Olives, olives, olives.

Last night's dinner featured black olives in each course.

A cold platter to start with green and black olives in there.

The last course, with candied black olives as a garnish.

(Yes, that is beetroot under the chocolate mousse.)

I forgot to photograph the main course - a chicken, red & yellow peppers and black olives dish.

Saturday night meal - Feb 25th

Another flavour experimenting meal:

Pre dinner nibbles:

1. Potato crisps with Brie gel, vanilla infused olive oil and ground coffee.
This was good.  I did it last week but used Pringles then.  They allowed a more uniform presentation.  Chips are a bit hit or miss at far as size and shape goes.

2. Beetroot chips with Brie gel, mashed walnuts and fresh fig.
Really nice but hindered a bit but the beet root chips - they were all very small.

Starter

Had eight for dinner so opted not to do the poached eggs but still wanted to do the asparagus and liquorice.  So did asparagus, smoked salmon, cream cheese and liquorice, based on the fact that dill is often paired with salmon and has aniseed flavours.  Worked well.

Main:

Chicken and strawberry salad.  Successively layered on the plate: baby spinach, sliced avocado, sliced bbq-ed chicken (still warm), sliced strawberries, finely sliced celery, finely diced red onion.  Dressed with a strawberry vinagrette.

Dessert:

Homemade gingerbread, fresh yellow nectarines, rum sauce, vanilla ice-cream.
One of the guests brought a very pleasant muscat that went very well with the dessert.

With coffee:

Dark chocolate and cumin truffles.  (What sort of fool picks a 38deg day to make truffles?  Oh.)

Having a lot of fun playing with the flavour matching thing at the moment.
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An Adventure in Flavour Pairing

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An interesting meal tonight:

Appetiser: A brie gel piped onto Pringles, topped with a few drops of vanilla infused olive oil and sprinkled with ground coffee.  Had with beer.

The coffee added interesting graininess and went very well with the brie; both have a similar after taste.

Starter (above): Asparagus, sautéed in a little butter with a star anise, served with a poached egg, some diced liquorice, and a  sprig of Tarragon.

Everything fitted together very well - especially the asparagus and the liquorice.

Main: Chicken tenders fried and wrapped in bacon, served with broccoli, brie and croutons.

Nothing very adventurous here but the flavours all matched brilliantly.

Dessert: Banana poached in a vanilla/citrus syrup, served on a bed of chocolate 'gravel', with a wedge of tomato sauce ice-cream and garnished with crushed Amaretti biscuits.

This was the one I had the most fears about.  Not the chocolate (a 50/50 mix of milk and dark, chopped in a food processor until a coarse 'crumb') but the ice-cream.  On its own it tasted a bit like cold Thousand Island dressing but, eaten with the banana and chocolate, it fitted in beautifully.

Most of these courses owe their inspiration to the Food Pairing site but the only one that was a direct copy was the Pringles and Brie Gel; the rest were modified.  For example, rather than make the Tomato Sauce Ice-cream from scratch, I took a good vanilla ice-cream and stirred tomato sauce through it and then refroze it.  The asparagus starter owes its inspiration to a comment in Heston Blumenthal's book (Heston Blumenthal at Home) where he said asparagus and liquorice are a good combination.  He was right.
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