We have now done 3 pop-ups together, cooking at each other’s restaurants.
First we cooked at Roux at Parliament square hosted by me, then a couple of weeks later we met to cook at the Frog e1 – hosted by Jamie Park. And most recently cooked at Simpsons in Birmingham hosted by Leo Kattou.
Unfortunately, due to the passing of our dear friend Matt Campbell all future pop-ups have been postponed.
6 Chefs from Master Chef the Professionals are hosting evening and lunchtime events on Saturday 27th January 2018 at Roux @ Parliament Square in Westminster, London.
Each Chef will cook a dish inspired by their creations featured on Master Chef the Professionals 2017.
Check the page for availability;
(Please note that this event has now passed is no longer available)
This is the First Tester of a Trout, Almond and Broccoli dish Steve and I have been working on.
When the Trout arrives in the kitchen we take the centre piece of fish, cure it in a salt/sugar mix for 20 mins. After that it gets cold smoked for 5 mins. The belly piece of Trout I really like because it carries slightly more fat and delicious either raw or very lightly cooked.
For the garnish of the dish I made a roasted Almond Puree, an almond soup which is the sauce for the dish which I turned into little spheres using a technique called ‘reverse spherefication’ a chemical reaction occurs when the calcium in the soup reacts with the Sodium Alginate bath forming a skin around the sphere allowing the centre to remain in liquid form. All chemicals can be found from the MSK website.
The purple sprouting broccoli gets blanched in salted water and finished on our indoor BBQ.
I made a dressing from caviar, pickled lemon and olive oil.
The belly of Trout gets confit in oil at 40 degrees for 10 mins and topped with toasted nibbed almonds.
This is the first tester of a dish that I’m looking to put on the menu for summer, it has simple flavours combined with a handful of modern techniques that for me, deliver a great dish.
White chocolate Delice that been dipped in white chocolate and sprayed in cocoa butter,
Strawberry, champagne and elderflower sorbet, macerated strawberry.
Pistachio cake and sable crumb.
In my spare time I like to improve my baking skills, so at home I made this super soft and tasty bread.
Using buttermilk in the bread gave a much softer and dense texture, and with the smokey bacon flavour it was really enjoyable to eat with some soup the next day.
Before baking I brushed over some bacon fat and maldon salt and threw some cold water in the bottom of my oven at home to induce some steam resulting in a great crust.
In the restaurant we tend to have a lot of wastage when we use ingredients such as Cod.
So with this dish I’ve utilised all of the Elements.
The cod loin has been salted to draw out some water, then tied in cling film to keep a natural shape when cooking.
The trim from the belly I turned half into a mouse using the paco jet, and other half turned into salt cod which then gets diced along with dill, chives and lemon zest. Then the mouse gets wrapped in cucumber strips and steamed till the proteins are set.
Next on the dish I have some charred cucumber which gives a nice smokey/refreshing burst to the dish.
All the trimmings from cucumber gets burnt to an ash and then I dress the confit potatoes in the ash and dill oil, which brings an umami element.
I made a cucumber ketchup – recipe I got when I did a stage at ‘Dinner by Heston’
All gets finished with a seaweed and Oyster beurre blanc.
For us at the restaurant attention to detail is everything. The first thing you see as a guest is our bread and butter, very simple but done well can look impressive.
Here we have a caramelised onion butter that gets whipped per service in the pacojet, and the other is a ballontine of a salted ‘Lincolnshire poacher’
We serve 2 different style sourdoughs alongside the Butter.
Cooked and dehydrated tapioca pearls finished with squid ink, puffed in 210 degree oil.
Emulsion made from a dill oil, taramasalata made from smoked cod roe.
Dusted with a powder made from dried cod skin and malt vinegar powder.
A dish I put on the lunch menu at roux, a praline parfait, between sheets of caramelised filo pastry with pink lady apples cooked sous vide in a acidulated caramel, then a parsnip and toffee puree, apple patê d’fruit
Wanted to make something a bit more interesting for breakfast on Sunday.
A traditional and simple farmhouse loaf recipe but replaced water for a strong IPA beer, that with the addition of black treacle just elevated the flavour.
Made for some decent blt’s