FIRST COURSE

Blue soup – written up here.

Dragon pie – just a chicken/onion/pea pie that we often do, with overlapping circular scales in red-endored pastry to look like dragon’s skin. Made up in casserole dishes with pastry only on top. Very good effect.

Golden apples – pork meatballs shaped as apples, endored gold (egg yolk and tumeric), with a sprig of mint as the leaves.

Red eggs – pickled eggs as you would normally make them, but we put a can of beetroot in the pickling solution, and got a mottled pink effect on the eggs. Didn’t work as well as we hoped, but not a fail.

SECOND COURSE

Roast snakes – essentially an equal mince of regular and sausage mince, highly spiced and shaped into snakes, endored with colours, served cold as they take too much oven space to do on the night.

Cockatrice – one chicken and a rabbit joined together and roasted, with a fancy bread head and wings. I was a bit disappointed with the result — did it better at the first Lochac Viceregal Feast in 1986.

Haslets – mixed fruit fritters meant to look like deer entrails.

Snow in summer – eggwhites whipped to a froth, with sugar. Served on rosemary sprigs.