Main: Fish fillets with prawns
Women’s Weekly Dinner Party Cookbook No. 2 Page 12
Dessert: Hazelnut crepes with chocolate sauce
Women’s Weekly Dinner Party Cookbook No. 2 Page 14
Hi there everyone,
Hope this weeks little cook-in finds you are well and happy. We had a lot of fun at Wine Wednesday this week because we had some ring-ins. My very old friend from Wagga Wagga came to visit and asked if they could stay an extra night to experience a Wine Wednesday. My boys love these beautiful people so it made for a really fun night and an added, interesting perspective on the food. Besides that, my friend sets a beautiful table, as you can see.
This is an extremely old WW cookbook and it is really great to look back on the type of cooking we all did in the 70’s. In most cases it does require a little imagination to ju ju it up a bit. The main course is like a mornay. The fish is cooked – in the recipe it is suggested that you cook it in the oven – however, I poached it which I feel saves the fish fillets from getting leathery. A basic white sauce is created using some of the juice from the “poached” fish. Now, this is where I feel it got bland. There was no real added flavours. I don’t know about you but I like a fish sauce that has a little cheese in it, perhaps a teaspoon of mustard, a dash of worcestershire sauce. Hey, you may like just the mild, if somewhat boring, flavour of the fish and that’s okay but if you try this dish please taste and adjust. The prawns are added to the sauce to cook through which only takes a few minutes. It is served over the rice which has steamed spinach added. The overall thinking was that the spinach did nothing for the rice and this dish would have perhaps been better served as a pasta dish stirred through fettucine or a pasta bake with cheese on the top. Everyone enjoyed it, however served like this it was nothing to rave about. The little salad of tomato and asparagus was light and delicious but also unremarkable. 6.8 was the score on this one. We did enjoy some yummy MUM champagne along with our wine this week, courtesy of the Wagga tribe.
Now for dessert. You ask yourself, how can I go wrong with beautiful crepes??? Well, this received two 5’s in the scoring which, of course, brought down the average. With this recipe and others in this book, there is a level of assumed knowledge that you need to be aware of. The recipe calls for toasted hazelnuts. It doesn’t tell you how long to toast them in the oven or at what temperature or even to blitz them afterwards to make a fine powder from them so I have added these instructions to the recipe for you. Crepes are always hard to get going in the pan at first but I find that after the first one I manage to flip them just fine. The recipe only made four so double it. The thin layer of the hazelnut paste folded up in the crepes is certainly delicious, however, I have a tendency to overdo the chocolate sauce when serving. I was told that it overtook the flavour and we lost the hazelnut. So – beware the chocoholic…… But seriously, what could be nicer that warm crepes with ice cream and chocolate sauce???? I will definitely be doing these again even if it’s just for the MAV and I. These received 8!
My dear friend from England arrives next week for six weeks so we will have some fun getting her perspective AND she has said she would love to cook for one of the Wine Wednesdays during that time. A guest chef so to speak. How exciting!!
Until next week,
From my table to yours with love. x
