ramtops

We are summoned to a supper party tonight where we must bring a dish. We’ve not been very well all week, and so no shopping has been done, thus a rummage in the store cupboards and freezers was required.

There were two packs of chicken wings (10 wings in all) in there, so here’s what I did:

Put them in a shallow dish, and anointed them with lots of olive oil, the juice of a lemon, lots of black peppercorns – crushed, not grated – and about a dozen bay leaves from my lovely bay tree. I left them to marinade for about an hour, then put them on a metal tray and baked them at gas 6 / 200˚C for about 50 minutes.

Simples, as the meerkcat would say. But delicious and good for a party, as it’s finger food.

However, there were far fewer chicken bits than I thought, and it looked a bit spartan, so I had to have a think about something else to take. That’ll be the next post, any moment now!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

More party food, concocted from bits and bobs.

One pack of frozen shortcrust pastry removed from freezer – I know, I know, but I’m hopeless at pastry. Just am.

Got Pete to roll it out and line the flan tin because he’s better at it than me. There’s half the block left, and some nectarines in the fruit bowl, which is giving me an idea for individual nectarine tarts, but we’ll see … This long thin flan tin is a wonderful thing – much easier to serve the contents.

Lined with greaseproof (this is important), added my trusty baking beans, and baked it blind at gas 6/200˚C for ten minutes.

While that was going on, I sliced half a red pepper and chopped a small onion, and sautéd them down in some olive oil. Added a few finely chopped sage leaves from the garden at the end.

Whisked four eggs and the remains of the double cream in the fridge, added chopped up Stilton (about 100g, I’d say), and about 40g of walnuts, which I had first put in a plastic bag and bashed with a rolling pin while muttering the name of someone under my breath. Added sea salt and black pepper.

Removed the greaseproof and baking beans from the pastry (this is important too), spread the pepper/onion mix on the bottom, topped with the egg/cheese/walnut mix.

Returned it to the oven for about 35 minutes. It rose a lot, but is sagging back now. It’s a slightly worrying brown shade, but I’m going to put that down to the walnuts, because it doesn’t smell burnt …