Saucy Dressings aims to complete this post – four weeks’ menus and recipes, plus a few spare by the end of 2024.

Every year an additional week’s menu, with the links to the individual recipes, is added.

For food in season in October, follow this link.

For music to listen to while cooking in October, follow this link.

You might also be interested in these posts – mostly concerned with Hallow’een:

• live dangerously – finish your meal with Dracula
• trumpets of the dead – intriguing mushrooms
• experiment with black garlic on Hallowe’en
• rich, to-kill-for, scallops with apple and blood pudding
• all about quince

Week’s menu for October: number one

“Some weather’s coming; you can taste on the sides of your tongue a quince tang in the air.”

Anne Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

This month I’m in Spain, so instead of a starter for the dinner party there’ll be some suggestions for tapas… and this month’s cocktail will be ‘Spain in a Glass’.

Saturday lunch:

• Pumpkin soup with bacon

OR

• Momentous Mushrooms on Toast

OR

• celeriac steaks with a cashew and caper sauce

OR

• Lucie’s Quiche Lorraine

FOLLOWED BY

• Manchego (or British manchego-style) cheese with
• membrillo

OR

• Susi’s Omi’s buttercookies

Sunday evening:

• Iberian ham with
• apricot and quinoa salad

and/or

• hot kissed cucumber – 60 second wonder
• warm bread

Monday evening chicken:

• Boursin stuffed pheasant with
• broccoli (or broccolini) and
• pommes Anna

OR

• duck à l’orange with a negroni sauce
• quick cabbage with juniper, gin and peppercorns
• pommes Anna

Tuesday evening:

• leftovers or night out!

Wednesday evening meat:

• Pork and apple pie with
• creamy cumin cabbage

Thursday evening dinner party:

• Canapés: angels and devils on horseback
• Starter: suggestions for tapas
• Main course: venison steaks  with a rich chocolate sauce and
• truffled butternut squash
• Pudding: Driving Miss Daisy apple tarte tatin or The Dracula!

Thank God it’s Friday drink:

• Spain in a Glass

WITH

• the Laconia’s luxurious böreks

Friday evening fish:

• Tuna pie with ‘crisp’ pastry and
• fried green pepper

OR

• quick Asian sauce for salmon
• almost instant pak choi
• fried rice

Week’s menu for October: number two

This month is the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, and we’re lucky enough to have The Old Foodie aka Janet Clarkson, specialist food history blogger as our guru for the month, giving a background to this battle. In the meantime here (also read in the video clip below) is the rousing Shakespeare speech to inspire you.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers:
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhood cheap while any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day

Shakespeare, Henry V

Saturday lunch:

• soft herring roes found when visiting The Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival

OR

• Magic Martini Mushrooms on Sweet Toasted Bread

OR

• Straightforward Broccoli Soup with Nutty Rye Bread Croutons

OR

• Pink Cauliflower, Red Onion, Burgundy Cranberries, Blush-coloured salt

FOLLOWED BY

• simply perfect Portuguese chocolate cake

Sunday supper:

• variations on pasta with courgettes: naughty ways, interesting ways and ways for goodie-goodies

OR

• Autumn sausage and apple plait with a tomato and yoghurt sauce

Monday evening meat:

• Montepulciano steak with soft potatoes braised with onion and beans all’ucceletto

Tuesday evening:

• leftovers or night out!

Wednesday evening poultry:

• molasses chicken with Snow White’s winter cabbage salad

Thursday evening dinner party:

• starter: striped Turkish starter – delirious aubergine with red pepper sauce
• main course: Cretan pork pie
• with golden beetroot
• or sugar snap peas
• pudding: blackberry caramel crumble

OR

• pudding: sophisticated and sultry peanut butter brunettes, with vanilla ice cream…and even…chocolate sauce

Thank God It’s Friday drink and dip:

• Six Bells Tea Cup from The Ivy Chelsea Garden
• best guacamole recipe

Friday evening fish:

• Greek sea bass with Job’s tears salad

OR

• gilded cod with a tamarind sauce
• mash

followed by

• a yoghurty salad of white onions and black onion seeds

Week’s menu for October: number three

“A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill’s shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.”

Poem in October by Dylan Thomas

Saturday lunch:

• luxurious leftover salad with marinated anchovies

OR

• Red salad cured with raspberry vinegar adorned with salty feta
• Fantastic Fusion mini-Japanese-Cornish Pasties

OR

• Black on toast – cavolo nero and black pudding

OR

• fennel and sausage meat tart with nutty miso broccoli

FOLLOWED BY

• chocolate, peanut butter and caramel cheesecake

OR

• chocolate-strewn cashew cookies

Sunday evening pasta:

• chorizo and vegetable lasagne

or

• truffled beef and mushroom lasagne

Monday evening poultry:

• chicken, sherry, marcona almonds
• ragu of red vegetables

Tuesday evening:

• leftovers or night out!

Wednesday evening meat:

• pulled apart lamb with tapenade and sweet Indian bread
• Life-changing blue cheese and beetroot carpaccio salad all thanks to Nigel Slater

Thursday evening dinner party:

• Starter: kipper pâté and a visit to a smokery
• Main course: early autumn slow cooked lamb with peanut and mint pesto, mashed potatoes and broccoli, or cabbage, vermouth and banana shallot melee or roast quince
• Pudding: ultimate maple and brandy soufflé

Thank God it’s Friday drink:

• blood and sand
• with sophisticated bacon butties

Friday evening fish:

• moules marinière

Followed, or preceded by:

• a cheese and tomato salad for newly-weds

Week’s menu for October: number four

“Mid-autumn follows, and the kitchen will fill with pumpkins, celeriac, walnuts and quinces from the trees and fields. The leaves will begin to fall slowly, but a day or two of strong wind will finish the job, exposing the trees’ skeletal winter profile”

Stephen Harris, The Daily Telegraph, September 2019

Saturday lunch:

• Renaissance ham and grapes

OR

• Rich, to-kill-for, scallops with apple and blood pudding

OR

• The North Wind and the Sun, rye bread salad

OR

• Warming winter carrot, ginger and turmeric soup

OR

• cheese and tomato savoury cobbler with ham and salami

AND

• Bountiful broken leg cookies

Sunday supper:

• Fresh and dry mushroom with pomegranate molasses sauce for pasta

Monday evening meat:

• venison sausage and rosemary red sauce
• shiitake and watercress salad

Tuesday evening:

• night out!

Wednesday evening poultry:

• Chicken with plums

OR

• Lemony chicken kebabs with tahini sauce

WITH

• Knock-out cauliflower

AND

• simple sumac flatbreads

Thursday evening dinner party:

• with drinks: paprika courgettes curled around mascarpone
• starter: Matej-inspired melon with ricotta and cornbread
• main course: slow cooked lamb with peanut and mint pesto, mashed potatoes and broccoli
• pudding:  sweetness and light, carrot halwa

Thank God It’s Friday drink:

• Blavod black vodka with blood-red cranberry juice

….. and to nibble at with it:

• seducer’s deep fried mussels

Friday evening fish:

• baked turbot with truffled potatoes, and red-speckled broad beans with vanilla and chives (instead of the mash); or mango and lambs lettuce salad

OR

• Salty, spicy, sweet salmon on a bed of tasty tomatoes with crushed lemony potatoes and titanic salad