Throwing Our Own Eurovision Party

Until Scott and I moved to Amsterdam last year, I have to admit that I hadn’t watched Eurovision in years.

After the glory days of the 90s (I’m thinking Sonia and Better The Devil You Know), I became disillusioned with the contest after it became too political and everyone stopped voting for us  (partly due to politics, partly due to the fact that we took it as a joke and started sending acts that reflected that.)

Since then, I would zone in on random conversations people would have in the office or on public transport about the UK receiving “nil points” and shake my head in sadness that we were becoming a joke in a contest that we used to be great in. (Even sadder when you consider that the UK produces some of the best music in the world)

Last year, after Scott heard people talking about this crazy music contest that seemed to unearth every form of life across Europe and his interest was piqued, we watched it together in our new apartment. We cheered for The Netherlands (who, by the way, should have won on musical merit alone) and got wrapped up in the political scoring system with the most die-hard of fans.

This year, having seemingly lost all my senses, I decided we should create a pre-show menu of food that reflected some of the countries who were finalists in 2015 and hold a little Eurovision party of our own. And so a day of cooking was born.

Having looked through the regional specialities of some of the Eastern European countries (and having travelled to some of them previously also) I knew that finding vegetarian dishes would be difficult (or solely bread or dessert-based). I considered making a Polish borscht for the main meal so as to at least make it known that I wasn’t discounting Eastern Europe altogether, but ended up going for something a little more filling. Here’s our menu (disappointingly Western, but delicious nonetheless).

Firstly, we cracked open a couple of Belgian and German wheat beers (a fruity one for me, naturally) before we tucked into the star of the show: a Italian pissaladeira. I’d been dying to make one of these for ages and this presented me with the perfect opportunity. I’ll be sharing the recipe for this soon, should you want to make one yourselves. Pissaladeira is essentially a soft, chewy dough (similar to focaccia) topped with caramelised onions and anchovies. 

Next up, we slurped down some Greek bean soup, fasolatha, which was basically just a plain tomato-based soup with beans and vegetables, but it was filling and I used broad beans instead of white beans to make it meatier.

Lastly, we finished up with Swedish semlor buns – an enriched dough bun filled with almond paste and whipped cream. These were delicious and something I’d never tried before, but I was very pleased with the result. 

After our dough-laden feast, I slurped down some Prosecco cocktails with Chambord raspberry liquor (a little nod to France) and settled down to watch the battle.

I’m hoping to do something like this every year, not least because it actually gave me the opportunity to cook some foreign dishes I’d never tried before. I know I shouldn’t need an opportunity to do that, but it seemed to make the whole thing more fun. Well….food and alcohol will do that, won’t they?