Tag: russell bateman

Categories
scallops

scallops with bacon sabayon

scallops bacon sabayon

Here’s a neat little starter for when you want to have something rich and indulgent. Some lovely sweet scallops on a savoury bacon sabayon. Just remember it’s not a hollandaise sauce OK? Nothing to fret over, just some egg and oil mixed together slowly over heat 🙂

This is inspired by something I ate at Petrus:

Mine isn’t a patch on the refined beauty of this one, where the sauce tasted like eating smooth bacon and eggs! But it’s a substantial starter to show off with. Read my full review of Petrus here.

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scallops with bacon sabayon

Course Starter
Cuisine English
Servings 2 people
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 1 rasher smoked bacon
  • 100 ml plain oil such as rapeseed
  • 2 egg yolks
  • Lemon juice to taste
  • 12 - 16 baby scallops
  • chives to garnish

Instructions

  • Get a frying pan over a high heat. Fill a saucepan with some water and get it on to gently boil. Put a bowl on top of this saucepan to make a bain marie.
  • Trim the fat from the bacon and add to the frying pan. While it renders and curls up, dice the rest of the bacon and add to the hot bacon fat. After two or three minutes the fat should start to go into the pan. Once the bacon is crisp, decant the fat to a shallow bowl and discard the bacon (or eat it, I won't tell anyone).
  • Put the egg yolks in the bowl and whisk to break up. Add a few drops of the bacon fat and whisk until disappeared. Keep adding a tiny splash of bacon fat and whisking in until you've run out of fat, and then start adding rapeseed oil instead. Keep whisking the whole time to prevent the eggs gathering at the bottom of the bowl and scrambling. Keep whisking and adding oil until it reaches a creamy-custardy consistency. Taste for salt (the bacon will have added quite a bit) and tone it down with a zip of lemon juice if you think it needs it. When it's done remove the bowl from the heat and put to one side while you prepare the scallops.
  • As the sauce comes together put the pan back over a high heat and fry the baby scallops. They take 2 - 3 minutes to cook on both sides. Season with salt before they leave the pan.
  • Ladle some sauce on to a plate, dot with scallops and scatter over chives to serve. Eat immediately.
Categories
food restaurant review

restaurant review: Petrus

Spoilers: it was great.

Gordon Ramsay the character is not a very appealing person but that’s a shame as it can mask what a bloody good chef he is. There’s a number of his techniques I turn to first when cooking: his Wellington, his scrambled egg, his duck breast. I rewatched some of his programmes from the early 2000s and despite formatting of the time – jump cuts! Aggressive music! Booming voiceover! – his presentation style is confident yet assuring, ‘you can do this, just follow along.’ I wish he did more straight food programmes, but I guess the drama of his ‘reality’ shows probably pays the bills better in residuals time after time.

Pétrus is Michelin-starred dining with a French inspired menu. It’s in Knightsbridge and wears this on its sleeve: subdued entrance, glass wine room, lush carpet. But despite the opportunity to be stuffy, instead it feels extremely welcoming.

I had a landmark birthday recently, and was treated to dinner here to mark the occasion. On a weekday we were given the option of the tasting menu or a la carte. I love a tasting menu, but seeing a take on Black Forest Gateau on the a la carte sealed it immediately. It’s my favourite dessert by some distance and I will pick it above everything.

Some amuse bouche to start: crab cakes, puffs of fish so light they disappear. Then an earthy pea veloute, topped with a buttermilk foam. The acidic hit here is perfect.

Then bread. I could’ve eaten this by itself all day long. Sweet, savoury, moreish, chewy, crusty, slathered in creamy salted butter I desperately wanted another helping but wanted to save myself!

Starters proper then. I had a tian of crab, dressed with sour apple and radish. Very good, but I immediately had starter envy when my dining partner had dish of the night: scallops on bacon sabayon.

What a triumph. A fat, juicy scallop perfectly browned outside but melting in the middle. A savoury konbu dressing with a huge savoury punch. A scattering of grassy chives. But the sabayon was out of this world. Like diving into a custard tasting of bacon, I could’ve lapped up bowls of the stuff. Seriously clever cooking.

For main course we both elected for fillet of beef with ‘charcuterie’ sauce, a new one on me. Kinda like a pastrami sandwich in sauce form; a rich gravy with pastrami and gherkin. It was everything you want from fillet of beef, loose texture, huge umami hits and little sweet notes from the scattered onion leaf garnish.

At dessert it all went a bit bonkers. Having clocked it was my birthday they served the aforementioned Black Forest (excellent), along with a rum baba (boozy) and a birthday teacake (rich). Bloody hell I was full. Even before you pretend we didn’t have two petits fours on top.

Earlier on we clocked that the head chef was Russell Bateman, and we’d both spent time with him before. He took us on a tour of the (surprisingly small) kitchen and he bowled me over by remembering us meeting him.

You should know, despite writing about food far too much, I very rarely eat at fancy places. So was I taken in by the grandeur of it all? Highly likely. Was I having a great time with my son? Yeah, that’ll influence it. As far as I’m concerned food is 95% atmosphere including your dining guests, so by that logic it was always going to be good.

Check out my take on the scallop dish here.

Categories
celeriac cod vanilla

sous-vide vanilla cod with escabeche vegetables

Sous vide might be the best method for cooking skinless fish. It allows a fish to be cooked to and held at the perfect temperature, without overcooking it to mush.

That was the message from chef Russell Bateman at an event hosted by Great British Chefs at Le Cordon Bleu cookery school. Whilst I’ve played around with lots of sous vide recipes, I’ve not tried white fish. Chef Bateman had composed an excellent recipe of halibut on a bed of escabéche vegetables. Both were cooked sous vide and complimented each other beautifully: the fish was soft and sweet but rich in beurre noisette; the vegetables still al dente and tangy.

I had to give it a go at home. I made a few changes according to what my fishmonger had, and incorporated another element we tried of Le Cordon Bleu’s Master Chef Eric Bediat’s creation: celeriac fondant to give the dish a starch. It’s an impressive dish when assembled, but due to the sous vide cooking requires little skill on your part.

There are some elements you can change: I add the burnt onion powder because I wanted a sweet, smoky seasoning but you could forego it. You’ll also need the bath to be at two different temperatures. Personally I’d cook the vegetables at the high heat, then let the bath come down to a lower temperature so the fish can be cooked and served immediately. It’s possible to do this in pans but this recipe shows off the versatility and flexibility of cooking sous vide.

Find more sous vide recipes on the Great British Chefs website.

If you’re interested in cookery courses, look up Le Cordon Bleu in Bloomsbury – excellent facilities for courses run by professionals.

Here’s TikiChris’s write up of the same event.

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sous-vide vanilla cod with escabeche vegetables and celeriac

Course Main Dish
Cuisine English
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 40 minutes
Total Time 1 hour
Servings 2 people
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

For the cod

  • 1 fillet cod skinless
  • 30 g sea salt
  • 1 lemon zest
  • 1 orange zest

For the escabeche

  • 2 carrots
  • 1 fennel bulb
  • 1 onion
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 50 ml Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  • 25 ml white wine vinegar
  • 25 ml white wine
  • 1 lemon
  • 1 teaspoon coriander seeds crushed
  • Fresh coriander leaf

For the celeriac

  • 1/2 head celeriac

For the beurre noisette

  • 250 g butter
  • 1 vanilla pod scraped

For the onion powder

  • 2 onions sliced

Instructions

  • To make onion powder, roast the onions in 150C oven for 2 hours or until it crumbles to the touch. Allow to cool and blitz in a food processor to dust. Store in an airtight container until needed.
  • First cure the fish. Mix the salt, sugar, orange and lemon zests. Pile on to the fish and rub all over. Leave in the fridge to cure for 30 minutes. After this time remove from the fridge, wash off the excess and pat dry.
  • Now make the beurre noisette. Put the butter and seeds from the vanilla in a pan and melt on a medium heat. Cook, swirling the pan until it is nut brown. Remove from the heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
  • Preheat your water bath to 52C. Put the fish and half the beurre noisette into a vacuum bag and seal. Sous vide for 20 minutes, drain and serve.
  • For the escabeche, preheat the water bath to 80C. Finely slice the carrot, onion, garlic, and fennel. Pop into a vacuum bag along with the liquids and coriander seeds and massage well to mix. Seal and cook for 20 minutes. To finish, pour the bag into a warm pan and mix through the freshly chopped coriander. Check seasoning before serving.
  • For the celeriac, peel and dice into large cubes. Preheat the water bath to 80C. Add to a vacuum bag with the remaining beurre noisette. Seal and cook for 45 minutes. Drain and serve, topping with burnt onion powder.
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