2/3 course meal?

princess_lou

misskool, the bruchetta idea is lovely, complaments tandraig lasagne idea perfect..

mands.. think ur desert sounds reallt yummy

greenbee

misskool wrote: »

For the starter, you can whizz up the mackerel with some yogurt and garlic to make a pate/dip. Slice up the bagels thinly (and turn them into stick shapes) and toast them till really crispy. If that doesn't seem enough, chop up the sundried tomatoes and sprinkle some parmesan over them and drape over some bagels for some bruschetta-esque extra.

For the main, slice up the pork steaks (nice thin slices so it goes further), marinade with the nandos peri peri thingy and do a quick stir fry with your egg noodles and your french beans with mixed veg. Add a fried egg on top if it looks like it won't be enough.

For pudding, you can make the sponge base cake mix with some dried fruit.

Great ideas... I might not put the garlic in with the mackeral though, and if you've got any horseradish or a dash of lemon juice I'd bung that in. Depending how far your bagel chips are going to go, I'd slice the panini into fingers rub with garlic, toast and go for the chopped sundried tomatoes too (if you have some basil & oregano, mix that in with the tomatoes and some slivers of garlic and if you have any fresh herbs, bung them in for a bit of greenery) and spoon it on to the toasted garlicky panini at the last minute. If you can nip out and get a couple of fresh tomatoes to go in with this it'll lighten it up a bit.

Put these out on a platter for people to nibble while you're putting the finishing touches to your main course.

You could also do a cold pea & mint soup. If you have a spring onion or two/shallot or onion chop finely and sweat till soft in a little butter or oil. Add veg stock, bring to the boil, add peas and simmer till peas are cooked. Add fresh or dried mint. Liquidise, cool and serve with a blob of yogurt and a couple of mint leaves or sprinkling of dried mint. (You can google recipes if you want quantities, but don't bother about the need to add celery/cream cheese etc... this works beautifully!).

You can roast the beetroot in advance, and serve them cold as a salad (I can't find the recipe for the dressing right now - the salad included roasted carrots, done in a separate tin so that they didn't go pink! - but it was a sweet & sour type of thing)

You can also make the green beans into a salad by cooking them, rinsing with cold water and putting a salad dressing on at the last minute.

If the other veg would work in a rice salad, make one of those two.

You could cook the pork en croute, which looks spectacular and would make it go further (especially if you slice it thinly which looks fantastic ... and you and OH have mostly pastry!). It may be easier if you make 4 of these, one for each pork steak, rather than trying to combine them into one. Defrost the pastry and make up some batter mix (enough for about 2 pancakes). Make pancakes. It may also be best to flour the pork steaks and seal them in a frying pan briefly.

Roll out the pastry, wrap the pork steak (with a slice of apple or a smear of any condiment you might have that goes with pork) in a pancake and then in the pastry. Put on a greased baking tray/roasting dish and keep covered until needed (if you do them in advance, keep in the fridge but take out before cooking). Erm... I'm not too good at timings, so it might be worth looking this up.

If you don't want to fiddle about so much, dice the pork, make a sauce with butter/flour/stock and frozen veggies, cook the pork, stir in the sauce, use pastry as a lid and glaze with egg/milk. Serve with hot roasted beetroot, green beans and rice.

Pudding - make up the sponge cake as per instructions (maybe add a couple of extra drops of vanilla). Cool. If you're good at cutting sponge with a bread knife cut into 3 or 4 layers (if its made in one tin, slice twice for 3 layers, if in two, see whether you think you can cut them in half, otherwise leave as they are). Drain the peaches, reserving the juice. If you've done 3 or 4 layers of sponge you may need to slice them more thinly.

Drizzle a little of the juice over each layer of sponge to moisten it. Spread a layer of jam over the bottom layer of the sponge, layer the peaches (spread them out if you think you may not have enough). Before you put the next layer on, spread the bottom of it with a generous layer of choc spread and then put it carefully on top of the peaches. Repeat jam-peaches-chocolate spread for each layer. Dredge the top of the cake with icing sugar, and server with chocolate and vanilla ice cream. (if you're feeling brave and want to assemble the cake at the last minute, you can soften the chocolate ice-cream and spread it on the cake as filling instead (in which case layer ice-cream-peaches-jam as it's easier) and then serve with a scoop of vanilla and the peach juice and a squiggle of chocolate sauce for a lovely moist, decadent pudding. (If you're really ambitious, you can also bake the sponge with a meringue top, or bake a soft meringue and top the cake with it

Hope all the ideas everyone has come up with helps!

princess_lou

Thankyou SO much to everyone who took the time to help me out.. i decided to do a mixture of the ideas.. to start we had sliced toasted bagels with a mackeral pate made with horseradish, yogurt and oregano. Followed by a lasagne made by roasting and shredding the lamb, and adding it to a sauce of passata, onion, peppers, mix herbs, balsamic vinegar and worchester sauce..then layered it with the lamb mixture/lasagne sheets/yogurt/cheddar and parmesan cheese.. and then doubled up again. Served that with a green salad(courtesy of nxt door) and turned the pizza bread in2 a foccacio bread with garlic and parmesan..DELICIOUS by the way. followed by pastry with peaches as suggested and the yogurt and jam pastry with ice cream.:T fantastic ideas and i loved them all, went down a treat with everyonetoo. MASSIVE THANKYOU to everyone x x x xx x

purpleivy

princess_lou wrote: »

Thankyou SO much to everyone who took the time to help me out.. i decided to do a mixture of the ideas.. to start we had sliced toasted bagels with a mackeral pate made with horseradish, yogurt and oregano. Followed by a lasagne made by roasting and shredding the lamb, and adding it to a sauce of passata, onion, peppers, mix herbs, balsamic vinegar and worchester sauce..then layered it with the lamb mixture/lasagne sheets/yogurt/cheddar and parmesan cheese.. and then doubled up again. Served that with a green salad(courtesy of nxt door) and turned the pizza bread in2 a foccacio bread with garlic and parmesan..DELICIOUS by the way. followed by pastry with peaches as suggested and the yogurt and jam pastry with ice cream.:T fantastic ideas and i loved them all, went down a treat with everyonetoo. MASSIVE THANKYOU to everyone x x x xx x

So glad it worked out and you had a lovely time. It just shows what you can do with what you have in the cupboards sometimes.

tandraig

wow - wish i could have come to yours for dinner!!! glad to have helped in a small way!