Right, even though its rubbish outside and it looks like staying that way this week I'm going to prove that, actually, summer in here!
I'll start with the peas.
Even though they are great, frozen, all year round, the arrival of fresh ones opens up more possibilities for a creative cook.
We pod them, saving the pods for a stock, blanch them, and then start changing their texture.
By infusing the pods in boiling water for 10 minutes, seasoning with a pinch of sugar and salt we can make a clear pea "tea". Cooled down and set with gelatine it forms the first component of this pretty Sunday lunch starter. Blanched peas are also podded and pureed with butter and some are reserved for the salad.
We also make a ravioli, not using pasta dough, but by using very finely sliced cured ham fat. Wrapped around podded peas and frozen, it will be warmed under the grill just before serving. The fat will go translucent, and will, of course,  allow me to call the dish "ham and peas"!
I thought some beautiful, glistening, freshly picked white crab meat would be superb with this, but being Sunday lunch, thought I would serve some boned, crisp fried confit chicken wings instead. Oh, and I had no crab anyway!
With a warm dressing made with some Morel mushrooms and some sliced summer truffles, surely this means I will be wearing my shorts soon!

And now we have Cherries as well! As well as using them in our puddings , they make a very agreeable garnish for rich meats, such as duck. Ours are from Goosnargh, over in Lancashire, and really are very good.
Arriving whole, it allows us to use the whole bird. Salting the legs, then poaching in duck fat, the meat it used to make a duck sausage. The breasts are served nice and pink and the bones are roasted to make a dark sweet sauce.
We also bake the skin to make duck "crackling", this is then used as a seasoning for some stir fried greens that are served on the side.
The only part I have a problem with is procuring their little hearts!
They are absolutely out of this world, especially grilled on my barbeque, in my garden, drinking wine, in the sunshine, if summer ever arrives in Pilsley!
So, some of the cherries are pickled in a reduction of red wine vinegar and sugar, some are pureed and some are saved, whole, for a garnish.


With a slice of fried duck liver and a pressed potato and bacon cake, it is another dish that proves, that somewhere else, Summer is here!
Just not Pilsley!

And, finally, here is a picture of some bread. It has just come out of the oven, ready for all of our Sunday lunch customers.

And I thought it looked nice!

Seeing as, at the moment, I'm surrounded by ballet dancers, it seemed apt to talk about meringue.
Well Pavlova to be precise!
Named after the Russian ballet dancer its a meringue based dessert, and done well, and served with some summer berries, makes a nice easy pudding.

I'm serving a small one as part of our raspberry plate at the moment. It goes well with the slightly tart raspberries along with a summer pudding, a raspberry and Champagne jelly, a very light lemon and vanilla mousse and some raspberry sorbet.
Garnished with some fresh raspberries, mint and gold leaf, its a very pretty dessert, one which I think, all light footed ballet dancers would love!
So, anyway, after a few too many glasses of red on Sunday night, I started thinking about savory meringues and if I could make one.
 Turns out I could but I would have to careful with the amount of sugar I could add. Too much and it would, of course, be too sweet. Too little and the egg whites would not support their own weight and therefore not be stable.
So by boiling sugar and a mixture of sherry and white vinegar to 121 oc and pouring onto whipped egg whites I managed to make some savory meringues that were as light as a "pas de chat"!
I sprinkled them with thyme flowers, cracked black peppercorns and Maldon sea salt and baked them in warmish oven for 20 minutes.
I'm thinking of adding some chopped truffles next time as well.
I served them last night, as an amuse, garnished with some apple puree, parfait of duck livers and some honey glazed pancetta.
I'm going to use, I think, a puree of gooseberries, instead of the apples, when they arrive in a few weeks time - how exciting!
And by then, hopefully, I will have sorted out how to use dark chocolate with some thyme, oranges and wood pigeons as another course in my new tasting menu.
Right then, I'm off to Highfield House Farm to see if  I can get my hands on some bone marrow and a couple of big fat steaks for dinner tonight.

I'll tell you about my inside out fish and chips next time!

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!

So, just finished mowing the lawn and having a perfectly chilled glass of wine, now that the lamb is in the oven.
Its from Chatsworth this week, only because David up at Highfield House Farm decided to have a lazy Sunday afternoon,  and it was all locked up when I got there after lunch service.
So I went to Sainsbury's and all they had was New Zealand lamb, and being such a good local lad, I thought I would try to get some Derbyshire meat. Hopefully it will be amazing, I'll let you know later.
Baked on a couple of sliced onions, thyme and garlic, and still on the bone, for a couple of hours, then rested, its my favorite lazy Sunday dinner! Served with the usual suspects of Jersey Royals, English asparagus and some baby carrots. No pub tonight though, after a brilliant night down there on Friday I think I'll leave it a few more days before my return!
You know, its interesting how we have made food portable. So even though I didn't want my dinner from "down under" tonight I do love food that has a history of making some sort of journey.
We all know how salmon spawn, swimming thousands of miles, back to the freshwater streams, to finally reach their end. Perhaps one or two might end up being smoked!
So not only do salmon swim across oceans when alive, by a simple curing and cold smoking, we can then transport again! Intensifying their flavor and prolonging their shelf life.
We now use a dry cure, then dry for 24 hours and finally cold smoke for about 10 hours.
As you can see the smoked fish is quite a lot smaller, as a result of the moisture lost during the process, making, I think,  a perfect Rowsley cure smoked salmon.
As you will also see a razor sharp knife is needed to slice the salmon paper thin.
Brown bread, butter, black pepper and lemon are my favorite garnishes.

I'm going to use it for canapes on Tuesday night dinner at East Lodge as we have quite a few very important diners coming!

And I'm going to change the whole menu - wish me luck!
Oh and we're starting the tasting menu as well, think I need another drink!

I love the idea of being able to get my hands on something to eat, anytime of day.
You know, how much of a pain it must of been,  not to be able to satisfy those hunger pangs.
The Great British Afternoon Tea was born out of the same craving for food.
So, and as a result of that,  I was presented with 101 afternoon tea sets this morning!
And, yes I know its a little bit gay, but hey come on, its still pretty good.
You know when we break it down, an English menu really does tick all the boxes, what with the best breakfast in the world, Sunday lunches and then afternoon tea, who on earth needs dinner?
Well, actually, I still do! But more of that later.
I think afternoon tea was born out of the hunger pangs of the Ladies in Waiting.
I don't know what they were waiting for, their dinner, one presumes!
Around 4 in the afternoon they would become hungry and as dinner was not going to be served until sometime around 8,  they fancied a light snack.
So a Victoria sponge cake fitted the bill, as did a rather new invention, the Sandwich!
And now at East Lodge we spend lots of time making sure that people, for whom time isn't an issue, never feel light headed through a lack of food.
What with smoking our own salmon, baking scones, ensuring we have plenty of clotted cream and strawberry jam, I like to think that after our afternoon tea, they will be able to last until dinner!
So what with all our new tea sets I just have to make sure that the cakes and pastries will do them justice!

Oh, a quick work about the tea.
And it should be tea, by the way! A strong classical blend is my choice, nothing too floral, and a glass of Champagne isn't a bad addition either!

Isn't it amazing how,  through world trade, we have made our Sunday lunches more interesting.
Salt cod was on the menu today and to think such a simple fish was exported all over the world, salted and dried.
I first started cooking salt cod in France. We used cheeks for a gratin with onions and parsley and salted cod fillet for a rich, warm, garlic scented puree.
Served with garlic rubbed croutons it just needs a bottle of chilled rose for company.
Soaked overnight, poached and flaked it is mixed with warm baked potato flesh, hot fruity olive oil and garlic cream.  A kitchen aid mixer makes light work of this, I used to do it by hand!
Like a lot of dishes, so simple, yet when done well, it really is amazing.
So perhaps we have boats to thank for our Sunday lunches and, by the way, Saturday night takeaways.
It was only when South America started exporting chillies did Indian and Thai food become the dishes that we know today.
So it was my first Sunday at East Lodge for a couple of weeks and the food still looks great, although, I think I need to work on some of the main courses.
Not the produce or portion size, I wouldn't dare!
Just the presentation, it keeps me on my toes, thats all.
And finally why do Supermarkets insist on telling us to overcook our Sunday lunch?
I bought a lovely chicken this afternoon and had I have listened to the cooking times it would have been ruined. Eighty minutes it said, I cut thirty off that, rested it, carved it and it was perfect!
So anyway, the picture is of the salt cod.
A nod to the joy of living in one big global food market!
Oh and its a prototype of a new venison dish with crispy pork fat, wood sorrel and sour dough.

Trust me,, it is!