Solar Eclipse

My bestfriend Jan who currently lives in China has been extremely excited about the solar eclipse that is meant to be happening today at 9:36am...visible in China and India. This eclipse will last as long as 6 minutes and 39 seconds in some places in the South Pacific. That will make it the longest solar eclipse of the 21st Century.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Sun and the Earth so that the Sun is fully or partially covered. It so happens that today the Earth is close to its farthest point from the sun. A small sun means the Moon can cover it longer and coincidentally the Moon will be near its closest point to Earth. So a large Moon covers the sun longer, lengthening the duration of the eclipse.

I'm sure Jan will be enjoying this eclipse and I decided to look up an eclipse cocktail which she might be able to enjoy later on tonight when chatting with her friends about how cool it was!

Eclipse Cocktail

Grenadine
1 oz Gin
2 oz Sloe Gin
½ tsp Lemon Juice

Put enough grenadine into a cocktail glass to cover a ripe olive. Mix the remaining ingredients with ice and strain them onto the grenadine so that they do not mix.

Have you experienced a solar eclipse before?

Way Overdue Birthday Dinner

In January a good friend of mine, Nilam, celebrated her birthday. My gift to her was a lovely sit down dinner for her and her boyfriend Stephen. Unfortunately with our busy schedules it was almost impossible to pin down a date that worked for us...until last Saturday, 25 April. Yes, it may have been 3months overdue...but we had a lot of fun and I certainly enjoyed preparing the meal. I'll be posting up the recipes of most of what I made over the course of this week...but this post will mainly be an overview of the dinner with one recipe for a drink.

For the cocktail of the night I decided to make an original Alex concoction. A ginger blackcurrant vodka spritzer. I made a simple syrup by heating equal parts of sugar and water with roughly chopped pieces of ginger. Once the sugar melted I let the syrup simmer for a while and cool overnight with the ginger pieces. To assemble the drink I poured a shot of blackcurrant vodka into a glass with 1tablespoon of the syrup (this amount depends on how sweet you like your drink)...I then topped it off with spritzer water and dropped in 2 blackcurrant gummies for presentation and also as a fun thing to chew on once the drink is done.

As a starter I made a little phyllo dough stack topped with smoked salmon...fresh cream and dill...I served a balsamic mushroom salad on the side.

Smoked salmon...cream...and phyllo dough work very well together. I might even play around with this and in the future make little phyllo wonton parcels.

The main dish was a 40 garlic clove braised chicken with a white wine sauce and my special Quinoa Pilaf on the side with fresh figs.

It was my first time making this chicken dish and I must say it was very tasty...the chicken was slightly overcooked simply because I chose to work with fillet pieces rather than full chicken breasts...next time I won't cook it as long....but it's definitely a recipe I'll use again.

And for the dessert I made individual servings of a rich chocolate pannacotta with caramelised bananas...

This was as thick and rich as a ganache ...very creamy and chocolatey. I purposely made the rest of the dinner quite light and healthy because I knew that this dessert would be extremely sinful.

All in all the night was a success and I certainly hope Nilam enjoyed her overdue birthday dinner!