In July this year was the first time I had the chance to cook with a group of friends, something that I’ve been wanting to do for some time. It’s always nice to meet up with your friends and go to a restaurant for dinner, but I think it’s better when you can all sit down and enjoy the food that was prepared by those friends.
This wasn’t a special occasion really, just an excuse to think of some nice courses, goto some local places to buy the ingredients, and spend a Saturday afternoon preparing and cooking, then enjoying the fruit of our fayres later in the evening.
For this meal there would be 6 of us dining, the most I’ve been involved in cooking for to date, although admittedly not single handed. The menu we decided on was;
- Curried Butternut Squash Volute & home made rolls
- Pea, broad bean and mint Risotto
- Pork 3 ways
- Lemon Posset
- Macadamia and caramel baked cheesecake
All in all the prep and cooking took around 5 hours, with 2 of us doing the the 3 courses, and one person each doing a dessert (so 4 cooks in the kitchen, thankfully it was plenty big enough to cope with the movement of bodies, ingredients and utensils!!)
The food, even if we say so ourselves, was bloomin’ great – I would reckon a few of the courses were on par with some of the plates I’ve had from quality restaurants. All 6 of us had a thoroughly good time devouring it, and all got full – we had to forego the cheese course as we were so full!
The recipes for each course is shown below….
Curried Butternut Squash Volute
- 1 Butternut squash, halved, de-seeded and the flesh scored near to the skin in cubes
- 50g (we didn’t measure so guessing here) of unsalted butter
- Garam Marsala (medium sized pinch, enough for background taste for this and the spices below)
- Curry powder
- Fennel Seeds
- Star Anise
- Bacon Lardons
- Pork Stock ** (see below for this)
- Smoked Oil
Once you’ve prepared the squash, mix the butter and remaining ingredients into a smooth paste and rub liberally into the squash flesh. Put the 2 halves of squash into a roasting tin and roast at a high heat (prob 220′C) until the flesh is soft.
When the squash is cooked, let it cool down enough to handle and scoop out the flesh. Place into a blender and blend until smooth, adding enough stock throughout to achieve the required consistency – this should be smooth and not too thick, something you could easily suck up using a straw.
Place a few bacon lardons into the bottom of a medium sized bowl, pour the volute in and drop a few spots of the oil onto the surface. Serve with the warm bread rolls.
Pork Stock
- leftover bones from the pork belly (pre-roasted as part of the belly cooking)
- roughly cut onions, carrots and celery
- bay leaves
- peppercorns
- star anise
- salt and pepper to flavour
- water
We used this stock for the volute, risotto and to make a jus, so it tied the first 3 courses together. The pot we were using held about 7L of water, and we let the stock simmer throughout the afternoon (about 3 hours or so), reducing by about 1/3. For the volute and risotto we ladled it directly in to the ingredients. For the jus we strained the remaining stock through some muslin and thickened with a small amount of cornflour.
Risotto
- Aborio Rice
- Onions and Celery (finely chopped)
- Frozen Peas
- Broad Beans (cooked then shelled)
- Mascarpone cheese
- Parmesan Cheese
- Garlic
- Pork Stock
- Butter
- Seasoning
Soften the onion and celery in a large frying pan. Once ready, add the rice and coat everything in the oil. After a few minutes of stirring the rice add a ladle of stock. The secret to cooking good risotto is to keep stirring (this releases the starch from the rice, making it gloopy) and feeding stock in controlled measures. As you see the stock disappear, just add another ladleful. Repeat this until the rice is “al dente”. When it reaches this stage, remove from the heat and add the peas, beans, mascapone and parmesan. Stir everything around. Once the cheese has melted in, get a large knob of butter, place in the middle and put the frying pan lid on – this lets the butter melt and the whole thing gets tied together with the flavours.
For serving we used a ring mould, topped the rice with micro herbs, poured some lemon oil dressing round the side and did some home made parmesan crisps (this was my first attempt and they weren’t great. Basically shave parmesan, add some seasoning, place a heap of the cheese about 3″ apart from the next and bake. Next time I will grill them)
Pork 3 ways
- Pressed Belly pork (with the skin scored and bones still attached)
- Pork Loin
- Parsnips (for the puree)
- Chorizo
- Carrots
- Broccoli
- Crackling
- Pork Jus
- 2 Apples, peeled and cut into segments
- Brown sugar
- Butter
For the Pork Loin sauce mix the following together
- 3 tbsp Dijon Mustard
- 2 tbsp White Wine Vinegar
- 1 tbsp Olive Oil
The pork element was served 3 ways in this dish; pressed belly pork, sliced pork loin and sauted chorizo. We bought all the ingredients at a local farm shop, and they were top quality. We asked the butcher for a piece of belly pork big enough for 6 portions (each portion of belly was about 2.5″ sq per person).
The Parsnip Puree
The parsnip puree was made by roasting 10 large parsnips, drizzled with oil, pepper and salt, until soft enough to easily stick a fork into the thickest part. When cooked, allow to cool until ok to handle and scoop out the inner flesh. Pop the parsnip into a food blender and blend to a medium puree using the stock to help loosen it. Prior to serving, warm through in a saucepan and add 50ml of double cream and season to taste. Blob a heaped tablespoon onto the plate, and do a fancy chef smear.
The Pork Jus
So, the leftover stock at this point has been passed thru cloth to remove any bits and pieces, and then slowly simmered to reduce further. When we had enough volume wise, we added some more butter, checked the seasoning and then thickened it up with a little bit of cornflour. We aren’t looking for a gravy consistency here, something a little looser.
The Crackling
For the crackling ask your butcher for some extra crackling, and you should get some free of charge. We then sewed one sheet of this (about A4 size) onto a grill tray. We then oiled and seasoned and placed into a very hot oven until the crackling started to bubble up. To make things easier, you should cut the uncooked skin into strips, and then fix these in place on the grill rack as when we tried to cut the cooked crackling, it just shattered. It wasn’t a disaster, the crackling was very tasty, but it would look better on the plate as a rectangular strip.
Caramelized Apples
Cut the apples into eighths and leave in water, with lemon juice to stop browning. Heat some butter, about 50g or so, in a frying pan, then when it has melted gently add the apple slice. Add the brown sugar, enough to give a good dusting on each segment, and gently fry them. Turn them over during the cooking process and once they are looking medium brown, remove the pan from the heat and let them carry on cooking in the residual heat. Be careful when cooking with sugar as it gets VERY hot!!!
The Belly Pork
Place the belly pork onto a roasting tray, oil lightly and season. Cover with tin foil and roast at 140′C for 240 mins. When cooked, remove from the oven and remove the bones (used in the stock). Let it cool down a little and then get something really heavy (around 4kg) to use as a weight to press the pork. Leave this pressing for at least 1 hour. Once it’s been pressed, cut the pork into individual portions. This pork needs cooking a second time, which we did when we cooked the Pork Loin.
The Pork Loin
For the pork loin, simply sear in a hot pan, “paint” the sauce on, and roast for 30 mins at 230′C. When cooked, slice the loin into 1″ thick fillets and gently pan fry to brown off (when we cooked this, the pork loin was moist and still a bit pink in the middle). Let both meats rest for at least 15 mins.
While these 2 meats are resting, saute the chorizo until it starts to bleed oil and cook the vegetables. The carrots and broccoli should only take about 15mins (carrots the full time and broccoli less)
