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Cowboy night, with all the trimmings

Howdy!! Jenny and I recently hosted a special fundraising supper club to celebrate International Day of the Cowboy – we’d love to hear how y’all marked this auspicious event!.

We were treated to a medley of cowboy tunes by Davie of Seven Songs (who gets even better every time I hear him play) and we raised not far off £260 for Youth Music – a cause that is close to our hearts.

Due to the injury to my finger that I have mentioned before (it’s much better now thanks, although I still prefer not to look at it), we decided that we would share the load cooking-wise and turn it into a potluck do. What a great idea that turned out to be – our friends bestowed upon us an impressive array of cowboy/Tex Mex delights. Jenny and I each made a chilli, testing out some recipes for the Silver Screen Suppers/Columbo project. Mine was Trish Van Devere’s All Day Chilli in a Pot – a fairly standard recipe for a good chilli. However Jenny made James Garner’s Oklahoma Chilli, which was really divine: lovely and smoky with a kick but also a hint of sweetness. Jenny also rustled up this very pretty cornbread.

Check out Jenny’s post about the evening, with some great pictures (I was too busy wafting around hostessing to take many pics, or something like that).

Contributions from our chums included a magnificent cowboy salad: black beans, avocado, tomato, corn and all sorts of tasty things. There was a pineapple salsa, which I confess I wouldn’t have chosen, on the basis of my strong feelings about fruit in savoury dishes, but I had the good manners to try it and it was extremely tasty! There was a vast pot of melt in your mouth pulled pork, some amazing chorizo and potato quesadillas. We had Vincent Price’s Mexican creamed corn (which I could eat by the bucket load if permitted to). We had guacamole. We had cornbread. We had a chicken and avocado salad. We had a FEAST.

I made Ida Lupino’s lemon mousse for dessert – not specifically a cowboy recipe, but Ida was in some Westerns so it was kinda in keeping with the theme. A very welcome palate cleanser after all the spicy delights.

Between us we made far too much food, but I had been stockpiling takeaway cartons for a while, so everyone was able to go home with a selection of leftovers. I personally ate chilli for most of the week, very happily.

This marvellous event also coincided with “gird your loins and defrost the damn freezer” season, so, sticking with the cowboyesque theme, I marinated a couple of old salmon fillets in lime, garlic, cumin and paprika and grilled them. Served on a bed of salad of leftover lettuce and avocado, with some toasted corn and what was left of my very moreish ranch dressing (thank you Pioneer Woman).