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| Moat around the castle |
Hello everyone, sorry but I'm a bit behind with my posts so these may not be very good :). So on New Years, it was our cooking day :) so much fun! After Andrew and Sonia slept in for a long time, I went out for a run, before returning and started making tomato sorbet for the entree. We have a lot left over, most of what we made because you only needed a tiny quenelle for the dish-typical! After making the sorbet, we came to the conclusion that there wasn't actually anything else that needed doing ahead of time because on New Year's Eve, I had made a lime cheesecake and the potato and goats cheese terrine for our main course while Sonia made a delicious sauce to go with it :).
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| Hever castle decorated on the inside |
So in the middle of the day, while it was nice and rainy, we headed out to Hever castle with Andrew in a funny grouch because he didn't want to walk from the car into the castle in the rain :). Eventually we made it in, it was all decorated with Christmas trees from their christmas display, and was very cool. Hever castle was the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, one of King Henry VIII's wives whom he beheaded. The sign said not to take any pictures, but we
surreptitiously did so without the flash because surely a photo without the flash won't do any damage to the ancient artwork and furniture etc.
after we finished in the castle, we went into the 'moat restaurant'. Here, Andrew and Sonia had roast pork rolls while I had what they call a nut roast, this was served with lots of brussel sprouts, potatoes and carrots and parsnips-quite enjoyable, even the sprouts :)
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| Nut Roast |
Once we got back home, after driving through as many of the rather large puddles on the road as possible (because, "If I had to put up with going to a castle in the rain, then I can drive through puddles"-Andrew), we planned how dinner was going to work, and planned it to be started at 6:30.
I managed to get it out on time!
So for the first course, we had tomatoes topped with mozzarella, basil oil and tomato sorbet. This was a nice and fresh start to the meal, we were planning on having salmon tartare in a cornet, but given that we couldn't find any cornet moulds this would have been a bit difficult :).
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Tomato, sorbet, mozzarella
and basil oil |
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Fillet with goats cheese and
potato terrine, with mushrooms |
Next we had grilled fillet steak with the potato and goats cheese terrine, which was topped with some orange marmalade, with mushrooms and a red wine sauce. This was super delicious, the steak was really nicely cooked, nice and medium-rare, while the terrine was beautifully caramelised and the sauce the perfect consistency and taste-great job Sonia! Strange as it sounded, the orange marmalade on top of the terrine made all the difference, it gave a perfect amount of fresh sweet/acidity from the orange to cut through the goats cheese in the terrine.
For dessert, I had attempted to recreate a 'gü' dessert. For those who don't know, gü is a brand that sells ready made dessert pots, they are really good and have a huge range, you can actually get some in NZ
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| Key lime cheesecake |
now and so I highly recommend that you try one-though they are quite expensive in New Zealand (cheap here in the uk though :) )
Anyway, I made an attempt to recreate the key lime pie cheesecake, it had a slightly gingery base, with a lime curd and a really light cheesecake top. So I did it, and it worked! The curd had just the right of acidity, and by adjusting mummy and my normal cheesecake recipe, I lightened it to a more similar texture. Andrew liked it so much that he had two :).
That was New Year's Day. A very nice start to a. New year, hope you all had a good day too :).
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