So at last here is the dessert from the underground restaurant event I held last month! It's a continuation of a recipe I posted when I first started this blog and it has slowly evolved into the dessert below. Anyway, enough babbling, here it is!

















Ingredients
Strawberry and Rose Jelly
1 sachet of powdered gelatine or vegetarian equivalent
500ml moderately hot, but not boiling, water
100g sugar
3 tablespoons good quality rose water
two handfuls of strawberries

Pistachio Cream
A small carton of double cream (or low fat equivalent)
a handful of roasted, unshelled, unsalted pistachio nuts
3 tablespoons of sugar
1-2 tablespoons of water

Cake Layer
1 small Madeira cake (recipe)


Method
You'll need to prepare the jellies and Madeira cake 3-4 hours (or even the night) before serving so plan ahead. The Madeira cake should be cooked and cooled (or bought from the shop!) by this point and cut into rounds encompassing the entire circumference of your chosen ramekins (there should be enough to make 6 pots). Put the water, sugar and 3/4 of the strawberries in a pan and make sure the water doesn't boil. Take the pan off the heat after 2-3 minutes. Mix the rose water in and make sure the sugar has dissolved. Strain the liquid into a measuring jug and vigorously mix in the gelatine making sure it is fully dissolved. Cool the mixture at room temperature. Place the Madeira cake rounds at the bottom of your ramekins and press down. Pour the liquid into the ramekins and let it cool down for 20 or so minutes. Place a few remaining strawberries in the jelly and use a toothpick to make sure they go into the position you want (presentation is important!). When the jelly has completely cooled down place the ramekins in the fridge.

Crush the pistachio nuts in a plastic bag until quite fine (make sure they're not all powdered - texture is important) and place them into a pan with the water and sugar. Heat together for a minute to so and leave to cool down whilst you whisk the cream. When the cream is fluffy add the pistachios making sure to fold them in. You might need to whisk the cream to get some more air into the mixture. Layer a teaspoon or so of the cream onto the jellies and top with extra crushed pistachios. Refrigerate for 20 minutes and then serve. Note: If you wanted to go all the way and make this into a trifle you could just add a custard layer!

So it was approaching the big night of my first underground restaurant event and I still didn't have a main course. I had sent out the invites three weeks ago. 21 days. 504 hours. 30, 240 minutes ago. How was I not panicking? I should have been panicking! Something inside me was ignoring the warning signs with an assured calm. I guess by chipping away at the expectations of my guests by suggesting in the invitations that a successful night was one in which I didn't make anyone ill and one in which I provide three moderately edible courses. It became my self-fulfilling prophecy and up until the day before the event I was walking blindly into failure. And what did I do when I knew I was gravitating towards failure? I went off and made a cup of coffee and put my internal alarm on snooze. Somewhere between making and consuming the coffee an idea hit me. Lamb! Yes! Lamb! That's kind of Lebanese, isn't it? I couldn't get the word lamb out of my head. I was just sitting there, tapping my fingers muttering the word lamb under my breath. I guess I was making lamb. What kind of lamb and how wasn't apparent just yet.

















The haze of procrastination started to wear off about lunchtime when some internal resilience actually saw me make some steady progress. I typed the word lamb into google and realised I was being silly. I typed in lamb recipes and I managed to get to page three of the search results before deciding I had to actually figure out what kind of dish I wanted to make. I got up to have a breather (after two or so minutes of actual thought) and then inspiration struck. I don't know why or how but I suddenly had a vivid idea of what to make (I was even aware of the ingredients). Saffron and Orange Lamb Shanks...how did I even know how to make that? Maybe wasting your days away reading cookery books, blogs and magazines pays off! I wrote down the ingredients I thought I needed and went off to the butchers. Suddenly everything was okay. Melodrama was replaced by a real assured calm and I was happy with my main course selection. I decided to pair it with a mashed potato recipe inspired by Joel Robuchon's famous pommes purée. This is how I made it!

Ingredients
Saffron and Orange Lamb Shanks
6 lamb shanks
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 onions diced
4 carrots roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic
1/2 teaspoon of cumin
1 teaspoon of saffron
3 bay leaves
4 1/2 cups of chicken stock
1 can of diced tomatoes
a splash of Worcestershire sauce
zest and juice of 1 orange
salt and pepper

Robuchon Mash
900g - 1kg of a floury variety of potato
300g butter
150ml milk
salt and pepper

Method
Lamb Shanks
Brown the lamb shanks in olive oil and set aside. Heat up your stock in another pan and add the saffron to it. Fry the onion until translucent and then add the girl. Add the canned tomatoes and cook for a minute. Add the cumin, bay leaves and Worcestershire sauce. Place the lamb shanks back into the pan and top with the stock. Heat till boiling and then cover the pot before turning it all the way down. Cook for 3 and a 1/2 hours. Turn off the heat and add the zest and juice of an orange. Check seasoning and adjust.

Mashed Potatoes
Bake the washed and unpeeled potatoes at 180C until soft (this takes quite a while...like over an hour). Scoop out the insides of the potato into a ricer. Set aside the riced potatoes (hah) and then work through a sieve (this is quite difficult). Add the potato to a pan with the butter and heat up until the butter has melted. Add the milk in slowly until it reaches a consistency of your liking. Add the seasoning and then serve with the lamb shanks and a little bit of the cooking juices.

Underground restaurants are everywhere right now. Every blog, magazine, newspaper and television channel has been underground restaurant crazy this past year and I thought I'd join the party before the clock struck midnight. One of the things I set out to do this year was to hold an underground restaurant (or supper club) event in my living room and this past Saturday (26th September) I did just that! I'd been planning the event for a month but being part of the Google generation my ability to concentrate was severely tested. Luckily I managed to get my stuff together and hold a pretty successful event (no one was poisoned; no expensive plates were broken).

















This, being my first foray into the underground restaurant game, was limited to friends who were keen and supportive of the idea (and looking forward to getting a 3 course meal for less than the price of a mojito). This was me testing the water; I needed to challenge myself and this was the perfect environment. Having friends over made the atmosphere comfortable and I think overall it was a very good night. I'll be publishing the recipes for each course right here for you lovely people but to tide you over until then, here is the menu:




Olive Fig Grape
Menu 26/09/09

Warak Einab and Labneh
Stuffed Vine Leaves with a Thick Yoghurt

Saffron and Orange Lamb Shanks
Served with 'Robuchon' Mash

Rose and Pistachio Pots
Rose Jelly and a Pistachio Cream



I went for a Lebanese theme to tie-in with my blog and one of the courses was a reworking of an old recipe I'd already published. We had Fairuz playing in the background and plenty of Jalab drink to go round to push some of the Middle-Eastern vibe. The atmosphere created by sharing with friends and interacting between meals made this a distinctly social event and for me this was one of the best food-related experiences of my life. I'll definitely be doing this again. Thanks to everyone who came! And a special thanks to Sam for taking the pics :-)