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