Challenge / Cook a new meal every day for 30 days.
Today was Valentines, and my first ever dinner party. For two. Married. Women.
Now I know what you’re thinking. They’re both gorgeous and they arrived in matching outfits. But honestly, I didn’t pay anyone. These are my happily married friends Sam and Sophie, who volunteered to step in for today’s cooking challenge. And like Come Dine With Me, they would be rating my efforts at the end.
Remember, I’ve only been cooking for a week, and until today I’d only ever attempted cooking one course for myself. Today I decided to attempt three. Let’s see how they went:
Course 1: Parma and Melon with Honey and Balsamic Dressing
(If you’re wondering about the funky lights, see what I did yesterday).
Not the most taxing starter, but I was worried about the unusual dressing here – it smelt pretty potent and I wondered if it might ruin everything. In the end it really added something to what would otherwise have been a wholly predictable entrée. As evidence, these two cleaned their plates (the wine may have helped):
Course 2: Stuffed chicken breast with red pepper sauce
A bit more ambitious: stuffed chicken with mozerella and cherry tomatoes, wrapped in parma ham, and served with a sauce made from roasted peppers, tomatoes, and muscovado sugar. I served with streamed asparagus:
It worked out pretty well, although my guests were a touch apprehensive before starting:
In the end though, everyone cleaned their plates. Sam had some constructive feedback, but more on that later…
Course 3: Chocolate brownies and ice cream
I’d never even tried baking before, so this was probably the hardest part. Mixing milk, light and dark chocolate, it’s served here with praline and cream Häagen-Dazs:
The mix itself came out beautifully, and before we sat down my guests happily devoured ‘Course 0′: licking the bowl clean. Unfortunately, something went a bit wrong in the oven, and the resulting mix was definitely not hard enough. We had to scrape the gooey result out of the pan with a spoon:
This is what happens when chocolate coats the top of your mouth and won’t leave.
It still tasted alright, but this is the one course none of us finished (incidentally, I did put the brownies in for an extra 15 minutes and they still came out like this; I suspect because I had multiple things in the oven at once, or because it was on the bottom tray).
What did they think?
In line with Come Dine With Me, we made a short video:
With enormous thanks to Sam, Sophie and their hugely understanding husbands.
Posted on by Oliver Emberton.