Chez Nu- Food with Friends

~

LouLovesFood now has a sister blog!

The other night, my dinner party companion and I cooked our first regular dinner club for friends. We hope to do this on a regular basis, cooking different styles of dinner (from set courses to shared plates) following different themes (themes based on the seasons, such as Bonfire night and summer salads, to cuisines such as Thai, or Indian.)

Friday's supper was a small dinner party of shared salads and a pudding, accompanied by frosted grapes and lime, cucumber and elderflower granita. The desert was an Ottolenghi caramelised macadamia cheesecake and was the highlight of the evening.
There was an idividual start for each guest; figs with honey, parma ham, gorgonzola and walnuts.

Chez-Nu; Food with Friends is a photo blog documenting these occasions, to indulge my obsessive food photography. Please drop by from time to time to see what's going on in our kitchen and dining room...

www.chez-nu.blogspot.com

Thankyou!

x

The Last Supper

With Helena off to Switzerland and me off to Italy, we decided to have a Last Supper before we we are to be reunited in Vienna (Little jet setters that we are...)
It was a fairly rustic supper of warming, almost autumnal dishes, heavy with root vegetables, mushrooms and seasonal produce- but with the English climate as it currently is, I think we got away with it.

As a starter, we had pan fried polenta with girolles mushroom. This course was of particular excitement to me. I had been working on a Foraging article at Food and Travel Magazine and had been attracted to the deep yellow and ribbed girolles.

I have also been reading a lot recently about polenta (I had acquired a lovely hard back copy of River Cafe from a charity shop and have spent a lot of time looking into the cuisine for my impending Italy trip.) Amazingly, I have never had it before. And, like scallops were my discovery of 2009, polenta is definitely my discovery of 201o. I feel this may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Roast butternut squash wedges with mixed roast nuts and a burnt aubergine and tahini dip, on the side.

This dish made us feel a little bit like we were in a wood cabin in the forest in Europe... Roast pheasant with a fennel puree.

My favourite!! I will follow this with a recipe as it's so simple and lovely and easy to do. Coffee cup cheesecake with a home made cherry brandy compote. Delightful, I think is the best word for this.

x

Simon's Birthday

Did a bit of last minute catering for Simon's birthday present. (For the rest of time, my poor friends and family will recieve nothing but food and art. You have been warned!)
As it was a boys thing, I decided to go with a theme of simple, spicy BBQ style food.
Here's a few of the bits I did~

Home made Chilli and Paprika tortilla chips with tomato and spring onion refried beans.

Home made vegetable crisps- parsnip, carrot, potato and beetroot.

Spicy courgette fritatta.
White chocolate and cherry cheesecake

This second pudding I made leftover filo from my filo pasties. I had lots of scraps I didn't want to waste, and a bit of excess cheesecake filling. And with a base of cherry Brandy preserve... Voila, cherry tart is born!

Also made but not photographed-

Fruit layered Pimm's Jelly
Feta, spring and red onion filo triangles

Various chutneys