Plan Ahead…

I have always maintained that 90% of the success of a good meal is what goes on hours before it’s put on the table. I am not someone who stays in the kitchen while everybody else quaffs the champagne and scoffs the apperitifs! I like to grab my share while there’s still some left, and have a nice relaxed conversation with my guests. Sure, there are moments I have to pop into the kitchen to keep an eye on something, but I minimise it by preparing as much as possible beforehand.

You know that rectangular beast that stands in the corner of the worktop – it’s called a microwave – make use of it! It’s designed to make life easy, so take advantage. Let me give you an example… mashed potatoes. Make them well before your guests arrive and put them in the serving dish you are going to use. Cover with clingfilm and put them to one side. As you finish preparing the main course, ready to serve, just pop the dish in the microwave for two or three minutes and your mashed potatoes will be perfect and hot. You can do the same with almost any vegetable.

salade des gourmetsPreparation really is 90% of the job!  One of the recipies I love is Salade des Gourmets which is extremely simple, but has a lot of component parts like foie gras, smoked salmon, smoked ham, magret de canard, fresh scallops, fresh prawns. The scallops and prawns are served warm, but everything else is cold, so what I do is cut all the pieces of foie gras, smoked salmon, smoked ham and magret de canard and keep them in the fridge along with the vinaigrette for the salad leaves. Then, when it’s time to plate up, it takes me less than one minute per plate to arrange the leaves, and meats, during which time the scallops and prawns cook quickly and can be added to the plates. 5 minutes for six complex-looking starters is a walk in the park!

The trick is to consider what you are proposing to serve and prepare as much as possible well in advance. Also, you should try and find combinations that make life easier in the kitchen. One of the meals we enjoy includes sauté potatoes, but sauté potatoes must be cooked when needed, otherwise they go soft and soggy. Again, with a little forethought, you can partially cook them and then just throw them in a hot pan for a few minutes at the last moment so they are served nice and crisp.

Most gravies and sauces can be prepared well in advance and reheated just before serving. In fact, you can make gravy days ahead and simply freeze in a container, defrost on the day, then add the juices from your meat to it before serving. Some people parboil and freeze their potatoes to give them a headstart. Others like them cooked from fresh, but you can still get ahead by peeling and cutting them the night before. Keep them in a water-filled container with a generous splash of milk overnight to stop them browning. When you are ready to cook them, rinse first to remove the milk.

Plan ahead, prepare ahead, and your meals will be so much more relaxed and better organised.

Bruno gets his Andouillette

Walking the Dogs by Bruno CavellecOur friends Jill and Bruno are, like us, a French-British couple only the other way round – Jill is British and Bruno is French. They live close to us on the Isle of Man and Bruno is a talented painter. We have one of his prints at home in France – ‘Walking the Dogs’ – that I adore because it really captures the essence of Peel (or Sunset City as the locals like to call it). But not only is Bruno a talented guy, he’s also a very genuine guy – as are they both.

Now, living in another country is fine but can leave you with strange ‘holes’ in your way of living since you begin to miss some of the things you were brought up with. Marie-Danielle and I are lucky because we move between the two cultures twice a year so we can get a regular “fix” of the things we like. For me, it’s little things like Salad Cream, Scotch Eggs and Corned Beef that simply aren’t available in France (I take several bottles of Salad Cream back with me!). It’s not that I miss them terribly, it’s just that it would be nice to be able to treat myself once in a while.For M-D, she misses being able to buy confit and veal (yes, I know veal is available in mainland UK, but this the Isle of Man where, for reasons I have never been able to fathom, veal is not available. But, as I say, M-D and I can ‘catch up’ on a fairly regular basis.

Andouillette_AAAAA_cuiteBruno has the same “challenges” and one of the things he misses is that famously French sausage called andouillette. Andouillette is a coarse-grained sausage made with pork intestines (or chitterlings, as we know them in Britain) pepper, wine, onions, and seasonings. True andouillette is shaped like an oblong tube. If made with the small intestine, it is a plump sausage generally about 1″ (2.5cm) in diameter but often it is much larger and stronger in scent when the colon is used. The andouillette has a strong, distinctive odour related to its intestinal origins and component parts. In fact, it is this odour (and subsequent taste) that turns me off this “delicacy”. I have tried eating bits of them several times, but simply do not appreciate them as many in France do. We all have foods like that, which simply don’t “suit” us.

Although sometimes repellant to the uninitiated, the strong odour and taste of andouillette is prized by its devotees (like Bruno and M-D). Since true andouillette is rarely seen outside France (and certainly never on the Isle of Man!), we brought some back with us and decided to “treat” Bruno to an andouillette evening!

tapenadeWe didn’t do a starter course as such, we simply ‘extended the choices’ of the aperitif. In addition to the usual olives and nibbly biscuits, we provided some slightly more ‘substantial’ fare like quails eggs and toasts with homemade tapenade on them. This way of starting a meall allows friends to sit in comfortable chairs around a low table and chat whilst beginning the eating process.

pan seared tunaAnd so to the pièce de résistance, the main course! I believe I’ve mentioned before on this blog that Jill is not vegetarian, but she won’t eat anything that had four legs when it was alive. She’s fine with poultry and fish so I did Pan-Seared Tuna with Avocado, Soy, Ginger, and Lime for the two of us while Bruno and Marie-Danielle got stuck into their andouillettes. The tuna is easy to prepare and takes 2 minutes to cook. The andouillette is ready-made and cooks almost on its own in a pan for 10-12 minutes. A handful of oven chips, a dish of Dijon mustard and a side salad was all we needed to create a main course that pleased all its participants. It doesn’t have to be complex to be a winner! But have you ever seen a grown man cry!!! Bruno was in Bruno heaven and didn’t want to come back down to planet earth!

We finished off with one our favourites (also extremely simple), Orange Carpaccio with Gâteau Creusois. It was a pleasant evening spent with two good people. I suspect we may be hauling back more andouillettes next time we return from France.

We head back to France in less than two weeks, but we’re not done eating yet! Tomorrow, Steve and Jeanette (brother and sister-in-law) have invited us to a little restaurant perched on the cliffs just down the coast. The day after, Terry and Julie are hosting “the big six” (themselves, us and two other friends from over the road) to dinner at theirs. The following Saturday, Penny and Steve (who joined us on Christmas Eve) have invited us to eat at theirs. And a day or two later, the evening before we leave, we’ll be at Bruno and Jill’s, enjoying crêpes for La Fête de la Chandeleur. And then I go on a diet – that’s if France will let me!

Terry’s Secret Treat!

I noticed a while back that our neighbour on the Isle of Man, Terry, was due for a birthday on January 3rd. Being a sharp-eyed individual, I also spotted that the 3rd fell on a Saturday this year. What better excuse for a party!! So I quiety contacted Terry’s wife, Julie, and we arranged to hijack his evening with a meal at ours. We also invited Kate and Dominic who are close neighbours. This is the “team” that M-D and I refer to as “The Big Six”… Terry, Julie, Kate, Dominic, M-D and myself! In fact, Julie and Kate were friends when they were young then, just a few years ago, discovered that they were living on opposite sides of the same street! Small world.

Christmas WreathWhat we didn’t know when we planned to hijack Terry’s birthday was that it was Julie’s birthday on 31st December. And what they didn’t know (until M-D told them) was that it’s mine on 6th January. So you can imagine that the aperitif was more alcoholic than normal (and normal is pretty good!). We repeated a little fun presentation that we had done at Christmas by making a sausage wreath out of cocktail sausages and that buttery, flaky, Vienna-style pastry used to make croissants. The bow was a red pepper that underwent M-D’s surgical skills and the bowl in the middle held Dijon mustard for dipping. It seemed to be well appreciated since it disappeared at a rapid rate of knots (is that a nautical term?).

Millefeuille de PintadeOur starter for the meal was a combination of Millefeuille de Pintade au Foie de Canard and Roulades de Jambon au Foie de Canard en Gelée au Sauternes. We get these (as you can see from the links) from an excellent supplier called Godard in the Perigord region of France. Washed down with a glass of Château Haut-Theulet Monbazillac 2002 (the colour of golden straw), this was a perfect starter for a great meal.

Two Excellent WinesFor the main course, we repeated a dish that had served us well at Christmas – Beef Wellington. This time, there were no problems with timing as there were on Christmas Eve. I correctly guessed that our guests would be happy with meat that was less cooked than I had done at Christmas and “the beast” arrived on the table in good time and in good shape and was helped down with a glass or three of Château de Sarenceau Saint-Emilion 2000 which we served right through the rest of the meal. And then came the famous Trou Normand – sorbet with calvados poured over the top – to help our digestion (I think!).

After the cheeses, we served Gâteau Creusois with M-D’s hand made Chocolate Mousse which is actually very simple to make, but very tasty. And another pleasant evening ended with happy campers all round. Cooking is fun, but the joy it brings to others is even better!

Goodbye 2014 – Hello 2015

Robin and RebeccaI have a niece called Rebecca who, a year or so ago, went to live in New Zealand with her new partner, Robin. Since then, we’ve all got to “know” Robin via Facebook, but none of us had actually met him. Rebecca decided to rectify this gap in our knowledge and she and Robin came to the Isle of Man to spend Christmas and New Year with her parents (my brother and his wife, Steve and Jeanette). And so, on Christmas day, we at last met Robin and discovered for ourselves what a really nice guy he is.

During the conversation, Robin observed that, while New Zealand is famous for its lamb, it was very expensive over there because much of it was exported. So, since Rebecca had recified the gap in our knowledge, we thought we would rectify Robin’s lamb shortage and invite them for New Year’s Eve. Therefore, on December 31st, Robin, Rebecca, Steve and Jeanette arrived at ours and we enjoyed an evening of good conversation, good food and good company.

For part of the aperitif, we produced a plate of green-lipped New Zealand mussels with a garlic vinaigrette (similar to the Left-Over Mussels recipe only with king-size mussels!). It was an instant hit with our visitors because, while they can obviously get the green-lipped mussels, they’d never thought of adding a garlic vinaigrette and eating them cold!

Tuna-Stuffed EggAs a starter, we tried a little recipe of tuna-stuffed eggs which, I have to say, was rather uninspiring and it’s one we won’t be repeating.So, rushing past the bad news and onto the main course, we’d done one of our favourites, Lamb in Deep Rich Gravy which is so very simple and looks after itself in the oven. We’ve noticed that, despite buying the largest legs of lamb we can get without buying mutton, there is never anything left and, sure enough, New Year’s Eve was no exception! In addition to feeding the poor Kiwi Couple with lamb, it gave is a chance to show off the quality of our locally produced Manx Lamb which is an excellent product.

wine bottlesFor Christmas, Marie-Danielle had bought me a case of Chateauneuf-du-Pape (both red and white) so, never being one to waste a good Christmas present, we enjoyed both the red and the white with this meal and it truly was a great Christmas gift (I even have a few bottles left!). Robin is a programmer and runs his own company, Aotea, in New Zealand. Partway through the meal he tried out a new App that he was working on which, when complete, will pick up the image of a wine label and return all the data on that wine. So we pulled a few bottles out and gave it a test run! It didn’t recognise the 1985 Chateau Balestard La Tonnelle (St Emilion) or the 1986 Chateau L’Eglise-Clinet (Pomerol) but I’m sure Robin will get it to function in due course.

Orange CarpaccioAfter a “Trou Normand” (calvados, served over sorbet) we moved on to the cheeseboard before actually celebrating the changing of the years and watching the London firworks on TV. After the last firwork had died out, we sat down to Orange Carpaccio with Gâteau Creusois which proved to be an excellent way to end a family New Year meal and welcome in another year of culinary delights!

New Year's Day SwimThe postscript to this pleasant evening was that, the following day, Robin and Rebecca braved the harsh Manx winter and took part in the New Year’s Day swim on Peel beach. Dressed as viking invaders, they did New Zealand proud! A couple of days later, they left the island and (going via England and Paris) they eventually found their way back to New Zealand with temperatures of 31ºC (91ºF)!