For patriotic occasions only the most British of dishes will do. In whatever way you are celebrating the Royal Wedding - be it organising or attending a street party, hosting friends and family or taking a dish to someone else's house - it will involve food. The competition of the month in our February E-newsletter was to suggest a seasonal dish which with to celebrate Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding. Beef Wellington has been a huge favourite. Made with fillet of beef, pâté and short crust pastry it is a true indulgence. It may not be a cost effective dish for feeding fifty but for a small lunch party nothing could be more delicious or British. Locally-sourced asparagus was another popular choice. So simple to cook, it can be barbecued, grilled or steamed. Broccoli and Stilton tart was a mouth-watering vegetarian suggestion and a great example of a dish that is easily transportable and one that can be made in advance.

The winner sent in a fabulous array of dishes for each course. To start she suggested hand-made nettle pasta ribbons with a confit tomato and cockle vinaigrette or warm salad of wood pigeon, water cress, smoked bacon with a walnut oil dressing or potted brown crab with crispy jersey royal potato salad, baby radish and watercress mayonnaise. For the main course she proposed roasted wood pigeon breast with pickled morel mushrooms, watercress emulsion and Cheltenham beets or lamb saddle Wellington - wrapped in blanched nettles and filo pastry with spelt salad spring greens and roasted wild garlic puree or spinach stuffed lamb, beetroot fondant, baby roast turnips - wilted spring onions and purple sprouting broccoli. Finally her pudding entry was rhubarb and ginger steamed puddings with English custard ice cream or Earl Grey and lemon tarts with candied rhubarb or a trio of puddings - Queen of puddings, Eton mess and rhubarb posset with honey shortbreads. Inspiring stuff, especially if you are catering for a sit-down lunch for a special group of friends after a morning of television-watching.

If you are looking to provide buffet-style sustenance, you could turn to a previous Royal wedding for ideas. However, do not be fooled into looking at Charles and Diana's wedding, which was in the month of July, as a source of culinary inspiration. Instead, focus on the nuptials of Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (the Queen Mother) and the future King George VI, who are the only other recent British Royalty to have had an April wedding. Their wedding breakfast menu, written in the customary French, consisted of: Consommé à la Windsor, Suprèmes de Saumon Reine Mary, Côtelettes d'Agneau Prince Albert, and Fraises Duchesse Elizabeth. From this, one could take lamb and strawberries as key ingredients. Lamb - d'Agneau Carole, perhaps - is the perfect seasonal British meat to be served. If the weather is good, butterflied lamb on the barbecue is delicious. If it is a cold day, you could serve roast shoulder or leg of lamb. If you are catering en masse consider cooking lamb sausages from your famers' market or local butcher.

By the second week of April, glasshouse-grown British strawberries are in season and can start to be picked. Create a Union Pudding, named after our national flag and the bringing together of two people in Holy matrimony. Using a pavlova recipe, bake a large rectangular meringue with British free-range eggs. Once cooled, cover it with locally-sourced, whipped double cream and British strawberries and blueberries to create the image of the Union Jack. Ah ha! I hear you cry, blueberries are not in season. This is true, but frozen British blueberries from last year's crop are actually very easy to track down. Grange Hall Farms, The Dorset Blueberry Company and Waitrose are just some of the stockists of frozen British blueberries. The British cheeseboard equivalent of the Union Pud could be Dorset Blue Vinney alongside Ashley Chase Goats Cheddar with Cranberries and a Somerset Brie.

Classic Royalty-inspired staples include; Coronation chicken - invented by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume for Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation - and fruitcake - the wedding cake of choice for the Royal family for the past few centuries.  Other ideas for a British buffet table are steak and kidney pie, Hot Cross buns, a bowl of Jersey Royal new potatoes and a rocket and watercress salad.  The Royal wedding is also a wonderful opportunity to cook something regional, particularly if you are celebrating as a community.  Here are a few ideas...
South West: Gloucester sausages served with Tewkesbury mustard, Cornish lamb pasties, Bath buns, Bath Oliver biscuits, Colston buns, Cornish saffron cake with clotted cream, Easter biscuits and local cider
South:  watercress from Hampshire, a Bedfordshire clanger, cottage loaves, cider cake, Isle Of Wight crab pasties, barley wine
South East: oysters, jellied eels, lamb from Romney sheep or Southdown sheep, Coronation Chicken using Sussex chickens, Chelsea buns, Maids of Honour - round open tarts that resemble simple cheesecakes, Bitter beer from Kent
East Anglia: Cromer crabs, potted crab, Suffolk ham, Newmarket sausages, custard tart, Norfolk knob, Colman's mustard and cider.
East Midlands: Stilton cheese, Lincolnshire sausages, Melton Mowbray Pork Pie, Ashbourne gingerbread, Bakewell pudding, Melton Hunt cake
West Midlands: Evesham asparagus, Fidget pie - a cooked pork, ham or bacon, vegetable and apple raised pie, Pikelet bread, Banbury cake, Shrewsbury cake, Staffordshire oatcake, Bitter beer, Worcestershire sauce
Wales: Glamorgan sausage, Caerphilly cheese, Welsh cakes
Isle of Man: scallops
North West England:  Cheshire cheese, potted shrimps, Herdwick lamb, Cumberland sausage, Borrowdale tea bread, Eccles cake, Grasmere gingerbread
North England: rhubarb, Wensleydale cheese, muffins, Yorkshire curd tarts, Yorkshire parkin, Pontefract cakes, Black beer
North East: England brown ale, Mead
South Scotland: Lanark blue cheese, Dundee cake, Border tart, Cumnock tart, Parkin biscuit

The Love British Food website is an invaluable resource in planning your Royal wedding feast, from finding a local farm shop to choosing a recipe.  Ultimately, you might decide to go out to a pub or restaurant for lunch, in which case, the website can still provide suggestions for where to go to eat British. Why not have some culinary fun on this bonus Bank Holiday and enjoy your own British banquet.

This month The Sauce tries the winning starter recipe - hand-made nettle pasta ribbons with a confit tomato and cockle vinaigrette…

The Sauce

Hand-made Nettle Pasta Ribbons with a Confit Tomato and Cockle Vinaigrette

• What ingredients did you use and how readily available were they?
  To begin with I didn't have a recipe, just the title of the dish.  I borrowed a pasta machine from a friend, because I don't possess one.  The machine came with a pasta recipe.  Armed with rubber gloves, I harvested some stinging nettles, which I washed and then boiled.  I then drained the nettles before blitzing them with a hand-blender. An armful of nettles did not produce much, but three batches produced 1/2 cup of puree, which I mixed with two free range eggs from the farmers' market and 1 1/2 cups of flour.  Once I had made a dough, I wrapped it in cling film and left it in the fridge for 30 minutes, before running it through the machine.
  
  I made the confit tomato and vinaigrette separately.  I don't know if this is what was intended.  I found the recipe for the confit online [click here]. I already had the herbs and oil and I bought the plum tomatoes from my local farmers' market.
  
  For the vinaigrette, I went to the local fishmonger to purchase 300g of cockles, which cost £5.00.  I found a recipe for cockle vinaigrette online [click here].  The other ingredients were white wine, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil - which I already had.  I grow chervil in my herb box.  I bought the shallots from my local supermarket.


• What was the sum total cost of this meal
  £9.75.


• How many people did it actually feed?
  4


• How long did it take and how easy was it?
  With practice, I am sure that this meal would not take a long time but for this initial attempt, it took me about an hour.  The pasta was much easier to make than I had anticipated. I have never made fresh pasta before and it is surprisingly simple and therapeutic to create.  I learned quickly that you need to dust the newly made pasta with flour, otherwise it sticks together.  The cockles were a little more frustrating but that is because I was impatient and should have left them to simmer longer.  The meat is easy to remove from the shells, providing they have opened fully.


• What did you do with the leftovers?
  There were none.


• What did you and your guests think of the meal?
  It was one of the freshest meals I have had in ages. We all thought it utterly delicious. Flavoursome yet light and so succulent.


• Would you cook it again?
  Yes I would.  It looks and sounds very impressive. It is cheap to make and tastes delicious.

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