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

30-Second Yoghurt Cake, 168 hours in the making.

 A while back I had a bit of success with a Chocolate and Beetroot Microwave 'coral' cake which was a combination of a two recipes and quite a few ingredients. It worked well on the first test only needing minor tweaking for version 2. I was happy with it, well for now anyway. I had plans for the torn pieces to go with a Beetroot Parfait I was testing from Johnny Iuzzini's Dessert four play book ( recipe was about 10 miles off from being ok...but I did rip off his presentation, well expanded on it and had some fun with it ), the parfaits another story..... had to run off to Sainbury's to get more beetroot half through so you could taste something other than pink creaminess. Anyway least after all the adjusting and tinkering I got a working recipe out of that experience.

After the reasonable ease of the Chocolate and Beetroot Microwave cake and the recipe from the incredible Natura book by Albert Adria, I was off to try out the Yoghurt cake recipe for my plan to put together a canapé with Aloe Vera Gel and the Yoghurt cake for the new canapé menu. I had always wanted to put the two flavours together after
 travelling through Japan a few years ago when I came across Yoghurt with chunks of Aloe Vera. It became a daily staple for me, absolutely loved it.

Straight from the book the recipe works ok but felt it was a bit too strong on the egg whites. I didn't have the Texturas Yopol Yoghurt powder but I was using a Sosa version. Maybe that was the problem? Quick phone call to my wife to ask for a favour to have a look on the internet while I was working away, she came across Michael Laiskonis's version from Le Bernardin and it's currently on their dessert menu. Test - No, way too soft and wet. Hmmm....
I brought in some Yoghurt from home the next day and adjusted the recipe to accommodate the extra liquid content in the recipe. The flavour was a bit deeper, softer crumb but still the texture just wasn't right. Next day I ordered some Yoghurt from our supplier, low fat natural Yoghurt come in. Whizzed up another version, flavour was still there but the texture had changed for the worse. Thinking it was the fat content and only having the low fat Yoghurt .1% fat. I tried adding a drop of oil to get back the texture and softness back. Nope, worst of them all.
I was almost ready to scrape the idea. Going over my notes of the various tests seeing which ones come out the best and what characteristics they possessed. So far it was the original, lacking flavour and ok structure and the one with Yoghurt from home better flavour but not as much volume. I compiled a recipe of the two, an average to say. No more Yoghurt meant it was time to go home and wait for more to come in the morning.

Over my morning Porridge, I checked out the fat content of the Yoghurt I had at home, 4.7%. Now that would explain the softer mouth feel I had back in test #2.
I boxed some up and jumped on my bike to work. Put the Yoghurt into my 'average' recipe.
At last I could feel I was getting close. Good texture, great holes and the flavour was almost there. Acceptable but I had one last thing I wanted to try. Greek Yoghurt, 10% fat and that meant waiting another day.
My perseverance paid off, the Greek Yoghurt added an extra depth in flavour and texture.
At last I was happy with my results.

I think the half of the problem was the fact that I've had the pleasure of having an amazing near perfect Yoghurt microwave cake at Arzak late last year. It was probably my second most favourite course from the whole experience. I think I've come close with my version but it's hard to compete with the R&D that goes on at Arzak.....

The original plan for my canapé with the cake and Aloe Vera, well hasn't come to much. Didn't even put it in on the new canapé menu.
That was partly dew to the fact I couldn't track down a good supply of solid Aloe Vera Gel.
There is another source I'm looking into for the Aloe. While I was travelling around Australia I stopped into a random Shop for a cold drink when I was walking around Sydney. I grabbed a bottle of White Grape and Aloe Vera juice with chunks of Aloe Vera in it. Thought it sounded nice at the time, well I can still remember how refreshing and delicious it was. Don't think I'll ever forget that day.
So far I've found just one place that sells it in the UK. Just another hurdle I've got to jump over, starting to get  used to the obstacles. Eventually I get around them.




??? Yoghurt or Yogurt ???

Easter eggs, the long good friday

I have often wanted to make my Mrs. an egg for Easter, but usually opt for a last minute Lindor or Wispa egg on my way home from work on Easter Saturday, as I am now in a job that shuts down for bank holidays and left with a 4 day weekend I had finally run out of excuses to put my money where my mouth is.

One teeny problem, having always been well staffed in the pastry department, I have not had the neccesity to temper my own chocolate i realised for over 15 years, sure I have come up with desserts, but with the constraints of everyday work have often asked of my pastry section to do the nitty gritty of the mis-en-place before I step in at the 11th hour and take the credit for the creation, slightly different here, G is a great teacher and a chef who always pushes himself to the limit regardless of business levels, so I have taken to producing my creations and re-learning the pastry section piece by piece.

So Thursday, I jump on with G to make a god awful mess (I mean make eggs for our members with him), during this time (a whole 3 hours, where G tempered all the chocolate for me, so didn't practise any myself), I picked his brains on tempering, decorating and making the eggs themselves.

Armed with this new(ish) knowledge, and about 3kg of chocolate and some moulds in my bag I set off home with the express mission to make my darling Mrs. an egg within an egg within an egg. oh did I tell you how much experience I had? Not!

Firstly I did not think of one small issue, that would be my one small kitchen, if I thought I had made a mess at work with my ample stainless steel surfacing, my wooden worktops (tiny), and the ins and outs of family life over the Easter holidays certainly didnt mean that I was lessening the mess, quite frankly the opposite, and we will be cleaning that up for some time, a lot of it on the Good Friday hence the title

All that said, quite soon I had all my varying size moulds full of appropriate size chocolate shells, awaiting extraction (the tricky bit), and after trashing the first go of the larger shells had enough chocolate still to keep going.

I am happy not to have had to dash out to a 7-11 at the last minute, and managed to produce exactly what I had aimed for, but I have learned a valuable lesson that my Father always told me, and that was to never ask someone to do a job that I am not capable of doing myself, and from now on I think I will set out to teach myself some of the basics that we chefs can neglect from time to time, especially when we run larger brigades It is fine to utilize someone elses expertize, but not when you have no idea yourself, learn it then delegate, my new kitchen ethos.

note the safety tea-towel holding the egg off its stand at the front, probably the most nerve racking moment was removing this just seconds before presenting the egg

and as you can just see, the middle egg inside. took Mrs. W. 2 days before she would crack this layer