At the weekend we had our friend Sunila over for dinner. She's a great foodie also and we spent a very entertaining hour after dinner compiling our desert island foods. This stemmed from a previous conversation where I noted that on Desert Island Discs, they asked chefs which herb they would take to the island and they invariably said parsley. "Parsley!" I cried in disgust, closely followed by Dom. Now, I don't HATE parsley, but honestly, if you could only have ONE herb, why oh why would you plump for parsley? But apparently Sunila would.
Anyhow... We then decided to pick one thing in several catagories such as fruit, vegetables, fish, spice, meat etc etc. We wrote them out and put them in an envelope and will open them in 10 years time so we can say things like "butternut squash! that's SO 2006".
It was an interesting exercise and of course we cheated like anything because we were allowed 8 staples, 5 luxury items and also a favourite meal from the other two :-).
Oh and for the record we ate pea, prawn and mint risotto followed by zabaglione (made with beaume de venise instead of marsala) and homemade pistachio biscotti. We also drank red wine though I can't remember which one except it was italian.
PS for the record, I'd take sage to the island.