Dinner with Katharine

Saturday June 28

Another of our new colleagues, Katharine, invited us over for dinner at her house in Jordan, which is a cute little one-road town in wine country. We ate on the terrace of her house, while Cool gales were fanning the glade, etc.

We drank a lovely rosé throughout, whose name we unfortunately forgot to write down by dipping our fingers in the lees (of which there were none), possibly under the influence of the single malt that Katharine served afterwards (oddly enough we've forgotten its name, too).

We began with amazing bruschette of smoked trout (from the little smoked trout place down the road, of course) on pesto, with a sprinkle of red onion.

Holt was taken back to his Russian days by Circassian chicken (Çerkez tavuk, also known as Georgian chicken: Kotmis Satsivi), that Ottoman delicacy of chicken in a walnut sauce. He used to make it all the time to feed various invading armies, mostly friendly. This was an especially rich and luscious rendering of an old favourite (we're practicing), served with an eggplant salad (Patlican salatasi), far too lovely to be called a mere side dish with crispy little strips of pita bread and yogurt dressing. Everything was mopped up with warm pide, and packed down with a tossed green salad.

And then we walked to the local ice cream parlor, where Katharine bought us big scoops of lovely gelato-style ice cream. That's another reason to live in Jordan.