Festive Table for Ten

The Festive Supper table set and ready to go. Again, our beautiful menu cards provided by the brilliant Kirstie at White Blossom Paper Boutique in Bruntsfield. 

Getting to know each other

In the foreground, hand made rye bread rolls, thinly sliced homecured gravadlax with delicious salmon from Eddie's in Marchmont. Our guests' wine lined up and labelled.

Our two desserts. Lemon posset with berries and panettone butter pudding.

Our guests enjoying the meal

Guests and hosts enjoying a post dinner chat.

Burns Night Supper

Our first event of 2012 will be a Burns Night Supper on 29 January.  More details to follow - email us on tableforten@btinternet.com to book.

The menu for our next event

We are fully booked for our next meal on Saturday 10th December!

Our menu will be:

Home cured gravadlax with mustard & dill dressing

Confit of Gartmorn Farm duck leg, 

roasted potatoes and red cabbage

Panettone bread and butter pudding or lemon posset

Coffee and petit fours

Dependent on availability of ingredients

A review of Table for Ten

Check out Hannah's review of Table for Ten's launch night!  Thank you so much Hannah - we're just delighted that you all had a great time!

If that has whet your appetite, 2 spaces have just become available at our next supper on 10th December.  Tweet us or drop is a line by email if you are interested in coming along!

Saturday 29th October - our 'official' launch night

Well, what can we say - what a fabulous evening!  In the days leading up to Saturday, both Ros and Clare were dreaming about food... literally!  Naturally we were a little nervous but full of excitement at the prospect of welcoming 10 guests to our supper club and I think we can say that the evening was a resounding success!

Our guests began to arrive at around 7.30 pm and were greeted by our fabulous hostess Edi who has the most amazing home and who is full of warmth and genuine charm which instantly puts guests at ease.  From the kitchen, where we were busy with the bloody mary soup shots which we served as an amuse bouche, we could hear lots of chatter and laughter as people enjoyed a glass of fizz with Ros' lovely fig, mint and cream cheese canapés. 

Now one thing we should say is that the kitchen area is at the top of the dining area and so we prepare, cook and plate up in full view of our guests.  Of course this means we have to be well behaved, but for us the cooks, it means that we are most definitely part of the evening and get to enjoy the lovely sounds of our guests having a good time. 

 


Once everyone had been seated and enjoyed their soup shot, we served up our starter which was butternut squash-filled ravioli served with sage butter.  By this time the kitchen was in full flow as we prepared to cook our main course.  

For Clare, this was the most nerve-racking part of the whole evening - the venison loin...  Having filleted the saddle herself and having used the bones to make a flavoursome game stock, the venison needed to be perfect.  We served the loin on a pomme puree with a bed of spinach, accompanied with a bitter chocolate sauce (which had port and almost a full bottle of wine in it!).  On the table we served roasted beetroot and confit baby onions for guests to help themselves to.  In the kitchen it was a true team effort to plate it all up and serve it to our expectant guests and it was most definitely the most frantic part of the evening in the kitchen. However, it was worth it and comments like this were welcomed by a very relieved Clare! 

 Then for dessert. To keep with the seasonal theme, Ros had prepared toffee apple puddings with a calvados and cinnamon icecream - basically a sticky toffee pudding with a twist! These went down a treat (also with the chefs as we snuck into the living room for a quick breather). 

 

Once everything had been cleared, we joined our guests for coffee and a good natter which went on into the small hours, with Edi even offering an impromptu 'tour' of her impressive art collection!  Our final guests left after 1.00 am but only after they had left us some lovely comments which you can see here on the blog.  We are absolutely delighted that everyone had a great time and would like to thank all of our guests for their kind words.  At the end of the day, Table for Ten would be nothing without our wonderful guests - they bring warmth, wit, curiosity and generosity which they share around the table to make the evening what it is.  We are really keen that Table for Ten should be an 'experience' where guests can feel relaxed and enjoy good food in a friendly atmosphere and it looks like we've gotten off to a good start!

 

Table for Ten is a team effort with all 4 of us involved, and last night's supper proved to us that we can do a good job and give our guests a night to remember.  We look forward to welcoming many more.

More comments from our guests:


 

Next event

Our next supper club event will be 10th December 2011.  We're planning a seasonal menu with some festive touches - email us tableforten@btinternet.com if you are interested in booking!

 Our menu for next Saturday, 29th October:

       

 Squash ravioli with sage butter

Loin of venison with a chocolate sauce and pomme puree

Toffee apple pudding with calvados and cinnamon ice cream

Coffee and petit fours

Our friends at Great Grog suggest that the following wines would go nicely with our food:

Starter: Gavi La Battistina £8.10 (Italian White)

            Araldica Barbera £5.59 (Italian Red)

Main: Trentham la Famiglia Nebbiolo £10.59 (Australian Red)

         Carpineto Dogajolo Super Tuscan £11.49 (Italian Red)

Dessert: Fernando de Castilla Pedro Ximinez £17.49 (Sweet Sherry - Full bottle)

Great Grog have a shop at 2 Dalkeith Road - more details on their website

Initial photos from our very first supper!

The table is set for ten

There was plenty of chat!

More will follow!

Menu for our trial this Saturday!

Warm Pear and Blue Cheese Salad

Aubergine and Mushroom Cottage Pie

Salted Caramel and Baked Chocolate Tart

Coffee and Petit Fours

Getting excited now!

Only a week and a bit till our 'trial' supper, and the launch night on 29 October is nearly full! Bit nervous, but more excited really - and of course getting hungry at thinking about some of the menu options.

It's certainly been a food filled few weeks, not least with a week in Turkey, eating some amazing mezze and kebabs (yes, we went to a restaurant called The Kebab Hospital in Gocek, which was delicious), and I may as well have come back as an aubergine given how much of the fantastic stuff I ate.

I'm quite liking the blue cheese (Dunsyre blue) and red onion tartlets I made at the weekend - with a green salad and balsamic syrup. At their best when still warm, but no longer piping hot.

I'm also a big fan of Joanna Weinberg's Feed your Friends with Relish and this is my version of her lamb with rose petal jam (try buying that in Edinburgh, I challenge you - I resorted to waiting till I was last down in London and grabbed some from a fab middle eastern store just off the Edgeware Road, one of my old haunts) with a nutty couscous and some lightly (in this case, slightly too lightly!) steamed beans.

And given the lack of summery weather, a hearty venison casserole - you can't quite see it, but the mash is purple, thanks to a gift of purple spuds from a green fingered friend! Still working on how to present greens on a plate - presentation currently not my forte!

Always one with a sweet tooth, I've been trying out some delicious ice cream recipes - a new favourite is cinnamon and calvados, which goes a treat with toffee apple pudding, as well as the trusted rosewater, white chocolate and cardamon... 

Then of course sticky toffee pudding. Delia's is a winner for me, and I thought nothing would ever beat my favourite Cartmel puds...

Contact us!

We are now taking bookings for our first event on 29th October! Please Email tableforten@btinternet.com for details or to book!

Perfecting the baked chocolate tart

I feel a little odd writing about my exploits in the kitchen whilst cities across the UK are shut down by rioters, and friends in London can't even go out to the shops to buy a pint of milk. But worrying about the quantity of egg yolk to put in a chocolate tart at least prevents me from going crazy thinking about the societal breakdown that can result in such a horrendous turn of events. This article got me thinking a lot about how disaffected some people really are from society, give it a read (and support Kid's Company), the author is an inspirational woman whom I once had the privilege of hearing speak at an event.

However, on to a more light hearted subject. The results of my weekend of gastronomic experimentation! Inspired by a canape at a friend's wedding a fortnight ago, I turned my hand to pea and mint soup. And very glad I am too! Served hot in a bowl (hubby's preference) or cold in a shot glass (my preference - aesthetically and taste), this will definitely make the menu at a supper club coming to you soon!

The pate worked out very nicely too. Though a lesson learnt will be to take it out of the fridge quite some time before serving. I can't take the credit for the delicious accompanying fig chutney (jam and chutney making scare me) but a delicious lunchtime snack - and perhaps, if I can get the presentation right, a tasty starter.

Having received an ice cream maker as an engagement present a couple of years ago - possibly the best and most well used present we have ever received - this weekend was the turn of sorbet. (OK, so I made a spiced chocolate and port ice-cream too, but pictures of that will have to wait). Not having made sorbet in the churner before, I was a little apprehensive, but fortunately my concerns were unfounded. Here is my apple and calvados sorbet (bit less sugar and it will be a perfect palate cleanser, should we opt for that course), complete with freezer chilled shot glasses. Oh dear, I'm enjoying the food porn photography a bit too much!

Of course, being surrounded by all things chocolately (we are fortunate enough to live within seconds of Cocos of Bruntsfield and The Chocolate Tree), where chocolate is, then I am never far away. The chocolate florentines - whilst risking turning into a big burnt caramel mess in the oven - in fact were rescued by James Martin's tip to 'reshape after 4 minutes in the oven' (my baking tray was nearly plate-glass candied fruit and sugar) and have turned out a treat. But how to get the chocolate glossier on top?

And now for the piece de la resistance*, the baked chocolate and salted caramel tart. This is a recreation as mentioned in a previous post of a delicious dessert we had on the West Coast, in Tarbert. My hunt for recipes which approximated what we had eaten led me to this BBC Good Food recipe. I leave out the cocoa in the pastry, opting for a simpler sweet short crust, and, in this, my second attempt, only used egg whites in the chocolate layer, to make it slightly less heavy than if including the yolk too. My top tip would also be to let each layer cool completely before adding the next (so it becomes a 24 hour job). Blind baked pastry shell needs to be cooled before pouring in the caramel layer, caramel should set before spooning over the chocolatey-egg-whitey goo (when I first made this, I wasn't as patient, meaning the chocolate layer was much harder to spread, and the cooked result had less distinctive layers).

It was well worth the wait.

And I know I'm not really going in order here (did you really think this was all eaten at one sitting), but given I have become obsessed with taking photos of food, how's about this for a ridiculous way to serve up fish fingers. A jenga of breaded fish fillets served on creamed potato, with a tomato and petits pois garnish. (Needless to say, after the photo was taken, I heaped on a whole load more peas - got to get my five a day)!

*apologies for the lack of accents throughout - the linguist in me is very disappointed at my lack of Mac shortcuts for these characters... Will try to learn, or make fewer things with French provenance.

A rainy day in the kitchen

Thank goodness it rained today. I have spent the last several hours in the kitchen (very willingly, I should add - and with a brief interlude on a desperate hunt for anywhere that sold Calvados... thank you Waitrose!) experimenting with some old and new recipes.

The morning started at least with some sunshine, a jog (the first in quite a while - I must have realised the calorific content of a weekend of food experimentation) and a quick shop in Real Foods on Brougham Street. Love that place, and in particular their sacks of muesli. Back home in time to make some salted caramel for the baked chocolate and caramel tart which I will be baking some time later this week. We had a similar treat when in Tarbert a few weeks back in a fantastic harbourside restaurant, Scott's. So delicious was it that I immediately set out on a quest to find a recipe to make it myself, and am just about there with this recipe from BBC Good Food, though next time I am just going to use egg white to see if I can make the chocolate layer a little less dense. Anyway, fun was had by all who got to lick the spoon after making the caramel.

The veg box arrived a couple of days ago and fortunately I had just stumbled across a recipe for broad bean and feta salad (a version of a favourite pea and feta salad I've made many a time thanks to Jamie Oliver).

I also made my first ever pate - chicken liver and cointreau - which is chilling in the fridge before being dished up for lunch tomorrow with freshly baked soda bread. I was tempted to try my hand at homemade brioche but after making pizza dough last night decided against doughy mess all over me and the kitchen for a second day in a row.

That said, I was suitably messy by the time I'd finished with the 'whisky snap' baskets, sculpted over an improvised basket mould... an old aerosol lid. They taste fab, but are, well, not particularly uniform in shape or size... and nearly ended up as one huge whisky snap tray bake at one stage in the afternoon!

The mixture for an apple and calvados sorbet (yes, the calvados was for a recipe, not just as a tipple) is chilling in the fridge over night. A memory of holidays in Brittany with my folks, when I was young enough to think ice cream before main course was just fantastic. My first introduction to a palate cleanser at the age of five.

And the hubby and I have just polished off a plate of deliciously meaty seared scallops, with creamy mash and a tomato, chorizo and balsamic sauce / salsa / confit (not sure what it should be called - sauteed in some oil for a few minutes before serving).

We are both suitably full, needless to say.

Right - better start blogging then...

OK folks, so this whole blogging business is new to me.
Suffice to say, we foodies are beginning to plot our soon to be launched supper club - watch this space for an October launch - and are beginning to get very excited... We've already got our hands on a copy of MsMarmiteLover's underground supper club book and are eagerly perusing it for tips and hints. The two cooks have been madly exchanging messages about our plans for amuses bouches, starters, mains and puds, not to mention some eager experimentation with petits fours... We've even been approached by MyMonkfish for our launch - I am quite simply wowed by the power of twitter.
In short, none of us have really been focussing on our actual day jobs and are instead fantasising about our gastronomic adventure. And of course, we now have the perfect excuse to sample as many of the eateries in Edinburgh as possible - all in the name of research. This will be a fun few months.