The course is scheduled to start on 10th July running for 6 weeks, . . . → Read More: Good things come to those that wait]]> Well it’s been a long time coming but Coursera has finally come up with a start date for their Science of Gastronomy course that was subject to a blog posting back in November last year (you can read the original post here).

The course is scheduled to start on 10th July running for 6 weeks, the estimated weekly commitment is 3/4 hours per week. A few readers have contacted me to say they had read the original post and have signed up. If you are thinking of taking this course let me know, perhaps we can form a study group!

Well I’m off to polish some test tubes or whatever, and begin preparations for a science powered blog at the end of the summer.

I had a huge sense of achievement after the first. It was a sell-out. I managed to feed 32 people who all . . . → Read More: Popping Up]]> I now have my first pop-up restaurant under my belt and getting ready for the next. It’s on June 8th at the No84 Café and Eatery in Gravesend if you are interested.

I had a huge sense of achievement after the first. It was a sell-out. I managed to feed 32 people who all had a great night     (with the help of my formidable team: front of house posse, Jim and Sarah, sous chef, Adam and Eileen and Ted for loads of help both pre and post and for being such enthusiastic diners on the night). Big thanks to all xx

The basic premise of the No84 Occasional Supper Club is that people eat good food, from local and trusted producers/suppliers. Diners eat communally -the tables are laid out in a large horseshoe – and each night features a different guest speaker.

On June 8th, the theme is ‘Wild about Kent’ and features local produce with elements of wild food. I am very excited that ‘Fergus the Forager’ (aka Fergus Brennan) has agreed to be our guest speaker. Check out his website.

http://fergustheforager.co.uk/

But now the difficult bit, deciding on the menu and making it work. Anyone with any experience of cooking for a crowd will tell you that simply scaling up a recipe meant for 2 to serve 32 doesn’t necessarily work. I am also restricted by the café kitchen itself. I love the café, I love its ethos, I love the people who run it and work there but it is a café and not a restaurant. No fancy equipment, in fact quite the opposite – a large oven but only two small induction hobs and that’s about it. Saturday is also their busiest day so we can’t get in and cracking until at least 5pm, later even. So the menu has to take account of all of these factors.

I have decided on the ‘amuse bouche’ and turn back to Heston Blumenthal for inspiration. It will be basically crudités with a big but (as opposed to a big butt which was on last month’s menu!). I want to create sharing plates of a Kentish vegetable garden. Heston suggests oven drying black olives and then chopping them finely to create soil. I will then ‘plant’ a range of tiny seasonal vegetables in the soil ready to be picked and dipped. I had a great chat with a local farmer on Sunday. Once he had got his head round the idea he was dead up for it and we have agreed a range of tiny veg that he’ll have ready for me a couple of days beforehand.

For the starter I am using a local goat’s cheese and Kent beetroot as the basis of the dish. I had a practice on Sunday. See my efforts below.

The component parts are goats cheese mousse, beetroot and raspberry puree, beetroot crisps, balsamic jelly cubes, leaves with a walnut dressing. It wasn’t quite right, it needs tweaking. The balsamic jelly cubes will be too expensive to make and didn’t add enough to justify their inclusion. I’ll go for a balsamic reduction instead and drizzle over. I need to do another batch of crisps and keep them in an airtight tin to make sure they stay crisp for a few hours and I’d like the salad leaves to include a few wild ones. Dandelion leaves come to mind and perhaps a few wild flowers as a garnish.

I’m almost halfway there, second half to follow.

I love Rhubarb it takes me back to my childhood of pink Rhubarb pies and tart crumbles, yum. As a vegetable or a fruit and there is quite a debate on that topic, it’s . . . → Read More: Rhubarb Rhubarb]]> The Rhubarb season is upon us and I for one rejoice to eat the first fruit or vegetable of the season.

I love Rhubarb it takes me back to my childhood of pink Rhubarb pies and tart crumbles, yum. As a vegetable or a fruit and there is quite a debate on that topic, it’s been seriously out of fashion for a number of years, but has recently enjoyed a resurgence with trendy TV cooks reintroducing it to the nation’s palates. In fact Rhubarb can be hard to get hold of, when researching this post I found that Tesco supermarket were offering none for sale and Ocado the Waitrose’s online brand were offering Rhubarb at a whooping £7.50 a kilo no wonder they are keen to sell it!

I don’t think my Mum was paying the equivalent of £7.50 a kilo back in the day, the truth was that we had loads of rhubarb because as any rhubarb grower knows if you have a plant you have a glut, so any friends with a garden or an allotment would drop some off.

Rhubarb has a long history even it’s name is of note, Rhu refers to the river Rha the Roman name for the Volga right on the eastern edge of the Roman empire where wild Rhubarb grows on the banks. Barb refers to the barbarians on the edge of the empire, therefore ‘the plant of the barbarians’.

References to Rhubarb as a medicine go back thousands of years in Chinese history, where it was taken as a laxative amongst other uses. Rhubarb was imported along the silk road in the 14th century and was on par with silks and jewels. A Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo’s report of his embassy in 1403-05 to Timur in Samarkand: “The best of all merchandise coming to Samarkand was from China: especially silks, satins, musk, rubies, diamonds, pearls, and rhubarb…”

£50 worth of Rhubarb!

Rhubarb became popular in the 17th Century when sugar became affordable and consumption reached it’d peak between the wars. A relic of these times hangs on in the famous Yorkshire triangle of Wakefield, Leeds, and Morley, all flat caps and whippets where forced rhubarb is harvested by candlelight in huge forcing sheds. I force my rhubarb but I don’t have a  forcing shed or a whippet but I do have several rather fetching flat caps, I just use an old inverted black water butt. I picked the first crop this weekend, hence this post. As you can see from the photo at Ocado’s prices I picked about £50 worth!

The one problem with Rhubarb is getting young people to eat it, in a corn syrup world they find even the taste of even the sweeter pink stalks too tart. At best I get a begrudging push around the plate until they decide that they are full and they raid the fridge for a proper pudding after a semi-respectable pause.

In fact rhubarb is so part of UK culture the very wonderful Eric Sykes filmed Rhubarb, a short film in which the only word spoken was rhubarb. Then he remade it years later as Rhubarb Rhubarb, here’s a link to the film here. Enjoy.

If that is not enough there was the 1970′s tea time joy of Roobarb and Custard one of the best children’s programmes ever made a youtube link to an episode is here. Enjoy again.

As this is a food blog I should write about the culinary uses of rhubarb and if I can get organised I will write some follow up posts on this theme. To start off we can remember that the simplest way of eating rhubarb is to dip tender young shoots in sugar something commonly given to children over the years. Some people believe you shouldn’t do this because rhubarb is poisonous uncooked because it contains Oxalic acid which is destroyed when cooked. This is correct but you would need to eat over 5 kilo’s of uncooked rhubarb at a sitting to cause any harm which is an unlikely event.

Here’s a simple and slightly unusual recipe for Rhubarb Schnapps

Ingredients

• 1 Kilo Rhubarb cut into 2/3 cm lengths
• 300 grams sugar
• 1 bottle of vodka (as cheap as you like)

Method

Put all the ingredients into an old sweet jar or similar and stir daily until the sugar is dissolved. Ready to drink after 4 weeks. You can serve your Schnapps straight from the jar or decant into a bottle. It has a lovely colour and is delicious served chilled.

I am thinking about popping in some Orange peel in my next batch as orange and Rhubarb are good partners, I’ll give it a go, I’ve got loads of Rhubarb!

Roundwood Farm in nearby . . . → Read More: Apples, wall bricks and 18 hours]]> I’m on the verge of something very exciting. The wonderful No84 Café and Eatery at Echo Square in Gravesend have agreed to let me run a pop-up restaurant….dates and full details to follow but the first of a three is on Saturday April 27th and the theme is pork and apples.

Roundwood Farm in nearby Meopham, rear rare breed pigs which roam freely amongst the apple orchards. The lovely Bev who runs the farm with her husband will be coming along to give a short talk on the evening too. It should be really good but as you know it will all hang on the food – no pressure then.

On Saturday, I decided to do a practice run on the dessert I have in mind. Arlette with pressed apple terrine. I know Heston Blumenthal has a recipe in his ‘Heston at Home’ book and I found another version on the internet by Mark Jordan. Both recipes are a layered dessert with ‘wafers’ and fillings layered up like a classic millefeuille. The Mark Jordan version used opaline (a ‘glass like’ caramel wafer) rather than the puff pastry caramelised wafer favoured by Heston. I thought it might be more impressive but having tried both the Heston version is by far the easiest to make.

It is simply puff pastry rolled paper thin and liberally dusted with icing sugar and then baked between two baking sheets to stop the pastry rising. You end up with gorgeous, sweet, caramelized pastry, which actually tastes nothing like pastry. Working quickly when they come out of the oven you can cut them into the desired shape using a template.

That said, I will adapt the recipe for opaline to give me my caramel ‘sculptures’ to decorate the finished dessert. It involves making a simple caramel by melting sugar, pouring into a baking tray lined with parchment, allowing it to cool and then blitzing the whole thing in a food processor. The resulting powder is then finely dusted onto a lined baking sheet and put into a hot oven for one minute to re-melt. It really does come out like caramel coloured glass.

Phew, that bit nailed, now onto the pressed apples. Actually that was also straightforward, at least to start with. Copious amounts of peeling, coring and slicing on a mandolin later, the apple slices (all 2mm thick) were neatly layered on yet another baking sheet (by now I had to borrow some from the neighbours) each layer being brushed with an apple flavoured sugar syrup that was allowed to turn quite dark (the finished taste bearing a resemblance to that of a really lovely, deeply caramelized tarte tatin). Then came the deceptively simple instructions:

“Place in a low oven (90 degrees) for 13 hours weighted down with something heavy.”

Really? What the hell can I use?

Wall bricks! Perfect. I found two buried in soil in the garden (don’t ask!), hauled them in washed them stuck them on top of the apples (protected by yet another baking sheet) and 13 hours later had the most amazing pressed apple terrine to slice up using the same template as before and 2 lovely warm wall bricks to use as hot water bottles in my apple pie bed!!

The apple jelly came next. I didn’t have the pectin powder stated in the recipe, you try finding it in Tesco/Asda/Sainsburys/Morrisons, so tried a number of substitutes including pectin sugar, arrowroot and agar-agar but nothing really worked. I started from scratch and made a simple apple jelly using some good quality apple juice and gelatine and it made a fine jelly but it didn’t work at all layered in the dessert. It made it too unstable. I tried cubing it and serving it on the side but my band of intrepid tasters all agreed the jelly wasn’t necessary.

So the final version went something like this:

• A slice of pressed apple terrine
• A caramelised wafer
• Piped cream flavoured with a few drops of rosewater
• A caramelised wafer
• A slice of apple terrine
• A caramelised wafer

And sprinkled on the top the following mix:

Crystallized fennel seeds, vanilla seeds from the pod, sea salt, crumbled wafer (the unused bits from slicing the wafer) and some broken bits of opaline. Also dotted on top, some small cubes of peeled apple. Sounds over the top but by god it tastes good.

I served it with some good quality ice cream, a shard of opaline and butterscotch sauce.

Thank you to my trusted tasters, I’m now happy with my dessert. If anyone has a surplus of apples, a couple of wall bricks hanging about and a spare 18 hours, message me and I’ll send you the recipe.

Snowy Garden Veg

One benefit was that despite the snow . . . → Read More: Snowy Veg and Nutty Crumble]]> We have snow all around chez nous, across France and the UK, in an unusual burst of commonsense I agreed to postpone Monday’s training course and I have reaped the benefits of being able to stay at home for a couple of extra days.

Snowy Garden Veg

One benefit was that despite the snow I could spend a bit of time in the garden, mostly sorting wood but I picked some snow covered veg for tonight’s dinner a simple no fuss Roast Chicken with trimmings and an Apple Crumble made with ground hazelnuts. I’m supposed to be watching what I eat but snow on the ground is a winning excuse for comfort food.

Most people think of their gardens being productive in the summer or autumn but there is quite a range of winter veg in ours. Currently we have wild rocket, leeks, broccoli, carrots and beetroot to name just a few. A frugal approach to good fresh produce is to try and ensure you have something to pick or lift all year round and all veg is at it’s cheapest and best just picked from the garden.

We’re finishing our comfort Chicken Dinner with a Hazelnut Apple Crumble, making it is simplicity it’s self. You can just add chopped Hazelnuts to the crumble mix but I prefer adding ground hazelnuts to the crumble mix, it gives a more aromatic and smoother texture. Getting hold of ground hazelnuts can be problematic but you can easily make your own by toasting of what you need and blitzing until ground in a food processor.

To make Hazelnut and Apple Crumble (for 2)

Ingredients

• Some apples (as many as you need)
• 40gs flour
• 40gs Ground hazelnuts
• 30gs of sugar + a bit for the apples

Apple and Hazelnut Crumble

Peel, core and roughly chop the apples and about a dessert spoon full of sugar to an oven proof dish leaving about 3cms of space at the top of the dish.

Gently rub together the flour, ground hazelnuts and butter and add the crumble mix to the chopped apple mix. Bake in a oven at 190C for 40 minutes. Serve warm with custard or cream.

Yum.

Once we hit forty, women only have about four taste buds left: one for vodka, one for wine, one for cheese, and one for chocolate.

Gina Barreca Born 1957 – Humourist and Academic