2011, part one

Hello. Anybody still reading?

We hope you all had a wonderful, gluttonous Christmas and a bright start to the New Year.

Admittedly, we're a little late in bidding farewell to 2011 and hello to 2012. But while we recover from the festivities and get over a nasty sickness bug, we'll leave you to view our year in pictures.

January

A home and many shelves packed into boxes, a precious table carefully moved, a 60th birthday and a supper to celebrate Scotland.

February

A flurry of suppers here, here and here, birthday merriment, the last supper and a baby growing fast.

March

Our favourite time of year, time to try another supper club, preparing, soaking up Spring.

April

A feast, a butchery workshop we never got to blog about, delicious roast lamb providing energy, a precious baby girl arrives, amazement, awe, love. Cakes for visitors, delicate wild garlic, new light, a new home, a Royal Wedding and baby's first picnic.

May

Hearts stinging with grief, baking in memory and for cake club. A special birthday remembered.

June

A not so summery solstice, baking for new friends, cordial making, new adventures in cheese, busy wedding preparations, busy with baby, a hen do remembered, a visit to Great Granny's tree, collecting eggs.

Viva Vivo salad!

It takes something really tempting for me to order a salad and actually enjoy it. I was first tempted by the combination of chicory, Gorgonzola, pomegranate and mint, simply and boldly served at Caffe Vivo last summer.

It's an atmospheric, bright place to have lunch or make the most of the all day express menu and you can get anything from a cappuccino to a hearty supper.

The salad is actually so simple, it doesn't warrant a recipe. It's great as a lunch dish or a light starter to allow space for a comforting Wintery main course and pudding. Here's a how to:

Lift the soft blue cheese from the fridge (the flavour improves if it's served at room temperature). If you're sticking to the Italian roots of this dish use Dolcelatte or Gorgonzola or if you're keen for a treat, try Cornish Blue from the award winning The Cheese Shed; it's a young blue cheese that competes well with imported cheeses and is much lighter than a British Stilton.

Wash and arrange the chicory as a base (we used a mixture of regular and red leaves).

Free the jewels of pomegranate from the fruit, set aside.

Arrange the blue cheese rustically on the leaves.

Scatter the pomegranate.

Dress with delicious olive oil (Arbequina is amazing and available here) and fresh mint.

Buon appetito!

For safe travels: in pictures

It was a strange feeling setting the Table again, revisiting our mental supper club to do list, checking everything twice convinced something would be forgotton. The menu planning, shopping, rush of the preparations, the anticipation of guests arriving. A curious mixture of nerves and delights.

Then, the doorbell rings, old roles are resumed like putting on a pair of well worn shoes, dinner is served, friends gather to tell stories and say farewell for now. The baby sleeps, wakes briefly aware there are strangers in her home and sleeps soundly again.

Now, it is over and we're left with these pictures to tell the story, house quiet, table cleared but washing up piled high, washing machine whirring, eager to do it again.

And so to bed.

To welcome: Dunsyre blue cheese mousse, buttery oat biscuits.

To amuse: Curried parsnip soup, apple crisps.

To start: Squash, rocket, Dunsyre blue, rosemary.

To follow: Venison Wellingtons, caramelised red cabbage, green beans.

Here's how a wheat free Wellington looks.

To finish: Baked chocolate pudding, toasted hazelnuts, vanilla ice cream.

Menu for safe travels

We're back, kind of!

As we've been missing hosting our supper club lots, the perfect opportunity to have a little practice for friends and send some of them to the other side of the world with bellies full of some fine home grown ingredients has arisen. We thought you'd like to see.

The menu has been selected from some of the most successful and decadent ever brought to the Table. Now we need to get to grips with shopping lists, transforming our home and all of the hosting/cooking things that were second nature earlier this year!

To start

Squash, rocket, Dunsyre blue, pear, rosemary.

To follow

Wellingtons, caramelised red cabbage, green beans.

To finish

Baked chocolate pudding, toasted hazelnuts, vanilla ice cream.

Shortbread for the weekend

Holly makes the best shortbread and I asked her to share her secrets and her recipe here. You can check out other wonderful things she makes and her quest to feather her nest over on her blog. In fact, make some shortbread, grab a tea, coffee, whisky or wine and click here.

Weighing.

Dough.

Ready to bake.

Ready to eat.

I have tried many different shortbread recipes in the past, but this one is by far the tastiest. It is adapted from a recipe by Anta who serve up big mugs of tea and generous portions of cakes and biscuits at their Highland showroom in Fearn...definitely worth a visit if you're ever on the north-east coast!

Since I began using this recipe it has been baked in heart shapes to celebrate weddings and engagements, in holly leaf shapes to be given as Christmas presents, and in sweet little rounds just to be enjoyed at home.

To make 25-30 small biscuits, you will need:

8oz butter - I use salted
3 and a half oz caster sugar (plus extra for sprinkling)
3 and a half oz corn flour
8oz plain flour
pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 150C. Grease and line a baking tray or two.
Mix together the butter and sugar.
Mix in the corn flour.
Mix in the plain flour and pinch of salt.

My mixer is not very good, and there is a lot of flour, so I have to use my hands towards the end to bring the mixture together. But once you have a soft, but not sticky, dough, flour a work surface and roll out to a depth of about 2cm.

Cut into any shapes you like and use a fork to prick holes in the tops.

Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes.

Transfer to a cooling rack, and while still warm sprinkle with caster sugar (the heat will make the sugar stick to the tops and in the holes you made with the fork).

Enjoy with tea, coffee, whisky, sweet wine, the list is endless - this shortbread goes with everything!

*Step by step photos by Holly except for the ready to eat shot which is mine!

Canapes for ladies

When ladies gather, this time to mark a retirement, it's an occasion worthy of some delectable bites.

Hot smoked salmon mousse on homemade buttery oat biscuits.

Prawn, cucumber ribbon and mint spoons.

Pea and Pecorino toasts.

Brioche toasts, chicken liver pate and nectarine pickle.

Party pieces - Scottish fruit skewers with chocolate coated blueberries.