Lunch for 16 when its so hot that everything melts

[with apologies for terrible formatting - I really must move away from Blogger as a platform soon. Any suggestions welcome!]


This is England.  When it snows, it paralyses the country, when it rains no one notices because it always rains.  And on a small number of days - by small I mean approx 0.0027% - La soleil brille.  All shops selling ice, beer or sunglasses log their biggest revenues of the year.  And those of us at home cooking realise our fridges don't really work very well, because most of the time they don't actually need to. 

So today I was cooking for 16,  6 of whom were little people, and it was 32 degrees in the garden, and I found out that some things work fine in this situation and some things start well and end badly (meringue cake).  Lentil salads kept overnight in a fridge set to 'slightly lower than room temperature but not much' are ok, esp with a little blue cheese that you kind of want to get in amongst it.  Fennel also fares very well, being a sturdy kind of a vegetable, as do pre-boiled new potatoes.  Here is my grub recipe lineup for the lunch, with a temperature rating as follows:

one star *:  only cook if you have a fridge or will eat it straight away. Otherwise it will melt, collapse, grow bacteria or taste vile

two stars **:  can cook if you don't have a fridge, but it may be to your advantage to get your guests slightly drunk before they start eating

three stars***: seriously it really doesn't matter, just cook the damn thing.



Dishes for buffet-style lunch:
1) Barbecue leg of lamb ***.  I mixed up rosemary, a whole bulb of garlic, some smoked salt (YES its pretentious but it tastes good) and some olive oil in my trusty pestle & mortar, rubbed it on the lamb and put on the BBQ for about 20-25 mins.  Olive oil dripping on a barbecue can be hazardous and you will definitely need a glass of water on standby to hurl at the flames until that stops (side effect: volcanic ash cloud!). 


I had already got someone else to do the hard work with the lamb -  Perry, my local butcher who is also a commonwealth games-level boxer converted the leg of lamb to butterfly by taking the bones out.  Perry was once deboning a leg of lamb and his customer announced that he was a surgeon and had never seen such fine cutting, suggesting Perry might think about a new medical career.  So basically, get someone else to do this unless you really do want to, or you're a surgeon.



 
2) salads: lentil, red onion, mint, gorgonzola **.  Cook the puy lentils and then cool down by running some cool water through them.  Mix with fresh mint, thinly sliced red onion, a little gorgonzola, some lemon juice and olive oil, and whatever else you like (eg butter beans here).




3) salads: fennel etc ***.  finely slice a couple of bulbs of fennel, chop a cucumber, mix with lots of dill and a bit of yoghurt (greek probably) and some finely grated garlic if you fancy it.  But put the yoghurt on at the last minute.





4) salads: potato salad *** if mayo added at the end.  pre boil the potatoes, if you like.  Make some mayonnaise by whisking three egg yolks with some salt, mustard powder and a tiny but of vinegar. Carry on whisking (preferably electric whisk), as you add olive oil as slowly as you can. the recipe says a ridiculous amount of oil, 500ml or more, but in fact I added about 250ml and it was nicely eggy and perfect for a potato salad. Before adding to the potatoes I chopped loads of herbs very finely (in this case dill, tarragon and chives but any soft stemmed herbs will do) and also mixed in some rocket with the potatoes.


5) salads: mozzarella and tomato with basil*. Er, I laid out some mozarella and beef tomatoes. With basil.


6) pudding (a) - almond tart with raspberries***. Am saving up the recipe for next post!

7)  pudding (b) meringue cake*.  Cook a victoria sponge (in brief, weigh 4 eggs in their shells and weigh the same weight of butter, self raising flour and caster sugar.  Cream the butter and sugar with an electric whisk, then add a spoonful of eggy flour / floury egg to combine up to a batter.  Put in cake tin, try to smooth the top so that there is a dip in the middle, put in oven at about 180' for about 30 mins or until a fork comes out clean.  Then, whip double cream and use as a filling with strawberries, then on the very top add meringue that you made using the leftover egg whites from the mayonnaise. For the meringue (uncooked by the way), whisk eggwhites as hard as possible for slightly longer than you think you need to, when they start looking creamy rather than frothy. add sugar and whisk again for longer than you think you need to.  You should be able to sculpt Munch's The Scream in the mixture, ie it basically holds its shape with slight gravity effect. 

Marco Pierre White's Yew Tree: when the cat's away the Monday chef will play

I don’t normally go in for celebrity chef–branded restaurants, particularly ones where the proprietor has more books + restaurants combined than he (sadly never she) has fingers on his hands. However, a month-in-the-planning treat visit to the Yew Tree (proprietor Marco Pierre White) with two fantastic girlfriends was full of promise.

• Monday night, so an outside chance of NOT getting the table by the bogs TICK.
  
• Rural location so free of leather banquettes and Orla Kiely ripoff wallpaper TICK.
  
• Livestock and watercress countryside so good local ingredients TICK.
  

And to be fair, we had a really brilliant evening, although maybe not because of Mr Pierre White’s personal oversight of the establishment. Talking of which I am resisting asking google “Is Marco Pierre White’s surname ‘White’ or ‘Pierre White’? Why couldn’t he choose a middle name that is OBVIOUSLY a first name or surname?

Anyway so to keep it brief, we had some pleasant dishes in a lovely surrounding, with service that really did make our evening. But if someone were to challenge us to summarise our dishes in four words each it would go something like this:

· Mussels starter: pledge of no seasoning.

· Chicory, brie, red onion tart starter: Jus Roll, savoury jam

· Pheasant egg something starter: fair cop, very nice

· Steak and chips: crunchy chips fried 7x!!

· Fish stew: remember avoid fish Mondays

· Roast saddle and confit shoulder of lamb: inappropriately fussy, yet tasty

· Sticky toffee pudding: yum diabetes on plate

· Chocolate Chip muffin with mint choc chip ice cream: baked last Thursday perhaps?

The big controversy was the chocolate chip muffin. Strategy meeting: how should we overcome our Britishness and point out that £7.50 for a petrol station Galaxy muffin that had been left to solidify in the bottom of the Yew Tree aga for four days was Inaccurate Pricing?

My technique (not employed that often but important to resist being ripped off) is to turn it around (in a friendly way) to the person serving the table, for example “we’ve had a great meal but wondered if the bread might be a bad batch, only because we found this mouse head in it, what do you think?” or in extreme low quality-to-price ratio “tell me honestly, between you and me, if you had a pet dog, what would be running through your head just before feeding him this meal?”.

And, bless, our very diplomatic muffin-disgustingness question was met with “shall I bring some pouring cream for the muffin?” which was an excellent reply because it shut us up good and proper.

We have since heard that MPW himself has never actually visited the Yew Tree since he stopped living in the lovely 17^th century house in which the restaurant is run. In fact, rumour tells that he never cooks except when on TV, which is a shame. If his brand promise is fantastic cooking with great fresh ingredients, he has let the franchise-runners put money (£45 a head with not much booze!) above this promise, which will surely catch up with you in the end? Never mind, there is always the pouring cream to cover it all up.