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 music to listen to while cooking in September, follow this link.

For food in season in September, follow this link.

You might also be interested in these posts:

• Gather ye blackberries while ye may because after Michaelmas ye will have to stop
• How to make damson gin

Week’s menu for September: number 1

“Turning our attention to diet and nutrition, I love a caprese salad and a glass of nutritious rosé on a sunny Tuscan terrace as much as the next person. The fact is, though, we’re here, not there, so let us review our options, which are uniformly thrilling: crumpets, pies, proper rich fruit cake instead of your fancy little foreign tartlets, hot puddings, roast pork with crackling and all the trimmings on a freezing day, red wine — so much less of a hangover than rosé — hearty soups, stews, lasagne, crumble, need I go on? On Sunday afternoons, as the rain pelts against the windows, there is no reason even to contemplate doing anything except lighting the fire and a scented candle, and sitting on the sofa with a hot Ribena and a heavily buttered crumpet. If you don’t think that sounds like the bee’s knees, then I’m afraid you are tired of life and there’s nothing to be done with you.”

Hilary Rose, The Times, October 4 2021

I’m spending a week of this month in Germany, mostly in Hamburg and there are all sorts of wonderful dishes to be tried and tested.

Saturday lunch:

• matjes and potato salad

OR

• The Pink Lady Dances With The Saucy Italian – apple and Gorgonzola on a roll

OR

• avocado with floaty grated egg and brightness

FOLLOWED BY

• plum pie-cake

OR

• chocolate and lemon sherbet digestive biscuits

Sunday evening pasta or rice:

• frankfurter pasta

OR

• sunset-inspired sweet and salty prawns with black rice

Monday evening poultry:

• pheasant in red wine with sourdough or ciabatta and a green salad with celery leaves

OR

• simple chicken, fennel and lemon supper inspired by The Eating Tree

Tuesday evening:

• leftovers or night out!

Wednesday evening meat:

• frikadellen – German meatballs with a salad dressed with German yoghurt dressing

OR

• Middle-eastern nearly devils on horseback sausages wrapped in bacon and cooked with juniper and gin with an avocado and baby gem salad dressed with an oily mustardy dressing

Thursday evening dinner party:

• starter: avocado and dill and salmon mousse

OR

• starter: breadcrumb-fried Camembert, or Tunworth with charming pear and apple chutney laced with Stone’s ginger wine or with cranberry sauce
• main course: geschnetzeltes with
• vegetables: rösti

OR

• main course: venison Wellington by Ashleigh Farrand

• pudding: rote grüze on panna cotta

OR

• pudding: blackberries with boozy orange-soaked cake

Thank God it’s Friday drink:

• The Cosmopolist – suave and sophisticated. An unforgettable amalgamation of a Cosmopolitan and  the indescribable Sex on the Beach with a Dead German Rock Star!

SERVE WITH

• Ribblesdale blue goats cheese, fresh fig, honey and charcoal cracker canapés

Friday evening fish:

• white fillet of sea bass with lobster, cream and brandy sauce, and
• Hamburg manful green beans and bacon

Week’s menu for September: number 2

“Early in the month, summer feels like it’s making its mind up about exactly when to leave and everything on the smallholding seems to sense a change coming. The animals become less active, the trees look less upright and lively, and the chickens lay less frequently. The vigour and chirpiness of spring and summer seem to be becoming loose and tatty, like favourite jeans aging.”

Mark Diacono, A Year at Otter Farm

With September the year shifts into autumn so we see the last of the courgette flowers and corn on the cob and quail come into season.

Saturday lunch:

• Indian corn on the cob

OR

• Clare Winskill’s chanterelle soup

OR

• Peppery rocket, sweet peach and salty feta salad

FOLLOWED BY

• Canadian maple cookies

Sunday supper:

• spitfire omelette

OR

• whole roasted cauliflower cheese with sausages

Monday evening meat

• breaded veal with stuffed courgette flowers and a green salad

OR

• sausages in a blackberry, port and onion sauce, with mashed potato mixed with leek and apple

Tuesday evening:

• leftovers or night out!

Wednesday evening chicken:

• holy moley! –  with guacamole

OR

• Nearly Reese Witherspoon’s Nut-crusted Chicken – with Titanic salad; or lime, coriander and tomato salad; or labneh and roasted tomatoes

Thursday evening dinner party:

• starter: twice baked cheese soufflés

OR

• starter: garlicky mushrooms with Taleggio on puff pastry beds
• main course: quail with fig and grilled aubergines;

OR alternatively,

• chicken with a lemon pickle glaze and a peppery mushroom salad or with mascarpone mushrooms with borlotti beans and truffle oil
• pudding: blackberry mousse

OR

• pudding: toffee-topped, popular plum upside-down cake

OR

• pudding: 3-ingredient lemon cake

Thank God It’s Friday drink:

• It’s a Knock-out!

Friday evening fish:

• Virginia Woolf fillets of sole a la crème et al

OR

• Hermione Gingold’s storecupboard salmon pie

WITH

• spinach with ricotta and black sesame seeds

Week’s menu for September: number 3

“Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.”

Douglas Adams,  Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Saturday lunch:

• haricot, egg, spring onion and tahini salad
• warm fennel, lemon, and pasta salad

OR

• an exciting tart of zhouged mushrooms, black olives and sage

OR

• Ayla’s sweet potato and peanut soup dressed with crunchy, candied, sesame

OR

• peach, tomato, blue cheese and walnut savoury salad

FOLLOWED BY

• what to do with Williamine Tart

OR

• a British cheeseboard and apple and blackberry chutney

Sunday supper:

• chicken and artichoke pasta sauce

OR

• ultimate comfort food – sausage, spices, and mini-malloredus

Monday evening meat

• mixed grill

WITH

• chard and cheese gratin

OR

• quick Japanese aubergines, aka Nasu Dengaku

Tuesday evening:

• leftovers or night out!

Wednesday evening chicken:

• Indian chicken breast with a black gold sauce
• orange salad

Thursday evening dinner party:

• with drinks: potato skins stuffed with truffled mascarpone
• starter: baby gem and crab meat

OR

• starter: Hospitality Awards confit of salmon with a citrus salad
• main course: Jardin d’Alice ballotine with new potatoes and cabbage

OR

• main course: duck breasts with rich Marsala and blackberry sauce, roasted baby potatoes and quick spinach
• pudding: self-saucing lemon pudding

Thank God It’s Friday drink:

• angels cry too
• the best garlic bread in the world, the universe, everything

Friday evening fish:

• cod in herbed breadcrumbs
• mozzarella, fennel and orange salad

OR

• zingy and light prawn orzo with green highlights

OR

• grape and cucumber salad with walnuts

Week’s menu for September: number 4

Saturday lunch:

• How to cook the best corn on the cob

OR

• Fabulous Flourless Cauliflower Cheese, with chipolatas

OR

• A September salad of ripe peaches; big, beefy, juicy tomatoes; and rich gooey burrata

FOLLOWED BY

• Lavender, lemon, blackberry pound cake

Sunday supper:

• autumn sausage and apple plait
• creamy, dreamy auberginey

Monday evening meat:

• sunny south of France slow-cooked beef stew, with noodles and an over-dressed green salad
• followed by runny cheese (try a Waterloo) and chocolate mousse.

Tuesday evening:

• leftovers or night out!

Wednesday evening poultry:

• Yashim’s aubergine parcels with chicken

Thursday evening dinner party:

• with drinks: Sketch gin and tonic jelly bookended with green olives
• starter: Casa Brindisa artichoke with wild mushrooms and truffle oil
• main course: carbonade de boeuf with green beans; or with griddled baby gem, pistachios and salsa verde

OR

• main course: Claridge’s chicken pie
• pudding:  David’s blackberry and almond cake

Thank God It’s Friday drink:

• Moscow mule

….. and to eat with it:

• Russian salad

Friday evening fish:

• Mrs Beeton’s curried cod
• Fennel with orange glazed with honey and sherry