On Sunday we hosted the second of what we hope will be a long running event, Potluck and Prose. The idea is simple; in these recession-hit times (did I really just write that?) sharing and swapping is cool, so: bring a book, bring a dish and bring a bottle!
The first P&P was hosted by Bex, the lovely evil genius mastermind behind all this. I took some standard issue Delia’s Oven-Roasted Ratatouille, which went down brilliantly as always. Great staple for parties that one. We had got the wrong end of the stick about its start time so I don’t think D brought any bread, and further to that no pictures were taken, how sad. However, we did offer to host the second swap.
So, one month later and I had really enjoyed Timoleon Vieta Come Home whilst Dougal had failed miserably to make any headway into Swallows and Amazons, much to my disappointment. The impetus of having 12 or so strangers turn up at our house (we only really know Bex and Dave, although we’ve met most of the others at repeated parties!) did amazing things to our getting the front room finally shipshape (with some sterling help from Ken who attached the bookshelves to the walls!) and all that remained was to do some cooking!
The really nice thing about hosting a pot luck supper is that, contrary to ones instincts, there is no need to spend the day cooking frantically! A dish or two will do it. Dougal did a double batch of bread (some lovely sesame seed plaits, displayed beautifully here in his new hand-made basket) whilst I opted for a savoury and a sweet dish, just to ensure we had something of each, regardless of what the other contributors brought.
My main course was lifted entirely from a scrummy but faulty salad I had when my very kind father took me out for lunch a fortnight ago (rescuing me from the horror that was the prospect of a Ginsters sandwich for lunch for the second day running). We went up to the Dean Gallery where I had a salad of puy lentils, slow-cooked red onion, beetroot, goats cheese and rocket. It was delicious but seriously let down by the rubble-like puy lentils. Call me unsophisticated but they just weren’t cooked!
I decided to recreate the salad, using Merchant Gourmand pre-cooked Puys in order to avoid any rubbley issues. Altogether it worked pretty well; I oven-roasted my red onions for ease, rather than standing over a hot stove, but otherwise stayed pretty faithful to the original as I remembered it. Bex even recognised it from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (the sister gallery to The Dean)! My only regret is that I forgot to add any garlic; I think beetroot goes so well with lashings of garlic that if anything it was lacking in its absence (to me, at least!).
For pudding I had planned in advance- I’d got up promptly on Sunday and made Nigella’s Ice Cream Cake from the Razzle Dazzle chapter of NE- you will recall I made it for D’s birthday last year.
The making of this beaut of a cake is easy peasy- you soften some ice cream and then mix in a good quantity of scrummy things: honey roast peanuts (have faith!); chocolate chips of a variety of colours; butterscotch chips if you can lay your hands on them; broken up bourbon biscuit and smashed up Crunchie. Then the whole lot goes into a clingfilm lined springform tin and back into the freezer until just before serving. Then, the cake is topped with more bourbon and choccie chip rubble, before being sliced and served with both butterscotch sauce and a hot chocolate sauce (with a dash of Camp Coffee to give it a dark kick). Now I am absolutely certain that, having topped the cake, I turned to look for my camera to take some pics. But clearly I didn’t get that far. You’ll have to make do with the pics from last year!
The cake went down a storm; we all politely had a delicate slice each, with Dougal slicing, me pouring sauces, and Richard providing much-needed assistance catching the drips of sauce with a spoon before passing plate&spoon onto the grateful guests. After 14 portions, we reached a problem. There was a decent sized chunk left, but pretty much everyone wanted some. The solution was simple and inelegant; slather the cake with the two sauces and just let everyone wire in with spoons. It was a feeding frenzy! The on-lookers took pictures with camera phones but all that came out was a blur. Success!
