Dinner party - by request!

(Edit: bad spelling and typing removed at nou's request, because she says I have to get used to using an iBook keyboard with no functioning backspace key.)

Have had a very nice dinner, and (apparently as always) nou cooked a truly ridiculous amount of lovely food, though by some sort of heroic effort we were able to save -some- space for the main course after filling up on chilli-dusted melon chunks, prosciutto crudo & melon on little sticks, vegetable sushi, and the truly goooooooorgeous garlic & anchovy dip. Which proved to be wise, given just how good the squid in red wine & the courgettes were. (And the other things, the technical details of which I forget at this late stage.)

Met some very nice people, the LJ usernames of whom I promptly forgot (yes, gentle reader, it was that sort of party - it seems I'm fated to end up at parties wherein all the people present are introduced, or at least introduceable, by at least two names. Theatre people, roleplayers, mudders, LJers. Damn the lot of us) but will no doubt find out at some stage.

nou kindly let me try out a new paintbrush on her back, and pictures will be forthcoming. In retrospect, I should've chosen a different one, but I managed, and will be using it quite happily on other occasions.

Reminder: fish soup!

(Edit: bad typing redacted.)

This was prompted by remembering the international food fair from my days at Cranfield - it was about 85% foreign students and at the beginning of every academic year they rounded up as many nationalities as possible and induced them to do ethnic food stalls. We had Russian borscht (with Hellman's Mayonnaise) which didn't impress me much, thin & watery, but thickened up a bit it would be lovely. Iraqi applish semolina, French apple pancakes, African stew (the gentleman apologised profusely for not having been able to get goat for it. Bit hard in the middle of nowhere, Home Counties). And a rather gorgeous Nigerian fish soup containing approximately three kilos of black pepper.

Googling around, it seems to go sort of like this - the lady who made it wasn't all that interested in explaining it at the time, she just liked having people eat it.

FISH. Lotsa fish.
Pepper. All the recipes I've found say chilli peppers or even ahbaneros, but I distinctly remember black pepper so I'll use that. All the black pepper in the world ever.
Tomatoes.
Onion.

I'm figuring on pan-frying small chunks of fish in large quantities, then just doing a long slow tomato sauce stew thing with the pepper and some previously fried onions, and then seeing whether it worked and what else I need to do with it.