Wales on the Menu

Wales on the Menu

 

It started with a random tweet asking if anyone had a recipe which highlighted Welsh produce. As Local and Great is dedicated to promoting high quality local produce my attention was grabbed and I followed the link to an email address.

A brief exchange of emails and a phone conversation later I was submitting a recipe for consideration.

A couple of weeks ago one of the highlights of Local and Great Live (see earlier post) was the Smoked Salmon Quiche which I made using local products so I suggested that this would be suitable.

It was, and soon other details emerged – I would be cooking for “Wales on the Menu” a programme for Radio Wales. Simon Wright the force behind great welsh restaurant Y Polyn would present and would be arriving at my house with a production crew to record my making the Quiche and to interview me as I went.

The next stage would be cooking the recipe again in a restaurant where a tasting panel would determine whether it was good enough to go “on the menu” of that particular restaurant.

So to source the ingredients, balancing the dish and ensuring the very best of Welsh produce.

The Pastry for the quiche would require the best of butter so off to Riverside Market where I knew that I could obtain both Farmhouse Butter and Organic Eggs. The Smoked Salmon was simple Jo and Jonathon Carthew at Black Mountain Smokery produce the finest of smoked product in Crickhowell and sell through the local Farmers Markets as well as having an online presence. Ty Mawr Organics and Pen Coed Farm would provide the salad leaves, tomatoes and cucumber needed for the accompanying salad, and the small but important amount of salt involved would, of course be Halen Mon from Anglesey. It would be only Flour and Crème Fraiche that I could not guarantee to be Welsh.

The ingredients certainly fit the bill, would the finished product be good enough to get “On the Menu”.

On the day a small crew Simon, Carolyn the producer and Terry the Soundman arrived and my home became the temporary sound studio as well as a kitchen. “There’s a nice sound quality in the conservatory” was an early comment though this was amended later when rain falling on the roof proved too loud.

Over coffee we chatted and Simon got background information on me, the recipe and the ingredients and why they would fit the Wales on the menu concept.

As the pastry was difficult to handle I had pre-made some but had to demonstrate that I could and had made it myself so some kitchen action took place before I blind baked the pre-made shells and entered a discussion on the basis of blind baking.

The filling was put together quickly as the blind bake happened, with a discussion on the importance of good ingredients and the relevance of locality and seasonality. Terry needed a retake of the sound of whisking so I invented the culinary equivalent of Air Guitar, the Air whisk, desperately whisking an empty bowl.

A quick Cucumber pickle and some mixed leaves, chosen to give a balance to the richness of the quiche, later the quiche had cooked and cooled for a few minutes it was ready to serve.

Would Simon like it? Would it be deemed good enough to compete? If so which of the many great restaurants, that a former editor of the AA Guide knew, would be chosen?

As it was Simon approved and, with a few minor tweaks, suggested that it could compete for a place on the menu of a restaurant of his choice. That choice turned out to be http://www.ypolynrestaurant.co.uk/  Y Polyn the multi award winning Carmarthenshire restaurant, and I had a week to practice before facing a panel of judges who would determine the success or failure of my idea.

 

Crammed into a small car with the production crew, their equipment and my ingredients we headed down the M4 and then into the leafy lanes surrounding the National Botanical Gardens to find Y Polyn.

Met in the car park by Simon, I was introduced to Mark Manson the chef/proprietor before walking up to the door. Immediately I was struck by the menu which included as a starter  Black Montain Smokery Smoked Salmon with a Cucumber Pickle! So not only did I have to get my dish on the menu but, in order to do this, I had to produce a better dish than the one already on the menu!

I could see why Y Polyn had been chosen as my test bed. The menu featured dishes which reflected both the seasonality and locality that I support and as Mark put it “We do as little as possible to the ingredients to bring out the quality of the food”.

Meeting Sue the chef and co-owner over coffee I was shown into the kitchen. On a Monday the restaurant is closed so I would be on my own with Sue – and the fitters who were carrying out some refurbishments! This led to their having to stop work any time that we were actually recording in the kitchen.

Obviously in a strange kitchen finding things is not easy, and the commercial ovens would work at different heats and speeds than my own domestic set up. These though are the challenges of the programme and you just have to suck it up and deal with it.

Time flew as I cooked, this time individual starter dishes as opposed to one large quiche and made my amended dressing – the Cucumber pickle had been pre-made as it takes 5 hours to develop and we had only 2 hours cooking time before presentation. Helpful hints and questions from Sue made me reconsider a couple of issues but, just about on time the dishes were ready to present to the panel.

Simon had assembled some fearsome critics, Peter Thomas a regular at Y Polyn, Cardiff based  food blogger ed Gilbert (Gourmet Gorro) and Mark himself.

Having presented I was asked to leave whilst they tasted and deliberated.

On my return I was given the result, and unlike my previous experience of critics when William Sitwell and Charles Campion made their comments to camera and I did not hear them intl transmission, I had to face my judges.

The result…. Both Peter and Ed had reservations but Mark liked the dish and with a couple of minor amendments, possibly to cooking time and thickness of pastry, suggested that it would get on the menu.

Me, I shall be off to Y Polyn to see whether it does get On the Menu!

To hear the programme go here  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mhrqx

 

and, if you want to cook it here's the recipe

 

Warm Smoked Salmon Quiche

 

Pastry

225g Plain Flour

110g Butter

1 Free Range or Organic Egg Yolk

 

Chill your bowl and the butter for 30 minutes before starting.

Sift the flour into the bowl and add the butter cut into small chunks. Rub in until breadcrumb texture is achieved.

Using a fork add the egg a little at a time to just bring the pastry together. Form into a ball with your hands then clingfilm and chill for 30 -40 minutes.

 

Roll the chilled pastry on a lightly floured work surface until a circle 2 inches wider than your flan ring can be cut out. Fit into the flan ring and push some of the overhanging pastry forward to make a small lip on the inside. Press the remainder away from the ring to cut it. Return the ring to the fridge for a further 30 minutes to chill thoroughly.

Heat the oven to 180c and then bake the flan blind for 15-20 minutes, remove, take out the baking beans. Brush the base and sides with egg wash to seal, return to oven for 5 minutes.

 

Filling

150-175g Smoked Salmon (I use Black Mountain Smokery, in Ireland I would use Frank Hederman, Bill Casey or Sally Barnes salmon)

4 or 5 Free Range/Organic Eggs

Zest of a Lemon

Freshly Ground Black Pepper

A sprinkle of Halen Mon Sea Salt

4 or 5 tbsp Crème Fraiche

Cut the salmon into strips around ½ cm wide. Combine these with the lemon zest and black pepper and set aside to marinate for a while.

Beat the eggs and combine with the crème fraiche.

 

Line the base of the flan with the salmon and then add a sprinle of Halen Mon salt. Pour over the custard and bake for 30 minutes or so or until the top is set but the quiche still has a spring.

Cool on a rack but remember to serve warm.

As the quiche is rather rich it should be served with a mixed leaf salad and a cucumber pickle.

The quiche can also be served cold and is ideal for late summer picnics.

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Crumbs! It's Sourdough, but not as we know it

I have always baked.

My long suffering family and friends have had to suffer an endless procession of bricks of textures varying from gravel to impenetrable Kevlar and rolls that would have gone down well in a medieval siege machine.

 

Over the years, however, something bread like began to emerge and the number of blue tits with bent beaks in the garden reduced. Sometimes people even asked whether there was any home-made bread in the kitchen, and not to decide that a fast food restaurant on the way home was the gourmet option.

Two people though reignited my love affair with bread and baking. Tim Allen taught us some of the mysteries at Ballymaloe Cookery School and baking on a daily basis for three months honed the skills. The other person I met through Ballymaloe, Declan Ryan, a great artisan bread maker from Cork. In addition to sampling his fine wares at Middleton Farmers Market we visited the Arbutus Bakery as part of our school trip and I was able to get a Sourdough Starter from him.

Back home I decided to maintain the routine of baking on a daily basis and soon every spare corner of the house was filled with different flours, bannetons and tins whilst the brewery smell of fresh yeast and sourdough cultures was an organic Febreeze, eliminating all other odours.

Eagerly I devoured Andrew Whitley’s Bread Matters, trying recipes and absorbing the writing, soon I was reading Richard Berthinet’s Crust and Dough, trying his recipes and techniques. My delight at getting a day’s course with him as a birthday present was immeasurable and there were two other ex-Ballymaloe students there as well!

Life settled down as I tried Fougasse and Batons in my newly acquired moulds. Bread was a fact of life and daily experimentation the norm.

Then in the spring of 2012 I met Duncan Glendinning from Thoughtful Bread in Bristol and life changed gear again. Duncan and Patrick Ryan had a book out Bread Revolution and reading through some of the recipes I decided that it would be the new bible. That doesn’t mean that others were dropped, Waterford Blaas (Niam Shields’ recipe from Comfort and Spice) remain favourites but the range of recipes had to be tried.

Anyhow this is all by way of a preamble.

A recent trip to Kent led me to Macknade near Faversham an excellent food store with a wide range of flours available.

The one that caught my eye was a bread mix for a Simple Sourdough! That can’t be right I thought, Sourdough relies on air borne yeasts and a long slow rise. But, it had to be bought and tested.

The list of ingredients were worrying, bread is simple – flour water salt and yeast (wild in the case of Sourdough).Why did the mix need 16 including dried yeast and potato flakes along with something called Dried Wheat Sourdough Powder?

When I bake the only tools used are my hands and a plastic scraper, following Richard Berthinet I do not use floured surfaces, just work the dough until it comes clean of the surface in a soft, springy ball.

“Add water and vegetable oil to the dry ingredients and mix together for 5 minutes until it forms a ball of dough, transfer to a floured work surface and rest for five minutes before kneading for 2 and shaping your loaf” were the instructions on the pack.

Hmmm, the sticky mass resolutely refused to form a ball and as much was transferred on to my hands as onto the surface. Using the scraper I cleaned my hands and doubled the size of the blob on the counter top. Perhaps the 5 minutes rest would allow the gluten to develop to a point at which the dough would start to form.

10 minutes of the bread equivalent of mud wrestling and the addition of more strong flour to the surface and I had a “ball” of dough. Now I was going to give this every chance so a bannetons was floured and the dough set to rise. 30 to 40 minutes to double in size promised the packet and indeed 1 hour later it had. A couple of quick slashes to the top and into the oven.

Allowing the packet, and my normal, cooking time of 30 minutes I returned to the kitchen and removed the loaf from the oven.

“Crusty on the outside, chewy in the middle” someone called Peter Sidwell had endorsed the packet. It was. However, despite using only Sunflower Oil the taste was more Focaccia than Sourdough and the annoying little pieces of Kibbled Rye gave it a Granary loaf texture.

Probably if you use an electric breadmaker and usually have only Sliced White Pan as your mainstay bread you would like this but for me, I’ll wait the hours and days and bake proper Sourdough anytime!

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Newport Food Festival Supper Launched

Tickets for the 2012 Newport Food Festival have just gone live, and one of the hottest tickets in town will be for the Food Festival Supper held on the eve of the festival.

I was lucky enough to get to the inaugural Supper last year and what an event it was!

Several local food businesses had teamed up to provide an excellent menu based on local, seasonal and sustainable ingredients and, almost more importantly for me the wait staff had all been unemployed and had been trained for the event with a view to getting work in the food sector.

Last years menu

With entertainment and dancing towards the end the event was a great showcase for the festival and set it off in just the right way.

 

This year the Supper looks to be just as good with three restaurants combining talents to provide a strong menu.

 

 

STARTER

By The White Hart Village Inn/ The Waterloo Hotel & Bistro

- Quail Terrine, slow cooked egg yolk, sweet and sour apple, radish and watercress

- Grilled Swansea Bay Seabass on a bed of pickled fennel

- Sautéed wild mushrooms en-croute with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce

MAIN

By The White Hart Village Inn/ The Waterloo Hotel & Bistro

- Roast Local Duck Breast, Duck Straws, Speculaas textures, Beetroot and Quinoa

- Baked Sewin with an almond crust, laver bread and potato cake

with a veloute of mussel and herbs

- Courgette, potato and sundried tomato fritters with spicy tomato sauce,

rocket and parmesan shavings

DESSERT

by Vittorios

- Tiramisu

- Pineapple and mascarpone

COFFEE

Any specific dietary requirements need to be indicated at time of final booking.

 

Places will be limited and in great demand s get your tickets –priced £30, early on 01633 656757.

The Supper is just the beginning though and on the Saturday award winning chefs such as Anand George, Bryn Williams and James Summerin will be holding demos and masterclasses, a wide range of producer stalls will fill the streets and the Junior and Teen Chef competitions will reach their climax.

Only in its second year Newport Food Festival is bigger and better and sure to be a major fixture on the Welsh Food Calendar.

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Tomato Sorcery!

I love this time of year as the Tomato season heads towards a glorious taste filled climax.

Naturally there are gluts of the sun drenched little fruit and preserving that glorious summer for the depths of winter becomes an imperative. Traditionally they have been dried, bottled or converted to rich fruity chutneys, even the under-ripe ones get to be Green Tomato Chutney, and modern technology allows us to freeze them whole as well.

For me, however, it is saving them as sauce that offers the widest range of possibilities. Make a couple of varieties Red and Yellow and ring the changes in dishes!

A little work now means a plethora of dishes later in the year and the possibility of using seasonal vegetables right away!

It’s a simple process that pays big rewards. Into a big pan put a little Olive Oil. A diced onion, a crushed Garlic Clove or two and a little Marjoram or Oregano along with freshly ground Black Pepper.

Sweat it for a few minutes to develop the flavours – they will help the final sauce without changing the overall tomatoiness.

Tip in the Tomatoes and heat on a low heat for 45 minutes to an hour whilst the fruit split and release that glorious sweet liquid.

Liquidise the content of the pan – I use my mighty Bamix – and then strain into another pan, turn the heat up a little and reduce to concentrate the sauce. Done!

For a really smooth sauce put the strained pips and skin into a Muslin bag and allow to drip into the reducing sauce, may as well get every last drop of summer out of the fruit.

To intensify the flavour oven roast some – or all – of the Tomatoes before adding to the pan at the beginning.

Once made the possibilities are endless: Pizza Sauce, Pasta, basis for a really rich Curry or Chicken Casserole, good old Soup or a couple of the recipes below.

Ratatouille
2 Tbsp. Olive Oil
Large Banana Shallot in large ½ inch dice
1 Aubergine Diced to ½ inch or 2 Snake Aubergines sliced ½ inch wide
1 Medium Courgette (Zucchini) Try the Yellow Ones
I Red Pepper in 1 inch sections
3 or 4 Cloves of Garlic
Fresh Oregano (chopped)
4 or 5 Basil Leaves
Sea Salt and Black Pepper.
½ Pint Tomato Sauce

Fry the Shallot and Garlic gently in the Olive Oil then add the Courgette and turn the heat up a little.

Add the Aubergine and Pepper and fry 2 minutes before adding the Tomato Sauce.
Add the fresh herbs then taste and season lightly.

Cover and simmer 20 minutes, taste and season then serve in bowls with good bread to sop up the remaining sauce.

Paella(ish)

75 grams of Paella rice per person
100g cooking Chorizo in ½ inch slices, either normal or Smoked (or even both)
4 cloves of Garlic
1 large onion diced
Red and Green Peppers in 1 inch chunks (Optional)
1 tsp. Smoked Paprika (Picante for those who like a little heat)
½ pint Tomato Sauce and ½ pint Vegetable Stock to make up
2 Tbsp. Olive Oil

Heat the Olive Oil and add the diced Onion and Garlic. Fry for 2 minutes then add the Chorizo to release the rich oils from the sausage.

Add the Smoked Paprika and stir well to ensure blended in.

Add the Tomato sauce and allow to bubble away for a couple of minutes before adding the rice and enough Vegetable Stock to cover.

Turn down heat and cook for 18 to 20 minutes under foil, stirring a couple of times at the beginning but then leave.
You will develop a crust on the bottom called a Soccarat which is highly prized in Paella circles.

Serve from the pan with the addition of a little Chopped Parsley garnish.

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Faversham's Foodie Heaven

A family function in Kent and the need to source and prep ingredients for a major cooking episode (more of which in a later blog), left me with a dilemma – Where to find the ingredients I needed, at the quality and provenance that was required?

Fortunately for me on the way home, and a favourite destination for my Parents was Macknade, a farm shop just of the M2 in Faversham. Annoyingly the sign posting for the shop is a brown tourist sign to a “Craft Centre”. Sure there is one there but it is much smaller than the un-advertised Farm Shop, Fishmonger and Wine centre.

On arrival a large low red brick former farm building awaits. Step through the door and an Aladdin’s cave awaits.

Part Farm Shop, part high class deli, part food emporium Macnade is a foodie’s heaven.

There is a long history to the farm, the 1st Fredrick Neame (think Sheppard Neame Britain’s oldest Brewer and Faversham based) started to farm traditional Kentish crops, such as apples, pears and hops, in 1847. Macknade was a magnet to thousands of East Enders who came to Kent to pick Hops in season and had a good reputation as both producer and employer.

 In 1979 Renato Cuomo developed a market garden, to grow courgette flowers, mangetout and purple raspberries.

The Original Farm Shop was called Fir Tree Farm and was a simple tent in 20 hectares of Pick Your Own. As demand grew a large shed was built as a replacement and the range of goods expanded, Macknade think that many people had their first experience of Mangetout, Courgette Flowers and Yellow or Purple Raspberries there.

Today it has moved on further and offers brilliant local produce as well as top quality imported goods.

A range of fresh potted herbs greets you and inside a fresh bakery counter offers organic breads, sourdoughs, continental breads and pastries with a small oven constantly making fresh artisan breads – it could not be further removed from a Supermarket Bakery Section.

A table has special offers on it – today’s was a big box of local tomatoes for £4.50. It had to be snapped up and will provide sauces for pasta and Ratatouille as well as some sauce to be frozen and tomatoes to be frozen whole for a little summer sun in winter.

Good dairy included un-homogenised milk, fresh local creams and crème Fraiche, cheeses, yoghurts and butters. Hard to fault, then on to good local bacons, sausages and hams as well as a range of continental meats - though not as many as the main Delicatessen section.

Finally in the chillers Salad Leaves. I needed some good quality leaves to give a strong and slightly bitter counterpoint to a dish that I planned and with Frisee, Watercress, Land Cress and Lambs Lettuce I was not to be disappointed. All found their way into the trolley along with some rather fine looking Golden Enoki mushrooms, visions of omelettes with a butter-fried Enoki filling and garnish sprang instantly to mind.

Huge shelves of fruit and vegetables were tempting; much of it very local and with three types of Aubergine, several types of Courgette, huge Banana Shallots, Green White and Red Onions, trays of fresh beans and carrots, potatoes brassicas and salad vegetables menu planning was a cinch. Again I loaded up and moved on.

A good range of traditional flours would have kept any home or artisan baker happy whilst for the starter in baking good ready mixes were available. I settled on a large bag of Shipton Mill Organic Flour and, just to try it a Sourdough mix. I make Sourdough and do not begrudge the time taken in the least but culinary curiosity made me buy the mix – can it possibly match the real thing?

Asian and European flours formed the next section along with spices and spice blends, whilst Rices finished the little area. A bag of Paella Rice crept into the trolley, partly because a large Paella Pan at a bargain price was on display and promptly snaffled. (This may have relevance to another future blog post, but my lips are sealed – possibly contractually!).

A quick break for coffee, a Double Espresso for me and a pre-11am Cappuccino for the long suffering Mrs K, and we hit the final leg the Delicatessen. (I had already decided not to enter the enticing world of Wines, Beers and Soft Drinks and to ignore (nobly) the cakes, biscuits, chocolates and exotic fruits in brandy or other alcoholically infused syrups.

The large Meat counter had all the usual hams, though these were local, sausages and chorizos, salamis and kabana’s all of great quality For my Welsh readers I was pleased to see, and purchased Cardiff based Franco Gorno's Pastrami and Salt beef whilst two types of cooking chorizo – Smoked and Green- made up the final purchases from that counter.

The cheeses would not have disgraced a dedicated Cheesemonger and offered a range of British, Irish and continental types from Ireland’s great Coolea to Gorgonzola and its younger relative Dolce latté, hard and soft French and German Cheeses, Manchego from Spain and several maturities of Gouda. It was again great to see many Kentish and Sussex cheeses, from hard mature Cheddars to the UK version of Parmesan, soft Brie or Camembert styles, Blues of varying vintages and strengths and all available to taste.

To be honest I could have stayed all day but time and my budget were pressing and I headed off to the car pausing only for Mrs K to slip a few punnets of Raspberries and Strawberries into the trolley “Well you can’t come to Kent and not buy local fruit” she stated – luckily for my straightened circumstances she forgot that there was brilliant Organic Double Cream back in Dairy.

Car loaded we headed off but one thing is certain, As Arnold Schwarzenegger said “I’ll be back”.

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