A spoon-full of sugar (or chocolate in this case) helps the medicine go down.

It all started out with the simple idea of making a simple refreshing fruit cocktail and serving it in a sphere to capture the explosion waiting to happen when it bursts in your mouth.
I decided on the cocktail 'strawberry kiss', four simple ingredients - strawberries, cream, amaretto and rum.
Sounds refreshing, appetizing and to me like something everyone would like.
I went about mixing it up, reverse spherification style, garnishing with a  few chopped strawberries, white chocolate powder and a single leaf of micro basil.

Everything ended up how i imagine, nice burst of flavour, followed a fresh hit of basil and fresh strawberries.

I set up the tasting spoons for the canape party and left for the day......

The next day,
Half of them are still in the fridge???  didn't make sense. Turns out after speaking with the waiting staff the guests were scared of them. Ok maybe they were a bit older and not yet made it into the 21st century.....

but annoyingly it happened again, twice. hmmm. No one wants to put balls in there mouth it seems.
Not wanting to give up on this cos I was happy with them, I decided to be a little devious and camouflage them....

Next time I gave the sphere's an extra minute in the aglin bath to give them a little bit more strength, for all the extra handling they were about to get.
Once 'cooked', I drained them, dried them carefully and when rolled them in a mixture of finely grated dark chocolate and cocoa, then carefully picked them up again and dusted off the excess and then lastly into the tasting spoons ready to go.
 Rather delicate work, It was a good thing a had quite a few spares.



Well, the camouflage worked and the guests licked the spoons clean. Finally.


Not one to make my life easier, I'm gonna stick to the triple handling chocolate rolling method. It gives the canape another dimension, texture and in the end and more importantly... happy customers.


This week I've got a chefs choice canape party where I'm going to do a liquid chocolate bon bon,  I'm just changing the center to a dark and milk chocolate liquor and rolling in the chocolate powder mix. In all 4 different types of chocolate.

Just wondering where I can take this to next......

National chef of the year 2010

Have given this a go a few times now, but never with any true confidence in the dishes I have put forward

organised by The craft guild of chefs this competition is one of the largest in a chefs calendar.

Every time there is a brief which has not suited my frame of mind, my mojo as it were, was missing.

This year though, although the competition is divided into geographical categories (not sure how a french dish can be weighed up against a noodle dish from Asia, but time will tell), I had the mojo, the confidence and also importantly the dishes to put forward.

These categories are:

Modern British/Irish

Asian/Oriental

European (Continental, Central and Eastern, Scandinavian and Mediterranean)

◦Africa, The Americas and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand)

After some deliberation (basically cos my main was British and my dessert a bit French), I have chosen the modern British category

The brief for this years menu is

Canapés – 3 varieties of canapé - 4 pieces of each, 2 hot and 1 cold

Main Course – a chicken dish with appropriate starch and vegetable accompaniments

Dessert – a dessert using fresh lemons, served hot or cold

 

so for canapes my cold is based around what is accepted nowadays as a traditional ploughman's

The base being the celery, a cheddar mousse, pickled vegetables and onion and bread crust

My two hot canapes are 1:

Kedgeree, classical curried smoked haddock, egg yolk and white, sauteed mushrooms with fresh parsley and curried rice, this I have puffed for texture and for ease of release from the shell which it is served in.

And 2:

And an old childhood fave of mine, York ham, new potatoes and parsley sauce

For the main, I reverted back to an earlier post HERE and tweaked the dish to use the whole bird in one shape or form

Here we have, poached chicken breast, crisped skin sitting on hasty pudding, and to the side, carrot puree and a 'cottage pie' of the chicken leg, finished with a Madeira jus

Lastly the 'Frenchish' dessert

 

A lemon Cambridge burnt cream (English name for brulee) with blackberries (gel, puree and fresh macerated), mint pesto and lemon sorbet

I have everything crossed, judging begins this week and we will find out end of this, or beginning of next week, so here's hoping!

New menu(s) a couple of bits

Not much writing today, busy service awaits so will leave you with a couple of snaps

Duck and cherries, chicory and fennel

Eton 'Tidy'

And one from our new canape menus

Foie Gras doughnut

No more time, will be posting my Chef of the Year entry menu soon, so until then

Later

And now the real McCoy, Salmon and Lamb

Tricky week, 1 chef on holiday and business has doubled, fun fun fun

So this week I had to actually work, hmm no sympathy? Ok fair enough

The doodles did make it into dishes, happy enough with both of them, well received by my guests which is the most important aspect, however i feel they are missing a little je ne ce quas. So a little more playing required

Anyway the Salmon, as I said in the previous post would explain why the loin and belly, I hadn't really given it any thought before until I read This. As to why do we not consider a side of fish for different cuts, after all we would never quick roast a side of lamb and expect it to tick all the boxes, there is a huge variety in texture and tastes from each region of the animal, but whilst this does not ring true in fish, there are certain qualities we should perhaps not ignore when planning our menus

I took the side and separated the loin from the belly, and whilst I didn't give it the activa treatment they did, I did trim the shape and roll the belly tight to get a somewhat cylindrical shape. This I then cooked sous-vide at 48C for 8 minutes, and chilled down ready for service.

Whilst the loin piece is roasting, I just simply drop a piece into some seaoned lobster butter which sits on the passe at 50C for about 5 minutes.

The rest of the dish consists of some braised fennel, wilted spinach, confit fingerling carrots and an orange & fennel fluid gel, it ticks all the right boxes as far as a 'dish' goes, but as I said.... Missing a little I don't know what!!

Then the Lamb, not quite the visual food porn I was hoping for, but to eat takes comforting food to a new level, would love to be able to do this dish with lamb loin for the menu, but then I would sell none due to the supplement I would have to charge

'Tis a very simple affair, the lamb leg is Denham Castle lamb, with production like this I do not need to mess around with anything, the rearing has given all the flavour I need, to cook it all I did was to double bag each leg, with a few sprigs of thyme, rosemary and a little olive oil, this was then cooked for 24 hours at 55C, this produces a perfect medium rare throughout, I chilled the legs briefly and scorched the outer fat with a blowtorch which gives a wonderful roasted not to the flavour without over-cooking any of the meat.

The mash is scented with the smoked garlic I made a couple of weeks ago, which we pureed and stored under vacuum, grilled aubergine, and a fine ratatouille.

Will have a couple of desserts next week, but the pictures are over exposed (still trying to get the hang of my camera)

Time to start thinking towards the new menu, where did I leave that mojo?????

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Salmon and lamb, this weeks doodles

Hee hee, this is fun

glad I never discoved this as a kid, my mum would have done her nut, drawing on plates, really brings the kid out in me, and the look of shock from my daughter and wife yesterday as I grabbed a plate from my kitchen and a pile of marker pens and doodled away.

They didn't think they were dry wipe and I forgot (kind of) to tell 'em

ah well the look on their faces was priceless, but anyway enough of my childish amusement, just thought I would share a couple of doodles with you ahead of my menu change tomorrow.

first: Salmon

Currently going to be roasted loin, confit belly (will explain more when the dish is finished), confit carrots, roast fennel, orange fluid gel, and a couple of other bits not worked out yet

next: Lamb

Slow roast Denham castle lamb leg, sous vide at 55C for 24 hours, smoked garlic mash, baked aubergine, fine ratatouille, the purple thing should be the sauce but not sure yet, the designs are bound to change before they get served.

best get cracking with the prep, later

Everything but the squeak, a tribute to Denham pork

From doodle to degustation

Earlier in the week you saw the scribble as we planned a dish I have had in mind for some time.

Even then it rarely makes it to the plate quite like that

Any way with porky bits cooked and raring for action, off we went

From front to back

pork loin studded with truffle

slow braised pork belly (60 hours sous vide)

black pudding

pigs head terrine, crumbed with crude pork crust

pork tenderloin roasted

pigs ear again pork crust coated

To this we added a small amount of pea puree, feves, split beans and peas

a slim Anna potato, some pea shoots a drizzle of pork jus and we are ready to serve

almost as sketched, beautiful plate of textures and tastes, a real celebration of one of the best farms in England Denham Estates

Also this week a coupl of dishes we have running are a simple chicken and peach salad with almonds, a small toast to benzaldehyde

And simple plaice and asparagus, which a few fillets are 'glued' together with Activa, then simply breaded and fried, with asparagus, remoulade and a parsley beurre noisette the reason for glueing is to give the piece of fish more substance and to retain more moisture to improve the eating quality

Also thought I would pop in this week's best seller though, being a club a lot of our membership are traditionalists and love the following dish, I don't believe I will ever be able to remove from the menu, and why not everyone loves a good calves liver and bacon, we serve ours simply on a bed of sage crushed potato and a little onion gravy.

Menu changes again on the 28th (or there abouts), should have more menu gems for you then, next I am hoping to show off a few little gems in my garden, providing the kids haven't been foraging too much.

Time for lunch methinks with Chef1 from The Staff Canteen

a wee taster

I know usually my 'short' posts are far from that

this time though

a quick show of a plate design of a dish on the current menu

dish is called

"Everything but the squeak"

a celebration of pork

the last step as each element is cooking

Ridiculously expensive, considering what it is

Very quick drop in today, just finalizing the new menu post for this week just thought I would run this by you as it startled me last Friday

I recently re-vamped my banquet menus, lighter and fresher for the summer months, I usually try to work with the seasons but, and I will probably get hung for this, I am not blinkered by them, weather is different all year round, seasons vary in different countries, there are economies that rely on our occasional ignorance of seasons, just think about that next time you see french beans on a menu and you can be happy that a hard working Kenyan farmer is able to feed his family a little longer. Also in the past seasonability was sensibility as the price of a perfect local product was so low you would have to be stupid to ignore it, nowadays as the bandwagon is very full with conciencious chefs screaming pure seasonality, that the price in season is often similar or even higher than out of season.

Anyway, as usual I am digressing, the dish in question is one of my vegetarian offerings, not my strongest suit I admit, I am still perfecting the 'anything' fondant which will expand the vegetarian offering hugely, but until then I have a small repetiore of tried and tested dishes, one of these which appears regularly is a paella of garden vegetables which is chosen from the veg growing in my own garden at the time of cooking, I dont pick from my own garden, but I keep an eye on my garden and order accordingly, this year I chose to pair this with a rocket pesto and a saffron tuille, this brings me finally to the point of this post.

I like food to smack of the flavour that is mentioned, you should be left in no doubt that is what you ordered!

maybe for once i went too far

the recipe was, 1gm saffron threads, 500ml mix of veg stock, simple syrup, noilly prat. then rduce with strands in. once a teaspoon is reached I mix in a little malt extract, maltodextrin, flour. when I reached this point my concern began. there really didn't seem to be very much in the bowl.

so I got my silpat, scraped my usual shape and 3 tuilles later i was out of mix!!

not worrying about cost (a failing of mine), I cooked them thinking, wow these will be great, dramatic size tuille and intense colour and flavour.

a few fennel seeds, a little fleur de sel

let the cool, break a little off and taste

OH MY GOD, beautiful rich saffron taste, excellent crisp, lightly puffed texture

one small issue was I got all that impact from a piece about as bit as your small fingernail, here I have a tuille 10cm X 4 cm, so a change was required, 3 small bits dotted in the rice, lost it's impact but am happy with the flavour

the point of the post, food cost for the paella, vegetables, pesto and everything required to make the rice dish. £1.75., cost of the tuille if i kept to the large size £1.45

Oops!!!!!

Smoked Garlic - lovely but a bit of a space filler

Very slack, thats what we have been, the ideas are there just not the time to execute any of them

Sorry!

Thought I would plonk an image or 2 your way, to keep you going till the next post (soon I promise)

today found 2 strings of garlic in the fridge, me and my sous chef having the same thought on 2 different mobiles, so rather than watch it while away for a couple of weeks wondered how home smoking it would turn out.

This is something we usually buy in, as it is a cold smoked product, with deep smoky tones and a prefect raw garlic inside, I do not have the facility here to cold smoke and if I did, not really enough room to do it well, so I thought about trying it hot smoked

so I lined a gastro tray with foil (to help the KP), then chucked on a load of my smoke mix, which is raw rice, sugar and a great Green tea from Damman which has some dried fruit and petals in.

place on the solid top until wisps of smoke begin to appear, and move to the very side of the stove on just enough heat to keep the smoke going.

checked after 1/2 hour

nearly there

another 1/2 hour later

and...

the cloves are still quite firm, the smokyness is fantastic, now just need a dish for them, off I go

thanks for your patience, we are working on a few things at the moment so should return to lively service very shortly

Hasty Pudding - a bit of food history bandwagon

It must be that chef's have had enough with innovation, the buzzword over the last couple of years has to be:

'my dish is older than your dish'

'but my dish is even older'

'mine was cooked by cavemen'

'but mine was cooked by dinosaurs'

'but mine.................' and so it goes on.

We are obviously struggling to come up with new ideas and concepts, and wrapping it up in buzz-word terms such as keeping history alive, and that they really had to know their flavours back then.

By now you must think I am slapping and slating this trend as a cop-out in culinary terms, this could not be further from the truth, I think it is completely fantastic that records of these foods exist and that with modern day technologly and know how allow us to expand on what was once was and were fantastic recipes and dishes.

So what is Hasty Pudding? in a nutshell it is a savoury porridge, a recipe for which I use has onions and leek in it, doesn't exactly sound appetizing does it? Sure Heston at the fat duck has been making snail porridge for years to much acclaim, however I wish to stand up and make the bold claim "this one's yummier", probably get shot for that. Not that I think the snail porridge is not a lovely dish having been fortunate to try it on a number of occasions both as a guest and working in the kitchen, just that this combination is soooo moreish. don't beleive me? well I was surprised too.

enhancing the original recipe, I simply make a leek puree to cook my oats in and get a great colour, add some shredded leek and soften with a little goat's milk, the chicken is pot roasted, a few baby leeks, some madeira jus and finished with a little goats milk tapioca and a shallot crisp. I love it when a plan comes together.

more information on this dish and other great dishes from the annuls of time here