Friday, November 29, 2013

Holt's Birthday Bash


Saturday 23 November
It's Holt's Heinz birthday - and there was nothing from that company in this dinner, except the decor.  

This week was also Kathy and Russel's joint birthday, and Julie and Liz came to help us celebrate them all.


Holt's theme was "good things in small packages" - he began putting the dinner together four days in advance.  First he made up a batch of paté St. Hubert, i.e. venison, topped with duxelle de cèpes, each in its own little brioche.


For the second course, he took our standard recipe for fish fillets en papillote and adapted it for half portions of salmon, without carrots (as they'd appear in another course); and 12-15 minutes was ample cooking time. 

Perhaps the biggest job was preparing a covey of quail according to the Fatted Calf's recipe; unfortunately these had already been hacked in half for grilling, so he had to debone, stuff them with lemon-zested sausage centering on a single (dried) fig; then wrap them in prosciutto to keep them together.  They made a perfect small plate when presented with Moroccan carrot salad.

Dessert was another small package: friands stuffed with fresh raspberries, with more marinated raspberries and dusted with powdered sugar.  Here's a shoutout to Elizabeth Minchin of Canberra, who gave us the recipe from the Sydney Morning Herald.  
So everyone had their own little birthday cake to enjoy with a glass of Ipsus passito di Pantelleria.

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