Winter gatherings and Portuval vs. Catalunya

Life in our new house has indeed brought brightness and parties to our life in this dark time of the year. We have only lived here for a month now, but hosted 3 dinner parties. I have picture records only two of them though.

On one dinner we had the chef Rui Martins from Portugal, who gracefully prepared a two course meal. As a stater we had auted mushrooms with tomatoes and herbs on a toast for starter and for main meal more traditional deep fried chicken wings and thighs with tomato rice, salad and Nando's Sauce Toppings (a non-typical-portuguese franchising).

Portugal

Another major event was the reception of chef Jordi from Catalunya (not Spain) to make paella. For starter we had some cured ham and salami type of thing from Catalunya or Spain (I am trying to be politically correct here, not to insult anyone, but forgive me if I do). For main meal chef Jordi made poor peoples paella with chicken and some vegs. This is what roughly seemed for me to be in the dish, true recepie is only known by the chef himself and not to be given out to anyone.

Catalunya

As I mentioned there was three dinners and so the third one of them I was cooking and made a simple Lasagne, which tasted yummy, but unfortunately I don't have any photographic record of it. I leave the images for the responsibility of your imagination.

Chef Rui Vs. Chef Jordi

Just not to pass in vain, I will mention the fact that booth of these gran latinos are marvellous cookers, truly passionate about their food and able to do horrendous things to protect their master pieces.
With these Iberic Peninsula cuisine icons I realised that a good meal comes from the dedication of the chef and the environment created around the ritual of dinning and not the use of gourmet ingredients and the fashion look of the dish.