A Spanish Holiday - Part 5.

Our own personal chef.

One of the best aspects of staying in this particular rental property, is that the English owners live right next door. This can be very helpful if there are any questions you need to ask and also very useful if you want any advice about the best places to eat etc etc.

Another great aspect is the fact that one of the owners is a qualified chef and will cook a meal for you. He also does a mean carrot cake by the way.
Obviously, this service has to be paid for and it's not the sort of thing that you'd want to do every evening. But, for a day when you either don't want to cook yourself, or can't be bothered to walk into town to a restuarant, it's very handy indeed.

Being a qualified chef means that Ainsley doesn't just cook anything.He has his favourite things to cook. But, there is a nice selction of Thai, Indian, Japanese, Italian and even English cuisine.
All the meals are freshly prepared, with organic ingredients, if possible and they are served, by Ainsley, at your holiday cottage.

Well, last night my wife and i decided to treat ourselves to one of the Thai options and what a meal it turned out to be. In case you're wondering, we cooked the girls something seperately, as the Thai option wasn't really to their taste. They were quite happy with this by the way.

The meal consisted of:
5 mushroom soup,.
Cucumber salad,
Carrot and green bean salad,
Thai chicken curry with rice,
Home made lime ice cream.

This was all washed down with a nice, cold bottle of white wine. This was hastily supplied from Ainsley's fridge, as we'd forgotten to  put our bottle in ours!
He even gave us each a glass of a special dessert wine, made by local friends of his, to finish the meal off. Which it did very nicely indeed.

Before the meal was served, Ainsley came and set the table. Which you may be able to see in the photo above? He was even wearing his cooking apron and regulation harlequin checked chefs trousers. Very colourful.
Everything was presented very nicely and it was obvious that Ainsley takes a lot of pride in both the cooking and the presentation.

The meal itself was wonderful in every aspect and is easily the best meal we've ever had in Spain. It is a little ironic that the best meal we've ever eaten in Spain happens to be a Thai meal. But, it must be said that Spain is not a nation really known for it's cuisine. This is something that Ainsley agrees with.

All in all, it was a lovely evening. Made even better by the surroundings. It's not every day that you get to eat a meal like that, specially prepared and served to you, sitting by a pool, with a great view of the evening sun on the Alpujarran hills in the distance.
And to cap it all off and something that the girls really enjoyed. A nearby Spanish family were having some kind of family celebration and their music started to kick in, just as we finished our meal. That certainly got the girls dancing by the pool.
This made it all a very nice, idyllic and authentic Spanish evening, albeit with Thai food. But, somehow it all seemed to go together well.

Strangely enough, we're thinking of having another of Aisnleys menu options, later in the holiday.
We just can't decide what it might be....yet.

                                    (A meal with a view)