Goats Cheese Parcels with a Cranberry Dressing – Wild Boar Stew with Chorizo and White Beans – Banoffi Pie

My style of cooking for our dinner parties is fairly basic, but tasty (I hope) and easy to. The hardest part is to think up different menus, so I don’t repeat anything, and also when you are hosting, it is nice to prepare and cook as much as you can in advance, or dishes that do not need to be cooked when your guests are ensconced, so you spend most of the time with your guests rather than being in the kitchen. You can read about my style of cooking here

Dinner Party Menu Idea for 4 People

STARTER:    Goats Cheese Parcels (Serves 4)

Ingredients
3  tbsp. olive oil
3 onions thinly sliced
1 garlic clove crushed
pinch of sugar
25g butter melted
8 sheets of filo pastry cut in half
50g walnut chopped walnut pieces
2 rounds of goats cheese (about 70g each cut in half)
chopped fresh thyme
black pepper
fresh thyme sprigs to tie purses (optional)

Cranberry Dressing
2tbs cranberry sauce
2tbs redcurrant jelly
2tbs clear honey

Method
Heat half of the oil and add the onions, garlic and a pinch of sugar.  Spread onions out as much as possible, stir to coat in the oil and gently over a low heat for about 30 mins, only turning occasionally, until they turn a golden brown and caramalised.  Leave to cool

Preheat oven to 200 degrees (190 for fan oven)

Mix the remaining oil and butter together and take half a sheet of filo and brush with a little of the oil mixture.  Place three more pieces on top at angles to each other to form a star shape, lightly oiling each sheet

Spread a quarter of the onions in the centre and place one half of goats cheese on top.  Scatter over the thyme leaves and season with pepper

Gather up the edges of the pastry and pinch tightly together to enclose the filling making a purse shape.  Repeat to make three more purses

Place the purses on a non stick baking sheet and brush lightly with the remaining oil mixture

Bake for 10 – 15 minutes until golden.  If you want to , you can tie each purse with a sprig of thyme and serve immediately

Serve with a little salad and diced yellow pepper (or colour of your choice) and drizzle over a little bit of salad dressing (ready done) or I just mix olive oil, balsamic vinegar, clear honey a little salt and pepper which makes a perfect quick and easy dressing.  Also serve with the cranberry dressing by just mixing the ingredients together

MAIN COURSE:  Wild Boar Stew ((this is a dish we had on holiday when we were in Spain, which I have tried to replicate, and it is very rich and thick and absolutely delicious)

Wild Boar Stew (I can get wild boar from my local butcher, where they source it from a Dorset Farm owned by Jody Sheckter (a former Formula 1 racing driver) but I have done this recipe using lamb) Serves 4 hearty good size bowls

Ingredients
Marinade the boar the night before and leave in the fridge
700g Wild Boar cut into generous cubes
Chorizo sausage sliced (one large one, or I use 4 of Tesco’s mini ones)
1 bottle of full favoured red wine (use 3/4 for the marinade)
2 tins cannelli beans (drained)
tin berlotti beans (drained)
1000 fl oz stock (I use a herb and a vegetable Knorr stock pot mixed together, but you can use what stock you like
Note:  You will seem to think that there is an awful lot of liquid, but this reduces down and you will probably find that you need to add a little extra water near the end of the cooking time
Olive Oil
Carton of Passata
Salt and Pepper

Marinade
3/4 bottle of the red wine
3tbs (approx) red wine vinegar
2 cloves garlic
2/3 bay leaves
2/3 cloves
2 carrots thinly sliced or chopped
Fresh or dried Sage and Rosemary

Method
Put the boar in a large bowl.  Mix all the marinade ingredients together and pour over the boar, cover and leave in the fridge overnight

Following day, remove the meat from the marinade and sear in a hot frying pan

Once browned place the meat in a large casserole dish.  Deglaze the pad with a bit of the marinade and pour that and all the rest of the marinade over the boar (you can take out the 3 cloves at this stage (if you can find them)

Pour in the remainder of the wine, the stock, chorizo, beans stock and salt and plenty

Cover and cook for about 3 hours

Pick out the bay leaves and the cloves (if you haven’t already found them), and serve with crusty bread

DESSERT:  Banoffi Pie (serves 6 small or 4 large portions)

Ingredients
90g (3oz butter)
1 x 400g already done caramel condensed milk (or you can make your own caramel if you do not want an easy cheat)
2 bananas peeled and sliced
1/4 pint double cream lightly whipped
plain chocolate to grate over the top
Biscuit base
60g (2oz) butter
150g (5oz) digestive or ginger nut biscuits crushed

7 inch loose bottomed flan dish

Method
Make the biscuit base by melting the butter in a saucepan and adding the crushed biscuits.  Stir well to combine and then press on to the bottom and sides of the flan dish.  Chill until set

Pour the caramel condensed milk over the set biscuit base, arrange the sliced bananas evenly on the top of the caramel and then topped with the lightly whipped cream.  Decorate with the grated chocolate.  Serve chilled