Mary’s food theme this week is Dinner Parties and the first lady of baking has come up with a wonderful recipe for a guinea fowl to impress at ant dinner party.

Mary says about her guinea fowl with porcini and lardons dish: “This is a really smart main course, which is actually very simple to prepare in advance and reheat on the day. Guinea fowl are full of flavour, but not as big as chicken and the drumsticks are quite small, so use two birds to serve six.”

The ingridents Mary used for the sauce are: 10g dried porcini mushrooms, 2 tbsp olive oil, 200g smoked bacon lardons, 4 banana shallots, 4 sprigs thyme, 300ml/½ pint pale dry amontillado sherry or dry white wine , 50g butter, 50g plain flour, 200g small chestnut mushrooms, 2-3 tbsp full-fat crème fraîche, small bunch fresh parsley, chopped.