So now that the guests have finished eating, I’ve finished cooking and all the pans have been washed (several times over), all that’s left to do is write-up all the recipes. Before I do that, I’m going to go through the menu and how it all went. Firstly, I decided to add an additional soup course. Three courses didn’t sound like enough work and I had initially planned to make a Langoustine & Coconut Bisque with pan-fried Monkfish. But due to a last-minute let down, I couldn’t get any Langoustine and I spent over an hour searching for an alternative when I should have been cooking. As I also forgot to make my chocolate mousse the previous night, I had thrown my entire plan out by over an hour. In the end I spent a good 11 hours cooking and serving dinner but the result was worth it. As a reminder (and a little plug to each recipe – which I will add with time), here was the full menu:
Amuse Bouche: Lemon Sole & Avocado Ceviche. 
Soup: Prawn & Monkfish Coconut Bisque with Chilli and Lemongrass.
Main: Pork Roulade filled with Avocado, Baby Fennel, Basil and Orange, on a Polenta Fritter, topped with Pepperoni sauce and served with a Broccoli Puree and charred Yellow peppers.
Dessert: Dark Chocolate Mousse topped with a Raspberry and Limoncello Granita.
Planning a dinner party menu can be quite a challenge. In this case I was forced to go a certain way because my dishes had to be both lactose and gluten free. So I didn’t need to make up a theme of any kind. I did however, plan out how I wanted my dishes to “flow”. Initially I had planned on going from a seafood dish to surf and turf to a meat dish, but then I added a soup course which was more or less just seafood. But even then, I still wanted to go from subtle, refreshing flavours to big, strong flavours towards the end. I opened with my ceviche, which was light and refreshing (and served it with a glass of Prosecco) and that setup the rest of the meal. I then had the starter, which was sweet, subtle but had a bit of a kick from the salad. Then the soup, which was creamy and a little sweet but it had the asian aromatic flavours as well. Then the main course was a much stronger dish, plenty of aniseed from the fennel but still giving a bit of sweetness along with the salty spice from the pepperoni sauce. Then lastly I had the rich, dark chocolate mousse contrasted with the sharp raspberry and limoncello but it still had a lasting sweetness from the granita’s syrup. I thought the whole menu ended up being nicely balanced.
The feedback from the guests was good – great in fact (and that’s the most important thing). The only negative I got was the black truffle oil dressing was too strong and that seemed largely down to people not liking black truffles! Personally I think you need a strong dressing to go with wild rocket, otherwise you just won’t taste it. I can live with that as a criticism. The ceviche, pepperoni sauce and granita seemed to get special praise. It’s nice when people pick highlights to a meal, it gives me more confidence than just “everything was good” which sounds like polite code for “well I didn’t hate it but…”.
Personally I had two issues with the meal. The first was the chorizo in the starter, it was too smoky, too strong. The feedback I got was that it provided a really nice contrast to the scallops. But I felt that they overpowered the scallops and I could still taste them until I got to my soup course, I didn’t really like that lingering smoky aftertaste. It was the first time I had bought this type of chorizo, I normally use one bought in the supermarket or one by a brand called “Bath Pig” (which is really good) but this time I got them from the Limoncello deli and I wasn’t that happy with them. The other issue I had was with the bisque. It wasn’t creamy enough, but to be fair to myself, it wasn’t the dish I had planned and I ended up improvising. I had no complaints about it, but I didn’t feel like it was as good as it probably should have been. Those two minor issues aside, I really enjoyed the meal and I loved making it and coming with the menu. What I thought was going to be a real challenge – the lactose and gluten free requirement, actually helped in the end. The inspiration for my bisque came from being forced to use coconut milk instead of cream. As soon as I had sweet fish meat and coconut, I immediately thought of a Thai green curry. So I had a lot of fun with it, I enjoyed putting the whole meal together and I’m happy to say that my guests enjoyed it as well.
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