What to cook for friends if you are hungover

Thursday night.  Dinner with two friends who like wine.  Start with Martinis. Drink lots of wine. Drink Calvados. Get Scooterman home. Mr Scooterman is very nice and interesting, originally from Afghanistan, makes me realise how indescribably fortunate I am in so many ways to be a woman living in England in the 21st Century. He is a liberal guy, got dumped by his last girlfriend when he encouraged her to continue her education and have a career. His sister back home wasn't allowed to stay in education beyond 16.  He thinks this is wrong and can't believe it when people have education and opportunities on a plate and choose to be lazy.  He's right.  Ironically half of his job is driving people who have drunk too much home, so I can't be the first person to be embarrassed by my alcoholic (and general) indulgence.


Friday night, friends are coming round, who also love wine.  Note to self: never schedule dinner two nights in a row with wine buffs.  The state of me from the night before means that my ideal menu would be as follows:
1. to start.  popcorn (salt), with marmite bruschetta
2.  main course.  spaghetti carbonara with mashed potato, and maybe garlic bread.
3. pudding. butterscotch Angel Delight with Mr Kipling's French Fancies on the side.
A scientific look at the menu above leads me to believe that I crave carbohydrate, salt, sugar and fat when I am hungover.  Also Vitamin b (in marmite) which I believe is depleted after a right pissup.


Now, I thought that might be a slightly embarrassing menu (although I wonder if it might be received with secret enjoyment) so I altered it as follows:
1.  to nibble:  Marmite cashews. awe. some.
2.  to start: porcini risotto. Still has key elements of seriously unhealthiness, but is dressed up like a posh dish. recipe below.
3.  main: tiger prawns a la plancha (grilled on a disposable BBQ) with home made mayo and potato salad and green salad.  This is an interactive dish, I can reliably inform you that a kilo of prawns for four people takes approximately 1.5 hours to get through and is probably slightly too many prawns.
4.  pudding.  chocolate and cherry tart with almond pastry.  Actually this was quite nice.  recipe below.


Porcini risotto

Dried porcini mushrooms are just as good as the fresh ones and about a zillionth of the price.  In fact I wonder if they might even be better as they lack the slight sliminess that real porcini can get (maybe I have been shopping at the wrong places). And the added bonus is that when you pour boiling water over dried porcini to rehydrate them, you get a readymade stock. 


So, for this risotto I fried some finely sliced leeks in a butter/olive oil mix and also friend the arborio rice with the leeks, for about 5 minutes. This 'toasting' of the rice pops the starch in the rice and makes it more receptive to the liquid when added.  Then, pour in the mushroom-stock gradually, every time continuing to stir until the liquid is absorbed, then topping up with more. After about 15 minutes, maybe more depending on the rice, it's cooked. Add the rehydrated porcini, chopping finely first.  At this point you add in as much grated parmesan, butter, salt as your conscience will allow.  You can also add all sorts of other things - shelled broad beans are particularly good, petit pois, oregano, whatever according to your taste but probably not tomatoes which would upset the creamyness.

Chocolate, cherry and almond tart
Ingredients (sorry I always forget to list ingredients, am not a very accurate cook).
For the crust: 
120g ground almonds
100g caster sugar
110g plain flour
175 cold butter cut into cubes
1 egg yolk
a splash of water


Put all these ingredients in a food processor and whizz until combined into a slightly cohesive (but not a ball) of pastry.  Press into a springform tin at the base and up the sides and bake at about 180 degrees for about 20 minutes to get your pastry case.

For the filling:
cherries
200g dark chocolate
4 eggs
75g butter
50g plain flour
80g caster sugar


De-stone the cherries, you could pre-soak in booze if you like.  Plop them on the bottom of the pastry case.
Melt the butter and chocolate together. Ideally you should do this in a bain-marie )in a bowl hovering over a saucepan of boiling water, don't let the water actually touch the bottom of the bowl). BUT you can sneakily do this in the microwave, just underplay it so that the chocolate is only just starting to melt. a minute will be more than enough.
Mix the butter/choc with the rest of the ingredients, give it all a good beating with a wooden spoon, pour over the cherries and cook at 180 degrees for about 20 minutes.  It might be a bit gooey on the inside which is not necessarily a bad thing. If you test it with a fork, as I did, then please note that the fork marks stay as you can see from my photo.


Enjoy and I hope your hangovers are better than mine!