Since leaving university Andy and his friends have met up once or twice a year in a gathering that has come to be known as “Harcourt” (named after the house/street they shared). Each year they take it in turns to organise the weekend, and this year it was Andy’s turn, which meant I had the task of feeding this gruesome looking crew.

Originally a strictly lads only affair the arrival of various small people has led to the invite being extended to wives, girlfriends and children. I’m pretty happy about this as although I’ve only known them for about 2 years rather than the 10 or more years they’ve known each other, it’s a brilliant get together, always loads of fun, really nice to see how much of an effort they’ve made to stay in touch for all this time. Harcourt has become a definite highlight of the year for me.

As we’ve not been working over the summer we’ve had a lot of time on our hands to organise things and after a brainstorming session at the pub we got a little over excited (drunk) and decided it should be a Hallowe’en themed fancy dress weekend, hired a clown and set about planning various surprises and treats for everyone. It was so much fun doing it all! Everyone seemed to have a great time and despite me doing my usual trick of everyone arriving on the Friday and drinking far too much wine and waking up with a horrific hangover I managed not to make too much of a mess of the food, hopefully everyone enjoyed it.

We found a great place for the weekend in Belper, Derbyshire, the “Old Baptist Chapel”. It was a converted chapel and though we didn’t realise it at the time of booking, in good theme for the weekend, it came complete with a garden full of graves! How spooky. The place was lovely though, absolutely huge, with lots of space for the kids to run around, a great lounge with about 8 sofas in it and a pretty nice kitchen on a kind of mezzanine level which had a window overlooking the lounge. There’s a sauna too! Didn’t get used by our guests over the already hectic weekend, possibly not the best thing for kids. However you get the place for 4 days for the same price, so with no jobs to rush back for on Monday, on Sunday Andy and I found ourselves alone in the house with a couple of left over bottles of wine, so we made up for the lack of sauna action over the weekend. It was very nice indeed. Already thinking about going back!

Here’s a quick run down of the weekend’s activities and menu:

Friday – Welcome Party
Champagne Reception and a Selection of Canapés
(ok, so it was Cava and snacks including homemade hummous and crudites, brocolli and stilton quiche, red pepper and goat cheese mini quiche and mozzarella, tomato and basil tarts)

Saturday – The BIG Hallowe’en Day

Boogely BIG Breakfast from 10am
A full breakfast of bacon, pork sausages, goat sausages, scrambled eggs, scrambled duck eggs, beans, mushrooms, black pudding, toast, tea and coffee.

Lunch – Help yourself buffet of sandwiches and homemade apple pie (recipe below) and ice cream

A spooky stroll around Belper Woooooo

3.30pmish back to the house of horrors for the

Hallowe’en Harcourt Fancy Dress Party

Giggles the clown!
Pumpkin carving competition!
Fancy dress! Prizes for the best dressed!
Fun and Games!

Dinner from 6.30pm
Fajitas, Wedges, Sour Cream, Grated Cheese, Salsa and Guacomale (recipes below)

It was a little tricky cooking for 17 people, but I had a team of choppers and washer-uppers and it all went ok apart from a small problem with the oven which seemed to have no heat distribution and either didn’t cook at all or burnt things to a crisp within seconds. Hmm, very handy.

Another strange thing was cooking meat for the first time in two years! Much as we would have liked to make entirely veggie menu there were a couple of committed carnivores there who no doubt would have withered away if we hadn’t have given them their meat injection for the weekend. We had a bit of a trauma about where to buy it from. Obviously not practiced in where to buy good meat, and how much to expect to pay it was a bit of a challenge.

We went on a little research mission. Wirral Farmer’s Market had an overwhelming amount of meat, but it was difficult to tell to much about it and although I’m sure they would be normally happy to chat the place was so busy at the time we were there I doubt the stall holders would really have appreciated a million questions about the origins of their meat and the animals living conditions.

We went round the various butchers in New Ferry and compared prices to what we could buy in supermarkets where we could have gone if we wanted to buy something that had been locked up all it’s life, fed an unnatural diet and pumped full of chemicals. Possibly not completely fair and they did sell some organic meat, but then you have the issue of how they’re probably ripping the farmers off blah blah blah… Stop it Leanne! This rant belongs in another post.

The butchers were in most cases a little cheaper, definitely on the standard prices, although supermarkets do these buy one get one free offers, making their meat cheaper, but again impacts on the already struggling farmers. The supermarkets organic meat, was however a complete rip off! £3.99 for 6 slices of bacon! No wonder people choose not to buy it. We ended up only paying a couple of quid more for about 3 times the amount of local organic bacon which we eventually decided to buy from Church Farm, a Soil Association certified organic farm shop in Thurstaston a couple of miles from where we’re living.

We also bought goat sausages from the farmer’s market. We chatted to the lady for a while who told us primarily they kept the goats for cheese. However obviously you can only get milk from the female goats, as such any male kids would usually be taken away from their mothers and slaughtered soon after birth which causes a lot of distress for the mother. They decided the best thing to do would be to allow them to stay together until the kid would naturally leave, at which point they were sold on for meat. So in effect the meat was like a byproduct of the cheese rather than the other way around. Although they didn’t have organic certification (this can be expensive and very difficult to maintain) it was a fairly small farm, definitely free range, no use of chemicals and an emphasis on the animals welfare. We bought a few sausages for people to try at the Saturday morning breakfast. Generally I think they went down quite well.

Now here is an admission/an interesting discussion to be had. I never tried goat while I was a meat eater and was a little intrigued as to what it would taste like. Hmm. I’d been thinking about it for a few days. When breakfast was served there were a couple of sausages left over which hadn’t been taken. I don’t like waste. I knew where they were from and had bought them happy for other people to eat them. I just wanted to know what they were like! I cut a bit off one and put it on the side of my plate. I kept looking at it while I was eating my beans and eggs, pushed it around the plate a few times, “Should I eat it, should I eat it?” I ate everything else first, and then chopped the piece of sausage in half, popped it in my mouth and ate it. It was indeed pretty tasty, very different to pork sausages, kind of more rich and creamy taste somehow. I didn’t want to eat more though, and am definitely happily not back on the meat eating side. But as I’ve said before I’ve seen meat eating in a different light since staying with people on various small holding who have a completely different  attitude towards meat and the animals it comes from than you get from the detached relationship you have when you buy your prepacked meat from the supermarket fridges.

I’ve included a few of the recipes from the weekend for you below, and some picture right at the end (is this the longest post ever!?). Making your own dips for fajitas is a great idea, especially when you’re making it for lots of people. So much fresher tasting, cheaper and you can adjust the chili to your own taste. The leftovers were great in sandwiches! Mmm. Oo, nearly forgot, I’d made welcome packs too, with skeleton straws, balloons, Hallowe’en shaped chocolates from the Chocolate Cellar and I’d made some Hallowe’en ginger biscuits to go in them too. They were great! Seemed to go down quite well with the kids who loved all the spooky shapes. Would be a brilliant thing to give out to any trick or treaters when real Hallowe’en comes around.

Expect several dozen pumpkin recipes in the next couple of days. The pumpkin carving competition left us with around 10kg of pumpkin to think of something to do with. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

From previous posts:

Brocolli and stilton quiche

Home made hummous
For the version for this weekend I’d just made plain hummous, so no red peppers and also I’ve stopped putting the onion, garlic and bayleaf in with the boiling chickpeas, it seems to be nicer without. Maybe the quest for the perfect hummous needs updating?

Guacamole

• 1chilli, finely chopped
• 1/2 bunch coriander, chopped
• 10 cherry tomatoes, finely chopped
• salt, to taste
• 1/2 red onion, very finely chopped
• juice of 1 lime
• 3 ripe avocados

1. Mash the avocados with a fork then mix in all the other ingredients.

Salsa

• 250g/9oz fresh tomatoes, finely chopped
• 1 small red onion, finely chopped
• 2 chillies, finely chopped
• bunch coriander, finely chopped
• salt, to taste
• lime juice, to taste

1. Combine all the ingredients together in a bowl.

Apple Pie

For the pastry:

• 10oz plain flour
• pinch of salt
• 5oz butter
• 6 tsp cold water

For the filling:

• 3 large Bramley cooking apples, chopped, stewed and cooled
• sugar, to taste (approx 2 tbsp)

1. Preheat the oven to 200C
2. Sieve the flour and salt into a bowl. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
3. Add the cold water to the flour mixture. Using a knife, mix the water into the flour, using your hand to firm up the mixture.
4. Divide the pastry into two halves. Roll one half out so that it is big enough to cover an 20cm plate. Trim the edges with a knife using the edge of the plate as your guide.
5. Cover the pastry with the stewed apples and sprinkle with sugar to taste.
6. Roll out the other half of the pastry. Moisten the edge of the bottom layer of pastry and place the second piece on top.
7. Press down on the pastry edges, making sure that they are properly sealed. Trim off any excess pastry with a knife.
8. Press down round the edges with your thumb to seal and make a pattern round the edge.
9. Prick the surface of the pastry lightly before placing the pie in the oven and sprinkle with a little sugar. Cook for 20-30 minutes.

Hallowe’en Ginger Biscuits

• 75g soft brown sugar, sieved
• 2 tablespoons golden syrup
• 1 tablespoon black treacle
• 1 level teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 level teaspoon ginger
• 1 pinch ground cloves
• 100g butter
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 225g plain flour
• Hallowe’en shaped pastry cutters

1. Put the sugar, syrup, treacle, 1 tablespoon of water and spices in a large saucepan. Then bring them to boiling point, stir all the time.
2. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the butter, cut into lumps, and the bicarbonate of soda.
3. Stir in the flour gradually until you have a smooth manageable dough
4. Leave the dough covered in a cool place for 30 minutes.
5. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to 3mm thick and cut out the hallowe’en shapes.
6. Arrange them on the lightly greased baking sheets and bake for 10-15 minutes are lightly browned and becoming firm.
7. Leave the biscuits to cool a little and harden on the baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring them to a wire rack.