Clams, mussels, squid and tiger prawns in black bean sauce for a 21st birthday pan asian theme buffet in Minster Lovell near Oxford

Anton,

Please pass on our thanks to James and the rest of the team – the food was fantastic (asparagus tempura and crispy shredded beef were highlights!) and Jessie was really pleased with everything.

Thanks again

Helen

Of all the things we've cooked this year (that's a lot of things) I think this has been my favourite so far! It's all in the sauce, so don't go thinking you can use a brought ready made one. 

Black bean sauce is actually surprisingly easy to make, so much so you kind of wonder why you've never got round to it before. It helps, of course, now being based round the corner from all sorts of different ethnic food shops. I used this black bean sauce recipe and dropped the seafood into it to cook & take on the flavours - wild! This was served in chafing dishes, buffet style in the barn.

Sushi as a canape, made on site, minutes before it went out - can't beat the freshness! Vegetable maki rolls, cooked prawn uramaki rolled in sesame, tuna rolls in (raw) savoy cabbage leaves, salmon nigiri, gunkan maki with keta caviar, and swordfish nigiri. 

It's amazing how often people think you just turn up on the day and that's it. They don't see the 7 day industry that goes behind all the setting up, and clearing away. This party took 10 days in total from beginning to end. The pan asian menus especially take a lot of food preparation, both before and on the day, but it's all worth it for those fresh flavours - you can't get that with ready made sauces etc. It must have made on an impression on the birthday girl's aunt as well - as she has since booked us to cater for her wedding at the same venue next year!

So after a pan-asian style main, the birthday girl had decided on a more english style dessert with lemon & raspberry meringue roulade, chocolate eclair and shotglass of raspberry sorbet. Mix and match the styles - that's what it's all about!

Canapés

Sushi Selection;

including vegetable and avocado, cooked prawn, raw salmon and tuna, keta caviar

Served with Wasabi, Soy Sauce and Pickled Ginger

Catered Buffet Menu

Sharing Platters Starter

Crispy Confit Duck Spring Rolls with Hoi Sin Dip

Stir Fried Salt and Pepper Squid

Asparagus Tempura

Beef Tataki

Prawns in Lemongrass and Coconut

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Selection of 4 main courses

Chicken Katsu Curry

Pad Thai Noodles with Tofu

Crispy Shredded Beef with Honey Chilli Sauce

Mussels, Clams, Squid, Prawns and Edamame in Black Bean Sauce

served with;

Plain Steamed Rice

Pak Choi with Garlic, Ginger and Oyster Sauce

XXX

Trio of desserts;

Mini Chocolate Éclairs

Mini Lemon Meringue Roulade

Shotglass of Homemade Raspberry Mojito Sorbet 

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Plum sauce for duck spring rolls

There's a good tip going round for food bloggers - watermark your photos to stop anyone else stealing them and passing them off as their own. This is not something I have to worry about - the photos I end up with are so bad nobody would ever want to steal them - they're always in a rush as you're sending food out to clients, or they're in the middle of the night in the kitchen.

This is a good case in point - taken around 3am in my little cottage some time at the beginning of February with the left overs from a canapé party. The  message remains the same though - why not make your own plum sauce? It's a million miles away from the one you buy in the supermarket - never worked out why the bottled version is a light - dark brown colour when plums are.... well plum coloured. Try this recipe - easy, but it will be a revelation from those ready made versions!

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Cotswold Way ale sauce

Michael Roux's book 'Sauces'. It's the stuff food dreams are made of. As Eddie and Mary Cadogan point out, recipes can be used just as inspiration, or as a guide - it's when you adjust them to taste that you make them your own. Such is the case with the books stacked up on my desk, on the bookshelf and lodged behind the sofa. I use the books for inspiration, ideas and flavour combining, add my own ideas and then go off and cook.
Half way through cooking a large order of frozen meals I realized rather too many were tomato based, so I hunted around and found the beer baked beans recipe. Beans - beer - beer batter - hake - hake and beans - beer and beans - hake and beer sauce.... it all seemed to fit together.

The beer sauce was one I had been looking at on and off for years in the 'Sauces' book but have never got round to making, so this seemed the ideal moment. Nice, but I needed something that could freeze, so as it is heavy on the cream I also added a little chicken stock I had left from the chicken chasseur and beurre manie to thicken it. You could also use vegetable or fish stock.

Originally this was going to be added to the beans entry to Bookmarked Recipes last week in a two for the price of one, but I just ran out of time in the pre-Easter rush, so here it is.

It has been bookmarked for anyone else who wants to try it on the virtual recipe drawer that is Bookmarked Recipes - your one-stop shop for tried and tested recipes from the food blogger community updated every Monday this week hosted by Laurie, of Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska.

Re: cipe

60g shallots finely sliced (onions are fine too)
1 small (fresh) bouquet garni
4 juniper berries
300ml mild light beer (but I used Cotswold Way ale - it works well for me)
200 ml double cream
60g butter
1/2 tbsp snipped flat leaf parsley (I had some english parsley growing so used that)
salt & pepper

Put the shallots, bouquet garni and juniper berries in a saucepan, pour in the beer and reduce by two thirds over a medium heat. Add the cream and bubble for 5 minutes, until the sauce will lightly coat the back of a spoon. If it seems to thin, cook it for a few more minutes. Pass the sauce through a conical sieve, whisk in the butter, a small piece at a time, and finally stir in the parsley. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Good with braised/ baked fish and also good with roast cauliflower:


Related posts:

Hake with beer sauce
Roasted cauliflower in Cotswold Way ale sauce

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1001 Kitchen tips #47 - How do I reduce the fat content of a meat dish or gravy?

Everyone knows that along with red meat comes a certain amount of fat. Some fat is good for you - it contains fat soluble vitamins, but we also know the effects of too much saturated fat.

• You can use a fat seperator jug - as the fat settles to the top this enables you to pour the gravy from the bottom, thus leaving the fat in the jug.
  
• You can use a piece of kitchen paper - if you drop this on the surface on the sauce it will soak up the fat. You can keep doing this till the fat is removed. More ideal for small scale home use. You can also use a slice of stale bread for this.
  
• You can skim the sauce/ stock with a small ladle while it's boiling. Swirl the base of the ladle in the top of the sauce and the fat moves to the side of the pan where you can remove it more easily.
  
• You can remove the fat from your sauce by chilling it and - as shown below - the fat will rise to the top and solidify. This makes it easy to remove - either with a skimmer (a wonderful tool) or by pouring through a sieve.

Fat removed from lamb and apricot casserole

Don't throw the fat away though, you can use it to make fat balls - the birds in your garden will love you for ever.

Related posts:

1001 Kitchen tips
Lamb and apricot casserole
Make you own mince

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1001 Kitchen Tips #45 - How do I stop mince burning to the bottom of the pan?

I was asked this today (Saturday's cooking day in Blogsville), so here's an answer......

Mince, onions, peppers - you name it, you turn your back for a moment and there it is burning to the bottom of the pan. Add a ladle of stock, water or wine. This cools it down immediately, and the liquid then boils so stops it burning. This is useful when sweating onions for risotto for example and they start to brown slightly - add a drop of white wine to stop them colouring and let it reduce before adding your risotto rice.

If it's a bad, thick encrusted burning however, if you do this you will incorporate the burnt flavour all through your food, and that's the last thing you want. So the answer is to cut your losses and swap pans - lift out what mince/ onions etc you can save and put it in a new pan and start again.

Another good tip, as I mention on the lamb and apricot post is not to thicken anything that is going to sit in the pan, or go into the oven for a couple of hours, like minced lamb for shepherds pie, or shin of beef for beef and ale pie. Thicken it after cooking and it doesn't burn on to your pan/ dish for 3 or 4 hours - much easier to clean. When the meat is cooked, drain the sauce through a colander into a saucepan, and put the meat to one side. Then thicken the sauce with beurre manie or cornflour, and drop the meat back in.

Related posts:

1001 Kitchen Tips

P.S. Kitchen tip #44 - how to make the best roast parsnips - is in draft form at the moment - keep a lookout.......

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Seared scallops with jerusalem artichoke puree and champagne sauce

Parsnip puree? Done that.
Pea puree? Done that
Asparagus and tiger prawns? Done that, and it's not asparagus season yet.
Celariac puree? Did that once last year as a special request, but there was roast celariac with the main course.

When I was looking for something to go with scallops for this year's Valentine's Day menu, I remembered I had really neglected Jerusalem artichokes this season, and the season was just about to end. You can't miss something like this. I had to try really hard to find these ones:

They really are vegetable royalty - there's just nothing else like them. If you haven't tried them before don't be confused with globe artichokes - the taste and textures are quite a long way apart - but both are wonderful.

Jerusalem artichokes always remind me of pink fur potatoes, which incidentally, if you are thinking of growing anything you should grow these because they are so hard to find in shops, and when you do are astronomical in price.

I used the same cooking method as my fondant potatoes in chicken stock and butter. By the time the liquid is reduced they are soft - if not, you add a little more liquid and let that reduce again. The syruppy gloop of the chicken stock and butter is added to the puree - that's where the flavour is. If you want to roast them, you can pop them in the oven instead at this point to finish.

Champagne sauce

Related posts:

Other scallop dishes we have made

Valentine's Day individual beef en croute and seabass with mussell paella

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