PIE & MASH



Chicken, chestnut mushroom, leek and thyme pie with mustard and truffle mash

To celebrate issue one of my dear friend’s, Harriet and Matt’s, new magazine Pie & Mash, i decided to provide a veritable feast. In honour of such what would i cook but pie and mash. However this dish originated in 9500BC (so its basically as old as the dinosaurs give or take a few years) and thus needs to be treated to more glory than ginsters or pukka give it... By 160BC the Roman statesman Marcus Porcius Cato wrote about the best seller of the day, Placenta . no its not as bad as it sounds but rather it is a dish consisting of sheets of flour dough topped with cheese and honey and flavored with bay leaves. Still with the modern usage of the word i would not expect to see that flavour written up on the blackboards of every gastro pub up and down the country. Anyway i digress. I feel the pie has been subject to a bit of a battering in reputation, a hate war has been waged against it, the quiche or even better the tart is its much refined cousin. So i decided to counter this humble pie image and bake one incorporating all the grandeur of its ancient classical past, but fear not the contemporary delicacy of honeyed mice remains absent.
First i must confess i did not make the pastry, if you feel very strongly against shop bought pastry then go ahead and make your own but for me jus-roll is jus-fine.
I did manage to stretch myself to make the filling. Roughly chop two large onions and gently sweat with four cloves of garlic. Add in the chicken (roughly one breast per person, you can use thigh meat too though) and fry until cooked through. For earthy nuttiness throw in a box of chestnut mushrooms, leaving the smaller ones whole and just halving those slightly larger, you don’t want gobstoppers in your pie. I also added three leeks, again roughly chopped (my particular method of cooking is not a particularly neat one) and a good few sprigs of thyme, the herb of courage. If you want a nice salty edge to your filling i would recommend incorporating some pancetta or smoky bacon. Pour in a small pot of creme fraiche and then refill the pot with water and add that too. I’d recommend using half fat creme fraiche and not just because i’m a diet coke drinking girl but to avoid it all getting a bit rich. If not you may be reclining like a roman not out of glamour but from ache. The medieval english did call the pie, the coffyn... i’m just saying. Allow to bubble along for a quarter of an hour or so to get nice and flavoursome and reduce down a bit.
Pour all this in a pie dish and cover the top with the pastry which you have so easily to hand straight from the packet. With all the spare time gained from not needing to actually make it, i could decorate the top, a much more practical use of time i’m sure you’ll agree. If you like me do not have a pie dish, use whatever looks like it will be roughly the right depth and shape, in my case this was a cake tin.
On to the mash. In every episode of masterchef the mash seems to be a particularly contentious issue. Who knew that something so apparently comforting could be the source of so much debate: too lumpy, too salty, too bland, no wonder smash was invented. i chopped up a good few standard potatoes, roughly around one per person into fairly small pieces so they cooked quickly in rigorously boiling and salted water. Once boiled i drained and not having a masher (as you can tell with no pie dish and no masher mine is a well stocked kitchen, not forgetting the microwave inhabiting mouse) used a fork to break up before graduating to a whisk once a splosh of milk and a knob of butter had been added. To make the mash a little more elegant, i flavoured mine with mustard and truffle oil. Both again being controversial, i would add this in with respect to your guests’ tastes but as with the lavender debacle (see my herb dinner) do not throw caution to the wind and practice a little restraint. Oh and if you are balking at the truffle oil see my first post for a curious economic argument for it...
Once your pie has baked for 25 minutes and your mash is silky smooth, serve with long stem broccoli, broad beans (and ketchup, sorry).

grand marnier and marmlade brownies

according to folklore, brownies are these little nymphs of the house. closely resembling elves, they are helpful, mostly kind, loyal and enthusiastic. this is after all why the brownies movement is named such.



nowadays if someone was to say 'brownie' the most likely image would be of the baked good. i want to impart some of the spirit of the brownies into their namesakes, the (chocolate) brownie. and before you guess wrong, no i do not intend to do so with illegal substances, just go to amsterdam. for too long has the brownie been degraded, wrapped in cellophane or ubiquitous, lingering away in chain coffee shop counters, they are the most boring option. too many are dry, crumbly and just plain dull. if you are going to have cake, make sure its worth it.



but then there has always been a divide in the brownie: is it to be cakey or fudgey. for me the latter is the only way.



the brownie originated in 1893 after the Colombian Exhibition came to Chicago. Bertha Palmer, an American socialite who knew what she wanted (think Paris Hilton but a whole lot more respected), told the chef at the Palmer House Hotel in which she was staying, that the ladies should have a new dessert designed for them specifically. the two requirements were that it was to be smaller than a piece of cake and suitable to be eaten from packed lunches and thus not requiring cutlery. sadly for these women they were deprived of the brownie in its best, densest, gooiest, fudgiest incarnation, rather until 1907 with the recipe of a Maria Willet Howard, the sweet treat was on the dry, cakeish side. in Maria's recipe an extra egg and an extra square of chocolate was added to cries of delight.

it is from Maria's lead i follow. however being a bit of a magpie the plain chocolate brownie will not do. no! i refuse to. instead over the years i have made variations on the recipe to shake it all up a bit. if not i may as well resort to betty crocker.



there has been the ginger brownie in which the addition of crystallised ginger added a sophistication and healthy note (ginger's a detoxer!?); a marshmallow brownie; a chequerboard variety in which to the basic brownie tray i slathered squares of white chocolate and hazelnut spread on top; a white chocolate and rose brownie whereby i substituted milk chocolate for milkybars and then poured in a considerable splash of rose extract; and the amaretto brownie. for those of you on the marriage market i have received three proposals out of these (and not from joking middle aged men), i would recommend the chequerboard variety (especially if at a chess convention) and the white chocolate and rose, everyone wants a nigella in their life.



this summer was my friend Harriet's birthday. a key bonding moment in our friendship was over a terry's chocolate orange on a walk from camden to our university halls. i took this as inspiration. as much as i love terry and his ultimate confection, this was a sophisticated soiree that i intended to rise up to. kraft was replaced by craft as i guaranteed the chocolate/orange combination by raiding my father's liquour cabinet once again and pulled out the grand marnier.
begin by preheating the oven to 180 degrees or gas mark 4, i find that if you forget this and then have to wait once the mixture is prepared, the mixture mysteriously depletes and you wind up feeling a little sicky... line roughly a 20cm square tin with baking parchment. if you don't have this size exactly it's not the end of the world but try to find a tray that will not cause the brownies to thin out too far. in a bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water melt 100g of milk chocolate with 100g of dark chocolate and 140g of unsalted butter. this will probably be sacriligous to some but i really don't feel the need to dicate the necessity of good chocolate, sainsbury's basics is actually very fine. allow the molten mixture to cool a little before stirring in 225g of sugar (you may want to try different combinations, brown sugar lends a treacly character and i did spot lavender sugar in wiatrose the other day...), 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract and a pinch of salt. oh and it is here you add in your defining ingredient, in this case a good slosh of grand marnier. if you are alcohol averse you could replace this with orange extract or crystallised orange peel. then whisk in 2 large beaten eggs and, vitally that extra egg of Maria's, another large egg yolk. sift in 85g of plain flour and mix for a minute to form a "gorgeous golden gleaming gloop", sorry that was just me turning into nigella. basically you want to be staring into a bowl filled with what looks like a rich brown mercurial mixture. pour into the tray and bake for any time between 30 and 40 minutes. i'd check after half an hour, insert a knife in and if it comes out clean then take out but if not then pop in for another five minutes or so. not one for subtlety i then spread marmalade over the top, after all what is it people say, you have to accentuate the positive. i used golden spread but once again this isn't a must, if i'm honest i chose it for the packaging, the black and white striped cap and then Paddington Bear's beaming endorsement. finely grate some chocolate over the surface and finito!



HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
i'd say she looks pretty pleased.

ashes to ashes

worried that my grand total of two followers may have been pondering the gap of over two months between my last post, i felt it necessary to do a post devoted to the show occupying so much of my time. i missed Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes on TV proper so had an intense two month period to catch up on 40 episodes in total. this meal was made for my similarly enthused family plus my sister's bemused (he has missed this trend) boyfriend. contrary to my father's quip the meal was not fittingly burnt.



to drink:
Alex Drake, so affectionately referred to as Bollyknickers, lent us the excuse to sip from flutes of Prosecco. being at my family home rather than my student house there was a bottle of actual Bollinger lurking dusty in the cupboard. however despite this opportune gift i was confined to the lesser option. mind you i am a fan of sainsbury's cava retailing at under £5 a bottle. bargain.



to dress:
anything 80's is perfect. my icon of the decade would have to be molly ringwald or madonna in her desperately seeking susan stage. other attire you may want to don could include: gene hunt's cowboy boots, ray's horrendous turtleneck, alex's fur coat and gold jewellery. or perhaps just make like a yuppie.



to dress the table:
if you are going to do a theme like this, white tablecloth and silver cutlery will not do. there needs to be excess. scrap minimalism, think gold ("gold, always believe in your soul", shush now simon le bon). alternatively you could arrange the table to relate to the programme. i would print out pictures and stills found on google and them slightly burn them at the edges. scatter them down the table between the martini glasses and champagne bottles.

to listen/dance/sing:
the soundtrack is paramount to the decade and the series. in fact the music forms such a backdrop to the series that there are several albums on sale. i decided to choose my own however. David Bowie is the seminal singer to the series so he of course features much. Those which seem a little on the dark side of the 80's owe their presence to my treasured bargain basement CD 100 more hits of the 80's. i think the 'more' gives it all away, Jason Donovan anyone...

1) Life On Mars? - David Bowie
2) Money, Money, Money - ABBA - i am aware that this is a 70's number however the 80's was nothing if not concerned with 'loadsamoney'
3) When Smokey Sings - ABC
4) Heroes - David Bowie
5) Gold - Spandau Ballet
6) Teardrops - Womack & Womack
7) Wishing I Was Lucky - Wet Wet Wet
8) Too Many Broken Hearts - Jason Donovan
9) Addicted To Love - Robert Palmer
10) Rio - Duran Duran
11) The Jean Genie - David Bowie
12) West End Girls - Pet Shop Boys
13) Wild Boys - Duran Duran
14) Take Me To The River - Talking Heads
15) Living In A Box - Living In A Box
16) Shout to the Top! - Style Council
17) Let's Dance - David Bowie
18) Vogue - Madonna
19) Ashes to Ashes - David Bowie

finally the food

to start: fire up the quatro red tomato soup

the red quatro belonging to the great Jean Genie is so revered it is tantamount to a character. i decided to pay homage by making a soup as red in colour as its spick paintwork. my recipe was inspired by the tomato soup available in pret. this may seem odd to those uninitiated but without exaggeration pret's tomato soup is quite honestly the best i have yet to taste at the tender age of 20. it beats heinz hands down, quelle horror. there is of course great secrecy surrounding the magic recipe, think the everlasting gobstopper in charlie and the chocolate factory. however one can find the ingredient list and thus fudge their way armed with blender and tasting spoon. begin by sweating two large shallots and plenty of garlic in a large saucepan with a little olive oil. then fill the saucepan to a third full with water charged with much swiss bouillon (i did warn readers way back in my first post that this was my vice). unsurprisingly the basis of the recipe is tomatoes. i added twelve plum tomatoes and a tin of chopped tomatoes. thyme is my favourite herb so, undaunted by the lavender catastrophe of the herby dinner, i removed the leaves of several (as in too many to count) sprigs before following this up with a good shake of dried oregano. when i was 12 and food technology was a compulsory class at school a friend and i were convinced that the way to a good grade was oregano, 'everything taste's better with oregano', our oregano houmus did very well i can assure you. so far so typical tomato soup. it is the cream and especially the white wine which is so transformational to the cauldron infront of you. give a good glug of white wine (alex would only commend this too well, i'm not sure they drunk water in any episode) and a dollop of half fat creme fraiche. then blitz in the blender. *caution*: aged 15 i had a nasty run in with the blender in one of my first forays into soup making, it is not clever to try and cut time by placing as much liquid in to the jug as possible, a scalded arm is likely to ensue, rather one may have to face the facts that blitzing in stages is where it's at. lecture over. you're likely to have a soup of a very fine consistency now, even dare i say it, bordering on the watery. leave to reduce for as long as suits, adding wine if needed and more creme fraiche to increase a velvety taste sensation!



for main: take out pizza's from luigi's

the great thing about this course is that if needs be you can just order a pizza in. a internet search garners results for luigi's pizza, papa luigi's, don luigi etc. etc. need i go on. wow Luigi came a long way from his beginnings on ashes to ashes. i however decided to make my own, including the dough itself. to be honest i can't claim much awe it really is deceptively easy. fear not. this recipe does not even require 'tipo oo' flour. the following is for one large pizza feeding a minimum of two. to make the base i went against my typically lax approach to measuring so that the outcome was more dough, less doh. weigh out 225g of strong white flour and sift through into a large bowl with a teaspoon of salt as well as a teaspoon of yeast and ½ a teaspoon of sugar. make a well and pour in a tbsp of olive oil and 120ml of warm water. with your hands gently coerce the mixture into a ball until you have a soft dough that leaves the bowl clean, add a little more flour or water if needs be. then tip the dough out on to the worktop and knead for a few minutes till silky smooth. oil up a bowl till its as greasy as Chris’s hair was and place the dough in, cover with a damp cloth and leave for an hour till the dough has roughly doubled in size. tip the dough back onto the work surface and knock the air out, before kneading for another few minutes. it’s kneady, geddit?! roll out into the desired shape, you don’t have to be conventional with a circle or square, you could shape the dough into separate 8 and 0 by way of homage. toppings are down to you. channel Luigi and be adventurous, though I wasn’t especially I must admit. my sister went to Brazil once and faced a chocolate, banana and mozzarella pizza which i had no intention in repeating. instead I opted for a classic Mediterranean with a heavy dose of passata, mozzarella, parma ham, sundried peppers, basil and aubergine, and another a Fiorentina with passata, much fresh spinach, mozzarella, parmesan and three quarters of the way through cooking crack a couple of eggs onto the top. if you only have a crummy oven rather than a pizza oven to stone bake your creation to perfection, turn the heat up to 220 degrees and cook for 15-20 minutes.
When the moon hits your eye like a big-a pizza pie that’s amore




For pudding: garibaldi’s

Garibaldi’s were the go-to biscuit for the series but i reckoned my guest’s would be a little unimpressed with a packet from the supermarket. instead i decided to make my own squashed fly biscuits. cream 100g of sugar with 200g of unsalted butter and hefty splashes of vanilla extract. add 300g of plain flour, a pinch of salt and the flies, ie.dried fruit of your choice, be it classic raisins (or sultanas, the difference has passed me by) or a multitude of berries and mix into a dough. wrap in cling film and chill for anything from an hour to overnight. roll out and cut into as many biscuits as you can muster depending on the thickness you want. cook for 15 minutes on a low heat of 160 degrees till they are the pale gold of Raymondo’s curls. Serve in tea cups to emulate the classic arrangement of tea and biscuits.




"I'm happy, hope you're happy too"

Herbie

don't worry this is not a meal based entirely on the anthropomorphic car.



rather the title of this post refers to the theme governing last night's meal which i cooked for my parents. the two have just planted a herb garden so i thought i would play on this.

to start: rosemary focaccia

i had always thought baking bread took much effort (see my first post where i applauded sainsburys bakery) but my parents in this instance are a little on the fussy side (Mother). however i was proved very much wrong. i liked this recipe for its spartan ingredients list, no searching for 00 flour for me. begin by putting 1 tsp of dried yeast in 125ml of warm water. leave it for ten minutes before adding 75g of the plain flour. mix this up and then leave it for 45 minutes. being impatient i have always got bored with recipes telling you to let things rest or chill and have interfered but i knew that i would have to restrain myself in this instance. instead i took the opportunity to do other errands, in this case go and find the rosemary in the garden. this is more laborious than one might suppose due to two terriers and their homemade acid rain prompting a search for the less accessible stalks... in a different bowl allow another tsp of dried yeast to bubble in 250ml of warm water for 5-10 minutes before adding it to the original mix. then throw in all the rest (400g of plain flour, 75ml of olive oil, 3tsp of sea salt flakes and a good handful of chopped rosemary) and mix to a dough. knead this for around ten minutes and then leave it in a well oiled (as in olive oil not drunk) bowl till it doubles in size, i'd say around an hour and a half. once this is done place it in another well oiled tray, punch the air out of it and leave to rise for one more hour. sprinkle with more rosemary and sea salt before baking for 15-20 minutes at 220 degrees. mamma mia.
i really love the symoblism and mythology behind herbs. rosemary is from the greek ros marinus translating as dew of the sea for it is commonly found close to the water. for this reason it is also associated with Aphrodite who was said to have it draped around her when arising from the sea.



for main: lemon sole in an aubergine, sun dried tomato and basil robe with a mixed herb salad

i guess 'robe' is a rather weird way of putting what was really a crust. but i think crust doesn't sound so appetising and chiefly it is so called because basil is known as king of the herbs. so i gave the rather humble lemon sole a makeover with a variation on the ermine cloaked attire of the greats. saute one medium onion and one aubergine both finely chopped on a medium heat until softened. then add in two chopped tomatoes and a good few squeezes of sun dried tomato paste as well as much basil. once this is all combined lay out your sole skin side down and either place the paste at one end and roll the fish up or just cover the meat with it. into the pan in which i cooked them i also placed some cherry tomatoes on the vine, these could be added to with some garlic cloves and red onions or shallots. bake at 160 degress in a fan oven for 15 minutes or until the fish is cooked. all the supermarkets do a version of a herb salad which is pretty good value if you don't have fresh herbs in your garden, i added extra basil to it (not one for subtlety) and a dressing of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
fact time: basil occupies a central role in the tragic tale of Boccaccio's 'Decameron', later retold by Keats as Isabella and the Pot of Basil. The young heroine Isabella falls for Lorenzo, a man beneath her social status quite different to her intended husband "some high noble and his olive trees". her brothers murder Lorenzo who then returns to Isabella in her dreams telling her where he is buried. Isabella takes his head as a souvenir and keeps it in a pot of basil watering it each day with her tears. her pot is later taken by her brothers, after which she dies in despair and grief lamenting "O cruelty, To steal my Basil-pot away from me!"



for desert: lavender ice cream with a raspberry and chambord sauce or vanilla ice cream with a raspberry, lavender and chambord sauce

i am going to put my hands up and admit that i split the custard in making the first option thus accounting for the 'or' clause. thus having run out of ingredients for ice cream i had to think on my feet and improvise. i am going to try and speak this second option up and rename it the 'speedy option' rather than the failure's. for the sauce i added a punnet of raspberries to a pan with a little water over a medium heat. to this i mixed a good gloop of runny honey for sweetness and some lavender. on this last point i urge caution. i was fearful of the lavender being unnoticeable so added the flowers of something approaching ten sprigs...this was really very unnecessary and can be summed up by dad's appraisal "it tastes like i'm eating a bucky bag". if you don't enjoy eating those bags stored in peoples drawers to keep them smelling fresh i would perhaps halve the amount i used thus avoiding any relation to pot pourri et al. once the sauce had chilled i added in a few shots of chambord for a little kick. i came over all seventies and served it up in a martini glass the ice cream submerged in a lavender bath which incidentally leads me on to my last fact: lavender was used by the Romans to bath in hence its name deriving from lavare (to wash).

what can i say i went overboard with the lavender...



to compliment the meal i would play Cat Stevens's back catalogue, he truly is a sage. oh and for a nice garnish on the table i placed a sprig of marjoram on each napkin, marjoram is the herb of happiness.

a very special relationship

america gets overlooked by chefs, it's food demonised. but hey the people love it, i investigated how many beef burgers were made every year and my results were inconclusive because the number is just too huge for anyone to have a grip on it. i decided to bring the american dream to london, the deep south to south london. this was a much more cohesive night than previous. by having a theme i could organise a more all round dinner party, or rather diner party, opposed to just a meal.
first things first though, the food!




to start: soda and bacon rashers
a starter seemed an unnecessary frippery which would leave us all a little too american (64% of adults are obese or overweight). crikey its only one night we don't need to go the whole hog and physically change. so on the table i allowed people to serve themselves to coca-cola (served ice cold as the bottle prescribes) and delve into bowls of those bacon rasher crisps. i got tescos own brand being a cheapskate but basically they're frazzles. also as i was cooking for 7 just having nibbles allowed me to not be totally crushed in the kitchen, in fact stay more like this.



for main: tex-mex and more chilli con carne with paprika chips
i am aware that chilli doesn't actually hail from north america per se but its been adopted with much gusto and thats enough for me. chilli is disliked by those who have been used to the bland gloop served at school (which is so anemic so as not to be too spicy to anyone, it really should just be called carne), and those with an aversion to kidney beans. i dealt with both such issues by banishing kidney beans (possibly because i forgot) and making sure that if anything mine would be too spicy, after all it is chilli con carne. such a name gives prominence to the spice over the meat.
i started by frying four roughly chopped red onions (richer than their common cousins), a decent amount of garlic, with a chorizo sausage chopped into chunks. if you can get a paprika spiced chorizo sausage i feel this adds to the flavour but its by no means essential. once the oils started to seep out of the chorizo, i added two packs of lean minced beef. throw in three peppers and a fresh finely chopped chilli or two. now to the spices. i added a healthy dose of ground chilli, cumin and smoked paprika. i won't dictate on measurements, just adjust to personal choice, after all america is the country of free will. then add 3 tins of chopped tomatoes and allow to bubble along. i am normally on the impatient side but i really would leave the pot on a low heat for it to get that flavour. keep checking for taste and addressing spices throughout.
to serve alongside i believed chips would be more in keeping with the theme than rice. but i did veer away from fries and instead made chunky potato wedges. i cut countless potatoes into roughly equal sized wedges before rubbing olive oil, salt and paprika all over them. pop in the oven at 200 degrees for at least 30 mins but shake them up to get them crispy on both sides. from a visit to nathans when on holiday in new york i know that cheesy chips are de rigeur so sprinkled mature cheddar over ( i could not bring myself to be so authentic as to use cheese in a tube).



to finish: sal paradise's apple pie with cookies and milk ice cream
sal paradise in on the road effectively lives off of apple pie. if its good enough for him, its good enough for me. "I ate apple pie and ice cream- it was getting better as i got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer." well in that case Stockwell is definitely in Iowa. on the subject i found this rather amusing. http://www.ukqna.com/food/1569-2-food-ukqna.html. but thats going off on a tangent. i chopped 6 cooking apples into slices and placed on a medium heat with half a cup of water and a knob of butter. to this i threw in some muscavado sugar to take a little of the sharpness of the apples away and then a fair amount of ground cinnamon. to give another nuance i would recommend putting a splash of calvados or ameretto to the mix. let the mix bubble away before placing in a deep pan and then sealing with some shortcrust pastry. for a finishing touch use any spare pastry for a design flourish. i kept it simple with U S A but next time i intend to try and interpret Jackson Pollock.in basically every film set in america featuring a kid there will undoubtably follow cookies and milk. i don't have the machinery to whip ice cream up myself so bought a couple of pots of ben and jerry's cookie dough to serve alongside. yes i am a cheat.



this may all seem rather simple and i concede it was. but it meant i could enjoy being with my friends and not simply sweat over a hot stove. i also had the time to devote to the extras.

the table: for a cheap but cool table i bought a pack of royal blue tissue paper which i layed out like a tablecloth. i then liberally sprinkled red and white confetti stars. for placemats i bought a postcard of an american icon for each sitter. then we could say that marlon brando, marilyn monroe and audrey hepburn were at the table too.

the music: i made up an american playlist so the ears weren't left out:
1) Jolene - Dolly Parton
2) All Along The Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix
3) Home - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
4) Vogue - Madonna (she's basically the Queen over there)
5) Born In The U.S.A. - Bruce Springsteen
6) Heart of Gold - Neil Young
7) Let's Go Surfing - The Drums
8) Young Americans - David Bowie
9) L'America - The Doors
10) Graceland - Paul Simon
11) Land - Patti Smith
12) Summer of '69 - Bryan Adams
13) Blowin' In The Wind - Bob Dylan
14) Don't You (Forget About Me) - Simple Minds (not an American band but the soundtrack to The Breakfast Club)
15) Jackson - Johnny Cash, June Carter
16) Blue Moon of Kentucky - Elvis Presley
17) Surfin' U.S.A. - The Beach Boys
18) Parchment Farm Blues - Johnny Winter

the dress: i wore a white dress fit for sitting on the porch in a prarie with a red rag wrapped around my plait and blue stars pencilled on my face with eyeliner. the flag personified. my co-host Harriet dressed in levis, the ultimate american clothier.



so there you have it. the american dream is yours for a night.

to launch my internet ramblings i held a dinner party last wednesday. the tasters were four friends and they assured me of approval. however they're good friends so take this with a pinch of salt if you are a sceptic.

to start: boiled egg with asparagus soldiers
simple to start, this recipe doesn't require much preparation, leaving you free to entertain your guests or in my case try and engineer plates, people et al around a rickety, diminutive table. boil one egg per person for a maximum time of 4 minutes for a egg which won't run away with you. the asparagus i boiled too for a similar length of time in a pan with a generous amount of swiss bouillion powder ( a vice of mine). sprinkle parmesan over the asparagus to make your soldiers less modern camouflage warfare, more flamboyant red and gilt of the 18th century.



for main: chicken escalope with a truffle, shallot and bacon cream sauce, served with garlic mushrooms, broad beans and fresh tiger loaf
this was probably the most impressive of the three courses but nonetheless i could still make it from scratch after wolfing down the starter. for the sauce: i made an error in buying a bag of tiny shallots this meant much peeling and much crying. i would advise buying around 1.5 sizeable shallots per guest. once chopped roughly add to a frying pan with 8 strips of bacon again roughly cut. you will realise i am not one for neatness. once the two are cooked add a dollop of wholegrain mustard and creme fraiche. stir so all are combined and allow to bubble along but not to become excessively hot. the sauce reduces quickly so avoid a high heat and add water if it becomes a little gloopy. it is fairly rich so i used half fat creme fraiche and would not overload the portions. to give it another nuance add a couple of drops of truffle oil. a point on truffle oil: firstly i imagine a few raised eyebrows as this is ostensibly a student blog but waitrose (oh dear, eyebrows even higher) stocks a small bottle for a surprisingly reasonable price, used sparingly this is not so extravagant as it first appears...; secondly, the truffle is more controversial than its chocolate cousin so i allowed my friends to add the oil themselves.
the chicken i pan fried in a little olive oil and seasoned. once cooked i added this to the sauce and made sure it was clothed in the creamy goodness.
the mushrooms are perhaps to garlicky for the french but what with twilight fever coming over us again i thought it best not to be overly cautious. i freely admit to my laziness so along to 4 finely chopped clothes (i had to make an exception to my rough cutting here, apparently most people don't tend to like eating whole chunks of garlic for some reason) i added a couple of teaspoons of that jarred, purreed stuff. sorry to any food snobs out there. bite me (you ain't coming close with the intense garlic). so as to avoid intense indigestion the broad beans were simply boiled and served plain.
i make no pretence at being a domestic goddess so the bread was bought from sainsburys bakery but cut thickly and served with unsalted butter spread over it the guests seemed happy.



for pudding: put on your sundae suit.
on wednesday i was feeling a little worse for wear so postponed the brownies with a lavender and white chocolate sauce in place of sundaes. i dressed up the menu change with other reasons ranging from my current obsession with america to a homage to all those 'surprise' desserts on come dine with me.
this is the lazy girls pudding but it went down a storm. i decided to go so kitsch i like to think it verged on cool, so to compliment the neopolitan ice cream (ice cream i am sure the italian mammas would despair over) i piled the table with bowls of sweets. the secret is in the sweets and as a girl known to favour pick n mix suppers over michelin starred ones, this arena is my forte. it is all in the textures. mix jelly beans with m and m's, glace cherries (the more nuclear the better) with oreos, then garnish with mini marshmallows and toffee and fudge sauce.
death by sugar.



to seal the deal: the all inclusive extras
we drank: to keep with the unintentional theme of kids playing grown ups we washed it down with rose and lemonade. cheaper and, if we're honest, nicer than champers.
we heard: after having to listen to countless awful soundtracks in restaurants, we loosley arranged the music to fit the food. for the starter and main johnny flynn played out so as to compliment the wholesomeness. yet for pudding david bowie young americans is a necessity. play it loud like in a burger bar and picture your laptop less tinny, more like a dukebox.

CHEFS MAY TURN IN THEIR GRAVES BUT I SAY YUM.