Buy good quality thinly sliced smoked salmon
Pipe crème fresh on cocktail bread. Fold a slice of salmon into a fan and insert at an angle into the crème fresh
Garnish with a few caper berries and a few leaves of fennel.
Serve with a full bodied white wine.
Mix the following in a large Pyrex baking dish (9x13 works well)
Two thinly slice two fennel bulbs
One or two cloves of garlic – diced
20 black olives - pitted and sliced
1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes
1 14 oz can of white beans
1 tablespoon of caper berries
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon sugar
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tbs orange juice
Bake at 450 for 20 minutes – stir once
Heat oven to 500
Rub fish fillets with olive oil, lemon juice and cracked pepper.
Roast for 5 minutes.
It works well to put the fish on the top rack of the oven and put the fennel provincial back in the oven (after cooking it for 20 minutes at 450) on the lower rack. The steam from the vegetable flavors the fish and makes sure that everything is piping hot.
While the fish is roasting put asparagus spears (remove the tough ends) in a large skillet. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil. Put a tablespoon of water in the skillet, put the lid on. Turn the heat to high. You just want the asparagus to be hot – it should still be a bit crunchy and will be done in five minutes.
Assemble the plates with a pile of veggies in the center and a fish fillet and several asparagus spears stacked on it like a teepee.
Serve with a big white wine, the same wine as you served with the appetizer will work.
Melt 6 oz of bittersweet chocolate and 6 tablespoons of butter. It works well to put in the microwave on half power for a minute. Take it out and let the chocolate melt in the melted butter. When everything is liquid add ¼ of cocoa and stir well.
Beat 4 egg whites and 1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar until it is fluffy. Add two tablespoons of sugar and beat until it is stiff.
Fold ¼ of the eggs into the chocolate and then fold the entire chocolate mixture back into the rest of the eggs.
Butter a muffin tin and coat the sides of the muffin cups with white sugar.
Fill the muffin cups ¾’s full of batter – it should fill about 8 standard sized muffin cups.
You can let the cakes sit on the counter of a couple of hours at this stage.
You will cook the cakes for 8-10 minutes at 400. They will still be gooey in the middle when you take them from the oven, but the tops should be cracked and dry. SERVE THEM WHILE THEY ARE STILL HOT.
Let the muffins sit for 3 or 4 minutes before you remove them from the tin. They will fall and shrink and won’t look very pretty, but you are going to cover them with raspberries and whipping cream so it doesn’t matter.
Put a cake on a dessert plate. Put a couple of tablespoons, or more, of the berries on top of the cake and pipe some whipped cream along side. It looks pretty and is very yummy.
Buy a bag of good quality frozen raspberries. Put them in a bowl and let them thaw. When they are thawed add a tablespoon of liqueur or 1/8 of a teaspoon of almond extract if you like. Taste them and see how sweet they are you may want to add some sugar (maybe a tablespoon or two), but go easy on the sugar. The dessert is very rich, and the berries add a nice contrast if they are a little tart. Stir it up and let it sit of ½ hour. Done.
Serve with coffee or raspberry liqueur or red wine.
The great thing about this menu is that you can put it all together in about two hours and still have time for a shower before your guests arrive.
Here is what I would do:
1) Dump the frozen raspberries into a bowl and let sit.
2) Whip a pint of heavy cream. Transfer to a pastry bag and put it in the fridge.
3) Make the chocolate cakes, but don’t cook them. Leave the batter in the tin on the cupboard.
4) Have a glass of wine. Repeat this step as necessary.
5) Prepare the fennel, but don’t cook it. Leave it on the countertop – or on the floor if you don’t have much counter space and don’t have cats.
6) Wash and chop the ends off the asparagus – put it back in the fridge.
7) Assemble the smoked salmon and put it in the fridge.
8) Set the table
9) Have a shower and clean up the kitchen
10) ½ hour before your guests arrive turn on the oven to 450.
11) 20 minutes before your guests arrive put the fennel in the oven. It will make the whole house smell good.
12) Prepare the raspberry sauce.
13) Prepare the fish, put it on a broiler pan, and leave it sitting on top of the stove.
14) When your guests arrive, take the fennel out of the oven. Turn the oven up to 500.
15) Take the salmon out of the fridge and sit down and enjoy a glass of wine and appetizers with your guests.
16) Pop the fish into the oven and the fennel back into the oven.
17) Cook the asparagus.
18) Turn the oven down to 400.
19) Arrange the food on plates and serve with a flourish. It will take less than 10 minutes from when you put the fish into the oven until you are sitting with your guests again.
20) About the time when you would ask your guests if they want seconds, pop the cake into the oven. Be sure to set a timer if your guests are interesting. (Depending on how leisurely you want the evening to be, you could wait and put the dessert into the oven later).
21) Take the cakes out. They need to sit for a few minutes and this is a good time to load up your guests with liqueur or red wine or coffee.
22) Plop each cake onto a plate, dump on the berries and pipe some whipped cream around the edge – it goes very fast.
23) Enjoy with your guests.