Prawn cocktails (with Mayonnaise and Soy-marinated roe) : the Prep Ahead Dinner Party : Entree edition

Time for another dinner party! This time, I was eyeing off that 18-hour pork belly, so after some careful choosing, today I present - the Prep Ahead Dinner.

It's kind of an all-Heston-all-the-time dinner. With bonus points for lots of straight forward make-ahead ease. If you were after the lowest effort Heston dinner party this list would have to be up there!

We had: (Heston dishes marked with a *)

• Prawn cocktails*, with from scratch Mayonnaise* and Soy-marinated roe*
• Braised pork belly with cracking*, pommes puree* (mk2), braised lettuce* and steamed carrots.
• Coffee creme brulee*

Had I bothered with the glazed carrots like I was considering, it would have been my first entirely Heston three course meal. Ah well, close enough.

Today, we're talking entrée...

Prawn cocktails, garnished with soy-marinated roe.

Heston's love of prawn cocktails is well known. He talks about them all the time. From Heston Blumenthal at Home, "Confession time: prawn cocktails are my secret vice. When I get home late after working in the Fat Duck there's nothing I like better than to raid the fridge for prawn cocktail."

Conveniently, this recipe is also available reprinted here.

So.. there are a few components to this dish - most noteworthy is the mayonnaise, which Heston recommends making from scratch. The soy marinated roe is a garnish, and also a complete doddle, and so is done at the end.

Mayonnaise

True story, somewhat embarrassing story: This was only my second time making mayonnaise. The first time I made it, (many years ago) it looked fine, but tasted terrible. It scarred me, meaning I haven't braved making it again. Time to put on my big girl panties and get on with getting over it, huh? (Side note: You don't use strongly flavoured olive oil to make mayonnaise. Don't try it, as waste of time and good olive oil. Learn from my misfortune, padawan).

Mayonnaise is an emulsion. which means a thick liquid-meets-solid thing.

You get some egg yolks.

 Measure out the oil.

 Add some Dijon mustard to the egg yolks

 Mix them with a stick blender. Having a stick blender makes the making of mayonnaise, much much easier. Also helpful is a container of the beaker style persuasion. Or, as in my case a plastic container of excellent proportions that was cheap and a 1/10th price of the bamix one. And had a lid.

 Add oil in tiny amounts at first.

The a little bit more oil once it is thicker, blending with the stick blender until it is all incorporated each time.

Keep adding little bits of oil. Then, once your blender can't cope because wow, it's really, really thick and your stick blender is getting warm under hand and seems to be struggling...

Switch to a low tech, but convenient for the container butter knife. Keep adding the oil until it is all incorporated in the mayo. Be kind of impressed with yourself.

 Add in the vinegar, mixing it in to more like normal mayo consistently and kind of nicely gloopy.

Add a pinch of cayenne. If you are sensitive to chili, I'd make it a small pinch. Cayenne can be potent stuff. Add that salt now too.

Look! You made mayo! It doesn't suck! And only took maybe 20 minutes? I was impressed. (And a bit relieved).

Prawn cocktails

Really, this is kind of so straight forward as to be a non event. However, while I sat and shelled prawns I got to relive lots of lovely memories of my grandmother who, on special occasions would make prawn cocktails as an entrée when I was a kid. I love them, and her, so this was a nice bit of memory...

... to cut through the tedium of shelling a bunch of nice tiger prawns. I bought 600g, which gave about 340g of prawn meat - so if you wanted to hit the 400g from the recipe, get maybe 700g in the shell? They were beautiful prawns though.

Next, mix the tomato ketchup, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice and some cayenne pepper. Since I knew my guests were not super keen on chili-heat, I only added a pinch of cayenne, not the 1/4 teaspoon the recipe calls for - which is a lot to me.

 Mixed up... and done! Sauce is ready!

 Shred some washed lettuce finely, and your ready to serve later.

Soy marinated roe

Ah, to be suckered by a pretty picture - the downfall of many a Heston Blumenthal recipe-reader.
I wanted these...because they looked so pretty in the photo! I mean.. look at them there on top...

I did nearly back out though when I went to buy the salmon roe.. and the smallest jar - 50g - was $28. Gulp. But ... but... I caved. They cost more than the prawns. Sigh. The things I do for this hobby...

Three ingredients. Really. Take some mirin, warm it up, and burn off the alcohol. Realise you're pretty sure this one isn't alcoholic and feel a bit silly when it doesn't work. Oh well.

Add some cold water (same weight as the mirin) and some light soy (same again). Set it aside to cool. When you are nearly ready to serve, carefully rinse your roe. I found a fine mesh tea strainer perfect for this. Then pop it in for a few minutes to marinate. I found this was perfect as I assembled the cocktails and then they were ready.

Mix your prawns into the sauce. Scoop your lettuce into fancy bowls. Add some chopped avocado, the prawns in their sauce, and carefully add those beautiful little orange gems of caviar.

All done!

Things I learned from this recipe:

• Not everything from the 70s was awful.
• $30 is too much for a garnish. 
• Even Heston has things he won't mess with. Traditional can sometime be the way to go.
• Yep, I still love prawn cocktails.

Verdict:

Okay, yes, I know prawn cocktails are 70s and kitschy and looked down on. But you know what? They taste so good, I can live with all that. Making the mayonnaise did bring the quality of this dish up a lot. I loved them when I was 10, and I still do. Yum.

The soy marinated roe? It was nice and salty and pretty. But.. I doubt I'd bother with this again. It was dead easy to make though, so if you wanted something fancy to impress, or to go on those blinis Heston also mentions, by all means have at it!

Guest opinions:

"Delicious!"
These were very well received!  Despite there being a lot of "wow, I haven't had one of these in years..." there was a lot of very happy silence while everyone chowed down on them happily. Several guests even used their bread to make sure no sauce was left behind. (I great compliment in my book. If you like a sauce I made enough to use your bread to sop it all up, then I know its a job well done.)

Next time: Main course: and that 18 hour braised pork belly..

Peach and Parma Ham Salad

I should subtitle this - "The most expensive salad I've ever made".

So this was for Christmas eve, which was of course about three weeks ago, but seems like longer. Life has been busy. And hot. Very hot. Of course, 'tis the season, here anyway.

So Christmas eve, we wanted easy, prepare ahead meals. Because we couldn't predict how hot it was going to be and didn't want to be spending the day cooking.

I've been eyeing off that Peach and Parma Ham Salad from Heston Blumenthal at Home recipe for a long time, and was certainly influenced by In Search of Heston's take on it. Christmas even seemed perfect as an opportunity.

And it was good. So. Good.

Steps.

1. Shake a bunch of stuff together. Make a vinaigrette
2. Reduce some balsamic vinegar
3. Slice up the peaches, ham and Gruyere cheese
4. Toss the salad in the vinaigrette, add the other stuff
5. Make fancy and serve.

Seriously easy. It ends up more assembly than anything.

Let's take a look shall we?

Make a vinaigrette.

(Just as an aside, I can't believe that's the correct spelling. It just looks wrong).
So a mustard vinaigrette - oil, seeded mustard and vinegar. Plus a little salt.

 Whisk it together. In this case, you also add some ground cloves. And that's it.

Reduce some balsamic vinegar.

Take a tiny amount of balsamic. Realise this is ludicrous and double it for handling purposes.

Heat it until it gets reduced. Don't get distracted or it becomes more treacle-like than you intended.

Oops. It does taste a lot better than the bought stuff (which can be very sweet, as Phil over at In Search Of Heston notes). Given how inexpensive balsamic is, I'd recommend putting in a large-ish whack then then just keeping some for leftovers. The trick seems to be keep an eye on it, ignore Heston's assertion it will take 10 minutes and just grab it off when it's down to about half. I listened to the 10 minutes thing and while it tasted fine, it was almost thin toffee consistency when cool. (As you'll see).

Slice up your ham, peaches and Gruyere.

So. About that ham. I don't buy Parma ham normally. This is the first time I've ever bought it. I've eaten it in restaurants before, but never bought it.

I bought the correct amount - 180g. Which is quite a lot.

When I went over my budget later that day, I thought there had been a mistake. I actually called the grocer. Because I genuinely didn't realise it was $130 a kg. I was mortified and glad I called and didn't visit in person. I felt like such a plebeian.

So. Yes, this will be the most expensive salad I've ever made. Is it cheaper in the UK? I have to wonder. Anyway, I think this was almost twice the weight of ham you actually needed for that portion size. I used about 2/3 the amount for 5 people and it was really more than needed. So halve it I'd say. (And read the label in the shop so you don't embarrass yourself.).

You then chop up the peaches, which I forgot to photograph me doing, and shave the Gruyere.  When shaving your cheese, you want nice thin slices - so use your cheap peeler on the left, not your excellent quality on the right. Otherwise you get thick cheese, and this recipe really wants thin and delicate.

Toss the salad leaves in the vinaigrette

 And season.

Ready to assemble! 

Dressed rocket...

 Plus yummy peaches... (ripe is good).

 Plus the Parma ham and Gruyere.

 Drizzle with your toffee-like nicely reduced balsamic and you're done!

Lessons learned

• Watch that balsamic, ignore the time frame and pull it off when thickened, not sticky. This means it will get to the sticky stage once cooled. Instead of almost toffee. Which tastes good, but makes it hard to make it pretty. (See above)
• Order less ham. Or more guests. Whichever works for you.

Guest Opinions

Very appreciative. (Yes mum and uncle, you can come to dinner again. Braddles, you missed out!)

This really is a dish where the highest quality ingredients make it sing. I really don't think regular ham would work here. The Parma ham is salty and almost prosciutto-like without being tough at all. It contrast beautifully with the sweet softness of the peaches and the cloves in the vinaigrette lift it.

Verdict

This would make an excellent dinner party starter. It can be mostly easily prepared ahead of time, then assembled when ready with limited fuss. If you have great peaches in season, I think it is worth it.

And.. I'm going be in Italy next year in springtime. (First northern hemisphere trip ever - whoop!) So I will certainly think about trying this again there!

Next: Strawberry crumble-trifle-like thing.

Serious Meal Two, Part One: Soup & Entree

Okay, so I'm definitely going to have to break up this meal into separate blog posts, as there was a lot going on. This was a dinner party for friends, and went well - good company, good food, that sort of thing.

The menu was: (Heston dishes are indicated by an asterisk (*))

• Chicken Consommé*
• Goat's Cheese Tarts
• Braised Chicken with Sherry and Cream*
• Glazed carrots* (as per previously)
• Steamed sugar snap peas
• Pommes boulangere*
• Tiramisu*

In this post, I'm covering the Chicken Consommé and the Goat's Cheese Tarts.

 

Chicken Consommé

This is an interesting one, because at it's heart you take stock you've frozen previously and defrost it, heat it up and call it soup.

You'll possibly recall I made a big batch of the Brown Chicken Stock a while back, so for this I was planning on using the rest of that as my starter.


So you take the big pile of frozen stock cubes... this is my extra huge bowl... And place it over a sieve, lined with wet muslin.

 

After two and a bit days, mine looked like this...

Yeah, still frosty. At that point we decided to leave it on the bench (it was a cool day) covered by a clingfilm.

That was a bit more successful. It actually melted.

What I hadn't been expecting was the huge reduction in volume. That pile of gel stuff above? That's what's left over. The volume of the actual consommé was small, much smaller than I'd expected from about one litre and a half of stock that I started with. 

The technical explanation is that all that gelatine in the stock acts as a filter for impurities. Really, I wonder if given the volume loss, whether it might be overkill.

That said, what was left looked good. Clear and a deep colour. Which lead to my idea of how to creatively serve a small quantity of consommé!

 Anyway, serving is simple - simply gently warm it.

And place in your serving receptacle. In my case, inspired by the colour, I chose brandy balloons.

Things I learned from this recipe:

• The reduction in volume using this method is substantial. I'd expect in order to serve this as a soup, you'd need a double batch of stock to start (around 4L). It's all that gelitine - it really hangs onto the bulk of the stock.

Verdict: 

The end result... well.... not as great as I'd hoped. One guest (husband) didn't like it, and felt it tasted like KFC. The rest of the guests were more openly polite, but my own opinion was that it was OK, but certainly not the earth-shattering flavour I'd anticipated from the filtration process.

To be honest, I feel there are better uses for the stock!

Goats cheese tarts

So these are an old favourite - my husband's all time favourite entree. Goat's cheese tarts from an old (1999) issue of Vogue Entertaining and Travel. This is the quick recap for menu completeness.

For this, you do the following:

• Slowly caramelise a pile of thinly sliced onion, thyme and olive oil.
• Cut circles of excellent quality puff pastry
• Place piles of cooked onion in centre, top with a slice of goat cheese
• Bake the tarts in oven while you toast some hazelnuts
• Serve tarts on a bed of greens with a scattering of hazelnuts and a drizzle of lemon juice and hazelnut oil.

So, you  thinly slice that onion and then pick all the little tiny leaves off your thyme. This takes ages, and is very fiddly. Get a nine year old to help if you have one.

 Slow cook the onion and thyme in olive oil until caramelised and soft (this takes about 30 mins)

 Assemble your tarts...

 Bake for 8 minutes, until puffy and golden. Then put them on their bed of greenery, scatter with toasted chopped hazelnuts, lemon juice and hazelnut oil.

Delicious. Very well recieved as usual, though husband thought they should have been bigger. (But I had a pretty good idea (I thought...) how rich the rest of the dinner was going to be, so little ones were good. If you are going to do this, I'd recommend go easy on the goat cheese, it can be very strong and overpowering if you use too much.

Next: Pomme Boulangere, a side dish.