70th birthday barbecue catering near Bourton on the Water, Gloucestershire

2 barbecues on 2 consecutive days and both for 70th birthdays - must be barbecue season! Both also featured the blackened cod - must be my favourite. Marinated in a mix of soy, oyster sauce, thai fish sauce, chopped lemon grass, grated ginger and garlic, mirin, dark brown sugar, ground cumin and coriander & fresh coriander. Completely transforms it. It helps when you have a BBQ with a lid. This was one of the best barbecues I have ever used - a Weber. Managed to get the coals just the right temperature so food would cook rather than burn.

Barbecue with a view (house had a 180 degree view - stunning)

As there was one vegan guest for this one I made a few vegan items - grilled field mushroom with shallot curry (pre-cooked the curry while they had canapes then put in the raw mushroom and let it cook on the BBQ) and roasted pepper with chickpeas with chilli and garlic (he liked spicy food), and also black bean kofta with soy yogurt and mint in pitta.













Although we have tempting desserts you can cook on the barbecue they were interested in the assiette, but to have 3 rather than 5, so I made them slightly lager - muffin size tart cases for the chocolate tart and the creme brulee in the mini bread and butter dishes rather than the japanese spoons. And raspberry sorbet.

Sunset from the kitchen door while the guests ate dessert

'Did you leave anything for me?'

Then as we were clearing up...... pop. Out went the lights. The third time this year - I'm not kidding. After our experience in January though - this was a piece of cake. In January we had arrived at a venue to cook for 31 guests and found there was no power at all - the local substation had blown. We couldn't even get in though the electric gates - all our equipment and food had to be passed over the gates, and driven up to the house, and then of course, no lights too cook with, or set the table with, no electric hob or oven to cook with, no hot water, just an aga which was 1/5 of the power it should be. The hosts had decked the place in candles and hoped for the best. They got it too - it all went fine - I'll never forget all those pheasants, vegetables and potatoes in one aga. Amazing. Boiling water for washing up took 1 1/2 hours. Then in April we did a canape wedding in Gloucester and half way through proceedings, just as it was getting dark the fuse blew for the kitchen lights. Not the receptions rooms - were all the guests were - they were fine, just the kitchen for some reason. Try as they might each time it just kept tripping so in the end it was back to decking the kitchen out in candles again.

So this time at least we got to clear nearly everything from the table before we enetered darkness. It's all part of the fun/ challenge of cooking in people's homes.

Just as I had packed up the last thing in the van around 23:30 they had located the problem room. They had kept switching everything off/ on in various rooms of the house to see which room was causing the fuse box to go. Which room was it? The kitchen of course. It's always the ktichens' fault!