A weekend of cooking

Do you sometimes find you have days when the thought of cooking is a real drudge? I have to admit to having felt this way these past few days. It's just as well that the freezer is filled with stuff made on days when I am keen.
I think perhaps this happens when cooking for pleasure or fun becomes cooking under pressure. When I think about this a bit more, I suspect the pressure I am talking about is entirely self made and can be compared to performance anxiety.
This weekend we had friends over for a meal. It's a fairly long running arrangement in which over the course of a year, each couple takes it in turn to cook a meal. It started out that the meals were 'themed' dinners where the cooking was shared; the hosts choosing the 'theme' and preparing the main course and the others cooking the canapes,  first course and pudding. However, what happened then was that we ended eating enormous meals and collectively falling asleep at the table. We started with the usual type of themed meals; French, Italian, Spanish and so on but then we started to get a bit more imaginative with themes like, " A bit on the side" where the emphasis was on garnishes, or "the letter P" where everything including wine had to begin with the letter P.  We even had a "Bad taste" theme, but for the life of me I can't remember what we cooked for that one.
Part of the fun of the themes evenings was having to research and source appropriate food and wine for the meals. And of course the dressing up! I shall never forget our next door neighbours preferring to  drive 100 yards by car because they had decided to dress as Morris Dancers and the shame and embarrassment of being seen by anyone locally was too great to risk walking. I have included a picture of someone in Morris dancing costume to explain why!

After a few years, I think we all ran out of ideas and so we finally just decided to have 'normal' dinners, with the host's choosing and preparing all the food. 

I suspect there is some friendly rivalry amongst us all and being fairly competitive, I tend to want to create a culinary masterpiece. However, being as my real love is for baking and puddings, I am always a bit nervous about what to cook for the main course as I suspect my skills fall a bit short in this area. 

In the end I plumped for something fairly simple in the hope that I would be able to relax and enjoy the evening. 

Saturday Evening Supper for 8

CANAPES

Little Cheesey Shortbread Cookies

Smoked Salmon Pate tartlets

Melon & Meat on a stick

FIRST COURSE

Homemade Tomato Soup

MAIN COURSE 

Goats Cheese stuffed Chicken Breasts on a bed of HoneyRoasted Beets and Shallots with Puy Lentils

PUDDING

Chocolate and Ginger Torte

Mini StrawberryPavlovas

All in all it wasn't too bad although the chicken breasts were so large that they took much longer to cook than planned. The canapes were great fun to make and  very easy. The cheesey cookies were a recipe I found in an ancient Mrs Beeton I made a couple of changes to the recipe mainly because the original called for a cheese I didn't have in the fridge. I wanted a savoury biscuit and was looking for a home made equivalent of a Ritz cracker. This is the recipe, it's fairly easy to do but seems to impress.  I made them a couple of days before and just heated them up before handing round. I hope you like them as much as we did.

CHEESEY SNACKS

200g/ 8oz butter

200g/8oz plain flour

200g/8oz Cheddar cheese( But you could use any mixture of  hard cheese to your taste)

pinch of cayenne pepper added to the flour

salt to taste added to the flour

Grate the cheese and set aside.

Rub the butter and flour together until they resemble fine breadcrumbs. You can use a food processor for this. In fact it works better. Add the cheese and process or work together by hand until it forms a smooth dough. You might need to add water to help it stick together- but be careful as the more you add at this stage, the tougher the cookies will be.Roll the dough into a ball and leave to rest for 30mins in the fridge.

Heat the oven to 180degrees C. 

Line a couple of baking sheets with grease proof paper. On a floured surface, roll out the dough to about 5mm or 1/4 inch thick. Cut out cookies using a small cutter( if you don't have a specific cutter, an egg cup would do) and put on baking sheet into the oven for about 17 mins until they are golden brown and the kitchen smells deliciously of cheese. If you try to eat them straight from the oven BEWARE, they will be very crumbly. The best idea is to make them a day or two ahead and reheat them for 15mins at the same temp. just before you want to serve them. They will be hot, but oh so good with a glass of something cold and alcoholic. 

The recipe should make a bout 24 cookies, so any left over could be stored in an airtight container  for up to four days. I guess they will also freeze although they never last long enough to try this out.

But to bring you back to where I opened, by the end of Saturday, by the time the last guest left, I felt that I'd had my 'cooking fix' for the weekend. Hence today's feeling.

But of course we also have a fridge full of all the bits and pieces that are left over from the meal. I don't know about you, that is often the best part of any entertaining, the 'leftovers'. So tonight, we shall be eating left over smoked salmon pate, cheese and bread, cold honey roasted beetroot with a dash of balsamic vinegar, and best of all left over puddings. I will tell you about them another time..............