Scattered, smothered, covered, and Swiss

Rösti on my plate!
Originally uploaded by hellomizk

Last night we were invited for dinner at the home of a couple we met at Kasia and Peter's party from a couple weeks ago. We arrived at 6:30 in the evening (1830) and, after exchanging our Swiss cheek-kisses, immediately "got our drink on." Mr K and Dani both had beers to start what turned out to be a pretty alcohol-laden evening while Steph and I demurely sipped Baileys. Dani and Steph were treating us to a traditional Swiss dinner of Rösti which I learned translates to "oh my god can I have another helping, please?!?!" All kidding aside, Rösti consists of grated potato cooked in a skillet with oil or butter and can include bacon and onion and spices and cheese and an egg tossed in to hold everything together. The potatoes are cooked to form a crust on the bottom layer and then tossed to distribute the crust throughout before being allowed to form another crust on the bottom and then being flipped to brown a matching crust on the other side as well. After being inverted onto a plate, the Rösti was topped with eggs cooked sunny-side up. With this, we had more Gruyere cheese and potato nut bread. After this course, we had a wonderful salad with tomato and lettuce and red bell pepper tossed with a sesame oil dressing. With dinner we had a pinotage red wine Dani was given by a friend who brought it back from South Africa. It was a wine "first" for all four of us and was very very nice. After dinner, we had a really wonderful dessert. For more on dessert, check out Mr K's blog. With dessert, Dani and Mr K had scotch that made Mr K swoon. After that was cigars and then cookies and green tea and more scotch. Needless to say, everyone was feeling pretty comfy at this point. We had a wonderful time and look forward to the opportunity to entertain Dani and Steph at our home soon.

The other really funny part of the evening: watching their cat go completely insane over a packet of tissues - the cat flipped and spun and tossed the tissues before sliding into a wall and taking a nap.