Fish sharing platter starter and whole rib of beef main course for business away day/ Christmas celebration

"....basically, we are all out at restaurants all the time, every day on the expense account with clients, so what we are after is something much more simple, like home cooking, something we can serve family style at the table....."
The boss of this company talked so fast and so passionately about food. Always a bonus!

Didn't do so well getting food photos - so hectic getting everything done and out.......

Beer battered mussells - served in the cleaned shells (my personal favourite of the night - simple is good!)

Home-smoked mackerel with elderflower and gooseberry compote - a platter sized version of the starter above - smoked over hickory chips and lady grey tea. 

Mini size version of the trout en papillote - above (again pic taken from a previous event)

Smoked trout risotto balls with courgette ribbon salad

 Mini fillet of hake with parsley coulis and celariac chips. Hake - such an underated fish sadly - it's so nice!

Crab and apple salad in filo basket - never got a pic of this one in the end.

Phew - totally epic starter!

Then for a main course came these babies:

Huge ribs of beef which the group carved themselves at the table - great fun! We served these with dauphinoise potatoes, glazed Chantenay carrots, steamed kale with chestnuts and a raw vegetable, basil and lambs lettuce  salad.

Then for dessert - large sticky toffee pudding,

large tarte tatin 

and large lemon meringue pie 

... which again all the guests passed round the table family style - if they could steal themselves away from the cocktails being served in the hall way. The same cocktail makers that we recognised from the October wedding near Redditch - small world round here!

Time for those embarrassing office party photos complete with dressing  up kit courtesy of the cocktail guys.

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Paella

I think my paella I made earlier today had it going on...... 

I think this has to be my favourite dish of all time. It was an old family classic started off by my nana. She had an authentic spanish recipe from their spanish friend back in the 60's. The paella pan (which I have since inherited) would only come out on very rare, and very special occasions - maybe that adds to the mystique. Each paella was a labour of love. This one I made today was too!

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Comedy night at The Underground Restaurant

"Have you got any more marmite?" I ask. "Are you kidding?" Ms M opens a drawer. Ha - she ain't called Ms Marmitelover for nothing you know!

Marmite, pinenut and parmesan palmiers
Sweetcorn cakes with rice wine vinegar dip (the recipe for the sweetcorn cakes? Don't worry - it's in the book coming out soon.)

What an amazing idea - why go out to a comedy club when you can bring it to your own front room? I loved the idea of the last comdey night back in September - comedy doesn't get more intimate than all being in the same dining room - much more down to earth. Who needs a stage? So this time round, asked if I wanted to help out at this one I jumped at the chance.

When I was asked for menu ideas I thought along the lines of the last one where the food was a 'joke' - nutty soup, gnocci gnocci who's there, Stinking bishop & Wensleydale (Wallace & Gromit's fave cheese of course) & custard pie. What fun. But how to follow that?

Curry in a hurry - plantain curry

Driving between Lechlade and Blockley early on a foggy Monday morning in the middle of November (Lakes by Yoo looked just like you'd slipped in to a Tarkovsky film - delicious) I drove past a pub advertising a curry night - 2 for £10 and remembered my curry in a hurry. Adam still wants to do a rhyming menu one day.
This one was plaintain curry that Ms M had made the day before - is much better the next day when the flavours have developed. Last time she had made it with banana and served in the skin (comedy - banana skins?). This time she tried it with plaintains. Because they are firmer it doesn't break down so much - better texture. This is a proper curry - takes a long time to make - but is so worth it. Unfortunately some of the guests couldn't make it to the evening due to snow affecting trains, so there were a few left to try. Lucky us! Real curry like this is such a world apart. What was that curry book again?

Moules in minutes - Thai style mussells with sweet potato wedges

But what could we do for a starter?.... I rolled through some other rhymes as I left the fog bank behind and the late autumn sun lit up the Cotswold hills. What about Meals in minutes >>>>> Moules in minutes. In the end we swapped it round so the moules became the main course. I had recently done a thai night, so still had the thai flavours alive and found this recipe. Mussells and chips? You can't beat a classic. I've still got this thing about sweet potato either grilled or chips after barbecuing them for the first time back in the summer. So these went in the aga earlier in the day so we could have the heat later in the evening for cooking the plaintains.
Next time I do the thai me up thai me down salad I'll dry salting the carrots and mouli first to take off some of the water before adding the dressing. Live and learn!

A nice cup of brie

The cheese course was easy. I'd been wanting to try the cup of brie since January when I made the truffled macaroni bries. We went for this recipe. Rich, but seriously tasty. St. John's sourdough made the perfect accompaniment. It's true what they say about it - it's awesome. So need to try sourdough. Hopefully find time next year.











Brie came from Borough market - this was the real deal. Forget trying to do this with supermarket cheese.

English breakfast - black pudding with fried egg, ketchup & OJ

Dessert? Totally stumped. Couldn't think of any more rhymes - what rhymes with dessert or pudding? There is my 'Dessert Warefare' idea - but I'm saving that for another day. Then again pudding... pudding.... black pudding?
I remembered this post from the British Larder last year, and how similar it was to our age old family Jul Kake recipe.

Christmas was a big cooking time in our house back in the day and when it came to Christmas cake, mum's Guiness cake was all very well, but if only for the marzipan and icing - the actual cake, I could either take or leave it. Leave it more often (sorry if you're reading this :') ). No - it was the Norwegian Jul Kake which I saved myself for - chocolate, creamed coconut and eggs layered with biscuts, dried fruits, nuts.... oh and fruit jelly sweets. We have Norwegian family friends and had spent Christmas over there when I was 5 and Adam 3 months in 6ft of snow. This chocolate Jul kake sure warms you up after hours of snowplay!
Tradionally we would layer these up in a 1/2 lb loaf tin so it looks nice and neat - but here it was just mixed all in one and rolled into a 'black pudding'.
What do you have with an english breakfast? Fried egg (aka fried egg sweets), a glass of OJ (aka orange sorbet - link to recipe here) and ketchup (aka raspberry coulis). Fun - no?



It's the real eggs in it that make the difference.


See more from the evening on Ms Marmitelover's blog post.

In London at Christmas Eve - why not try out the original Underground Restaurant? - http://www.wegottickets.com/event/92917

The 'children's' table for the comedians in the pantry

Oh yes - one last thing. That rice wine vinegar? Home made apparently. What an amazing flavour!

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Mussells, fennel & chorizo in an apple and fennel bread bowl

I was so hungry I even ate the bowl! Who can resist a blog event? When I saw Zen Chef's fennel/ pastrami gratin entry for Beet 'n Squash You (the monthly food- fight wherein the stupendous virtues of vegetables are extolled) , it immediately tickled the taste buds, and got me into thinking what could I do?

I'd been looking at mussells and chorizo in cider a couple of nights before, and thought it would go well with fennel seed bread...... which reminded me of Jules' bread bowls. I like combining recipes. You always need bread to go with mussells - so there seemed no better excuse to make a bread bowl.

As we live next to cider country (Herefordshire) I like using cider with mussells, although we also have some very good vinyards nearby too - you could use either white wine or cider.

Stage 1 - Fennel & fennel seed bread backets

I only need a few baskets (this made 5 ramekin size) so used:

250g bread flour
130ml cider & apple juice combined (was going to use all cider but ran out)
20ml olive oil
1/2 tsp of instant action yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar (though with the cider didn't really need this)
1/2 bulb fennel diced small and roasted in olive oil till soft & cooled.
Fennel seeds

For method see here. When it had proved I knocked it back and mixed in the roasted dice fennel and a few fennel seeds. Then rolled them out to fit over the ramekins.

Stage 2 - Look at those mussells!

At the end of the Cotswold Way 3 1/2 years ago we ended up in Bath.... and it's Loch Fyne restaurant. If you happen to be nearby their rope grown mussells are really the best. Of course there are lots of other Loch Fyne restaurants too. At that time they also had a fish counter you could buy from - the same way other restaurants have delis attached. Not sure if they still do, but you can also shop online - so that's good to know. Rope grown means you don't have the grit you can find in dredged mussells - that's always good.
I always plunge them into cold water. The ones which float and any that don't close when you tap them (dead) are to be avoided. Then it's just a matter of cleaning and de-bearding them. There's a few more tips here.

Stage 3 -

I sweated the shredded fennel, onions, choizo & garlic in a little olive oil. Then added cider and allowed the onions & fennel to soften (don't really like crunchy onions & fennel with mussells) before adding the mussells. Put a lid on to let it steam and the mussells are cooked in 2 - 3 minutes.

I then removed the mussells and thickened the sauce a little with cornflour so it would sit in the bread bowl without making running through the bread basket. Oh and a few chives at the last minute.

Once the mussells had cooled a little I took most of them out of the shell and then dropped them back in the sauce before spooning it in the baskets.

If you're not a meat fan you could go with smoked paprika instead of the chorizo.

It was definitely an interesting way of serving them!


Oh and there's 9 days left to enter my blog/ twitter/ facebook event by the way!

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Individual fillet of beef en croute (beef wellington) and seabass for Valentine's Day

Beef en croute

Last year I was asked to make beef wellington for a special birthday meal which they wanted to cook and serve themselves. 4 out of the 6 guests were vegetarian, so it seemed most sensible to make just 2 individual beef wellingtons (aka beef en croute). Such was the glowing response the Monday after that I had had it in mind to prepare again - it does make the perfect english dish for a celebration. And what better day to celebrate than St. Valentine's Day?Fillet steaks are cut from the centre of the fillet so they are small in diameter, but thick in depth. I seal these on the bar grill - so you get the grilled taste on the outside, but the inside is left raw - that cooks when you put the finished beef en croute in the oven.

For the duxelle mushroom I use Oakfield organic portobello mushrooms. Because of the water content in mushrooms, these are cooked for around 30 - 45 minutes on a low heat to reduce as much of that water content as possible and then chilled. If this were not done that water would turn to steam while the beef en croute cooked in the oven - and that would break the pastry apart, it would burst and be ruined.

Beef is put on a disc of puff pastry, mushrooms on top. It is egg washed around the bottom to so it attaches to the lid.

Another disc is cut slightly larger than the bottom. This is place on top, crimped and trimmed. On Valentine's Day it was finished with - what else? - a pastry heart shape in the middle.


Fillet of seabass and mussell paella
If the beef en croute is one dish fit for a celebration, the other certainly has to be paella. You know how closely you are held in regard of my grandmother if you have been invited for paella. Few have - and those few are lucky I can tell you. Hidden deep in her recipe drawer is a dusty and splattered authentic recipe taken down from her spanish friends over 50 years ago who had served it for her, and she was instantly taken.

It's a recipe I'm still working on - the most important change being I use arborio rice - close to spanish rice - now rather than the long grain rice.

This particular time I had reduced chicken stock made from the bones left from the grilled chicken a couple of days before. The mussells I cooked with white wine, onion, garlic and a little cream. This liquor was also added to the cooking paella, adding a depth of flavour.

To accompany this I made some more of the salsa verde - it makes a light accompanying sauce.

Strawberry and mango cheesecake

A delivery version of the cheesecake seen last year. Strawberry coulis and candied orange zest was also provided.

Trio of chcolate desserts

The only part of the chocolate trio that was snapped during the rush that was Valentine's Day was the white chocolate sauce.

Other elements have been seen before though:

Chocolate tart with gold leaf (part of - for this trio)

Shotglass of espresso and chocolate tirimisu

Related posts:

Valentine's Day 2008

Roast vegetables en croute

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