Tempura...but not on my roast potatoes!

Sunday, a day of rest and roast beef! That is if you’re not cooking it...what a weekend to finish a whacker of a week! A mere two thousand or so plates of beautiful food were served to some very happy guests this week, great fun!

It was Friday morning and I had a saint on my board (well at least the French named it after a saint) which was a beautiful John Dory for the Martin family’s Tasting Menu. But it was Friday morning, so no time to dwell on beautiful dead fish...well not much time anyway.  

Friday's fish mountain was finished and  before I could say “Sammar my Angel, could you do the ice bags”, the weekend's game was arriving...and we’re not talking monopoly! We've got 12 brace of partridge, 6 of mallard and two saddles of Salisbury venison - cheers David, spot on.

It’s funny, but no-one ever seems to keen to volunteer for liver duties, I wonder why?? Jacob and I knocked through the partridges in no time and the venison loins were already sitting pretty in the red wine marinade, so it was just the mallards to finish. “Must remember to keep one whole, must remember to keep one whole”... Mr. Martin had asked for some game to be included in the menu, so a well seasoned mallard crown went into a sous vide bag, followed by a load of foie gras fat. The bag was then sealed and the bird was poached 'slow and low'. Craig poached some beautiful little baby pears in a light syrup, spiced with cinnamon, clove and cardamom, which we will serve with the mallard on Saturday night.

Friday’s lunch service was long and busy; with salt beef raviolo’s leaving for table 6 and club sandwiches leaving for the lounge 4. Not sure what happened to Friday afternoon as before I knew it we were in the middle of a traditional Friday night service, thick and fast! But it was a hell of good fun, with all of the boys on top form, smooth as!

Saturdays have to be simple, it’s just rude otherwise! A steady busy lunch that rolled on till 4ish, then FAT’s (Full Afternoon Tea's that is) galore. Then on to Langoustine Cannelloni duty with Niall and before we know it, Saturday night set-up is complete, job's a gooden.

Corned ox tongue with beets and horseradish was the evening appetiser, and I have to say, it was delicious! The Cannelloni flew out the door, as did the venison, with us serving nearly 30 of them. The Martin’s loved their meal, with the JD being there favourite;  pan-fried John Dory, parsnips and vanilla, chicken jus roti. Mr. Martin also loved the mallard; slow roast breast of mallard, with poached pear, ceps and game jus.

So we’d got our Saturday night service fix, kitchen was cleaned down and we were home for midnight - cheeky!

I shouldn’t work on Sundays, there’s far too much good stuff around for me to eat! Ben’s roast tats and shallots finished with a touch of Xerse (a Spanish vinegar), too good, plus the sirloin of beef Winky had roasted to perfection. Luckily he’d hidden the his Béarnaise very well so I could only manage 4 or so roasties, and he stood firm guarding over his roast sirloin...oh it looked good!

Start of Sunday's dinner service and we had five guests on their 7^th night who fancied some tempura prawns. “I don’t have enough prawns” was the call, “leave it with me” I said. Not sure how, but 30 minutes later an oriental buffet was on its way to their bedroom! We managed to conjure up all sorts of tasty treats, think I must enjoy eating at Yauatcha too much. No soft-shell crab with almond and chilli, just tempura batter everywhere. Quick clean down and then on with dinner service, weekend almost over. What a week!

Bread to make and then Jerusalem 'chokes to prep tomorrow, winter’s coming! Thursday’s new lunch menu will also be written up, with something along the lines of scallop with Jerusalem artichokes and bacon; slow-roast rump of beef with bone marrow raviolo, then we’re going to have a play with some fresh ewe's cheese for pudding - sound tasty?

Looking to the week ahead - I'll hopefully sneak a morning out on Thursday to go and meet our lovely kale leaves while they're still in the ground, growing at Eurdige Manor Farm. It seems as one busy week finishes, another starts, and all the time the seasons roll on.

What tasty treats will be gracing our back door this week?

Cornish Outlaws, cheese and beef.

The key to a good day is clear communication, at least that’s half the battle anyway! I arrived in Devon late on Saturday night to be greeted by the words "apple pie, what you talking about? It was a pear frangipane!", to which I replied “what do you mean WAS”, no pudding for me then! Dartmoor on a sunny autumnal afternoon really is perfect, where better place to spend a Sunday off than sat up on the top of Hound tor, ace.

Monday took us to Cornwall, our destination: Nathan Outlaw's 'Seafood Bar and Grill' in Rock. What a superb lunch. Beautiful local oysters and a lovely fillet of mackerel on charred toast for our starters, then Thornback ray wing with dumplings and caper sauce and Haddock with squash and parsley sauce as our mains. For pudding, one crumble and one cheesecake.  Really tasty and all cooked and seasoned perfectly. Wash it all down with a pint or two of Doom Bar ale, which is brewed just down the road - perfect!


After lunch we headed across the river to Padstow to have a look at the lobster hatchery. Although it is only small, it’s really worth a visit. The idea is that Padstow’s fleet of lobster fishermen hand any egg carrying females they have caught over to the hatchery. The lobsters are then kept in controlled tanks until their eggs hatch. The near microscopic baby lobster are then kept while the females are returned to, hopefully, carry on breeding. The babies are released once they have reached a less vulnerable size. Seems to me like a proactive and vital means towards achieving the 'near impossible' that is sustainable fishing. What lovely days off!



 I'm back in the kitchen early Tuesday morning and as ever its all go! First it was the MEP for the cheese lunch on Thursday and then on to having a think about our new lunch menus. For the cheese lunch MC has asked for beef with blue cheese, so we seamed out a rump of lovely, four-week-hung Hinton beef, which is rolled and cooked really slowly in the water bath. We then have a lovely piece of braised cheek to serve on the side, together with highland blue mashed potatoes. The amuse bouche will be a rather lovely game consommé with welsh rarebit on the side, then Goats cheese mousse with pickled beetroots & walnuts (a Gidleigh Park classic) as the starter.
  

As for lunch menu, I think it’s just about cold enough for the salt beef raviolo with parsnips to reappear as a starter. Then, how about some lovely woodland belly pork which has been rolled and braised in cider all day? Day-boat Cornish cod with bacon is staying on again this week, it’s just too good to take off, and one of my pastry chefs, Emma, has been busy all day making some rather clever little chocolate puddings; dark and white chocolate mousse on a pistachio biscuit - tasty stuff.

 Hopefully I’ll have our new vegetarian menu written up and on tomorrow evening, then I’m onto writing two Tasting menus for the Martin family, who are my perfect guests, as they truly enjoy eating. “Something with john dory and some game please, the rest's up to you” - that I can take care of!

Oh and before I forget, the quince jelly set and is fantastic! And what timing, ready for the cheese lunch tomorrow! Onwards.

Nearly ready, nearly ready, nearly ready...oops, ripe and falling off the tree! Picking quince should come with a safety warning, poor old Benji took one right to the back of the head! (Honestly I wasn’t shaking the branch he was under!!).

A quick dash down the garden in search of bukler sorrel before this evening’s dinner service resulted in two aprons full of the most fragrant quince ever. There perfume really is amazing...and the bukler sorrel wasn’t too bad either.

So we now have our first ever batch of homemade and home grown quince jelly on the stove. It may be slightly ambitious of me to call it a jelly at this early stage, it’s still well and truly in its water form, but tomorrow will tell! Where’s that apple pectin powder Roland?? SSH, it will set...I hope!

It’s a real shame that Richard Vines is stopping to grow his tiny little leaves and all those lovely salads, I will miss chatting to Lou on a Thursday morning and hope they manage to keep growing something. So I guess it looks like we'll be out in our kitchen garden every morning, trying to find the sorrels before our Gardener Jane does her weeding!!  Poor bronze sorrel, if only you grew in a more sensible place!

Another supplier, Douglas from Euridge Manor Farm, has been growing us some wonderfully little bits a bobs, his red and black kale shoots are great, as his mustard leaf. These little leaves pack such a powerful punch of flavour and really make their mark on a dish - a plate of rabbit with mustard, or the kale on the side of a mallard dish, ace!!!

Back out in our garden, pears and kale are in my sites for the morning...seeing as I couldn’t persuade Craig to get the torch out and pick the pears after dinner service! We also have what looks like 20 or so shaggy ink caps about to shoot up tomorrow, but we'll see - I won’t cook them, but all mushrooms look great in a garden.  

On Sunday I'm off down to the moor with my lovely, perhaps finding a nice bog to get stuck in or something! The plan is then to eat far too many roast potatoes, along with a few pints of jail ale, plus I have heard rumours of an apple pie, so fingers crossed!  Then maybe I'll pop my head in at Gidleigh Park and say hello to Andy P and the boys, sounds like a good day off to me!

Remember the quince jelly people; hope we’ve got some cheese to serve it with Melinda!

Lunch with Mister Quail,

“Are you ready Sam?”, “I thought you said half past?!”, “No Sam, I said quarter past!”, “ARGH, SORRY! Give me 5 minutes”. So 4¼ minutes later, my nearly forgotten hair bands and the whereabouts of my missing pig (don’t ask) found, we were on our way to getting well a truly lost en-route to meet the Quails, Tim and Clare.

Our second call to Tim for help and we were told it was right at The Bell, then left down another lane which wasn’t the right way.  An expert poultry farmer he may be, but a Sat Nav he is not! A wave for help from Karen got us a lovely smile and wave back, but unfortunately for us, this farmer and his quad bike did not stop! Third call for help to Tim...“I’ll send out the father in law. Turn right at the top the road and then wait in the lay-by”. Five minutes later a chap asks “Are you the chef then? Follow me.” with real west county twang.  So finally we make it to the Lower End Farm.

“Tim’s down the Shed”...now shed doesn’t really do it justice! It’s £75,000 worth of shed! And its full of happy, egg-laying chickens, complete with wind turbine, solar panels, food, light and lay times, all pre set and controlled by the man in the know, Tim. These really are happy and confident chickens, each looking absolutely beautiful.  But I’m here to see the quails Tim!

On to the new bit of the setup, Sunny Side Organics. Just born, the quails are tiny, about the size of our thumb, and really quite sweet if you like that sort of thing...but I don’t! So where are the ones we’ll have on the menu next week?! A short walk away and I’m introduced, talk about noisy! But again, confident and healthy looking little birds.

Now you can’t really keep them outside as they are on everything’s menu including the very friendly farm dog! He has spent his whole life being tormented by chickens, and after finally having something he can boss around, they’re looked away from him! Life’s hard for jack russells!

So what Tim has done is; Take a 20ft by 15ft pen and turf half of it (which is replaced monthly) then there’s a little step and a gritted area with raised feed pots and the water pot, which were suspend off the ground, but the quails didn’t like it so they now rest in the grit. The pen is amazingly clean with plenty of free space, enough that the four of us could happily pose for a photo after lunch. Aah lunch, the reason I was there.

So Tim had approached Clare Hargreaves, a food journalist, and she agreed to write a piece for The Independent on why people should eat quail. This is where I come in. I’ve known about Tim’s quail plans for a good three months, so wanted to help out, and they loved the idea, so invited me to cook lunch. 

I had six very fresh birds to use, they could maybe have done with a few more days in the fridge, but never the less they were lovely.  Under the watchful eye of Tim’s Mother in law, I set about preparing them - wishbone out, legs off and carcass cut for sauce; a simple jus roti. I then caramelised the crown, set them aside to rest and cooked the legs separately, ensuring they were well-done. To the same pan I added button onions and some little carrots, and once cooked I added some wild mushrooms and braised lentils. This cheeky mix became one with my jus roti and was finished with some black kale, chives and tarragon. Quick taste, S&P sorted, the breast of the crowns whipped, and the dish assembled and there you have it...wild mushroom and puy lentil ragout, with one of Tim’s quails perfectly roasted, magic! Plus, I only used 2 pans - that’s a record!

A couple of pics and a pre-order of 24 birds for next Friday, and I was on my way back to the hotel, kindly this time with Clare, thankful she knew the way! Favourite restaurants was the conversation for the journey. On our return, a quick tour of the the Priory for Clare and my day out was complete. So the remaining question, what to do with those quails next week?!

Sunny Side Organics and Tim Mister Quail can be reached on misterquail@hotmail.co.uk 

It's always the little guy that starts it.

Three months ago Tim, my egg man, handed me something really quite special. So now after power cuts, mix ups, deaths, pre orders, a journalist, recipes and far too many phone calls...my new supply of quail is ready. Quail are fantastic little birds full of flavour, delicate and always tender, but unfortunately so often unloved in their rearing. Tomorrow I'm off to Lower End Farm to meet these little chaps, and more importantly, to taste them. The plan is we'll cook a nice simple recipe in the kitchen of the farm house, then bring some back to HQ and set about creating something for our menus here...I'm already hungry! What's more, Clare from The Independent is going write a piece on it, highlighting the work that goes into producing good food way before me and my chef's get our hands on it. Then, if all's going to plan, I'll have a the finest quails in the country on our menus! Now if that's not something to get excited about!

Cheers