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

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

Classic Fondant well nearly.........

I love it when a thought becomes something lovely at the first attempt

especially when that is so rare

CELERIAC FONDANT

and the proof of the pudding is..........

as Hannibal would say, I love it when a plan comes together. now just the beet jus and the beef elements left to go

Lamb stock - sous vide the real way forward

"why are stocks simmered for so long?"

"WHAT!"

"err, why are stocks made over days constantly topped up with fresh water?"

"Because they work that way, get on with your mis....!!"

sure that all cooks have has sous that had the stock answer (usually shouted) of "because it does", often accompanied by a swift thwack accross the back of the head, perhaps this is why I grew up in kitchens where questions were seldom asked, for myself I was quicker at ducking than most so asked anyway, also if something didn't make sense then I had to get an answer, even if it was dug up myself.

but one question still has not been answered.

so have stuck to these rules for the last 20 years as I have not known better.

recently the trend has led towards pressure cooking stock, this can lead to outstanding flavour, but also to a heavy gelatinous mass and (once pressure is achieved) loses volume anyway, which could lead to 'topping up' the main issue I have in the whole process. why add fresh water when you are trying to impart as much flavour as possible into the liquid.

which led me to this task:

whilst preparing a petit gigot for this weeks menu, I ended up with an inordinate amount of trim due to the nature of the mis en place, so with the idea at hand, it seemed as good a time as any to try out the thought.

so step 1; traditionally roast the bones in the usual way, rendering as much fat as possible for use later.

here is the fat infusing with orange and rosemary, this will later be used to fry the gigot in for service

Step 2: is to fill large Vac-pac bags with, bones, water, red wine, rosemary, thyme, mirepoix, seal at full pressure and double bag

Step 3: set my Rational oven to 66C and put deep waterbaths in the oven, add the bags and cling film the waterbath to minimise evaporation.

Step 4: go home and have a nice weekend with the family, leaving the stock (and some duck legs for good measure) ticking over for the weekend.

Step 5: 60 hours later, remove the baths from the oven, drain the duck, god what a texture, more on this another day. but eagerly drain the stock bag in anticipation of the contents, first thing to note was the meat was squidging off the bones incredibly but the mirepoix was still firm, so my first thought was, 'bugger no veg flavour' thankfully this was a short lived concern, as the flavour was greatly pronounced.

step 6: chill the stock to remove the last of the residual fat, and found the stock beautifully gelled and clear as a bell (this is where impatience got the better of me and should have agar filtered at this point, but one step at a time). the flavour was like none I had tastede in such a simple stock, deep and meaty but with a fresh sweetness of vegetables and herbs and none of the usual stewy notes of the usual over cooked veg in stock.

step 7: reduction, had to fulfill this with respect. most of our jus at this point gets either wine, or port a little fresh veg perhaps but all get as much gas as I can get underneath it, quick reduction and pass and store, next job.

but not this one. kept the temperature between 75 & 80 (mostly) but never boiling and brought down slowly, slowly heightening flavours and not just evaporating water, trying to maintain the balance of flavour I had in the original stock, also to this stock I added nothing, just time. the end flavour was a depth I have not known in a jus of such basic ingredients, no fancy wines or ports, just a basic stock.

step 8: pass, chill, store. Ready to be served with the Gigot which I will post briefly next time.

Smoked salmon, don't mess with tradition

Since starting this blog, I have given much mention to gels, modern technique, protein glueing chemicals and basically heaps of modernism.

This not to say that our style is about to change, I think we are reaching an understanding where we can look at the old surviving classics and reinvent through texture or temperature, it is just that you musn't mess about with the absolutes in cookery, certain combination or techniques that have been with us so long that they deserve to be replicated in their entirety, as they were created back then. After all they still remain with us so many years later so who are we to mess with tradition,

Well all of us really, arent we all guilty of using electricity to cook with, are we not grateful for items taken for granted dare I say cling film (not known before 1953), but many chefs are challenging 'tradition' most have taken a bit of a bash for their original thought, see this from Grant Achatz where at the ICC has to defend the way in which he decides to cook for and serve his guests, the complaints from the Traditionalists come across childish, I respect them enough to happily accept without question that for them 3 traditional courses are enough, but why do some people lack the respect for others when they wish to do things their way.

click here to see which side Foodplayers vote is on. Touche Linda!

Even the new Dan Brown book labours the point that all new major discoveries are nearly always met with staunch opposition.

As for us, trying to define a term of culinary traditional progressive, we try to ensure that we are still cooking classically (I have commis I am responsible for) but we question each basic and explore as many techniques and textures as we can before deciding what incarnation of any given item goes on to each given dish, often you will order a sole dish with a champagne sauce, and you will get a white wine based, acidulated heavy cream sauce, if you're lucky you will have a little butter monted in at the last minute and a little chopped herb, (by the way why do so many soft herbs taste of different levels of anise, seems we only have parsley, chive and (anise in many guises), anyway not digressing, honest. so do we do this.? I say YES, but also lets do a champagne fluid gel, and perhaps finish the plate with a croquant of champagne and lemon, this is not poncing, it is not breaking with tradition, it is taking the same dish on a different journey enhancing the experience all the way.

Now make this dish into a 2 bite affair, As Linda did, and Grant ONLY does, when you are paying £100+ for a meal, you expect to consume a certain number of (fork/spoonfuls) to ensure you do not leave hungry, and you expect to be entertained, so I say lets keep flavour profiles high impact, and increase the number of courses to ensure our guests are entertained and well fed by the time they are presented with the bill and the espresso.

anyway, when I started typing I was trying to think of a way to introduce the next dish, lost it a bit didnt I?

wanted to show you:

smoked salmon, traditional flavours

Salmon, red onion, brown bread, horseradish, caper, black pepper

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.