Five Unforgivable Wedding Food Faux Pas

I am privileged enough to be the food expert at The Wedding Community offering wedding specific advice to hundreds of couples in the throws of organising their big day. Here is a taster of a recent article...

I have worked on over one thousand weddings and the following choices have never, ever worked well for the guests, the couple nor the caterer.

1. Replacing Pudding with Cake
I am evangelical about this, so much so that I have dedicated a whole article about it, here.

2. Marrying Early but Eating Late
Beware the “black hole” between the end of your ceremony and the first bite of food. If you are marrying any earlier than 3pm, your guests will not have had lunch (trust me, they wont) and will need feeding twice. Some form of food should be made available within half an hour of your nuptials and guests should be taking their seats for the main meal within two hours of the confetti falling.

3. Changing Seats after the Starter
If you’re intending to play musical chairs, don’t make the first move until after the main course. As a caterer and a passionate foodie, I can think of nothing worse than a beautiful dish drying out and crusting over in a hot cupboard as the post-starter speech inevitably drags.

4. A Selfishly Whacky Menu
There is a difference between serving delicious food to delight everyone and food so unique that the majority of your guests won’t touch it. Yes you might have eaten stuffed sardines on your first date, yes I appreciate that Nigella is heralding a fois gras renaissance but what goes uneaten goes unappreciated. Oysters, veal, fois gras, offal... proceed with caution and ask you caterer for advice. They’ll know what will leave guests full versus what will leave them famished.

5. Icecream in a Hot Marquee
There is a memorable episode of BBC’s The Restaurant where one hapless duo learn the hard way that marquees don’t come with freezers. Instead of ice cream and poached pears, they end up serving lukewarm “vanilla soup” to one hundred horrified VIPs at the Hurlingham Club. Caterers can do incredible things but keeping sorbet, icecream and frozen desserts at the necessary minus 23 degrees Celsius in outdoors in the sun using only a cool box is beyond even our magic.

May Big Picture

The Orchid Room at Nonsuch Mansion as taken by the wonderful Lloyd Dobbie.

To me, this photo captures the sense of calm anticipation felt by wedding caterers like Bovingdons. It also highlights the attention to detail needed to "set the scene" before the guests walk through the door.

Just looking at it gives me pre-event butterflies!

In Season - British Asparagus

Be quick! You've not got long to enjoy this superfood delicacy. Asparagus has a teasingly short and notoriously unpredictable season which falls sometime between May and June depending on the fickle British weather. I am reliably informed by the British Asparagus Growers Association website that the 2010 season is well and truly here.

Appropriately perhaps for an aphrodisiac, the key to ensuring the best flavour is tenderness rather than length or girth. Colour is a good indicator, seek light green with closed tips and a hint of purple. British Asparagus is a hand grown crop which requires a huge investment of time and patience for a relatively low yield. Cooking it however, is almost totally the opposite case!

 - Simple: Steamed with a splash of olive oil, black pepper and parmesan

 - Hot: Fresh asparagus soup with crème fraiche and sage and parmesan bread

 - Brunch: Asparagus bundles tied with chives served with a vanilla and pomegranate mayonnaise

 - Fish: Asparagus icecream with salmon toasts - recipe here!

 - Main: Pan roast asparagus with rare roast beef, wild mushroom jus, thyme and talegio potatoes

 - Summer Buffet: Prosciutto or Parma ham involtini of chargrilled asparagus

 - Stuffed: Baby Pousin with fresh asparagus stuffing, lemon risotto, French beans and tarragon jus

 - Vegetarian: Fresh handmade asparagus ravioli with herb emulsion and micro shoots

Pull! Westminster Tug of War

Part of being a professional and discreet corporate caterer means never, ever disclosing details about a client's event before it occurs.

Not so when the event in question is the Westminster Tug of War! This event is one of the highlights of the Parliamentary calendar, and, unlike the incredible barbeque I mentioned in a previous post, everyone is invited to buy a ticket and attend. 

Held in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support, the 23rd annual Tug of War will be held on Tuesday 8 June from 5.30-10pm in the stunning venue that is Westminster Abbey College Gardens.

You can join 600 guests to enjoy an exclusive champagne reception with canapes and tasty bowl food (all delicious, I promise!) whilst you witness Lords and MPs, choristers, rival City firms, embassies, fire fighters and military teams all battling it out over a Tug of War rope.

If you have never attended, this is the year to go. After yesterday's news, it is sure to be an particularly unmissable occasion.

Click here for more details form Macmillan Cancer Support.

West End Charm: Fulham Palace

I am delighted to say that after a few weeks of anxiously waiting for "the phonecall", Bovingdons have been awarded a privileged place on the catering list at Fulham Palace.

There are so many reasons why I love this venue; its impressive courtyard entrance, the way that it nestles quietly beside the Thames, the romantic atmosphere of its wild walled gardens, its maze of achingly graceful rooms, its intriguing thousand year history, the graceful tall ceilings and elegant furnishings... I could go on. Fulham Palace is a venue that has won top awards and high praise as well as my heart.

The ink on our contract is still wet but I'm already looking forward to catering for some sublime summer soirees. In my mind, a perfect palace party would involve Courtyard canapés, a delicious dinner in the Chaplain’s Garden Marquee, a dance floor in the Great Hall and a corner for quiet conversation in Bishop Terrick's Drawing Room.

Fulham Palace has a great management team with a flexible approach to how you choose use its cluster of various sized drawing and dining rooms. For availability and more details call 020 7736 8140 or visit http://www.fulhampalace.org/, then call me to start talking food!

Westminster's Vote Winning BBQ

What do you think of when you think of Westminster? Politics? The election? When I think of Westminster I immediately think of prime Scottish beef.

No, not the PM! I mean delicious meat sizzling on a barbeque. Why? Because for the last eight years, summer at Westminster Abbey Gardens for Bovingdons means the privilege of catering at the annual Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board event (formerly the Meat and Livestock Commission).

As you can imagine, this showcase offers the biggest variety and best possible quality of this country's meat - Scottish beef, Welsh lamb, English sausages... every single ingredient (including the sauces) must be of British origin, the meat must be labelled and fully traceable almost right to the animals name. My yearly challenge as appointed caterer is to surpass my last menu.  It's an irresistible brief for Chef David and I. We have just pitched our ideas for 2010 but my lips are sealed! Instead, here are just some of the items from the 2009 barbeque to tempt the carnivore in you.

Canapes

Seared fillet of British beef in little Yorkshire puddings with horseradish cream

Crisp new potatoes filled with dry cure smoked bacon and English blue cheese

Little spiced lamb and aubergine falafel

BBQ

Conisbees Cumberland pork sausages

Home and hand made beef burgers with chilli and fresh parsley

Shoulder of lamb, marinated in garlic and lavender yoghurt

British pork shoulder steaks with apricot glaze
Sticky BBQ lamb slices

Salads

Minted new potato mayonnaise

Roasted vegetable with red onions, purple basil and barley

Garden leaf and herb salad with rape seed oil dressing

Tomato and cucumber salad with Bovingdons honey dressing

Condiments

Good grain mustard

Home made mayonnaise

Good horseradish sauce

Bovingdons Famous BBQ sauce

Dessert

Mini waffle cones of assorted sorbets

Bowls of delicious Eton Mess with strawberries and cream

Cheese

English, Scottish and Welsh Cows cheese

with crostini fingers and oatcakes 

Breads

A selection of rustic country breads made with Doves flour

(and yes, of course the full menu includes a fair proportion of vegetarian, Halal and special diet considerations)

April Big Picture

In Season - Winchester Watercress

It’s only a couple of weeks until the Alresford Watercress Festival which takes place just a few miles down the A3 from me. During a day of community celebration, the elected Watercress King and Queen travel down the main street atop a horse and cart and distribute the first of the season's harvest to festival goers.

Iron rich, vitamin fuelled, nose twistingly peppery and utterly delicious, watercress is often overlooked as an ingredient despite its similarity to rocket. For the best of the crop look for fat clusters of wet, deep green leaves and eat as soon after picking as possible (it is notoriously perishable)

Here are some delicious watercress menu ideas for your next event...
- Starter: Gingered watercress soup with toasted sesame seeds
- Main: Duo plate of watercress blinis with smoked trout and cucumber vermicelli
- Salad: Organic watercress with roasted sweet potato and toasted walnuts
- Canapé: Seared fillet of beef in Yorkshire puddings with watercress hollandaise
- Fish: Roast monkfish on crushed potatoes topped with watercress
- Afternoon tea: Finger sandwiches of wafer honey baked ham, cream cheese and watercress

London in Surrey: Nonsuch Mansion

It's been just nine months since the end (or I suppose the beginning!) of our most epic project to date - refurbishing, rebranding and relaunching Nonsuch Mansion

To say that this Surrey venue has become a labour of love for Bovingdons would be a huge understatement. Well before the contract was won, we had fallen completely in love with this treasured venue and could not wait to throw open its doors and help make it the success it deserves to be. The 2010 / 2011 diary acts as reassuring evidence that plenty of others feel as passionately as we do.

Set at the heart of 300 acres of sumptuous parkland, its features appeal to both head and heart. In a practical sense it has a prime location (half an hour of London Victoria, minutes from the A3 Tolworth), space for up to 250 guests, a fascinating history and a perfectly flat lawn with plenty of scope for marquees.

But the real test of a venue is always in the way that being there makes you feel and the first few hosts have told us that they felt "cherished", "serene", " and "like royalty" on their important night.

You can read more about the venue the website, or for all of the mansion happenings and news you can read the Nonsuch Mansion blog or join the hundreds of followers and fans on Twitter and Facebook. And, of course, watch this space!

The Sweet Smell (and Taste) of Success

As you can probably tell, the chefs and I adore any opportunity to work with a client with exacting standards, impeccable taste and high expectations. A challenging (or even impossible sounding) brief fires my imagination, as does the chance to transform a brand into a dish or distil its message into a bite.

Last week we served the result of a really great brief for the private launch of a new scent collection at Leighton House. We had been asked to create a menu to satisfy the tastes of eminent fashion, beauty and lifestyle editors as well as present food that would be a perfect representation of the well-known fragrance brand. Every item served needed to reflect the values of the company and entice the busy journalists to linger on and learn about their fabulous new product.

This bespoke breakfast and brunch menu was served during two separate morning and afternoon sessions. Each item was designed to be especially petite, smaller than a typical bite sized canape. Perfectly cooked, carefully prepared morsels to suit our client's perfectly tailored guest.

(If you are curious about the launch, click here to read a full report)

Breakfast

Tiny crisp new potato filled with sausage, bacon, tomato and mushrooms

Mini waffle cones with creamed eggs and smoked salmon with chives

Fresh blinis with smoked salmon, cream cheese and capers

Quails egg Royale

Brioche French toast with orange infused rhubarb

Ricotta cakes with fresh blueberry compote

Prism skewers of morsels of fresh fruit

Shot glass of light granola and yoghurt

Brunch

Seared fillet of beef on watermelon cubes with pickled ginger

Sultana bread croute with Dolcelatté, caramelised fresh fig and pomegranate

Julienne vegetables wrapped in Bovingdons cured salmon

Asparagus bundles tied with chives with a vanilla pomegranate mayonnaise

Cucumber cups of lemon, tarragon chicken

Herb blini with Crayfish tails and mirin spaghetti of cucumber

Ricotta cakes with oven roasted plum tomatoes and basil

Herb ficelle of lime cured cerviche of sea bream

Chilled Juices

Blood orange and grapefruit

Cranberry and watermelon

Fresh pear and vanilla

Refreshing Pressè

Watermelon, cranberry and rose water

Apple juice, elderflower, lime and mint

Pomegranate pressè with sparkling mineral water

Hot Beverages

Espresso shots

Fresh sweet mint tea

March Big Picture

The Orangery Holland Park decked out for a recent ceremony.

In Season - Forced British Rhubarb

I was delighted to read this morning that forced rhubarb has recieved EU protected status officially making it a jewel in the crown of British foods.

The North of England has long been known amoungst chefs as "The Pink Triangle" as this is where this humble vegetable (yes, vegetable) is still grown in darkened sheds and harvested by candlelight.

Now is the best time both to eat and to sow a crown or too. A great option for anyone seeking a guaranteed high-return for the bargain price of the occasional bucket of manure.

- Orange braised rhubarb with cool ginger soufflé
- Cardamom scented panna cotta with rhubarb coulis
- Rhubarb crumble and fresh vanilla ice cream