A Monday night dinner party.

Twice baked Goat's Cheese Soufflé

Lamb casserole with Soisson Beans

Camembert

Steamed Fudgy Pudding

The starter is an old favourite using a Raymond Blanc recipe from his Le Manoir aux Quat' Saison recipe book. I used to make it a lot when I cooked professionally as it is light as a snowflake, tasty, looks great, can be prepared ahead of time and is very impressive. I haven't cooked this dish for many (15?) years and this is probably the first time that I made it it with all the right equipment: accurate scales for the small and very precise measurements and correct sized ramekin moulds. Apart from a little trouble de-moulding them they were perfect.

The lamb casserole was made the day before. It is the only way to get the full, rich flavour. The soisson beans were from the allotment via the freezer. The dish was served with glazed shallots and boiled potatoes.

Cheese starter and then some more cheese ....

It was meant to be a toffee pudding but something went 'wrong' with the sauce. Usually I caramelize my sugar and then add butter and this works fine. But this time I noticed that the sugar was caramelizing unevenly so I gave it a stir, bad panic reaction. Because when you knock sugar crystals back into the mixture it causes the sugar to do something weird; go very grainy and refuse to caramelize any further. Rather than start again I added the butter and some cream and ended up with an interesting fudge type concoction. Probably this is fudge, and everyone but me knows this and that this is how you make it. We served this with more of the hot sauce and Crème Fraiche.