Thursday 19 January 2012

If you look at this years AA restaurant guide, it mentions one of the dishes I served last year as "beef, seared on the plancha and served with celeriac, horseradish mayonnaise and bone marrow".

And here it is.

But, it's a little bit more as well!

First we prepare all the textures of celeriac.

Most chefs love celeriac, it's really versatile, and goes well with lots of other foods.

I remember even doing a raw, sort of pressed, gratin for Sarah's mum when they came to East Lodge for lunch a couple of years ago.

So, for the beef, we make a remoulade.

Basically it's a French salad, using thinly sliced celeriac, normally mixed with grain mustard and mayonnaise. But as I was going to use beef fillet I thought grated horseradish would be nicer , adding an English touch to the French salad.

And, anyway, I think the grain mustard remoulade goes better with pork based dishes, think ham and mustard, it's a winner.

So with our crunchy julienned celeriac ( we sometimes use parsnips as well ) mixed with some horseradish mayonnaise, we then cooked the trimmings with butter and milk to make a silky smooth puree.

This will be served hot, seasoned with truffle oil, to bring out all those earthy flavors.

We also soaked trompette mushrooms and layered them with sliced celeriac and potatoes, cooked and pressed them, into a sort of pommes "Anna".

This will be sliced and fried in butter to crisp and brown the sides.

The only thing I had to think about then was how to make it all look tidy, so we rolled sheets of bric pastry around metal moulds, and baked them until crisp.

These would be a good wrapper for the remoulade.

So, can you see, we're going to get all hot and cold and soft and crunchy!

So, with some water bathed beef fillet, unwrapped, seasoned and seared on the red hot plancha, a classic Bercy sauce, made with loads of shallots and white wine, poached rounds of bone marrow on garlic croutons and some deep fried parsley, it's simple description belies it's true complexity.



It's like this simple little terrine, made of slowly cooked duck, duck livers and ham, we served it with a chicory puree, and a little salad made with honeycomb and coco nibs.

It's not as daft as it sounds though, chicory has a slight bitterness to it, as do the coco nibs, but are sweetened by the honeycomb.

And duck glazed with honey is another great combination.

We also served a couple of little duck pies, made with the leg meat, so it's happened again isn't it?

All hot and cold and soft and crunchy!

And I just wanted to show one more picture whose description was very simple, but, was in fact quite complicated.

"Coq au vin"

I've told you about it before, but it's my favorite dish of 2011, and one Sophie enjoyed at East Lodge last year.

And I still have not forgotten about the tasting menu, I'm getting around to it slowly, I'm just waiting to sort out pictures, and wait until you see the new 2012 "Bakewell" - it's pretty cool!

Right that's it!

Oh, by the way, the 2012 AA restaurant guide also mentions that we now have three rosettes.

Which is nice!









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