Searching for the Japanese vegetable peeler from Masterchef

We just finished watching Masterchef The Professionals and congratulations to Craig! Well deserved, but really either one of the three had the potential to win.

My BIG question is, where can I get the Japanese vegetable peeler Craig used for the potatoes. It was used earlier in the series as well. I MUST HAVE ONE!!!

If you have any idea then please let me know.

Sous Vide SIrloin

It has been a while and I am not quite sure why. I blame the summer holidays 😉
However, believe it or not, I have been eating and cooking in the meantime. I even posted a video on it on YouTube. It's about cooking a lovely piece of sirloin sous vide - the BEST way to cook red meat (in my humble opinion).

Have a look and don't forget to like, subscribe, G+, and so on...

Steamed Sea Bass

It's Regal Fish time again. This time I got two whole sea bass, gutted and scaled from Regal:

https://www.regalfish.co.uk/seafood/whole-fish/sea-bass-whole-descaled/

Admittedly, my filleting skills need improving, but I used, the bones and head to make a lovely fish stock, which added bags of flavour to the final dish. I steamed the fillets in a tin foil bag in the oven with ginger, garlic and chilli.

In order to make it a proper meal I steamed some broccoli with the same aromatics, fried off an Asian mushroom mix and served it with wild rice. To garnish I added some hibiscus salt.

The only complaints my kids had was, that there was only one fillet per person...

Poached Duck Egg with Hibiscus Salt for Breakfast

Well, I love poached eggs. And the one I had for breakfast today was special. This one is a duck egg and the yoke is super creamy. Underneath the egg is loin of pork with a little mushroom powder for added umami. The hibiscus salt on top is simply good sea salt blitzed together with dried hibiscus flowers. Add freshly ground pepper and a little basil to add some green and you have a breakfast fit for a king.

You can find out more on the mushroom powder at: Magic Powder

The Fat Duck

A few pictures and clips from our visit to The Fat Duck in April 2017

Yeah - Masterchef is back!!!

Oh, I missed this. I might be getting a bit judgemental ;-) Can't wait to see the making of some of the food from the intro...

Jellied Cherry from Minamoto Kitchoan

We recently discovered Minamoto Kitchoan - a treasure trove for anything Japanese. These jellied cherries were just to die for...

Even the packaging looked stunning

And they just melted in the mouth

If you are anywhere near the Strand go and have a look!

Sesame Marinated Steak

This is one of our family favourites. We found it in a Japanese cook book years ago. This time I used the marinate to also dress  the asparagus and we had edamame and cauliflower couscous flavoured with Shichimi Togarashi

Beetroot, Lentil, Parsley and Halloumi Salad

We found this recipe in the 2016 March edition of the Waitrose food magazine. It has become a family staple.

Vietnamese Crab Spring Rolls

Dinner using Cromer crab supplied by Regal Fish. When 10 year olds go for seconds, then I assume it's OK. Rhona (my wife) is fabulous when it comes to coming up with food ideas (she tells me)

Halibut in Herb Crust with Samphire, Peas and Potatoes

It's been a while since I have been using Regal Fish's produce, but last night we had Halibut in a herb crust, served with samphire, peas and potatoes. The crust was left over stale bread whizzed up with a garlic clove, a shallot, spring onion, tarragon, basil, dill, and parsley. Seeing as I had all these herbs and the trimmings from the fish a made a quick fish stock and thickened it slightly with a little corn starch.

It was delicious!

We are going to the Fat Duck!!!

I can't tell you how excited I am! It's my wife's birthday in April and "just for a laugh" I checked if there is a table available at the Fat Duck and guess what! They had one! (I know I am going overboard with the exclamation marks!)

Over the last few years we as a family have been following Heston Blumenthal and we have a quite a few of his books. We even tried soem of his dishes and made some which are best described as "inspired by Heston". For example (and that was before I started the blog) we did red cabbage gazpacho with mustard ice crram and the kids, now 10 and 13 - god knows how young they were then, went for thirds.

I also posted some of our experiments:

• Mother's Day Dinner Inspired by Heston
• Magic Powder
• Heston's Scallop

All in all Heston is probably THE food hero of mine and I am sooo looking forward to experience the real thing.

Lamb Lollipops with fried Gnocchi and "Grained" Broccoli

Rack of lamb for dinner today. Well, the kids call them lamb lollipops 😉. Done sous vide at 47C for 5 hours and then flash fried. Actually, the bone part blow torched. After the lamb had been fried I used the same pan (minus most of the fat) to roast some (bought) gnocchi.

For the greens I put some broccoli through a food processor and fried it on a sheet in the oven. That was a bit of an experiment, but the "audience" seemed to approve. Finished off with a lamb & onion gravy.

Quick Bacon and Cheese

Following on from Fake Cheese on Toast and the Ultimate Sandwich (in my humble opinion) I did a quick bacon and cheese open sandwich for lunch...

Moules et Frites

Got the idea from the current Waitrose magazine. It was delicious!

Finely chopped 2 shallots, 2 cloves of garlic and a small leak. Added them and 200ml of dry white wine, salt and pepper into a large pan and slowly reduced the wine to almost nothing. Then I added another 200ml of the wine and turned off the heat. While this was infusing I cleaned two nets of mussels. About half an hour before servicng I pre heated the oven to 220C. After putting the fries into the oven (approx 20 minutes), I started to re-heat the pan and then added the mussels. Once they had opened I remove them with a slotted spoon into a pre-warmed pan. I then added about 200ml double cream and a knob of butter (actually I used clover) and let that reduce a bit. Finally I added 2 tabelspoons each of chopped parsley and tarragon, poured that sauce over the mussels and served.

The whole family loved it, but we found that it is much more filling than you think.