The Ginger Chef

Seasonal diets, binges or normality?

2012-01-27T02:37:00.000-08:00

I am sure itwas the last government who said, “No more boom and bust”. If you take anaverage of December and January in terms of trading figures, you get a good butnot spectacular month. December was a hugely busy month but January is neverreally poor, but is never really busy either.

Restaurantswork best when they are busy, staff tend to be motivated more, customers likethe buzz and atmosphere, and owners worry less. If every month was December, the business wouldbe very profitable but I wonder if the product would be as good. Lots of bigtables mean a fast and slow service. It is much easier to send six tables oftwo than a table of twelve, and much easier to serve and clear from the frontof house point of view. The best case scenario would be full, but not crazyfull, with tables of two and four, in time slots ranging from 6.30 to 9.30. Wecan but dream.

Every one, Iknow at the moment seems to be on a diet or detox. They have over done it inDecember and want to make amends in January. I must admit that I have tried tocut down as well, I see my old friend, “glass of wine” much less often but Ithink the trick is not to cut down entirely. Like all good friendships, you canpick up where you left off. It is increasinglyobvious to me that, as I get older, things have to be done much more inmoderation.

It is important not to cut out the things inlife that make us happy. Cream cakes, glasses of wine, M&S trifle from thebowl in front of the telly (you know who you are) bacon sandwiches, chips,burgers etc. To my mind, and it might be this only works with me, is to cutdown on the luxury to maybe once a week, and be a monk the rest of the week. Ihave heard that with meat we should eat better quality, less often. Perhapsbinge on a Saturday to keep us sane and take it easy the rest of the week.

With that inmind and to those of you who don’t care, I have included a couple of recipe’sthat do not pretend to be healthy but ones that might actually get you through theweek.

Banana andRum Beignet with Chocolate Sauce

100ml milkwith splash of rum

90g banana

10g sugar

100g butter

100g flour

3 eggs

Puree Bananawith sugar, boil milk and butter, add puree and re boil. Add flour and cook outfor 1 minute, put mixture in food processor and once cool, add 1 egg at a timeuntil fully mixed. Fry small tea spoons of the mixture until golden and drainon kitchen paper.

Chocolatesauce

300mlwhipping cream

25g sugar

185g darkchocolate

Boil creamand sugar, add chocolate and take off the heat.

To serve,place Beignets on the plate with a little chocolate sauce and a scoop of icecream.

SicilianCannoli

200g plainflour

40g butter

30g castersugar

70ml Marsala

1 egg beaten

Make a doughwith the flour, butter, sugar and Marsala, rest for one hour. Roll out to 1mmthickness and cut out 8cm discs with a cutter. Roll the discs round a smallrolling pin or saucepan handle until the edges touch, stick edges with thebeaten egg. Deep fry on 150 degrees until golden, drain, set aside and dustwith icing sugar. To serve fill with sweetened Ricotta or Vanilla whippedcream.

For those ofyou who have watched the Sopranos, you will find the Cannoli recipeinteresting. They are delicious with strong coffee as an afternoon tea treat. TheBeignets can be used as a garnish with lots of other desserts or on their ownas a dessert canapé.

Glorious mushrooms, wild and tame

2011-09-30T01:56:00.000-07:00

The end of the summer is usually met with mixed feelings, some of you will say that they don’t remember a summer at all this year but that is another story. For chefs just as summer starts by bringing lots of different ingredients, think peas, broad beans, asparagus, jersey royals, new season lamb to name a few, so does Autumn.

Squashes, celeriac, chestnuts, partridges, quince and pheasant are suddenly available or become available over the season. The focus also changes from light fresh food to food with more of a comfort feel. You would not want to see heavy braised dishes in summer but on a cold day stews and braises are a must.

Autumn is the best time for wild mushrooms, when damp conditions tend to suit the funghi. Varieties such as golden chanterelle, penny bun, horse mushroom, cones of death and others become more plentiful. Foraging has become more and more popular over recent years with celebrity chefs extolling the virtues of “free food “and in this case mushrooms. Picking mushrooms does have a dangerous edge to it, there are apparently over 383 species of poisonous mushrooms in the UK with 19 of those classified as deadly. If you don’t fancy playing mushroom Russian roulette then having a good knowledge is essential. Alternatively find a good supplier or forager to do the hard work for you.

Most supermarkets now stock lots of different species of mushrooms now and shopping baskets are being filled with new varieties rather than button or field mushrooms. We use a company called Fundamentally Fungus, they grow organic varieties of mushroom from the common oyster mushroom to the less common Japanese varieties like enoki and nameko. Using different mushrooms adds texture, colour and flavour to a dish.

My favourite mushroom has to be the penny bun although you will probably have heard of it by either its Italian name, porcini or its French one, cep. The penny bun has a delicate enough aroma to flavour a sauce and yet will stand up to all meats and fish. I like to have them fried on toast with a fried duck egg. This is a simple approach to mushrooms that I prefer but other chefs like to adopt a more radical approach.

Claude Bosi a 2 Michelin star chef of Hibiscus restaurant in Mayfair had a sweet Cep tart on the menu when I went last year. He uses short crust pastry filled with a sweetened cep puree. The result is a sort of earthy under sweet tart which was not to my taste although I understand it is a bit of a signature dish for him.

We tend to use a mixture of wild and tame mushrooms in a vegetarian version of suet pudding with the addition of dried cranberries. This proves very popular at this time of year and would work well as a vegetarian alternative to Christmas dinner.

Fried Penny Bun and Duck Egg on Toast

Serves 4

4 tbsp veg oil

1 diced shallot

1 clove chopped garlic

250g fresh penny bun thickly sliced

2tbsp chopped parsley

4 slices good bread toasted

4 duck eggs

Knob butter

Heat a non stick pan with 3 tbsp oil, add the mushrooms and fry gently until golden brown, add the shallots, garlic, parsley and butter, toss together for a minute and season well. Divide the mixture on to the toast slices. Wipe the pan clean and heat the remaining oil, fry the duck eggs and place on top of the mushrooms.

Mixed Mushroom Suet Pudding with Dried Cranberies and Port

Suet pastry

450g self raising flour

225g vegetable suet

Pinch salt

Cold water

Mix the flour, salt and suet in a bowl at room temperature, slowly add cold water until a smooth elastic dough is achieved, cover with cling film and leave to rest. Once rested roll out to half cm thick and line your preferred buttered and floured mould, roll out any left over pastry to form the lid.

Filling

100g dried cranberries soaked in ruby port

1 onion chopped

1 clove garlic

2 kg mixed mushrooms

25 g butter

250ml double cream

2 tbsp chopped parsley

Sprig thyme

3tbsp oil

In a heave bottomed pan heat the oil and fry the mushrooms until golden, put in a colander to drain over a bowl, add the butter to the pan and sweat the onion, thyme and garlic, once softened add the cranberries and port and cook until the port has evaporated, add the cream and any juice that has come out of the mushrooms. Reduce the liquid until it coats the back of a spoon then season and add the parsley and mushrooms, remove the sprig of thyme and leave the mixture to cool.

Spoon your mixture into the lined mould, if the mixture is too wet then drain a little juice off to use as a sauce (depending on what mushrooms you use will depend on how much sauce you have) cover with the pastry lid, cover with cling film and steam for 30 minutes, turn out and serve.

For more recipes see http://gingermanrestaurants.com/

COOKING art or craft?

2011-07-29T01:41:00.000-07:00

I was in a book shop recently and saw a book by Escoffier called “le guide culinaire” or the culinary guide in English. The strap line for this book was “the art of modern cookery” This got me thinking whether modern cookery or indeed any cookery is an art form at all. I have been asked many times whether cooking is art or craft and it is a difficult one to answer.

I still have a book that was bought for me in 1989 called “the art of Anton Mosimann” (anyone still remember him?) flicking through the pages now, it is very noticeable that the focus of the food is very much a visual one. Mosimann was very much a pioneer of Nouvelle cuisine which dominated the 80’s restaurant scene. Nouvelle Cuisine was about making food lighter and healthier by getting rid of flour based sauces and replacing them with reduction based sauces or jus that are still common today.

Nouvelle Cuisine is often remembered for its small portions even though these small dishes were supposed to be eaten as part of a larger menu. There are lots of restaurants today that serve several smaller courses as part of a larger menu. Brighton’s own Graze restaurant is one such restaurant, as is Maze in London and almost every fine dining restaurant in the country serves a “tasting menu” made up of several dishes. Could it be that Nouvelle Cuisine was ahead of its time?

It is easy to understand the art element of Mosimann’s cooking with dishes that are delicate and colourful. He uses gold leaf and many different coloured plates. It is only when you read the recipe that the craft side of it comes to the fore. Cooking involves years of training and in many cases an apprenticeship is involved. The idea is you learn your craft from a talented chef and then introduce your own ideas and approaches when you have the skill.

Anyone who has made a layered terrine or boned and stuffed a duck will know that the craft element is very important, as is science. A cook has to know why the soufflé will rise when the egg whites are whipped and not when the egg whites are over whipped. Why do egg yolks in mayonnaise thicken when the oil is added?

Art is also less obvious in modern styles of restaurant. Today the onus is very much on the provenance of the ingredients used and by the simplicity in which said ingredients are cooked, in order to show off their flavour best. It is probably fair to say that farmers and growers are considered the true artists today. I also think we need to look at the nature of art itself, surely art is supposed to be a one off and not to be replicated. Surely restaurant food by its very nature needs to be replicated day in day out, a dish in a restaurant eaten on a Monday needs to look and taste the same on a Tuesday and a Wednesday.

My own view is that cooking is mainly craft with a smattering of art, not dissimilar to furniture or jewellery making. Fast food restaurants cater for the mass market as do furniture warehouses. It is only when you go to hand maid bespoke furniture that you see the true craft and I suppose art as well. You only have to look at a really well made hand crafted piece of furniture to appreciate art and craft together.

I also think that art is a personal thing, give 10 chefs the same ingredients to cook the same dish and you will get 10 different interpretations of the same thing. There are chefs like Mark Hix, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Fergus Henderson and Simon Hopkinson who advocate a more simple robust style of cooking and presentation and there are chefs like Heston Blumenthal, Gordon Ramsay, Marcus Wareing and Tom Aikens who prefer a more delicate arty style. I suppose ultimately it’s the customer who decides which is preferable.

Gingerman Wine Nights

2011-06-05T01:13:00.000-07:00

In about 2004 we started the Gingerman wine club. The idea of this was to organise and run wine dinners for customers at one of our sites. We have been doing wine dinners on and off since we opened in 1998 but they were very infrequent. Since 2005 we have aimed to do about three a year.

The idea is to get a wine maker to come to the restaurant and talk about their wines. We then do a tasting menu to go with the wines on show. We have had producers from Chile, South Africa, New Zealand, England, Italy and France over the years.

I think these dinners are a win, win, for everyone involved and can be a very entertaining evening. The wine supplier gets to show off his wine in an environment that is relaxed. It enables him to meet what is essentially, his target market. Wine producers spend a lot of time meeting wholesalers, distributors and wine press but very little time speaking to the actual people who buy the wine to enjoy over dinner.

Customers who enjoy wine and food find it interesting talking to the person who has made the wine, hearing their philosophy of wine and what they tried to achieve in making the wine. Customers can also taste a six course meal specially designed to go with the wine on show. Wines and courses are carefully matched, with most of the combinations working, or at least working for most people. One of the great things about food is that it is subjective, some people will love a dish and others will not, there is a lot down to personal taste. Either way it gives people a talking point.

For us wine dinners work because it gives us a chance to meet the producers. We try to use wines from only small artisan producers who have a passion for what they do, rather than big brands. The trouble with the big brands is that they try to produce the same flavour year on year in order to satisfy their brand rather than making a wine that has the characteristics of the year in which it is made.

Wine dinners also give us an opportunity to cook something different and maybe experiment a little. On this month’s Burgundy wine dinner we have matched a light red burgundy with an Arancini. Instead of using white wine for the risotto in the Arancini we have used red wine, along with Taleggio cheese and Scottish Girolle mushrooms. We think this combination will work well but will wait for the feedback on the night.

For the cheese course we are matching a 2008 Gevry Chambertin with an English cheese called Oxford Isis. The French wine producer suggested that we use a Burgundian cheese called Epoisses. Now Epoisses is a great cheese but we wanted to promote an English cheese and we think that Oxford Isis will do a good job. I wait to hear what our French friend thinks!

The wine nights usually start between 7 and 7.30pm with canapé and aperitif. This is usually one of the lighter wines on show, wines that are designed to be drunk by the glass and not necessarily with food. We go on to starter, fish course, main course (usually meat unless we are tasting white wines only or Champagne) we finish with cheese sometimes or dessert. Not every vineyard produces dessert wine so we might pick one from another vineyard to compere or use a demi sec Champagne to go with the dessert.

If anybody wants to be kept up to date with the next wine dinner then let us know by signing up to our newsletter at http:/www.gingermanrestaurants.com

Here is an example menu of our last Wine Night:

Burgundy wine dinner

English Asparagus with Pink Grapefruit Hollandaise
Macon Villages, Jean Francois Gonon, 2009

Grilled Channel Slip Sole with Vermouth and Sorrel Cream
Chablis, Domaine Nathalie & Gilles Feves, 2008

Pinot Noir and Taleggio Arancini with Sauteed Girolle
Domaine Lucien Boillot, Bourgogne Rouge, 2009

Rack of Sussex Lamb, Grilled Aubergine, Caponata and Lamb Jus
Volnay, Dom L.B. 2007

Oxford Isis Cow’s Milk Cheese
Gevry Chambertin, Dom L.B. 2008

Vanilla Pannacotta with Poached Raspberries and Pistachio Filo Crisp
Muscat de Rivesaltes, Chateau Montesquieu, 2009

£65 per person plus 12.5% service

and a dish for you to try at home:

Radichio Arancini with Pinot Noir and Taleggio

Half head Radichio finely sliced
1 tbsp olive oil
50g butter in a small dice
1 onion finely chopped
300g Risotto rice
250ml Pinot Noir
750g fresh stock (chicken or vegetable)
2 tbsp grated Parmesan
100g Taleggio cheese
1 egg
50g plain flour
200g breadcrumbs

Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed pan and sweat the onion, add the radicchio and rice and stir for a few minutes so that all the rice is coated with the oil. Add the red wine and stir over a medium heat. Once the wine has evaporated, add the warmed stock a ladle at a time, stirring constantly. As the stock evaporates add more until all the stock is used up.

The rice should be cooked but with a little bite in the centre. Take the risotto off the heat and add the butter cubes and the parmesan, season with salt and pepper and leave to go cold. Once cold portion the rice and roll into balls (90g for a main course and 40g for a starter) insert a small piece of Taleggio in the centre of each ball and roll them in the flour, then the beaten egg and finally the breadcrumbs.

Deep fry just before serving until golden brown.
Smaller ones can be made for canape’s

Rockinghorse

2011-03-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

Children have a very profound effect on your life as many of you will know. You suddenly become very aware of children and seem to become more tolerant and sympathetic (not always of course) I remember going to Edinburgh with friends for the weekend without the kids, on the plane there were several families with crying children. The kids cried all the way but it did not bother me in the slightest because the children were not mine.

Similarly any delay at an airport or somewhere else is no longer a problem if you are not with children because you are so used to having no time, that you are able to occupy yourself easily.

Children bring joy, worry, anger, frustration, laughter and lack of sleep all rolled into one. They represent the future and you start thinking much more about your own future when they come around. Children represent probably the most vunerable group in our society and their welfare should be high on the agenda of any civilised society.

Every year we give away hundreds of pounds worth vouchers to various charities across Brighton and Sussex. These are all deserving charities but this year we thought we should concentrate on one charity in particular and try to make a big difference.

The Rockinghorse appeal was set up by a very forward thinking Doctor by the name of Dr Trevor Mann in 1968, the baby unit at the Royal Alexandra Childrens Hospital bears his name today. Dr Mann recognised that new expensive technology was needed in order to offer children the excellent standards of care that they deserve. Brighton was one of the first places to have a ventilator designed to breathe for tiny and premature babies, who may not have previously survived. Doctors were also able to carry out pioneering research into new areas of medicine such as neonatal care and oncology.

In 2006 Rockinghorse launched a £1 million appeal to help fund the new Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital and since then they have worked hard to raise funds to provide equipment for needy and sick children.

Gingerman’s aim is to raise initially £7500 to help fund the new children’s A&E department at the royal Alex. I recently visited the children’s hospital and was very moved by what I saw and impressed by the passion and dedication shown by the nurses on duty. It all came to a head when I saw the bedrooms for sick children. There were two windows set into the wall, one normal height and one set about two feet from the floor. The lower window was so sick children could look out of the window while in bed. It takes a lot to move me to tears but the level of thought and consideration in this simple addition did just that.

The new A&E department will be vital in enabling doctors and nurses to evaluate children as soon as they come into hospital. Speed is of the essence when dealing with children because they deteriorate very quickly. At the moment children arriving at hospital go straight to the A&E Department. There they have to wait with all the other patients in order to be seen. You can only imagine what they see in the A&E department of a busy hospital on a Friday or Saturday night. The new kids A&E department will enable specialist doctors to treat sick and injured children quickly in an environment suitable for their needs.

We will arrange a number of fund raising events throughout the year with the hope of supporting this wonderful local charity and making a difference to sick children. Find out more here http://www.gingermanrestaurants.com

One of the things we will be doing to support other people raising funds for Rockinghorse is to create 'high-energy boosting' dish across two of our venues, for all marathon runners supporting Rockinghorse, in the week leading up to the Brighton Marathon 4th-9th April 2011 .

Marathon Pasta

Potato and Wild Garlic Gnocchi with Pancetta, Brocoli, Kalamata olives and Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

Serves 4 or 2 hungry people

For the Gnocchi

500g dry mash potato (cook potatoes in their skins)

150g pasta flour

1 egg

Small handful fresh wild garlic chopped

Salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients thoroughly and roll into small bite sized balls, flatten the balls a little with a fork and place in boiling water with a little olive oil. Lift the gnocchi out gently when they rise to the surface and place in cold water. Drain and set aside.

1 head of broccoli cut into florets and blanched until just passed al dente

200g diced pancetta

6 Kalamata olives (chopped roughly)

1 clove garlic chopped

30g toasted pumpkin seeds

30g grated parmesan or more if you prefer

Olive oil

Squeeze of lemon juice

Knob of butter

Fry the pancetta in a little oil until brown, lift out of the pan leaving the oil behind. In the oil gently fry the gnocchi until golden on both sides. Add the broccoli, butter, pancetta and olives and warm through. Add the lemon juice and season, making sure not to add too much salt due to the pancetta. Serve and sprinkle with the pumpkin seeds and parmesan.

Please note this dish would work well with freshly cooked spaghetti

Steaming Puddings

2011-02-11T04:13:00.000-08:00

As I write this it is steadily raining outside and has been all week. Christmas has left us and we are into a new year. It is not exactly cold outside but it is pretty miserable none the less. At this time of year comfort food is what we fancy eating. To my mind the ultimate British comfort foods are steamed puddings.
Christmas pudding.

Steamed pudding has been made in this country since the fourteenth century and can come in both sweet and savoury versions. The most well known version is probably Christmas pudding which started life as a sort of porridge known as frumenty which included cereal, breadcrumbs, mutton, wine, raisins, currants, prunes and spices.
By 1595 the frumenty had been replaced by a pudding which contained eggs to give it a firmer texture, it is about then that it became a Christmas dessert. In 1664 it was banned by the puritans because the act of flaming the pudding was seen as a Pagan custom. The pudding was reintroduced in 1701 by George 1st and continues to be popular to this day.

A recent version of Christmas pudding by Heston Blumenthal for Waitrose sold out within days of going on sale and was reputed to be selling on e-bay for £129. Interestingly Heston’s pudding which contained a whole orange was inspired by a classic Sussex steamed pudding called Sussex pond pudding. The pond pudding consists of suet pastry enclosing a whole lemon, currants, butter and sugar and then steamed for several hours.

The Savoury Pudding

The most famous savoury version of steamed pudding is probably steak and kidney pudding. This pudding or versions of it have been around for hundreds of years. The original pastry was not eaten but served as a protector to the filling while it cooked in the oven. Medieval ovens were crude affairs with not much in the way of thermostats or temperature control. Once cooked the puddings lid was removed and the filling eaten before the rest of the casing discarded.

In the fifteenth century oysters were put in the puddings to help make the beef go further, it is hard to imagine today a time when oysters were less expensive and more readily available than beef! There is even a mention of beef and oyster pudding in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’ which was written in late 1400’s.

Once you have mastered the basic construction of a savoury pudding the filling can be very much at your discretion. Pig foot, ham hock and pheasant work well together as does rabbit and bacon with whole grain mustard. We have done a few vegetarian versions using vegetarian suet instead of beef suet. Wild mushroom and chestnuts with dried cranberry is popular as is roasted squash and sweet potato with pickled walnuts.

The Sponge Pudding

Probably my favourite dessert of all time has to be steamed treacle pudding with vanilla custard. I could enjoy it in any time of the year and almost any time of the day. In fact sponge in all forms is a winner in my eyes, victoria sponge with a cup of tea, Rum Baba soaked in aged rum syrup or the almond version of sponge that you put in tarts to bake, called Frangipane.

When I was a child my mum used to make pineapple upside down pudding for my birthday, this consisted of a tin of pineapple rings in a buttered dish with sponge mixture poured over the top and baked in the oven. It is something that we have revived lately at the Gingerman with great success.

To make sponge richer it is good to use duck eggs instead of hen’s eggs. It is a general point that duck eggs make better pastry than hen’s eggs but they are more expensive and more difficult to get hold off. As with the savoury versions, steamed sponges can have many flavours or combination's of flavours it is really up to the individual and I have added a couple of recipes to help.

Duck Egg Sponge with Champagne Rhubarb and Ginger

6 small stems champagne rhubarb
1 thumb crystalized ginger diced
Little sugar
1 knob butter
Put all ingredients in a non- stick pan and heat gently until the sugar is dissolved. Put into a buttered and floured pudding basin.
For the sponge
170g butter
250g caster sugar
2 duck eggs
2 duck yolks
2 duck whites
200g plain flour
Half tsp baking powder
Cream the butter and 110g sugar, add 1 whole duck egg at a time, then the 2 duck yolks and beat well. Fold in the flour and baking powder. Whip the 2 duck yolks with the rest of the sugar and fold into the sponge mixture.
Pour the sponge mix over the Rhubarb and steam until a knife blade comes out clean. Serve with custard.

Sticky toffee pudding

Date puree
375g dates (stones removed)
375g water
Simmer for 10 mins and then puree in food processor

For the sponge

130g butter
375g muscovado sugar
3 eggs lightly beaten
450g flour
10g baking powder
3g bicarb
Cream sugar and butter until fluffy, add egg a little at a time, add flour, baking powder and bicarb. Mix well and fold in the date puree.
Pour mixture into buttered and lined oven proof dish and bake on 160 degrees for approx. 30 mins or until the inserted knife comes out clean. Leave to cool and turn out.
For the sauce
640 ml double cream
340g caster sugar
130g glucose
130g unsalted butter
Boil half cream with sugar, glucose and butter until golden brown. Take off the heat and add the rest of the cream.

Christmas Time

2010-12-06T04:06:00.000-08:00

Christmas time is not always a time of happiness in the restaurant business. For most people Christmas Eve, Christmas day and Boxing Day is a time for celebrations and a time to unwind with close friends and family. For people in the business Christmas starts in August. Menus have to be written and approved ready to be sent out when we get our first enquiries. Traditionally September is the month when we start to get enquiries about Christmas staff parties. Menus are sent and bookings taken.

We tend to do our first parties in early December, with them running through to January. We have Christmas parties ranging in size from two or three people, through to exclusive use Parties who book out a whole venue. Our two private dining rooms also prove popular for groups of up to 20 people who want a bit of privacy.

By the time Christmas Eve comes along staff could have had several weeks of working flat out. In all of our sites we now close Christmas Day but open Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. For years we have worked Christmas Day, both for ourselves and other people and it is only since we have had kids that we have decided to close.

We have Christmas Day at home and generally invite a few friends to enjoy the Day. The day starts off with presents for the children followed by bacon sandwiches and mugs of tea. This year we have 22 for lunch and so I will have to pull my finger out on Christmas Eve. Luckily I have a chef friend from London staying for Christmas so we should be able to get the work done.

We will start at around 2pm with smoked salmon and blinis with a little gin crème fraiche. I like to make blinis without buckwheat as I think it makes the blinis lighter, the batter will be made in the morning and then lightly fried in butter at the last minute. I will get my salmon from Paul at P.H.FISH. He does a great cure and lightly smokes whole sides of organic farmed salmon from Loch Duart in the Highlands. I like to cut the salmon quite thickly to give it a bit more texture and chew.

Starter

This year I think I will start the meal off with lobster and fennel ravioli with a spicy tomato butter sauce. The filling will have to be made the day before and the pasta dough made Christmas morning. It will be a fair amount of work but two of us should get it done.

The most important main course of the year

I used to be a goose man until I met a couple on holiday in Turkey.

Tanya and Mark Beckinsale help run Tanya’s family turkey farm in Cookham Dean, just outside Henley on Thames. The Copas family have been rearing award winning turkeys since 1957 http://www.copasturkeys.co.uk. Copas turkeys have a reputation for quality second to none. At Copas they choose slow growing breeds which are reared outside from the age of 6 weeks in cherry orchards and reach maturity at about 6 or 7 months, (the norm is 2 months) This gives the birds a more dense flesh, further hanging of the bird gives it a more gamey flavour reminiscent of other rare breed poultry. The turkeys are dry plucked by hand and because of a good fat covering the turkeys stay moist and succulent. Mark and Tanya kindly sent us a Copas turkey the first Christmas after we met and we have not looked back. We recently took the kids to Cookham to choose our Turkey. Grace and Freddie loved running in the orchard with the turkeys as you can see from the photos.

It is really great to spend time with a family who really have as big a passion for food as I have, and I cannot recommend their turkeys highly enough.

I usually cook the Turkey in two parts, much to Tanya’s disgust! I like to roast the breast meat and slowly cook the legs. By roasting the bird whole I find that the breast can overcook while you wait for the legs to cook.

The legs I will cook on Christmas Eve by slowly braising the meat on the bone for 3 hours, I will then pick the meat and layer it in an ovenproof dish with caramelised onions and potato slices. I will then cover with some of the braising juices and finish off in the oven. The “crown” will then be roasted on Christmas day and carved in thin slices.

Vegetables

I will serve roast potatoes, cooked in duck fat until crispy. Sprouts tossed with sliced chestnuts and smoked bacon, buttered savoy cabbage with black pepper and probably roasted parsnips.

Sauce

I like to do truffle scented gravy made with a reduction of the turkey stock finished with truffle. Cranberry sauce is a must in my house even though it is not my favourite. People seem to love cranberry sauce. I have a friend who thinks that turkeys were invented as a vehicle for getting the cranberry sauce from their plate to their mouth.

Bread sauce is another sauce that would go very well as it does with almost all roasted poultry.

Cheese Board

We like to serve the cheese at the same time as we serve the Christmas pudding. This allows the red wine served with the turkey to go with the cheese. I am a big pinot noir fan so something classic from Burgundy will do the trick. My cheese boards are almost always from the British Isles, in the British Isles we now make cheese which is as good as if not better than the rest of the world. A good mix would be Colston Basset Stilton, Flower Marie, a nice goats log like Ragstone or Ticklemore and finally probably a good cheddar like Montgommery’s cheddar or Lord of the Hundreds.

Christmas Pudding

My mum always makes a fantastic Christmas pudding, we serve it flambéed with any old booze that’s lying about, although something with orange in it would be perfect. Custard goes well but crème fraiche works better to cut the richness.

Chocolates might be too much after the meal but we will probably fine room for a few later.

I hope everyone has a good Christmas and great new year.

Game

2010-11-14T13:23:00.000-08:00

As the last days of summer start to disappear and those long cold nights start to close in, I am in good spirits. The season from early September through to Christmas is my favourite time of year for produce in this country. I really look forward to cooking with root vegetables from squashes to swedes. Those long slow cooking dishes like oxtail in red wine or suet puddings and of course the game season.

What Is Game?

I love the game season. It allows chefs to cook something a little different and also offers a little bit of a change on a menu that has featured beef, lamb and pork heavily up until then. The Glorious Twelfth of August is when traditionally the game season starts in the U.K. with people paying big money to shoot red grouse (up to £1000 per day) or to a much lesser extent ptarmigan.

Game broadly falls in to two categories, feathered and furred and can be truly wild or semi wild to not really wild at all depending on what it is and where it is found.

Feathered game starts as I have mentioned with grouse, next comes partridge and then pheasant. Woodcock and snipe are also available from the twelfth but they are much less common. Grouse, woodcock, wood pigeon, wild duck and snipe are truly wild but both pheasant and partridge are for the large part reared from chicks and then released into the wild in readiness for the shoot.

Furred game consists mainly of venison, hare, rabbit, and to a lesser degree squirrel (recently some chefs have been singing their culinary praises so to speak). Venison is the generic term for the meat of all species of deer found in the U.K. Venison can be either totally wild or farmed depending on the time of year and depending where it comes from. Most venison on menus tends to be Red Deer but you can find fallow, roe or muntjac from time to time.

Rabbits and hares can be shot all year round but hare especially is better eaten during the winter months.

Pros and Cons of Shooting

Shooting often gets a bad press. It is often perceived as a sport for "Toffs" done at great cost. While this does probably go on, it is not the norm and the vast majority of people who shoot do it for the right reasons.

Scottish wild deer need to be culled. A wild deer does not die of old age but dies of starvation due to it losing its teeth and not being able to feed in the winter months. Because deer no longer have any natural predators (the last wolf in Scotland was said to be killed in 1743) the only thing that can now check their numbers is Man. Gillies or Game keepers in Scotland regularly cull the deer and it has been known for the army to be bought in to cull the deer from helicopters in years of high population growth. Surely it is better for people to regularly shoot the oldest deer for food rather than either let them starve to death or be shot from helicopters?

Grouse, woodcock and snipe which are truly wild are encouraged to flourish by man for the purpose of shooting. Keepers will promote the growing of things like heather and wild berries, upon which they feed and also by killing their predators like foxes and weasels. People will say that this is just a method of farming and that the animals should be left to live in peace. This argument only goes so far, the money made from shooting helps to protect the natural habitat which might otherwise be ruined. It is also worth considering that wild game numbers have increased over the years and this must mainly be due to them being promoted and nurtured.

It is perhaps with the most common shoots of pheasant and partridge that the waters of acceptability are most muddied. As I have said above pheasants and partridges for the most part are reared from chicks for several weeks and then released into a controlled environment where they are fed grain from hoppers. They are then released at the time of the shoot. This can be seen as a sort of semi wild farming just for the benefit of someone with a shotgun.

It is certainly true that large shoots organised for the benefit of corporate bankers or `'Toffs`' is a bad thing. It is not right that someone should fire 1000 shells to kill 200 birds in one afternoon and this practise is generally frowned upon by the shooting community, not least as there have been cases of the birds being buried once shot because there is no local market for the meat. Small shoots with ten or so guns where the shooters can effectively eat what they kill or sell what they kill to the local restaurant are a much better bet.

When you compare the lives of even semi wild game to that of farm animals or heaven forbid battery or intensively reared animals then the game birds have a much better life. It is also worth considering that it is thought that up to 15% of game birds escape the shoot and live at least another year of total wildness. This has helped push up the numbers of wild birds who live locally. You only have to drive around rural Sussex near the Ginger Fox to see how many pheasants there are all year round.

Game Cookery

The cooking of game has changed quite a bit since I started cooking some 20 years ago. The hanging of game in restaurants no longer happens due to Health Departments not allowing game to be kept on the premises in the fur or feather. The days of pheasants being hung by the head until the head falls off or until Maggots appear are long gone. Today’s taste is much more for lighter fresher tasting food which doesn’t lend itself to hanging. Venison used to be marinated in red wine overnight before cooking to intensify its flavour but that again is seen as old fashioned with restaurants preferring just to simply cook the venison, brush with mustard, coat with pistachio crumbs and serve pink.

Often, as with most things, simple cooking and bread sauce are all you really need. I have done a couple of recipes below to help get you started and its worth remembering that you can now get game in most good supermarkets.

Pheasant Crumble

Serves 6
For the pheasant stew
1 large cock pheasant jointed
2 rashers streaky bacon diced
1 clove garlic chopped
1 onion diced
Sprig thyme
Bay leaf
50ml Madeira
250ml brown pheasant or chicken stock
Flour for dusting
Little oil for frying
20 button onions
20 small mushrooms

Coat the pheasant in the flour and shallow fry in a dish that can go in the oven. Brown the pheasant and then add the onion and garlic, stir for a few minutes, and add the herbs and madeira. Simmer for 1 minute and add the stock, bring to the boil, season, cover with a lid or foil and place in an oven on 150 degrees for about 2 hours or until the meat comes easily away from the bone. Leave to cool, shred the meat from the bones and set aside in an oven proof dish . Pass the stock and leave to stand. Fry the button mushrooms and onions until golden brown and add to the pheasant meat. Pour the stock over the meat, onion and mushroom mix.

For the crumble topping

100g plain flour
50g butter
20g toasted hazelnuts
4 rashers crispy bacon
Little chopped parsley

Put the flour and butter in a food processor and pulse until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, this can also be done by hand. Place a mixture on a baking sheet with Parchment paper, bake in the over on 180 degrees stirring every 5 minutes until the mixture is golden brown. Leave to cool and put in a mixing bowl. Add the bacon, hazelnuts and parsley and season well. Put the mixture onto the pheasant mix and heat through in an oven.

Serve with mashed potato and greens.

Quick Bread Sauce

This is the perfect sauce to go with all feathered game or roast chicken.
1 small onion chopped
400ml milk
1 clove
1 sprig thyme
1 bay leaf
4 slices stale white bread made into breadcrumbs
25g butter

Gently heat the milk with the bay, thyme, and clove. Bring to the boil and set aside to infuse. Sweat the onion in half the butter until soft, add the milk, bring back to the boil and add the breadcrumbs. Take off the heat and mix well, season with salt and black pepper and then add the last of the butter.

Posted by Ben Mckellar

Do We Eat Enough Seafood?

2010-10-06T02:26:00.000-07:00

When you read the papers you get the feeling that seafood stocks are being over fished and that one of our most important food resources is being destroyed. Is this the case or is it that we do not eat enough of the right seafood?

Two thirds of the world’s surface is covered with sea and we are told that we know more about the Moon than we do about our oceans. Man has fished for over 25,000 years and fish has always had a special place in our history right up to the present day with “fish and chips” being still a very popular dish.

At The Gingerman we buy the majority of our fish from a company called P.H.Fish which is based in Hastings. Hastings is one of the oldest fishing ports dating back a thousand years and Hastings boasts the largest beach launched fleet in the UK.

P.H.Fish is a company run by Paul Hodges, he has a catamaran called The Amadeus which goes out almost every day. The Amadeus is a 10 meter boat which is not very big but because of the type of nets they use she is able to land, and therefore sell all that they catch. This is not something that all boats can do with many of the larger boats throwing away up to half of their haul because it has either been crushed in the nets or because they cannot sell the fish on land. P.H.Fish was awarded a sustainability award by the MSC or marine stewardship council for the sustainable methods of fishing.

All our head chefs get text messages from the fishing boat detailing what has been landed and from that they work out the specials boards before the fish arrives on the premises. When we change the monthly menus we speak to the fishermen to determine what is in season and what will be readily available and then write the menus accordingly.
We try hard to introduce lesser known varieties of fish to menus in order to try to take the pressure off fish like Cod and Haddock with different degrees of success. Fish like Pollock, Hake, Gurnard, Whiting, Slip Soles and Coley are all delicious but they need to be cooked well and be treated with respect.

The trouble with lesser known fish is that the public will not necessarily order them in a restaurant as they would Cod or Sea bass. The job of the front of house is to “hand sell” these fish in the same way that they would Ox tail, Grouse or Crispy Pigs Head on the meat side of the menu or a Riesling or Gewurztraminer wine on the wine list. This allows the restaurant to sell more unusual ingredients and for the customer to discover something new. A very good example of this is Monkfish, which 15 years ago was used as either cheap Scampi or cat food but today is one of the most popular and therefore most expensive fish you can get.

So do we eat enough fish in this country? The evidence is probably no but we are improving. We currently export 80% of what we catch to countries like France, Spain and Portugal. Many people I know say that they don’t even like fish. I am convinced that people go off fish when they are young, they don’t like the bones or the eyes looking at them or maybe they were brought up on over cooked fish which let us be honest is pretty awful. The same might be said of Liver with a generation put off by grey grainy overcooked Liver.

My 5 year old daughter will eat raw salmon in a Japanese restaurant (or pink fish as she calls it) without a second thought. She will also tuck into a bowl of mussels without a problem. Is this a case of her being innocent enough to try something without any inhibitions? And if a 5 year old can enjoy raw fish why can’t a 25 year old?

In my book there are 2 general rules when it comes to fish, freshness and simplicity. Buy the freshest fish possible and cook it simply. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall talks of eating freshly caught Mackerel poached in sea water on the beach with his hands from a driftwood plate.

Japanese fishermen often eat a little of their catch raw on the boat while at sea with a little soy sauce and wasabi.

For the home cook fresh fish just fried with a little butter and lemon is as good as it gets. I have written two recipes below for you to try at home. The Tikka monkfish is a great dish if you are not that keen on fish because the monkfish is meaty and has no bones to worry about. The spice gives a little kick but the Raita calms that down. It is also a dish that works as a starter or in Pitta bread for a snack. The Salt Cod Croquettes are simply delicious as either a starter with salad or as a canapé with drinks. Both dishes are very popular at the restaurants.

Salt Cod Croquettes with Wild Garlic and Aioli

Makes about 30 croquettes depending on size
200g cod fillet
Course sea salt (enough to cover the cod)
60g strong flour
150ml water
50g unsalted butter
2 large eggs
4 wild garlic leaves chopped
Pinch cayenne pepper

For the Aioli
2 egg yolks
1 tsp Dijon mustard
150ml vegetable oil
150ml olive oil
2 cloves crushed garlic
Pinch saffron infused in warm water
Juice of 1 lemon

Place the cod on a plate and cover with the sea salt, put in the fridge for at least 6 hours or overnight. Wash the salt off the cod and poach the cod in a little milk, drain the cod and discard the milk. Flake the fish and set aside. Bring the water and butter to the boil together in a saucepan, add the flour and stir rapidly, keep the dough mixture on the heat for 2 minutes and set aside to cool down. Once cool add the eggs slowly one at a time. If you have a mixer then that will work best. Once the eggs are added, fold in the flaked fish, the wild garlic and cayenne. Do not season the mix as there will be enough salt from the cod.

Heat a pan of oil to 170 degrees (or use a deep fat fryer) and drop small spoons of croquette mix into the oil. Fry until golden brown and drain on kitchen paper.
For the Aioli place the yolks, mustard, saffron, lemon juice and garlic in a food processor. Slowly pour both the oils onto the yolks mixture slowly and steadily while the food processor is running until a smooth mayonnaise is formed, season with salt and pepper.

Simply dip the croquettes in the Aioli and eat or Serve several Croquettes with some dressed leaves and a pot of Aioli as a starter.

Posted by Ben Mckellar

Everyone Loves Roast Chicken!

2010-08-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

Roast chicken is one of those dishes that most people have learned to cook in their time. It was probably one of the first things I cooked with my mum, along with the beef gravy or maybe a jam tart with left over pastry.

We eat more chicken in this country than any other meat and it is difficult to find a more versatile animal. The pig can offer perhaps more dishes but pigs are harder and more costly to produce and pigs don’t lay eggs!

One of my favourite cookery books by Simon Hopkinson is simply called “roast chicken and other stories” and if you type roast chicken on Google you get 1 million 210 thousand hits.

The most popular restaurant dish in Britain we are told is Chicken Tikka Marsala. I am sure that chicken contributes as much to these sales as the Tikka Marsala element in this dish. Would Mutton Tikka Marsala be as popular?

You can now get many different types of chicken in the supermarkets from the often frowned upon value chicken to the Rolls Royce of chickens “Poulet de Bresse”
The Poulet de Bresse comes from the Bourg en Bresse region of France between Lyon and Geneva. The Poulet de Bresse chicken has its own Apellation d’origine controlee certificate. This means it is protected to the same extent as some of Frances most famous wines.

You can buy 2 value chickens in a supermarket on special offer for £5 but the Bresse chicken will cost about £30 - £35. The price difference is indeed great but is it worth paying the extra?

Generally rare breeds of all animals take twice as long to reach maturity and are half the size of their extensively reared counterparts. These 2 points contribute most to the expense of the raw product. The other and perhaps most important thing to consider is then taste. The more expensive chickens will have a much firmer and more gamey taste than the cheaper version but that might not always suit a pallet that is used to the more tender watery bird.

At the restaurants we buy our chickens from a farm in Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex. This farm produces free range chickens which reach maturity in 16 weeks and is about 3 miles from The Ginger Fox. These chickens are very good quality and have travelled very little in order to be on our menus. In the restaurant business it is always more cost effective to buy whole animals or fish and butcher yourself than to buy joints or fillets (in the case of fish). The problem with this is that you need the skills necessary to deal with whole carcasses and the flexibility of menu to cope with different dishes.

We will buy say 20 chickens at a time and then joint the birds and come up with various dishes in order to get the most out of each bird. Recently at The Ginger Dog we came up with following specials out of our chickens.

The breasts would be plainly roasted and served with a crispy potato cake, buttered runner beans and a roasted garlic cream. The legs we marinated in vegetables, thyme, bay leaf and red wine for up to 5 days and then braised. The cooking juices were then reduced for coq au vin. This dish was placed on our £10 menu and served with mash potato. In the past we have also roasted the legs with “40 cloves of garlic” to recreate the famous French classic bistro dish.

The chicken wings were salted for 2 hours and then cooked slowly in duck fat for 2 hours. The bones were taken out of the wings and then the wings were served with the sautéed livers from the chicken in a salad dressed with Cabernet sauvignon vinegar as a starter.

Finally we made a chicken consommé with the carcasses which we roasted in the oven and then clarified. We served the consommé with some bacon dumplings and a little drizzle of truffle oil.

This practice is the best way to ensure that everything is used up, that little is wasted and that the restaurants can be competitive in this market. This can also be done at home with leftover roast chicken being used in risotto with a stock made from the bones.

Posted by Ben Mckellar

Menu Change

2010-06-28T14:46:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the month again.

We generally change our menus every calendar month in all the restaurants. The logic behind this is to keep the food as seasonal as possible and also because as we run small menus, it gives our regular customers something new to try. We think its better to run small menus that change often than have big menus that change little. If a menu has twenty main courses you can usually tell the food will not be as fresh as you want. The most important thing for a good chef is to get produce in daily and then sell it by the end of service that night.

Lots of celebrated and busy restaurants do not change the menu at all or very rarely. When was the last time you went to your favourite curry house or Chinese and found that Chicken Tikka Marsala was no longer on the menu? When we go to ethnic restaurants we generally know what we are going to order before we arrive.

Other restaurants are so well known for certain dishes that customers make special journey just for that particular dish. The Tour d’Argent is Paris is famous for its roasted duck with a sauce made from pressing the carcass in a silver press. The restaurant gives you a certificate telling you which number customer you are in ordering the duck. They have so far sold over one million ducks.

There is another restaurant in Paris that serves just one starter and one main course. Le Relais de L’Entrecote in St Germain will only serve a walnut oil salad to start and Sirloin steak for main course. We went one evening because we just followed the queue which extended onto the street. The only question they ask you about the food is how you would like the steak cooked, as some of you will no doubt know, most steaks in Paris come in shades of rare. The meal we had was great and the atmosphere terrific.

We try to stagger the menu changes at our restaurant so that either Pamela or myself can be there. The Fox menu changed on Wednesday and the others change next week. We try to get all the staff to attend. This is a great opportunity for staff to see what they are going to be serving and also gives them a chance to ask questions on particular dishes, is the chicken free range? where do the scallops come from? are sweetbreads testicles? that sort of thing. It is also valuable for chefs to get some feedback from people who like food before dishes go on the menu.

Most good chefs see a finished dish in their head and then work back from that to create the dish. The dish might look great on paper and work well in the head but until you actually cook the dish you don’t know how it will taste. There are a few basic rules that we try to stick to when writing menus, a soup, a red meat and white meat, a chocolate pudding, a salad and so on.

We get market reports from most suppliers and generally get the heads up when new produce become available. Nurturing good relationships with suppliers is very much part of the head chefs job. At this time of year the food tends to be a little lighter in style with fewer heavy sauces. Peas, broad beans, mint, new potatoes, new season lamb, rabbit, Wild sea trout, berries and stone fruit should all feature heavily. Maybe a chilled sweet corn soup with crab as a starter or chilled raspberry soup with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

At The Ginger Fox tasting we had a near full house turn out which was a surprise in itself considering England were playing Slovenia. Everyone was happy with the menu and hopefully it will be well executed by the kitchen. The Sweetbread starter and stuffed Rabbit main course proved popular with us but we will have to see which dishes sell well with our customers.