Apologies about that massive delay! It's been all go here lately. There are many plans in the works!

So I decided on this supper around the same time that i had decided to do te July 4th dinner. I had been in Galway and met James McGeogh. Who kindly gave me some of his AMAZING smoked black pudding. James studied butchering for seven years in Germany, where he gained his interests in air dried meats and smoked meat.....anyway, he gave me some of his black pudding and the idea popped into my head that it would go wonderfully with really well with some kind of sweet compote. So I needed a platform to deliver it. I decided that scotch quail eggs would be the answer.

The dinner was well and truly booked out when found out one of the attendees was wheat and cows-milk intolerant. She offered to eat around anything that contained wheat (she had not looked at the menu) once I explained there was no escaping wheat she offered to not attend, but I insisted that I could make everything to suit her diet. With a few substitutions I soon had a wheat/gluten/cows-milk free meal under way.

I prepared the quail eggs by soft boiling them, letting them cool then wrapping them in the black pudding that I minced further down and added some cream. For the alternative I made smoked mix of sausage meat and treated them the same. Rolled everything in polenta and left to stiffen up in the fridge.

The yorkshire puddings were a bit more of a challenge in the intolerant department..I used a mix of self raising flour, xanthan gum, egg and goats milk....they were more Yorkshire muffins in the long run, but I was informed were rather tasty. Everyone had steak the one way (no substitutes there) I deglazed the pan with some madeira wine and my salsa verde mix.

Finally came the wonderful challenge of a tolerable pasta. There was a huge amount of ideas, recipes and tips (which always worries me...no has really got a simple working idea for it) I knew I didn't need it to be overly elasticy, so I just needed to make sure there was lots of protein to bind it all together so I decided on fresh duck eggs, with an extra yolk throw in on top for good meusure..