Eat in - Dinner party for 7

Amuse bouche
Polenta, aubergine and smoked paprika, beetroot oil
Broad bean, feta, mint on pear

Courgette cannelloni, butternut squash flower

I love making up little amuse bouche although they can be hard work - these 3 little mouthfuls probably took more time to prepare than any other of the items on the menu. Using the rigatoni tube as a mini cannelloni is a handy trick. Great for crab. The version here stuffed with courgette was finished off with the last minute idea of adding the courgette flower – inspired if truth be told by the pured butternut squash I’d just defrosted to feed the baby.

Starter

Clear tomato water, mozzarella panna cotta, basil sorbet

This is one of my own inventions; it's a kind of take on a caprese salad. Part of me wonders if I'd actually prefer to eat a real caprese salad with sun warmed Sicilian tomatoes and great mozzarella but for a dinner party when you're trying to impress you can't be serving people simple food like that, can you?  

The panna cotta here is made out of the milky water you get in the bag with your mozzarella ball, combined with some reduced cream. I tried this previously (photo) and on that occasion I actually liquidized some mozzarella in with the water and cream, however, when it set it was grainy and had the texture of ricotta. By just using the mozzarella liquid and cream you still get the real panna cotta texture and you still get a real taste of the mozzarella. 

The tomato water or tomato consommé as I've also heard it called is just a lot of tomatoes liquidized and then put in a double layered muslin bag to drip through. Whatever you do don’t squeeze it otherwise  you'll end up with a red liquid rather than a clear liquid. For additional flavor I add green tomato  vines to the water and allow them to steep for a few hours before serving. There's great smell and flavor out of the vines but it gets lost in cooking so it's great for something like this.

The basil sorbet has a white wine and syrup base and is out of my favorite ice cream book ‘Ices’ by Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir.

Fish

John dory, saffron potatoes, samphire, orange butter sauce 

The John Dory and orange sauce is taken from Simon Hopkinson's book ‘Week in Week out’. The idea of the saffron potatoes and samphire was nabbed from Ottolenghi. Combining them as a single dish worked pretty well. This is definitely something I will serve again, looks fantastic and has great flavor combinations with the salty samphire and the sharp orange sauce. I remember an old Masterchef episode where Jean Michelle Roux Jr berated some poor guy for having potato and orange on the same plate - but it works for definite here.  A full single fillet per person would be ideal here normally but with there being a few courses this time I was trying to keep the portions small, so it's half a fillet each which is difficult to do with a John Dory.  It's pretty difficult to cut fish neatly after it's cooked but it's also far better to cook John Dory on the bone. So I opted to cut through the flesh before hand to portion it up but leave it actually on the bone for cooking.  Once it's cooked the flesh comes away from the skin and bones very easily.

Refresher

Cucumber granita, pink grapefruit

 
I actually stole this from Dylan McGrath. He serves something like this with olives. He does a very nice portion of olives but it’s a bit mean that you only get 2 olives (maybe it’s 3 - but even so). I'm not sure if Dylan does it this way but it’s a cucumber juiced (not liquidized) with some sugar syrup made into a granita. Different from a sorbet in that for a granita you want large ice crystals rather than the smooth texture you get from a sorbet. You get this by allowing it to freeze in a shallow container and then periodically scraping away the crystals that form at the edges of the dish. Just scrape – don’t mash.

Meat
Lamb cutlet baked in lavender, braised lettuce, pea pure, swede, red wine reduction

I had originally planned to bake the lamb in hay, but a detour through the Wicklow Mountains didn't yield results (in a search for hay) so I ended up just baking it in a pot with some lavender. For future reference – city dwellers can purchase large bundles of hay from pet stores – even the pet section of Tescos. We should all really eat much more braised lettuce.

 

Desert 

Vinegar parfait, champagne strawberry jelly, strawberries with black pepper

 

I was really impressed when I came across a vinegar ice cream a few years ago in a restaurant – the Bridge at Wilton in Ross-on-Wye (also had an excellent hops soufflé there) and was determined to have a stab at it myself. This is actually a parfait rather than an ice cream. With a parfait you don’t churn as you freeze as you do with an ice cream. It does require heating sugar syrup and eggs and then more than 10 minutes of whisking with an electric beater. The aerated result is much more stable and thicker than the standard custard you might use for an ice cream and is therefore much better at holding certain liquids that might split in a custard. It will also incorporate high levels of alcohol and yet still freeze, which a normal churned custard ice-cream won't. For all the real science behind ice crystals and eggs and fat and proteins and the likes best consult the bible on these things Harold Magee's – On food and Cooking – a reference book that will serve your kitchen well for life -  well worth getting.

The vinegar ice cream I originally tasted used a malt vinegar. The first time I attempted this I tried balsamic vinegar given its affinity to strawberries but discovered that actually it was far too subtle. You need something much more astringent. In this instance I actually used the rather good Llewellyn`s Irish Balsamic Cider Vinegar. It actually takes a surprising amount of vinegar to add the required flavor and bite to this.

The basic parfait recipe is taken from the excellent Ices – just keep adding your vinegar at the end till it tastes right - bearing in mind that cold dulls flavor. The strawberry champagne jelly is from Gordon Ramsay's book Just Deserts.

Cheese