ENTERTAINING:What's it like to be a guest in your own home? The Butler's Pantry has a new events team dedicated to providing "Dream Dinners" for clients
IMAGINE, IF YOU WILL, coming home to the sight of a chef in pristine whites standing by your cooker preparing an exquisite five-course dinner menu of your choosing, while uniformed wait staff put the finishing touches to an elaborate table setting - breaking away from their preparations momentarily to hand you a chilled flute of champagne, with the suggestion that you relax before the other guests arrive.
Wrong house, surely? But no, this is what it's like to have a professional catering company host an event in your own home, as I discovered recently. You really are a guest in your own home. Domini Kemp's recipes and John Wilson's wine suggestions on page 30 will inspire those who want to put together their own party, but if you want to take it easy, a catered dinner is a luxurious, if pricey, option.
Private catering is nothing new to The Butler's Pantry, which has nine retail outlets stretching from Wicklow to Clontarf, selling its ready-to-go takeaway meals, desserts and breads. The company, set up by Eileen Bergin, has been supplying food for First Communions, birthday celebrations, dinner parties and weddings for 21 years, but in a new initiative has launched a dedicated party-planning service called "Events", which offers the option of having every detail involved in staging an event done for them. Menu planning, table dressing, flowers, linen, glassware, and the provision of staff are all part of the package, which at its most extravagant is called "The Dream Dinner".
"The concept grew from the packages we have given in the past to be auctioned at charity balls," explains the company's executive head chef Niall Hill, who trained with Colin O'Daly of Rolys and worked in Canada and the US before returning to Ireland to take up the position of executive head chef at Rathsallagh House. He joined The Butler's Pantry in 2001.
Hill, who insists on cooking food that is in season, will go to great lengths to ensure that "dream dinner" clients get what they ask for, even hopping on a plane to the food market at Rungis in Paris in search of elusive ingredients.
So, what sort of person books a "dream dinner", the cost of which runs from around €150 per person and upwards?
"We have quite a lot of clients who do business, as well as personal entertaining in their homes; it makes it more personal and what better compliment to pay someone than invite them into your home," Hill says.
And of course, not everyone has the skills to cook and serve dinner to a large group. "We have catered in the most beautiful kitchens where the instruction manuals are still in the appliances, and the saucepans - wedding presents - have never been used," Hill says.
"Michelin-star-style dining in the home" is what the Butler's Pantry team is aiming for. But how would it work in an ordinary home, more accustomed to family dinners and the occasional casual get-together than extravagant formal entertaining? Very well, actually.
The planning process begins with a consultation with Hill, and events manager Maria Reidy, who until May of this year was a corporate banker with JP Morgan, but says she is now doing what she really wants to do.
"I grew up on a farm in west Clare where we were practically self-sufficient, with all our own vegetables and meat," she explains. "My grandmother was a great cook and gardener and she was a great influence on me. I love people and I love food, flowers and interiors. My friends say I should have been born in the 1950s!"
The polished and ultra-polite Reidy cast an eagle eye over my house during our planning meeting, quizzing me gently on my likes and dislikes, while Hill discussed food and menus. Instead of choosing a specific theme and a menu for the dinner, it was decided that the team would have free rein to surprise us on the evening of the party.
Arriving home on the designated date, a Butler's Pantry van parked discreetly around the corner was the only hint that something was up. Inside, however, the kitchen was a flurry of activity as the chef set up his five-course menu and Reidy and her assistant Ailbhe Carroll put the finishing touches to the decor, while sharing useful entertaining tips such as putting candles in the freezer for a while before lighting them, to prolong their burning time.
And so to dinner, which became something akin to a cookery demonstration as Hill answered questions about the menu, and interacted with the guests.
Canapes - shots of roast butternut squash soup, smoked chicken Waldorf salad on endive leaves, and seared pigeon breast and confit shallot on puff pastry - were followed by a seafood plate of Castletownbere scallops, crab and poached smoked salmon. Beef fillet for the main course came from master butcher Tomás Kinsella in Enniscorthy, and was served with celeriac puree, glazed shallots and balsamic cider jus. It was all delicious, but the biggest hit of the night was the chewy coconut meringue dessert (see Niall Hill's recipe below). A Sheridan's cheeseboard, stylishly served on a giant marble slab, was left on the table for guests to nibble at.
Throughout dinner, Hill kept us amused with discreet stories about catering jobs: "When I was part of the Canadian culinary team, one of our sponsors owned an ostrich farm, and we had to prepare a nine-course menu using ostrich for every course, right down to the eggs, which we used for a dessert. We had to use an angle grinder to cut the eggs open."
Service throughout the evening was professional and personable, but it did feel odd to have these charming, entertaining people in the house and not be able to treat them as guests. The team was in the house at 5.30pm and worked solidly until 11pm without a break, and must have been starving, as well as exhausted, when they discreetly packed up their equipment and headed home, leaving a sparklingly clean kitchen, and a fridge stuffed with leftovers that made a delicious supper the following evening.
The "Dream Dinner" is The Butler's Pantry's top-of-the-range offering, but they also cater on a more modest level, with a three-course menu costing from just under €20 a head - but for that, you'll do some of the work yourself.
See www.thebutlerspantry.ie
Coconut meringue with plums in red wine, served with cinnamon cream
4 medium egg whites
400g caster sugar
1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar
115g desiccated coconut
100ml red wine
100ml water
100g caster sugar
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
1 star anise
3 peppercorns
Zest of half an orange
Zest of half a lemon
6 plums, halved and stone removed
200ml cream
Icing sugar (to taste)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
To make the meringue, whip the egg whites with 200g of the sugar, until stiff. Fold in the remaining 200g of sugar, along with the white wine vinegar. Next, fold in the coconut. Using a piping bag, pipe onto a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Alternatively, you can scoop the meringue onto the baking tray using an ice-cream scoop. Using the back of a dessert spoon, create a curve in the centre of the meringue. Dip the spoon into some hot water between doing each meringue. Bake at 150 degrees for 30 minutes.
Mix together the red wine, water, 100g of caster sugar, spices and zests and bring to the boil. Add the plums, reduce heat and slowly simmer for 30 minutes.
Whip the cream with the cinnamon and add sieved icing sugar to taste.
Assemble by spooning some of the cream into the cavity in the meringues created with the back of the dessert spoon. Place two or three plum halves on top of the cream and drizzle some of the red wine poaching liquor onto the plate.
CATERERS: LITTLE BLACK BOOK
See also: www.privatecaterers.com, 01-8555855; www.bittersweetfood.com, 087-6945675; www.wildthyme.ie, 087-2314127; www.thecaterers.ie, 01-4595560; www.redpeppercatering.com, 087-9550205; www.foodforthoughtwestcork.com, 087-7528940.