Day 162 & 163 - My longest blog ever! Sunday lunch & Monday's roadworks....

I must first start by filling you all in with the visit from the man from the town hall. I wrote it on my last blog title, and then forgot to fill you in! If I begin with the words 'what a knobhead', you will immediately get an idea of purpose of the visit! Baring in mind that the works began on the renovation of the pavement today, (see pictures below), he had the down right cheek to tell us that our pavement tax was going up to 2,500€! Apparently instead of charging per table, (we have 4 outside), they are now charging square meterage. Here's the best part...he has measured from the front of the cafe to the edge of the pavement where it meets the road. We dont have any effing chairs and tables there!!! We now have to take photographs of the chairs and tables we have, and where we put them, and submit it to the town hall. Problem is, as you can see from this photo, its a bit difficult to do that with the way the outside is at the moment....

 

ONLY IN SPAIN!

 

I will of course keep you up to date with the final result!


So another Sunday has come and gone and finally now that the stupidly hot days have just turned into very hot days, our regulars are definitely returning in their droves... We started the day with 25 bookings and ended up having to turn people away as we were fully booked. Thats more like it. Its so nice when you know you have a lot of bookings, as you can make a real effort with the food and know its not going to be wasted. By that I mean, why spend half an hour and extra money stuffing a loin of pork with sage, rosemary and apricot and wrapping it in streaky bacon when you only have 12 booked? Why spend time and extra money creating a really interesting starter, when you only have a few bookings. At least when you have a lot of bookings, you can make the extra effort knowing that there shouldn't be too much waste. A certain chef is slowly getting a little excited!

Although I have used it on the set menu a couple of times, I dont often put the 'goats cheese, caramelised onion, serrano ham and balsamic bruschetta' on the Sunday lunch menu. Thought I'd stick it on this week. It was about par with the minestrone soup for orders, so I was pretty chuffed. Here's a piccy (for those of you who havent seen it 100 times before!)

As I was a little busy during service, I didnt get much chance to take too many photos, so there is no picture of the minestrone soup. Its a shame, as the soup was excellent! I made some pistou, (basically just fresh basil, garlic and olive oil blitzed together), and spooned it over the top just before serving. If you've never tried it, its a must. It takes a really nice soup to another level. I cant describe what it does, just try it. Oh, and dont forget to put a message on the blog telling me how it was!

One of the puds this week was a home made lemon cheesecake. Although 99 times out of 100, we put a cheesecake on, (as there would be uproar if we didnt), we do try and rotate the type of cheesecake as often as possible. As we had an abundance of lemons this week, it seemed silly not to use them. Here then is this Sunday's lemon cheesecake...

No fancy coulis or sauces. Somtimes the simple things are the best. I'm not a dessert man, but I could eat this all day long!

So that was Sunday....

On to today, and a day off, yipee! We took the little fella to school this morning and then had to queue up for 20 minutes in the canteen to purchase his school books for this year. Only 130€! Popped in to work to see if the road works had started and to drop some baguettes in. This is what we were greeted with...

Great for business, eh! Not only can we not put tables and chairs out, (it averaged 35C today), but we couldn't open our doors up either, as I dont think those customers who braved the disruption would have wanted the dust and crap ending up in their food! As I have asked before, why have these imbeciles started the work now? Whats wrong with November? Really makes me mad! They can stick their 2,500€ pavement tax up their ridiculously illogical, disorganised arses...

We decided to pop to a nearby cafe for a light breakfast. Normally,we would have stayed at our own place, but didnt fancy it. I wonder why! If we, the owners, didn't want to sit there, what are the chances of the general public doing so?

We went to a nice, modern air conditioned cafe about 5 minutes walk up the road and I had 'tostada con tomate, (tomato on toast!), with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. It filled a hole...

We needed to get a couple of bits for work, and try and look for 2 bedside tables, (as I'm sick of putting everything on the floor!), so headed off in search of those. Didn't find any!

We had invited over a couple of friends for a BBQ this afternoon as a thank you to them for helping us with our pool problem, so also needed to a little food shop as well, before picking the little fella up from school at 1pm. Just read this sentence back as I always do, and realise I had typed 'poo problem'. Thank the Lord I checked!!!!!

After collecting Harrison from school, we took him to 'Burger King' for a little treat. They have an indoor play area in there, so he likes to let off a little steam. I was very good and ordered a salad. As salads go, it was pretty dull!...

Didnt enjoy it, but patted myself on the back for not giving in to the temptation of the 'Bacon double cheeseburger'!


We had some left over fish, chicken, spinach, courgette and streaky bacon at work, so I got my thinking head on and came up with these...

Firstly, I made a spinach, sun dried tomato and ricotta filling and wrapped it inside some BBQ'd strips of courgette. Never tried it before, but it was pretty yum...

 

 

I then skewered some cod and streaky bacon and sort of entwined the bacon around the cod...

 

The picture isn't great, but you get the idea... I brought home the pea puree from work and used it as a sauce for the above and it was pretty darn good!

 

Laura made a paella, which is better than any Spanish version I have tried. I honestly believe that the Spanish have some very good ideas about food, and some interesting recipies, but they just dont know how to execute the dishes properly. I find that a lot of their food is just too bland for me... Here's the paella...

 

 

This isnt the greatest picture in the world, but I also made a Caesar salad and some BBQ'd chicken breast. Forgot to take a picture of the chicken, so here's the salad...

 

 

 

So that's basically it! My last 2 days in their entirety. Hope I didnt go on too much!

 

I'm off to bed and I shall speak to you all very soon

 

Nite nite

Jimbo