Recipes and Menus for March

For food in season in March, follow this link.
For music to listen to while cooking in March, follow this link.

- St Patrick’s boozy bread and butter pudding
- Green Spot Irish Whiskey
- St Patrick’s light-as-air chocolate tart
Week’s menu for March: number one

“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.”
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Saturday lunch:
- two saints and a tart – a Welsh leek and Irish blue cheese quiche
OR
OR
FOLLOWED BY
Sunday evening mince:
- Irish colcannon with Irish sausages (spot the theme?)
OR
WITH
Monday evening meat:
- scallopini ai funghi – from Youghal (in Ireland)
Shrove Tuesday:
Wednesday evening poultry:
- Chicken schnitzels, splendid with seeds, golden with turmeric
- Roast baby tomatoes, or juicy Spanish red peppers, with a lemon-thyme yoghurt sauce
OR
OR
- juicy chicken thighs with blue cheese sauce, crushed lemony potatoes, and a crisp green salad, or buttered romanesco or broccoli
Thursday evening dinner party:
- with drinks: umami mixed and whole nuts
- starter: warm Welsh goats’ cheese, fig and honey salad
OR
- starter: it’s-a-doddle duck liver pâté
- main course: chicken with kumquats; basmati rice and a green salad
- pudding: St Patrick’s light-as-air chocolate tart
OR
- pudding: chocolate and peanut butter fondant – sort of molten Snickers!
Thank God It’s Friday drink:
and to eat with it
Friday evening fish:
Week’s menu for March: number two

“…surely it is the spring that stirs the heart more profoundly [than autumn]. Then, birdsong is full of the feel of spring, the plants beneath the hedges bud into leaf in the warm sunlight, the slowly deepening season brings soft mists, while the blossoms at last begin to open, only to meet with ceaseless winds and rain that send them flurrying restlessly to earth. Until the leaves appear on the boughs, the heart is endlessly perturbed.”
Kenkō, A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees (written circa 1330)
For this week then the dinner party menu is the famed Great British Menu. And there are other classics such as chicken liver pate and bubble and squeak. But the chicken with Paris pastry and the sea bass accompanied by the Thai coconut rice add a touch of the exotic. It’s St David’s day today so you could watch the gentle, feel-good, Englishman who went up a hill, but came down a mountain, which stars Hugh Grant, as usual charmingly playing himself, and is all about Welshness (see clip below). The soundtrack is equally gentle – just what you need when attempting the albeit pared-down challenge of the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte.
Saturday lunch:
OR
OR
Sunday evening:
OR
Monday evening chicken:
Tuesday evening:
- leftovers or night out!
Wednesday evening meat:
OR
Thursday evening dinner party – The Great British Menu:
- starter: prawn cocktail
- main course: steak with wonderful wedge potatoes or root chips; or sort-of Greek salad; cheats’ béarnaise sauce or a herb or blue cheese butter
- pudding: black forest gâteau with kirsch – Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte
- after dinner drink: Irish coffee
“Cooked as it should be, this much derided and often ridiculed dinner is still something very special indeed”
Hopkinson and Bareham, The Prawn Cocktail Years
Thank God It’s Friday drink:
… and to nibble at with it:
- quails’ eggs on fried bread
Friday evening fish:
Week’s menu for March: number three

“’Is the spring coming?’ he said. ‘What is it like?’…
‘It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine…’”
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Saturday lunch:
OR
OR
AND
Sunday supper:
Monday evening meat:
Tuesday evening:
- leftovers or night out!
Wednesday evening poultry:
Thursday evening dinner party:
- with drinks: mushroom-embraced quails’ eggs
- starter: smoked salmon and avocado and sundried tomatoes
OR
- starter: Irish prawns and eggs
- main course: lamb and celeriac hotpot
- pudding: st patrick’s day bread and butter pudding
OR
- pudding: coconut and pineapple flower pie
Thank God It’s Friday drink:
….. and to eat with it:
Friday evening fish:
OR
Week’s menu for March: number four

“In this international commerce of geese, the waste corn of Illinois is carried through the clouds to the Arctic tundras, there to combine with the waste sunlight of a nightless June to grow goslings for all the lands in between. And in this annual barter of food for light, and winter warmth for summer solitude, the whole continent receives as net profit a wild poem dropped from the murky skies upon the muds of March.”
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There
Saturday lunch:
OR
OR
AND
FOLLOWED BY
- wardrobe cake
Sunday supper:
- sausage ring with crushed potatoes
- green salad with cream dressing
OR
Monday evening meat:
OR
OR
- albóndigas…..aka Spanish meatballs in tomato sauce; with wonderful wedge potatoes and a primavera salad
Tuesday evening:
- leftovers or night out!
Wednesday evening poultry:
Thursday evening dinner party:
- with drinks: chilled vodka with blini, sour cream and shocking hot pink salmon cured in gin and beetroot
- starter: camembert cigars with fiery red accompaniments
OR
- starter: scallops with a salty chocolate sauce
- main course: veal in a curry sauce with Domini’s tenderstem broccoli and Pommes Anna
- pudding: hot chocolate and marmalade mousse pudding
OR
Thank God It’s Friday drink:
….. and to eat with it:
Friday evening fish:
“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations