Dinner Is Served

I hadn’t organised a dinner party since last October when I made the bad decision to give my eight guests a menu with choices of what to order and ended up barely catching up with them due to frantically dashing around the kitchen with scallops and bruschetta coming out of my ears!

This time there were just four of us and I decided on a set menu to save myself the stress and perspiring I would of no doubt endured over the evening (does anyone else end up with a nice face full of pimples from this??)

The main challenge for the Dinner Party was ensuring that the menu was wheat free due to an intolerance our friend’s teacher girlfriend suffered with.  This was a particular challenge given that I’m so used to feeding my garbage bin boyfriend who will eat absolutely anything I serve to him!

Dinner Parties have been around for centuries and you only have to watch one of my favourite television series “Heston’s Feasts” to discover what foods were considered to be lavish delicacies back in the day!

I have learnt that one particular Roman Emperor by the name of Heliogabalus, who clearly thought himself quite the funny man, threw a dinner party at his house in 220 AD where he served up a main course of Ostrich Brains and a side of Eel which had been raised on the flesh of his slaves!  Quite grotesque even for that era!  As his guests then retired to the lounge for drinks, he decided it would be rather hilarious (as you do) to lock the doors and let loose lions, bears and leopards into the room…only after the cumulative panic did he then reveal that they were actually his pets and were completely tame!  Plus if you made it all the way through to the end of Heliogabalus’ parties, you were given a Eunuch slave to take home with you which kind of puts our modern “party bag”, with cake wrapped up in a napkin, to shame!

Now if I were Mr Blumenthal I would be travelling to countries in the search for the perfect bird brains to serve up to my unsuspecting diners but without liquid nitrogen and a large science lab, I thought I would have to pass!

Instead I sat and thought about exciting new flavours that I could incorporate in my feast that would give new appreciation to some overlooked, wheat free ingredients.

After designing my menu, decorating the table, stealing some pretty teacups from work and searching every supermarket for some ruddy fennel, I was ready to begin cooking my butt off. 

Starter

Cauliflower, Gruyere and Caramelised Onion Ravioli

with crushed Hazelnuts, roasted Fennel and Sweet Plum Dressing

Palate Cleanser

Basil and Lime Sorbet

Main Course

Cod wrapped in Prosciutto and Chilli Butter Poached Prawns

with Sweet Potato crisps, roasted warm Tomato coulis, Pea puree and seasonal vegetables

Dessert

Rosemary Infused Crème Brulee

with Honey shortbread

For starters I decided to take inspiration from a delicious entrée I had recently inhaled at one of my favourite Townsville restaurants, Salt Cellar. 

Due to leaving our trusty pasta maker back in Blighty, I decided on fiddling about with fresh pasta sheets for the ravioli which worked quite well even though it took me ages and I was ready to throw it at the wall after ten minutes!  I then boiled up some Gluten free lasagne sheets for our wheat free diner!  The latter was a mistake as I found the gluten free product was as rubbery as a rubbery thing and the pasta repelled like magnets when I tried to stick it together!  Gluten-free ravioli = epic fail!  Solution?  Getting my guests to bring over some Gluten-free spiral pasta so that I could just mix it with the Ravioli filling instead!  Not my ideal result but as long as the taste was smashing I’d be happy!

The pasta filling I had prepared worried me slightly since I struggled to obtain the desired consistency.  I was unsure of the ingredients they had used in the filling over at Salt Cellar but bought some Gruyere from the supermarkets thinking it would complement the cauliflower and onion perfectly.  Unfortunately, I felt rather nauseous from the robust fungal stench of this particular variety of cheese and couldn’t bring myself to use much of it!  It smelt like a cross between wet dog, a rotting skin infection (I could only imagine it would smell like that!) and when you leave a wet jay cloth on the sink and it goes off!  Horrid!

I served up the pasta parcels (and gluten-free spirals) with roasted fennel, warm crushed hazelnuts and a sweet plum dressing made from white wine, bought plum paste and Balsamic.  In the restaurant they had used Muscat for the sauce but I had no idea what that was let alone where I could find that in Townsville so thought if I experimented with white wine and plum I might make a similar tasting dressing…don’t worry I now know Muscat is a variety of grapes so you learn something new every day!

Even though there were empty plates left in minutes and I enjoyed the combination of textures from the soft cheesy ravioli with the crunchy nuts and sweet trickle of sauce, I felt it didn’t compare to the original dish I had consumed due to the flavours not pulling together as well.  The roasted fennel added another consistency and taste to the plate but seemed to be slightly chewy and I wasn’t entirely happy with the ravioli filling.  I think if I’d made the pasta from scratch and gave the gruyere a wide berth I would have been happier with the starter.  I was happier with the presentation though which I had based on ideas taken out of my new Masterchef recipe book! (Thanks Hazel!)

I wanted to imitate a Michelin star establishment and refresh our palates before the main course so had prepared a basil and lime sorbet to invigorate our tastebuds which is one of my favourite combinations of flavours-if you haven’t tried it- oh please do it!

For Mains, I pan fried some prosciutto wrapped cod, poached some juicy prawns in garlic infused chilli butter and served it alongside my sweet potato crisps sprinkled with smoked paprika, a warm tomato coulis and with a splash of pea puree to accompany the fish and add colour to the dish.  I also accompanied the meal with a side of Broccoli and Sugar Snap Peas.

I made the sauces from scratch and had slight trouble with the warm tomato coulis.  I blended some roma tomatoes, garlic, basil and balsamic but the mixture looked really pink for some reason- I made the error of adding a drop of red food colouring to it which any chefs reading will probably want to slap me on the head for!  The mixture then looked like bright war paint and totally abnormal so I had to ditch it and start again.  Second time lucky- I used the same ingredients as before but added sundried tomatoes and some cooked roma tomatoes which gave it a much richer flavour and natural red colour!

This dish seemed to go down really well with the guests and empty plates were again collected so it was worth the painful scald I had attained on preparing it!  I did find that I probably didn’t require the pea puree though as the rich tomato coulis was enough to carry through the flavours and I found the puree went cold on the plate pretty quickly-it seemed not warming the plates was another naughty blunder of mine!  Oops!

My dessert, I believe was the heroine of the dinner party and I was almighty proud of my efforts since I had never made a crème brulee before and rarely order them at restaurants. 

I love to incorporate herbs in desserts so took this as my chance to infuse Rosemary into the cream overnight for the crème brulee to electrify the palette.   I also added chopped sprigs of rosemary and vanilla seeds to the cream mixture when cooking to further release the aroma into the dish.  If you would also be interested in using herbs in desserts then a tip from me is that coriander leaves add a delicious flavour to mango dishes!

Well who needs a blow torch for brulees when you can just spoon some sugar over the tops of them and pop them under the grill to achieve that delicious crisp caramel layer you have to crack into to get at the mixture within.

I also baked some gluten free Honey shortbread to escort the dessert as Honey and Rosemary are another great match and I found it very enjoyable dunking that biscuit into the sweet, warm custard.  Everyone really loved the rosemary flavour in the brulee and I was thrilled as I thought it had been cooked to perfection!

My poor boyfriend had been most disappointed when I revealed my pudding choice for the party saying that he couldn’t stand crème brulee’s.  Well!   He was ever so quick to change his mind after devouring my version of the dessert and was quite upset that I hadn’t made him two of them!

I will most definitely be going on a crème brulee spree soon and am looking forward to experimenting with fragrant Lavender, Bailey’s Irish cream, Ginger and Turkish delight…any other suggestions would be highly welcomed too!

Even though I didn’t set any animals on my guests or castrate my boyfriend and give him to them to take home as a slave, I felt that the meal had been a success and that all four courses were enjoyed by all which I think is the best you can ask for when experimenting with food.

Bex J