For tonight's Formal Hall we decided to tackle a recipe from Mr Ramsey's 3-Star Chef cookbook. Duck breast with crushed peas, spinach, pommes de terre puree, glazed onions, salsify and Madeira jus. This dish alone would have been difficult, but due to madness I decided to add a tricky amuse busche and Moules Mariniere to the meal.
The deep fried gruyere cheese was tonight's amuse bouche, we served the cheese on a cocktail pick balanced on a shot glass containing a herb dressing. We only have 100 glasses so dropping one was not an option! A lot of these small hot dishes aren't really designed to be served to large numbers of guest; however I had written and published the menu before the penny dropped!
Mussels are an easy dish to prepare in a restaurant, you use one pan per portion, add wine and onions etc, and cover with a lid. Two minutes later the mussels are done. Deciding to serve mussels to almost 100 people was not quite as easy; the mussels all had to be cooked in one pan at the same time and then 'evenly' portioned. I hope those of you who dined tonight enjoyed the mussels and had enough of them to eat!
The duck was probably the easiest part of the meal. we cooked the duck sous vide and then crisped the skin in a hot pan prior to slicing. I really like the colour and presentation of this dish, I guess this is a reflection on Gordon Ramsey's creativity.
Tonight's sweet was a pear batter cake served with apple sorbet and hazelnut cream. This recipe is from one of my favourite cooking blogs 'Chocolate and Zucchini'. Clotilde Dusoulier, the lady who writes this blog has received many awards and much recognition for her great writing and recipes.
Happy Eating!
Once in a while, I enjoy going out to a really nice restaurant, and having a fine dinner. Sometimes the great tastes of the food and sauces hit my taste buds (hard to explain) so hard it actually hurts. But the portions are so small. It seems like the better the establishment, the less food you get. I realize the richness of some dishes give the feeling of fullness, but as soon as I sober-up, I'm still hungry.
ReplyDeleteMaybe some of us should just stick to our steak and potatoes...
I was at this Formal and it was one of my favourite menus - so thanks! :) The "amuse bouche" was a little confusing though - it was quite difficult to dip in the dressing so I resorted to drinking the rest of the contents of the shot glass. :S Maybe next time we could have instructions with it? :p
ReplyDelete