Cooking in London, The Algarve (Portugal) and Cheltenham

2. The Algarve, hotel Quinta Jacintina

"Is there any possibility you could help us out?.... we have a lunch party for around 25 and canape party for 65....."
"Yes - when did you have in mind?"
".....There's a flight from Stansted at 7 o'clock tomorrow morning.... or 3:30 in the afternoon from Gatwick...."

This was 7pm on Monday. I was still 70 miles from the Tewkesbury base.... and there were so many loose ends to clear up.... and was my passport still in date? I like a challenge. I took the Gatwick flight. The next 24 hours were rather busy.

The menus were all in place already from the previous chef, so I emailed them a shopping list. I touched down in Faro at 6:30pm and was in the kitchen by 8:00pm trying to decipher the portugese ingredients. After 4 years it was odd being back in a hotel kitchen again - you get used to cooking in houses, marquees and other various venues (the car showroom where we had to climb under the cars to get to the kitchen was memorable as was the disused air control tower). The only thing missing was the salmon which Alex, the Portugese apprentice chef I had working with me found at market whole, so it was good to do a bit of fish filleting - it's been a while. By the next lunch time we had two starters, two main course and desserts ready to go. And then there were a few diners in the restaurant for the evening too.

Have mini yorkshire pudding tins will travel

The canape party on the Friday was for an englishman's 70th birthday so the canapes they had chosen were all english favourites. As I guessed they wouldn't have the mini yorkshire pudding tins I took my own - I do like to make everything from scratch.

• Mini yorkshire puddings with fillet of beef and horseradish
• Chicken piri piri (I kept the piri piri marinade we made and used it to cook prawns for the evening for someone else)
• Tempura prawns
• Smoked salmon blinis with creme fraiche
  
• Honey and mustard glazed mini sausages
  
• Crab cakes in [white and black] sesame with chilli and pepper dip
  

Everything was made between the day before and on the day itself in between helping out with a lunch someone else was providing at the hotel (Noelia who normally looks after the catering in their Portugese holiday villas) and cooking for the hotel guests in the evening.

I went with this recipe for the tempura - always better with bicarbonate of soda. After 50 prawns though, I did get the feeling that I was in a fish and chip shop :-) The prawns were absolutely the biggest I have ever seen - more like mini lobster. Even cut in quarters they were still big.

XXX

I also made lots of bread while I was there - it was the first thing I did c. 8:30pm the first night I got there so it was ready for the next day. I suddenly realised why continental bread always tastes so different (better?) - different flour. This one was extra fine - in more ways than one. I also used a 'OO' flour as well - using up what was there. Both tasted so different to our english flour - and the extra-fine quality of the flour really added something to the texture of the bread too. For flavourings raided their storecupboard again and found coriander seeds which I added to the first batch, sesame seeds for another and some branched of oregano that had dried for another.




So I cooked for a few people on my own on the Friday night after the canape party, Alex joined me for the Saturday night, we did Sunday lunch as well and then a Valentine's menu for the Sunday night.

Again, the menus were in place I couldn't get snaps of everything - it's difficult sometimes as the food is going and you're moving quickly into the next thing.

Twice baked Roquefort souffle - Just amazed at how these turned out. It'd been a while since I'd done a souffle. If you're on the ropes you need a tried and tested recipe - there's no second chances - so I went for this one. Definitely be doing that again. [shame the photo doesn't show how high it was - almost bursting out of the oven].



Home cured salmon with asparagus, egg custard and horseradish cream




Grilled turbot with panfried polenta, baby gem, oven dried tomatoes and pea puree.

As the turbot was delivered whole, once I'd filleted it I had the bones to make stock with. Once the stock was reduced I could use that to make a white wine sauce - it was like being back with the stargazy pies all over again. I really like the baby gem with this too. It's something I do occasionally in the summer - after first trying the pan fried raddichio treviso a couple of years ago. And when you make your own polenta you can really get some flavour in their too - I cooked it with chicken stock and organo and added parmesan & a little 'cous cous seasoning' that I found on the shelf - much better.

Chocolate mousse with homemade sherry ice cream and praline






Related posts

London, the Algarve and Cheltenham in 2 weeks


Hotel Quinta Jacintina - http://www.mysecretgardenhotel.com/

Cooking in London, The Algrave (Portugal) and Cheltenham

1. London - The Underground Restaurant, Stargazy pie
"...... I want to catch this!...... on so many levels!"

Working with @MsMarmitelover was a hoot! Am I the only person who hasn't been there?
The front door opens and you feel immediately at home. Everyone who did the kitchen tour after the meal wanted it for their own - it's pretty special.

So it was back in June last year when I caught the melanzane parmigiana evening that Shuna Fish Lydon cooked at and it looked so good, I thought 'yes - that would be fun to do', but it had to wait till February - normally the only quiet month of the year (but as it turned out - not so this year).

The English Can Cook has been an avid read for a while - it's quite easy to relate to as I also spend all my time cooking in the home environment - although it is other people's home for me. Actually going there though I can see how cooking dishes that you will never see in a restaurant really works there. And the theme evenings are great - you just won't find that anywhere else - running a home restaurant gives you a lot more freedom in what you can do. And that's why people love it - and rightly so. Although while some people knew what they were coming to (some even dressed for the part), others had no idea - so a mixed group. If you live in a world where you have Saturday nights off I suppose there is this circuit of home restaurants, and maybe some people book because it's the place to go, rather than doing the homework beforehand to see what the week's theme is. Either way though, everyone ends up having a good time - and that's what its about.


'What about the Patrick O'Brien night?' Ms M had said back in December. Patrick O'Who? He wrote a mere 20 novels centred around the tales of Jack Aubrey in the late 1700's / early 1800's, and food features heavily as their pre-battle meals are always well described. Mmm 19th Century ship's food! Well you can read much more about him here (the pre-meal info) - and it all sounds like a great read.

Well I had never made Stargazy pie before. I remembered Helen's langoustine stargazy pie from a while back which was the first time I had come accross it, so I googled a few pics and recipes around midnight the night before as I finished up getting everything ready for the next day in my abscence. Ms M printed off a couple of recipes and we compared those with the recipe in the Lobscouse and Spotted Dog book (the recipe companion to the series of books) and came up with our own. Originally it was made with pilchards, but in fact they have quite a short season, so the pie is also made with mackerel or herrings, which we used. They had already been canoed by the fish monger (de-boned from the top) - so that was a good start.

I had brought my trusty pastry recipe with me, so while I got on with making the pastry Ms M went shopping for last minute supplies.

Pastry

(recipe from here - adapted for UK measurments)

2 cups (220g) plain flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

170g butter (I use half butter/ half lard normally [85g each] but as this was vegetarian I just doubled up the butter)

90ml ice water

As it was so many people I multiplied that by 10 and then did it two halves - by hand.

"Have you been drinking this?" says Ms. M as she gets back with the shopping. The bottle of white wine on the work surface was now 3/4 empty. And then she smells the pot on the aga with the begining of the sauce - white wine reducing nicely. Trust me - it's all under control......

Sauce

Very like the beer sauce I made here - only with white wine instead of beer. It's a classic. Pepped up with some veg bouillon

Onion
Spring onion
Carrot
White wine
Vegetable bouillon
Double cream
Lemon (this really perks it up)
Caraway seeds
Coriander seeds
(maybe?) fennel seeds
Other various spices on the shelf - there was a really nice homemade curry powder.
Mustard
Seasoning

I built the pies in the enamel dishes previously used at the Brixton pop up - it felt very authentic - with the sauce on the bottom, fish on top and quail eggs (c. 11 per pie) that Ms. M had been peeling. A bit more sauce on top and chopped dill, tarragon and parsley and the pie lid on top. Then you push the fish heads and tails into place under the pastry lid and cut around them so the poke through the top (find out as you go along).

But I went into auto-pilot pie mode at this point with crimping the egdes, and as try as I might, I couldn't make the fancy wave patterns - so Ms M took over. She also thought the stars on top would look good - stars for a stargazy pie. And ever being the astrologist thought a moon would look good too, so I cut one for each pie. What a pie-fest - they looked great lined up on the kitchen table.

Just in case there were any vegetarians we made a vegetarian pie too. There were mushrooms in the fridge and garlic bulbs hanging up in the kitchen, so I thought of garlic mushrooms and we used the same cream sauce base as the other pies. Then Ms. M put in the last of the Stinking Bishop cheese from the week before. Yes Stinking Bishop! As there was only one vegetarian in the end there was some left to try afterwards - wow that had to be the tasiest pie in the world..... ever! If you never make a stargazy pie - at least try this one.


Meanwhile, while I'd been making the pies, Ms M had been making the boiled baby - a giant boiled (vegetarian) suet pudding -just what you need to keep you going on board ship all day.

"Wouldn't it look good if I formed it into a baby shape?" says Ms M - what a sense of humour! And that's just what she did. Here I am - nursing the baby. Rrrrrrrr. Becuase the recipe had been trippled up to feed the 31 guests, it was so big it wouldn't quite fit in the largest saucepan so had to go in feet first. You can read into that what you will......

We just needed a custard to go with it. I pulled one of Nigella's books off the kitchen shelf. Probably similar to this recipe except I put the milk & cream on to heat with a vanilla pod, whisked the yolks and sugar till thick then after the milk had been infusing for 15 mins or so whisked it in to the yolks and put it back on the aga to cook. And Ms M added rosewater - what we used at the time before vanilla. Rosewater custard - it could be a dessert just by itself!


While I juggled stargazy pies between top shelves and bottom shelves, top and bottom ovens (aga cooking is fun), it gave Ms M chance to give the intro to the meal to the diners - certainly helped to get everyone in the ship's food spirit, or was that the rum cocktail first?


It seemed odd when guests started leaving around 11pm. London transport on a weekend - one of the things about London I don't miss. Normally for the meals we do the guests are staying at the house, so it's normally us that leaves. By 11:30pm the last guests had left - it felt so early. Time to wash a few more glasses and head off up the M1 for a family visit (killing 2 birds with one stone - it had been 3 - 4 months). There are 24 hours in a day after all......

By tickets for the Underground Restaurant here on We Got Tickets.
The Underground restaurant on Facebook

Christmas/ Xmas Day Lunch & Dinner in the Cotswolds, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Evesham, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Oxfordshire 2009

Christmas lunch using locally sourced produce delivered chilled to your home on Christmas Eve or cooked and served in your home on Christmas Day by chef and waiting staff.

See more info at Christmaslunchdelivery.co.uk

Delivery Christmas/ Xmas day lunch 2008 on the blog - see more click here








Christmas/ Xmas day lunch or dinner cooked and served in your home on the blog 2007 - see more click here.






Christmas/ Xmas Day lunch & dinner Bristol, Cirencester, Cheltenham, Chipping Norton, Evesham, Fairford, Gloucester, Lechlade, Ledbury, Malvern, Moreton in Marsh, Pershore, Ross on Wye, Stretton on Fosse, Stonehouse, Stow on the Wold, roud, Tetbury, Tewkesbury, Winchcombe, Wotton-under-Edge, Worcester

Christmas lunch delivery or cooked and served in your home by chef and waitress in the Cotswolds, Gloucestersire, Cheltenham, Cirencester and London

Chocolate Christmas 'card' from Miette

Your Christmas day lunch or dinner in the Cotswolds & Gloucestershire sourced locally.

Dear James,

Many thanks for the fantastic Christmas dinner you delivered for my father-in-law and his mother. They both really enjoyed it and were very pleased with the generous portion sizes! For Granny to say she really enjoyed it is very hig praise indeed..... previous attempts at change have not gone well....

Many thanks, once again - a great service & wonderful food.

Yours sincerely

Jane Freeman

Pumpkin and cranberry bread rolls

dough before being rolled

Cushion of Smoked Donnington trout.

The fish are reared in crystal clear spring water at Donnington trout farm which is free of pollution so they taste delicious, with none of the muddy flavours sometimes associated with river-farmed trout. They smoke it on site in their own smokery. Smoked trout is similar to smoked salmon but softer and more delicate.

Garnished with caviar, the cushions have cold-smoked trout on outside, and a mix of hot-smoked trout, crème fraîche, cucumber dice and lemon zest on the inside.

Roast turkey ballottine - breast meat and leg meat - to see how this was made click here. Sadly, after the sudden death of Bob Buckingham in November, his wife, Elizabeth, was understandably under severe pressure this Christmas at the Smallholding in Chadbury, so our tukey came instead from Ann & Micky Meadows at Home Farm on Bredon Hill, whose family has been rearing turkeys for over 50 years.

It was accompanied by chipolatas and bacon also from the Meadows farm. They make their own sausages from their Gloucester Old Spot/ Berksire cross pigs, and the sausage casing is the traditional vareity made from sheeps intestine. They also cure their own bacon with a dry cure using salt and demerara sugar - no added water there!

Hazelnut stuffing was made with some of their sausagmeat, breadcrumbs, chopped hazelnuts, pices and fresh herbs.

This was accompanied by creamed leeks & onions, honey roast parsnips and glazed roast sprouts and chestnuts as seen last year, and rosemary roast potatoes.

For the turkey gravy I used the stock made from the roasted bones, along with red wine from Three Choirs vineyard in Newent:

Chilled, the fat from the stock can be removed

Christmas pudding with brandy sauce - awaiting photo

After dinner

To serve with coffee after Christmas lunch, I always favour something light, such as handmade marshmallow from Miette in Stow on the Wold:

Although, for the owners of Miette themselves, as I thought they would be chocolated out by the time they closed on Christmas Eve, I made some canapé sized version of my frangipane and almond topped mince pies for their Christmas lunch delivery:

Related posts:

Christmas menu
Christmas 2007
Sunday lunch in the Cotswolds

Sunday lunch menu

Turkey ballottine
Mince pies
Gloucestershire Echo article, Christmas 2007
Smoked trout trio

Christmas Day - Chilled delivery or cooked and served in your home in the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, Cheltenham & Cirencester

* 2008 - Also available catered only in London area

We may deliver outside the Cotswolds contact us for details *

Most Highly Flavoured Gravy

3:05pm on Christmas Eve, and all the deliveries are finally cooked, packed and ready to go, and then a single voice sounds out. The first verse of Once in Royal from Kings broadcast on radio 4. There’s only one month that matters in a young choristers life - and that’s December.

Composers always saved up all their tricks for their Christmas music, and the there’s the vast array of descants with which you can test your voice, reaching the highest notes possible while the congregation look on admiringly. Everyone in the choir would have their favourite carols too - for Sheila it was ‘ark the ‘erald - which always signified the beginning of Christmas for her, for Vic, it was always The Angel Gabriel - in practice he’d always change the words of the end of the chorus from ‘most highly favoured lady’ to ‘most highly flavoured gravy’ and it had us in pieces each time, and, getting to that bit when we were performing it, we‘d be knotted up inside waiting for that moment - would he say the right words? For me it was O Come All Ye Faithful. It wasn’t just that it had the highest descant, but a couple of minutes before, you’d hear the whirr of the organ being switched on and then all the stops being pulled out, and you knew - before everyone else - there was going to to be this big triumphant sound.



Years later, Christmas is still about pulling out all the stops. It begins with sourcing the best local ingredients. There’s smoked trout from Donnington trout farm for the starter topped at Christmas with caviar, and an old traditional family receipe for the Christmas pudding, and with coffee, handmade marshmallow with a hint of coconut from Miette in Stow on the wold. But what about the main course?



Turkey


Our Norfolk Black Turkey is free range and organically reared sourced from the Smallholding in Chadbury. The Buckinghams have been rearing poultry for over 30 years and take care of the whole proccess themselves from the egg laying, hatching, rearing to the slaughter and preparation. They also hang their birds which gives you a much softer texture meat. Most poultry these days comes from factory production lines where the emphasis is on speed of production rather than the quality of the end result. The Buckinghams are one of only two small scale poultry farmers left in the county and have a loyal following due to the quality.


Hazelnut stuffing



Made with sausagemeat from Home Farm, hazelnuts, breadcrumbs, blackcurrants, and a little mixed spice.



Caumpedene Berksire breed pork chipolatas and bacon



Carol Webbs' award winning Berkshire pigs produce the Cotswolds finest bacon and sausages. While Berkshire pigs are known to produce the best pork, these are left to roam the orchards eating natural food, and consequently have an almost gamey flavour the same way wild boar has. The bacon goes crispy like no other. Bacon you buy in supermarkets is pumped with water to increase the weight, but means that when you cook it all that water covers the baking tray, and the bacon steams rather than roasting/ grilling.


Rosemary roast potatoes


As described last week



Roast sprouts with chestnuts




Roasting is definitely the way forward with sprouts. Gone is that watery mush texture of the over-boiled sprouts that we used to have at school. Roasting keeps the flavour in, you get the caramelisation, and you can keep them quite crisp. Mixed with chestnuts and a glaze.





Creamed leeks and baby onions



My antidote to bread sauce. By paternal grandmother would always make creamed onions with roast lamb - a yorkshire tradition - and I think they go very well with turkey too.


Honey and thyme roast parsnip

Most highly flavored gravy


Once the turkeys have been cooked for delivery and chilled, I remove the breast and leg meat, chop the carcass and make a stock which is allowed to reduce.


The roasting juices from the roasting tin are poured off and chilled till the fat sets:


Now the fat can be removed leaving the highly flavoured tukey jus.


After that the sauce is made by caramelising mirepoix, deglazing with red wine, adding the turkey stock and the pan roasting jus, cooking down, infusing with thyme and thickening.


The absence of cranberries


The only look-in that cranberries get is in the homemade pumpkin and cranberry bread rolls. Cranberries, being an American intervention, are not top of my list of ingredients for the traditional english feast, though due to requests I had to feature them somewhere. They make a wonderful fesive addition to the bread rolls. I prefer to use rowan and hosehip jelly to accompany turkey, made by Dove Cottage in Broadway from berries picked from the surrounding fields.




All you need now is the mulled wine to precede it all......



For full menu and details click here



Related posts:

Gloucestershire Echo article, Christmas 2007