Our journey to B'ond: Quentin's Feast!

So, a couple of weeks ago we got creative and decided to have a small casual dinner with friends. As the planning started, I realised that I have a lot of favourite dishes that I wanted to refine, and others that I had never eaten but sounded good in the internal commentary that is my mind! So far from a casual dinner, we ended up with something quite different.

We ended up sitting down to seven courses (over a couple of hours) and drank a couple of really nice wines to go with the meal. One of the best parts for me was that we were eating a fairly formal meal in a formal setting, while in the background kids were running around with spaghetti bolognaise and having fun in the bath.

The meal we served is as follows:

Every meal starts with fresh bread!

Pulled pigs head with free range eggs and salsa verde.

‘Peposo Notturno’ with buttered spaetzle and cherry tomato.

Quail saltimbocca. Pumpkin polenta, asparagus and balsamic glaze.

Twice roasted duck. Sauteed potato and leek, caramelised orange and orange sauce.

Cheddar Napoleon. Cloth wrapped Pyengana cheddar, quince paste and honey roast walnuts.

Chocolate Mousse, caramel popcorn and minted raspberries.

Mint cloud, hot chocolate lining.

I made a brawn from the pigs head (a trotter in the poaching stock would have helped gelatinise the brawn), and let it set. I then cut it into cubes before crumbing and shallow frying it. It was very good, and the eggs were from our garden. They are truly free range chickens too. One in particular gets out into the park during the day, but comes back in to lay and roost. We can’t work out where she is getting out, but I am happy as long as she comes back!

The Peposo Notturno is out of Bill Bufords book ‘Heat’ and is intensely good in its peppery garlickness! It is very simple, and only has five ingredients – Beef shin, garlic, salt, pepper and red wine. The shin is boned out and trimmed, the garlic and pepper are cracked and stirred through the meat with salt. The meat is then covered with red wine before being covered and put in the oven (very low) until it becomes a thick, unctuous paste. I did it in the slow cooker on low, and it took almost 15 hours.

The duck was amazing, and had the most gloriously crispy skin. Jane left her skin, as she was too full (that, and we weren’t eating the duck peking style…), but left it on the plate as though there was still meat under it. In vain, I turned it over to see she had stripped every last piece of meat from the bone. When I roasted the duck initially, I rendered all the fat out. We know have a jar of glorious duck fat in the fridge that we use to sauté our potatoes in.

The Napoleon was probably my favourite dish of the night. The puff pastry worked (never a guarantee in this heat) and the honey, cheese and paste together were great. The mint cloud was good too, but Jane’s least favourite. Understandable, as she isn’t a marshmallow kind of girl. We made a peppermint marshmallow, and set it into a mould. Before we served it, I forced a hot chocolate ganache into the centre with a syringe. YUM!

Because I was at the table for each course, the guests didn’t think I would have been able to cook the food myself, and came up with an elaborate story for the “Fat Chef”, who was outside the kitchen, passing food in through the oven, which isn’t really an oven! I love the concept, and may well use the name (Fat Chef) if I ever have a catering business in the future!

In other news, MacK is crawling (everywhere) and has a fascination with cords. Curtain cords, power cords, shoelaces – he just loves them! Straight in the mouth! He has a heap of teeth, and seems to grow every day. He is eating well, and this week is having lamb, zuchinni, pumpkin, carrot, potato and spinach all cooked in chicken stock. He still only sleeps in 2 – 3 hour blocks, but we are sure (hoping) that will change at some point!