Monday 30 August 2010

Off wednesday and thursday.


I have been taking some pictures at work over the weekend, so will hopefully appear on thie blog on my days off, some wicked wagyu beef and top tempura! Me and Dobbie are meeting to discuss the competition, only two weeks away now!

Saturday 28 August 2010

Seasonal Caugettes fried with Japanese breadcrumbs.











Saturday off means Pimlico Farmers Market! Found some lovely caugettes down there so I decided to fry some in Japanese breadcrumbs (Panko flakes), thay are lighter and crispier than all other breadcrumbs, and anytime I use another type of breadcrumb they always remind me of Finders Crispy Pancakes! I also bought a beutifull wild Seabass and some lovely yellow carrots.
I sliced the caugettes (4 for 3 of us)diagnally, floured then (plain flour), then dipped them in beaten eggs (2), then coated them in some Japanese breadcrumbs. Then I shallow fried them in a mixture of Sesame and vegetable oil, I served them with a homemade Tartare sauce (2 egg yolks, grapeseen oil, chopped capers and gherkins, the juice of 1 small lemon, salt and pepper). I also baked the Seabass whole and simply boiled the carrots in lightly salted water, then I garnished them with the carrot stalks which I washed and chopped and salt and pepper.

Competition Plates.







After our disappointing lunch at Yautcha, me and my Spanish mate Nacho, made our way over to Typhoon, a really cool Japanese shop in Brent Cross which specialises in plates, teapots, chopsticks, etc. Chris, the owner (top name), really helped me out, as they usually sell everything in bulk, but as I am a bloody top guy, good lookin and a right laugh (and work at Zuma, a 200 cover Japanese restaurant!), he opened up a few boxes for me, all the products are top quality, hand made and imported in from Japan. I found everything that I need for my competition, Chris and his wife were really help full, they even drove us to the tube station afterwards!

Yaucha, Michelin starred restaurant?????????







Me and Nacho are a lazy pair of sods, after a pre-fish and chip beer in Soho, we wandered across the road and began reading the menu for Yaucha, 1 of 3 Michelin starred Chinese restaurants in London ,Hakkassan and Kai being the other two. The menu looked great and Nacho not eaten in a 'so called' good restaurant in London yet, so we decided to go inside, they were almost full as it was Friday lunch time and there was a good buz about the restaurant, but we managed to get a table for 2, we went for Dim-Sum, we had about 8 small dishes, mainly steamed dumplings of different types, chicken and prawn, mushroom, chicken and mushroom, etc, and some fried chicken balls, which tasted like they had been fried in old oil! A fried rice was very medioca, with salted fish, eggs and spring onions, it was a bit to oily and didn't have that slight charred flavour that a fried rice should, it was more of a steamed oily rice! Peking duck was nowhere near as good as I have had in other restaurants in London for a fraction of the price, it again had been deep fried in dirty oil, and was a bit to dry, served with steamed pancakes, cucumber and spring onion and a toy town sized portion of Hoi Sin sauce, which didn't help as the duck was dry anyway. We had 2 beers each and a bottle of still water, no dessert and the bill was £100! Next time we wont be so lazy, and we will walk the 5 minutes it takes to walk to China town.....Or go for fish and chips as planned!

Friday 27 August 2010

9 Day stint over!


Nine day stint at work is finally over, and my body automatically woke up at 7, the time it usually does when I am working! So here I am at 7.30 planning my days off! Today, meet Nacho for fish n chips, then off to Typhoon, a Japanese plate shop in Brent Cross, looking for a few bits for my competition, only 2 weeks away!

Monday 23 August 2010

Fish on Friday!



Taking my Spanish mate Nacho for fish and chips on friday, I'll take him to the Fryers Delight in Holbon, another mate of mine tells me it's the best in London, I hope so because Nacho is always complaining about English food! !!!!! I'll show him! Paella, Whatever!

Friday 20 August 2010

My Favourite Cookbooks.















I have over 300 cookbooks, some of them I havn't even opened! I see them in bookshops or charity shops, take them home and put them in my cupboard and forget about them! But there are a few that I always refer to when creating a dish or cooking something on a day off.
My Roux cookbooks are special to me as I won them at the final of the Roux scholarship and they are signed, Michel Snr signs one to ''Christopher'', only Gastro Gran ever calls me that! Also special to me are my Thai cookbooks, written by my old boss David Thompson, his first (the pink book), took 10 years to write! And his new book Thai Street Food, he gave me when I left Nahm. He was such an inspiration to me and I will never forget my time at Nahm, I have never met a person as passionate as him or as dedicated to one cuisine as David.
Then there are my Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, 'Meat' and 'Fish' books, they are full of everything that you need to know about the great Produce Britain has to offer, with a few fairly easy recipes, top books.
When looking for a bit of Japanese inspiration I open one of my Nobu cookbooks or Yoshihiros Murata's book Kaiseki, with great recipes from his 3 michelin starred restaurant in Kyoto, also full of great Japanese recipes and ingredient information is Shizuo Tsuji's Japanese cooking, a fine art.
I also have a great Escoffier book (no introduction needed) which I picked up for £9 in a charity shop! But my all time favourite and bargain book is called 'A Practical Cook' written by Joseph Bregion and Anne Miller, it was written in 1845! That makes it 165 years old!!!!!!!! It has some amazing recipes in it, including 'Real Turtle Soup'! Amazing, I bought it from a second hand bookshop on the Kings Road for £12! Gorden Ramski's new book costs £25, and he probably doesn't even know the person who wrote it! Did I write that or think it?

Wednesday 18 August 2010

Nahm Archives.

















Just found these pictures from when I was working at Nahm.(Whatever).