Three-course Halloween Meal Inspired By Nigella Lawson

I decided to cook Halloween dinner for my friends and I thought I really need something to celebrate the occasion. Through my recent discovery of the Food Network I have become addicted to Nigella Lawson, that cooking goddess and perused her site for some Halloween meal ideas. A good idea, as it turned out, since my entire three-course Halloween meal ended up based on her Halloween Top 5 of 2012, with my own tiny little twist.

Halloween Menu 2012

Here was the Halloween menu that I decided to go with for the night: 

Starter: 

Green Goo with Pus and Croutons 

(i.e. Pea Soup with Mozzarella Cheese)

For the starter I went with Nigella's Slime Soup. I changed for no reason whatsoever, except I liked it better. 

Now, if you click the link above you will find the whole recipe with peas and blending and blitzing. For a number of reasons including patience, lack of tools and just plain laziness, I did the cheeky thing and bought a Pea and Ham Soup ready at Tescos. 

Ingredients and Recipe: Green Goo with Pus and Croutons (Serves 4-5 as Starter)

Pea and Ham Soup (2x, Tesco)

1 ball of Mozzarella

Garlic

Spinach

Bread

Salt

Pepper

Chili Powder

1. Heat up the soup.

2. Slice the bread into little chunks for croutons and fry in oil with chopped garlic until crispy brown. Add salt, pepper, chili powder and set aside.

3. Chop up some garlic and fry it with the spinach.

4. Chop up the Mozzarella into little squares and add it only AFTER TAKING THE SOUP OFF THE HEAT. *

5. Add some spinach and croutons.**

Taddaaa, your green goo with pus is ready to eat. Erm...yumm...

*This is where Nigella and my recipe differ - while she blends the mozzarella and makes everything smooth, I thought just slightly heating up the cheese will mean it looks like pus, which is more disgusting, but also in my opinion gives it better taste.

**I added the spinach to make it look more exciting - more shades of green - and the croutons because I simply love them.

Main Course: 

Witches' Curls with Bloody, Severed Fingers 

(or Green Pasta with Tomato Sauce and Hamburger Fingers)

This is the recipe most loosely based on Nigella's Witches' Hair, all I stole here was the idea of having pasta in a non-too regular colour. As it turned out, my supermarket only had greens spinach pasta, which reminded me of curly hair, hence the change of name compared to Nigella. Thinking of imitating blood of course a tomato sauce came to mind, however it seemed to be missing that extra something. The American classic Spaghetti Meatballs then stirred in me the idea that I could shape the meat into fingers, using almonds by way of imitating finger nails. Voilà, my main course was created. Again, I must admit the tomato sauce was a ready one - forgive me, I am just a recent graduate living on a budget and without the cooking tools. You are very welcome to make it from scratch.

Ingredients and Recipe: Witches Curls with Bloody, Severed Fingers

Sauce

Tomato Sauce (any brand and variation of your choosing)

250g fresh cherry tomatoes

Chili Powder

Parmesan

Pine Nuts

Fingers (German burger mixture)

400g minced meat (best is a pork and beef mixture)

1 soaked roll

1 egg

1/2 onion

1 tbsp tomato ketchup

Parmesan

Paprika powder

Salt

Pepper

Blanched almonds

Pasta

Any pasta of your choice, preferably in an unusual colour, e.g. green (spinach) or black (octopus ink).

Since the fingers take the most time, start with them.

Making the Fingers

1. Soak the roll in water.

2. Add it to a bowl with the raw meat, egg, chopped onions, ketchup, parmesan, paprika powder, salt and pepper and start mashing it all up. 

3. Take a little portion of the mixture and form it into a finger. 

4. Add an almond as finger nail - push it in deep enough to stay put, but not so deep as to make it disappear.

5. After shaping your fingers, add oil to a pan and then fry from both sides until done (ca. 5 minutes).

Making the Sauce

1. Put your tomato sauce into a pot to heat.

2. Add some salt, pepper an parmesan to the sauce. (I also like to add a bit of milk to get the rest of the sauce out of the glass and make it more creamy)

3. Chop the fresh tomatoes into quarters and add them to the sauce to stew in.

4. Fry the pine nuts in a separate pan with a bit of oil and put them on the side.

Final Steps

1. Boil the pasta and drain it.

2. Arrange pasta on a plate, add some of the tomato sauce in the middle. 

3. Add some fingers on top and drape a bit more of the tomato sauce on them, so they look like they are sticking out of a pool of blood.

4. Add the pine nuts and some fresh parmesan.

And your done!

Dessert: 

Blood Clots and

 DIY Halloween Cookies

The DIY cookies I found in Morrissons and I knew they would be a lot of fun. Ginger-flavoured and shaped like pumpkins they came with a little decoration set, so your guests can have some fun dessert. We also had some Haribo Halloween gummies, which we then added to the range of cookie decoration.

The blood clots are based on this fun recipe by Nigella and have not been tampered with. Very simple too. I discovered afterwards that she has made it even scarier, take a look here.

Just mix three different kinds of jelly - rasperry, strawberry and blackcurrant into one bowl, take a fork and mess about with it until it is all ...well...clotty ;) Yummy-licious and my personal favourite on the scary-looks scale!

Halloween Decoration

As I enjoy a bit of kitschy decoration, I could not resist dressing the plates up a little. While I neither have a fortune to spend, nor did I have the time to go hunt for Halloween decoration, this was entirely homemade. The Halloween menu was printed out on photo paper, so guests can take it home and have a souvenir. The paper curls I made myself with very simple help from Photoshop, a printer and some pencils. After cutting out the strips of ghosts, witches and pumpkins, I wrapped them around pencils over night, held in place with a little tape and just unwrapped them shortly before the guests arrived. As easy as that. 

Happy Halloween Everyone!