklings out of chicken skin, played Word Connect (does anyone
else here play this supreme time water?), put the stewy things on
to cook (stewy things taste better cooked in advance), looked in
vain for more echo, cut up stuff for the nonstewy things, took a
nap, prepared the rice, more Word Connect, chose the wine (we
didn't end up using the wine, because we drank guest offerings
instead), and then started preparing in earnest around 5:30 for
supposedly 6:30 dinner. People didn't show up until a bit after
dinnertime (strange, as Effie is usually early), and we didn't
dine until after 7.

Appies from the Wine and Cheese Cask: the L'Amuse Gouda, which
went over very well, the duck and duck liver pate made I believe
by Trois Petits Cochons, also popular, and a Basque sheep cheese
that stank up the neighborhood and put everyone off their feed for
a while. Also Cedars hummus with pignoli, which nobody touched.

Dinner.

Baingan bharta, not too spicy - I cooked this early and decided
for expediency's sake to finish it in the oven, which made the
eggplant cubes stay distinct; I prefer them mushy, but I didn't
have the energy to recook on top of the stove, so separate they
remained. I will boil the leftovers for a while to achieve the
texture I desire.

Chhole Madras, not too spicy - actually, not spicy enough, but
there were tenderpalates involved. Made with Bush's canned
chickpeas, reduced salt, which were almost salty enough anyway.

Chicken korma, not spicy at all and with no dried fruit, as
Bonnie doesn't care for dried fruit. I used diced carrots instead
to provide the necessary sweetness; also cashews and almonds
picked out of trail mix (I ate the M&Ms, pepitas, and sunflower
seeds as a snack). Siggi's thick yogurt was quite tart, and so I
added a little sugar as well.

Chicken in a generic curryish spicing, with red and green
peppers and a lot of onion, hotted up with very hot Indian
pepper given to me a long time ago by the Shipps. I stewed the
chicken in chicken fat at almost sous-vide temperature, which
yielded a very tender texture and very chickeny chicken (I used
thighs, the skin going into cracklings, which the three of us
ate, the cook getting the lion's share; the bones and onion
trimmings went into stock; and I cubed the chicken bite-size).

Pork vindaloo, fairly spicy, was very sour and without enough
onions (I added more later, but the flavors didn't meld right);
the main taste, as it often is, was cloves. I didn't dare to
put in as much hot pepper as I'd like, so.

I made a batch of my hot sauce, the vinegar-free one that I'd
spilled all over Bonnie's table once, prompting me to utter the
first curse she'd ever heard me use (she hadn't been around me
for very long), for those who wanted to hot up the chickpeas or
the eggplant, or whatever - Big T and I put it on everything.

Eice was done in a pilaf style with cumin, coriander seed, and
saffron. The liquid was that broth from the chicken bones.

Bonnie got a mixed-berry pie from Petzi, the place that gives
away pies on Pi Day, the little handheld size if you can recite
that constant to 10 decimal places, a big one if you can do
100 (I was going to try to learn the 100, knowing 50 plus since
high school and 60 in college, but I'm flying out to Arizona to
meet Swisher for spring training that morning, and the store
doesn't open until 3:14). She augmented that with an apple pie
(Greenings and Honeycrisp_ that she made from a cookbook, only
the crust was frozen from I think Whole Foods. The Petzi crust
was immeasurably better than the readymade; the fillings were
comparable in every way; I might in fact give the edge to Bonnie's.

Mayu Cabernet Sauvgnon 17 I think (Elqui Valley, Chile) - a quite
sweet, pruny liquid that Winston Smith might have liked in 1984,
i.e., a children's introduction to wine. I would not drink this on
its own, but it went okay with the curries. Looking it up, it's
from one of the driest deserts in the world, and why people are
making wine there is anyone's guess.

Bread & Butter Chardonnay 17 (Napa) - a highly oaked monster
from California, it lives up to the name, combining a bit of
yeastiness with a quite substantial butteriness. Again, something
that would have become cloying if drunk by itself but went okay
with the food, the hotter dishes burning off the oak, which had
added character to the chickpeas and the blander of the two
chicken dishes.
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