Anatomy of a dish, whist G is on honeymoon

G is sunning it up in the Dominican republic on a well deserved break and his honeymoon no less.

Breathtaking views, stunning beaches and of course chocolate, he is my Pastry chef, and his now wife is a chocolatier so the destination really was a no-brainer for them, although he puthimself through the wringer to decide and book the thing, but hey all's well that ends well and hope that the big day itself last Sunday went superbly.

anyway with him gone, his trusy junior is left to pick up the pieces, and many there are! I try and muddle my way through a little to help but more often than not am a hindrance more than a help, but I just wanted to share the build up of one of the dishes shown on our first post, panacotta with raspberries, enjoy and I hope I pop the pictures in the correct order.

biscuit crumb and tonka bean caramel on first

(please bear with me, this was done whilst plating a function so they are the same

dessert but not always the same plate

then pop on a few raspberries

add a frozen raspberry sheet, and wait.......wait......wait

kitchen is too cold, a little blowtorch assistance to get things going

then on goes the panacotta, vanilla with a raspberry sauce inside

then a few micro basil leaves....jelly still not wanting to melt#

finally the sorbet, and it has to go

and here is one we prepared earlier on a warmer day and taken with a better camera.

simple and effective, thanks to the Alinea cookbook for the gel recipe to help us with our thoughts.

heres to the next 2 week for G and to us for having to do some extra running around.

Scones, never made this many before

A short while ago my wife talked to me about a quandry she faces for a local PTA event fundraiser for our childrens school, she had agreed to produce one thing for this event, my reply was " you only agreed to do ONE thing, wow you held yourself back this time why only one?"

"err because it is 500 scones!"

"how many?"

and so it goes on, anyway there is no way we could possibly conceive preparing and cooking 500 scones in our small home kitchen so the only solution was for me to do them at work. so with the fun day this Sunday, I thought I would get cracking on the mix first, lets get the ingredients together.

18 kg flour

2.4kg sugar

600gm baking powder

120 (1.5kg) eggs

2.5 kg sultanas (only used in half the batch)

4.8kg butter

80g salt

2.2 litres of milk

split into 4 batches

which gives you.......

note the phone in the foreground to give an idea of scale

after a little resting (me and the dough)

roll, cut, brush with egg wash, allow to dry and brush again, its amazing I noted when re-rolling after first cut, exactly how aggressive the gluten develops on every successive roll after the first, anyway digressing from the point

then cook like so......

with so many in the oven the reciped time of 15 mins at 170C is thrown out of the window, they took between 21 and 28 minutes due to the air struggling to circulate around the oven.

once done.....

in total 2 oven loads were required to achive the number my wife needed, and after cooling I was left with 554 scones, there was a noticable difference between 1st roll and the subsequent rolls to use up all the mix, if you can afford to when making the mix then only use the first roll, and use the remaining dough on fruit cobblers and the like.

anyway, back to work got a wedding to prepare now.

PEAS one of my favourite foods

I quite simply love peas

versatiliy in a small green skin, I can,'t think of a food that will not accept the humble pea as a garnish in one of it's numerous guises. Mushy peas with fish, smooth puree with steaks, plain and simple with butter and mint for lamb, not forgetting soups and sauces, I cannot think of any vegetable that is quite so capable.

here is one of the dishes we did recently

scallop, peas, bacon and whisky sour

The dish concept is as old as the hills but the ways in which we are able to revisit and re-invent it each and every time is usually down to the manipulation of this fantastic bastion of spherical clorophyl.

same dish not so arty

talking of classic combinations, reminds me of something a few weeks ago, hmmm onto the next post. until then a quick recipe for the pea gel sheets

to make 20 sheets

1. 
   
   500gm frozen peas
   
   
   
2. 
   
   300gm  cold water (plus water to boil the peas)
   
   
   
3. 
   
   25gm vegetable gel (sosa brand)
   
   
   
4. 
   
   salt
   
   
   

bring the water to the boil, add the peas and cook at a rapid boil for 5-6 minutes, strain the peas and refresh in iced water. blitz in a blender until smooth with the cold water, and pass through a fine sieve, the season to taste with salt only.

using an immersion blender, blend the gel into the cold liquid and then transfer to a pan and bring to the boil as quickly as possible. At 90 degrees C the gel hydrates and is ready to use, pour quickly onto a gastronorm tray and very quickly pour any residual pea liquor off into the pan, you only have seconds to do this as the gel sets almost immediately and can take a little practice.

once the gel has cooled it can be cut to your required size and stored in the fridge, separated by silicone sheets, for up to 3 days. place on plate as required and warm with a blowtorch or salamander as your recipe requires, it is heat resistant up to 82C

cutting the sheet

getting ready to store