Dinner Party Ideas

I’ve been watching lots of Come Dine With Me on Channel 4 and it’s given me an idea: each week I will give you an incredible and original idea for your Come Dine With Me dinner party, made with minimal ingredients, that you can use to blow the minds of your guests!

This week it’s starters so I nip off to my Professional chef’s fridge and return with the following ingredients:

Bacon and creme freche.

Minimal! So, what am I going to turn these into? I have no idea but the first obvious step is to grill the bacon till it is extra crispy:

This has given me enough time to think of what I’m going to make: a bacon prawn cocktail, but without the prawns ie a bacon cocktail!

The first step is to reduce the creme freche with a bit of sugar and some taragon (this is the only herb I had to hand, so, er yeah) and my camera phone has turned the mix into a Cocteau Twins album cover:

After reducing for ten minutes the creme freche has become this:

(the sauce spits like a bitch by the way)

The final step is to transfer the reduced creme freche to a glass and stir in the crispy bacon:

So, how’s it taste?

Erm, it’s a bit sickly, but the overall taste is OK. I think it would have been better had I allowed the creme fraiche to cool down; it just doesn’t work warm. And I reckon you probably need much more bacon because the sweet cream is very overpowering in the 1:1 ratio I have. On the other hand, the tarragon was a good choice because the aniseed flavour compliments the bacon nicely.

Overall, this has potential and is something that you could serve as an interesting alternative to a prawn cocktail at your CDWM dinner party!

So, have you tried bacon in weird contexts or have you been on CDWM? Did it work, was it fun? Tell me on my facebook page or on twitter!