An Entertaining Weekend

We had a favourite visitor stay on Friday and as well as actually doing a tad of housework in his honour we wanted to make him some delicious food.


Antipasto of Griddled Vegetables in a Lemon Vinaigrette

Red peppers (at the bottom and invisible), courgettes and spring onions cooked on a a very hot ridged griddle, coated while warm with a very lemony dressing and decorated with Kalamata olives and capers. It was chilled before serving. I also made some ciabatta to soak up the juices.

Then we made him do some work and create his own ravioli from pasta dough and filling I had prepared in the afternoon. In fact, the two of them, A and Mr. S-C made a great team with the pasta roller and the cutters and I wish I'd taken pictures but I was having too good a time sipping wine and watching my boys work!


Mushroom Ravioli with Basil oil and Roasted Tomato

For pudding we had raspberry sorbet. The Fruit Garden in France is still a gleam in my eye but there were some raspberries at the Co-op that were not only at an appropriate price for the season (it's not "half price" but market price and I wish they'd tell the truth) but local, in good condition and marked down for being on their sell-by date. Irresistible or what?


Raspberry Sorbet

The sorbet is tremendously easy to make;

200g fine white sugar
200ml water
250g raspberries
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Select half a dozen of the prettiest raspberries and freeze individually for garnish.

Make a syrup of the water and sugar, stirring over a gentle heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. Add the remaining raspberries and allow to simmer for about a minute until the fruit starts to cook and falls apart when you stir it. Remove from the heat and rub the syrup and fruit through a fine sieve to remove the pips. Allow to cool and add the lemon juice.

Put into a freezer proof container and as soon as it's cold into the freezer. Allow to freeze. The relatively high sugar content and the pectin in the fruit stops this from freezing too hard but give it a stir after a few hours to redistribute the ice crystals.

When it's frozen completely (and it still won't be to solid to scoop unless you have an industrial freezer) scrape it out into your food processor and process smooth. The colour will change as air is beaten in. Put it back in its freezer container and into the freezer again until needed.

You can skip that last step if you like, the colour will be darker and the end product not quite so smooth but it's still delicious.

It was a hot evening and although I shaped the ice into neat quenelle shapes it's such a soft ice it melted during the photos. If you need quenelles, shape them and put back into the freezer until serving.