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20th April 2010
Dinner With Hussies
A lovely dinner with our friends the Hussies had two notable highlights - the Olive and Ricotta starter for me, and the Tiramisu for Rachel. Perhaps the level of Amaretto content coloured her judgement.

Sorry no photos. Although I recently bought myself a cool second-hand digital SLR Sony Alpha 200 from ebay, I've only just started playing around with it, and to be honest I thought it might seem a little importunate pulling it out at a dinner party, enormous beast that it is.

Olive and Ricotta Pâté
starter cheese

Takes 40 minutes.
Serves 6


Ingredients
450g/1 lb ricotta cheese
50g/2 oz parmesan, finely grated
2 medium egg whites, lightly beaten
190g jar lemon and mint marinated green olives
185g can pitted black olives, drained
4 sun-dried tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves only
bread and roasted whole vine tomatoes to serve
Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6/fan oven 180°C. Oil and base line a 20cm/8" sandwich tin. In a large bowl, beat together the ricotta, parmesan, egg whites and seasoning.

Spoon into the prepared cake tin and level the surface with the back of a wet spoon. Press the olives, sun-dried tomatoes and rosemary into the surface and bake for 25-30 minutes until firm.

Turn out and remove the paper. Serve in wedges with bread and roasted tomatoes.
A gorgeous, firm, quiche-like pâté, with a deep rich flavour almost of goat's cheese.
You can serve it cold, with a small salad around the roast tomatoes, though I think it would go really well with a tomato sauce or oil.

To roast the tomatoes, you can place them whole on a non-stick backing tray, drizzle with olive oil and bake for 10 minutes in the 200°C oven or until they start to split or blister. They look nice with their stalks still in.

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