Saturday 17 November - A Bit of a Dinner Party

My lovely brother was down for the weekend, so I decided to cook a bit of a special meal for him.

For starters I played around with chicken liver pate as I had bought a lovely jar I wanted to use.

I cooked the livers with onions, garlic, thyme and brandy, then whizzed in the food processor and forced through a sieve (with a credit card)

I then added a selection of mushrooms that I had fried - I used some girolles, chestnut mushrooms, some frozen ceps, and some dried ceps - these were folded into the chicken livers.

 

Very little butter went into this, and the mushrooms padded it out to keep it lower fat. Then it went into my beautiful jar, and was chilled, then served with home made bread, cornichons and caper berries.

 

Main course was duck breasts - these were marinaded in white wine, before being fried to colour, then finished off in the oven. Served with crushed root vegetables (sweet potato, celeriac and carrots) and potatoes roasted in the fat from the duck. The sauce was the reduced white wine marinade, duck stock and green peppercorns.

 

Next we had creme caramel with some fresh fruit, and some cream for the boys.

Finally we had a cheeseboard and large amounts of port!