Dinner Party with our not so new neighbours

When we moved into our new house we invited our new neighbours around to dinner.  A year later we eventually got round to it.

So the question is - what do you feed people you barely know and who themselves live the good life, raising sheep and produce on a couple of acres of garden?   Of course there's an element of wanting to show off but not risk screwing up.  In the end we went with safe classics.

We started with drinks and nibbles of Boursin and Parma ham swirls (a complex recipe involving spreading Boursin on Parma ham, rolling it into a swiss roll and cutting into slices - Mr Vitty loves them) and Paprika smoked almonds (roast almonds and then coat with olive oil, ground sea salt and sweet smoked paprika).

Starters were Nigel Slaters Goats Cheese Souffle Puddings - a bit of a risk as I'd not made them before, but I love Nigel Slater's recipes and like everything of his they worked perfectly and tasted great.  We served them with an overload of homemade bread (sourdough, ciabatta and white bread rolls) and Nigel's suggested Walnut Salad.

Main course was Salmon en Croute. I bought the puff pastry this time as I was feeling lazy, but I'm not sure anyone could tell the difference.   Fillets of Salmon were sandwiched together with a mixture of boiled asparagus, a little double cream, dill, salt and pepper which had been blitzed together.  The salmon was then wrapped in pancetta before the whole lot was wrapped in the pastry and put in the oven. Peas and carrots were the intended veg - but I ran out of peas so frozen sweetcorn substituted.

Pudding was also a risk in that I'd not cooked it before, Will Torrent's chocolate brownies (from his book Chocolate at Home) involving a brownie base, chocolate ganache, chocolate glaze and topped with salted caramel popcorn, gold leaf (how do you get that stuff to stay where you want it rather than attached to the utensils?) and cocoa nibs.  It was incredibly rich but we enjoyed eating it all!

After all that we weren't up for the planned petit fours of mini madeleines - so work colleagues got to eat them!

An overload of Bread

Decadent Chocolate

The matching wine flight was recommended by Brian at HarperWells in Eaton, Norwich - and of course went beautifully.  

Sour Dough

Sour Dough is a food that combines my love for food from a particular place, microbiology and baking.  What can be more local than using the natural yeasts and lactic acid bacteria in my kitchen to flavour and leven bread (even if it does take a week to make a bruschetta!). I used Richard Bertinet's sourdough recipe from his book Crust.  The process requires mixing flour, water and honey to make a starter culture which is fed and develops over the week to a slowly fermenting mix.  The flour and honey in my sourdough were both produced in Norfolk, anchoring the bread in this place.  My starter produced a good flavoured bread and I've dried the starter so hopefully it'll stay viable for a while!

The final bread was toasted, drizzled with olive oil, rubbed with garlic and topped with Vittoria vine tomatoes and chopped basil which had been sprinkled with a little salt and pepper and left to stand for 10 minutes.

Initial Starter

Beginning of Bread Dough

Risen Ferment

Proving

Finished Bread

Best Bruschetta