Puzzlebrains

Has anyone got any chicken or pork recipes for a dinner party.

Also trying to decide whether I should do a starter. What's the general feeling. I haven't done a dinner party for years

I quite like this one, it's fancy enough to look interesting, and yet if people don't like olives they're easy to leave!
http://www.puzzlebrains.co.uk/forum/vie ... gon#p37444


This is a nice pork recipe for a main course

Pork Fillet with Feta, Crispy Pancetta and Minted Courgettes

Ingredients

400g pork fillet, sliced into 8 rounds
4 slices pancetta halved
8 small cubes of feta cheese
Olive oil
Four large courgettes, sliced thinly into rounds (yellow and green look good if you can get them)
Half a large red chilli chopped very small,
5 cloves garlic, crushed
Bunch of mint leaves, chopped
About 12 sage leaves
2 packets of ready cooked brown basmati rice
2 tablespoons sun dried tomato paste
Juice of half a lemon
Balsamic vinegar
2 tbs of fat free plain Greek yogurt

Method

Slice a little hole into the top of each piece of pork and squash a bit of feta cheese into each one. Cover over the top of the cheese with half a slice of pancetta, and mould it round the top of each piece so that it fits snugly with your hand.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan, and put the pieces of pork in pancetta side down. Fry on a medium heat until the pancetta is crispy.

In another pan, fry the courgettes in a little olive oil, stirring, until they begin to soften. Add the mint, garlic and chilli and cook for a further minute or so.

Turn the pork pieces and cook on the other side until cooked through.

Put the courgettes on a big serving plate, and place the pork pieces on the top. Leave somewhere warm while you prepare the rice.

Add a little water from the kettle to the pan you cooked the pork in and stir. Add the tomato puree and lemon juice and stir again. Open the packets of rice and add to the pan, stirring to break up any lumps, and to incorporate the liquid. Cook, stirring for a couple of minutes to heat through.

Stir a couple of tablespoons of yogurt through the rice and put it into a separate serving dish.
Drizzle a small amount of balsamic vinegar over the top of the pork and courgettes and serve.

And this is a REALLY easy starter http://www.puzzlebrains.co.uk/forum/vie ... ese#p24830 but obviously you would have to be reasonably confident that people would like goat's cheese, which isn't to everyone's taste.

Another starter which is nice and easy is to make in advance is to slice up some pears, pop them on top of some small leaf salad (like lamb's lettuce / watercress / baby spinach leaves or something), tossed in some French dressing or honey and mustard salad dressing, then crumble some roquefort cheese over the top and sprinkle some walnuts as well to finish. Serve with fresh sourdough bread.

I did this last Christmas Day for a starter. It was very easy to prepare as I made the dressing, mixed the horseradish cream and prepared the prawns in advance (I didn't actually leave the tails on as I bought a pack of large ready to eat prawns) so all I had to do when we wanted to eat is plate it all up. And it's nice and light so it doesn't fill you up.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/9081 ... eam-and-li

This is lovely. I'm sure one of these will be perfect. I need to test on the family. Jon is looking the idea of sticky toffee pudding

Ah, now I do have a really good recipe for that. It's a James Martin one and works perfectly every time. The sponge and sauce can be made in advance. The sponge can even be frozen and both can be plated up and re heated in the microwave.

Sticky toffee pudding with toffee sauce.

Serves 6-8

75g soft butter
175g dark brown demerara sugar
200g self raising flour plus extra for dusting
1tbs golden syrup
2tb black treacle
2 eggs
1tsp vanilla extract
200g pitted dates
1tbs bicarbonate of soda.

For the toffee sauce
100g sugar
100g butter
200ml double cream

Method
Pre heat oven gas 6. Grease 23cm tin with 25g of the butter, then dust the inside of the tin with flour.
Using a food mixer blend the remaining butter and sugar together. Slowly add the golden syrup treacle, eggs and vanilla extract to the butter mixture and continue mixing. Turn the mixer down to a slow speed and then add the flour. Once all the ingredients are combined turn off the mixer.

Place the dates into a saucepan with 300ml of water and bring to the boil. Puree the water and date mixture and add the bicarbonate of soda. While it is still hot, quickly add this mixture to the egg mix. Once the mix is combined, pour into the preparead tin and bake for 40-45 minutes until the top is just firm to the touch.

Remove the pudding from the oven and allow to cool, then turn out of the tin and cut into squares.

To make the sauce, melt the butter and sugar together in a small pan, add the cream and bring to the boil. Simmer for a few minutes until the sauce reaches the desired consistency.

To serve, re heat the sponge in a microwave or heat for 5 minutes in the oven at gas 4. Place onto a plate with lots of the sauce on the top and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

An all in one chicken dish to which you can decide what goes in it.

Chicken thighs and or legs with skin but remove any big bits of fat etc
Tomatoes roughly chopped
Smoked bacon or ham cubes (in tubs from supermarket)
Olive oil
Mushrooms
Courgette
Celery
Rosemary, thyme or preferred herbs or spices, pepper
Any other veg to your taste eg chilie or pepper

Put chicken in ovenproof dish add chunky chopped veg, herbs, then tomatoes drizzle with plenty of good olive oil, cover and cook in oven for 40 mins or until chicken is cooked through, stir halfway through cooking and take lid off for last 10 mins. No other liquid is needed.

I often do this and it turns out well every time no matter what ingredients I use. It originally came from The BBC good food mag.

That sounds good! And easy

Thanks for all the recipes. I'm trying then out on the family. They love them all so far, and they seem really doable.