Assiette of cold cuts and cured meats with Double Gloucester cheese

This has to be my favourite lunch!

Served with homemade breads & salads

Just found this pic - it was part of a lunch buffet we delivered to Pedington Manor near Berkeley a few weeks ago.

Lamb shank stargazy pie for a wedding of 150 in Stanway, Gloucestershire

Lamb shank stargazy pie - more than your average wedding party food offering!

You can see why not many peopple serve it - took 14 hours just to put them together with the lamb shanks, veg, gravy and pastry - split between Thursday evening and Friday morning. And that's without all the time cooking 140 lamb shanks & perfecting the sauce and making the pastry before - truly a labour of love. We served these on the table for guests to help themselves with dauphinoise potato, chantenay carrots and roast cauliflower & broccoli with cumin seeds.

140 lamb shanks sealed and ready to cook in red wine - an all night job!

We had 2 pies per table and in the end so busy shifting 30 pies and trays of hot canapes around 2 ovens that we never got pics of the final result - standard. Did get a few burns from all that shifting things round the oven though - getting the pastry browned on all sides meant shifting pies up and down the oven and turning back to front at the same time as getting canapes hot - busy!

The key to wedding catering - count those plates, and then re-count. Then count them again. Salt beef starter plating up.

 Arancini - saffron risotto balls with mozzarella in the middle. Half the guests were Italian, half Scottish - so we had haggis filo tarts there too among the canapés.

Palmiers - sun dried tomato, pesto and black olive

Canapé spoons of smoked haddock topped with welsh rarebit were also a hit!

Wedding cake by Contempory Cake designs in Cheltenham which  we served for dessert with berries and coulis  - like this.

Breakfast catering in Kiddrminster

From a recent all weekend event in Kidderminster - 6 meals over the weekend for 90 people per time.

Joe In mid-flow - what a helpful guy!

Gloucester old spot/ Berkshire breed cross sausages and bacon from Home Farm in Bredons Norton 6 miles away. Tomatoes from Buckland - just outside Broadway. Organic field mushrooms from Oakland Organic Mushrooms just outside Evesham. Homemade loaves of bread for toasting with jam & my dad's homemade marmalade Can't beat what you can buy locally & make yourself!

Putting the cup into 'cup'cake - buffet lunch delivery

Coffee is served! Or is it?

"What's this?" asked the sales exec and receptionist as we started laying out the saucers - we like to do something more than the average lunch buffet.

Coffee and banana cake - in a cup. Adapted from this recipe.

Quite fun no?

Birthday catering in Bourton on the Water

The Venice of the Cotswolds - fell in love with Bourton on the Water when I was 7. A model railway shop, model village, Birdland - what more does a boy want? A tea shop for cream meringues? Don't worry - plenty of those too.

Assiette of desserts. It's all about the finishing touches. For the birthday girl there was an added extra - a shotglass of gin and tonic sorbet

 We served this at Foxes Manor in Bourton on the Water last night.

Lamb cutlets - half way through plating up.

Only the best will do! Made the bread rolls it went with fresh at the house too - amazing what you can cram into an hour.

Apricot and almond madeleines

All ready for an assiette of desserts that @manlyartichokes was serving up. Last thing to be made last Saturday before zooming off to Badminton. The village that is, not the sport. Original recipe from here which I changed slightly.

Blueberry and orange meringue layer cake

As cakes go - this was quite a winner. Just a shame it was for someone else.......

Originally inspired by this lemon meringue layer cake as I was browsing for ideas, I then found Nigella's recipe as I was flicking through books on the shelf and just adapted that with a cream cheese/ marscapone filling.