Dinner party for four

Lemon sole fillets with crushed new potatoes

Cook new potatoes, till just done but still firm. Drain, peel, put in a bowl and season. Add a few good slugs of olive oil to a pan and gently heat then pour over the potatoes. Lightly crush the potatoes with a fork – they want to be chunky rather than smooth. Then stir through some very finely diced and lightly fried onion, some de-seeded and finely diced tomato, some basil, coriander, tarragon and lemon juice.

The sauce/dressing is just a little light vegetable stock blended with some olive oil, finely diced tomato, basil and a little red wine vinegar all brought up to the boil. And then set aside.

To finish - stack the potato (which should still be just warm) in ring moulds. Cut the sole into triangles, season and quickly fry in butter and olive oil in a hot pan – it should take no more than a minute on either side. Pile the fish pieces up on top of the potato and spoon the dressing out round the plate.    

Pork in milk

The main isn’t the most attractive dish but the meat is really tender and moist and the milk really help to impart all the flavour of the herbs and lemon and garlic into the meat.

I got the pork recipe from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. I used goats milk here but cow flavour milk is fine too. Just be sure to use whole milk.

The seasoned pork loin, with the rind removed is browned all over in a hot pan first, then set aside. Turn the heat down and add about 10 peeled garlic gloves and cook slowly till they start to just brown, then whip them out with a slotted spoon. Add sage, bay, thyme, rosemary and the peel pared from a lemon, let them infuse in the oil for a moment then add the the meat back to the pan and then add the goats milk – about a litre but enough to at least half cover. Bring to the boil and simmer slowly for about any hour and a half. The milk will have reduced right down and will have separated out leaving a gloopy sauce full of curds.

To accompany this I served baby beetroots, baby carrots and steamed rainbow chard. The carrots are cooked in the juice of half an orange, a chunk of butter and a little bit of cinnamon bark. Squeeze out a wt piece of grease proof paper and tuck it tightly down over the carrots, put the lid on the pan and let them steam in their own juice for half and hour. I always cook carrots like this they end up sweet and very carroty. The beets are scrubbed and baked whole in foil for an hour first with a good sprinkling of salt. Then tossed in a pan with butter and a splash of balsamic till glazed and syrupy. 


Treacle tart, pears poached in ginger wine and peated whiskey ice cream  

The desert is autumn on the plate. The treacle tart is soft, intensely sweet and warming, the pears are just slightly peppery from being poached in the ginger wine but what really sets this apart is the smokey, peated whiskey ice cream. I used Laphroaig whiskey. They make it by drying malted barley over turf fires. It has this pungent earthy and very smokey aroma in fact its almost tastes like someone left a cigarette butt in you glass of whiskey.  

 

One cake

 
It’s the train! A masterpiece of baking. Specially commissioned for a boy with a very discernible palate.