Thursday Dinner

her dinner in, my dinner out


Thursday nights is a night out with the boys. Mae is not so hot with the idea because when the boys get together, she imagines all the seedy and seamy things they get up to. But Thursdays have become an institution, one established long before Mae came along so she does give in, mostly. While she generally trusts me, I suspect there's this unease that gnaws at her every time I'm out there. So what do I do? I bribe her.


Dinner for the wife is a small but nice cut of beef well-done. Some veggies add colour to the dish so I give her a portion of steamed carrots and a corn-on-the-cob. I would have like to put in some french beans, cos some green would have improved the presentation but unfortunately our fridge is not as well stocked as I would have liked it to be. Which also explains the carrot strips instead of the more delicious baby carrots.


Since Mae is still swearing off anything with an overpowering taste or smell, I had to omit some of my favourite ingredients. No pepper for Mae. No onions too. And heaven forbid, no garlic. The meat was marinated with Lea & Perrin's Worcestershire Sauce and a little salt. And what steak is complete without a nice sauce? For this I had to improvise. I used milk. Would have used cream but I didn't have any. I put in a dash of Worcestershire sauce. A little dark soy sauce for colour. I added a mild mustard sauce for taste which is actually a thick mustard seed paste (by Sanden Brook sold by Omegatrend) which is nice for texture - though normal mustard would have done the trick quite nicely, I think. And I put honey, since Mae's developed a sweet tooth during the pregnancy. I used a little starch flour to thicken the sauce.


I present it as best I can given the restrictions and lack of ingredients. Everything goes into a nice white plate, carefully arranged as best I can. For show, I sprinkle some Rosemary over it all, like they do in good eateries. OK, so it's not much too look at, but hey, I did it myself -with own own two hands. I get brownie points for effort, no? :)


And that was dinner for Mae. She didn't complain. And she kept dipping her corn into the sauce - which I take to mean that she approves. As expected, there were no rave reviews. But then, there are never rave reviews on Thursdays. I can be Jamie Oliver and there'll be no rave reviews. Hahaha! But I got my ticket to go out. On a Thursday, that's plenty.