Fit for a Queen

After the Great British Menu winners had fed the Queen in June D and I decided that we wanted to recreate the Queen's birthday meal for our delectation. It's quite an ambitious menu but with a couple of J & D shortcuts, I'm sure we'll have no problems.

The menu (as voted by the Great British public) is:

Smoked salmon with blinis, Irish soda bread, woodland sorrel and cress
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Pan-fried
turbot with cockles and oxtail
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Loin of roe venison with rösti, celeriac,
cabbage, carrot and game gravy
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Custard Tart

We'll probably slip a Great British cheese board in there somewhere as well. I guess we will decide whether to go the French route and eat the cheese with the red wine before the dessert of as it's a British meal do the English thing and finish on cheese after the dessert.

The grand meal is taking place next week at the long table at the Cambridge palace. We decided we needed a theme for such an auspicious occasion. The first idea was "red, white and blue" to go all "patriotic". But one of our party just doesn't do blue. Okay, that would be me then! So after further consideration we then went for black tie and diamonds, hmmm much more manageable! Tiaras are optional, though in my case totally compulsory and to get in the mood I intend to cook in mine! I'm sure it's all going to be extremely tasty, fabulous, very sparkly and just totally fit for a Queen.

Never knowingly under catered, me!

I consulted a few cookbooks in the usual pre preparation for a culinary extravaganza. I thought as I had a picnic to plan that David Herbert’s ‘Picnics’ book I’d recently purchased would be a great start. But even though I like the book I wasn’t inspired enough. Maybe this was because I’d already decided to make a creamy leek tart from Simon Hopkinson’s ‘Roast Chicken and Other Stories’ and a Parma ham, hard boiled egg and cheese bread from Jamie Oliver’s Happy Days with the Naked Chef. I’d already got some mini smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels from M&S so the smoked salmon spirals from ‘Picnics’ seemed smoked salmon overkill even for me.
Eventually I also settled upon a Camembert baked in a box with hot potatoes to dip into the liquid cheese centre, chicken drumsticks with pesto cream (inspired by Olive magazine Aug 06), dough balls dipped in garlic butter and the inevitable mâche and balsamic. And for dessert, I’d gone for a tarte au citron and some chocolate pots. All my plans got jotted down on a little visual reminder which I use to ensure that I haven't forgotten anything. Unfortunately what I have seemed to have forgotten is that I was preparing a picnic for three and not a small village. D made me see sense and we dropped the chicken and pesto cream and dough balls quite early on in the preparation.
It was fortunate as the bread recipe would have happily fed a family for a week but I’d hate to think of anyone going hungry so I continued creating a mountain of picnic food.
The bread was particularly pleasing as (sorry H, turn away now) it looked rather like a bread snake had consumed a load of hard-boiled eggs, which in some sense it had. It looked even better when cut into slices and tasted just wonderful. I would heartily recommend baking bread with Parma ham inside; it permeated the entire bread – very tasty indeed! The leek tart is an old favourite of mine but I very stupidly decided to grab a chilled uncooked pastry case as I was pushed for time. What a mistake! When I blind baked it, it shrank unbelievably until in one place there was no pastry side at all to contain any filling. D had the marvellous idea of an attempt to patch it up with the uncooked bread dough and this helped some but as the whole tart ended up as no big than a fat pancake there wasn’t enough room for the cheesy, creamy, tarragon and leek filling so it was rather a dense leek tart. It tasted okay but normally this tart is a triumph, I won’t be cutting that culinary corner again!
We assembled the red and white chequered tablecloth and napkins, the white strawberry encrusted china plates (I’m not crazy about paper/plastic plates or plastic cutlery!), the spikes to stick in the ground to hold the wine glasses (such a boon, I’d urge you to get some), the fabulous Cath Kitson stripy picnic chair, an assortment of cutlery, corkscrews, cake slice, bread knife etcetera and fortunately an umbrella. And of course not forgetting the lantern and its crook and citronella tea lights to burn in it.
Everything was delicious but being a typical English picnic it rained! And I admit, in the end there was a little too much food but I have a reputation to protect and I’m never knowingly under catered, me!

Duck-tacular!

Well D-Day is here, time to release the ducks!
I think I’ve worked out the menu, but there’s always a chance I’ll have a wild last minute alteration! Ocado have done their part and now I just have to lock myself away in the kitchen and create!
And I have to scatter the black ducks etcetera in an artful manner on the table.
As it transpires - the menu turns out to be exactly as it was originally conceived:

Duck carpaccio and plum salad
Duck, spring onion and hoison sauce
tart
Duck en croute with asparagus and Jersey Royals
Lemon posset
Chocolate and ginger cheesecake à la duck

This was all washed down with a lip-smacking Chambord and Champagne cocktail.

I think it all went very well, I was very pleased with the carpaccio - made with D and I's patented mini rolling pin method! The colour was really good against the plums and green leaves.
The duck tarts made from a base inspired by the recipe in the new Gordon Ramsay book which I thought may be a little too brown were just perfect - well done Gordon, I'll never doubt you again!
I hadn't been able to find a suitable duck cutter for the en croute nee wellington so I went for free-hand and they turned out pretty okay.
I thought the posset was so refreshing and as I couldn't face any cheesecake until the next day, I couldn't report that I am still not crazy about cheesecake until Sunday. I enjoyed picking off the ginger though!

I have a sneaky suspicion that I’ll be finding little black ducks forever! Well never mind – it was a duck of a good do!

D-day - 7

Only a week to go before my duck-tacular meal in celebration of D & MC’s birthdays. I have been immersed in duck recipes and making little black duck table confetti (I can’t imagine why that’s not available on the marketplace). I am not sure if my plan for Duck Wellington will work (how like Puss in Boots does that sound?), but it’s been fun doing the research.