Brocket Hall, Banquet Food Tasting

So, I realise that over the last year or so I have been making vague and slightly sideways references to GrubsterGirl and I throwing a big party together.  Well, that happened and I am delighted to say that GG is now Mrs Grubster! 

Whilst I won't (for obvious reasons) be sharing everything about the absolutely magical day Mrs G and I had last month – this is not a 'lifestyle' blog after all – there have been some wonderful food related moments that I would like to blog about.

One of the most exciting of which was the menu tasting.

You see, basically you get to go to your venue and be served fantastic food and decide what you like and don't like.  Mrs G and I had chosen a venue that was renowned for it's food (hardly surprising, I expect) because we wanted to make sure that our guests would be served a really good, yummy meal – as opposed to some of the luke-warm, half-congealed, mass-produce stuff you so often get at otherwise very nice venues.  So we really put our foot down – in some cases even insisting upon the chef creating a new dish to our specifications!

The venue was the beautiful Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire. 

After a morning of wedding planning, we were shown into a little private dining room which was immaculately laid out with all the silverware and frippery that would be there on the day (barring the favours and flowers, of course).  They had even laid out little notepads so that we could each take notes.  It's serious business, this menu tasting.

First up we had our two starters – we were allowed to choose one of each course to try. 

Option 1: Chicken liver and foie gras parfait, grape and port chutney, smoked duck salad and toasted brioche.  Beautiful, smooth, rich pâté perfectly offset by the chutney.  The edition of the frisée salad and sliver of smoked duck breast was a nice touch.  Also, it was nice to see it served with brioche rather that the more ubiquitous bread – or even melba toast.  It's not that much harder to drum up and it really does make a very palpable difference, the sweet, charred crumb combining perfectly with a rich silky pâté.

Option 2: Confit green asparagus, duck egg, Parma ham and truffle.  This was an absolute delight, and tasted as beautiful as it looked.  The addition of the little edible flowers was a wonderful touch, really bringing the dish to life aesthetically and reminding everyone that this was a summer wedding.  The egg had a slightly weird texture – was it, perhaps, sous vide? – but was delicious nevertheless, and acted as a nice accompaniment to the asparagus.

In the end we plumped for Option 2, the asparagus.  Both dishes were delicious, but given that the main course was going to be cow-based (would you expect anything less?) we thought that the pâté would just be way too rich a starter.

Mrs G and I are all for palate cleansers, and don’t give a damn if you think they're pretentious.  They taste fantastic, and I love a sorbet.  So we tasted three – Granny Smith apple, champagne and basil.  The apple was actually a surprise, the chef having knocked some up previously and decided we should try it.  They were each fantastic, but the apple and basil were out a head, and it was a very close call.  The apple had a wonderful 'apple-y-ness' to it, not at all a fake apple flavour, but the basil came out just ahead.

Onto the mains.

Option 1: Braised blade of beef, bone marrow, broad beans, mashed potatoes and morels with a beef jus.  This was rich and sticky and yummy, but just too much so for a summer wedding.  The morels and the marrow added a further layer of meaty richness that would be perfect of a dark and damp winter's night but which had no place on a summer's table.  The beef was, sadly, verging on the dry which was  disappointing and worrying in equal measure.

Now, this is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about when I said that we were quite careful picking a place that could do food.  Instead of the choice of roasts that most venues insist on, we could try a dish as ballsy as it was traditional – bone marrow may be making a comeback right now, but it's still off many people's plates (and we feared may put some guests off, but we decided to try it nevertheless).  Although we didn’t go for it in the end, it was reassuring in itself to see a chef unafraid to use such a delicious ingredient regardless of its 'ewww' factor.  However, all that said, it does also highlight the number one wedding planning lesson I learned: be demanding, don’t settle.  Because originally Brocket Hall offered us roast lamb, roast chicken or roast beef.  We pushed back and were rewarded with a much better set of choices.

Option 2: Slow cooked short rib of beef with beetroot, polenta chips, mustard and herb puree, roasted and pickled onions and a treacle jus.  This was absolutely the business.  The meat fell off the bone and was juicy, almost buttery.  Beetroot and onions are perfect partners to beef, but the addition of the pickled onions was fantastic, adding as they did a peppery sharpness to cut through the fatty meat.  The only fault was the mustard and herb dressing, which seemed to jar with the other flavours – so we ditched that element in the final reckoning.

If I said that the beef blade was a good example of why it was good to go somewhere good with food, the short rib was doubly so.  Because, before us, it did not exist.  We, quite literally, tailor-made our own main course.  We had loved the fantastic short rib and beetroot at Wild Honey and whilst we were not so demanding as to expect the same Michelin-starred quality, we thought that the chef could manage an approximation, so just asked him to put something together – which he did with gusto and not just a little skill.  This was a winner of a dish, both at the tasting and on the big day.

Pudding.

Option 1: Malt vanilla ice cream, salted caramel and malt madeleine.  I love salt caramel.  But Mrs G LOVES salt caramel.  This was definitely a dish to try, and did not disappoint. However, like the beef blade it was fantastic but very much a winter's dish.  We wanted flavours that were light and summery; this was rich and dark.  Fantastic, but just not right.

Option 2: White peach parfait, roasted peaches, blood peach sorbet and poppy seed tuille.  For every inch that Option 1 was un-summery, Option 2 blasted out summer.  It shouted it from the battlements.  This was a peach of dish (pun intended and, frankly, #sorrynotsorry).  Ticked all of the boxes we needed ticking and then some.  Top marks.

That was really that.  We managed to persuade Brocket Hall to let us bring our own wine, albeit at extortionate corkage – and that was another victory of being stubborn.  The red a fantastic, ballsy carascal from Weinert, a winery in the infamous Mendoza region of Argentina – we visited Mendoza (and Weinert) a few years back to sample their fantastic wines and, as far as reds went, theirs was the best.  For the white we stuck with Argentina, opting for a Torrontés which is a much under-known and under-appreciated white wine.  We also through in a beautiful dessert wine, a mountain wine from Malaga that, being un-botryised, avoided the cloying sweetness of something like a sauternes and which matched our peach pudding so well it was almost as if the two had been made together.  All three (and, indeed, our champagne) came from The Wine Society.  If you're not a member, I heartily recommend membership – they provide access to a fantastically good value selection of hundreds of wines for a pitifully small lifetime membership fee.

I would be lying if I said that there weren't many, many other food-related elements of the wedding.  The stag, for example, was almost all food.  But that's for another post.

- GrubsterBoy - 

La Liegeoise, Wimereux, France

Last month I had to conduct a massive booze cruise to the north of France, in particular to bring back over 200 bottles of wine for a big party I was organising.  So me and a mate piled into GrubsterMummy's car and drove to France.  Specifically we were headed to Montreuil, a small town in the Pas de Calais which is home to The Wine Society's French operations - a much reduced list to choose from, but with the added incentive of a guarantee that each case would be at least £20 cheaper than buying from the UK. 

 

Of course, no trip to France would be complete without stopping off to enjoy the country's famous culinary skills.  So, on the advice of my boss, we came off the autoroute at Wimereux and sought out the finest lunch our crispy new €uros could buy us.  We hit La Liégeoise in the Hotel Atlantic.  The name gives it all away – the hotel is perched right on the Atlantic coast and you sit in the dining room looking out at the ocean.  On good days (which, sadly, did not include the day of our trip) you can take coffee on the terrace.

 

Our meal was a set meal – three courses, two glasses of wine per head and coffee for €30.  Nowt bad.

 

Boys being boys, we rejected the fish and vegetarian options and dived straight into the good stuff.  But before we ever got there we were presented with a little trio of appetisers: salmon mousse wrapped up in smoked salmon, a little onion tarte accompanied by a fishy mousse and a third mousse with a distinctly ginger flavour and little picked vegetables.  My friend's comment: "They certainly like their mousses, don’t they?"

 

By the way, if I am vague about the contents of things in this review it is for one reason only: I was not always entirely certain what I was eating.  My French doesn't go that far (last time we did this trip, in a cheap and cheerful little restaurant in Boulogne, I accidentally ordered horse meat for three of us), the waiters' English went less far, and my friend's French is non-existent.  So it was a very much a game of gesticulation and guesswork to figure out some of what we were eating.

We kicked off, however, with a dish of foie gras de canard.  Always a firm favourite.  The restaurant was even happy to substitute one of our glasses of free wine for a sweet wine to keep the starter company, which was nice.

The main course was a perfect example of the language barrier causing problems.  We had thought we were getting grilled venison.  We ended up with poached guinea fowl.  Don’t ask how we got there.  Still, it was nice enough – albeit with yet another mousse that really didn’t go.  I can't tell you what flavour it was, but it was not particularly nice. 

Pudding we substituted for a cheese plate, and were given three different cheeses, served with apricot and prune compotes.  The waited explained what they were but we didn't understand.  Again, nice enough.

Coffee came with little petite fours – guess what, more mousse!  This time a mango mousse on top of a green apple compote.  There were also sweet little passion fruit and white chocolate truffles.

Overall, the term I'd use is 'nice'.  I wasn't blown away by the meal, and there was perhaps an element of trying too hard on display.  But otherwise, it was good and very decently priced.

- GrubsterBoy -

Blue Tomato

Just a quick little post today to tell you about Blue Tomato in Rock, Cornwall.

Besides a delightful atmosphere – right on the sea front, with a beautiful view that just as good in foul weather as it is in bright sunshine – it also serves up fantastic food and cakes.  But what I really wanted to share was this little number: a crab meat salad.  Now, I'm absolutely potty about crab, but so often shy away from it in restaurants.  You can never tell when it's going to be fresh or, worse still, if it's going to come out of a tin.  But down in Cornwall I felt safe.  And I'm glad I did, because it was amazeballs.

The addition of the soft fruit and the crunchy croutons, and a sweet-and-sharp dressign absolutely made the dish.  I would move to Cornwall to eat this every day, if it were practical to do so.

 - GrubsterBoy -

Food Porn #9: Pimms

OK, so more drink porn than food porn.

 - GrubsterBoy -

Pesto

This really isn’t a recipe; I feel like a bit of a fraud.  It's shockingly easy, almost nothing more than a case of assembly.  But I will say one thing: it is absolutely, totally worth it.  I have completely fallen back in love with pasta and pesto now I've made this.  it's a million times better than that green gunk that comes in jars and at least a thousand times better than the 'fresh' stuff the supermarkets produce.  It's also all about adjusting the taste to fit what you want it to taste like.

 

You will need:

 

2 packets of fresh basil (about 50g)
100g pine nuts
100g parmesan
1 clove of garlic
A wedge of lemon
Olive oil (some)

On the subject of olive oil, there is amazingly broad range going around at the moment.  I am currently using a bottle that a colleague gave me.  She's married to a Cypriot whose family has their own olive grove, so this is kind of home grown.  Whatever you go for, bear in mind that the oil here will make a big difference – it's essentially the base of the sauce.  Don’t use something too cheap, because it will infect the whole dish.  If you use something too expensive (which tends to include spicier, stronger, more peppery oils) it will blot out too much of the basil flavour. 

First, get the oven on and lightly toast the pine nuts.  Did you know you can now buy pre-toasted pine nuts? C'est ridicule.  Paying an extra quid for something that takes 10 minutes to do yourself is just burning money. 

Whilst that's happening, pick the leaves from the stalks of the basil and discard the stalks.  As I've mentioned before, basil stalks are rather fibrous and will wrap themselves around the blade of a blender and clog it up.  Also, they won't blend properly, so you're better off without. 

Also, grate the parmesan now.

 

You know I said this was easy?  Well, you're about 75% done already.  Throw the basil, cheese and pine nuts into the food processor along with a squeeze of lemon and whizz for about two seconds, no more.  Add an enormous glug of olive oil and repeat.  Keep adding olive oil to the mulch until you have a soft jam-like consistency.

Now, take the lid off and taste it.  You'll probably need to season it as well, but try fiddling around, adding more cheese or another squeeze of lemon, or more oil. 

And then you're done.  Ta da!  See, easy peasy lemon (and basil) squeezy, huh?

This is a fantastic sauce for anything.  For some reason, it always screams 'summer' to me.  Perhaps it's the fresh, no nonsense flavours or scents of basil.  Pasta pesto is the classic, but it also goes well drizzled over pizza, or chicken breasts to be baked in the oven.  If you're making the classic pancetta wrapped cod, smear a blob of pesto all over the ham before wrapping, for a ultra-classy version of an already pretentious dish.  Alternatively, liven up an old school one, as I have below, by drizzling a tomato salad (or, indeed, any salad) with pesto and a sprinkling of balsamic vinegar.

 - GrubsterBoy -