Dinner For Four, 2 November 2018

November 04, 2018 / Geoff Griffiths

Here’s one of my posts which has a prime objective. Whatever else you take from it, if you don’t invite some friends round and offer them some food from your kitchen, I will have failed in that objective. And don’t wriggle out of it by arguing over the standard of your own cooking. If your skills are better than mine, I salute you. If you suggest that you can’t match what Mrs. Cheoff and I produce then you will miss a trick. Good, proper friends come to share everything you have to offer… any that don’t appreciate your food efforts can always be ‘Muted’ on social media and in real life!
I hope we understand each other. Get busy… but put on your apron first!

This was our menu for last Friday’s meal. It was very much appreciated and we enjoyed making it and eating it. And, yes… we were knackered and did bugger all on Saturday.

Amuse Bouche

Smoked haddock, curried eggs, shallot rings

No recipe for this one. I was in the middle of ‘mucking about a bit’ with the three main elements… as can be seen from my header picture where a canapé version was experimented with. Expect a post with more details soon.

Here is my plating on the night.

Starter

Carrot cooked in chicken fat with pickled carrots & crispy chicken skin
From Paul Foster at Salt, Stratford-upon-Avon. We enjoyed this as part of the tasting menu on our first visit. It’s published in the Great British Chefs cookbook. Chef Foster contributed this as one of a small number of original recipes which are not available on the Great British Chefs website. So I’ll leave you to discover its glories by buying a copy of the book!

Soft chunks of carrot imbued with chicken fat, pickled and raw carrots, buttery croutons and crispy chicken skin. Pretty much all the flavours of a roast chicken dinner in a bowl. No ‘meat’… but still not vegetarian.

Main

‘Somerset’ pork (fillet, mushrooms, cider, cream), Spiced red cabbage, Buttery mashed potatoes… with extra butter

Over to Mrs. Cheoff for the stove duties on this one. I’ve cooked it myself but not as much as she has. Not sure if the cabbage exerted some strange colour spectrum for my photo… we did not eat this under ultra-violet light!

The recipe is a much repeated one. Out of a Marks & Sparks cookbook from the mid eighties. Here is the cutting which we still have but hardly need to refer to after all these years.