New Years Day Dinner

Last night I served fillet steak with a choice of sauces. There was a peppercorn, garlic mushroom and Marie’s Beef Fillets With Stilton Portobello Sauce . Cooking 7 steaks is no easy task and two ended up ‘medium’ instead of ‘medium rare’…but hey, their plates were empty at the end so it couldn’t have been too much of a hardship! I didn't managed to snap any photos of the main meal which was served with Evelyn's Greek Potatoes (Oven-Roasted and Delicious!) and petit pois but rest assured that they flavours were wonderful and everyone enjoyed everything.

Peppercorn sauce – slightly different from the original recipe I was given, from the exclusively food web site.

1 clove garlic
2 teaspoons of butter
100ml (about 5 tablespoons) white wine (on this occasion used rosé)
150ml vegetable stock
2 teaspoons green peppercorns, drained. The original recipe said I could use dried black peppercorns if green ones were unavailable, which I did!
2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons of cream
1 teaspoon of cornflower mixed with 2 tsps of water

Melt butter in pan,
Add garlic, give it a stir,
Add wine and vegetable stock
Bring to the boil,
Simmer for a minute.
Add peppercorns
Stir in mustard
Stir in cream
Add cornflower and stir until thickened.

I made my sauce first then reheated it in steak pan with the remaining meat juices, making sure all the sticky goodness from the steak was incorporated into my sauce.

Garlic Mushroom – Almost identical except I fried the mushrooms in the butter at step 1 and left out the peppercorns and mustard in steps 6 & 7 easy peasy!

For dessert I served Light and Dark Chocolate Mousse

Don't let the pan touch the boiling water - it will take the shine off your chocolate!

I doubled this recipe for 8 large portions (Well it was New Years Day!!!)

200g dark chocolate (I used a mix of milk and dark to appeal to the children)
50ml full cream milk (I used semi skimmed milk)
2 large egg yolks
½ tsp vanilla extract
4 large egg whites
40g caster sugar.
Melt the chocolate and milk in a heatproof bowl suspended over a saucepan of barely simmering water.
Stir together and then set aside to cool slightly. Stir the egg yolks into the chocolate until well blended, and then stir in the vanilla extract. Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form. Add the sugar gradually and continue to whisk until stiff and glossy. Stir a ladle full of egg whites into the chocolate mixture to lighten it, and then gently fold in the rest of the egg white. Transfer the mixture into your chosen container and chill for at least an hour.

Whisk the egg whites in a non-greasy bowl otherwise they won't double in size

I decorated them with a squirt of cream before serving

I served them with a light Vanilla Biscuit
These biscuits are very simple to make and unlike other biscuits I have tried, they are VERY easy to roll out.

125g butter
125g caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
250g plain flour
Vanilla extract

Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until creamy
Beat in the egg
Add two capfuls of vanilla extract
Add flour and mix with a spoon at first then using your hands
wrap dough in cling film and cool in the fridge for 30 minutes
Pre-heat oven to 180c
Roll out dough onto a lightly floured surface
Cut out shapes (I used flowers)
Bake for 10 minutes

Dust with icing sugar before serving