I’ve been off cooking for a while, but on Saturday Gill’s friends Mike and Anita came over, and it gave me all the inspiration I needed to get back on track…

It all started the day before, I decided to make some vegan ice-cream from the wonderful recipes in the Millennium Café Cookbook, so planned ahead for a time when I had a good six hours free to keep taking it out of the freezer and giving it a stir. I opted for the coffee sorbet - coconut milk, a couple of shots of espresso, some ground coffee and sugar (plus I added a drop or two of brandy for good measure). I whisked it and I put it in the freezer… and I stirred… and I stirred… and I stirred.

The problem came at around 2am - OK, I no longer really needed to stir, as the ice-cream had pretty much set, but I was enjoying it and, more to the point, I was having one of my 2am food inspiration moments. I kept dreaming up dishes to make, and things to do to prepare for the next day. So I spent until around 4 or 5am soaking cashew nuts, making curry sauce, churning ice cream, spearing mint sprigs into rasberries and freezing them, etc etc etc.

So one night plus the following day slaving non-stop in the kitchen, and the meal was every bit as good as I’d envisaged it. It was also 100% vegan, all three courses, which kinda stunned me particularly given the richness of the food. Anyway, here’s what we had:

The starter, which was entirely my own invention, was buckwheat & wild rice blinis (made with egg replacement powder) topped with a layer of a kind of garlic cream (made by liquidising soaked cashew nuts with garlic which had been very very very gently cooked and then soaked in olive oil with parsley all night. There were probably a few other ingredients which I’ve forgotten). On top of that was a blob of white bean hummus (a left over from a previous meal, white beans pulverized with lemon juice and zest, garlic and sage) and on top of that were cherry tomatoes caramelized in strawberry balsamic vinegar (another leftover), slowly cooked red onions with thyme, and raw carrot julienned and left to sweat in some salt.

The main course, which entirely the invention of the Millennium Café (well, meddled with slightly) had a puddle of green curry sauce covering each plate, and floated on top a precariously tall stack of (1) barley and rice salad (barley, brown rice and wild rice mixed with diced cucumber and tomato, marinaded in lots of fresh mint and lime juice) (2) a thick slice of aubergine fried in a mustardy batter (3) a pile of stir-fried vegetables (green beans, red cabbage, carrot, shallots, beansprouts) and (pre-soaked) cashew nuts briefly cooked in the green curry sauce (4) another battered aubergine slice and finally (5) a sprinkling of raw bean sprouts. Amazingly, every stack except mine stood up all the way to the dinner table.

Dessert was a joint effort between me and the Millennium Café - well, mostly the latter actually. The aforementioned coffee ice cream served up with individual-sized chocolate bombs (little chocolate cakes with oozy melting chocolate in the middle) and decorated with rasberries, redcurrants and mint (I meant to throw in a bit of maple syrup too, and perhaps some brandy, but forgot. Probably a good thing).

Desperately seeking guests now, so I can try something else new perhaps I should auction a dinner party on Ebay.