Menu of the month October 2011

Chicken liver pate with brandy with sweet and sour red onion salad 

This is smooth and velvety and also works well with duck livers, if you can get them. The salad helps to cut through the richness. I like to serve this with toasted multi-grain bread. 
 

Beef in Barolo with Parmesan mashed potatoes 

This is a classic from Piedmont but because Barolo is such a very fine and quite expensive wine, I tend to make this with something less costly but from the same region. Then splash out and buy a bottle of Barolo to drink with it. 
 

Spiced apple and pecan crumble with mascarpone vanilla cream 

‘September blowe soft, till fruit be in the loft’ wrote Thomas Tusser, an East Anglian farmer who lived in the 16th century. Too much wind and the fallen apples would be bruised and unsuitable for storing in the loft to last throughout the winter months. Now that we don’t have apple lofts but deep freezers instead, the bruises can be cut out and the apples beautifully preserved as apple sauce. I always make a big vat of it and freeze the sauce in small bags for the winter months.