It's Saturday morning and I'm at work in my office at Pembroke. Today we are hosting The Master's Society Lunch which is quite a big event. So, my son is at home playing on the Wii instead of at football practice and considering how cold it is it's properly the best place for him;-)
Whether or not tradition plays a part in modern menu planning is anyone’s guess, but nevertheless, you’d be hard pressed to find a restaurant not serving fish on a Friday!
Pembroke is no different, and we began last night’s dinner with a smoked salmon and guacamole Verrine. This is another of Frank's recipes and looks nice, but mixing cream cheese with avocado is not guacamole Frank!
Maybe it tastes nice, maybe it looks good, and maybe everyone enjoyed it, but, and its a big but, if I'd made guacamole like that back in the States they'd have been real trouble;-)
The verrine was made by mixing avocado and cream cheese for the bottom layer, and mixing smoked salmon and cream cheese again for the top. A garnish of diced avocado, fresh smoked salmon and cress finished off the presentation.
For the main course, we served home salted cod with roasted tomatoes, chickpeas and anchovy dressing. This is a very Mediterranean dish, just right for light eating. The secret lies in salting the cod yourself so you get a firm but moist piece of fish with a slightly salty taste.
The cod was first coated with a mix of sea salt, sugar and citrus zest for three hours, before being rinsed and patted dry. The chickpeas were cooked with fennel, onions, garlic and orange. The tomatoes were roasted and peeled before being mixed with the chickpeas, roasted red peppers and kale. We finished the dish with anchovy dressing.
After eating all that fish I thought our guests might appreciate a little chocolate. So for dessert we served a Chocolate Souffle Tart with Milk Chocolate Malted Ice Cream. Malt is powdered milk and used in making traditional American milk shakes; makes great ice cream. I'm eating on of these right now and it's really quite good!
Thokoleza ukudla!
The chocolate souffle tart yesterday was delicious, as was most of the main, but sadly I and several of my dining friends were unable to finish the cod as it was far too salty. This was a real shame as it was otherwise really nicely cooked and the other flavours in it were great, but they were pushed into the background by the dominance of salt. We'd give the whole of the rest of the meal a big thumbs up, just less salt next time, please!
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