Day Two Hundred and Sixty Nine - Darren's Office Pot Luck Lunch

Dear all,

Today was my first day off for the Christmas break ( hurray) and also Darren's office lunch where everyone was to bring in something as part of a pot luck bonanza.

We decided to try out a new recipe from Ted's new book, 'Everyday Gourmet Grilling', a fabulous new addition from Ted which contains user-friendly recipes using a huge range of ingredients.

Darren wanted to make a Greek salad, a favorite for us both and turns out Ted likes it too. Page 138 sees Ted's Thai Style Greek Salad, so I popped to Metro to get ingredients and we started work immediately.

Darren is most certainly the King of the Kitchen and continues to surprise me with his exceptional culinary skills. I naturally fall into the role of Sous Chef, but this suits me as I do have slight resistance to following recipes and have been notable cavalier in my cooking in the past. Not so good for the office lunch ( which I later discovered becomes a forum for showcasing cooking ability - my, my, people can cook!)

We needed cucumber,red onion, tomatoes, green onions ** spring onions, celery and bell peppers for the main salad mix that Darren diligently sliced up along with cilantro **Coriander (I bought parsley by mistake first time. grrrrr) and fresh mint ( note to all: not so 'fresh' in December).

We had bought some lovely olive oil from Costco the other day so saw this ample opportunity to crack open the bottle for the dressing http://www.oliocostadoro.com/acm-on-line/en/Home/Products/Ilgrezzo.html

I had bought a 'kilo' of feta for the salad which we chopped into medium sized pieces. We then started on the dressing.

We heated up chillies, garlic, olive oil, fresh lime juice, rice vinegar ( delicious) and sugar in a pan, bought it to a 'low boil' and then let it cool for 5 minutes. Darren then whisked it up with the hand blender.

We poured the dressing on the salad and were ready to go!

I had also whipped up a 'gourd' soup in a spare moment, also adding carrots, onions and potatoes. It tasted pretty good as I had thrown in a load of spices.. (it's cold outside).

We arrived at the office just in time and everyone had gone all out on the food prep, holy moly! It was fantastic. There was everything from meat balls to salads to mini Cornish Hens to dips. It was a veritable feast!

It was such a lovely lunch and without realizing 3 hours went by with wonderful chit chat and resents galore including, the always hilarious, 'Secret Santa'!

Thank you to all at In.Genu for inviting me along, I had a great time and what a feast!! Congratulations to everyone!