So the new menu went well on Tuesday night.
We had a tasting menu for the chef's table and an a la carte in the restaurant.
It was nice that Jodie and Simon came up from the Peacock, hope they enjoyed it!
And the staff from Matlock's world famous Indigo furniture store, who built the chef's table, found some of the new dishes interesting.
That's the whole point of a tasting menu, you see, to make sure we make it interesting for the diner.
Whether that means trying to get them to eat some cured venison, perhaps served a glass of beer, and some dripping, its giving them something that they normally wouldn't try.
You know, the one dish that I thought would raise a few eyebrows, was the one that everyone seemed to enjoy most.
For the last few weeks I've been really trying to incorporate tomatoes onto the dessert menu. Now that the weather is getting better I just thought it would be fun, and anyway, I get bored!
So I was faffing around, trying to make sweet tomato confit and a spicy tomato syrup, but neither really seemed to hit the spot, so it was back to the drawing board.
A few months ago, for a wedding tasting, I came up with the idea of a sweet carrot sorbet to garnish an orange mousse and so I wondered if there was any mileage in teaming up tomatoes and carrots, but that didn't seem quite right either. Then cucumbers entered the equation, and the new pudding starting taking shape.
I had to be careful, as it was after all, still a pudding!
We peel a cucumber, scoop out small balls from the flesh, and vac pac them with a light, sweet, tarragon syrup. Various melons are peeled, cut into geometric shapes and compressed in the sous vide machine.
Sliced carrots are cooked with orange juice, blended, and churned into a sorbet. We also make a yoghurt sorbet as well. Tarragon leafs are cooked in the microwave and sprinkled with icing sugar to make sweet tarragon crisps and finally we deep fry julienne carrots to make crispy carrots. Oh, and a brown sugar wafer adds a nice toasty crunch!
And so you see, not a tomato in sight!
On Tuesday night someone asked me how I got my inspiration for my dishes, so now you know. It often starts with one ingredient and that will send me off in another direction.
And the outcome - everyone really loved the dish, so do I by the way!