Natasha and I love food and love hosting dinner parties so we thought before term began and everyone gets busy why not make a delicious meal...but with a twist...
We are both interested in experimental flavour combinations, new ways to sweeten desserts and delicious nutritious ways to pimp up salads. After the success of the last dinner party we hosted - Deliciously Ella themed - we thought why not try out more of our experimental recipes on our friends.
Our aim was to do good food but with nutritious alternatives to for example refined sugar, and also to source locally and organically for as many ingredients as possible. We used a variety of books to search for our favourite recipes and narrowed it down to four books: Eat Right by Nick Barnard, Hemsley and Hemsley by Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley, Deliciously Ella by Ella Mills and Love Bake Nourish by Amber Rose.
So here was our menu and the book references
Main:
Organic Burgers served with goats cheese, lime guacamole, caramelised red onions, local Durham chutney and rocket
Eat Right
Broccoli Slaw
Adapted from Hemsley and Hemsley
Roasted vegetable Salad
Adapted from Deliciously Ella
Dessert
Raspberry and Almond tart
Love Bake Nourish
Pistachio, fig and goats' cheese trifle
Hemsley and Hemsley
Salted caramel chocolates
Hemsley and Hemsley
Caramel cups
My own creation
Now of course this isn't a cheap 'student' type menu so we decided to make it really special - like going for a meal out - and asked our guests to contribute to the cost. Overall it came to about £4.20 each, which isn't bad at all for a hearty meal!
The Main:
So we used inspiration from Eat Right, using meat from out local butcher in the Durham market and buying bread rolls from the bakery in the Market too.
The broccoli slaw was made with homemade mayonnaise, so no additives, all good fats from olive oil (replacing the sesame oil as we didn't have any!) and so delicious!
The roasted vegetable salad was also delicious, replacing butternut squash from the original recipe with various roasted veggies and more avocado.
The verdict...
We asked our guests to be honest about what we had cooked, the good, the bad and the ugly...
'Faultless'
'For someone who doesn't like avocado I liked it because of the dressing'
'I don't like broccoli usually but that was nice'
'I don't usually like mayonnaise but I like that'
So it seems we have changed some opinions about food here.
The Desserts:
Now both of us LOVE desserts, hence why we have four! But these were made with no refined sugar but attempting to find alternative ways to sweeten deserts. We also wanted to try new and interesting flavour combinations.
The verdict...
Goats' cheese trifle
'I'm glad we made it'
'Interesting flavour'
'I think goats' cheese is more of a savoury flavour'
'I probably wouldn't make it again'
'I didn't like it when I first tasted but now I want more'
So interestingly this is a bit of an odd flavour combination and probably not one to make again maybe but fun to try out.
Raspberry and Almond tart
'Yummy'
'Like a treacle tart, that's good'
'Maybe a drizzle would be good on it'
'The tart needs the raspberries'
'It's so Bake Off!'
So a success! This really was delicious. The filling seems to be a cross between a treacle tart and a frangipane which is so yummy.
Salted caramel chocolates
These went down well, it took a while to guess that the caramel is made of apricots, in fact!
Caramel cups
'This is better then caramel because it's not sickly'
'The base is so good!'
'You can tell it's not caramel, but I can tell that because I love sugar so much!'
So again these went down well too, possibly these went down the best??
