Menu 4

I broke up this meal into 2 parts as we aren't used to eating such rich food.

For breakfast we had the Smoked Salmon Crepes, which garned a resounding "yum!" from my son. There was no specification, so I used cold smoked salmon, which was soaked in milk overnight, then patted dry. I made the crepes, filled them with salmon, baked them in the creme fraiche (made from buttermilk and heavy cream), and served them plated with chives and caviar as garnishing, and scrambled eggs and a beefsteak tomato from the garden on the side.

A few nights later as my son was drifting off to sleep he said, "Can we have salmon crepes for breakfast again with the black stuff on top?"

These savory crepes would also be good for a brunch or mini crepes for hors d'ouvres since you can make them in advance and pop them in the oven for about 10 minutes before serving.

I saved one crepe for my son and spread Nutella on it as a midmorning treat.

For dinner we had the Roast Leg of Lamb. Since I could not find a leg with the bone in, I used a deboned leg and rolled and tied it. It was studded with garlic and sprigs of rosemary. I made the au jus that is part of the recipe, but we are bigger fans of eating lamb with mint jelly.

The Swiss Chard Gratin is something we will definitely be making again, as we grow our own chard. This was a nice change from a broccoli or cauliflower gratin. I learned from this recipe that you can scrape the tough outer parts from the stem of the chard using a peeler (much like with broccoli), slice it thinly, the cook it in boiling water for about 10 minutes and it is perfectly edible.

For dessert it was Pineapple Sorbet. Much too sweet that it made my teeth ache. It did give us a few ideas about trying the process with other fruit in season using about half the sugar instead. Though quicker to make with an ice cream maker, it is easily made without one by placing the pureed fruit mixture mixed with a sugar syrup (aka simple syrup) into a large pan (more surface area, thus faster freezing) then scraping it up to get the icy grains of a sorbet. A less sweet version would be good to serve as a palate cleanser between courses for a formal dinner.

In case you were wondering - in order to serve the sorbet in the pineapple, we froze the body (and the top of the fruit) before we filled it with the sorbet so it kept its shape. We then put the whole body of the fruit back in the freezer to keep it frozen before serving a few of hours later.

Just a note that we do not eat like this nightly. I only cook the Le Cordon Bleu At Home menus once a week on a Saturday or Sunday night. The rest of the week we eat well, but avoid much of the meat, butter, cream and flour. We dine on chicken, fish and at least on one night a week we have a vegetarian meal. I usually bake a cake or pie once every two weeks.