Recently in Chefs Category

I always enjoy reading anything about David Everitt-Matthias, his restaurant and his food because it's always worth reading! He has created a restaurant which is well in tune with his character and soul - both of which are individual. So too is his cooking. It is no surprise then to thumb through Dessert and find a multitude of recipes and ideas both original and inspiring.

Everitt-Matthias's obsession with all things wild has given his savoury cooking a particularly feral overtone and his desserts follow a similar idiom. His marrying of unusual combinations of flavours, or unusual ingredients, is not a display of novelty style fare but more a result of progressive cooking with a natural interest and appreciation of wild ingredients.

The book is simply laid out. There is guidance on how to get the best out of it and notes on key and particular ingredients. There is a very useful section on suppliers and given the nature of his cooking, an all-important glossary at the back.

The recipes are in six categories, chocolate and nuts; fruits; vegetables; roots, pods, seeds and bark; wild and petit fours. All recipes are broken down into constituent parts to enable the user to reduce the workload or leave out or add components with ease. Each recipe has an introduction stating the origin of the dish or the idea behind it, some useful guidance on its execution and possibilities for trying other ingredients or flavours.

Following the recipes will give rise to desserts such as "Salted chicory parfait with vanilla rice pudding and bitter chocolate sorbet", "Star anise and Muscovado parfait with bergamot cream and parkin purée" or "Swiss chard and confit melon tart". These are desserts with complex yet harmonious flavours that require careful hands to ensure successful results. Everitt-Matthias enjoys not only unusual flavours but strong flavours too and these recipes require a level of focus and understanding to produce pleasing and satisfying results.

These desserts are special occasion masterpieces that have quite rightly played a part in earning him a reputation as one of the finest cooks in this country.

Reviewed by Phil Howard, The Square, London
Dessert
David Everitt-Matthias
Sauvage £25
ISBN 978-1-906650-03-2

 Ingredients

(serves four)

For the duck

2 whole ducks (take the legs off and use for confit)

Salt and pepper

2 oranges (with their zest very finely julienned and segments kept)

275ml duck stock (jus)

For the spinach and watercress mousse

200g washed spinach

100g watercress, picked

175ml double cream (infused with ½ clove of garlic, nutmeg, salt and pepper)

3 size 2 egg yolks

Salt and pepper + knob of butter

For the crushed olive-oil Jersey Royal potatoes

275ml white chicken stock

275ml water

450g medium-sized Jerseys (scraped and chopped evenly)

50g finely chopped shallots

110ml olive oil

1tbs chopped parsley

Salt and pepper

Knob of butter Supplier DirectoryCandle Lamps, Oil

Cooking Oil

Olive Oils

Filtering Machines, Frying Oil

Oil Filters

Method

Prick the duck skins all over with a skewer, then truss. Pour boiling water over the breasts to loosen the skin, then pat dry and refrigerate for as long as possible. Season with salt, pepper and orange zest. Place the ducks in a dry pan over a low heat, then roast the ducks on top of the stove until golden all over. This may take 10-20 minutes.

Article continues below

Transfer the breasts to the oven, skin-side up, and roast for about 10 minutes at 200ºC. It should be cooked medium and crispy. Drain the fat from the pan and deglaze with the reduced duck stock and juice of one orange. Taste the sauce and finish with a knob of butter.

To make the crushed olive oil Jerseys, place the stock and water in a pan, along with the potatoes. Bring to the boil and cook until soft. Drain well, then return to the pan and crush potatoes. Keep aside. In another pan sweat the shallots in a little olive oil. When soft, throw into the pan of potatoes along with the rest of the olive oil, chopped parsley and knob of butter.

To make the mousse, blanch the greens in boiling water and refresh. Then squeeze dry. Bring the cream and garlic to the boil.

Place the greens in a blender with the egg yolks and heated cream and allow to infuse and season. Blitz and pass through a medium sieve. Pour the mixture into four buttered dariole moulds or ramekins. Place in a bain-marie and cover with clingfilm. Cook in a low oven (120ºC) for about 30 mins or until just set.

Carve the duck into thin slices, place on the watercress mousse, and garnish with the segments, julienne and crushed olive-oil Jersey potatoes. Pour the sauce over and around the duck.

Galton Blackiston, chef patron, Morston Hall, Norfolk

For those of you who haven't been to the Coach and Horses in London's Clerkenwell is a fab little gastropub with head chef Henry Herbert (pictured here doing an impression of Cate Blanchett doing an impression of Bob Dylan) big on his foraging. And he's foraged up this cheeky recipe using bang in season produce; crab and wild garlic.

Wild Garlic & Crab Tart

Ingredients for the Pastry:

125g Unsalted Butter
250g Plain Flour
2 Egg Yolks
Pinch of Salt
2 Tablespoons Cold Water

Ingredients for the Filling:

2 Whole Eggs
4 Egg Yolks     
400ml Double Cream
200ml Milk
50g Grated Parmesan
Salt and Pepper
200g White Crab Meat
30g Shredded Wild Garlic Leaves
10g Tarragon
20g Flaked Almonds

For the pastry, rub the butter into the flour. Mix in the yolks, salt and cold water until the pastry comes together. Wrap in cling-film and rest in fridge for 2 hours. Line a greased 10inch tart case and bake at 180C for 12 minutes, remove from oven, brush pastry with egg wash and return to the oven for a further 5 minutes. For the filling whisk together the eggs, yolks, cream, milk, parmesan and seasoning. Fold in the crab meat, wild garlic and tarragon. Pour the mix into the tart case and sprinkle the almonds on top. Bake at 160C for 30 minutes.  Cool and serve with a green salad.

Henry Herbert, head chef, the Coach and Horses, Clerkenwell, London

Lovely Aiden Byrne, dome-headed genius and youngest British recipient of a Michelin star, is a newby on the Great British Menu. He might have gone from London now but the capital's loss is Cheshire's gain and despite the Scouse chef saying his food is slightly simpler at his pub-cum-restaurant the Church Green in Lymm it still has the same bold flavours, exquisite technique and visual prominence of the cooking that drew plaudits during his time at the Grill Room at the Dorchester. And while it's a shame Aiden (pictured here with an invisible page three model) might not be pushing the envelope as much as he once was, it's good to see a talented chef now cooking near the relative culinary wasteland that is Liverpool.

For those new to the shiny-scalped chef's cooking he's worked at Adlards in Norwich (where he got a star), at the Commons in Dublin, as head chef to Tom Aikens, as head chef at the Oak Room at Danesfield House, as head chef at the Grill Room at London's Dorchester Hotel and now as chef patron at the Church Green pub in Lymm.

Scroll down for a cheeky snippet of his cooking via a recipe.

For those of you unfamiliar with Glynn Purnell's food, it's culinary embodiment of the idea that you are what you cook. As much as Jamie Oliver's food is simple, friendly, media savvy nosh, or Bruce Poole's warm, appealing, big-hearted grub, Purnell's stuff is playful, mischievous, Brummie fare from a man as Birmingham-centric as Friday night curry vomit.

After sneaking through to the final with a strawberry dessert last year Purnell (pictured here enjoying a choc-ice with his pal after successfully retaking his maths GCSE) is back again. This year he's up against Daniel Clifford from Midsummer House in Cambridge in a Midlands heat and he's got a lot to live up to after not only becoming not only the first chef to pick up a perfect score for a dish on last year's dessert but also gaining the arguably-somewhat-better accolade of a Michelin star this January at his eponymous Birmingham restaurant, set up in 2007 after he left his position as head chef at Birmingham's Jessica's restaurant (where he also gained a star).

Anyho, this is first and foremost a food blog, so scroll down for a recipe of Glynn that is, just maybe, one of my favourite dishes I've eaten. It's definitely the only one to have made me smile while I'm eating it. Which is more than Purnell's joke has ever done: Q: What do you say to a man with no arms when you want to know the time? A: Do you have the time on you cock?