Baking chocolate brownies with the family - everyday should be a brownie day ........

I have yet to meet someone who doesn't eat those decadent little brownie treats but the blondies (White chocolate versions) in my opinion should be avoided at all costs white chocolate has too higher fat content to work effectively.

The biggest question is which style of brownie suits you, for me they fall into two categories - rich melted chocolate versions or the cake like cocoa nibbles - I like both but the two camps can get quite heated about the outcome and finished results and brownie purists will argue about the addition of anything other than chocolate, eggs, flour and sugar but you try adding a few nuts to adorn the basic recipe and you might aswell have asked them to eat a blondie !!!!

For me the better the ingredient the better the brownie whether it is the best quality chocolate you can afford or the best cocoa you can afford, in the restaurant I always go for the rich fudgey chocolate versions as I feel the guests deserve that little piece of luxury whether it be a brownie slice for the bar, the base for a rocky road sundae for the kids or an a la carte assiette of chocolate......

But at home I always opt for the cocoa version as the kids prefer them lighter and fluffier but they are still decadent nuggets of goodness and all we have to do is reach for the cocoa inside the store cupboard.....

It’s easy to see that the brownie got its name from its dark brown color. But as with most foods, the origin of the brownie is shrouded in myth, first appearing in print in the early 20th century. The legend is told variously: a chef mistakenly added melted chocolate to a batch of biscuits...a cook was making a cake but didn’t have enough flour. The favorite, cited in Betty Crocker's Baking Classics and John Mariani’s The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, tells of a housewife in Bangor, Maine, who was making a chocolate cake but forgot to add baking powder. When her cake didn’t rise properly, instead of tossing it out, she cut and served the flat pieces. Alas, that theory relies on a cookbook published in Bangor in 1912, six years after the first chocolate brownie recipe was published by one of America’s most famous cookbook authors, Fannie Merritt Farmer, in 1906 (and the Bangor version was almost identical to the 1906 recipe).
From what we can find in the historic record, the actual “inventor” is most likely the great cookbook editor Fannie Farmer. The super-chocolate fudgy brownies we now known were developed by her protégé, Maria Willet Lowney.

Here is the recipe I use at home for the cocoa brownies - use it as a base or adapt your own brownie. As you will have probably guessed a brownie can be highly personal and everyone enjoys them in a different way........

Easy Brownies made with cocoa

Yield: 12-15 servings

 

Ingredients

170g unsalted butter

330g caster sugar

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 free range eggs

85g plain flour

75g cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

a pinch of salt (optional)

chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)

Method

Preheat oven to 180 deg c.

Line a 13 x 9 in (33 x 23 cm) cake tin with grease proof or other non-stick paper and grease the tin. Melt the butter.

Beat eggs with sugar, and add vanilla, flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt (optional) and melted butter.

Add chopped nuts.

Bake at 180 degrees until a wooden skewer inserted in center comes out clean, approximately 20-30 minutes.

Cool the cake on a cooling rack

Dust with icing sugar or extra cocoa powder and portion as large as you like !!!

and don't forget the most important part of baking the ultimate in spoon licking !!!!!!!!

what chocolate ??

New menu fun/Shepherds Pie recipe

Almost from the moment we implemented the current menu in the restaurant we began discussions around ideas for the next one. There are few things more exciting than talking about food, planning dishes, coming up with ingredients and combinations, thinking about how logistics in service or prep will work, considering crockery, working out how to get the maximum flavour out of any one component (possibly just me...) and we have spent a fair bit of our quieter times in the kitchen doing just that over the past few months.

Talking is fun. Doing is way more fun. This week we have begun to put into practice the ideas and theories, putting physical form to them, figuring out the recipes and playing with presentation. We have now begun putting on some of the new dishes as weekend specials to give them a test drive.

First up in the batting order is a trio of lamb that was one of the very first concepts that we discussed. The idea behind making this a trio is pretty much fuelled by greed, we love lamb in all its forms so why settle for cooking it in just one way when we can do three!? This particular version includes a roasted rump served medium rare, a slow braised shoulder croquette, a mini shepherd’s pie, mint jelly, celeriac puree and spinach. A variety of textures, tastes and techniques combined to make a dish greater than the sum of its parts.

It’s not all about the ideas and the recipes though. As a busy restaurant serving anything up to 150 covers in a night it is equally important that we are able to replicate the dish time and time again regardless of how busy we are. This is why the opportunity of a test run is so useful. Any change to routine or procedure can cause a hold up, as can taking time to figure out how exactly to do something. In this particular case we had a pretty good idea of how we would cook the rump, shoulder and garnish but we ended up experimenting with three different ways of heating up the shepherd’s pie (including a particularly explosive, ill-advised foray into the microwave) before deciding on the best method. This is relatively easy with just one new dish, we are pretty well dialled in on the rest of the menu as it has been on for a few months now, an entire new menu in one go is a pretty big push though.

We are in an exciting period right now and I’m looking forward to next weekend and another new dish or two to play with

Shepherd’s Pie

This is our take on a classic. While we use it as part of a taster plate of lamb but it could easily be a meal in itself. The basic recipe has been around since Victorian times and is traditionally a quick an easy way of using up leftovers from the Sunday Roast. This version though is one to take your time over and the pie is a worthy goal in its own right.

If you’re not a fan of offal then don’t be put off by the kidney and liver, they melt in at the beginning and add richness and depth to the whole dish without being discernable in the finished pie.

For the Lamb Stock

-          5kg lamb bones

-          4 large onions

-          6 carrots

-          1 head celery

-          2 leeks

-          750ml red wine

For the mash

-          Potatoes

-          Double cream

For the filling

-          2kg lamb mince

-          2 lamb’s kidney

-          1 lamb’s liver

-          3 carrots

-          2 sticks celery

-          2 onions

-          4 cloves garlic

-          2 tbsps Tomato puree

-          500 ml red wine

-          Bouquet Garni consisting of rosemary, thyme, bay

·         Make the lamb stock the day before – roast the lamb bones at 160C for about 40mins. Also roast the veg off for about 20 mins. Reduce the red wine by 1/3 then put all together in a pot and cover with water. Bring up to just under a simmer (ie. a trembling rather than bubbling surface) and leave on overnight.

·         Pass the lamb stock through a fine sieve and then reduce by about a ½

·         For the pie, first blanch the mince by covering in cold water and bringing up to the boil then taking off and draining. This will render off some of the fat and make the end result less greasy (we omitted this stage first time around and ended up warming the mix and hanging it in a muslin bag to drain off excess fat).

·         Sear the mince in a hot pan large enough to hold all of the filling in batches and remove to hold until later, lower the temperature on the pan.

·         Dice all of the veg (it’s worth taking some time over this, particularly with the carrots as they will show in the final result) and sweat them off.

·         Trim the liver and kidney and chop in a food processor. Add this to the vegetables with the tomato puree and cook off.

·         Add back in the seared mince and the red wine, reduce until nearly all absorbed then add half of the stock and the bouquet garni.

·         Cook slowly over several hours until sauce has reduced to almost nothing. Season with salt, pepper and a dash of balsamic vinegar.

·         While the filling is cooking reduce the rest of the stock to about half again.

·         Bake the potatoes on a baking tray with lots of salt until cooked through. Push through a drum sieve (or use a potato ricer) and beat in cream and seasoning until taste and consistency is correct.

·         To construct the pie – stir in some of the reduced stock to the hot pie mix to loosen it up and put into the pie dish. Top with hot mashed potato and place under a grill until browned.

Roast Fillet of Grey Mullet, Bouillabaise Jus

Ever even heard of grey mullet before ? red mullet maybe or seen it on a menu or in the local fishmongers and thought mmm.. not sure might just stick with the old favourites you know the ones - all the species that are on the unsustainable and nearly extinct list!!! Take note though because grey mullet is almost a 1/3 cheaper than most other well known fish and it is a small round fish which looks similar to a Seabass but with a distinctive grey/silver shine to the skin and comes in similar size to the bass although the grey mullet does have a more dense texture but is certainly full of flavour
Time for a change try this delicious recipe and i am certain you will change your mind - we recently had this on in the restaurant as part of a 6 course tasting menu and this dish was the intermediate fish course and it went down a storm (sorry no more seafaring jokes i promise )
The sauce is a take on a classic french bouillabaise without the hassle of the different elements just the beautiful fresh flavours of the bouillabaise in a rich decadent sauce and is a match for just about any other fish
but in all seriousness do not worry this dish is within every competent cooks reach !!!

Roast Fillet of Grey Mullet, Bouillabaise Jus

2 large fillets from a 2-3kg Grey Mullet (ask your fishmonger to scale and pinbone for you will be great to do yourself but will save a lot of time in the long run)
50ml vegetable oil
2 litre fresh fish stock
3 whole fennel heads chopped
3 whole small white onions chopped
1 celery chopped
3g Saffron filaments
100ml Pernod or Vermouth
100ml White wine
3 Bay leaf
2 Star anise
5 cloves of Garlic crushed
1 whole Orange skin only but no pith
6 whole beef tomatoes chopped and deseeded
1 bunch Dill chopped stalks reserved
35g diced cold butter

Method;
Portion the Grey Mullet to the size you require and give a thorough wash and pat dry season the fish with sea salt and white pepper and leave to one side
In a large thick based saucepan heat a little vegetable oil and start to sweat (cook without colouring) the garlic and onions until soft and translucent then add the celery, fennel and saffron cook for a further 2 mins until the saffron starts to release some of its aromatics you should have a wonderful aromatic soft vegetable mass add the pernod and white wine and reduce by 1/2.
Add the bay leaf, star anise, orange and tomatoes and cook until a puree then finally add the fish stock and reduce by 1/2 again it should have the consistency of a thick broth.
Remove from heat and let cool for a couple of mins and then blend ideally using a stick blender once the sauce is a smooth thick consistency pass through a conical sieve or strainer but not too fine as you want to keep most of that flavour within the sauce, once passed reserve the sauce for later.
Now time for the mullet heat a non-stik pan until it is just smoking slightly then add a little olive oil and place the fish skin side down into the pan and hold slightly to prevent the fish from curling up, leave on skin side until the edges turn a golden brown and then turn you should have a beautifully crisp skin cook for a further 5 mins and then remove from heat and add a little butter once off heat to creat a nice glaze for the fish.
Reheat the sauce and add the chopped dill and the extra butter to give the sauce a good finish

i like to serve this with buttered spinach and fresh bread at home or at work we usually serve with a fine dice of sunblushed tomatoes,maris piper potatoes, celery, leek and fennel placed into a ring and sit the mullet on top surrounded by the sauce and finish with a little fennel cress

Dorset Seafood Festival 2011 (plus John Dory with Sauce Vierge)

Visited on a sunny weekend in July, Weymouth has the feel of a proper, old fashioned British seaside town. Deckchairs, Punch and Judy, Penny Arcades, sun, sea and sand, Weymouth has it all. The only thing needed to complete the picture is the traditional fish and chips but this particular weekend we could go one better than this old favourite with the fourth annual Dorset Seafood Festival.

We kick off with a breakfast of Aussie style Scallop and King Prawn kebabs from the South West Sushi stand and a glass of champagne from main sponsors Pommery and get the day off to a good start.

This is followed up with more scallops, this time on a stick with chorizo from Weymouth based Perry’s restaurant. While always a good pairing, chucking scallops down your throat left right and centre enables you to be a little bit picky and they weren’t quite as fresh and plump as the first lot. There is undoubtedly something magical though about the combination of fish, pork, sun and outdoor cooking.

OK. This could go on a bit so I’ll summarise. There was bbq’d lobster, oysters, crab sandwiches, fish cakes, Chilean wine, New Zealand wine, Ringwood beer, no razor clams (they’d sold out – I was gutted) and a fair bit of sunburn if I’m honest. Also, a fair few dishes we didn’t even try, the day could have turned out very expensive if I had eaten everything I fancied.

Now and then we took a break from eating and drinking to stand still and watch one of the many demonstrations taking place throughout the weekend, a couple of highlights were:

 Duncan Lucas from Passionate About Fish gave a demonstration of virtuoso fish filleting, making it look ridiculously simple and finished by deboning a whole plaice, creating a ‘pocket’ that he filled with water and held above his head in just 60 seconds (a challenge in aid of the Fishermen’s Mission)!

River Cottage’s John Wright gave a frankly hilarious, rambling talk that was vaguely about foraging seaweed with demonstrations of a lavabread cake with bacon and oatmeal and a carageen pannacotta using the seaweed as a substitute for gelatine. Later on Richard Bertinet cooked mussels and mackerel. Sadly, unable to be in more than one place at once and spend the entire weekend in Weymouth, we missed Matt Follas, Shaun Rankin, Nigel Bloxham and Mark Hix amongst others but hey, there’s always next year!

Pan Fried John Dory with Crushed New Potatoes and a Sauce Vierge

While not from the seafood festival as such, John Dory is a great fish. It’s ugly as hell but does taste good. As a weekend special recently we presented it with crushed new potatoes and a tarragon sauce vierge for a simple but classic summer dish.

John Dory – 1 fillet per person

For the Sauce Vierge

1 Finely diced shallot

2 Tomatoes – deseeded and finely diced

Olive oil

A small bunch Tarragon chopped

A few Basil leaves chopped

For the crushed new potatoes

New potatoes

Butter

Parsley

Chives

-          Steam the new potatoes until soft then crush in your hand

-          Sweat down the shallot, when soft add the tomato and herbs and warm through.

-          Top up the sauce with olive oil to give a loose consistency and season with salt, pepper and lemon juice, keep warm

-          In a sauce pan warm the potatoes through with plenty of butter and salt until hot and soft and stir through the herbs

-          Cut the John Dory fillet in half lengthwise to give two long, thin fillets. Season and oil

-          Fry skin side down in a hot pan, flip when cooked a third of the way up and finish with a couple of cubes of cold butter and lemon juice

-          Serve with buttered spinach

Tricks of the Trade No. 1: In Praise of the Pastry Knife

Having entered the restaurant kitchen relatively late in life, my perspective is a little different from one who has led their whole professional and home cooking lives in tandem. Ten years as a keen (read obsessive and fairly geeky) home cook, reading, experimenting, watching TV, buying gadgets and playing around in my kitchen taught me a lot and left me well equipped (in some ways) for life in the cheffing world. It has been really interesting though, over the past couple of years to learn various tricks and tools that are well known ‘on the inside’ but a revelation to my home cooking self.

Deciding what equipment to buy in the early stages of my career was always going to be a key decision. Most chefs have big bags or boxes full of kit mostly centered around knives designed do various different jobs collected over the lifetime of their career when needed or available.

Knives are expensive.

There was never going to be any way that I could afford a full set straight away, so where to start?

There is one knife that pretty much every chef I have met owns. Pretty much no home cook I know has one. I bought one within days of starting out and have since used mine to chop stock veg, finely dice shallots, cut steaks, joint chicken, make sandwiches, carve roasts, slice tomatoes, dice pancetta, prep fish and countless other tasks.*

It is the Pastry Knife.

I have not used it to cut pastry.

Yet.

It is also cheap.

It is a little unwieldy the first time you use it. They are quite large and it seems strange initially to be using a serrated blade. It is, though, as sharp as hell and the curve to the blade makes it easy to get the rocking motion required for quick, smooth chopping. Serrations mean it doesn’t slip on smooth surfaces but surprisingly cuts cleanly. When eventually it gets ground down through use and sharpening (through home use we’re probably talking decades) then it still works well as a straight edged carver and it’s only about £20 to get a replacement.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against expensive knives. In fact I would really like some expensive knives. If anyone reading this feels an urge to buy me gifts then here would be a good place to start. Actually just chuck me a few thousand pounds; I shouldn’t have too much trouble spending it.

Most people though don’t have endless bundles of cash to spend on equipment but, even if I did, then the Pastry Knife would still be in my kit box. It seems unbelievable to me that every home doesn’t own one (mine certainly does now) but for some reason it remains the preserve of the professional, little known outside the stainless steel and striplight world and was a revelation to me that I would like to share with you.

Amazon has a fewone here if I have managed to convince you.

*I have also cut myself with it a few times  ;o)

Blog, blog, blogging

Blog, blog, blogging we have been talking for a very long time about starting this blog and now it is time to engage our culinary brains and put fingers to the keyboard to share and impart some of this knowledge (interesting or not) to anyone who is willing to read our humble blog !

We share a passion for all things culinary and foodie whether it be ingredients, dishes, stories or just the randomness of our life within food and we are lucky enough to be able to translate all of this to our work.

One of us has been a professional chef for many years and has been lucky enough to travel around the world (at least a couple of times) to ply our trade in several different countries, picking up invaluable food knowledge and stories, I cannot always promised they will be interesting but I hope to share what I can

The other part of this dynamic duo has been an avid foodie and curious cook for many years but has only just recently taken the plunge and completely changed career paths (and salaries) only to find that his destiny lay within the professional kitchen. He turned up one day at the back door of a local hotel where I happened to be the executive chef and asked to be given a chance (I felt sorry for the little urchin) and he has never looked back he even followed me to another hotel - what a glutton for punishment.......

We hope this blog will give you an interesting insight into our little foodie world, it could be dishes we are developing at work, ingredients that are in season, random food related issues that are important to us and the food that we cook a home and share with our families. I am sure at some point that my two boys, Giles and Sebastian, will make an appearance as they seem to enjoy eating the spoils and maybe even a couple of friendly chickens along the way........

Some fresh Wild Seabass

Seabass is a fantastic ingredient at any time but we were lucky enough recently to get some ultra fresh wild fish in the restaurant. It’s a shame with anything this good to do too much to it and indeed this recipe keeps things fairly simple, complementing the fish and letting it sing as the star of the dish.

                Not only delicious, Seabass also rates well in terms of sustainability. Fish caught wild locally to us here in the UK rates as a ‘2’ (“still a good choice”) on the Marine Conservation Society’s scale of 1-5. The MCS website is well worth checking out at www.fishonline.org. Here you can search on pretty much any fish and get a relatively simple run down on the pros and cons from a sustainability perspective. From there you can dig deeper, really get underneath the issue and gain an understanding of the many and complex issues surrounding the sustainability of our fish stocks.

                While you are on the subject, why not head over to www.fishfight.net for a chance to make a difference above and beyond your shopping choices. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has certainly brought a lot of publicity to the subject through his TV programmes and the ‘fight’ continues through this site and his visits to supermarkets, fishermen and the European Parliament.

Seabass with Crispy Potato, Bacon and Fennel Cress Salad

Seabass

Pancetta

New potatoes

Samphire

Nori dried seaweed

Fennel Cress

Olive oil

1.       Make a seaweed dressing by shredding the nori sheets and putting them into a sieve, pour boiling water over them and through the sieve. Put the cooked, wet sheets into a blender and blend with enough olive oil to give a pourable consistency.

2.       Steam the potatoes until cooking but still firm, slice lengthways to give approx two 1cm thick slices per potato.

3.       Dice the pancetta to give 1cm cubes, place in a pan of cold water and bring to the boil. Once boiling, drain the pancetta, spread on a baking sheet and cook for 15 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 160C

4.       Pin bone and portion the Seabass, making a couple of slashes in the skin.

To serve:

1.       In a hot pan, fry the potato slices in some clarified butter until crisp and browned, add the pancetta and toss to coat.

2.       Season and oil the fish before pan frying.

3.       Add the samphire to the bacon and potato mix and toss together until just wilted. Season the mix if required.

4.       Serve in a warm bowl, placing the fish on top of the mix, surrounded by the fennel cress with a drizzle of the seaweed dressing.