Dinner party for five

Amuse-bouche - Mushroom jelly

I adapted this from a Heston Blumenthal dish out of his At Home with Heston book. In his recipe the jelly is just one component in a kind of layered mushroom sundae. I just went with the jelly, I know it seems a cop out to only do one bit of the dish but this is just the amuse bouche and I still had to begin preparations 4 days before the dinner party. The jelly needs a little more gelatin in order to keep its shape when turned out of a mold than it would if simply served in a glass. They ended up looking pretty cool, if a little like mini alien space crafts.

The jelly is a fortified mushroom stock that gets clarified through ice filtration before setting. It starts with a lot of mushrooms for a small amount of end product.

Start the stock (a few days in advance of serving) by frying 750g button mushrooms in 100g butter till all the liquid evaporates and the mushrooms have browned, deglaze with madeira, reduce to a syrup, add a litre of water and simmer for an hour. Strain through muslin and discard the mushrooms. Meanwhile, finely chop a shallot and simmer in madeira till syrupy. Strain and discard the onion. Add the madeira syrup to the stock and add a tea spoon of mushroom ketchup. Bloom 3 sheets of gelatin and whisk into the stock.

The stock is dark and cloudy at this stage but through a simple process of ice filtration you end up with a perfectly clear and luminous liquid. To do this, chill and then freeze the stock then turn it out into a sieve lined with a double layer of wet muslin, sit over a bowl, wrap the whole thing in clingfilm and leave in the fridge for 2 days to defrost and filter through the muslin. You end up with a small amount of clarified stock. Set with more gelatin and pour into molds – I used egg cups – and chill for at least 4 hours.

I served the turned out jellies on little thin circles of set polenta, fried till crisp, cooled to room temperature and brushed with truffle oil. The jellies were a little tricky to get out but after a brief dunking in hot water a little bit of poking round the edges I managed to coax them out. They're finished off with little enoki mushrooms. If I was doing this again I think I would sit the polenta on a short fat stem of some sort so as the whole thing looked like a mushroom.

Starter - Smoked haddock, spinach and saffron rice rolls, quails egg yolk rolled in dried dillsk powder, samphire and a smoked fish milk foam.


















My idea was that this would be a bit like a kedgeree. A real flavour of the sea, not so much in a fresh fish way, more in a warm breezy evening walk around a harbour kind of way. There's the leathery salty smell of the dillisk, the oily perfume of the saffron and smoked fish and a spray of sea water from the crunchy samphire.

I didn't get a photo of it here but the special thing about this is the discovery of the quails egg yolk, which sits disguised in a coating of powdered dillisk. You poke at this dusty dark purple ball with your knife and it suddenly bursts and the bright yellow yolk oozes out over the haddock and into the yellow of the saffron rice.

For the egg and dillisk powder - put the dillisk in a food processor and blitz, spread out on a baking tray and dry in a low oven for a couple of hours then grind to a powder in a pestle and mortar and pass through a fine sieve. For the eggs, separate and using a slotted spoon immerse the yolks one by one into barely simmering water for 30 seconds then remove to a bowl of cold water to finish later.

For the spinach and saffron rice rolls - cook the rice in saffron and set aside to cool. Remove and tough stalks from the spinach, blanch for a minute in well-salted water, drain and refresh in cold water. Spread out the leaves over a clean tea towel, cover with paper towels then roll the whole lot up and twist the ends in opposite directions to wring dry. Lay an even layer of spinach leaves out shiny side down over a sushi mat. Spoon out a line of rice over the spinach, role up tightly and chill.

For the foam, skin the haddock (from Woodcock Smokey in west Cork) place in a pan and cover with milk. Add a bay leaf, a few pepper corns and a slice of onion. Bring slowly to the boil and reduce heat to a low simmer for 10 mins. Strain through a sieve and keep warm.

To finish – slice the smoked haddock, cover with milk, bring slowly to the boil an and set aside. Blanch the samphire and season with lemon. Slice the rice rolls into rounds and heat through in the microwave. Dunk the egg yolks back in boiling water for 20 seconds then roll in the dillisk powder, they should be completely covered. Reheat the milk with a little cream and blitz with a hand blender to create a foam. Top the rice roll with the fish and and an egg, decorate with the samphire and spoon round the milk foam.

Main - Pressed pork belly, marinated pork fillet, onion puree, glazed carrots and beetroot.

Here we have soft, unctuous pork belly with a crispy skin alongside tender pork fillet. The onion puree has a really deep earthy flavour.  

The pressed pork is a Gorden Ramsey recipe with the addition of crushed coriander seeds rubbed into the meat and skin on the first cooking. The fillet is simply marinated in red wine, bay and thyme and then briefly roasted (til it reaches 71C). The sauce is a combination of the pan juices of the pork belly and the marinade all reduced right down. The onion puree is a Heston Blumenthal recipe – leaves you with a very steamy kitchen but well worth the effort. 

And for desert – Rosewater panna cotta, warm blackcurrant and liquorice coulis, lemon ice-cream and lemon sherbet.

Ive made various versions of this before. Its all based on 2 types of sweets that were a regular part of my childhood - sherbet lemons and those liquoirce and blackcurrant boiled sweets that have a chewy centre.

The liquoruce flavour comes from one of those hard black resinous sticks of liquorice that you buy in health food shops – left to dissolve in water overnight before blending with the fruit coulis. The panna cottas are set in ice cube bags which makes them look like little soft pillows. The lemon ice cream involves infusing milk with lemon peel and then adding the lemon juice at the very end before churning. Making sherbet is a doddle – its just icing sugar with a spoon of bicarbonate of soda and one of citric acid, add finely grated lemon zest and pass through a fine sieve.

And to finish - chocolates.

These truffles are rich and very alcoholic. Think as them as chocolate liqueurs. The outer chocolate coating on these adds a wonderful crisp contrast to the softer buttery chocolate within. Melt 200g of dark chocolate (64%) with 60g milk chocolate. Stir in 100g of butter cut into small pieces till completely incorporated. Then stir in the alcohol 40ml of brandy and 60ml of port. With the high volume of liquid there's a danger of this splitting – which it did on me, if so you can bring it all back together with a hand blender. Pour the chocolate mix into a shallow tray lined with clingfilm and freeze. When set cut into squares with a knife dipped in hot water and wiped clean between each cut. Separate out the squares on the tray and freeze again. Using cocktail sticks, quickly dip the frozen squares in melted chocolate and then roll in a good quality coco powder – the chocolate trading company does a good Valrhona coco powder that’s a wonderful deep dark almost purple colour.