Raspberry Chocolate Mousse & Biscotti
🍫 This raspberry chocolate mousse is the perfect dessert for special occasions. The fluffy chocolate mousse is smooth and light in texture. It’s swirled with homemade raspberry compote, then topped with almond biscotti that offer contrasting flavours and textures.
🥚 It’s a French-style dark chocolate mousse, so it’s made with egg yolks and whisked egg whites. This is vital to bringing light and mousse-y texture. The mousse is with dark chocolate and raspberry compote.
🍃 The raspberry compote is a sauce made from whole fresh raspberries. We can make a strained raspberry coulis, if you don’t want the texture of the seeds. @cynthandco.catering
Slow-cooked lamb shanks with buttery mash
🐑 If a hearty winter-warmer meal containing fall-off-the bone meat and a flavoursome vegetable packed sauce sounds appealing then this meal is for you! Our Slow Cooked Lamb Shanks & Buttery Mash is simple to prepare, nutrient-dense and a dish the whole family will love.
🥕 I have a few dishes that are a must come winter, and this is one of them! Tender, oh so tender lamb shanks is a simple tomato-based sauce with carrot & celery, served with a buttery smooth potato mash. It’s instantly warming, satisfying, and will have you reaching for a glass of red wine.
♨️ A couple of notes before we start - as shanks are long, it can be hard to find a pot to cook them in, so I use a wide, shallow pot. This can mean that the stock won’t fully cover the meat, so we work around this, you can make a paper cartochue, or just turn the meat every hour, giving both sides a chance to ternderise. Also, I don’t season the dish until it’s finished cooking - tomato paste, red wine and stock can all be high in salt. If you season the dish at the start, it can end up being too salty at the end, when the sauce has reduced. @cynthandco.catering
Spaghetti Bolognese
🍝 I’ve got brothers who are obsessed with pasta. Whenever I come across a new pasta recipe, my mind jumps to them. I’ll think, “Oh, Josh, Sammy & Clifford would go crazy for this!” or “I bet this sauce would be a hit with them, especially on rigatoni.” I’m always on the lookout for the ultimate pasta dish to wow them with, since they are self-proclaimed pasta kings! This spaghetti Bolognese is just that wow-ing recipe with its rich and flavourful meat sauce. If it were up to my brothers, this would be on the menu for every single meal.
🍃 Although Bolognese requires a lengthy cooking time, it’s worth the wait. The foundation of this dish is its hearty tomato sauce, enriched with a trio of mince ground beef, ground chuck, and the not-so-secret weapon, which I can’t share. This meaty combination combined with parmesan forms an unbeatable savoury fusion enhanced by fresh Italian seasoning and the aromatic dream team of garlic, onion, celery, and carrots.
🍅 Tomatoes, supported by dry red wine, play a pivotal role in this sauce, giving a tangy, umami sweetness that counterbalances the meat’s richness. And when I’m talking about tomatoes, I’m talking about using cream of the crop: plum tomatoes. It enriches both the sauce’s flavour and texture, and gives it a vivid hue.
🥖 You can’t go wrong with this comforting, hearty spaghetti Bolognese, and it calls for the perfect companion. We recommend serving it with a crisp salad to offset the richness of the dish, toasted garlic bread for sopping up the sauce and maybe an appetiser of deliciously seasoned bruschetta to round out the meal. @cynthandco.catering
Peach Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta
🥛 PANNA COTTA - Panna cotta is one of my absolute favourite desserts; it’s a light and simple canvas for all kinds of seasonal fruit, and unbelievably easy to customise by steeping the milk and cream with split vanilla beans, cinnamon sticks, peach pits, citrus zest, dried lavender, aromatic herbs, or even sassafras - to be honest, whatever sounds good.
🍸 You can keep it softly set and serve it in a sparkling glass, or let it gel a little more firmly and pot it in a cup to unmold as a plated dessert. What’s more, panna cotta has an extraordinary shelf life—it can keep 10 days or longer in the fridge, if tightly wrapped and protected from savoury odors.
🍑 Those qualities earned panna cotta a full-time spot on an ever-changing dessert menu back in my restaurant days, where endless incarnations kept the format fresh. Given all those possibilities for customisation, I think everyone should have a bare-bones panna cotta on hand at their next event. This dessert can be adapt again and again to your personal taste. @cynthandco.catering
Spaghetti con Gamberi
🍝 Spaghetti con gamberi is the stuff pasta dreams are made of. Smothered in olive oil, garlic, chilli and lemon, this prawn and pasta dish is ideal for date night or simply when you feel like a treat.
🍤 Ask any pasta addict what they think about prawn spaghetti , and they’ll tell you to stop talking and give them a fork to dig in.
🇮🇹 Called “spaghetti gamberi” in Italian, this prawn spaghetti main course is for all those moments that only Italian comfort food would do. I like that this olive oil, garlic and chilli prawn pasta is incredibly tasty but somehow not that rich to make you feel lethargic after you have a bowl (or two).
And the real bonus?
It’s ready in 20 minutes.
⏲️ You heard that right; you can have a delicious, restaurant-worthy pasta dinner on the table in 20 minutes.
📱 Now let’s get right down to it and order some gamberi pasta! @cynthandco.catering
BOFROT (GHANIAN DONUTS)
🍩 A special delicacy that is very near and dear to my heart. I know there’s a lot of families out there that refuse to share their recipes, but what good is it if you don’t share with the rest of the world?! Now as the title has already given away, these donuts are a deep fried heaven to me…yummy! This is a Ghanaian recipe that my mum taught me when I was young, and I’ve made just some slight modifications to it. Through and through it is her recipe and all credit is given to her–thanks mum 🙎🏾♀️ She has been making them ever since I can remember, and at one point in time even sold them to the general public. So by no means will I steal her thunder (haha).
🇬🇭 As a child I loved having them for breakfast, immediately after they finished cooking. Though it wasn’t an everyday thing, I remember wanting it every time I could smell it. In Ghana it is common for street vendors, especially in the main city of Accra, to sell it along the sides of the roads, among other delicacies. Many African countries have their own variations and different names for them. For instance, Nigerians call them puff-puff and in the Congo it’s Mikate. In Ghana, Bofrot is made in the morning and immediately eaten for breakfast with “koko”, which happens to be fermented corn porridge. You may think yuck to fermented corn, but the porridge is sweetened with evaporated milk and sugar. “Don’t knock it until you try it,” 🤣. But I like to have my donuts anytime of the day sprinkled with powdered sugar. @cynthandco.catering
Peach muffins with pecan crumb topping
🍑 These fluffy peach muffins with pecan crumb topping are the perfect autumn treat. The combination of fresh peaches and a cinnamon streusel topping makes them irresistible for breakfast or snack time.
🥚 We wanted to create a recipe with peaches in it, since they are such a sweet and juicy fruit. We decided to make muffins! These pecan muffins with pecan crumb topping are so bright and flavourful. They have a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg, which complements peaches so well.
🌰 We, of course added a streusel topping. We love muffins, cupcakes (apple crisp cupcakes), cakes (pumpkin streusel coffee cake), and, well anything, with a crumbly topping! The texture of a streusel or crisp topping goes so well with a soft base.
🧈 This streusel has pecans in it for an extra crunch. I now think all streusels should have pecans in them! It’s that good! @cynthandco.catering
🌶️ Homemade Harissa - Harissa is a hot chile paste that is commonly found in North African cooking, mainly Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian cuisine. Recipes vary among different countries, but most versions of this spicy paste include a blend of hot chile peppers, garlic, olive oil, and spices, including caraway, cumin, coriander, and mint. Other common ingredients include tomatoes and rose petals.
🥘 Harissa is considered the North African version of Sriracha or ketchup in the sense that it is a common condiment; it is added to couscous, soups, pasta, and a wide range of other dishes. Harissa is sold in jars and can be purchased in Middle Eastern markets, but it is also simple enough to make at home.
🔥 One of the benefits of preparing from scratch is that you can adjust the heat to your liking. For a very spicy harissa, use a blend of cayenne, chile de arbol, or cayenne with a milder chile like ancho chiles. For medium spiciness, use a blend of New Mexico chiles with guajillo chiles.
Harissa can be used to season meats and vegetables or included in a salad dressing for a spicy kick. It can also be stirred into hummus (store-bought or homemade) for another layer of flavour. @cynthandco.catering
Stir-Fried Beef!
🥩 This recipe for stir-fry beef with vegetables features an interesting contrast of textures and flavours that pleases both children and adults. Marinated tender flank steak is stir-fried with carrot, mushrooms, and onion in a flavourful dark soy sauce with rice wine or sherry sauce. If you are not familiar with how to stir-fry beef, before you start preparing this dish, you may want to arm yourself with some pointers, such as freezing the meat for easy slicing.
🔥👩🏾🍳Cynth’s Notes
♨️To make a good stir-fry, you absolutely must have an extremely hot wok. A sauté pan works well, too. Not getting the pan hot enough is one of the most common problems for home cooks. This is true in general, not just with stir-fries.
🌻Once the wok is really hot, add some oil. Use the most refined high-heat vegetable oil you can find. That is usually a refined safflower oil or a refined sunflower oil. These oils have the advantage also of being neutral-flavoured, so you will taste the food and the seasonings, not the oil. Peanut oil is also a good choice, and it imparts a slightly nutty flavour. @cynthandco.catering
Here is a taster of what is to come. Just FIVE ingredients, all good stuff we like: chocolate, cream, sugar, eggs and brandy! @cynthandco.catering
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