First Foodie Post

Yesterday I had my first January Dinner Party. I was so pleased with what I cooked that I really wanted to blog to about it. I’m gutted that I didn’t manage to take final photographs! Once my guests were around I forgot about photographing as I was having such a great time. (That and the fact that its always a rush to co-ordinate/get things on the plate and I was feeling flustered as I almost forgot the crucial broccoli!)

The Starter: Mackerel Pate

• A pack of peppered smoked mackerel (around 500g) with the skins peeled off
• A pack of cream cheese (250g)
• 2 sticks of celery
• A punnet of cress
• Juice and zest of 1 lemon
• I was planning on putting parsley in but I forgot…

Instructions:

1. Put it all in the food processor
2. Blend
3. Serve (or refrigerate until you need it)

I kind off stole this from a Jamie Oliver recipe (minus quite a few lemons, the man is citrus crazy), but I didn’t read the instructions which it turns out WASN’T just blend it all together, I’m not even sure it was all supposed to go in the pate… but it tasted really delicious…. so all good there! I served it with a pot of celery sticks, some crackers and some part baked rolls. Went down a treat 🙂

Main: Stuffed chicken breast, dauphinoise potatoes and broccoli (serves 4… generously)

Chicken: 

• 4 chicken breasts
• tub of ricotta
• about half a bag of fresh spinach
• a bag of pine nuts
• 8 slices of parma ham
• white wine
• chicken stock
• (The photo is pre-fluid addition + pre-cooking)

1. Chop the spinach up into tiny tiny bits
2. Mix spinach + ricotta + pine nuts in a bowl – decide the ratios depending on how it looks and personal preference
3. Season
4. Lay 2 parma ham on your meat board, place chicken breast on them + score open
5. Fill with a quarter of the cheese mixture (or as much as you can get it!)
6. Wrap with the parma ham to try and contain the stuffing
7. Place in an appropriate dish
8. Repeat with the other chicken breasts
9. Mix 100-200mls of chicken stock with some white wine and pour over breasts so they are sitting in a bit of fluid (not drowning though – I had to pour fluid out as I over did it!
10. Cover with foil, cook for 20 mins covered, 15 mins uncovered at 180 degrees C

This recipe I kind of amalgamated lots of recipes because I couldn’t find what I wanted. I remembered having the chicken with stuffing but no ham at my parents and thinking… if this was wrapped in prosciutto it would be even more amazing… but when i googled it parma ham seemed to be used more, although never with quite the stuffing I wanted. I only found one recipe that suggested the stock which I leapt on because I was really worried about it being too dry especially as I wasn’t serving any sauce.

Potatoes:

I take no claim to this unfortunately as I copied it 100% from BBC Good food (one of my favourite online recipe resources.) The only thing I did was up the garlic quantity!

My photo is pre-cheese addition and pre-cooking. I’m so gutted I didn’t take one when it came out it was so golden and creamy…. numnumnum

 

 

The Wine

I know barely anything about wine, I don’t even know how to talk about them let alone know which I like, but I am trying to teach myself so bear with me… They were all three completely delicious. (Much to my surprise as I am very fussy about white wine)

I cooked with Tohora Point Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. I realise that this is really too nice to cook with but it was only a splash (it was my only white wine) and the rest was drunk.

My lovely neighbours then also brought round a bottle of Schloss Johannisberg 2014 Reisling Kabinett Feinherb… I wine I had gifted them from south Germany but they saved to drink with us, and a Castillo de Albai 2015 Rioja Viura Blanco

There was a shop bought cheesecake for desert… but no one could eat any we were all so full!!!

Hope you enjoyed my first post about food!

TTFN x