Celebratory Picnic

Celebratory Picnic

• Marinated olives; in organic olive oil, cumin coriander, basil, cloves, peppercorns in stored in the fridge in a glass jar.
• Lemon hommus; chick peas, organic olive oil, lemon juice, tahini and fresh parsley served with flax bark crackers.

• Mushroom pate; stock, cream, eggs, porcini and shiitake mushrooms and herbs.
• Cauliflower cream tambales served with flax bark crackers.
• Poached asparagus with tea pickled eggs with a dressing made from the pickled egg marinade.
• Baby beetroot salad with walnuts, organic goat fetta (marinated) and mint.
• Green leaf salad of bitter greens (rocket, dandelion) with slow roasted tomatoes & capsicum.
• Chocolate almond cake with strawberry coulees

This is a convenient ++ menu, as I’ve been very busy this week.  

The olives came out of a jar from IGA.  I just strained out the brine and added the olive oil and herbs.  The hummus ingredients were also very convenient.  I used Eden organic tinned beans as they don’t use bis phenol (plastic) lining in their cans and thus avoiding the xeno oestrogens.  I simply opened and drained the garbanzo (chick peas) beans, put them in the blender with a few sprigs of parsley leaves, juice of a lemon, organic olive oil and a dessertspoon of tahini and blend.

The mushroom pate came from the freezer.  I made it for a dinner party a few months ago.  It does require a bit of effort to make the original  but we’ve been eating portions of it continually.  The recipe is superb as part of any entree for a special event or dinner party. The recipe make a significant amount (loaf tin) and it’s easily sliced up and frozen to impress unexpected visitors.

The chocolate almond cake is a healthier variation of Stephanie Alexanders chocolate almond cake.  This also successfully freezes, however, it barely lasts long enough to freeze in our house. I’ll serve this with Mr Body Guard’s strawberry coulee out of jar from the fridge.  Its basically strawberries reduced down with a little pectin.  If we’re lucky I’ll pick up some organic cream to dob onto the chocolate cake and strawberry coulee!