Last Night's Formal Hall 02/02

Tuesday's Formal Hall began with smoked salmon and goat's cheese cakes coated in Panko breadcrumbs. The smoked salmon and goat's cheese was mixed with crisp bacon lardons, spring onions, capers and pepper before being coated in Panko. What is Panko? Panko is a variety of bread crumb used in Japanese cuisine as a crunchy coating for fried foods such as tonkatsu. Panko is made from bread without crusts, thus it has a crisper, airier texture than most types of breading found in Western cuisine. Americans are increasingly familair with panko as many US restaurants use it to bread fish.

The fishy/cheesey cakes looked like.....

The recipe for this came from the Geronimo cookbook mentioned on Monday.

After the starter came an interesting intermezo, red radish and melon in watermelon jus.

This small dish consisted of watermelon, honeydew melon, sliced radish and chilli garnished with dried pancetta. The melon is scooped into balls with the leftover flesh pureed, juiced and poured over the radish. This was another recipe from Terrines and Verrines.

The main course consisted of free-range supreme of chicken with bacon, roasted sweet potato, fresh figs and brandy sauce. Looks very, very tasty!

For the sweet we served quite possibly the dish of the week. Chocolate and star anise truffle cake with fennel ice cream. This might sound odd but take my word for it, sweet fennel ice cream is amazing! It's taken me 43 years to realise the potential of mixing vegetables with ice cream-the flavour is so so subtle and the natural anise flavour of the fennel is truely sublime when mixed with chocolate.

My God, this sweet was sooooo good!