Redcurrant Supperclub
A Harvest Home
29 October 2011.

Beforehand

Sloe fizz
Grissini

At the table
Raisin and walnut bread with country butter

Starter
Shallot Tartlets

Mains
Chicken cacciatore with cannellini beans OR
Potato and parsnip cakes with a mushroom and cider cream and beetroot relish
Seasonal sides

Pudding
Apple cakes with a calvados and honey syrup and vanilla ice-cream.

Coffee and petit fours.

Ok, I'm fond of sherry. In fact, very fond. I wouldn't be  known to refuse a wee sweet sherry at Christmas or indeed at any time. Even Harveys has a welcome in my glass. But my real love is for the bone dry stuff.  I used to secretly scoff at my uncle who ordered Tio Pepe the odd time we would have been out for dinner - now I know what it was all about. TP is grand, very good in fact and served well chilled is the most lovely aperitif before dinner. 

However what I have really grown to love is all things Lustau. Cooking dinner on a Friday night is my time to have a couple of glasses - (small).  Reaching for my latest buy last night realised with a sob that I had guzzled the lot. So off to Direct Wine Shipments this morning for a restock.




What lovely folks they are in DWS. Helpful, knowledgeable and enthusiastic. Oh, and they stock LOTs of sherry...manzanilla, olorosso, fino.....yum, give one a go with salted almonds or a wee bit of cheese. Delicious.

Sunday is baking day in our house - usually because  we are more likely to be around the house generally making a feeble effort to put order on chaotic house.


The stater comes out of the fridge where it has been sleeping all week on a Friday and gets refresh with flour and water.  The sponge gets made with starter, flour and water on Saturday night ready to bake sourdough bread on Sunday.


This week though I was a hired hand on Saturday for my brothers book stall at the Belfast Book fair and by the time I got back on Saturday evening I was too tired to think about bread (not often you'll hear me saying that).


So a chance to try out a new type of flour I came across a couple of weeks ago. Einkorn flour is apparently the earliest type of wheat cultivated. It comes from Doves farm in a very attractive green paper bag and though it's wholegrain, it seems a fine and quite light flour.  I have added about 250g of white flour to 750 of Einkorn along with two teaspoons of quick yeast, salt and water.  A double prove - the final one in bread tins and its ready to bake.  


More later on whether it proves itself.