I didn’t have much time to cook for the garden party lil’sis & threw for 50 people & 15 infants last Saturday. The plan was to cook all day on Friday, and have Saturday for organising & unpacking the Tesco home delivery before the guests arrived from 1pm. The plan upended when lil’sis had an accident at Bristol Station and we didn’t get home from hospital until 4am on Friday morning.
In the end I slept & mooched around in the day, & went for super simple food that took a total of five or so hours, spread between a scant 3hrs cooking on Friday night & a couple of hours on Saturday morning, with chopping help from Miss P on Sat am. Sausages for the grown-ups, chipolatas for the infants, lots of salads and four puddings…
So Friday: I grilled a large batch of courgettes, made two purees — a roasted aubergine & yogurt one, and a knockout garlic & chickpea one, roasted & skinned long pointy red peppers, cooked a kilo of couscous ready for pilaf-ing in the morning, & then knocked up a fat Victoria sponge, a pound of paté brisée for fruit tarts, and a strawberry jelly with skinned & chopped white peaches for the infants. I also made two dozen scones but they were crap so I binned them.
On Saturday morning I made my apple cake with cinnamon crumble topping, prepared the ingredients for the couscous, made tomato salads, a litre of crème patissiere, boiled new potatoes with mint, chopped up fruit for Pimms, and made cruditiés for the dips.
Victoria sponge with double cream, strawberries & blueberries; tarte aux prunes
Strawberry jelly with skinned white peaches; apple cake with crumble topping
Best comment of the day about the food after the event (found on Twitter):
“Honestly, all a bit of a gin-induced blur — I know I tried all 4 (puddings), and loved every morsel. Also, I stole the children’s fruit jelly.”
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oh my god, you are *incredible* this looks utterly delicious– so beautiful. what a spread. e bravissima! xxx shayma
Ha! you know of all people that if you love it, it’s no hassle! x
Erm, so… Any chance of space for one more for dinner…?
The more the merrier!
I probably would have done the same, the fruit jelly looks delish. The aubergine and yoghurt dip sound wonderful too; I have been obsessed wtih aubergines lately and am now in the middle of cooking a stroganoff with fried aubergine in the place of mushrooms — hopefully with good results!
I think there poss needs to be a LLG cookbook…
I hope there will be! LLG Cooks…
What FANTASTIC effort LLG. I always think real cooks are those who can whip up food miracles when there’s a crisis (usually time) !
Thank you! My test is can they cook without a cookbook?!
Well that was certainly great feedback! Hope your sis is OK?
She’s much better now: black eye fading…thank you for asking x
I thoroughly endorse the cookbook idea, was entranced by the long pointy red peppers and very grateful that the children didn’t lock me up in the prison they built under our noses for stealing their gorgeous jelly x
Well, I’m thrilled you could make it. Feel free to steal the infant’s jelly any time..x
I managed to keep my snout out of the puddings but succumbed to the sausages — kinda like cannibalism! It was brill, thanks so much x
Dearest Fran, I admire your restraint — I cldn’t even get to them!
Any left overs?
None! Greedy piglets!
Forgive me for being hopelessly American…
It took me a few minutes to figure out what “knocked up a fat Victoria sponge” meant. Actually a hilarious expression to Yanks who don’t know this cake.
@Laura You made me hoot!
Splendido! However do you do all that you do do ? Next you will be revealing that all along you are really Wonderwoman in thinly veiled disguise.…
x
I always wanted a pair of those Wonderwoman gold bracelets!
Your guests seems to be very lucky
and I would say they know it (considering the twittering comment).
oh I’m lucky to have such great friends!
All looks fab,love the cut glass jelly bowl!
It was our grandmother’s…so lovely to be able to use it.
Looks and sounds fab, LLG .
It’s very, very cheering to find something written by a fashionista who is also serious about food. And having now read your mother’s blog, I realise where you get your culinary talent from
And I really, really wanted a recipe for crème patissiere that was tried & tested for something I want to cook this week, so I’ll try yours. Thanks!
What a lovely compliment. Fingers crossed the recipe works…x
I love the comment from Laura the American — made me LOL! LLG, if you can achieve this when things don’t go to plan, what on earth do you do when all is straight forward. Looks amazing!!!
@ Wannabe Goddess: I sleep!
And so, dear LLG, what do you do in your spare time? Quite amazing & yum! Hope this lovely and successful effort means you are feeling all well once more.
Cook!
I must admit, I’ve never been to a garden party and i was quite wide-eyed about how la-de-da it sounded, especially when the formal invitations went out. I had mental images of Helena Bonham-Carter in period costume. But when I saw this beautiful food laid out, it all made sense. You were having a barbecue!
I’m going to play your “In England…” game. In Australia, we call this a barbecue. We don’t send out formal invites to barbecues. And all barbecues have sausages, bread rolls, salads and dessert. (Except for one I went to lately held by recent British immigrants which just involved copious amounts of charred kangaroo meat!)
You Brits are a funny old lot.
@Sophie But wldn;t a barbecue imply, you know, a barbecue! These were cooked in the oven!