The first party: drag queens and roast lamb

To kick things off, I had the first dinner party on Friday night. Ok, I didn’t use exclusively Lidl products this time but for the most part I managed it. I invited my friend and his boyfriend, who becomes Vivienne on weekends.

The menu was as follows:

- Leek and potato soup with home-made croutons

- Roast lamb with garlic & rosemary, roast potatoes and watercress salad

- Chocolate orange tart with drambuie

- Cheese course

If you’ve never tried making your own bread, you really ought to try out Lidl’s own brand “Landgut” range of bread mixes. They’re all absolutely top-notch, and terribly easy. In Edinburgh it’s not that easy to get proper bread, so this stuff goes down really well. I’d especially recommend the sunflower seed mix, or rye-bread. Pics to be posted soon, I promise.

Truthfully, I have never been this organised for a dinner party before. I started the night before by defrosting the lamb and making the tart pastry case. This is all a clever tactic to help me repress my kitchen-fascist personality facet which rears its ugly head a few times a week.

Ultimately the whole thing was a roaring success, but I was so full that in the morning I only managed to gobble a small piece of that chocolate tart for breakfast.