Sarah Serves!

Same same, but different.

2017-04-17T11:07:00.001+01:00

I'm writing this after a cookery course on a farm in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It's a course I've done already, some years ago, back when I hadn't done my chef course yet, before I had worked in restaurants, before I ran a cafe, before I supported, worked for and left a food charity. It's left me thinking about the journey I've been on since the last course and wondering what that means I call "now" - do I call it After? Different? New?

When I get back to the UK there will be lots of change. There's been a fair bit already - I've got a new kitchen with more space, which necessitated a cupboard clear out to prioritise the kind of food I want to make in it. I've boxed up a hefty weight of cookery books I don't love enough to keep. I'm soon starting a new job in a field I am passionate about, but it's definitely not in the food industry. I don't yet know much about the people I'll be working with but they'd really have to go some to beat the levels of food obsession of the team I have left behind. Frankly, I'm a bit worried about where my passion for cooking will fit in to my life if it isn't part of what my work involves, and therefore a labeller of who I am, and I wonder how I will keep learning about it. The last thing I want is for it to fall back.

Something I have learned recently is how important it is to keep learning from each other. That for me was the best bit about working in hospitality - learning from chefs passionate about their craft, and sharing my knowledge with young people who were timid about cookery and watching them bloom. Recently a colleague challenged himself by exploring how diverse and exciting veganism can be, and this reminded me to break from routine. Dinner at a friend's lead to my buying a slow cooker, which helped see me through the kitchen refurbishment but also reminded me about the beauty of cheap cuts of meat and the gift of time in the evenings. Learning how to work the timer and pre-set options on my new oven did the same. Shopping with a friend in a Lebanese supermarket taught me new ingredients and flavours, which made me get up early on a Sunday to spend time making breakfast. Another friend is going to help me demystify my pressure cooker. There are themes here of sharing the love of food and also of gifting oneself time, to spend exploring new foods and flavours.

There is every chance that not working in, or talking about, food all day every day will mean that I have more space and time to explore it on my own terms and more drive to get creative. I did however think this would be the case when I moved from working in hospitality to working office based for a food charity, and it simply didn't. Basically, you have to make your own opportunities to create wonderful food, around all the other stuff that takes up life space like work, housemin, relationships, family and exercise. The best breadmaker I know is my wonderful friend the academic who can turn her dough in between marking papers at home, which is not a possibility for everyone. For me it feels like there is just so much food I want to learn and make, and so little time, it seems, to make it all! And if I am not making chatter-worthy food regularly, then frankly, who am I?

But maybe this is where I am worrying too much, and being too hard on myself. Last Christmas, at an annual dinner bonanza with friends, where we usually try to outcook each other, we all had circumstances that nearly lead to us cancelling. So I ended up making roast turkey - we'd never actually celebrated this way and it was suitably undemanding of my time the week before. And it was a glorious dish, perfect to remind us that the important thing was coming together as friends to share a meal.

Today's cookery course was much the same in content as it was for me almost five years ago, but this time round it wasn't about frantically making notes about it all. It was about taking it in, enjoying it and noticing its simplicity. Thai cookery isn't actually that complicated - the same combinations of ingredients pop up regularly and there is an economy in things like curry pastes, which are often adapted from each other into totally different things from the same core. I've come away just as excited about recreating it at home, but in a more relaxed way.

So maybe that's the answer. Maybe all I need to remember is what I think food is all about anyway - enjoyment, exploration and sharing, and that this can be found in wonderfully simple foods done really well just as much as in complex techniques and flavours. It's just important that it's bringing a smile. And that doesn't sound nearly as challenging as constantly pushing my food exploration limits.

It might mean I have to find more excuses to cook for people however. But how bad is that?

Location:Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Hangry

2015-11-18T13:55:00.000+00:00

I'm now on day 4 out of my 5 on FoodCycle's #BreadlineChallenge. It's been an interesting journey.
I say interesting, but actually I mean frustrating.

Frustrating because of the constant temptation to break budget - whether this be by being told it would be ok to have a sip of my boyfriend's pint at the pub rather than stick to water, or by the way my stomach rumbles at 3pm when I know that, really, my lunch was sufficient.
Frustrating because I didn't realise how easily I would succumb to the need to maintain my working routine - not to mention my relationship with my colleagues - with tea I don't really need. Or a couple of biscuits from a shared pack.

Frustrating because when Tuesday's apple suffered a dent on the way in to work, I couldn't buy another one. And when my over-enthusiastic fridge froze my celery and carrot solid, my mid-afternoon snacks were no longer something to look forward to but something I had to put up with.
Frustrating because I have had to work my life around my food. This is usually a concept that would fill me with joy, but this week, food has just got in the way. I have forgotten a doctor's appointment because my mind was more concerned with what I was supposed to be cooking when I got home. I have felt like a rubbish hostess in my own home when I don't quite have enough milk to make tea for my parents when they pop over and make my porridge in the morning, so I've had to use water for my porridge instead.
Frustrating because by only doing 5 days of the challenge, I am restricting my budget further. I have enough base ingredients to get me through 7 days, and yet not quite enough money for some greens, or fish, or eggs. Or chocolate. Nutritionally, this week doesn't look great.

I have had a background headache since Sunday evening, which could of course be nothing at all to do with the challenge. But it has made me wonder if I'm a bit dependent on sugar or caffeine, and it's made things that little bit less 'fun'.

But more than anything, this experience is making me frustrated at just how much living on this food budget takes over your life. Everything is having to be made from scratch - and this is time consuming. I know how to make bread because I'm a trained chef, and while a trip to the library to use the internet would show you how, this kind of knowledge isn't something you can then perfect through through trial and error when money for raw ingredients is tight. I'm finding myself irritated at having beige food every day because all I bought in the way of herbs and spices is garam masala. Again, this is a result of my having fairly broad food horizons and being used to colourful plates. I feel cheated when I hear that someone else managed to find tinned tomatoes cheaper. We've all become a bit territorial over our food in the office - haggling with each other for teabags and the like. It's brought up debates like "if this were my usual budget, at what stage would I have decided that a stick blender is a vital part of my life?", "if I had to cook from scratch like this every day, how would it affect my gas and electricity bill?" and "how can I maintain my principles and care about the planet when my money won't allow it?"

It angers me that I have a choice to be on this challenge, and I have a passion for food which is backed up with skills and knowledge to make basic food bearable, whilst there are single parents up and down the country frantically trying to nourish their kids and maintain a stable home life whilst having to hunt down the cheapest food. If £2.86/day for food is a reality of your life, then so is stress over where to find it, how to prepare it and when to find the time.

So, to those of you now halfway through the challenge - keep going. If, like me, you feel a fire in your belly from it (and one that isn't just a result of eating lentils every day), then I hope you are getting angry too. Having to feed yourself on this budget isn't fair. I'm biased and I know that one solution is to volunteer for FoodCycle, so that more people can access a free nutritious meal, giving them a bit of a breather from their budget (and their kitchen) for the week. But there are other solutions out there. Let's get the conversations going.

You can support me, my colleagues and our wonderful volunteers through their #BreadlineChallenge week by donating here.

#BreadlineChallenge - The Shop

2015-11-16T08:00:00.000+00:00

For most people taking part, FoodCycle's #BreadlineChallenge starts today. Up and down the country, volunteers will be living off £2.86 per day to highlight the harsh realities of food poverty and the reasons why organisations such as FoodCycle exist.

I started my challenge yesterday, and did most of my food shopping on Saturday, having started researching prices in the week.

This meant:

5 different shops
2.5 hours traipsing up and down my local high street in the rain
3 additional aborted shop visits as I deliberated over bacon, fish and the reduced section

So, what did I buy with my £14.30?

Ambient
Chopped tomatoes - 4 tins for £1 (Sainsburys)
Basics vegetable stock cubes - 30p (Sainsburys)
Basics pasta - 35p (Sainsburys)
500g brown rice - 90p (Sainsburys)
Tin basics kidney beans - 30p (Sainsburys)
1.5kg Plain flour - 45p (Lidl)
500g porridge oats - 65p (Tesco)
500g red lentils, and 150g Garam masala - on offer together for £1.50 (Tesco)

Fruit and Veg
1 lemon - 35p (Sainsburys)
5 small bananas - 37p (Sainsburys)
2 carrots - 20p (Sainsburys)
Bag of small basics apples (contained 7!) - 80p (Sainsburys)
Small butternut squash - 49p (Lidl)
Celery - 59p (Lidl)
2 parsnips - 65p (Sainsburys)
1 red chilli, 4 onions, 1 red pepper, a small piece of ginger and a bulb of garlic - £1.03 (local greengrocer)
3 avocados - 50p (skilful haggling with the £1-a-bowl man!)

Dairy
500g Basics natural yogurt - 50p (Sainsburys)
Basics mozzarella - 50p
4 pints semi skimmed milk - £1 (Iceland)

Fresh
50g Fresh yeast from the bakery counter - 20p (Sainsburys)

Cheats
I'm being pretty strict about the challenge. I went to pub quiz this evening and took a bottle of water with me. I've given away the food in my fridge that won't make it to the end of the week. I'm even using a counter-top fridge from my uni days as my Breadline supply store so I don't use anything that's not from the budget. But there have been lines I've crossed that others might not cross.
Salt, pepper and sugar - I haven't bought this, as it is freely available in fast food outlets for anyone to help themselves to. I needed 1tbsp salt for the bread and 2tbsp sugar.
Oil - I'm really debating this one. The cheapest option, it seems, is to buy lard, and I'm not quite prepared to do that. The most economical and acceptable option for me personally would be to buy a block of vegetable fat for 79p. But I won't use it after this week, which I feel is wasteful. As things stand I have £1.72 left in my budget, so I can afford this. However, I already know that I will have some food left over from the week, so I reason that if this were true on occasion, I would probably have some cooking oil in my cupboard already. So I'm using what I already have, very sparingly.

Nutrition
My shopping is fairly balanced, but if I had the extra two days of the challenge there are definitely some gaps that need filling.
I will be getting a good hit of protein from the lentils, milk, yoghurt and cheese, which will also provide calcium.
I think I'll be getting about 4 of my 5-a-day of fruit and veg, so that could definitely be better. There's no leafy veg, so my iron intake this week is poor and I will be missing a number of vitamins and minerals.
There's no fish. I'm planning on using some of my remaining budget for either a small piece of coley or on some oily fish such as tinned mackerel for essential fatty acids.

I made white bread, but porridge and brown pasta will provide fibre, and are slow burning carbohydrates.
As I've not bought any, it's definitely going to be a diet low in salt and sugar!

Challenges and Things I'd Change
I feel fairly confident I can make it without tea and coffee, and I'm thinking about cutting up my apple for lunch so I can use the core to flavour my water to liven things up a bit. I'll definitely be using the lemon rind for this. But by the end of day one I have a headache, which I think is due to not drinking enough water, so I need to watch out if water is all that's on offer!

I'm already finding myself thinking about snacks more than I anticipated. I have some celery sticks for tomorrow at work but at this rate my leftover budget might end up on chocolate rather than oily fish... Again, if I had more time and money on the challenge, some sultanas would provide snacks, iron, fibre and make breakfast more fun.

I made bread using plain flour rather than strong flour as it is cheaper and careful foodie forum research told me that this is possible, with extra time for kneading and proving as the flour contains less gluten. It has definitely made an odd few loaves - it looks ok but feels a bit too spongy and tastes a bit trashy. Maybe I actually over proved it. It is definitely better toasted!

I have 500g of flour left after my bread-making bonanza, and I will have milk leftover too. If I were to have 6, rather than five days of the challenge, I would totally buy eggs and treat myself to pancakes.

The time this is all taking is really quite significant. I changed my plans this weekend to factor in breadmaking, and an unexpected trip to visit someone in hospital meant I had to throw together an unsatisfying dinner. Trying to carry on with my week as usual is definitely going to be tricky...

You can support me, my colleagues and our wonderful volunteers through their #BreadlineChallenge week by donating here.

FoodCycle's #BreadlineChallenge

2015-11-10T21:57:00.001+00:00

These days, my day job is working for FoodCycle, a national food charity that serves free communiy meals cooked by volunteers from food that would otherwise be thrown away by supermarkets. I got here by volunteering at my local hub, enjoyed it so much that I wanted to do it full time, and ended up in the team running their wonderful café for a year. Now I’m working at HQ, managing a number of projects similar to the one I started volunteering at.

A major part of what we do is trying our best to raise awareness of, and tackle, food poverty in England. We are not a soup kitchen or a food bank (although our projects around the country often collaborate with both), but instead somewhere that anybody can come and eat a nutritious meal, cooked from scratch with care, and make friends in their community. Our guests sit down and have a three-course meal brought to them at laid tables, often dressed with flowers. We only serve vegetarian and vegan meals both to minimise risks of food safety and to make the meals inclusive to all cultures and beliefs. People come to eat with us for many reasons – some are motivated by wanting to do their bit to reduce food waste. Some come because it gets them out of the house, provides some respite from caring responsibilities or gives them an opportunity to socialise somewhere warm and friendly. But some come because they have little choice; they can’t afford food and they need to eat.

My daily budget during #BreadlineChallenge

Next week, our volunteers around the country and the team at HQ are taking part in the Breadline Challenge. Research has shown that those people on such limited income that they are living on the breadline have an average budget of £2.86 per day for food and drink. So that is what our budget will be too. If we want to go out for a pint, it needs to come out of the budget. If we drizzle our budget pasta with olive oil, that does too. If we travel an extra mile or so to get to that budget food store, we should probably consider how the journey was paid for, and if we grow our own herbs, we need to factor in how much they cost.

It will be the first time I’m taking part in the annual challenge – the café team decided last year that this would simply be too difficult alongside catering orders and communal eating with our volunteers – and my colleagues warn me it will be very hard. I’m already having to wimp out of taking part for a whole week as both of my parents celebrate landmark birthdays next week, which also means a party. I'll still be doing five days though - with a total budget of £14.30*. We’ve already decided as a team that we can’t eat the cookies that will inevitably be put out at a training day next week, nor can we make use of the tea and coffee supplies already in the office – these are luxuries that simply wouldn’t be available to people on the budget we are calling into attention.

I will be blogging my way through the week and sharing my menus, as well as highlighting all those pitfalls I’m sure even my careful planning won’t have seen coming – like needing chocolate at 3pm on a Wednesday…

Further information about FoodCycle's Breadline challenge, where the figure of £2.86 came from and why we are doing this can be found here.

You can sponsor me to take part in thie challenge here. All money raised goes to helping us to open more much-needed hubs around the country and support our volunteers in the fantastic work they do.

*I will be donating the £5.72 from the extra two days of the challenge week to FoodCycle

Award Winning!

2015-09-14T21:52:00.000+01:00

Well, hello there!

We have met before, it's just that I don't come here often. So it's not surprising that I'm vaguely familiar - but after our little rendezvous, you'll want us to stay in touch.

To those of you who have occasionally wondered where on earth I've been, apologies.
To those of you new here, welcome! Please take a look around. I'm doing the place up and it's on its way to being fabulous. Make yourself at home.

I couldn't possibly fit all the stories behind my radio silence into one blog post, but all in good time. Let's take this post as a relaunch of sorts, and allow me to reintroduce myself as

AN AWARD-WINNING COOK!

Right now, my bill-paying work does not include cooking. This could be a Sorry State Of Affairs, but it does allow me to cook more in my spare time, i.e in a leisurely fashion, and this is a Good Thing. It is a particularly Good Thing when it means I win prizes.

Over the past two years, my lovely home town has introduced me to new friends, new skills, new cuisines and new cooking opportunities. It is a Transition Town, designed to nurture ventures that seek to build, promote, or improve a sense of community. Aside from volunteering locally, I am barely more involved in helping this movement than any average Joe, but I do at least like to think that by doing a little bit where I can, even if that's just explaining the concept to somebody, I am doing something positive.

Every year, Transition Town Tooting runs Foodival, a celebration of growing, eating and cooking locally produced and sustainable food. And with that comes the Top Tooting Cook competition.

So on Saturday, I went along to see the frankly enormous mountain of vegetables that had been grown in local community gardens, allotments, backyards and window boxes, and as an entrant, I was allowed to take my pick of the beautiful produce on offer.

I selected:

Tomatoes - big, small, green, yellow, red and orange. Some squishy and some firm
A piece of horseradish root
Some home-grown and dried garlic
A small beetroot
Thyme
Some beautiful nasturtium flowers and leaves

Back home, I put the tomatoes (about 2kg in all) along with the washed and peeled horseradish, half a clove of garlic, a good bunch of basil and a small slice of beetroot into a blender in batches, before using a stick blender to make the mixture really smooth. I added a healthy dose of freshly ground pepper, about 2.5tbsp of red wine vinegar and a good couple of pinches of salt. I was being halal-friendly on this occasion, but if I wasn't, I'd have added a couple of shots of vodka.

After tasting the mixture (and adding more horseradish, seasoning and vinegar to make it really punchy), I poured it into clean muslin cloth in a bowl, before tying the cloth into a bag, knotting it really well and hanging it over a bowl to drip through overnight. This needs to be done somewhere cool where pests won't be a problem - the best place for me happened to be the living room and my housemate reported quite enjoying the aromatic water feature during her film night.

In the meantime, just because I could, I halved a good handful of leftover baby tomatoes, tossed them with some salt, pepper, thyme leaves, olive oil and a little sugar, laid them in a roasting tin and put them into a really hot oven, along with a foil pouch of whole garlic cloves and olive oil. I turned the oven off immediately and left them in there overnight. By the morning, they were tender and delicious and barely made it past the poached eggs brunch I made to thank my sous chef.

This 'moonblush' method is such a simple thing to do with tomatoes that I often pick up a bowl of them from the greengrocers at the end of my road, or pounce on a reduced punnet in my local supermarket - because it's so much better than the sunblush tomatoes you can get from the deli counter, and so little effort. Give it a try!

Anyway, by Sunday morning, the muslin bag was considerably lighter, and below it shimmered a bowl of gloriously pink and clear liquid, which I tasted for seasoning (only salt can be added at this stage!) and then chilled.

Just after lunch, off I went to Foodival, where I presented my consomme decorated with some baby basil leaves, some drops of beautiful olive oil and the nasturtiums:

Easy peasy. And a few hours later, I became one of Tooting's Top Cooks! You will shortly see me at my local pub, celebrating with money off my food bill. But first, I have to cook my way through the box of lovely locally grown fruit and veg I was given.

There's going to be runner bean chutney, squash and sage risotto, courgette curry, carrot cake.....

#onepoundpantry - the fourth

2014-08-05T22:40:00.002+01:00

So, a string of family meals (thanks mum!) and dinners at friends houses (thanks chums!) has meant that, whilst I may have saved pennies, I've had to put my #onepoundpantry challenge on a temporary hold.

Until today!!

After a loonnnng day at work, tonight I basically couldn't be bothered. So I had a look in my fridge and decided to make an odds-and-sod it salad.

Languishing in my fridge and salad draw I found:

2 carrots
A kohlrabi - leftover from a FoodCycle session at the weekend
Leftover cabbage from my #onepoundpantry turkey and bacon pie
Some slightly squishy tomatoes
Broad beans donated from a green-fingered neighbour
A red pepper and some frisée lettuce left behind by my housemate before he went away for the week (Mwahahaha! You snooze, you lose!)
Coriander bought for an abortive #onepoundpantey meal last week before Mum called with an invite - 49p
Eggs leftover from last week's beetroot ravioli.
Half a lemon

Being a kitchen gadget-aholic, I have a mandolin and decided that using it would make dinner quicker. I cut matchsticks of carrot, kohlrabi and an apple from the fruit bowl to create a makeshift slaw. To this I added lemon juice, a little white wine vinegar, olive oil and seasoning. There's even enough left for tomorrow! I finely sliced some of the cabbage to add to this, along with the frisée and some coriander. While I blanched and refreshed the podded broad beans and soft-boiled an egg, I cut fine dice of tomato and pepper.

The whole lot got tossed together and served. Not only were there lots of different flavours going in here, it had loads of colour, and hence vitamins, a good filling hit of protein, and an added benefit of everything being chopped small means that it was quick to eat as well as make!

Score!

TOTAL #onepoundpantry SPEND: 49p

AMOUNT BANKED: 51p

TOTAL BANKED TO DATE: £1.02

#onepoundpantry - Wednesday

2014-07-30T18:09:00.001+01:00

Tonight I cooked beetroot ravioli for my housemate and I, and given that I was not at work today I had a little extra time to spend. Saying that, dinner probably only took an hour from start to finish once the ingredients were in place.

Yesterday, aforementioned housemate bought a bunch of beetroot for £1 from the '£1 a bowl' man on the corner. I gave them a good wash before drying them and putting them in a roasting pan on a bed of sea salt and thyme stalks I had dried in a cupboard. This was fully enclosed with a foil lid and popped into the oven at 180C for about 45 minutes. The beetroot need to be cooked until they are tender so check them from 30 minutes onwards as their size will affect cooking times.

Once they were cooked I left them to cool with the foil still on the tray, allowing them to steam as this makes the skins much easier to remove - when they're cool enough to handle, that is, and wearing rubber gloves! Once they were cool I blitzed them in my food processor with seasoning and a little cream cheese I needed to use up to make a purée. I should mention at this point that some of my beetroot a turned out to be golden, and others pink, so I decided to make not one purée but two, in different colours. I kept a couple of little beetroots back for later.

Then I got onto making pasta. I bought a box of mixed weight free range eggs for £1 and beat two larger ones together. Once clean and dry, I used the food processor to blitz 200g of type 00 flour I need to use up on the cupboard with a good couple of pinches of salt. Then, with the motor running, I drizzled in the beaten egg just until the mixture looked like couscous. You will probably need to use all of the egg. If it clumps together, add a little more flour. You can mix it together by hand as well. Once you have the mix, knead it for 10minutes before leaving it to rest wrapped in cling film for half an hour; if it feels too dry, leave it to rest with a damp tea towel covering it instead.

After half an hour, you're ready to roll! I have a pasta machine at home I bought for less than €20 on holiday in France that has served my needs fine, but if not you can roll it out by hand with a rolling pin. Dust surfaces with flour before you start and keep extra pasta covered with a damp cloth. Extra pasta sheets need to be dusted with semolina while you work on filling the others.

I worked out the sizing of my ravioli and used piping bags to pipe beetroot filling onto a sheet of pasta before carefully laying another sheet on top so that the edges matched together.

Then I used the blunt edges of a small cookie cutter to 'seal' the filling in the middle of the ravioli and cut them out with a larger one - but you could equally use a knife.

I put a large pan of salted water on to boil while I made a mint butter by melting a large knob of butter in a pan until it sizzled before adding wedges of the cooked beetroot I'd kept back. Once these had browned I added finely shredded mint leaves from the garden.

The ravioli take about 2 minutes to cook and can then be tossed in or drizzled with the butter - which would also work well with toasted pine nuts. Tonserve, I alternated the ravioli with the different colour fillings and piped on top some of the beetroot purées. Beautiful to eye and to palate!

TOTAL #onepoundpantry SPEND: £2

AMOUNT BANKED: £0

TOTAL BANKED TO DATE: 51p

#onepoundpantry - Tuesday

2014-07-29T21:55:00.001+01:00

Today's dinner made use of some turkey breast fillets from the freezer, a nice lean form of protein, and some frozen bacon, which is less so! Whilst not entirely the weather for it, the crushed potato-topped turkey and bacon pie with tarragon gravy was delicious.

I chopped an onion and softened this with defrosted and trimmed bacon rashers before adding the defrosted turkey, cut into bite-sized pieces. This was seasoned well and once the turkey was cooked I added some tarragon I found lurking in the fridge. I let the mixture simmer a little before adding some finely shredded green cabbage I bought for 69p. This all released a fair bit of liquid, so I added some flour to thicken the sauce. Meanwhile I boiled some new potatoes donated from a relative's weekly veg box - a bag every week seems to overwhelm them in summer and they were about to sprout! Once the potatoes were cooked, I crushed a few and used them as a topping for some of the turkey and bacon mixture in a mini casserole. I dotted a little butter on too, seasoned with salt and pepper and put it in the oven at 180C for about 15 minutes.

And lovely it was too!

TOTAL #onepoundpantry COST: 69p

AMOUNT BANKED: 31p

TOTAL BANKED TO DATE: 51p

#onepoundpantry Monday

2014-07-28T18:37:00.001+01:00

Todays's #onepoundpantry dinner was pork tenderloin with fennel and apple.

I bought and froze a couple of pork tenderloins that had been reduced in the supermarket a while ago, for a bargainous £1.99 for 400g, each one enough to feed two comfortably with this recipe or three with some added carbs such as mash or roast potato. This cut of pork can be cut into 150-200g pieces and cooked on a bed of fennel, apple and onion slices in a greaseproof parcel for each diner.

For my dinner, I thinly sliced the fennel bulb, bought for 80p at my local market, as well as an onion and two eating apples from a value bag. I sliced a couple of cloves of garlic as thinly as I could and tossed the vegetables together with olive oil, a little dried thyme from the cupboard and seasoning before laying in the bottom of a roasting pan. I trimmed fat and sinew from the defrosted tenderloin before seasoning it, drizzling it with oil and placing this on top of the vegetables into the oven at 180C. It took about 40-45 minutes to cook; check the juices run clear and if you have a meat probe use this on the thickest part of the meat.

Slice the tenderloin, place on top of some of the veg and dinner is served!

TOTAL #onepoundpantry COST: 80p

AMOUNT BANKED: 20p

TOTAL IN BANK: 20p

#onepoundpantry posts - the introduction!

2014-07-28T12:48:00.000+01:00

Having thoroughly enjoyed cooking my way through a #FoodieWorldCup, stretching my culinary knowledge and techniques with dishes like Ghanaian Fotor, Brazilian Coxinhas and tea-smoked salmon for Russian blinis, I need a new challenge.

Times are a bit tough at the moment. Earlier in the year, my time managing a training cafe came to an end. Whilst I've had a fantastic culinary journey since then, learning abundantly through my time at Ashburton Chefs Academy, having lots of trial shifts in various kitchens and now working part-time at a fantastic restaurant, I am yet to establish what Sarah Serves does next for a stable income. This is all really exciting but it does mean the purse strings are fraying.

How to discover your personal OCD: Step 1.

However, one of the side benefits to this is that I've also got a bit more time at home than usual, and something this has been good for is reorganising my kitchen and having a good clear out! Not only are my cupboards slowly becoming more organised and tidy, but I've also found long-forgotten exciting and exotic ingredients at the back of cupboards that I'm looking forward to using. It's also time I emptied out my freezer to make way for BBQ meats, homemade icecreams and all those lovely summer berries growing out there ready for pies, sorbets and smoothies.

So it made perfect sense to put this together with my need for a new cooking at home challenge, and it starts today.

The principles of #onepoundpantry are simple:

For my main meal each day, I have to use what is available in my cupboards or freezer, given to me by friends growing vegetables or genuinely leftover from my sessions volunteering for FoodCycle Wandsworth.
If I have to supplement the ingredients, I am only allowed to spend £1 per meal. If I need to spend more than that, I have to have the money 'in the bank' - it needs to be leftover from the day before.
I'm starting the week with a few pantry staples, such as onions and garlic, milk and butter, and a reasonably occupied fruit bowl.
If I'm cooking for more than one, I am allowed to accept ingredients from other diners up to a value of £1 per head, but need to try not to.

I appreciate that these rules are nowhere near as admirably stringent as challenges such as the breadline challenge or the belowtheline challenge. I'm using things in the freezer that I spent money on already, I'm not taking into account the cost of running my hob or oven, I'm ignoring how much it costs to grow the vegetables I'm given to use. The point of this personal undertaking is to do my little bit to help eliminate my food waste, save money and to make you, my readers, think about what's lurking in your cupboards and freezers unloved and unused. And to prove that you can have delicious dinners for not much dosh! I'm going to start by doing this for a week and see how I get on. You can see from the picture that there are a few exciting packets in my cupboards and there is no way I'm getting through the lot in one week. Why not have a try at this with me and let me know how you are getting on? You can follow my facebook page for updates, or tweet with the hashtag #onepoundpantry.

Good Luck!

Easy Cheesy!

2014-07-22T20:37:00.000+01:00

Once upon a time, Christmas and birthday presents for me meant hair gadgetry, nail varnish or makeup. In the past few years, there has been a discernible shift as family and friends realise that this cookery malarky has gone way beyond being a hobby, and to reflect this, presents too have shifted towards food gadgetry and plate-up. A good thing too, hot kitchens, where hair is firmly scraped away from my face, melt most warpaint and pretty nails are now my stuff of legend.

Two of the most favourite of my foodie friends bought me 'The Big Cheese Making Kit' for my birthday this year and, spurred on by the fun I was having with my #FoodieWorldCup challenge, I decided to give it a go. As it turns out, whilst the kit makes a great present, with the process neatly packaged and cute, it is by no means obligatory as the ingredients are readily available on a high street near you. It is also almost disappointingly easy, and takes no more than an hour from start to finish. In fact you could, as I did, start your pizza dough, get your passata on the hob reducing away happily and make mozzarella so that the whole thing comes together in time to pop a delicious <insertfavouritepizzahere> into the oven for dinner! I started with mozzarella and plan to give ricotta a go soon, and may commence a quest for world cheese domination shortly afterwards. All I need is ready access to vast lakes of milk. And probably someone else to do the icky cow-rearing stuff for me.

What you will need (makes approx 900g):

8 pints milk - fresh, full fat stuff! Don't use UHT. I resisted the urge to bulk-buy buffalo milk in Waitrose as this would be a) very expensive and b) a bit mental for my first go.
1.5tsp citric acid - this is available from Asian supermarkets and will keep long enough for you to use for next year's elderflower cordial (click link for my blog on how!). It coagulates the milk and causes it to separate.
1/4 of a rennet tablet - traditionally, rennet is enzymes derived from animal stomach linings, but vegetarian rennet is readily available in supermarkets and chemists and is what was provided in the kit. It helps the curds to set and keeps very well in your freezer
A large, heavy-bottomed pan (capable of holding aforementioned 8 pints of milk) with a lid
A long knife - a bread knife will do
A large slotted spoon
Rubber gloves - fairly thick preferably to protect your hands from heat
A thermometer - food temperature probes are, in my opinion, an incredibly useful bit of kit. Try to get one that will withstand temperatures for deep frying, making caramel and warming to 'blood heat', preferably digital for accuracy.

How to do it:

Dissolve the rennet in one ramekin of 50ml room temperature boiled water and the citric acid in another.
Pour the milk into the pan and add the citric acid solution. Stir thoroughly up and down - I used a potato masher to "mash" the mixture.
Heat the milk to 32.2°C, stirring frequently to ensure it heats evenly.
Once the temperature has been reached, remove the pan from the heat and gently "mash" in the rennet solution for 30 seconds. Then put the pan on the lid and leave it to have a think for 20 minutes.
After this time there the mixture will have separated into solid curds on the surface and yellowy-green whey liquid underneath. Use the knife to cut the curds into 3cm cubes.

Whey-hey! (Apologies, it had to be done)

Put the pan back on the heat and warm to 40.5°C whilst gently moving the curds with the slotted spoon. They will break up at this point, and that's ok.
Use the slotted spoon to remove the curds into a microwavable bowl, or gently drain the curds in a colander and tip into the bowl.
Microwave the curds on high power for one minute, before draining off excess whey, putting on those rubber gloves and kneading and folding the hot cheese (congratulations, you now have cheese!) for 30 seconds, removing as much whey as possible.
Microwave for another 30 seconds, add 1 tsp salt (preferably flakey sea salt) and knead and fold the cheese for another 30 seconds. The more you knead the cheese, the firmer it will be.

Microwave for another 30 seconds then continue to fold and stretch the hot cheese. At this stage, feel free to add herbs like basil or oregano, chilli flakes or chopped sundried tomatoes to jazz up the mozzarella. If the cheese doesn't stretch easily, microwave it for another 30 seconds as it needs to be too hot to handle with bare hands.
When the cheese is smooth, elastic and shiny, shape it into balls however you like. It can be eaten immediately but if possible, pop it into a bowl of iced water to cool it down and help it keep its shape.

The cheese will last for up to a week in an airtight container in the fridge but should not be stored in water. Leftover whey can be used in bread making (such as that pizza base!) or for soups, smoothies, soaking pulses or even in a bath! There will be quite a bit so it can be frozen and safely stored for up to three months.

If you don't have a microwave, once the curds have been drained, heat the reserved whey to 82.2°C, shape the curd into two or three lumps and put them into a sieve. Dip them into the hot whey for a minute, remove from the liquid, knead and add the salt. repeat this until the cheese is smooth and elastic before shaping and storing as above.

It was great fun to make and tasted just like it should. I like my mozzarella to be so soft that it's falling apart, which mine wasn't, leaning more towards the firmness of large blocks available in the supermarket, and this meant its melting capabilities were a little under-par. But I'm definitely giving it another go soon.

Pizza night, anyone?

Bom Apetite!

2014-06-12T19:13:00.000+01:00

Love it or hate it, football is likely to cross your path for the next few weeks as the 2014 World Cup tournament gets underway this evening in Brazil. Whilst not strictly speaking a fan, my family is pretty male-dominated and my partner works his calendar around matches, so I have needed to find a way to make the tournament work for me. Which is why I have used it as the perfect excuse to explore the food of Brazil!

Ready for the opening ceremony tonight, I have made a Brazilian feast fit for the greatest fan – be they foodie or footie or both, and I have a sneaky feeling at least one of them might be working its way into my regular repertoire.

To start, we will be nibbling on Coxinha, a popular street food in Brazil. These are bite-sized “little chicken drumsticks” and great fun to make. I have to admit to accidentally polishing off the leftover filling while making them yesterday because it was so delicious, and as we all know that deep-frying multiplies food by a factor of delicious, this should mean the finished article will be delicious squared.

Coxinha are made by poaching a large chicken breast in stock and a mirepoix of vegetables before allowing it to cool and shredding it. In a deviation from how they are traditionally made, the chicken is then mixed with cream cheese rather than Mexican crema and a little tomato paste, as well as fresh corn kernels, grated garlic, sliced spring onions and seasoning. Some of the poaching liquid and a little oil are then brought to a boil and used to make a roux-based dough with plain flour, which is kneaded, rolled to 3mm thickness and cut into 10cm discs. Each disc is used to enclose a little of the filling as a teardrop-shaped pouch, which is then dipped in an egg wash and coated in breadcrumbs (I used Panko). The pouches are then deep-fried in batches, drained on paper and served hot with a sprinkling of salt. Whilst time consuming and a little fiddly these were great fun to make.

I really enjoy making streetfood like this, which in my mind, due to the necessity of portability, largely falls into a number of categories:

Things In Wraps – such as burritos, spring rolls, peking duck, nori rolls, masala dosa and gyros
Mouth-Pops – such as arancini, bhel puri, churros and Pão de Queijo (see below)
Hidden-Content Foodstuffs – where a filling is enclosed in some sort of pastry, such as Cornish Pasties*, baozi, brik and samosas

Slightly more tricky to make were the Pão de Quieijo, soft chewy cheese bread rolls. For these, I was supposed to use two different types of manioc starch. Manioc is another word for cassava, and the starch and the flour are not one and the same. The recipe called for both a sightly fermented version and a non-fermented version, but neither supermarket nor organic health food store could land me what I needed, even if it is gluten free! I did find ground manioc in Sainsbury's but this would make more of a porridge consistency, so I opted instead for Arrowroot, which also derives from rhizomes of a number of root vegetables native to South America, including manioc, and which research assured me would give a close likeness to the required consistency. Cornflour would prove too sticky, I was told, and potato flour would become slimy after cooking.

To make the bread rolls, I blended eggs and egg yolks with packed grated parmesan well in a food processor to make a loose paste. I brought milk, water and olive oil to a boil and added this to the arrowroot along with pinches of cayenne, nutmeg and pepper. If you have a mixer with a dough hook, use it!! I don’t, and my arms are now paying for the 15 minutes of hard work mixing and kneading this to a smooth and incredibly sticky dough. After resting overnight in the fridge, the dough is rolled into gold-ball sized balls and baked until lightly golden before serving while warm and chewy.

Next I made steak marinaded in Chimichurri Rojo. The marinade is like an Argentine Worcestershire, with sherry vinegar, oil, paprika, cayenne, minced garlic, ground cumin and pepper with bay and salt. I used thin sirloins but skirt steak is recommended. The steaks marinated overnight in half of the marinade ready to be quickly grilled the next day (the acidity in the marinade serves to cure the steak, greatly reducing its cooking time whilst increasing its tenderness). To serve with the steaks I made Cebollas Fritas – thinly sliced Spanish onion battered and fried before liberally covering with manchego cheese and baking.

To round off proceedings and provide occasional cheering fuel during the first match, I made chocolate Brigadeiros – chocolate fudge balls. Though a little time consuming, these were simple to make – I boiled condensed milk, cream, butter and golden syrup (a substitution for corn syrup) before stirring through chopped chocolate (I used 70% cocoa to counter the sweetness a little) and cocoa powder. This is then cooked, stirring constantly, ‘until the mixture moves as one piece’ and there is a burnt layer on the bottom. As an insurance policy, I used a probe and cooked it to 110C. This mixture was cooled in a bowl to room temperature and then covered in the fridge for a few hours before being rolled into truffle-sized balls and coating in grated chocolate. They are very sticky indeed and I’m not too sure how many of the ice-cream tub full even two hungry boys are going to manage, but I will do my best to help.

Hopefully, one of those hungry boys will mix me a traditional Brazilian Caipirinha to go with it after my hard work. Gotta keep things authentic, after all!

So, if food, but not football is your thing, why not use the World Cup as an excuse to explore a few new world cuisines? You might find some new favourite dishes…

*Funny story, I once had an email jokingly refer to ‘nipple pasties’ and it took me a long time to re-adjust my thinking away from either the amazing (although possibly somewhat painful) concept of nipples adorned with miniature steak and swede-filled delights, or of canapé pastries in the shape of, well, nipples. Which miniature versions of the coxinha’s described above do in fact resemble.

Cordial Greetings!

2014-06-08T14:37:00.000+01:00

Summer, I think we can tentatively suggest, is on its way. And this means a whole host of wonderful vegetables, edible flowers, abundant herbs, and opportunities for even newbies to have an outdoor forage. Now, this needs to be done with some careful research - I'm not suggesting anyone heads out into the wild gleefully munching on whatever they can pick - but one thing growing particularly rampantly right now, and fairly easy to identify, is elderflower.

From cordial, to sparkling wine, syllabub or sorbet, elderflower is a flavour that encapsulates Summer (almost as nicely as Pimms!). It is lightly floral and refreshingly citrus in flavour and elderflower bushes pop up everywhere. Right this minute they are out there at their best, so once you've finished reading this, pop on your sunnies and get out there with a pair of scissors and a sturdy plastic shopper to collect some.

Choosing where to forage is up to you, but I prefer to head for places that are low in traffic so that my pickings are as unpolluted as possible. I also do my best to forage responsibly, choosing a few blooms from a number of bushes rather than decimating a few. This has added benefits when it comes to elderflower, as the untouched flowers now will turn into delicious elderberries in Autumn.

Elderflower is fairly easy to identify if you head out foraging in the morning. The creamy white flowers grow on bushes, often attached to trees, with the flowers growing in clustered blooms that should smell of - you guessed it - elderflower. By the afternoon, or when they are past their best - they begin to smell musty and should not be picked. They can be confused with other plants such as cow parsley and pyracantha but there are easy ways to rule these out. This is an excellent blog on how to identify the right target.

To make about three litres of elderflower cordial, you will need to pick about 20 elderflower blooms. I picked mine from three different woods and commons and found that those in the sunlight and higher up in the bushes smelled freshest. One of the first rules of foraging is not to pick close to the ground if you can avoid it - basically wherever dogs can make their mark. Smell the blooms before you pick them to ensure you are getting the ones that smell as they should and beware - a few hours smelling these can wreak havoc on even mild hayfever sufferers like me!

Once you've picked your blooms, here is the best recipe I could find - BBC Good Food's recipes contains a lot more sugar and I wanted to keep a little more zingy freshness.

Elderflower cordial (makes approx three litres)

20 Elderflower blooms (no leaves)

4 unwaxed lemons

1.8kg caster sugar

1.2 litres water

50g citric acid (this can be bought from asian grocers or chemists but is not a vital ingredient)

Gently shake the elderflower heads to knock the blackflies and other bugs from their delicious harem. Do not wash them as this washes away more of the precious pollen than knocking them will. You won't be able to get rid of all the bugs, sadly, but do your best and think of the extra protein!
Put them in the roomiest saucepan you have, along with the peeled zest of the lemons, which then need to be sliced and added to the pot.

Add the water, boiling, to the sugar, and heat until the sugar has completely dissolved before pouring this on top of the elderflower and lemon. Pop a lid on the pot and allow it to talk to itself for 24 hours.
After this time, strain the mixture into a clean pot first through a large sieve or chinois and then through muslin to remove unwanted particles.
Heat the strained mixture to boiling (do not allow to catch or burn before bottling in sterilised bottles. Bottles can be sterilised either by fully immersing in sterilising solution and allowing to airdry, or by running the clean bottles through a hot cycle in the dishwasher.

The cordial will keep for six weeks in the fridge, or can be stored in the freezer in ice cube trays or frozen flat in freezer bags on a tray for easier storage. It can be used as a cordial (mix one part to 8 or 9 parts water, added to champagne or prosecco, or used in cheesecakes, custards, syllabubs.. the list goes on.

And let me tell you, it tastes delicious. So what are you waiting for? Get your shoes on and get out there before it disappears!

Quantifying and Qualifying

2014-04-16T17:05:00.000+01:00

It had finally arrived. The three days we all knew were coming. The three days they said we would fly through. The three days to decide it all.

The three days of Assessment Week.

Rationally speaking, we didn't have anything to work ourselves into a blind panic about - assessment required us to produce a three or four course menu from recipes we had all made successfully before and even replicated since we had been taught them. We had four hours to complete and present the dishes and then were assessed on how we tidied and cleaned down the kitchen, and on what we did with our leftover ingredients. We'd get the afternoon to recover and prepare for the next day before we started again in the morning, each day becoming progressively more difficult. The chef tutors had all been keen to point out all the way through the course that they were there to help us ahead of assessment, to answer any questions we had, to enable us to achieve the best results we were capable of. We had been put through a mock assessment a week ahead of the real deal, to help us to iron out any areas of weakness such as speed, seasoning, and prioritising tasks, and that had taught me the valuable lesson of treating my cooking process with a little more mindfulness and care.

Circumstances around my own assessment week were wonderful, but hardly optimal in an academic sense - I spent the weekend before away with friends, and the night before our final assessment day out to dinner with classmates at Rob Dawe's pop-up. But in fact, this all helped me to focus, to plan ahead and to reflect on the skills I had picked up. The weekend before gave me the opportunity to replicate some of the dishes as practise for a crowd who could give me supportive customer-style feedback and boost my confidence in the process. The pop-up reminded me what I'm doing this for - so that I, too, can continue to bring smiles to people's faces with my cooking, to share my skills and to enthuse others about food so that it can bring as much happiness to them as it does to me. And despite my original fears, the last, and hardest, of my assessment days, following my night off, was also my strongest and most enjoyable. Back in February, I would never have thought I could successfully produce minestrone, filleted and panfried fish, bread rolls, a French trimmed rack of lamb and dauphinoise potatoes with jus and a tarte tatin in four hours, looking beautiful and tasting great. And to enjoy myself in the process? Give over.

I struggle to believe all of this was a mere week ago, as it already feels like the days when I cooked and learned (and ate!) all day long are far more distant than that. Over the next few weeks, I will be taking time to go through all of my course notes, to digest the wealth of information I have absorbed and to plan on how to put it to use. I want to make sure my blog readers can benefit from my newfound knowledge too; I am so proud of the work I have put into recording my journey through the course and sharing my experiences with you and I hope you look forward to carrying on learning as much as I do. In the meantime, there are a few key nuggets of wisdom that I took away from the course that I will keep with me and that I hope will help you in your own kitchen endeavours.

Plan Ahead. For each day of our assessment, we had to prepare a Prep List. We didn't get much guidance on how to do this, and I went off and did what worked for me - a detailed breakdown of what tasks I needed to do, in what order. For any menu, be it making a sandwich for lunch through to a dinner party for twelve, there will be jobs that take varying lengths of time, different processes to be used, different operating temperatures, and these need to be planned together in a way that allows them to slot into each other like jigsaw pieces. It's kitchen choreography. This aspect may extend to days, weeks in advance as you take into account seasonality and availability of ingredients, dietary requirements, even unforeseen mishaps. Don't just make things one at a time; the most skilful chefs can dance between dishes, spinning multiple plates at once. I was told that my Prep List was the most organised and methodical they had seen and while I don't plan on replicating that style every time I cook by any means, I have definitely learned the value of thinking dishes through carefully!

Taste it, and taste it again. It takes practise to get seasoning right. I still have more to learn here, and lots of my dishes could have gone from 'great' to 'excellent' if I'd been a bit more brave with the salt. It takes time to develop a palate and the only way to speed up that process is to taste everything. Your food will be transformed when the seasoning hits the mark and it is important to respect salt, not to make it your enemy. Don't use table salt - the flavour is too harsh, and experiment with the different salts out there. You may be a Maldon lover or you may develop a Cornish Sea passion but the only way to know is to try. If you find yourself scared at how big a proper chef pinch of sea salt flakes is, try weighing it and you will be surprised at how little you are adding. If you get it right, you shouldn't need it at the table any more, which is an excellent move for better health.

Eat with your eyes. A beautiful tasting dish needs to be treated with respect, and this means making it look as good as it tastes. Think not only about portion size, but the shape of the items and hence the best corresponding plate shape. Consider the colours and how best to showcase them. Remember that human brains are wired to find odd numbers more attractive. Get rid of any unwanted drips, smears or fingermarks. And make sure the temperature of the plate supports the food as well.

Ask Questions. Learn as much as you can about ingredients - where they are from, how to treat them, and what they pair with. If you make a mistake, find out why, learn from it, and try again. Never, Ever Stop Learning. And practise as much as you can. One of the tutors told us that when he started out, he would come home with a 2.5kg sack of potatoes and sit in front of the TV practising how to carve each one. Every mouthful you make should be treated with dedication and respect, and if you fail partway through a recipe, don't blame the ingredients, but reflect on how you will do better next time. Having a failure does not make you a failure.

Be responsible. For every plate of food, there is a long chain reaching back to where the ingredients came from. Always strive to shorten that chain where you can, and to learn about it so that you can say with confidence that you have respected the way that ingredient was born, nurtured and eventually came to be on your plate. 'Catch it, kill it, eat it' may not be your style but it is still important to have an awareness of what is involved in that process.

As we sat together on our final day, our first day as a team of qualified chefs, happy tums full of the curries we had made together, the Academy Manager told us that this was just the start of our journeys. He told us that not a day goes by when food doesn't enthuse him in some way, when he learns something new about it. "The Perfect Dish," he said, "does not exist. Because you'll never know when you serve it, whether or not it was perfection. You can have tasted it and checked it all the way through but you won't know how it tastes to that person at that time and whether all the elements came together perfectly. And so you continue to strive for perfection every day."

I made a gamble when I started down the food path three years ago. I'm still making gambles now as I work out what to do next, how I will generate an income and the best way to balance my passion and my happiness. But I do know that I am on the right journey and I am proud of what I have achieved so far. My course has shaped me (in more ways than one!); I am grateful to the chef tutors for their time, their energy, their knowledge and their passion and consider myself very lucky to have had the opportunity to learn from them.

And do you know what, I can cook!

I completed a six-week Professional Culinary Certificate at Ashburton Chefs Academy. This comprised of a CTH Level 2 in Culinary Skills an a CIEH Level 3 Award in Food Safety. You can find out more about the course here.

A series of experiences

2014-04-15T08:14:00.000+01:00

I have been lucky enough to get to know a couple of talented supperclub and pop-up restaurant geniuses in the past couple of years, one of whom I have worked with a few times and learned a lot from, and the other I have had the great fortune of being taught by. Rob Dawe is one of the most inspirational people I have met - and I don't use terms like that lightly. Chefs are often incredibly good at what they do, meticulous in their precision, fiercely proud of their work and renowned for their art. What sometimes slips away is their passion, worn down by years of seasons repeating themselves, trends coming and going, diner desires becoming ever more fastidious. So it is not every day that a chef comes along who not only has a wealth of experience, but also an abundance of passion about cooking, about ingredients and sourcing, and to top it all, a desire to help others to learn as much as they can and gain the most benefit possible from time in a kitchen.

Rob's years of experience cheffing in London eventually led to a post teaching in Exeter college and after while, he moved on to Ashburton Cookery School as a chef tutor. Fast forward a few years and he is now working there part-time while he also carries out consultancy work for restaurants and hotels, runs his own pop-up events and, probably my favourite part, forages for mussels. As you do.

As soon as I heard Rob mention his pop-ups, I asked him when his next one was. It turned out that it would be the night before the most scary of my assessments, and this put off almost half of my classmates. My philosophy on life, however, is that it is built from a series of experiences and opportunities, and I knew that I would be going regardless of how ready I felt for the next day.

The event was hosted at the Heart of Oak pub in Pinhoe, Exeter and was a sell-out within a few days of tickets going on sale for what turned out to be an even more reasonable £30 than I had originally thought. There were to be seven courses of wonderfully treated, locally sourced and seasonal ingredients and my fears that perhaps devouring the steak and chips we had produced for our assessments earlier that day was a bit of an error, were quickly blown away when I saw the menu.

To start, we had a trio of pea, ham and beetroot. This was served as a warm pea soup mini cappuccino with a delicately salty foam, a tender and sticky nugget of glazed ham hock topped with pea shoots, and a pea and ham croquette with beetroot puree. It was great, as students, to recognise the various techniques in use on the plate and to discuss how they could be recreated. Pea shoots are one of my favourite salad gems, with a wonderful sweetness to offset the honeyed saltiness of the ham beneath.

Rob had taken us through how to prepare and serve mussels - hence his casual anecdote about foraging for them (we never found out if that was how he had sourced them this evening!) and so I was glad to see them on the menu, served 'à la Devon' with cider, bacon and cream. I could have done with a few more lardons in my portion, and we all agreed that some fresh, warm and homemade bread would have gone down a treat, although, as we grudgingly conceded, might have been a bit much with five courses to go... Still, I ignored all principles of restraint and finished most of my sauce because it was delicious. Cider gives a much more delicate finish to a mussel dish that wine can, and complements the sweetness of the mussel flesh well. Bacon rounds off what sounds like a heavy dish but ends up being light and flavoursome.

Next up was a palate cleanser ahead of the main event - delicate mojito sorbet with edible flowers. The balance of mint, lime and alcohol was just right and - a small but important detail - this was one of the occasions where we appreciated the attention of the front of house team. We had been given finger bowls for our mussels but also a teaspoon for our sorbet, and so could spend all our energy on enjoying the food and company.

The main dish was locally-sourced Crediton rump of lamb, with parsnip purée, spring vegetables and a port and rosemary jus. Spring is probably my favourite season, and vegetables like asparagus, firm and dazzling green like they were here, are a big part of the reason why. The parsnip purée had been infused with saffron - something I hadn't tried together before, let alone saffron in a lamb dish. But then saffron is largely produced in Iran, and lamb kebabs with saffron rice is a national dish, so it makes perfect sense. The purée had just enough liquid gold in it to complement the flavours without being an overbearing presence. The lamb rump was served in big, no messin' cuts, wonderfully pink and delectably tender. Parsnip crisps were a welcome addition to the dish, bringing an extra texture and fun presentation.

Next up was what Rob thinks may become his signature, mysteriously titled 'Mango, coconut, lime' and looking much more like 'Egg, chip'.

To reveal how this is done, how to eat it or what happens when you try would be too much of a spoiler. Suffice to say I had been told about this in advance, and it delivered just as described - in terms of flavours, textures, and, of course, theatre.

Hearing the room bubble with excitement, laughter and various 'ooohs' and 'aaahs' made me smile and I hope it had the same effect on chef.

This was served with mini fresh strawberry 'milkshakes' - another fun surprise, and packed with lots of vibrant flavour. The tiny bottles being carried to the tables in mini milk crates showed a great attention to detail and sense of humour.

Dessert was chocolate fondant with salted caramel and peanut butter ice cream, which I am fairly sure Rob must have designed especially for me.

The fondant had a pre-requisite gooey centre and its warm chocolate headiness was well complemented with the icecream, which nestled on a bed of honeycomb to give added texture. I'm normally a lover of raspberry but here felt that although the coulis looked perfect on the plate, it distracted a little from the stars of the show. That said, whoever came up with the pairing of chocolate and peanut was a genius. A little digging tells me that Alexandre Dumas, of Musketeers fame, may well have beaten Reece's cups to it, when he suggested that the Spanish called peanuts cacohuette because their flavour resembles that of cocoa, and used to mix cocoa into a peanut mixture to make a kind of cheap chocolate. Although I love my desserts, I've often struggled with this part of my 'last supper' scenario, but I feel more sure now that chocolate and peanuts would be involved.

Our after-dinner coffee was served with a handmade marshmallow, topped with popping candy, renewing my wish to give making marshmallow a go myself soon. Despite the number of courses we all felt comfortably full and disappeared off to the moors with happy faces and entertained tums.

Rob's next pop-up will be on Monday 19th May at the Rodean Restaurant in Kenton, starting at 7.15pm. This will be a six course Summer tasting menu for £35/head and is BYOB. If you would like to book a place, or to be added to Rob's email list and receive notifications of future events, please drop him an email here.

Something(s) for the weekend?

2014-04-14T16:01:00.000+01:00

Having made our croissant and brioche doughs on the Thursday, Friday was the day when they were transformed into things of beauty. The doughs had been left to prove in the fridge overnight and when we peeked in to wake them up, the brioche had bulged to monstrous lumps barely restrained by its triple-layered clingfilm and the croissant wasn't far behind!

Before

After!

We started with the brioche and carefully unleashed it from its skin-tight clobber before tapping it with a rolling pin to start the knocking back process, which was completed with a quick kneading. We made a variety of shapes from the dough, such as a brioche burger bun and small individual brioches made from two ping-pong ball lumps of dough enclosing a few chocolate drops in a brioche tin, but by far my favourite, and which yielded the best results, was the large brioche loaf. We used a hand-rolling technique as with bread dough to make three equal-sized balls (ours weighed about 215g each) and snuggled them with each other in a loaf tin before generously egg washing. We left these to prove until they had doubled in size before they went into the oven at 200°C until golden. The resulting loaf was delicious - light, aromatic and comforting, and fabulous toasted. Definitely one to try again!

Next, it was on to the croissants and pains au chocolat. We had a template ready, a paper isosceles triangle with a base of 15cm and a height of 17.5cm. After removing about a third of the dough to use our chocolate treats, it was possible to see the spiralled layering in the dough; exactly what we were looking for as a result of yesterday's turning and rolling. We re-wrapped this chunk and put it back in the fridge.
Tapping the remaining dough flat with a rolling pin on a floured surface, as we had with the brioche dough, we then rolled it out, working quickly while it was still cold, to a thickness of 2-3mm, keeping the dough in as uniform a rectangular shape as possible. It is quite an active dough and shrinks back when you are rolling it out, hence the need to work quickly - this part is good exercise!

Croissants ready to be baked, each with lots of space!

Using the templates, we cut out one triangle at a time, before cutting a slit about 5cm long from the centre of the base of the triangle. This will reduce the density of dough in the centre of the croissant. Teasing the two 'legs' of the triangle away from each other, we rolled the pastry from the bottom of the triangle to the top point as tightly as possible, before bringing the two thin outer points in towards the middle, twisting them together and tucking them underneath the centre of the croissant. We repeated this for the rest of the dough, rolling out again as necessary if the pastry shrunk. With the scraps, we made an 'ugly bun' by smooshing them together with chocolate drops and dried fruit. Everything was liberally egg washed.

Pains au chocolat are considerably easier. For these, we again rolled the dough into a rectangular shape before cutting these into smaller rectangles, about 10cm x 15cm. We placed a few chocolate drops along the narrower base edge and rolled the dough towards the top. The dough cylinder was sealed by egg washing the open flap and rolling the pastry shut - the seam would be baked underneath. These, too, were egg washed. I also tried my hand at making a plait, which was beautiful to look at although I wish the filling was a bit more substantial! Starting with a rectangle of rolled-out dough, 1cm slits are made 1/3 of the way into the centre of the dough from the longer edges. In the open space in the middle of the dough rectangle I spread a little pastry cream and a few chocolate drops before folding the flaps in towards the other side of the dough, first from the left, then the right and so on. The top and bottom of the resulting plait is tidied and folded under before egg washing.

All of the pastries were left to prove for about 20minutes before a second egg wash to really glaze the pastry and they were baked first at 240°C then at 180°C after 15 minutes until they were deep golden brown.

I didn't have to try too hard to find some willing guinea pigs to try my first attempts at croissants and pastries, and their rapid disappearance was rather reasssuring! I was really pleased to see that the dough inside my croissants had spiralled like it was supposed to through the layering and rolling process. Chef advised us that if we could crack croissant dough, making puff pastry from scratch would be a doddle, albeit still a waste of a few hours of one's life. I'm keen to give these another go and see if I can make a better pastry by working quicker as mine seemed to leak more butter than I would have liked whilst I was turning it!

Lunch that day was a beef and mushroom steamed suet pudding. We had made the suet pastry the day before, as well as the beef filling. We drained the beef casserole filling and kept just the meat and the beef chunks, which we broke down into smaller pieces. We fried some sliced shallots in one pan and some sliced wild mushrooms in another, draining the mushrooms before combining them both with the meat. Meanwhile, the sauce had been reducing in a pan, and some of this reduction was used to bind the beef filling before seasoning. Ready for lunch, we rolled the pastry to 2-3mm thick before cutting it into a large disc, removing a wedge to make a 'pacman' shape and using it to line a small pudding basin (a cappuccino cup or dariole mould would also work) which had been oiled and lined with oven-proof clingfilm. We cut lids for the pudding bases, filled the lined basins with the meat mixture and sealed the filling inside the pastry, removing excess overhang before pinching the edges tightly together and closing the edges of the clingfilm together over this. This was all wrapped tightly in foil and steamed for half an hour.

To serve with this, we made a parsnip purée by peeling, coring and chopping parsnips into chunks and simmering in milk until soft. We drained the parsnips, retaining the milk, and once the parsnips had steamed dry we blended them in a liquidizer with as much of the milk as was necessary to make a smooth purée. This needed a LOT of seasoning, as parsnip can harbour an earthy bitterness that needs to be tempered with salt, but it was deliciously moreish. We also made beetroot en papillote by sprinkling chunks of raw, peeled beetroot with thyme, smashed garlic, rosemary, thyme, seasoning and balsamic vinegar in a foil parcel and baking at 200°C for 30 minutes. Chef showed us how to make parsnip crisps by peeling strips of parsnip, dusting the with flour to stop them from sticking to each other and deep-frying these until golden before draining and sprinkling with paprika and salt. Lunch was served with the stew juices reduced down to a gravy and made into a glossy sauce with a little butter whisked through at the end of cooking. A lovely, simple and impressive dinner!

Could do better.
But everyone likes an ooze!

For dessert (can't spend the day making pastries and not have dessert, of course!) we made raspberry millefeuille. Millefeuille means 'a thousand layers' which might give you the clue that it is made from puff pastry. Most chefs will agree that as long as it is of a good quality, using good butter and base ingredients, ready-made puff pastry is a winner due to its consistency of product. We dusted the worktop with icing sugar and rolled the pastry with the layers pointing upwards, effectively ruining them in a process called 'back rolling'. When the pastry was about 3mm thick we rested it in the fridge in a sandwich of baking trays for 10 minutes before dusting with icing sugar and baking it in the same way for 15 minutes at 220°C. Once the pastry was cool, we carefully cut it into rectangles and used it to make our millefeuille, sandwiching fresh raspberries and piped pastry cream in between. The pastry cream was made with cornflour rather than plain flour this time, to give a more solid density, although mine was still a little too loose an could have done with being cooked longer rather than chickening out a little early as I did! I will have to carry the burden of needing to try making these again as well, I suppose!

It was a great day to finish a great course, and as we left that day, full of trepidation at the week ahead and the weekend of revision needed to get through it, I am sure I was not the only one having the occasional headshake of disbelief at just how much we had learned so far. I am so glad to have blogged it all!

"You see, pidge..."

2014-04-03T21:11:00.001+01:00

"...when you're footloose and collar-free, well, you take nothing but the best!"
(Disney's 'Lady and the Tramp')

I am proud to declare that today, I made some beautiful food. Both to the eye and the palate. And, hopefully, some beautiful doughs. This we shall find out about tomorrow! The doughs in question were for brioche and for croissants. This weekend, it seems, I will mostly be eating French breakfast goods.

Bring it on.

Brioche dough is known as an 'enriched' bread dough as it contains a higher proportion of eggs, fat and sugar than other doughs. We made it by beating butter with sugar until very soft and loading this into a piping bag so that we could dose it carefully into our dough. We mixed fresh yeast with warm water and a little sugar, as well as beaten eggs. Meanwhile, we sieved strong bread flour and salt into a large bowl and gave this a good mix by hand, using a clawed hand. While still mixing, we gradually poured in the yeasty-watery-eggy mixture to make a sloppy dough. We piped the butter and sugar mixture in little by little, fully incorporating each addition into the dough. This dough can be made quite well in a mixer with a dough hook, and can be flavoured by mixing a flavoured butter through it, with additions such as dried fruits, saffron or cooked chestnuts as long as the quantities are kept consistent with the recipe. We left our dough to slowly prove in the fridge overnight and will finish our brioches tomorrow!

Next, we moved on to croissant dough. Croissants are made with a 'laminated dough', which means a dough is made and then layered up with butter. They are best made with French ingredients, we were told, as the French know what they are doing when it comes to their pastries! French butter, for example, will be more pure, meaning it can hold its shape at higher temperatures and it is also drier than English butter. We used French 'T45' flour, which is soft and relatively low in gluten. It is also best to ensure the flour used is no more than six months old, as it loses nutrients and natural sugars over time. So, first we made our dough by sieving the flour into a bowl and mixing through sugar, crumbled fresh yeast and then a little salt. To this we mixed in egg and milk beaten together and kneaded it a little before putting it into a lightly oiled bowl to prove it in the fridge for a couple of hours while we got on with other tasks.

One of these was to place a block of butter between two sheets of greaseproof paper and tap and roll it with a rolling pin until it was a rectangle about the size of an A5 piece of paper. This was kept at a cool room temperature. After the dough had proved a little in the fridge, we rolled it out to a rectangle that approximately measured the length of the butter rectangle in width, and three times the butter's width in length. Then we placed the butter on the dough so the two were facing the same way, meaning the butter spread oer half of the length of the dough and had a little perimeter around the three other edges. We folded the 'free' edge of dough one third over the rest of the dough, and the 'buttered' edge of dough that remained was then folded over this. Keeping up? At this stage we had a folded piece of dough with butter in the middle, vaguely resembling a massively yummy business letter. We chilled it like this for a short while to re-chill the butter a little. Keeping the worksurface dusted, but the top surface as dust-free as possible, we then rolled this dough out to stretch it into a rectangle a similar size as the first dough rectangle had been, with the 'twist' edges now becoming the longer sides of the rectangle. Then we repeated this folding process twice more, and put the dough in the fridge with a weight on top to stop it expanding too much during an overnight prove. We will also finish these tomorrow!

Two last things we did for tomorrow were to make a suet pastry, and a beef stew ready for steamed puddings tomorrow. Suet is basically "dessicated" fat, typically surrounding beef kidneys. That may sound gross enough to make you reach for the vegetarian version, but that is made with palm oil, responsible for massive deforestation. A tough call either way. We sieved self raising flour and added salt, chopped thyme and the suet, along with a little pepper. We then added in milk a little at a time to made a sticky dough, which we kneaded lightly to achieve a slightly smoother ball of dough which will also rest in the fridge until tomorrow. Suet dough should not be kept for more than one day as the flour will oxidise and it will turn grey! It can, however, be frozen. To make the beef stew, we seared chunks of rump steak in a hot pan with a little oil, before removing them to a casserole pan and using the pan to brown chunks of carrot, onion, celery and leek. We removed this to the same casserole, added a little more oil and chopped garlic to the hot pan before deglazing the pan with a little madeira. We had rehydrated some dried wild mushrooms in hot water before squeezing these dry and chopping them, and we added the remaining stock to the casserole, and the mushrooms went with the madeira along with thyme and a bay leaf. Everything then went into the casserole and was covered with veal stock before being brought to a simmer and put into the oven for four hours at 160°C.

= Some of my life I'll never get back

Finally, it was on to making lunch. Prep for this involved two rather tricky tasks. First, peeling walnuts. This job is a proper pain in the a***. Bring water to the boil and drop the walnuts in there before taking it off the heat and leaving them in there for at least 30 seconds. After this point they are painstakingly peeled using a turning knife, or your fingers, and a massive dose of patience! Once the walnuts were peeled, we made a caramel by heating sugar until it melted to a golden colour, took it off the heat and dipped the nuts into it using a cocktail stick to coat them in caramel.

The second job was to butcher pigeons to get the breasts ready for lunch. This was fairly similar to our duck butchery task a few weeks ago, only slightly fiddlier due to the facts that pigeons are considerably smaller than ducks, with teeny, snappable bones, and a likelihood of shot, bulletholes or broken wings. We removed the wing but kept the skin on the breast as well as the mini fillet as both keep the breast moist during cooking. Our last bit of prep was a celeriac remoulade which we made by chopping celeriac into matchstick pieces and salting while we mixed a little mayonnaise, wholegrain mustard, lemon, capers, seasoning and chopped chives. We rinsed the celeriac and mixed it through.

To cook the pigeon breast, we poured a little rapeseed oil into a hot pan and placed the salted breasts, skinside down, into the pan, applying a little pressure to prevent it curling up. After two minutes, we turned the breast over, added butter, a bashed garlic clove and some thyme to the pan and basted the breast continuously for a further two minutes. Then we rested the breasts while we prepared our plate.

Chef Tom had made a spiced apple jelly by mixing juice with agar agar and allowing it to set - I cut mine into discs. He also made an apple puree and apple pearls, by dropping the agar agar solution into cold olive oil, draining and rinsing the resulting pearls, and a tarragon oil powder by whisking tapioca maltodextrin through a little of the oil. A little carving of breasts, loading a chef ring with the remoulate, and artful arranging later, I loved how my lunch looked - almost as much as how it tasted!

Such a beautiful lunch deserves an equally beautiful dessert. Yesterday we made chocolate and cointreau mousse and glass biscuits, as well as a raspberry reduction made by simmering raspberries with a little water and sugar before straining through a fine sieve to remove pips. Chef had made raspberry pastilles by heating raspberry purée with sugar and pectin, lemon juice and liquid glucose up to 108°C. This had been chilled overnight and today was tipped onto a board coated in caster sugar and cut into pieces, before we were set loose to freestyle our plate.

I'm hoping tomorrow will look and taste just as delicious. Check back to find out!

My kind of sausage roll

2014-04-02T21:15:00.000+01:00

Today was our last day being taught by Chef Phil and it was just as much fun as ever. By now, we have reached the stage where banter flies back and forth all day between teacher and students, so when I ran out of ingredients and asked for help with a dish today, chef kindly donated some of his, but I was quick to point out that they weren't as nicely prepared as mine!

Most of the morning was dedicated to preparing an amazing lunch. Meanwhile, we were set separate tasks in groups and mine was to make veal stock. We roasted two huge veal knuckles until brown, turning halfway, then spread tomato puree and honey on them and roasted some more. These went into a pan and were covered with water while we browned a mirepoix (chunky cuts of carrot, onion, celery, leek and parsley stalks) in the oven. Once the water was simmering, we skimmed fat and impurities from the surface before adding the mirepoix to the pot and leaving it to 'talk to itself' all day, skimming the surface occasionally. At the end of the day, we allowed the stock to cool a little before straining it and storing it in the fridge.

Chef also demonstrated to us how to make a consommé with the venison stock we had made yesterday, by whisking egg white with finely chopped leek, carrot, celery and onion, a little tomato puree and herbs and stirring this into warm stock. The stock is brought to the simmer, stirring occassionally to ensure the egg does not stick to the bottom of the pan until the egg forms a 'cake' on top of the stock. At this point it is left there while the stock simmers for about 40 minutes so that the egg can absorb impurities from the stock, at which point it is passed through muslin. This can be served with finely chopped vegetables to make a broth, or a poached quails egg, or can have gelatin added to make a clear jelly to set in the base of a glass plate, or cut into cubes for a garnish.

Yesterday we had prepared and marinaded a loin of venison and today was eat day! Lunch had various components, as follows:
Pommes Anna - we placed a tatin tin in a hot pan, added a little oil and layered thinly-sliced potato discs in a circle before encouraging them to cook down in the pan. Once they had begun to sink in the pan and brown around the edges we added butter, seasoning and chopped thyme before repeating the process. Once the second layer looked to be browning around the edges we added even more butter, removed the tin from the pan, flipped the potato 'cake' and cooked it on the other side to brown to base. Once both sides were cooked the 'cake' was put on a baking tray ready to be reheated later.
Cabbage parcel - I have made a lovely pot-roasted partridge with chestnut, sage and sausagemeat-stuffed cabbage parcels a few times around Christmas, with great success, and as the recipe has disappeared from the interweb, you will have to trust me when I assure you of its deliciousness. Today's cabbage parcels were made by blanching cabbage leaves and using them as a wrapper for a stuffing of sautéed shallot, garlic, lardons and shredded cabbage. This was wrapped tightly in clingfilm into a ball and steamed for service.
Braised shallots - I peeled shallots and kept most of the root intact to prevent them from disintegrating before gently frying them in butter and oil, turning carefully once brown. When they had browned on both sides we added some of the venison stock from yesterday with a sprig of thyme and braised them further in the oven. Once they were tender we removed them from the pan and reduced the sauce a little to glaze them.
To serve with all of this we made a chocolate-infused jus by softening some finely chopped shallot and garlic before adding madiera and reducing this to a glaze. At this point we added venison stock and reduced it to a third of its volume before straining the sauce and further reducing it a little. We added seasoning to taste before a few Valrhona chocolate drops were melted into the sauce off the heat as well as a small knob of butter to add gloss and thicken.
The venison itself was seared on both sides before being wrapped in rolled puff pastry, trimmed to resemble a sausage roll, egg washed and baked at 200°C. Lunch today was one of my favourites yet on the course.

After lunch we made praline soufflés. Earlier in the day we had made pastry cream, which you may recall from profiterole day a little while ago. We mixed a little of this with some of yesterday's praline, before folding into this egg whites that had been whisked to stiff peaks with caster sugar. This mixture was gently poured into ramekins that had been brushed with melted butter (in upward strokes to encourage the egg to rise) and dusted with caster sugar. The surface of the mixture was levelled with a palette knife before the edge of the ramekin was wiped clean and then a little groove was created between mix and ramekin edge with a thumbtip. This went into the oven for 10 minutes while they rose beautifully before we dusted with icing sugar and ate straight away! Mine needed a more decisive 'thumbtrick' as they were a bit shy to rise, and one of mine looked more like a muffin when it came out! Still, I started out today planning to be less afraid of soufflés, and now I certainly am.

Ready for another dessert-fest tomorrow, we made a chocolate mousse by melting dark chocolate and orange juice in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water before stirring in cocoa powder and when cooled, adding egg yolks and Cointreau. We folded lightly whipped cream into the chocolate mix, followed, very gently, by eggs we had whisked with caster sugar to glossy stiff peaks. This was piped into chef rings bottom-sealed with clingfilm and will be chilled overnight.

We also made glass biscuits by melting butter, sugar and glucose together in a pan until melted before stirring in sifted flour. We cooled this mixture for a while until hardened before placing flattened marble-sized blobs on a baking sheet. After baking for four minutes at 180°C we removed them from the oven and place a silicon mat on top before rolling them really flat and baking for a further four minutes. At this point we quickly shaped or cut them as they rapidly cooled, into curves, bowls, shards and strips ready to decorate our plates tomorrow. Check back to see how they look!

Meat sweats

2014-04-01T22:07:00.000+01:00

Today we were taken through our paces by the inimitable Chef Phil, who we duly got stuck in with for group tasks like making a stock, having a go at large-scale butchery and helping make staff lunch for the next day. Yesterday's mock, as well as the fact we are now a month into the course, has got us working well as a team together so all in all, it was a good day.

Fred the fillet steak. 1/4/14 - 1/4/14. RIP.

We started the day with an enormous, beautiful and expensive beef fillet, ready for Steak Day. Phil explained that the fillet is an underused muscle, found underneath the sirloin ribs across the back of the animal. He pointed out that the muscle is particularly underused in castrated bulls, for obvious reasons.... The various cuts from the fillet were then explained - the chateaubriand at the wider end, the centre cut, used for fillet steak, beef wellington or steak tartare, the filet mignon towards the tapered end, and meat at the end of the fillet that can be used for stroganoff. Other cuts were mentioned too; the ribeye being the last cut from the forequarter before the sirloin (best eaten medium rare to medium due to its higher fat content), the sirloin, which is removed from the rib unless it is called a porterhouse, where it is left on the bone, and a T-bone having the sirloin on one side and the fillet on the other. The 'rump' is fairly self-explanatory; a rump steak is cut thinner than a fillet, as is a sirloin and should be cooked medium as the meat is tougher, but arguably more flavoursome due to its fat content.
We all took turns in trimming sinew from the fillet to get a feel for it and chef rolled it in clingfilm to give it a consistent shape before cutting it into fillets about 180g each and allowing us to pick our own steak. I called mine Fred. Fred had beautiful marbling and I felt very optimistic about our relationship.
We were to come back to making our amazing steak lunch later, so keep dribbling for just a little longer...

Next, we got onto a bit of venison butchery. Venison is a very lean meat with a gamier flavour than beef, only available during hunting seasons and shot in the head or heart at around 18 months old. Phil described good hunting practises and rationales and presented us with a venison saddle before demonstrating how to cut the meat from the carcass by cutting down the spine and carefully cutting the meat away from the ribs, allowing us each to have a go. Once the saddle meat had been removed, it was separated from the skin, trimmed of any sinew and the large cuts of meat were marinaded in a mix of red wine, crushed juniper berries, coriander seeds and peppercorns, chopped shallot and garlic and bruised bay and thyme. Smaller pieces were trimmed and tightly wrapped in clingfilm to give it a consistent shape, ready for use in canapes. The carcass bones were hacked into smaller pieces, roasted with a little oil to colour before honey and tomato puree were spread on the bones and roasted a little longer. Meanwhile we roasted a mirepoix (chunky cuts of celery, carrot, onion, leeks and parsley stalks) in one oven, and halved onions in another. The bones were covered in a good quantity of water, brought to a simmer and skimmed before the vegetables and aromats were added to make a stock that would carry on simmering throughout the day. It smelled amazing, and it was great to all take turns keeping an eye on it, skimming the surface to remove any impurities, adding water if necessary and sieving it at the end of the day. All being well, we will make a consomme with it tomorrow, which I am very much looking forward to!

Tomorrow we will make a soufflé (oh dear God! Soufflé!! The potential for catastrophic failure is HUGE!) and the base of this soufflé will be praline, which we made next. We toasted some hazelnuts in the oven before shaking vigorously in a closed tub to rub off their skins and finishing this process with a clean cloth. Then we melted some sugar in a pan until it began to caramelise and turn golden, at which point we added the hazelnuts and some almonds which we coated in the caramel, poured the praline out onto a baking sheet and allowed to cool. When the praline had hardened, we blitzed it to a crumb in a food processor. I may have had a cheeky taste *just to check* and found it delicious. So, what with marinaded venison saddle and praline soufflé, tomorrow is shaping up nicely.

Before we knew it, it was time to start pulling together our lovely steak lunch, the last of the dishes we had to learn for next week's assessments. We cut Maris Piper potatoes into even-sized chips which we triple cooked. Cook one is to bring them to a simmer for about 10 minutes, to the point where the edges are beginning to go a little translucent and the chips have a 'flop' developing. They are left to steam dry (not on paper, which will stick to them!) and cool a little before they are deep-fried at 120°C for cook two, drained on kitchen paper and reserved for 'go time', at which point they were deep-fried at 190°C (cook three) until golden for service with a sprinkle of salt. We peeled a large mushroom and removed the stalk (all trimmings going straight into that lovely stock), and roasted this on a bed of thyme stalks with some cherry tomatoes on the vine, having drizzled both with a little oil, salt and pepper and aged balsamic.

Fred went to a Very Good Place

To accompany our steak meal, we made a béarnaise sauce. Béarnaise sauce essentially has a hollandaise base, and for that reason it scared me. Note the past tense there. As of today, I can successfully make hollandaise and béarnaise! First, we reduced some tarragon vinegar (white wine vinegar with benefit!) with some very finely chopped shallot and peppercorns. We whisked egg yolks in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and added a little of the reduced vinegar before very slowly whisking in warm clarified butter until the sauce had thickened and was leaving ribbons. It is critical not to overheat the egg or it will scramble, not to add too much vinegar for the same reason and not to let it get too cool so that it doesn't solidify too much or fail to cook. Once the sauce is made, it should be kept warm until just before it is served, at which point chopped tarragon and chervil is stirred through.

Then, it was on to the steak! I oiled and salted Fred on both sides before placing him delicately in a rather hot pan and cooking him for two minutes on each side before adding butter to the pan and giving him a lovely bath. He then went onto a baking tray and into the oven for 3 minutes before a quick rest while the rest of the meal was pulled together. It. Was. Lush.

I might have had to finish this for dinner.
#firstworldproblems

As if that wasn't enough, we had to drag our meat-sweaty, food-comatose selves in from the sunshine to make bread and butter pudding for dessert! We buttered thick slices of bread that had been left to dry overnight and cut it into rounds, which we halved and layered up in a cappuccino cup along with some sultanas. We then made a custard base of milk, cream, egg, egg yolks, sugar and vanilla seeds and poured this on top of the bread. Leaving the pudding to absorb the custard at this point is crucial, and something that I have neglected to do before. After ten minutes or so, the custard can be topped up as it will have been absorbed into the bread. We put it in a deep oven tray in the oven and poured boiling water halfway up the cups before baking for about 40 minutes at 180°C. They puffed up quite a bit as they cooked, so once they were out of the oven and had cooled and settled a little, we topped them with a dusting of cocoa, cinnamon and icing sugar and tried to eat them! The inside was a lovely hug of squidgyness, with just the right level of sweet warm egginess. Presenting such a comfort food staple in this new way was great, and has given me a few new ideas!

Now, no beef-and-venison-butchery-steak-and-chips-and-breadandbutterpudding day would be complete if it wasn't for also making a cake. Gluten free, of course. We creamed butter and sugar, added in ground almonds and vanilla seeds before slowly mixing in beaten egg to avoid causing the mixture to split. We had zested a lemon and let it sit in lemon juice to infuse the oils, and at this point we strained the zest out and added it to the mix, along with a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice to taste. Polenta was folded in, along with a small amount of baking powder and the cake batter was piped into rings that had been buttered and coated in caster sugar. The little cakes took about 15 minutes in the oven at 200°C and we served them with sultanas that had been soaking in warm marsala all day.

Last job of the day was frosted hazelnuts. Quite scary, but really easy and pretty cool. Mix equal amounts of sugar and water and dissolve over heat before adding an equal amount of skinned hazelnuts. Keep heating and keep stirring. Eventually the water will evaporate and the sugar will return to its crystallised form, at which point you will need to stir lots to get the hazelnuts coated, and take the pan from the heat before pouring the nuts onto a baking tray to cool. Try not to set fire to the teatowel holding your pan, like I did. When something I'm a bit nervous about turns out not to be all that scary, I have to make it frightening somehow!

Speaking of frightening times, check back tomorrow to find out how that soufflé goes!

Wisely and slow..

2014-03-31T18:59:00.001+01:00

...they stumble that run fast."

(Friar Lawrence, Romeo and Juliet)

Today was our mock assessment, ahead of next week's course finale, a three-day fret-fest of three to four-course meals prepared, presented and served by us to our chef assessors.

I am no stranger to exams and assessment. I have even been known to willingly put myself through them when there is no requirement to do so. I am, however, strangely afflicted with an inability to grasp the fact that I am, in fact, being assessed. This is a good thing in that I don't tend to get flustered or panicked but a bad thing because I can sometimes fail to give my all in a way befitting of a be-all-and-end-all situation.

Today was just a practise, sure, but I spent time over the weekend preparing an elaborate prep list, and practised the recipes, and re-annotated fresh copies of them, and read around a bit for some technique hints. I felt pretty ready for today, and by and large, it showed.

Why on earth I felt the need to rattle through it all quite that fast then, I have no idea! Much to my surprise, I was the first out of the kitchen having prepared and presented all of my dishes and cleaned down my section. Not only was my prep list missing some ballpark time frames, it also missed words 'BREATHE! SLOW DOWN! TAKE YOUR TIME TO GET IT RIGHT!!' in thick red marker across the top. As well as a reminder to drink water. Had both of these been included, I wouldn't have left feeling quite so discombobulated.

First course was Vichysoisse, otherwise known as leek and potato soup. By this point in the course we can work out pretty well the 'purpose' for each recipe, be it knife skills, technique, heat control and so forth. Vichysoisse is not about how the vegetables are chopped up as much as other dishes, because the cooked ingredients are then blended. Which means the focus is the flavour, the texture and the presentation.

I was pleased with how my soup turned out, and prettyfied it well with nicely chopped chives and a drizzle of cream. However, during the course we had been told that straining the soup was not really that necessary unless the potato is undercooked, which I interpreted as 'don't strain the soup unless you've undercooked the potato'. Of course, when you blend a soup in a food processor there will inevitably be bits that escape in the initial surge of liquid up the sides of the jug, so straining just makes sense. Noted. Also, goodness me this soup can take some salt. I need to focus more on 'does this taste right?' rather than 'gosh I've put a lot of salt in already!'

Which also stands for my next dish, sweetcorn and chorizo à la française, with griddled chicken. My chicken was largely fine, cooked well and only a few tweaks needed with preparation, but the sweetcorn accompaniment needed to be more saucy, and more salty.

Tart tatin, however, I need a bit more practise with! Had I adopted a calmer approach, taken my time, been a bit more careful, the pastry would have been rolled thinner, the apple would have been cooked that fraction more and the whole thing would have been cooked more fully. If I hadn't been in such a frenzy, my vanilla mascarpone would not have been overbeaten to the verge of splitting, either. By the time I got to serving that (ironically enough, with not a plain caramel sauce, but a salted version, leaving all my salting til the end of the meal!) I was so disappointed that the cream had gone granular that I simply didn't bother presenting it nicely, and hence lost more marks than I could have.

But anyway. The point of a mock is to stop the 'Shoulda, woulda, coulda' before they start, and today did that very well. Tomorrow we learn our last assessment dish - steak and chips! This is not a week for those on a diet...

Chef hands

2014-03-28T21:43:00.000+00:00

It's an age-old dilemma. Countless workers in the hospitality and restaurant industries suffer variations of the same affliction, with little attention being paid to their plight. If you come into contact with someone suffering in this way, you will know about it soon enough, often without them even having to say a word. And you will likely make a judgement about their suffering, decide that it is self-inflicted, and let me tell you, this is unfair.

I write, of course, of the problem of going home after a hard day's work smelling like your job.

As I sit here and write this, I cannot remove the smell of fish from my hands. I have scrubbed. I have used a variety of antibacterial handwashes. I am pretty sure by now that I have found all of the errant fish scales seemingly growing from me, but I may stand corrected tomorrow, Sunday even. And I consider myself a rather clean person in general.

This is to say nothing of the pork grease that seems to have permeated from my hair to my underclothes. We made carrot cakes and lemon tarts today as well as the various piscatory and porcine delights, but to go home smelling of cinnamon and zesty citrus would be illogical, of course. Even the richly fragrant tomato, herby, garlicky bean stew would have been better, but no.

Anyway, I digress before I've even started. Today was the last day of week four, and marks the point at which we are two thirds through our course. From here, things start to get really tasty. On Monday we have a mock assessment, the first time that we will be left fully to our own devices to work our way through a three-course meal demonstrating our skills and our time management. Or areas where either need to be sharpened. A few more dishes to learn and skills to pick up and before we know it we will be in our final, assessment week and then thrust into the big wide professional cookery world. What happens when I get there, nobody knows.

We started today blitzing through a carrot cake. I have made a fair few of these in my life and until I have a piece of today's one, my favourite remains an Ottolenghi recipe from his first cookbook, with hints of coconut and a lightness from carefully folded meringue in the batter. Chef Rob is proud of his recipe, which has produced a beautiful-smelling cake and is the result of coarsely-grated carrot and wholemeal flour for texture, a moist sponge resulting from a dousing in citrus syrup and a good hit of cinnamon in the cream cheese frosting.

As soon as the cake was in the oven, we got onto making a tomato and bean stew, by deskinning and deseeding lots of tomatoes before getting them in a pan with some softened onion, garlic and herbs and letting them stew away for an hour or so with some chopped sundried tomatoes. Once this was bubbling away, we rolled out some lemon sweet pastry we had made yesterday, much in the same way as before, but with the addition of lemon zest, and lined a tart case ready for a lemon tart.
We also made the tart filling, by whisking together lemon juice and zest, eggs, caster sugar and cream. We let this sit for a while so that the lemon oils could infuse, and the cream could react with the acidity. Later, once it had reacted, we skimmed the surface to remove any scum and near-curdled cream, tasted how lemony it was before pouring into the tart cases which had been blind baked and trimmed. This was a tense moment, as the cases needed to be as watertight as possible, and the filling needed to be as clear as possible and filled as far up the case as we dared. We poured the filling into the cases while they were in the oven and baked them on a low temperature until they were set but had a good wobble. I am looking forward to my dessert after dinner tonight!

No peeking...

For lunch today, we had a surf and turf of sorts. We had A bit of pork belly left from Wednesday's roast that we reheated in a pan to give it a good edge of crackling, and served with it some of our tomato and bean stew, a panfried sardine and a couple of panfried scallops. When we prepared scallops earlier in the week they had not been delivered in their shell and today we had the chance to try preparing them again from scratch. It was quite an experience to have a scallop shell try to close on my fingers as I prised it open, and chef claims he could feel the scallop twitching in his hand once I had removed it.
We started by sawing a knife as close to the inside of the flat shell as possible. This releases the scallop from the shell, and this side becomes the presentation side. Once the shell is open any grit can be washed away if the scallop is a product of bycatch, as ours were today due to weather conditions making hand diving difficult. Then the whole of the inside of the shell can be removed with a spoon scraping from the outer edge of the shell inwards. The stomach sac, roe and 'skirt' around the scallop can be pulled away from the scallop along with any membrane. We cooked the scallops like yesterday, only today we also had a sardine in the pan!

I have never eaten sardines, so today was a bit of an experience. First, the head is removed, then the body cavity is opened, the guts removed and the cavity rinsed. Once the cut has been extended to the tail, the sardine can be butterflied by opening it on a board and pressing down along the spine to flatten it. The bones inside can largely be pulled away in one go, with the ribs needing to be cut out separately before the fillet is tidied up. The fin on the back of the fish needs to be cut out by removing a little keyhole of flesh from inside the fillet. We seasoned it, dusted it with flour and panfried it skinside down first before flipping over one the flesh had started to cook. As I discovered, sardines taste a little like mackerel, but they will still need a little getting used to! We served our lunch with a mustard sauce made be reducing a little fish stock before heating cream through it, along with a little mustard, chopped chives and seasoning. An obligatory 'monter au beurre' to thicken, and it became a delicious accompaniment to an already lovely lunch.

After lunch, we filleted a lemon sole. This was very similar to the plaice we had filleted earlier in the course, and as we were all so full, chef demonstrated how to finish the dish before letting us take the completed fillets home. We will brown pine nuts in a pan before adding butter and allowing it to cook to a beurre noisette - a nice, toasted nutty stage once the milk solids have sizzled. Then we will stir through brown shrimp, rosemary, seasoning and lemon juice before serving it over the lemon sole which will have been oven roasted back in it's fishy shape.

That, however, will be a meal for another day. I need to wait for my hands to smell normal again before I tackle that one!

A veritable surf and turf of dishes!

2014-03-27T22:50:00.001+00:00

Week four has not been too technique-heavy, so today I am letting you know about two whole days worth of fun. Get ready for lots of pictures!

Having humanely dispatched Dave the crab, before giving him an aromatic hot tub wake with his mates, it was time to pick his brains. An ingenious idea to photograph this over timelapse failed (technology, eh?) so if you'd like to see the process described below in action, I'd suggest a more thorough YouTube search than I've done, as I can't find one I'm happy to endorse! To prepare a crab like Dave, you will need a large knife you don't mind ruining and a crab pick, and a couple of containers for the white and brown crab meat.

Dave's demise awaits behind him...

First, the legs are removed by pulling them in towards the centre of the body. The bottom two joints can be removed and retained for stock, whilst the joint closer to the body can be opened by placing it on it's curve on a board and tapping it sharply with the back of the knife, before removing the meat within. Then the claws are removed by getting your thumbs behind their top joint and pulling them in towards the body. The joint closest to the body can be removed from the claw with a firm twist, whilst the next two are a little harder to separate but get there with a little brute force! The moveable pincer can be twisted off and the meat removed, and the rest of the claw meat can be removed by tapping the shell firmly with the back of a heavy blade and picking it out. The meat from all of this so far is white.

Next, the body. By now you will be left with a shell with a honeycomb-like structure underneath. This is called the box or purse, and it can be removed by placing thumbs below it and pushing it up towards the head. From this, the lungs, or 'dead man's fingers' - which are not poisonous, just not particularly pleasant, need to be removed, along with the film-like membrane, which is the diaphragm. Remove the face of the crab by pushing up and outwards with your thumbs from below and behind it. Spoon out the brown meat from the shell. If you were dressing the crab, you could tidy the shell at this point by using a teatowel on top of the open shell and gently pushing the inside rim of shell into the cavity to break it along a natural line to tidy it. Nature's clever that way. You could also make a ring from two of the small legs by inserting them into each other, making a little trivet for Dave's shell to rest on.

Using a teaspoon handle, twist the top leg joints from the box to remove them, and pick out the meat. You can then use the heavy knife to cut the box in half, and have a ball picking all the meat from its honeycomb structure. There will be some brown meat on top and white meat behind. And then, you will be done! The brown meat can be blended in a food processor and passed through a fine sieve, and used to flavour a vinaigrette for a seafood salad, or as the filling for savoury profiteroles, or beignets, or can be stirred through a bisque, risotto, bouillabaisse or chowder. Spread the white crab meat on a tray and very carefully pick your way through it all at least three times to remove all traces of shell.

Chef pointed out this was quuite a lot of salsa.
But so tasty!

We mixed white crab meat with half the quantity of brown meat, finely chopped shallot and chives, an egg yolk, a little cayenne and seasoning before blending with water biscuits ground down into a crumb to make slightly moist crab cakes that held themselves together. The biscuit crumb acts as a binding agent, but anything neutral would work, such as chickpeas, flour, oatmeal biscuit crumbs or breadcrumbs. We panfried our crabcakes in clarified butter but rapeseed oil could be used, and we served them with a salsa of pineapple, chilli, lime zest and juice, coriander, shallot and garlic.

Staying with the fish theme, we learned how to prep squid and scallops today. The scallops were incorrectly delivered already out of their shells, so we didn't learn how to do this stage of preparation. Good scallops should be slightly pearlescent, not white, as this shows they have been stored in salted water and slightly cured. We removed the muscle that attaches the scallops to the shell, which takes with it a small ring of membrane/muscle around the scallop. We removed the coral, as this cooks slightly slower than the scallop. If you can see any dark areas on the coral, use the back of the knife to push them out, as this will be leftover products of digestion! Don't wash the scallops, as they will absorb water and become soggy, and don't store them on paper towel as this will dry them.

We prepared whole squid by gently pulling the head and tentacles away from the body, before cutting just below the eyes and removing the beak right at the top of the tentacles, and cutting them into even bite-sized lengths. Then it was onto the body. The plastic-like cartilage can be gently pulled out, along with any remaining stomach sac or innards. The squid wings tend to cook quite tough so can be removed from the body, along with any dark membrane on the surface. Then, HOW COOL IS THIS! - We turned the squid body inside out by pushing the tip through to the base with the top of a wooden spoon handle! We cleaned the inside and removed any membrane before finding the 'seam' and cutting the tube open along this. We gently scored the inside of the squid tube as it is more delicate, by gently running the knife in a criss-cross over the inside surface of the tube a few millimeters apart. The butterflied tube was cut into four squares with tidied edges.

The scallops were seasoned and panfried in clarified butter at a medium heat, when they caramelised on one side we turned them. It is easy to overcook them and they should be pearlescent in the middle. They should only take about 45 seconds on each side. Once cooked, they were kept warm on kitchen paper and the heat was turned up. The squid and the coral both take about 45 seconds to cook and the squid will curl up with the scored side outwards, which makes for great presentation. Lemon juice was squeezed over the scallops and squid, which were also seasoned, and we served them with pea puree (cook frozen peas for 5 minutes, drain and blend with a little cooking liquid), fried quails eggs (cook them from cold, and gently!) and parma ham crisps (bake at 150°C with another baking sheet on top and cut into shape once cool).

Fishy lunch, and also a fishy dinner! We made salmon en croute by butterflying open a salmon fillet after removing the skin before stuffing it with chopped cashews, sunblush tomatoes, fresh anchovy fillets, olives and lemon zest, basil leaves and seasoning. We brushed two halves of a sheet of filo pastry with rapeseed oil, layering them up and wrapping the salmon so that the seams were underneath, trimming as necessary to avoid excessive layering. We sprinkled this with poppy seeds and baked it for ten minutes, flipping it topside-down after eight. We served with this a blanched, deskinned, hollowed out tomato filled with a pesto we had made by grinding together basil leaves, garlic, toasted pine nuts, parmesan, lemon juice, olive and rapeseed oils and seasoning in a pestle and mortar, and baked for the last two minutes of salmon cooking time. We cut the salmon parcel open to plate it displaying the stuffing.

Ready for some meat? Yesterday we made pork Holstein. This starts life as a pork escalope, which starts life as a pork tenderloin. After trimming the tenderloin to remove sinew, fat, and membrane, we stood it upright so that all the meat fibres were vertical, between two sandwich bags, and flattened them with a meat hammer. We then pané'd the escalope by dunking in flour, then an eggwash, then fine panko breadcrumbs, as we had our plaice goujons. This was panfried in butter and a little oil, once the sizzling had stopped. While this drained on kitchen paper, we fried a duck egg in the oil (be careful not to use too high a heat, like I did, and burn some escalope crumbs!), and plated up the buckwheat salad we had made earlier. This was a mix of buckwheat cooked in vegetable stock, chopped deskinned and deseeded tomato, spring onion, parsley and coriander with lemon juice, seasoning and olive oil. We made a beurre noisette by cooking butter until it stops foaming and then turns nutty and brown, and stirred through capers off the heat, along with chopped parsley and lemon juice. As per tradition, the Holstein is decorated with a criss-crossed anchovy.

For a lighter dinner option last night, we made a full roast dinner. Having braised our pork belly (not our own, although four weeks into the course, things are definitely heading that way!) on Tuesday, it was time to roast it. But first, the accompaniments. We learned how to 'turn' our vegetables into nice, high-end restaurant shapes - and that we need a lot of practise to get this right! We cut potatoes into beautiful seven-sided pointed barrels, carrots into flower-shaped slices, and parsnips into curve-sided mini-spearheads. We blanched cauliflower florets before making a roux (cooking out butter and flour) and loosening into a sauce with milk (making a béchamel), before stirring through grated cheddar (making a mornay). We coated the cauliflower in the mornay sauce and put it in a dish, sprinking with parmesan ready to bake at the same time as the belly pork after browning all sides in a hot pan with some rapeseed oil, on top of some parchment paper to stop it sticking to the pan. We boiled the potatoes for about 10 minutes until just cooked, in salted water before draining and allowing to steam, and blanched the parsnips for about a minute and a half. Then we fried the potatoes in duck fat until brown, added the carrots to the pan before covering with a cartouche of parchment with a steam hole, and putting this into the oven along with the pork and cauliflower cheese for 15 minutes at 200°C.
While they were in the oven, we made an apple and tarragon sauce by cooking out apple cubes with a splash of apple juice until the cubes began to break down, before adding sugar to taste and stirring through chopped tarragon. We cooked the parsnips by pan frying in duck fat until they started to colour before adding a little honey to the pan. And the gravy! Of course the gravy. We had been cooking the juices from braising the pork belly with added beef stock, having fried off a mirepoix and reducing red wine in the pan after the vegetables had coloured. Once this had reduced, we strained it and thickened with cornflour and water. All of this had to come together at the same time, and we presented it beautifully. It was the most glamorous roast dinner I have ever seen! I must say that being taken through this dish by Tom Ewings has inspired me as well as giving me the fear of God when it comes to thinking about my presentation and level of technique skills for assessment week! A weekend of practise awaits....

A case of crabs

2014-03-25T19:33:00.000+00:00

We had Rob Dawe back today, unexpectedly but gladly. Today promised to be a little calmer than yesterday, with a shorter prep list, but with some brand new skills I was looking forward to picking up.

We started off with lots of pork! We prepped pork belly in pairs by scoring the skin with very sharp knives, not to cut through to the flesh but to create a lovely crackling for when we roast the meat later in the week. We sprinkled this liberally with salt, rested the meat in a roasting tin on top of a bed of chunks of carrot, celery, onion and leek, along with thyme, smashed cloves of garlic and broken up star anise. We topped the tin up with water up to the top of the vegetables, covered the meat with baking parchment and foil before putting the meat into the oven at 150°C for 5 hours. Belly pork is an economical cut - 800g will cost about £4 - but it is worth remembering that it will lose about 1/3 of its volume in the cooking process, so a piece this size would make two portions. The meat can also be cooked as a confit to make pork rillettes. Once the meat had cooked, we removed rib bones, cartilage and excess fat layers underneath before wrapping the meat in portions in clingfilm. It will be pressed overnight in the fridge by placing a tray on top of it with a pestle and mortar, and we will roast it for lunch tomorrow.

Pork tenderloin, before.

Next we prepped pork tenderloin. The tenderloin is pork's equivalent of a fillet of beef, found nestled underneath the cannon, below the spine and within the ribs. A whole tenderloin weighs about 800g and would serve about 4 people at a cost of around £8. We removed fat and sinews, and those who had a 'chain' strip of meat attached to their piece of tenderloin removed it. We made a cut about halfway down the meat along its length before making secondary cuts a quarter of the way down this first cut in order to open up the meat. We spread chopped sage, lemon zest, salt and pepper into the opened-up meat before tying the meat three times and browning it in a hot pan with a little rapeseed oil and butter.

The tenderloin was laid on top of a bed of sliced shallot, garlic and fennel, small wedges of apple and sprinkled with thyme. We were making parcels with our meat so this all happened atop a square of parchment and a big piece of foil. We folded out parchment over the meat, then the foil and sealed two of the three ends of the parcel. After pouring away any excess fat, we deglazed our meat-sealing pans with a little cider before pouring this into the parcel and sealing the remaining edge. The parcels would be put into the oven when the accompaniments were ready. Cooking food in a bag is a great way to retain a lot of flavour and moisture, and can easily be prepared in advance, ready to go in the oven and be served with a bit of theatre at the table for your guests. This can be done with a lot of meats, such as chicken, and fish, particularly non-oily fish that take on flavours well, and all sorts of aromatics, such as lemongrass, chilli, lime and a variety of vegetables can be used.

One of the accompaniments for the tenderloin was potato dauphinoise, which is one of our assessment dishes. King Edward or Maris Piper potatoes are used and sliced very thinly (this could be done using a mandolin or even a peeler, but we are being tested on our knife skills!) before being layered up in a small buttered dish with a little seasoning in between each layer. Meanwhile, we heated cream and milk with a smashed clove of garlic until it boiled before taking it off the heat and allowing it to infuse. We were making individual portions to practise for our assessment, but this could be done in a large dish, with portions cut out later. The large dish would also have to be buttered, and if it is also lined with parchment the finished dauphinoise can be lifted out when cold to cut and reheat. The dish can also have the addition of cheese or be adapted by substituting 40% of the potato for other vegetables such as sweet potatoes, parsnips or butternut squash. Once the layers had been built up, we strained enough of the infused cream over them to cover before baking for 45 minutes, pressing the potatoes down into the cream every 15 minutes. Once the dauphinoise had cooled, we used a cutter to cut a tower out of the dish and put it on the same baking tray as our pork parcel to cook in the oven for 10 minutes at 200°C.

Once the pork had had its time in the oven, we snipped a corner of the bag, poured the cooking juices into a pan and started to reduce it vigorously. Earlier in the day we had blanched and refreshed broccoli and now we reheated it in a little water before adding spinach to the pan to wilt in the heat. When the sauce had reduced, we added cream and took it off the heat before adding butter to 'monter au beurre'. The tenderloin had its strings removed before being carved and presented with its accompaniments. I kept the spare bits aside from my presented plate but decided once I had tasted it that it was too delicious to last until the journey home!

Believe me I was more impressed at the prospect than I look

After lunch we became CRAB KILLERS! I have long wanted to prepare crab from start to finish and today we began that process. Crabs cannot legally be removed from the sea until they have a shell span of 12cm, which takes them three to four years. Chef showed us how to identify boy and girl crabs and explained that for sale, the tendons of a crab's claws are often severed between them to make the crab easier to handle. Ours hadn't been through this process and chef recounted tales of students flailing round the room in past classes with a crab fervently attached to fingers. A crab's claws are strong enough to cut these off!

Trying not to get grabbed!

Our crabs were about 1.3kg and would have cost about £8-9. I called mine Dave. Ashburton has a special machine to kill crabs, lobsters, langoustines and Dublin Bay prawns in milliseconds by electrocution in a salt bath, which ensures optimal conduction of the current. The process also kills bacteria in the crab and tenderises the meat.
I have never held a live crab, and jumped out of my skin when I was tentatively reaching into the box of crabs and one of them had a shuffle. The trick is to stay well clear of the claws and to hold them upside down.

Checking that Dave had passed into crabby heaven

By the time my group had our turn with the stun-a-crab-omatic, they had been out of the fridge long enough to really wake up and mine was not impressed at being put into a machine. Tough, mate, sorry. I closed the lid and after a few seconds it was over. This is the most humane way to kill the crabs, the second best being to put them in the freezer for 30 minutes before putting them straight into boiling water.

Dave's demise

Apparently it is now trendy for chefs to cook crabs from cold water, as this is more likely to keep the claws intact, but this takes much longer to kill them and they suffer.

Once Dave had joined the crab king upstairs, he went into a pot of boiling water with his mates and sliced lemon, onion, fennel and celery with bay leaves, star anise and black peppercorns. We cooked them for 20 minutes before leaving them to cool in a sink full of cold water. Apparently it is not too much of a problem to cook crabs for a little too long, but lobster is very easy to overcook. The crabs were stored face down, vertically in the fridge so that water within their shells didn't sit inside and stagnate overnight.

In between our porky tasks earlier, chef had demonstrated how to make pannacotta by heating equal quantities of milk and cream before adding honey, then stirring through gelatine leaves that had been soaked in water. 1g of gelatine is enough to set 100ml of liquid and our recipe called for just short of these proportions because, as chef said, we needed 'to live on the edge' and our pannacotta had to have a good amount of wobble. Once the mixture had cooled, we stirred through greek yoghurt and poured the mixture into mini plastic pudding basins, otherwise known as dariole moulds. These were set in the fridge for as long as we could during the day, and chef moved them to the freezer for a little additional chill as he was concerned that they needed a little longer to set properly than we actually had. We glazed fig pieces in a reduction of orange juice, sugar, orange blossom water and orange zest before roasting for five minutes at 200°C. We reduced the remaining glaze down to a syrup to decorate the plate. Getting the pannacottas out of their moulds was tricky! We carefully used knives to loosen the edges and then very gently used fingers to try to create an air pocket before inverting them over the plate and letting them slowly release themselves.

We served the pannacotta and the figs with tuille biscuits. After seeing them on The Great British Bakeoff so many times I was very much looking forward to having a go and am pleased to report that they are not as tricky as the contestants made it seem! We made the batter by creaming equal quantities of everything - first egg whites and sugar before mixing in sifted flour and then slowly trickling in melted and cooled butter. We added vanilla seeds to our mix but other flavours could be used, such as lime zest or by substituting 10g of flour for cocoa powder or ground nuts. We chilled the batter for a while before piping long strips of it onto a baking sheet and using the back of a wet spoon to create a circle of batter. The batter was cooked in batches for five minutes at 180°C until lightly golden. Once they are taken out of the oven you have 15 seconds at most to use asbestos fingers to shape strips around wooden spoon handles and to squeeze the circles between two pastry tins to make cups. They set very quickly but if you are too slow they can be popped back into the oven for a few moments to re-soften.
Templates can be made using ice cream tub lids and batter can be spread in the cut out area using a palate knife. The biscuits can be kept for one day before they will go soggy, and are best stored in an airtight tin with rice to absorb moisture. Savoury versions can be made by using glucose instead of sugar and including parmesan. I ate this before I left school today, which means having yesterday's tiramisu for dessert after my leftover pizza for dinner tonight is fine, right? Right?

La Dolce Vita

2014-03-24T23:26:00.000+00:00

Today could have been subtitled 'The One Where They Cover Italy'. By the end of the day, I wouldn't have been surprised to see classmates gesticulating wildly to express how the day had gone, before knocking back an espresso and driving off in a Fiat 500.

We started the day by making pasta dough and pizza/focaccia dough. We made the pasta dough as we had waaay back in week two, divided it into three and set it aside while we made dough for pizza and focaccia. This was much like the bread dough for the white rolls we had made back in week one, with perhaps a slightly lower yeast to flour ratio, and making a slightly wetter dough. I will need to ask chef about this because the resulting dough was very puffy, just like you would want it to be!

We made two pasta fillings for the various shapes we would be making today - confit duck, and spinach and ricotta. The confit duck legs we had prepared last week were in the oven at 50°C just to melt the fat they were submerged in so that we wouldn't have to dig them out. We peeled away the skin and reserved this to make duck scratchings later. The meat was tender enough to fall away from the bone, and as we removed the meat we carefully ensured the bloodline was also discarded along with the bones as it can be stringy. The meat was finely chopped and softened shallots and a little aged balsamic vinegar. To make the spinach and ricotta filling, we wilted the clean spinach in a hot dry pan before gently squeezing excess water from it in a colander and drying it on kitchen paper. The spinach was then finely chopped and mixed with ricotta, a little parmesan and grated nutmeg. The parmesan should be added carefully so that you don't end up with a filling that tastes overwhelmingly of parmesan, like ours. This will affect the seasoning as the cheese is salty, so it is possible that only pepper will be needed.

Next we were onto the fun bit. We rolled pasta sheets as before, keeping them stick-free with semolina. We made tortelli and tortelloni with the spinach and ricotta filling by cutting the pasta sheet into squares and one by one, spooning a little filling onto the centre of a square of pasta, brushing the top half edges of the square with water, folding the bottom half up to meet the top half, using thumbs and little fingers to seal the filling as neatly and closely to the pasta as possible (no air bubbles!) before using the blunt end of a small cutter to 'seal' the filling in place. Next we cut the pasta into semicircles with about 1cm of 'clear' pasta around the filling using a larger cutter, flipped it over and brought the corners together to make the recognisable 'belly button' shape. (You can see a few pictures to demonstrate the technique more clearly at this site).

With the duck filling, we made ravioli. Ravioli is different in that it is made with two squares of pasta rather than one. We placed a nicely compacted nugget of the meat in the centre of a square of pasta, brushed all edges with water and enclosed the filling with another square of pasta instead of a fold. The square was then cut to neaten, and I crimped the edges with the tines of a fork. Both sets of pasta were set to one side while we got on with our dough. The third ball of pasta was cut into tagliatelle strips ready for later, dusted with semolina to stop it sticking and kept to one side.

By this point our pizza / focaccia dough was nicely proven. We knocked it back and cut away one third to make our pizzas with. Whilst somehow, I managed to make a pretty good circle by rolling my dough and turning it repeatedly, before stretching it a little with my hands and allowing its own weight to weigh it down, it was a fairly small circle, which became an issue later. Chef had made a lovely tomato sauce by bubbling away several kilos of different tomatoes with onion, garlic and herbs for a few hours, and we used this as our pizza sauce, before topping with prosciutto, breseola, salami and mozzarella. This went into the oven at 250°C for about 12 minutes, until the base was nice and dry. And here came the issue. My pizza base was quite small, and hence puffed up, meaning it was thick and took quite a long time more than others to cook, by which time the toppings were in danger of overcooking. Deep pan pizza and then some! The dough was perhaps slightly undercooked but I loved it as one of my own all the same.

Next up was the focaccia. I rolled this out as one large focaccia, which I then covered with indentations with my fingers. What was supposed to be a liberal coating of olive oil became a bit too literal when the top of the olive oil bottle popped off as I was squeezing. Can't have too much olive oil, I suppose? I pushed black olives into some of the indentations, along with mini sprigs of rosemary, and sprinkled a liberal dose of flaky salt on top before leaving it to puff up with a second prove under oiled clingfilm. Once they were nicely proved, they went into the oven for about 20 minutes at 200°C, with water poured in the bottom of the oven to create steam. We took this home for dinner. It will keep for about 3 days but if it's not being eaten straight away it will need a little sprinkle of water and some time in a warm oven to bring it closer to its former glory to eat.

While all of this was going on, we were also preparing our duck ravioli to have with our pizzas for lunch. We melted butter in a hot pan until it had stopped sizzling and foaming, at which point we added chopped hazelnuts and sage leaves, allowing them to become crisp in the hot oil. In a separate pan, we heated a little oil in a fairly hot pan and fried salted strips of the duck skin we had kept to one side earlier until they were crispy before draining on kitchen paper. When the butter had darkened a little, becoming a beurre noisette, we squeezed in a little lemon juice. By now, of course, we had also cooked our ravioli in a large pan of salted water until it was nicely al dente, and the pasta could just about be split by a thumbnail - very important not to make any holes in the pasta shapes before or during cooking as the filling will leak out and /or become soggy when cooking. The ravioli were removed to drain, plated and the sage and hazelnut butter was spooned on top, before topping with the duck scratchings.

After lunch, we rolled back into the kitchen to make some dishes for feedback. First up was tagliatelle carbonara. We cut and fried some bacon lardons to brown gently before adding a pureed garlic clove (I can now puree garlic with a knife. Skillz.) Meanwhile the pasta is cooked in a large pan of salted water, and time to be ready once the garlic has cooked. The pasta was drained, retaining the water so it can go back into the pan for the next pasta batch. The pasta was added to the bacon / garlic pan, followed swiftly by parmesan, chopped parsley which were stirred together. We then took the pan off the heat and stirred a mixture of egg yolk and double cream through. The egg acts to thicken the sauce and enrich it, and the cream stops the egg from cooking. We seasoned to taste and presented to chef. He seemed fairly happy with mine, commenting that the sauce could have been a little thinner, and that some of my pasta had clumped together, meaning it wasn't thoroughly cooked. I think it was a little on the wet side as a dough, which meant it stuck together when I cut it into tagliatelle, and pulling the strands apart 'stressed' them, making them crinkly! He did, however, comment that the sauce had 'great flavour', and after having it for dinner I incline to agree!

Alongside this, we made a gorgonzola sauce for our spinach and ricotta tortelloni. We sweated a very finely chopped shallot in a little butter, adding salt to stop it colouring, until it was soft, before adding a little wine and reducing this until it was just a glaze, at which point we added chicken stock and reduced it by two thirds. This took aaaages, and I should have transferred it to a larger pan sooner to speed up the process. If the wine hadn't reduced, the sauce would taste sour and be unfixable. The stock reducing is also key to the flavour and consistency of the finished sauce. Once it had reduced, we stirred through cream, and added a walnut-sized piece of gorgonzola once the pan was off the heat, much in the same way as butter is used to thicken a sauce and add gloss. When I tasted my sauce I worried I had added too much cheese but chef commented that I could have had more. On the flipside, the over-parmesan-ed filling I was worrying about earlier went down well.

Chef was not happy with our performance for the presentation dishes. Not to say that we hadn't presented them well, or that they tasted as they should, but rather that what should have been a 30 minute set of tasks took us over an hour. This would not be acceptable in a professional kitchen and we have to work on our time management, especially now we are over half way and have assessment approaching. I was really disappointed but he was absolutely right. I feel confident that I lined up my tasks - what to chop when, what to start cooking when - well, and I never had anything sitting waiting for an ingredient or overcooking, which I am pleased with. I could have cooked my shallot faster, and in turn, got my chicken stock reduced quicker, as this really held me up. It was a sobering moment for all of us, and gave us something to think about this evening.

Chef made a tiramisu for us to take home (today's doggy bags were bin liners!) by layering up sponge fingers liberally splashed with Tia Maria and drizzled with strong coffee, a vanilla custard whisked with mascarpone and double cream, cocoa and grated 72% Valrhona chocolate, and chilling the whole thing for a few hours. It was designed to be a special treat for a long day. I'm saving mine for tomorrow, which I am determined will all go to plan! Well, maybe I could have just a little taste now...

Half Way House

2014-03-23T11:56:00.000+00:00

Half way day was bittersweet. I have this thing where, rather than getting 'Sunday blues', I hit a low on Fridays. I think it's a combination of tiredness from the week and an unconscious pessimism at the possibility I won't achieve everything I want to from my weekend, that before I even start my two days off, I've somehow failed it already. If you know me, you'll know that this makes no sense. I may not always get through everything on all of my unachievable mental lists but I am always on the go, always trying to get the most out of my time, even if that means having a much-needed lie in. I'm not one for watching much TV, for example - I'm much more likely to wait until the din of approval at a series or programme is so hard to ignore that I know it's something worth watching. I'm a guerrilla researcher, always absorbing and trying to learn as much as I can about something, reading around a subject, and I am proud of my ability to merge knowledge when it comes to my cooking. My time is precious and there to be maximised. So, on Friday I felt a bit low, and whizzed through tasks without as much thought as I'd like, feeling distracted, perhaps at the prospect of having a two-day pause in all this learning, perhaps in the knowledge that while I still have half of this course's knowledge to absorb, I'm already half full.

We started the day with a quick recap theory lesson, which entailed us trying to label the component parts of a sheep with much initial bewilderment - whilst most of us correctly labelled 'head', 'chump' and 'breast' eluded a few. I learned that 'sweetbreads' are the thyroid and pancreatic glands of the animal (delightful) - having previously thought they were just to do with the nads. I also learned that Rick Stein's family-friendly 'crispy lamb' dish was in fact tongue. We were set some weekend reading about bread, ice cream and fish filleting and got on with the day.

First up were chocolate fondants (hooray!). A proper, dead good chocolate fondant is a light, chocolatey sponge on the outside and a puddle of silken chocolate goo on the inside. For me, it's been subject of many a 'will it? won't it?' moment as you cut into it and hope to see the liquidey reward. Rather than make our greased and dusted fondants in ramekins as the recipe suggested, we lined chef rings with parchment - no need to seal off the bottoms (loose-bottomed cake tins and the like always make me nervous - there's nothing worse than seeing something you've put love and care into seeping out of a baking tin in the oven). We melted chocolate and butter in a bain marie and allowed to cool slightly; we made a plain fondant but this is the point at which flavours could be added by infusing things like chilli, mint, basil or cinnamon into the chocolate. We whisked eggs and egg yolks together with sugar until they were thickened before lightly folding in the chocolate. Interestingly, it was important not to over-aerate the egg yolks, and not necessary to do any more than marble the chocolate through the mix as over-aerating the batter makes a light sponge, which would cook more quickly due to the higher air content and therefore dry out. Sifted flour was then folded in and we poured the mix ito our moulds and chilled them. This makes the centre of the batter cooler which in turn makes it cook slower than the outside of the fondant.

Meanwhile, chef made raspberry and champagne sorbet by mixing fruit puree with sugar syrup, stirring in champagne and putting in an ice-cream maker. We were told that, as all fruits have a different water and sugar ratio, they all need different amounts of syrup to fruit to make a sorbet that is smooth, crystal-free and not too granular. A bit of research when I got home reveals this to be quite a complicated science, involving both the baume scale, which is to do with the density of liquids (such as in fruit), and the brix scale, which is the sugar content of a solution. In short, the water and sugar content of a lemon is different to that of a peach, and this means their sorbet recipes will be different. This page shows some related information for commercial fruit purees to give you an idea.

Science lesson over. While we were waiting for our fondants to chill and our sorbet to freeze, we filleted a seabass. As you do. This was fairly similar to the gurnard we filleted earlier in the week (I have definitely had my dose of fish this week!) as we had to remove a fair bit of the fillet and snip it free by using scissors to cut through the rib bones. We will be assessed on our seabass filleting techniques in a couple of weeks time and as such I had a bit more practise this weekend.

The weekend practise was a lot more stressful, however, as the fish I bought needed to be gutted (no major issue there, I can handle that) descaled (aaargh! this was not factored into my assessment recipe practise schedule, was incredibly messy and I am still finding scales in my hair, clothes and stuck to my skin) filleted without a fish filleting knife and pinboned without the use of tweezers. Anyway, on Friday it was much easier, the fish had been gutted and scaled - although we still needed to check, and we had all appropriate equipment to get the job done. Once we had our fillets, we cut one into sections to pan fry later, and cut the other into very thin slices to make a carpaccio starter.
Carpaccio is a dish using spankingly fresh meat or fish, perhaps dressed, but not cured with lemon or lime juice as a ceviche would be. We practised our knife skills by cutting the slices without them being too thick, or going through the skin, or even by cutting through the fish's blood line and making the slices unattractive. We made a citrus dressing by mixing orange and lemon juice with olive and rapeseed oil, seasoning and a little icing sugar to take the sour edge off, and painted the slices with this before constructing the dish. We dressed the plate with mixed leaves, capers and cornichons and a little extra dressing.

This was our first course of the day - it was really delicious and I was surprised to find that seabass flesh has a certain sweetness to it that I didn't expect. Our next course was pan-fried seabass with a mussel cockle, pea and wild mushroon fricassee. We sweated sliced shallot and garlic before adding the shellfish we had carefully cleaned, added a little stock to the pan and allowed them to cook while we fried off a combination of wild mushrooms we had cleaned and prepared - oyster, bluefoot, chanterelle, chestnut and cluster mushrooms all found within ten miles of the school.

Surreptitious parsley use to cover up loss of skin

We added peas to the shellfish and a little butter, chopped parsley and then the mushrooms with a squeeze of lemon. This was served with the seabass, which we started cooking skinside down in a hot pan with a layer of rapeseed oil. The trick is to wiggle the fillet in the pan so that it doesn't stick, and not to overcrowd the pan. My cooking partner and I failed on both counts so we lost most of the skin on our fish, but it was cooked beautifully. I managed a lot better with this when I practised at the weekend, although I will need a bit more practise so that I can achieve crispy skin too!

Soon it was dessert time, which means back to those fondants! We cooked ours for about eight minutes at 220°C, by which time the top had risen slightly and dried out. We took them out of their chef rings as soon as possible so that they did not continue to cook. Presentation was a bit of fun, and we had chocolate paint, freeze-dried raspberries, blitzed chocolate 'soil' and cocoa powder to play with. It tasted as good as it looks and the centre was beautifully gooey! Unlike the rosewater ice cream earlier in the week, I didn't secure my ball of sorbet with the freeze dried raspberries, so I had to chase it over the plate to eat!

Last job of the day was to prepare a duck breast with a beetroot salsa. Top tip of the day? Cook duck breast in a cold pan. It will render so much fat that it doesn't need any to start with, and if you start cooking it in a hot pan the skin will burn. Actually, today I'm feeling generous and you can have two top tips. When cooking duck breasts, use the 'rule of six' as a guide. Six minutes in a pan, six minutes in the oven and six minutes resting, and it will be perfectly cooked and beautifully pink. We scored the skin, seasoned with salt and put it in the cold pan skin side down for six minutes. After sealing the other side of the breast, we put it on a roasting tray, skin side down, with a good drizzle of honey all over and into the oven for six minutes at 220°C. After resting it skin side up for six minutes, we carved it into slices and served it with a salsa of chickpeas, beetroot cubes, chopped spring onions, sliced garlic, chilli, coriander and lots of lime juice. I'm a lot more keen to try duck again now that I know, having bought a more expensive bit of meat, I can cook it properly!

This weekend, I practised a menu from what we've been taught so far, for a five-person dinner party. I made the vegetable broth and bread rolls from week one, the sea bass and sabayon from week three and the chicken and sweetcorn from week two. So much chopping! It was all fairly successful, aside from the fish fiasco, the rolls looking beautiful but burnt after the old gas oven acted more ferociously than the ones at school, and my blow torch giving up the ghost leading me to rely on my dad's garage tools. While I'm happy that my diners were happy, I will need to ask the chefs how to up-scale the amounts in the recipes we have from now on. Having a folder full of one-portion recipes is lovely but it's not simply a matter of multiplying the quantities by the number of people eating. And just like that, I'm back on another learning cycle, ready for week four.