Madsen’s feast
The meal started when I served vintage cava and small blinis with creme fraiche and Onuga caviar. Then for the first course I made individual quiche tartlets of blue cheese and wild boar sausage with spinach. I had the short-crust pastry just right, using goose fat and sunflower spread as shortening, and as little water as I could. It came out very crumbly. The filling was made up of half an egg and milk on top of the chopped up ingredients. It was very soft and creamy.
For the main course I roasted two pheasants with sausage, sage & onion stuffing, plus cocktail smoky bacon sausages and bacon. I washed the birds (one large and one smaller) and put in the stuffing. I put them in a baking tin with half a pint of chicken stock, then buttered and seasoned the birds before covering them in streaky bacon. They had 45 minutes in the oven, and for the final 15 minutes I removed the bacon and rolled it up on cocktail sticks to sit alongside the pheasants.
To finish up with I served a cold fruit compote of apple and blueberry (with a dash of cane sugar) with a couple of big spoons of berry blue jello and cream. With the birds I served 35 Degrees South, a Chilean cabernet sauvignon at 13.5 percent, and afterwards some Grant Burge 10 year-old tawny. I was pretty pleased with the way everything turned out.