The Great Fire of 18:55 (Post title ripped off from SAJ)

“Cooking round the world with SAJ and Shay “has resumed after summer hiatus. Yes, for those of you that didn’t know my first name is not “Quilting”, it is actually Shay. Shay Pyjamas....(you have to say that like “Bond, James Bond” for it to be funny.)

Cooking this fortnight started innocently enough. Dinner was being brought to us by the letter “C”. We decided to cook Caribbean Lamb Shanks and Caribbean Lime Pie. I want to point out for reasons that will become obvious shortly , I was in charge of prepping dessert.

SAJ doesn’t like lamb (which is pretty un-Australian if you ask me. This country was founded on sheep and convicts. You have to like eating one of those choices and it’s not polite to eat people ) so she decided to make two dishes , one with lamb and one with beef. Same recipe, same flavours , just different meat. After a long day at work, I arrived, was plied with wine, and SAJ announced she had a gift for me. I LOVE gifts. 

Check out these aprons. That was my gift. A special apron for our cooking adventures! (I wanted to photoshop my head out because I look so tired and I also have crazy hair so if you could focus only on the apron I would appreciate it) SAJ looks gorgeous as usual. I seriously hate her guts sometimes.

So ...with cream whipped, limes squeezed, and pies made and chillin’ in the fridge we turned our attention to the lamb shanks.

The lamb shanks never did make it into the pan on SAJ’s stove. I’m not quite sure what happened really, but just as she was about to drop something in the pan a fireball erupted. A certain amount of flame is fairly typical when she cooks. All the best chefs have a little flame going on apparently. I just assumed SAJ was doing her usual visually dramatic cooking, trying to impress me.

But the flame didn’t go out...it just kept getting bigger and it didn’t take long for us to realise we were in deep deep trouble. There was nary a fire extinguisher or fire blanket in sight. By this time the rangehood was completely alight and dripping melting plastic all over the stove top and I was yelling for SAJ’s husband and wondering whether we should call the fire service. Mr. SAJ arrived and the fire was put out. It's pretty dramatic when the guts of the rangehood melts out onto your stove.

SAJ’s Spandau Ballet ticket is looking a little worse for wear as is pretty much everything else that was on the shelf three feet from the stove. The rangehood is dead.

Afterwards I joked it was too bad we weren’t cooking at my house tonight since we are replacing our kitchen in about 4 months. If my kitchen burned down at least we could claim it on insurance.

I’m sure we’ll be cooking Caribbean Lamb Shanks right after SAJ’s third degree burns heal. For now the lamb is in the freezer....We're considering entering the next series of My Kitchen Rules.

When SAJ’s husband muttered something about getting a fire blanket and extinguisher today, I jumped in with “Make that a double and I’ll fix you up later”

I swear by all that is holy we weren’t sloshed when we started cooking tonight. Not until after the unfortunate incident that rendered part of SAJ’s kitchen toast. A girl has to come down from a fire high somehow.