party of 5, PART 2

To follow on from the terrine and feed the hungry hoards, I drew inspiration from Jaime again with a warm quail and grape salad.


To make this scrumptious quail salad preheat the oven to 180 degrees. For 5 people I used 6 quails, rubbed with olive oil and generously seasoned with salt and pepper, and then draped each quail breast with slices of speck, fat, rind and all, then set the birds aside.

Next, I drizzled a large, deep baking dish with olive oil, the leaves from a few fresh sprigs of rosemary and 3 cloves of garlic, crushed with the back of a knife.
The next step is to tear some rustic bread into the pan forming large croutons (I used a panna di casa, which is a nice dry bread with lots of air holes which allows for maximum crispiness), the recipe suggests about 4 slices of bread, but I used almost a whole loaf, it just depends on your preference, but I tell you now, You'll be kicking yourself if you skimp on the bread, the croutons are probably the best part of the entire dish.
Again, drizzle the croutons with olive oil and lay the quails on the croutons, place in the oven and bake for 35 - 40 minutes and the bacon is golden, crisp like roast pork crackle .
the quail is ready when the juices run clear, or when the leg comes easily away from the body of the bird when gently pulled.

Once the quail comes out of the oven, move the birds to a bread board and with 1 strike of the knife cut the birds cleanly in half.

Meanwhile, position the tray so it slopes, scoop all the bread crumbs to the higher end of the tray allowing any juices to fall to the lower end of the tray. Pick out the garlic cloves removing the skins and squishing the garlic into the juices. Smoosh 2 large handfuls of mixed seedless grapes into the juicy end of the baking dish, season with salt, pepper and enough red wine vinegar to make a dressing.

Add a good mix of lettuce leaves to the pan (lambs tongue lettuce, rocket, watercress etc) and the quails, toss well and place on a platter to serve.

yum, so scrumptious.

Party of 5, a french inspired family dinner. PART 1

Whenever my mum, sisters & B.I.L come over for dins I love to try something new and tasty using all the evil ingredients I don't use in my every day cooking (butter, oil, full cream dairy...)

So when the wolves descended I fed them a well planned and executed meal.
We started with home made tomato foccacia and 3 cheese foccacia, accompanied by home made pork terrine, cornichons, olives, pickled onions and mustard.

The terrine recipe was thanks to Jamie Oliver who has a surprisingly simple recipe for this rustic french staple.
I added coarsely minced speck (about 80g) and 1 large chicken liver to 500g of pork mince.
I then added a small bunch of chopped thyme, parsley and 1/4 tsp of ground cloves, 1/2 a grated nutmeg, along with 2 finely chiffonaded bay leaves, salt and pepper to taste along with handful of breadcrumbs.

The ingredients need to be mixed by hand and packed into small ceramic dishes, like large ramekin's. Then place the ramekins into a deep baking dish and pour in enough boiling water to come half-way up the edges of the ramekins, making a bain-marie.

put the dish into a preheated oven ,160 degrees for 1 hour, (the terrine is cooked when you can insert a knife into the dish and the juices run clear) then remove the baking dish from the oven and allow the terrines to cool in bain-marie. When the water is cool you can put the terrine in the fridge, just cover with cling wrap.