Cider Battered Onions

This is a quick recipe we’ve served a number of times at ‘The Basement’ supper club as a nibble and it’s bloody superb, ridiculously easy to knock out, cheap and absolutely frigging delicious. The flavour combination of deep fried, hot battered onions and the sharp tang of the onion salt is cracking.

I wish I could say it’s my recipe, but it’s pinched from Mark Hix, although we only use one type of onion, made our own onion salt, and most importantly changed the name of the dish, which makes all the difference….probably…errr….not so much.

Just a couple of onions make enough to feed a whole frigging horde, it’s amazing, so it’s tres frugal too and therefore suitable recession eating.

Cider Battered Onions

Serves – a lot

You’ll Need:-
2 Large Spanish Onions

For the cider batter
80g Self Raising Flour
120ml Cider
Sea Salt and Freshly Ground Black Pepper
Vegetable Oil for Deep Frying
Plain Flour For Dusting

For the onion salt
2 Tbsp Sea Salt
2 Tbsp Dried Onions

First make the onion salt by blitzing the onions and the salt together in a mini processor until suitably pulverised into a fine, salty dust.

Peel and slice the onions in half, and then into 1cm thick half moons. Separate the slices.

Make the batter, put the flour in a bowl and whisk in the cider until it’s thick and smooth. Season and leave to rest for 30 mins.

Heat the vegetable oil in a deep fat fryer to 180C – be mindful that it’s incredibly scorchio so don’t go sticking any delicate appendages in there. Remember, if you burn those fingers, you won’t be able to continue with the next step, which is…

Season the flour for dusting the onions.

Toss the onions in the flour, then coat in the cider batter before dropping into the hot oil. Work in small batches.

When golden and crisp, remove and drain on kitchen paper before sprinkling with the onion salt.

I'm not the only one suggesting eating the lot, whilst hot and necking loads of cold Fino sherry. Refuse to share. (That's just me).

Slow Roast Shoulder of Pork in Cider. Mashed Potato, Green Sauce

It’s been far too long since I featured any recipes on the blog. Hopefully this post goes some small way to rectifying matters. Here’s something simple, but very decent we served to our guests this past weekend, at ‘The Basement’, the Bristol supper club I run with ‘E’.

Shoulder of pork is a fairly inexpensive cut, and doesn’t really need a hell of a lot doing with it, apart from a few timely interventions, it can be left to it’s own devices for hours in the oven until it’s practically falling apart and of course, there’s the added bonus of crackling, to really give those fillings a good workout.

A thick slab of tender pork, partnered with the almost rasping, herby pungency of green sauce. An aesthetically pleasing dollop of creamy mashed potato and finally, a spoonful of the porky-cidery cooking juices. You have an absolutely winning plate of food.

The Green sauce recipe is from St John. The mashed potato recipe is my own.

I am a total mash potato fiend and have gradually perfected what I modestly consider to be second only (just) to Joel Robuchon’s famous pureed pomme. Tried and tested at countless ‘Basement’s. This is the first time I’ve shared it with anyone.

Slow Roast Shoulder of Pork in Cider
Serves 6

1.5 kilo pork shoulder, boned, rolled, skin scored.
1 bulb garlic, broken up into cloves. (leave the skin on)
6 bay leaves
750ml dry cider
2 tbsp fennel seeds, bashed

Preheat the oven to 220C

Pat dry the pork with kitchen towel and place in a deep ovenproof dish
Shower it liberally with the fennel seeds, sea salt and black pepper. Be generous, giving it a good-old-all-over-rub-in.

Cook in the oven for 40 mins.

Remove from the oven, and transfer the pork momentarily to a plate.
Drain off the excess fat from the ovenproof dish and toss in the bay leaves and garlic cloves.

Place the pork back in its rightful place, and pour the cider around the sides of it.
Cover with foil and return to the oven at 160C. Cook for three-four hours (most likely four).
By this time, the pork should smell amazing and be practically falling apart.

Don’t forget to leave it to rest, covered in foil for about 20 mins before serving.
If the crackling is soft, take it off and put it in on a tray, in the oven at 220C for 10 mins. It should crisp up.

It’d also be a good idea to ladle off some of the porky cider juices from the pan, pour into a saucepan, boiling vigorously, reducing to make a nice syrupy gravy to pour over your meat when you serve up.

Of course, while all this was going on, and your pork was cooking away in the oven for hours, you had ample time to knock up your accompanying green sauce and mashed potato.

Green Sauce
Serves 6 (generously)

Half a bunch of curly parsley
Half a bunch of flat leaf parsley
Half a bunch of mint
A quarter bunch of dill
Couple of sprigs of tarragon leaves
1 small tin of anchovy fillets – finely chopped
12 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 handful of capers, roughly chopped (if extra fine, keep whole).
Extra virgin olive oil
Black pepper
Lemon juice (optional)

Chop the herbs finely, but not too finely, by hand (if you blitz them up by mechanical means, you’ll end up with a slurry).
Mix with the anchovy, garlic and capers. Add olive oil until it’s a loose, spoonable consistency. Season with black pepper and salt if it needs some.
Diverging a little from the original St John recipe, we added a squeeze of lemon juice at the end.

Dan’s Famous Mashed Potato
Serves 6 (Easily)

9 maris piper potatoes
400ml full fat milk
150g butter
12 tbsp double cream (180ml)
Sea salt
Freshly ground white Pepper

Peel and dice the potatoes into rough 2cm cubes.
Place in a pan, cover with cold water, bring to the boil, add salt and simmer for 12 minutes or until tender.

Drain well, and then using a potato ricer crush back into the empty pan. (If you don’t have a ricer, get one, they’re awesome. Otherwise, mash wildly in a traditional fashion with lots of elbow grease…. don’t leave any lumps).

Put the pan back on a low heat, for two minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon.
In a separate saucepan, heat the milk till it’s almost boiling. Gradually pour into your potatoes, stirring it in.

Add the cream. Keep stirring whilst on the heat, for three or four mins.
Turn the hob off.

Cut the butter into cubes, and gradually stir into your mash until it’s been absorbed.

Taste and season generously with salt and white pepper. The choice of pepper is important, mash must have white pepper. Don’t ask why, just accept it.

Your mash should be creamy and oozy, but still form a nice generous dollop when slapped onto a plate.

Do this now.

Place a generous, inch thick slab of pork astride it, at a jaunty angle. Spoon some green sauce over the pork, drizzle over a tablespoonful or so of your reduced cider cooking juices. Don’t forget the crackling.

Eat it all up.

Fried Mackerel in Oats with Rhubarb Ketchup

The most recent menu at ‘The Montpelier Basement’ supper club I run with ‘E’ in Bristol featured a dish we were quite pleased and fairly smug with. A starter-sized portion of superb fresh Cornish mackerel rolled in oats and fried, served with a parsley and red onion salad. On the side, in some glassware shaped like miniature milk bottles, we served a garish pink rhubarb ketchup. Rhubarb and mackerel go really well together, and it seemed to be appreciated by the diners so I thought I’d share the recipe.

Believe it or not, we found the rhubarb ketchup recipe in Phil Vickery’s ‘Favourite Food – The best of British cooking’. An inspired charity shop find. I’d normally instantly discard any of the ex Ready Steady Cook crew’s literary output to a convenient furnace, but for some reason, I fought down the gag reflex, and choked back my rising bile and flicked through. Sold! It’s actually a really decent book, full of interesting recipes and features on good British produce. No one was more surprised than me.

First of all, you’ll need to make the Rhubarb ketchup. This is supposed to mature for at least a month, but we used it within two days of making it, and it tasted fine. Perhaps a little sharp, it’ll definitely improve with age. But you don’t have to wait if you don’t want to.

Rhubarb Ketchup

(Makes about 300ml)
You'll need...

500g rhubarb cut into 2cm chunks and washed well.
50ml cold water
90g caster sugar
1 large pinch salt
125ml Red Wine Vinegar
1 Tbsp Arrowroot
4 Tbsp Cold Water

Place the rhubarb in a stainless steel pan. Add the 50ml water and cook over a gentle heat until you have a thick stew, about 10 mins. Liquidize then pass through a fine sieve.

Mix the arrowroot with the 4 Tbsp of cold water to make a paste, add this. Then add the caster sugar, salt and vinegar to the rhubarb and bring to the boil

Cook down gently until the sauce is thick, similar to double cream. It'll take about 20-25 mins

Straightway pour the ketchup into a sterilised jam jar or Kilner jar. Securely seal and place the jar into a saucepan with a tea-towel or cloth in the base to keep the glass off the bottom of the pan. Pour in enough warm water so that the jar is just covered.

Pop a thermometer in the pan and heat the water to 90C. Then turn down the heat and leave for 20mins bang on, making sure the temperature stays exactly the same. This will sterilise the ketchup.

Carefully remove the hot jar from the water and place on a wooden board or tea towel, as glass jars will sometimes crack if placed on metal or cold surfaces.

Cool then leave for at least a month to mature in a cool dark place (And for up to 3 months). Once opened, eat within a week.

The following recipe is for a more substantial portion than we served at the supper club.

Parsley & Red Onion Salad
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 Red Onion, very finely sliced
2 handfuls of Flat leaf Parsley, washed, dried and leaves picked
Tbsp Lemon Juice
2 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Maldon Sea Salt & Freshly Ground Black Pepper
Optional dash of Sherry Vinegar or Red Wine Vinegar


To make the red onion and parsley salad, start by running the sliced onion under a tap, just to take a little of the rawness out of it. Dry it and toss with the parsley, the extra virgin olive oil, Lemon Juice. Taste and add the Vinegar if you think it needs it. Season.

Fried Mackerel rolled in Oats
Serves 4

4 fresh Mackerel – Filleted (2 fillets per person, pin boned, skin on)
Large Handful of medium porridge oats
Olive oil and butter for frying.

Press your mackerel fillets well into a plate filled with the oats, making sure both sides are well covered. Shake off any excess.

Heat oil and butter in a frying pan over a medium to high heat. Fry the mackerel fillets, skin side first for around 3 minutes (until the skin is golden and crispy). Flip over and cook for approximately 2-3 minutes until golden.

Place a handful of the parsley and red onion salad on the centre of the plate. Lay the mackerel fillets across the salad, skin side down. Serve with the rhubarb ketchup on the side.

Rosemary and Lemon Posset

Last weekend, at ‘The Montpelier Basement’ (the Bristol supper club I run with ‘E’), we served one of the best desserts we’ve produced so far, a lemon and rosemary posset with meringue. Not to blow our own trumpet but it really was absolutely frigging phenomenal. The dining room falling totally silent except for contented ummmms and ahhhhhs confirmed it.

We got the overall idea from a dessert we ate recently at a The Chequers pub in Bath. So massive thanks to the chef there for the inspiration.

The dessert is comprised of three elements, a nutty crumble base, creamy rosemary infused lemon posset, all topped off with browned Italian Meringue. We pinched the idea of using rosemary in the posset from Jason Atherton’s ‘Gourmet Food For a Fiver’; the herb works amazingly well with lemon. The hazelnut crumble base recipe is pilfered from ‘The British Larder’.

Rosemary & Lemon Posset – Serves 4-6

The crumble base

100g plain flour
75g unsalted butter at room temperature
25g golden syrup
Pinch of salt
50g dark brown sugar
50g Jumbo or porridge oats
20g chopped hazelnuts

Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a baking tray with parchment paper.

Place the flour, sugar, golden syrup, salt and soft butter into a mixing bowl, use your fingertips to rub the butter into the flour until the mixture forms coarse breadcrumbs.

Add the oats and chopped hazelnuts, mix and transfer the crumble mixture to the lined baking tray, even out and bake the crumble mixture for 20 minutes, stir it once during the cooking time.

Once cool – break up any extra large chunks and spoon a tablespoon or so into the bottom of each serving glass.

Rosemary infused Posset

400ml Double Cream
100g Caster Sugar
1 Rosemary Sprig, leaves picked and chopped.
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon.

Put the cream, sugar and rosemary into a large saucepan, over a low heat, and slowly bring to the boil. Boil for 3 minutes, then take off the heat and allow to cool.
Add the lemon zest and juice. Whisk well.

Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a jug.

Pour into the serving glasses containing the crumble, and refrigerate for 3 hours until set.

Italian Meringue

250g Caster Sugar
75ml Water
4 egg whites

In a saucepan, dissolve the sugar in the water over a low heat. Heat to 121c.

Meanwhile, as soon as the temperature reaches 115c start whisking the egg whites with an electric whisk (or in your stand mixer – if you have one) until it forms soft peaks.

Still whisking, pour the sugar syrup heated to 121c onto the egg whites in a thin stream. Continue to whisk until it’s cold. The end result should be very stiff, smooth and satiny.

To Serve

Pipe some Italian meringue on top of your now set lemon posset. Decorate with whatever fetching meringue shape you feel is appropriate. We went for a ‘freshly pinched’ turd shape in a misguided homage to white dog poo. I’m sure you can do better.

Using a blowtorch, lightly brown the meringue.

And then eat it.

I’d just like to point out two things; that Italian meringue seems to be a bit of a pain in the arse to make without a stand mixer and blowtorching as opposed to grilling meringue is muchos fun.

(Massive thanks to Andrew at ‘Tart’ for digging us out of a meringue shaped hole when we were under the cosh on Friday)

Ewe’s Curd Cheesecake Mousse, Butterscotch Apple Sauce, Cobnut Crumb & Spiced Shortbread

This is a dessert we’ve served up at our Bristol based ‘Montpelier Basement’ supper club a few times recently, including our London debut at The Coach & Horses. It seemed to go down incredibly well, so I thought I’d write the recipe up on the blog .

In actual fact it's three recipes combined, stolen from three different chefs; Gordon Ramsay, Tom Kitchin and Jason Atherton. Between them they hold a multitude of Michelin stars but it took our culinary genius to slap the three elements all together in one bowl. So a massive 'in your face' Michelin starred chefs!

Ok first up, the ewe’s curd cheesecake mousse. This is an awesome recipe from Tom Kitchin. He uses Crowdie, which is a Scottish cream cheese. We used Homewood ewe’s curd instead, which is produced locally in Somerset by Tim & Angela Homewood, and is absolutely fantastic.

Cheesecake Mousse
Serves 4

450g Ewe’s Curd
125g Sugar
1 ½ Tbs Flour
1 Tbs Vanilla Extract
Zest of 1 Lemon
1 Egg
1 Egg Yolk

Preheat the oven to 150C. Mix the cheese, sugar, flour, vanilla and lemon zest in a blender until smooth. In a separate jug, mix the egg and egg yolk together, then pour into the blender with the cheese mixture and blend until smooth.

Pour into a 23cm baking dish and cover with foil. Bake for 35-40 minutes until set. (We cooked a much bigger volume, so it took quite a bit longer to set). Allow to cool and then transfer the mixture to a blender, and blitz until smooth. Leave to set in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

The butterscotch apple sauce is a Gordon Ramsay recipe, in fact, a component part of another dessert. It’s incredibly sweet but tastes amazing partnered with the slightly sour cheesecake mousse.

Butterscotch Apple Sauce
Serves 4

1 Large Granny Smith Apple, peeled cored and chopped.
1 Vanilla Pod
100g Caster Sugar, plus 2 Tbsp
100g Unsalted Butter
100ml Double Cream
Put the chopped apple in a small pan and sprinkle over 2 Tbs of water. Slit the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds, adding them to the pan with 2 Tbs of caster sugar. Stir into the apple and heat until sizzling. Then cover and cook for 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until soft and pulpy. Cool then crush to a chunky puree with a fork.

In another saucepan, gently heat the 100g of sugar with a splash of water until melted. Stir occasionally. When clear, raise the heat, stir in the butter and cook to a light caramel. Do not stir at this point or it will become fudge.
Remove from the heat, and cool for 5 minutes before mixing in the cream. Cool to room temperature, before stirring in the apple puree. Refrigerate.

The third component is a Jason Atherton recipe for Spiced Shortbread. We’ve found it works really well, is incredibly simple to make and the spices give it a bit more of an interesting flavour.

Spiced Shortbread

225g Unsalted Butter, cubed and softened. Plus extra to grease tin.
250g Plain Flour
80g Rice Flour
¼ Tsp Salt
½ Tsp Ground Star Anise
¼ Tsp Ground Cinnamon
100g Golden Caster Sugar

Cinnamon Sugar Topping
1 Tsp Ground Cinnamon
1 Tbsp Golden Caster Sugar

Preheat the oven to 150C. Grease a 23cm square baking tin with butter and line it with buttered greaseproof paper, allowing plenty of overhang on opposite sides to act as handles.

Sift the flours, salt, star anise and cinnamon together into a large bowl; set aside. Using a mixer, beat the butter until soft and fluffy. Tip in the sugar and beat for 2 minutes on high speed until creamy. (You can do all this by hand, but it’s hard work!) Add the creamed mixture to the flour and knead together by hand until uniform in texture.
Press evenly into the prepared tin and bake for 1 hour until golden. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes.

For the topping, mix together the cinnamon and the 1 tbsp of sugar in a small bowl.
Carefully lift the shortbread out of the tin (it's extremely fragile at this stage), using the overhanging paper as handles and place on a board. Cut it in half, and then into 1.5cm fingers. Sprinkle with the cinnamon-sugar mix (We also added a bit of leftover ground star anise to this). Place on a baking sheet, spaced apart and bake for another 10 mins to dry out. Transfer to a wire rack to cool and store in an airtight container.

Cobnut Crumbs

We sprinkled the final dish with cobnut crumbs. Basically roasted cobnuts which if you don’t know are like hazelnuts and smell absolutely incredible. Discard the outer husks, use a nutcracker to remove the shell and bake the nuts in a 150C oven for up to an hour, until hard and browned. Cool and then blitz to a crumb texture.


All that’s left to serve is a bit of assembly.

If you’re dexterous and suave, shape the cheesecake mousse into a quenelle and place delicately on the plate. Or if you’re me, dollop some on like a bricklayer shovelling cement. Next to this, add a generous portion of the butterscotch apple sauce. In an extremely cheffy asymmetric style, smugly place your spiced shortbread across the other two components. If you have a moustache, as this stage, you must twiddle it, if not, arch one eyebrow. Slice some apple and fan it out in a pleasingly pretentious fashion. Finally, sprinkle some cobnut crumb over everything.

Bon appétit. Your work here is done.

Best of 'The Basement'

It’ll come as no surprise to the readers of this blog, that as well as taking photos of pretty much everything I eat in restaurants, I also take photos of the food we cook at The Montpelier Basement, a Bristol supper club I run jointly with ‘E’ (well, photos of most of it, when it’s not too hectic in the kitchen…which, invariably it always is).

Sadly we had to let the official ‘Basement’ photographer go in a recent round of entourage cutbacks, along with the personal manicurist, hairdresser and stylist. (but you’ll be pleased to know we kept the all-important Feng Shui consultant. The upshot of this is we now look like absolute shit, but our dining room is orientated in a way that pleases the gods immensely).

But I was recently struck by the thought that I write a food blog and I hardly ever write about what we’re cooking at the supper club on it, which could be considered something of an oversight perhaps.

So, time to remedy it, with a selection of some of the best things we’ve cooked at ‘The Montpelier Basement’ in the last few months (errr…and that we have pictures of, and were reasonably happy with). Snatched pics in bad light, as we’re trying to frantically get food out to the diners, before it gets cold isn’t a recipe for great snaps, but here goes…in no particular order….


The end of May saw us serving up ‘chilled cucumber & horseradish soup with Cornish crab’ (or Homewood Ewe’s curd for the veggies). Cold soup has never really appealed to me much, but I’ve recently discovered that on a hot balmy evening, there’s nothing more refreshing. I was quite pleased with this, the horseradish giving a surprisingly subtle punch despite loads going in.


A dessert of ‘elderflower posset with deep fried elderflower fritters, drizzled with local St Werburghs honey’ was bloody awesome, even if I do say so myself. The contrast between the cool, fresh, silky posset and the hot, crisp elderflower fritters worked so well. As with anything that’s deep-fried at the supper club, it was incredibly messy churning these out for 18 people with tempura batter alles uber da platz.


‘Cornish smoked haddock fishcakes with watercress and hollandaise’, possibly one of the most substantial fish courses we’ve served up. The smoked haddock was fantastic quality, really subtle procured by our fishmonger Joe at Source in St Nicholas market. Absolutely cracking combined with my favourite sauce of all time, hollandaise (which is always fun to make when you’re making it for a crowd…how much butter!?)


An ‘egg & bacon salad’ was basically a locally sourced take on the classic French dish. ‘Soft boiled pheasant egg with Devonshire dry cured bacon, frissee and sourdough croutons’. Our diners were amazed when we got 18 just soft boiled eggs out of the kitchen in no time at all. To do this we used a cheffy trick of pre-boiling the eggs so they were just underdone, then plunging into iced water to stop the cooking and then refrigerating. To re-heat we plunged them back into boiling water for 30 seconds. We were really pleased with how this turned out, as it’s such a simple dish, but easy to cock up.


‘Braised shoulder of salt marsh lamb with peas, broad beans and potato’. This is a Jason Atherton recipe and is fantastic because most of the preparation is done in advance. The lamb shoulder is braised slowly for hours in a combination of chicken and beef stock, and allowed to cool, then taken out and ripped up, discarding all fat and gristle. The resulting meat is then rolled up into clingfilm cylinders and refrigerated, where it firms up. To serve, it’s cut into portions and fried off last minute. It’s already cooked really, so you’re just re-heating and browning the outside. I think this is a really impressive dish. A sprinkling of chopped rosemary to finish, and that’s it.


The beginning of July and for dessert we served ‘Homewood ewe’s curd cheesecake mousse, Wye Valley raspberries & spiced shortbread’. We pinched the mousse recipe from Tom Kitchin’s cookbook, but used the excellent local artisan produced Homewood Ewes curd to make our own version. It’s almost a deconstructed cheesecake. We were really pleased with this.


The end of July, and this was the vegetarian option, offered instead of the treacle cured salmon, ‘Beetroot mousse, horseradish crème fraiche, pea-shoots and Harts Bakery bread’. A striking colour, horseradish and beetroot are a classic combination and it seemed to go down well.


This is one of my favourite dishes ever, ‘Gloucester Old Spot pork belly, black pudding, gooseberry chutney & potatoes’. It’s another one of those recipes, like the lamb shoulder, where it’s mostly prepared in advance, which is perfect for a supper club. The pork belly is rolled and tied, then braised in stock, removed and laid out flat, it’s then weighted down to press it and refrigerated. To serve, it’s portioned up, and fried to order. We made the gooseberry chutney in advance, the tart sharpness cutting through the fatty pork nicely…. and the potatoes…mashed. The best mash I’ve ever made in fact, sheer silky creaminess, lets just ignore how much butter, full fat milk and double cream went into them. Just to finish it all off, we crumbled some black pudding over the pork.


Another chilled soup, tomato in this case. Ok, technically it’s gazpacho (even more so as it’s Spanish chef Jose Pizzaro's recipe), but as all the ingredients were perfectly in season in England at the time, it’s too bloody good and there were so many fantastic tomatoes around, we had to make it. The recipe is simplicity itself and it astounded me that it tasted so fantastic for seemingly such little work. We used locally grown Radford Mill organic tomatoes, and served it with something else pinched from Tom Kitchin; a dollop of Basil Sorbet (which tasted incredible by the way).


Finally, right up to the most recently held ‘Basement’ one of the best desserts we’ve made, ‘Mirabelle plum & thyme tart with cinnamon ice cream’. The plums were also from Radford Mill and were organic. Plum and thyme went together incredibly well. The cinnamon ice cream was also one of the best we’ve made so far, but it’s always a pain to make enough for 18, as our machine is one of those small, cheap ‘freeze for 24hrs before using’ jobbies, which means much scheduling and planning in order to knock up the required amount.

So, there you have it. Some of the better food we’ve cooked in recent months at The Montpelier Basement (that we have photos of). I’m proud of all it to be honest. To knock 18 of any of those dishes out, from a small domestic kitchen, under pressure, with a room full of expectant guests and no practice run… it's always going to be massive sighs of relief, cheesy grins and back slaps all round, I reckon. At the very least, we haven't poisoned anyone...yet.

P.S.
On Sunday September 25th, we’re bringing the whole Montpelier Basement dog and pony show to London, at Farringdon’s The Coach and Horses pub, for one night only. It’s already fully booked up, but if you fancy being added to the waiting list, or want to come along to any future possible Basement On Tour dates, or any of our regular Bristol ones for that matter, drop us a line at montpelierbsmt@gmail.com and we’ll add you to the mailing list.

Not 'Basement' behaviour.

So, can you believe ‘E’ and myself have been running ‘The Montpelier Basement’ supper club in our home since October last year? errr what’s that? *counts slowly on fingers* eight frigging months! Unbelievable. Surprisingly for us, (as I’ve just counted the dates up), tomorrow’s ‘Basement’ will be our 23rd. Therefore I thought it was high time that I wrote about it a bit, and you know…. spill my guts in a sharing fashion.

First of all, utilising all my fingers, and some of my toes, I can tell you that we’ve had nearly 400 people pass through our doors and eat our food. Incredibly, considering that number, nearly all of these people have been absolutely amazing individuals. They’ve been no problem whatsoever, they’ve loved what we’re doing and in return, we’ve loved them dearly. *blows copious air kisses, mwah mwah fashion*

But, it hasn’t been all rainbows, cuddles and snuggums. A couple of people have, quite frankly, been very bad guests. But, only a couple, out of nearly 400, that’s actually quite amazing. Nevertheless these few individuals have blighted our ‘Basement’ with their presence, and we curse their collective memories.

The most ghastly of our few rubbish guests descended on our subterranean lair a few months back. Lets call her ‘Sharon’, (errr because that’s actually her name). ‘Shazza’ was basically the supper club guest from hell.
She came on her own, which isn’t unusual in itself, lots of people do and that’s fine. She was in her late 50’s I guess, and she seemed a little bit pissed when she arrived. She ended up sitting on a table with 4 other people who were in their early twenties. It wasn’t long before we realised that she was completely dominating the whole table’s conversation. She was one of those awful people, with a loud voice (slurred) and an opinion on pretty much everything, all of it backed up with a winding longwinded story. The rest of the table were sitting there stunned, in a complete verbal vacuum. Mere puppets as Shazza held court in the most awful fashion.

But, our guests are adults, they can deal with this…. Thought I naively, until ‘E’ came into the kitchen aghast, and told me that ‘Shaz’ was now regaling her new dining companions with a cheery tale about her friend who had apparently committed suicide. As you can imagine, they quite literally looked like someone had died. Four pairs of eyes pleading for help and framed by expressions of exquisite misery greeted me, as I was physically ejected by ‘E’ out of the kitchen and into the dining room with orders to ‘change the subject’.

I decided the best approach was to engage Sharon in conversation, and draw her away from the others so they could best make their escape. Coming, as I do, from Essex, I have much experience of chatting to drunkards and felt assured that I could deal with this confidently. Try as I might, I can’t remember exactly what I said, or what Sharon said in response. I can only conclude that part of my memory has been blotted out, in what is no doubt some kind of primal brain defence mechanism which I am confident will see me awaking in years to come bathed in sweat and screaming.

But, the main thing is, I took one for the team. I changed the subject.


The evening progressed, and Shazza hadn’t seemed to cause any more real trouble. Apart from provoking the odd look from other guests. She’d taken to moving around the room, sitting at the other tables chatting, and helping herself to wine. Eventually at the arse end of the evening, myself, ‘E’ and two other women who happened to be young Doctors were left drinking and chatting. They were lovely, extremely funny and quite obviously had enjoyed a great evening, which made us happy. Shazza was still floating around, and by this time was steaming drunk. She offered to ‘help with the washing up’. We politely declined. She looked restless. A couple of minutes later, I looked around and realised she’d wandered into the empty kitchen. As I got up to she where she’d got to, she came stumbling out mumbling incoherently. The Doctors, bless em, had at this point realised what a problem Shazza was and whispered that they’d take her with them when they left.

I could only admire their skill, obviously honed to perfection in dealing with troublesome patients as they expertly shepherded our ghastly guest, cheerfully crying ‘C’mon Shazza, you’re coming with us’. Somewhat surprisingly she obediently accompanied them up the stairs to the front door.
As the unlikely trio departed into the night, we relaxed and breathed a sigh of relief. Immediately resolving that Sharon would never be coming to ‘The Basement’ again.

But my sorry tale doesn’t end there. The next day, whilst tidying up the wreckage in the kitchen, I found an envelope stuffed behind the radio. It was Shazzer’s payment envelope. Confused, I ripped it open. Instead of leaving the suggested donation of £25, she’d left £15, and hidden it. This despite raving how good the evening and the food was, necking a load of leftover wine and ruining the evening for her entire table with her complete boorishness.
Shazza, you’re a piece of work. If I ever see you again, it will be far too soon.To all our guests that night who may have been mentally scarred. We're truly sorry.

No one else has even come close to Shazza for sheer awfulness. In fact, as I said previously, we’ve been extremely lucky that nearly all save for a tiny minority have been an absolute pleasure welcome into our home and cook for. We love you all ‘Basementeers’.

So that’s our worst ever supper club guest.
I’d be interested to hear what’s the worst behaviour you’ve witnessed at a supper club, or even a restaurant for that matter.
Go on share.

PS: If you fancy coming along to a future ‘Basement’ (No Shazza – we promise – drop us an email at Montpelierbsmt@gmail.com)

Brown Windsor soup - A revival

I’ve always been slightly intrigued by Brown Windsor Soup. I’ve read mention of it countless times, generally in the context of Victorian or Edwardian dining, or perhaps later being associated with drab wartime austerity. It seems to come up again and again, but I’ve never tried it. I’ve never seen it on a menu and I barely know anyone who’s ever eaten it, apart from my Mother – once, in the 1960’s in London, who remembered it as being “Nice and rich”.

It used to be a restaurant staple, an absolute British classic, but the ravages of wartime economy meant that although it remained very much on the menu, the only defining characteristic it shared with it’s pre-war version was it’s brownness. ‘E’s grandfather apparently ate it whilst serving in the RAF, and remembers it being made from Bovril.
Abominations such as this are what helped to consign it not only to the dustbin of culinary history, but literally had it being held up as an example of the sheer awfulness of British cooking.

Recently I came across an Alastair Little recipe for Brown Windsor, and browsing the list of ingredients it was hard to see anything to dislike, in fact; it sounded absolutely delicious. Shin of beef, Lamb fillet, Marrow Bone, Cayenne and Sherry. Meat and booze! Does it get any better?
How could we, as a nation, have fallen out of love with something seemingly so right?

There was it seemed, only one-way to find out.

The soup’s very Britishness seemed to fit in nicely with what we try and do at our Bristol based ‘Montpelier Basement’ supper club, where the recurring theme is British, seasonal and local. When we announced it was on the menu, there was a fair bit of interest in the dish, it seemed I wasn’t the only one who had heard of it and was intrigued.

The night before the supper, we worked our way through the recipe ending up with a cauldron of murky, brackish swamp like liquid. Removing the bones, and scraping the jellified marrow out into the soup elicited something of an appalled and disgusted commentary from pescetarian ‘E’, for who the sheer meatiness was just a step too far. But the prodigious use of a stick blender and then forcing the resulting mixture through a Mouli saw something of a transformation…the soup slowly became a rather drab, but not entirely unexpected, uniform brown. The final additional flourish of some sherry and cayenne did nothing to improve the dull earthen sheen.

But what did it taste like?

Belying its slightly depressing, functional look, it tasted absolutely belting. Subtle at first, meaty. But then turning spicy and tinged with the sherry flavour. Bloody gorgeous.

We decided to liven things up slightly by adding a dollop of horseradish and chive crème fraiche to each bowl, which also helped to break up the appalling brownness.

The verdict of our diners at ‘The Basement’? The general consensus seemed to be that they absolutely loved it. In fact, I don’t think anyone we asked disliked it.

So, time for Brown Windsor Soup to emerge from it’s period in culinary limbo and once again take it’s place on menus across the nation, if only that a whole new generation can get to sample an absolute British classic? I think so.

Here’s the recipe.

Brown Windsor Soup
Serves 8

You’ll Need: -

225g Shin of Beef, cut into 2.5cm cubes
225g Lamb Fillet, cut into 2.5cm cubes
60g Dripping or Butter
1 Large Onion, thinly sliced
2 Carrots cut into small dice
60g Flour
1 Marrow Bone, sawn into 5cm pieces
2.25 Litres Beef or Chicken Stock
Bouquet Garni of Celery, Bay and Thyme
Salt and Pepper
1 tsp Cayenne Pepper
Sherry glass of Sweet Sherry or Madeira
Chopped Chives, Crème Fraiche, Horseradish to garnish (optional).

In a heavy casserole, brown the meat in the dripping or butter. Add the sliced onion and carrots, lower the heat and fry gently until they wilt. Sprinkle over the flour; turn up the heat and brown, stirring.

Add the marrow bone, pour over the stock and bring to the boil. Skim, and then lower the heat to a simmer. Add the bouquet garni and season. Simmer for 2 hours, topping up with water if needed.

Remove the bones and the bouquet garni (Making sure to scrape the marrow out into the soup). Blitz with a stick blender, then use a Mouli or push through a sieve using a wooden spoon into a clean pan. Adjust the seasoning and add the cayenne pepper and sweet sherry or Madeira.

Heat through gently before serving.
If you fancy pepping it up a bit, as we did, add some crème fraiche mixed with horseradish and finely chopped chives.

The Montpelier Basement - Behind the scenes

The last time I actually wrote about our Bristol supperclub ‘The Basement’ was just after our second event in October last year. We were complete novices back then embarking on an exciting new venture, fresh faced, young and naive. Much has happened since then. 12 suppers later, and we’ve been transformed into grizzled veterans; complete with scars, burns and wry smiles that seem to say ‘we’ve seen stuff’. But, and this is the nice thing; one of the reasons that we continue is that each event is still as incredibly exciting as the first.


Perhaps unsurprisingly, it all takes a hell of a lot of work. In the weeks before there’s the actual administration, announcing dates, emailing backwards and forwards, replying to people who want to come and filling spaces if people drop out. (Last minute cancellations being the absolute worst nightmare of a supper club. The ingredients are bought to order, and it’s not like a restaurant where you’ll get passing trade to fill those places), luckily we’ve not been troubled too much in this regard, *touch wood*


Then there’s setting the tables, cleaning the cutlery and glasses, ironing tablecloths (and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of napkins), drawing up seating plans and building a fire. This is all before we’ve done menu planning, emailed this out to our guests, and then spent at least a couple of days shopping.


Buying ingredients for a supper club presents it’s own problems. You want to cook pork cheeks? Superb. Now try and ensure you’ve got two each for 34 people on the exact weekend you want them. But what’s this? There’s been some kind of balls up at the butchers and the aforementioned porcine cheeks order hasn’t turned up in full and it’s too late to find anything else. So do you scrap that idea and cook something else entirely? It’s often a logistical nightmare I tell you.
Then there’s the sheer bulk of what you have to buy. How about 30 onions, 20 leeks and six kilos of pork belly? Not having a car means I’m slowly developing the squat, muscular build of a man who’s forever humping heavy bags of vegetables and meat for miles and miles in an urban environment.


The night before (or sometimes two nights before, depending on what’s on the menu), we begin to cook. Preparing as much as we can in advance to give us a fighting chance on the actual night of the supper. We have a four-burner hob and one oven. Trying to cook an eight-course menu on that for 17 can be incredibly tricky unless you plan it carefully (as we’ve learnt to our cost when horrified, we discovered three things we should be cooking, had to be in the oven all at the same time, at different temperatures. As you can imagine, much panicked juggling ensued!)
So we bake tarts, make ice cream and simmer stocks, normally working well into the night. The morning of a ‘Basement’ involves getting up early, shopping for last minute items and then cooking, cooking and more cooking. We write a ‘to do’ list; stick it up on the kitchen window and cross stuff off as it’s complete.

No matter how much time we think we have to prepare, the last few hours before a supper always pass in the blink of an eye. There’s normally the slightest moment of calm, a limbo where we wait for the first guest to arrive, and then we’re off, it’s wacky races (I’m Dick Dastardly, and I wont tell you who ‘E’ is……..Ok, who said Mutley?)


We both cook, and love it, sharing all the prep and the actual cooking on the night but we’ve also learnt to play to our individual strengths. ‘E’ has much experience of managing restaurants and waitressing, so she normally takes on the role of maitre d’ and waitress (Moving through the diners, smiling and balancing ridiculous amounts of plates on each hand “gracefully, like a swan” as one of our more poetic diners put it).

My own skill set lies more towards verging on being utterly OCD where it comes to tidiness and organisation. Basically, in between cooking, I wash up and put stuff away like a man possessed. (Finding enough space to plate up 17 dishes is hard enough even with the worktops clear!)
Obviously there’s some overlap, I sometimes act as greeter, clumsily bring dishes out to tables or clear them away and ‘E’ sometimes helps with the washing up (although she absolutely detests doing it), so actually it all works like a well oiled machine…sort of.


One of the main problems is getting the food out all at the same time and hot, but we’ve become pretty adept at getting this right. Making sure the plates are warmed beforehand is a must. (So, just one more thing to cram into the oven then yeah?).

Normally the main course involves much frantic activity, more often than not it’s served with accompanying vegetables and side dishes, which means mucho hob juggling trying to cook everything and keep it hot.


But once it’s all out and our guests are eating, it’s cheesy grins and high-fives. We’re over the ‘hump’ and it’s all downhill from here, (often literally, this is normally my signal to start drinking…. extravagantly). We come out of the kitchen for a bit, mingle, chat to everyone and have a drink with them before finishing off with the desserts and our signature savoury of Gorwydd Caerphilly and Bristol Beer Factory rarebit.


Then, feeling immensely satisfied, elated and buzzing it’s more mingling, chatting and drinking until in the early hours eventually people start to call it a night and drift off home.

Then it’s a sit down, a chat over a drink about how we thought the night went, perhaps a swift tidy up (That would be me), and then off to bed, to get up early and probably do it all again the next day. (Our preference of late is for back to back ‘Basements’ on a Friday and Saturday, it makes for a more manic time, but it means that people who want to come, can and we get some weekends off too…. it’s a tiring win/win).

But wait, the work doesn’t end there. Did I mention trying to get wine stains out of tablecloths? Or the problem of trying to get rid of all those empty bottles? God knows what our bin-men think; let alone our unsuspecting neighbours. Our recycling bin is normally bursting at the seams with 40 odd empty wine bottles on most Mondays…

If you fancy coming along and contributing to our Monday wine bottle mountain, then drop us an email at montpelierbsmt@gmail.com and we’ll add you to the mailing list.

Oh, and don't forget to follow us on Twitter @montpelierbsmt

Mwah Mwah

Homewood Fresh Ewe’s Cheese & Blood Orange Salad with Bristol Marmalade Croutons

In our ‘Montpelier Basement’ guise, ‘E’ and I were proud to be asked to provide lunch for the attendees of Bristol’s ‘Cheese School’ on Sunday, a fascinating regular class on all things cheese, jointly hosted by Trethowan’s Dairy and Food Writer Fiona Beckett, held at the Bordeaux Quay cookery school.

The brief was something light (as the ‘pupils’ had been gorging themselves on amazing artisan cheese all morning), but it also had to feature cheese in some way. (My initial thought of cheese& pineapple on cocktail sticks interspersed with Wotsits as a buffet option was swiftly vetoed).
Despite this initial setback (I mean come on! It fitted the brief perfectly), we eventually came up with an amazing yet simple and flavoursome cauliflower cheese soup using excellent Keen’s cheddar, this was topped with small pieces of welsh rarebit made with Trethowan’s own beautiful Gorwydd Caerphilly. (‘E’ has thoughtfully provided the recipe for the soup here on her blog).

In addition, we served a salad of our own invention, using sliced little gem, tossed with Homewood Fresh Ewe’s Cheese, Blood Orange segments and Bristol Marmalade Croutons. Over this we drizzled a warm marmalade dressing.

What’s really nice about this salad is that a local couple makes both the Cheese AND the Marmalade. Tim and Angela who actually met whilst selling their produce on adjoining stalls at a farmers market. (Tim selling his cheeses, Angela selling her jams and chutneys). Talk about ‘terroir’ eh? (If that reference just sailed over your head, ‘terroir’ is a bit of a vague slightly poncey French term to describe a special sense of 'place', with regards to food or wine.) I think this qualifies.

Anyway, enough of my babbling here’s the recipe….

Homewood Fresh Ewe’s Cheese & Blood Orange Salad with Bristol Marmalade Croutons

Serves 4

You’ll Need:-

2 x Little Gem Lettuce – leaves roughly shredded
1x Blood Orange – peeled, segmented and cut into 1cm chunks
2x slices of stale white bread, crusts removed and cut into 1cm cubes for croutons
Small 150g pot Homewood Fresh Ewe’s Milk Cheese
2-3 tbsp. Bristol Marmalade (Substitue normal Marmalade + a splash of Bristol sherry if unavailable).
4 tbs Olive Oil
1 tbs Sherry Vinegar
Butter
Salt & Pepper
2 tsp Pumpkin Seeds – lightly toasted.

To Assemble:-

Arrange the shredded little gem lettuce in a large serving bowl.
Scatter the lettuce with Blood Orange chunks, toasted Pumpkin Seeds and then crumble over the Homewood Fresh Ewe’s Milk Cheese.

Make the marmalade croutons by melting a large knob of butter in a frying pan, when foaming add the bread cubes. Toss in the melted butter and fry until crisp and golden. Add a heaped tbsp of Bristol Marmalade to the pan, and coat the croutons as it melts. Remove from the heat and allow to cool briefly to firm up before sprinkling the croutons over the salad.

To make the dressing, pour the Olive Oil into the same frying pan, with the Sherry Vinegar, and a heaped tbs of the Bristol Marmalade. Cook over a fairly high heat until the marmalade has melted and then drizzle the warm dressing over the finished salad. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

PS – I think I should mention that Angela’s Bristol Marmalade is so called because it has Bristol Sherry in it. And for those outside Bristol looking to buy some Homewood Fresh Ewe’s milk Cheese, it’s stocked by Able & Cole.

Fame at the Basement!! (And our 2nd Supper).

The dining room is darkened. Silence.
The sudden low electrical hum as a spotlight suddenly appears in the centre of the floor, dust pirouettes lazily in the glow.
An appreciative gasp from the audience as I stride into the limelight, contemptuous of the stir I've just caused. I strike a pose, and hold it. Clad head to toe in a body hugging black Lycra catsuit, my athletic dancer outline broken only by my leg warmers and the stick I use to beat on the floor for emphasis as I spit out "Fame costs, and right here is where you start paying"...I strike a 'jazz hands' position. The audience gasps, then hushed silence as strange rhythmic music, played on a bongo begins to drift out of the darkness.
I begin my routine with a daring crotch splitting high kick and spin...

*Sound of a needle skidding across the track*

No silly people.
Not the 1980's TV Show 'Fame'!

The fame that comes from having a recipe from Montpelier Basement featured in Xanthe Clay's column in The Telegraph. And, if that wasn't enough, Fiona Beckett the new Guardian wine columnist (and food writer) coming to our second supper and giving us a stonking write up on her blog, kind of fame!
To say 'E' and I are chuffed silly would be a complete understatement. Cheesy grins, high-fives and backslaps all round.

Although, not quite as good as me dancing gracefully in a body hugging leotard I think you'll all agree, but it's up there.... it’s certainly up there.

So, the second supper was superb (has a nice ring to it don’t you think?)
As you can see, the final menu featured pumpkin in every course (as it was Halloween...err...almost), but it was all quite subtle.

The Montpelier Basement - Saturday 30th October.

Sherry served with Gorwydd Caerphilly, thyme, chilli and pumpkin dust gougère

Bertinet rustic rye bread with West Country butter

Pumpkin and sage soup with deep fried sage, brown butter and chilli

Baked Cornish haddock with pumpkin crust, leeks and white wine sauce.

Onglet with pumpkin jam and polenta chips
OR,
Mushroom and Old Demdike tatin with thyme, chestnuts and squash

Spiced pumpkin and pecan cake with mascarpone, honey and toasted pecans

And finally,
Gorwydd Caerphilly and Bristol Beer Factory Milk Stout Rarebit

Quite an adventurous menu I'd say, given that we only have a domestic kitchen to crank it all out from. We had all eleven guests seated at one table stretching the length of the room, rather than split up onto separate tables. The problem with this arrangement is how to get eleven plates of food out all at once, and all hot with only limited hob and oven space. But with careful planning, flow charts, pie charts, spreadsheets and a white board, 'E' managed to drill into my dense skull exactly how this could be achieved. But more about that later.


Before our guests arrived, we'd laid the table, lit the wood fire which was roaring away, throwing a nice warm flicker around the room, lit the candles and finally - as it was Halloween (well almost) we'd borrowed a projector and had old black and white horror films playing on one of the dining room walls. It worked really well and added a really superb atmosphere to the dining room.


First up - the Gorwydd Caerphilly, thyme, chilli and pumpkin dust gougère, which we served as nibbles with sherry. The basic gougère recipe I've blogged before here, but we substituted Caerphilly for Cheddar, added some Thyme and dusted with chilli flakes and blitzed toasted pumpkin seeds.


After some beautiful Bertinet rye bread, we served a small portion of pumpkin and sage soup ('E' now has her own blog, and has helpfully put the recipe up here). We decorated this with chilli flakes and deep fried sage leaves .


Next, we were both especially pleased with the baked Cornish haddock with pumpkin crust, leeks and white wine sauce. It looked really elegant and tasted incredible (we made an extra portion for ourselves). It was actually a bastardised Gary Rhodes recipe from my old favourite 'New British Classics'. He uses Halibut and serves it in much bigger portions.


We had one vegetarian diner, and 'E' had made them a superb Mushroom and Old Demdike tatin with thyme, chestnuts and squash. We'd used a mixture of chestnut mushrooms, Portobello and for added luxury (it was an alternative to steak after all) sliced fresh ceps. This was layered through with Old Demdike cheese and thyme. We served it with the same pumpkin jam (Made the previous night) and polenta chips that we served with the Onglet.


The steak presented us with something of a problem. How to cook eleven massive slabs of Onglet, and then rest them.... to serve all at the same time, hot with only four hobs. Helpfully, the head chef at Source Food Hall & Cafe presented the solution to us. Pre-sear the Onglet first, and then whack all of it on a baking tray, covered with foil into the oven and cook until medium rare. A technique that worked beautifully. (Source incidentally supplied us with both the freshest Cornish Haddock, as well as the superb Onglet and Ceps).

Unfortunately, not everything was as easily worked around. The Polenta chips that we served with the onglet were a hell of a lot of work to flour, egg, and coat in panko then fry in small batches. But with head's down and working methodically we ploughed through it.

With the polenta chips fried, me frantically slicing the now rested steak and 'E' artistically smearing the plates with pumpkin jam and plating up, we managed to get the hardest course out. High Five!


Breathing a sigh of relief, and knocking back a celebratory glass of red we plated up the beautifully moist Spiced pumpkin and pecan cake with mascarpone, honey and toasted pecans which 'E' has made the previous evening (recipe here).
I drizzled with honey and artistically scattered toasted pecans whilst 'E' expertly shaped the mascarpone quenelles.

Pudding served we left the confines of the kitchen to sit with our guests, drink as much booze as we could lay our hands on and generally relax a bit and enjoy the atmosphere, with just a brief visit back to the grill to make the final course of Rarebit.

Everything, (surprisingly) had gone extremely smoothly, no tourette like streams of swearing, no panicked shouting and no screams, all of which have so often been the hallmarks of my dinner parties. Just fairly calm hustle in the kitchen.


With the majority of our guests waving unsteady goodbyes at around 1:30am, 'E' and I declared the second supper a bloody good evening, left the mess to clear up in the morning and crawled drunkenly upstairs to bed.

If you fancy attending a future supper at The Montpelier Basement, or would like to be added to our mailing list then send us an email at montpelierbsmt@gmail.com

We have at least two more dates planned for 2010, the 13th November and 27th November. (And possibly one more date in early December).
We’d love to see you.

This and that, bits and bobs etc…

What with all the work involved in The Montpelier Basement, I’ve found it pretty hard to find time to keep up with the blog posts. Seems this supper club gig is really time intensive!
But rest assured, in the background I’m still ‘out there’ doing all the same foodie stuff, eating in restaurants, cooking at home and falling out of bars…a lot – I just haven’t been writing about it as much…. which come to think of it, is no fun for anyone dammit, you want…no, you DEMAND to know what’s going on…. and I hear you, my beautiful, intelligent readers…. For indeed you are all beautiful and extremely intelligent and I am listening, like an unusual Essex-bloke-shaped radio antenna. I hear your plaintive cries for information reaching my furrowed brow, bombarding my brain with pleas…. I am attuned, and I’m going to give you what you want! Oh yeah, I’m going to squash a load of stuff into this post…. pack it, squeeze it all in until something breaks, or I get bored…and we’re off!!!!

First up, the next Montpelier Basement supper is being held on Saturday 30th October. The inaugural event seemed to be a massive success (*taps nose* check out Xanthe Clay’s column in The Telegraph next Saturday – say no more, say no more). We’re sold out already. However, we’ve worked out some future dates for the diary; Saturday 13th November and Saturday 27th November. Both dates are being booked up fast, so if you want to come, email montpelierbsmt@gmail.com

What will we be serving up at the next event on the 30th?

Here’s the menu….

Arrival drinks and nibbles

Bertinet bread and West country butter

Pumpkin and sage soup with deep fried sage, brown butter and chilli

Baked Cornish haddock with pumpkin crust. (Vegetarian option tbc)

Onglet with pumpkin jam, greens and polenta chips
OR,
Mushroom and Ogleshield tatin with thyme, chestnuts and squash

Spiced pumpkin and pecan cake with maple mascarpone, honey and toasted nuts.

Rarebit

As it’s Halloween weekend, we’ve tried to feature pumpkin in the menu a fair bit. Mainly because it’s orange and errr scary.

Moving on…..


Lets talk about Elizabeth David. Rightfully considered to be one of the most influential post war food writers and cooks Britain has ever produced, she pretty much singlehandedly shaped the face of what we eat and in some ways still influences what we eat today. So basically as important as it gets. Aaaaaaand, until I started writing my food blog almost two years ago, I’d never heard of her. There I’ve said it! I didn’t know who Elizabeth David was; fellow foodies come hither and flay me with chains, then squirt me liberally with lemon juice (Sicilian of course).
I’d like to say it’s because I was just too ‘into Escoffier to have time for her man’, or something. But no, I was just blissfully ignorant. Yet, gradually I became aware of her and her works. As they were entirely text (and being from Essex I’m all about the pictures) I always just scanned them and never really took them in. Until a few weeks ago, when I was sent *drum roll purlease* ‘At Elizabeth David’s Table’, a collection of her more everyday recipes, all with glorious food porn photos of what the grub is actually supposed to look like. So now, when I’m knocking out a quick Perdrix a l’auvergnate, I know exactly what it’s supposed to look like.
The interesting thing about this book, for someone like me who is less accustomed to Elizabeth David’s work, is how ahead of her time she was and how obviously influential she has been. Nearly all of the recipes could have been written yesterday, and considering how hard the exotic ingredients must have been to source in a dreary, just released from the shackles of wartime rationing Britain, the book is not only a cracking collection of her recipes, but a fascinating insight into our country’s food heritage.


I cooked a couple of things from the book (had to try it out of course), and the results were pretty good. Although, a quick pasta dish, Fettuccine alla marinara was fairly unspectacular as far as pasta goes.



I was much more impressed with the coffee ice cream recipe (which incidentally is something ‘E’ absolutely loves) and the classic chocolate mousse. Results for both of these were good, and being Elizabeth David, the recipes are beautifully written.


But enough about the past, now let’s talk about the future, in the shape of Stevie Parle, who aged just 24 has managed to cram a ridiculously impressive list of restaurants onto his CV. He has recently been awarded Young Chef Of The Year by Observer Food Monthly, as well as running the London pop up Moveable Restaurant AND has now opened his own restaurant, The Dock Kitchen…. oh…in between this it seems like he’s travelled everywhere. As such, we should all hate him with a fixated jealous seething anger, but I was sent his cookbook ‘My Kitchen, Real Food From Near And Far’ quite a while ago, and this is the thing…. all of the recipes I’ve tried so far are frigging amazing! (Chana Masala, I’m looking at you baby). So he’s grudgingly forgiven, frigging overachiever that he is.
Anyway, we were so impressed we had a bit of an evening where we cooked a few dishes from it, all were new to me and all were superb.


Apart from the aforementioned Chana Masala, a chickpea curry which achieves the rather enviable double whammy of being both delicious and cheap, we also made Avial, which was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever eaten; a thick coconut, yoghurt and vegetable paste, it looked utterly bizarre but was strangely tasty.


While we were at it, we made our own chapattis from a recipe in the book, which were surprisingly simple to knock up. Finally we made a fresh ginger and tamarind pickle. This particular accompaniment seemed to involve a hell of a lot of work for the end result of a small pot of pickle, but wow! It was bloody gorgeous. The strange thing is, when I tasted it, I realised immediately that I’ve encountered versions of it before in a hundred Indian restaurants, but I’ve never known what it was and it always tasted disgusting. Not this though, it was fresh, vibrant and punchy – I can’t recommend it enough.
So in conclusion, if you don’t have it – Stevie Parle’s book is really worth picking up.


Finally, the other night ‘E’ and I attended a Bristol supper club run by Sam J Leach. We’ve visited before and I wrote about it here, the food was cracking and when we heard he was holding another event, we signed up straightaway.

As before, the food was superb, and now having had a go at running our own supper club we have a bit more of an appreciation of how much bloody hard work it all is. There were a couple of truly standout courses, the duck heart, smoked mash and beetroot was delicious and beautifully presented, but what really blew me away (and everyone else it seemed), was the dessert.


A toffee apple hollowed out and filled with custard. Sam had cleverly worked out how to achieve this, and the ‘oooh’s and ‘ahhhh’s from our fellow diners that filled the room as everyone broke through the outer caramel shell and discovered the custard filling in unison, were a delight to hear. Stunning and extremely clever. Bravo.


There’s a hell of a lot more that I’ve eaten, cooked and drank lately that I’d love to share with you, (An excellent lunch at Polpetto in Soho, a not so great burger but great beer at Draft House Tower Bridge and a book launch at Moti Mahal spring to mind) but I’m acutely aware that too much information and peoples attentions start to wander. Yes I’m talking to you at the back.

So until next time, and do come to our supper club if you can, we'd love to see you.