Huzzah! An outstanding success.
Slightly ridiculously there was an error/substitution of every single recipe, but we still think this is one of our most successful clubs ever.
Obviously the company helps. It’s a fabulous group who leave you with less wine, but more gin. We like this particular upgrade in Dinner Part Guest.
It started with a Jerusalem Artichoke Soup. Rather excitingly it included Champagne as an ingrediant.
It was also supposed to contain a 100g piece of streaky bacon. This gets pouched in the soup, chopped up and sprinkled on top. We could only find rashers in both the supermarket and the butchers, so Dan wandered into the Polish Supermarket and bought what he thought was a large chunk of bacon.
It wasn’t. It was pork.
A fact we didn’t discover until after we’d cooked it in the soup. Went in red. Came out white. Definitely not bacon.
Annoying, but fortunately not irredeemable.
We dragged some bacon out the freezer, chopped it very small, and fried until extremely crisp.
Then we tried the soup and added salt. And more salt. And more salt. Until the background taste of pork fat was gone. Salt redeems many things. Trust salt. It makes things delicious.
The now delicious soup was served with bread. Dan made two loaves. One was a Stout Soda Bread, that sadly was still a bit doughy in the middle. The other was a Rye and Spelt Bread which came out really well.
The bacon sunk, but the hazelnut oil shows up well.
The next course was Pork Loin with Sauteed Kale, Apple and Chestnuts. Which was absolutely bloody marvellous.
Here we deliberately substituted Madeira (which we didn’t have) for White Port (which we did).
The crackling was amazing!
The final course was the most popular, so we’re going to post the recipe. It does need 6 x 7-8cm stainless steel rings. We have a set if you’re nearby and want to borrow them.
Also the left over coulis (and there will be left over coulis) is nice with yogurt on cereal.
Armagnac Frozen Mousses with Pouched Pear Coulis
Serves 6.
- 150g caster sugar
- 7 large egg yolks
- 375ml double cream
- 4 tbsp Armagnac
For the Pear Coulis
- 450g caster sugar
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 6 comice or william pears (we used comice)
- ½ tbsp lemon juice
First we’ll make the mousses. Put the caster sugar in a heavy based saucepan with 3 tbsp of water and heat gently, stirring occasionally and gently until the sugar has dissolved. Increase the heat and boil until soft ball stage. This is about 118-120°C. We’re sure there are other ways to tell, but we are somewhat married to our thermometer. Remove the pan from the heat and set to one side. Be careful, molten sugar burns are the worst.
Using an electric whisk (for god’s sake not a hand whisk), briefly whisk the egg yolks until just combined. Continue whisking as you slowly pour the hot sugar syrup onto the egg yolks. Whisk for five minutes, until the mixture is very pale yellow and resembles semi-whipped cream. Whip the double cream to soft peaks and gently fold in the egg yolk mixture and Armagnac. We over whipped the cream and couldn’t quite get it to fold in properly. No one seemed to notice.
Tightly cover the bottom of the the rings with clingfilm. Fill each ring with the mousse mixture and place in the freezer for at least 3 hours, until frozen.
Then make the coulis. Dissolve the caster sugar in 1.5 litres of water and add the cinnamon stick. Increase the heat and bring to the boil.
Peel the pears, add to the sugar syrup and poach gently for 10 -20 minutes (depending on ripeness). Turn the heat off and let the pears cool in the syrup for 30 minutes. Drain the pears, reserving 200ml of the poaching liquid.
Core four of the pears and blend with the reserved sugar syrup and lemon juice to make a smooth coulis.
To serve unmould each mousse onto a serving plate. Slice each of the remaining pears into six and serve two slice on top of each mousse.
Congratulations if you’ve made it this far!
We are looking for two volunteers for the February Greedy Guinea Pig, then we’ll take a break for a couple of months.
This menu is all about the Chinese New Year:
Cinnamon, Orange, Honey & Rosebud Tea
Pork & Prawn Wonton Soup
Roast Sweet Potatoes & Carrots Spiced with Cumin, Fennel & Coriander
Red Cooked/Hong Sao Beef
Chocolate Chip Cookie & Rolo Sticky Rice Dumplings
thegreedyguineapig 