Birthday 1

As I am in the USA for my birthday this year we decided to hold my first birthday party (well of this year anyway!) tonight. Really it was just an excuse to wear my tiara again, decorate the table, christen my elegant new crystal Villeroy & Boch candelabra and to cook the fabulous beef fillet with a gratin of mushrooms and sautéed new potatoes from Gordon Ramsay’s F Word.
LLcT had a few friends around (Scruffy or Fluffy and the finely eyebrowed JP) so we had a full house to help me celebrate!

We started off with he samphire we picked up on Bank holiday Monday. Samphire was a new experience for me. It is cooked like asparagus and served with lashings of unsalted butter. You eat it by picking up each sprig, biting gently through each piece and pulling the succulent flesh off with your teeth and then discarding the inner core. We were perhaps a little generous with the portions of samphire; we started to wonder if we’d ever get through it all but I really enjoyed it.

The beef fillet with a gratin of mushrooms and sautéed new potatoes was really gorgeous – the execution was slightly complicated by the fact we had two slightly conflicting versions of the recipe but D and I worked it all out. It was a truly tasty first birthday celebration meal.

And then we had a heavily candled M&S decadent chocolate cake to finish it all off.

Happy almost birthday to me!

Update: I just had to have another do and it was even better this time around!