The cook-on-demand birthday brings experimentation and very fine wine home

Back in my agency days, when I had a small team who all worked in the same place, I instituted a bake-on-demand policy for birthdays. You give me any cake recipe or flavour combo you want, I'll produce it for lunchtime celebrations. It was great for team morale, and it gave me the excuse to try interesting recipes.

My days of baking as management strategy have long gone, but I adapted the concept yesterday for my fiance's birthday. One of his presents: Hand me your dream menu and I'll produce it.

This ran the risk of my being hoisted on my own culinary petard, as the boy loves French cuisine, I rarely cook it and a multiple-course extravaganza could have featured items that kept me in the kitchen for days. Fortunately, he opted for simpler fare, combining both Danish and English classics. As with the cakes, the process gave me a chance to experiment and, in this case, to firm up some options for our regular dinner party rotation.

We started with two types of canapes: potato pancakes and crawfish tails. The first is a recipe from Trina Hahnemann's Nordic cookbook, my tutorial for delivering the flavours of my partner's youth. I think I have this dish almost perfected now: Neat circles of shredded potato mixed with onion, nutmeg, egg and oatmeal, topped with roasted beetroot salad, creme fraiche with chives and a generous dollop of lumpfish caviar. My only criticism is portion control. Even when attempting to work small, these ended up starter- rather than canape-sized, opening a meal where I cooked ... and we ate ... far too much. Guess I was taking an Italian approach to a Northern European menu. Beside the pancakes were little spoons of crawfish tails in a bisque made by boiling down the discarded shells and bodies in beer, then adding butter and cream. I had only intended the bisque as a sauce so made just a tiny bit of it, but think it probably deserves to be a soup on its own, with the tails used as garnish.

From one set of circles to the next. His first course request was scallops with black pudding, probably one of the most common early round Masterchef dishes but one neither of us had ever tried. I was happy with the ease, look and taste of the recipe. Rings of granny smith apples cooked in butter and a bit of sugar until they start to soften on the bottom, then disks of black pudding quickly fried in the sweet apple juices, then the scallops fried in the thickening glaze in the pan. I didn't get the proportions right here, either, and went overboard on the black pudding, which should have been about a quarter rather than half an inch thick. I'd also have to work on the presentation before it gets on the dinner party rota. But onto that list it will go, if only because you can't buy just two inches of black pudding. I am left with a whole coil of the stuff; a magnificently rich and flavourful version from the queen's farm shop at Windsor, but a weight watching sin of enormous proportions. I wonder, does anyone know if it freezes well?

After two terribly elegant introductory courses, the man went for upscale comfort food: salmon burgers. Not complete child's play, as they rested upon home-made rye focaccia, but not particularly complicated either. Mince up salmon, add chopped spring onions and capers, bread crumbs, lemon juice, egg and some herbs. Shape into burgers. I elaborated on the recipe here (another from Hahnemann) by pressing the burgers in clingfilm, wrapping them tightly and putting them in the fridge for an hour, which I think helped keep the fairly delicate patties together. Those get fried for four minutes on each side, then placed on that rye base with a generous spread of dressing made from creme fraiche, mayo, lemon juice and chives, a pile of salad leaves and a tomatoes. (The last ingredient not for the birthday boy, of course, who's allergic to them.)

On the side I did what's evidently a classic Scandinavian slaw: thin strips of pointed cabbage, freshly-shelled peas and lots of dill, all raw, tossed with a honey lemon dressing. I've never cooked much with dill and am not a particular fan of the flavour, but it's a Danish staple and one of Piers' favourites, so I'm experimenting. This salad, I must concede, is a winner. I'm a firm believer that all burgers need chips (fries), however, so I left Trina's cookbook for an Epicurious take on an oven-baked sweet potato version. These need refinement. I overdid it on the herbs (you shake the potatoes in oil and herbs before dumping them into a roasting pan) and left them in the oven a bit too long, but they were tasty all the same.

We returned to England for his requested dessert: Summer pudding. Although a classic, and very easy, I'd never actually made it. I opted for Epicurious again ... probably my most-used recipe web site, archiving years of recipes from Gourmet and Bon Apetit ... and a raspberry and blueberry version of the dish. The bread shell didn't get quite as gooey and juice-soaked as I wanted, which taught me a lesson about putting some of the liquid in before the fruit filling, but I had reserved a jug of the juices and could amend this with an additional bath once I'd unmoulded the pudding.

On the wine front, we started with a bargain. Jean de Praisac's brut champagne is produced by industry giant Heidsieck for the Thresher chain. It usually retails for just under £15 but has the biscuity, round flavours of something far more expensive. In fact, having dug it out of the champagne rack without any memory of where it came from, we thought we'd popped something pricey; it was only my post-meal web search that revealed the bargain. The real expenditure came with the wine for the rest of the meal, though this, too, could be put in the bargain category.

One of the benefits of doing really fine meals at home is that you can splash out for wines you could never afford in a restaurant. By conservative estimate, last night's Meursault ... Patrick Javillier's "Les Tillets" 2008 ... would be about £100 on any London wine list. We picked it up in Berry's summer sale, at 25% off its regular retail price. Yes, still £29 a bottle, so not something you want to glug down without thinking. Nor is it something I can imagine paying £20 a glass for when dining out. But here, it was both an appropriate and magnificent splash. Robert Parker gives it a lofty 92 on his scale and says "the wine’s lush texture together with ample juicy freshness and intriguing finishing mineral nuances makes for immediate delight." I can tell you that it also makes for a wine with the lightness to complement fish, but the body to stand up against the strong secondary flavours of the black pudding and the sweet potato fries.

I am seriously contemplating heading up to the Berry's outlet at lunch to buy a case while it's still on sale to put back for special occasions. Although I am hoping that the next big celebration is not on a Sunday. With that much food and wine on a school night, this Monday morning I am not as bright as I might be. Bring on more coffee, please.