Come dine with me
Entertaining people can be a stressful affair. I've seen grown women work themselves up into an agony of worry, reading cookery books late into the night and fretting over table settings because they've arranged to have people over for dinner.
It's the effect of TV programmes such as Come Dine with Me that causes this stress. Images of guests driving home saying, "That was a fun night, but I'll give Laura four out of 10 for the food -- that ceviche of scallops with pork belly was yuck" spring to mind. There was a time when the pleasure was simply sharing food with friends, but now it has all become very competitive.
If home entertaining is an evening of horrors for you, there are other solutions. Buying pre-prepared food is one, but that runs the risk of discovery. But there's another way: bring a chef to your house. You get good food, your guests will be impressed, it's a chance to use those John Rocha crystal glasses that you bought last year and you don't have to cook. It also gives you the chance to serve your favourite wines.
Over the past couple of weeks I've done just that -- I've hosted dinner parties at home and I haven't lifted a finger in the kitchen. I left that to Johnny Cooke and Andrew Rudd, both well-known names in the world of catering.
The first dinner was catered by Johnny, who no longer runs a restaurant, but now concentrates on event catering. The menu we chose was his East meets West Mediterranean Feast, a combination of dishes from the littoral Mediterranean. We started with Cava in the sitting room, where we were served the canapés: crostini of baccala with botarga, birds' nests with quail eggs and snipe pastillas, all excellent.
From here we moved to the dining room for the main event, a mix of dishes in the style of the Levant -- meze platters. There were two, with the first made up of baba ghanoush, Moroccan flatbread, shots of ajo blanco, spiced lamb cutlets with pomegranate and tahini, sweetbreads with artichoke, cardamom and preserved lemons, spinach with goats' cheese, pine nuts and garlic, and grilled Mediterranean vegetables.
The second platter, made up of seafood, comprised turbot Grenoble, clams with white beans and saffron, and chargrilled squid with charmoula (a north African marinade made with preserved lemons, garlic, cumin and herbs). You can see that there was a huge choice of foods, which would satisfy the most demanding palates.
A couple of these really stood out. I loved the ajo blanco shots (chilled almond soup) and the Moroccan flatbread, and the sweetbreads were divine -- I've always loved the taste of preserved lemons (a north African speciality). The stuffed squid was a delight too. For dessert we had a cardamom panacotta with blood orange segments and honeycomb, after which coffees and various teas ended an excellent meal.
The next week followed a similar pattern, with Andrew arriving a few hours before the 8pm kick-off to complete his preparations. This time we had a simpler menu with fewer dishes. As before, it began with fish cakes as canapés, which we had in the sitting room with our Cava. Andrew served some pickled cucumber slices with the fish cakes and they were remarkable. Remarkable because I generally hold cucumber in low regard. Like Dr Johnston, I think it should be thinly sliced, salted and peppered, then thrown away as fit for nothing. They changed my mind completely about cucumber and I shall be demanding it pickled from now on.
When we moved to the dining room we began with a really delicious butternut squash soup and good wholemeal bread. I'd had the advantage of watching Andrew in the kitchen before the guests arrived, so I'd seen him marinating and peppering a beef fillet. "Twenty-eight days dry-aged," he told me. It came to the table perfectly pink and seared on the outside, as tender as beef can be.
With the beef he served potatoes mashed with a ricer, which was flavoured with truffle, roasted carrots, leeks, peas cooked with fresh mint leaves and fine asparagus spears. The purist in me was muttering about asparagus with more air miles than I have, but my inner gourmand was stuffing it into my mouth. Dessert was a tour de force, a meringue roulade with raspberries and a twist on traditional mince pies -- honey-glazed pies made of puff pastry.
Although both dinners were good examples of what these two chefs can do, the economics make more sense if the numbers are larger than the six I had on both occasions. Johnny says he caters for 20 to 2,000 and Andrew Rudd would recommend at least a dozen. Remember, having a chef all to yourself is a bit like taking over a whole restaurant: you're not sharing his costs with other tables, so it's not a cheap option. A meal like the one we got from Johnny would cost around €80 a head and Andrew's would be a little cheaper, although he can do buffets starting from €45 a head. The basic rule here is that the bigger the number, the lower the cost per head.
Both can arrange to have waiters serving, and each can supply wines to match their menus. Both of these meals were five-star but I'd give Johnny a slight edge on the food. As for ambience, well, being my house it was of course beyond excellent.
Lastly, here's a tip: I made sure I had lots of water in the fridge. About two years ago my friends' drinking habits changed and on a couple of occasions I found I had plenty of wine but had run out of water. It's the new rectitude that forces a reverse Cana, when you need to turn your wine into water.
Paolo's marks: 9 out of 10 for Johnny; 8 out of 10 for Andrew
Read Paolo at www.tasteofireland.ie
For Johnny Cooke call 01-679 0536 or email cookes1@eircom.net
For Andrew Rudd call 085 713 6784 or email sales@gourmetfood.ie
- Paolo Tullio
Irish Independent
