Cooking at home: Here's your host, Squid...

Hi. Okay, so my parents are due back in about an hour, and I've decided to do a little welcome back treat. The house is all tidy and clean, everything has been put away etc etc, and I'm gonna do a little cooking for 'em. What's on the menu? Bagna Cauda.
Yep, after watching one too many episodes of Babylon 5, I rather fancied my hand at doing a decent Bagna Cauda, and we've got plenty to serve up with it today.

Bagna Cauda is basically a (rather unhealthy!) savoury fondue made of olive oil, butter, garlic, anchovies (before you say "eww" they dissolve so you don't realise they're in there), and onion. you dip vegetables and bread etc in it. So what have we got to dip in the sauce? Today we've got Celery, Yellow/Green Peppers, Onion chunks (some people do like onion), Pepperoni (I fancied a break with tradition), Olives (eww) and Carrot sticks.
And bread, of course. Real bread, not that pre-sliced rubbish.

So I'm gonna get on with it, photos and recipe to come soon :).

02:38: Well, here we go.

Here's the ingredients you will need for a generous serving of bagna cauda, complete with dipping things (there's some kind of snobby culinary word for the things, but I deliberately forget what it is :)).

The basic steps are:
Put the butter in a pan until it starts bubbling, (do not let it burn, or else you will ruin the whole thing!)
Put in the oil and the garlic, and let it simmer for a bit. another 3 or 4 mins.
Put in the anchovies and let it simmer some more. You guessed it, 3 or 4 mins.

Serve in a fondue thingie, with bread, pepperoni etc etc, and there you have it.

Don't do what I did, and let the butter burn - the taste of burned butter cuts through even the best bagna cauda, and as I found out, no amount of salt or pepper will fix it. In desperation, I even added another 5 cloves of garlic and some tabasco sauce. Nope, no change whatsoever in the taste.

My parents came back, and I let my dad in to show the surprise that I'd sorted out for him. Both my mum and dad were very pleased with the surprise, and as they'd never had bagna cauda, not even in Italy, they didn't know what they were missing.
They were very sympathetic and we had a nice meal, chatting and enjoying the extra dippy bits, even as the burned bagna cauda went cold.

So yeah, it's fairly simple to prepare, but don't burn the butter!

I'm off to relax now. Burned butter is irritating my still somewhat sensitive stomach, gonna have a nice sleep soon :).

Here are some pictures :).