My Weekend

It is Monday again and I can look back at a lovely weekend. Friday after work I went to town to get a nice piece of beef filet at O’Flynn’s Brother as Lorraine, Jill and Wendy were coming for dinner on Saturday. So, after putting the beef in the fridge, I drove to Anita who prepared a scrumptious risotto for us. She made also a lovely starter with tortillas (2 tortillas filled with mixed spicy veggies and baked in the oven) – really yummy. She offered a nice cooling Martini to go with the starter….and of course a really soft and smooth Prosecco. Main course as I said was a really yummy risotto and for afters we had the chocolate terrine I prepared the day before, which Anita liked very much). The Amaretto she served with it underplayed nicely the rich chocolate.

Got up early the next morning to start on my vegetable stock. I also wanted to make the pineapple soup from Gordon Ramsay’s *** Chef cookbook….A lot of work for almost no pineapple juice. I peeled the pineapple, removed the core and cut it into chunks. I then tossed the fruit in sugar and pan-fried them until they were slightly caramelized. Pureed the pineapple and passed it through a sieve and chilled the collected juice after topping it up with sparkling wine and some pineapple juice. The soup was supposed to be served with a fromage frais foam. For that I mixed milk and fromage frais. Heated stock syrup with lemon juice and let it reduce a bit. Soaked some gelatine and added it to the syrup. After a short cooking period I whisked it into the fromage frais and chilled until set. I also wanted to serve the soup with chilli syrup for which I heated some of the stock syrup and sprinkled in some dried chilli flakes and let it infused for a while. As I said…a lot of work which was not worth the effort. The fromage frais foam should have been applied with a soda siphon but according to good old Gordon…..it should also have worked with being whisked with an electric beater – for the records….it didn’t.

The rest of the dinner worked out a bit better. As a canapé I served Roquefort biscuits with walnuts. The first starter was Mushroom Risotto Cakes served with homemade tomato chutney. Second starter was an Indian Pea Soup. Main course then was the beef filet which I stuffed with prawns and crabmeat. This was served with herbed rice and creamed leeks. Until then I was kind of okay with the food…until it came to the flipping dessert….don’t get me wrong, the flavour was nice but it would have been perfect as a cocktail rather than a dessert. One dish down in Ramsay’s ***.

With the canapés I served Prosecco which I got from Sabrina and as Saturday afternoon was so sunny and lovely, we sat in the garden and enjoyed the sparkly wine. With the two starters I served a Chenin Blanc (not sure who gave me that wine but it went so well with the cakes and soup) and a nice rich Tempranillo which I had opened around 3 o’clock. All in all the food was okay but the company was excellent. I really enjoyed the night..

Sunday was spent in a lazy dazy state….

And since I got a dial up connection at home...it is almost impossible to upload pics.....sorry guys....