Rhubarb & Mustard

Guinness recipes are pure genius

2010-03-17T10:17:21Z

We all like to get merry with the Irish on St. Patrick's Day and it wouldn't be the same without a drop of the black stuff.

But if pints of the stout don't really float your boat, perhaps a collection of Guinness-inspired recipes will.

Published last year to coincide with the iconic brand's 250th birthday, Guinness tells the story of the beer, the people, the memorable advertising and the science behind the perfect pint.

The book by Paul Hartley and Jane Birch includes 18 recipes such as steak and Guinness burger and honeycomb and Guinness ice-cream.

As well as telling the history of the Irish stout, which began in 1759 when Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on a small Dublin brewery, the book contains some of the classic adverts including the fanous Toucan bird.

So if you can't get out to the pub tonight under the pretence that somewhere in your lineage there's an Irish uncle/grandfather/someone who wore green a lot, you could stay in and enjoy an Irish feast of sausages with Guinness gravy and colcannon followed by iced chocolate, Guinness and orange cake.

A two course dinner like that is bound to get even non-Irish eyes smiling.

Three pies down your shirt

2010-03-16T14:39:19Z

The World Cup is nearly upon us so brace yourselves for lots of slightly silly football-themed food and drink promotions.

Take Oxfordshire-based Brother Tom's Pies, for example. They've just launched a set of six World Cup-themed pies, all ready for kick-off in June.

So, if you are an England fan you get Steak & Stout flavour. Meanwhile South Africa is represented by Chicken Peri Peri. Other flavours include Bolognaise for Italy and, Patatas Bravas for Spain.

But sadly the company has only come up with pies for the World Cup host nation and the top five seeds. Just imagine the potential if it had gone the whole hog and produced a flavour for each qualifier - Nigerian Goat Stew flavour, Australian Kangaroo flavour, Chilean Llama flavour - the possibilities are endless. Although it gets a little bit more difficult when you come to North Korea...

La Dolce Vita preview: Lunch at Theo Randall's

2010-02-22T12:22:02Z

Top Italian chef, Theo Randall is setting up a pop-up restaurant at food event La Dolce Vita, on 11-14 March 2010.

The event held at the Design Business Centre in Islington is in its sixth year and the four-day celebration of all things Italian promises to be bigger and better than ever.

Highlights of the show will include masterclasses with celebrity chefs, wine tasting and demonstrations by some of Italy's top artisan producers.

Last week, I was lucky enough to get a taster of Theo's food and any visitor to La Dolce Vita will be in for a treat.

First up was the buffalo mozzarella (picture aboved). It was served with grilled red peppers, spinach, marinated artichokes and Taggiasche olives.

Second course was a beautiful pasta dish of slowed-cooked veal, pancetta with truffles (below)

The main course was slow-cooked lam shoulder with Taggiasche olives, anchoives, wet polenta and Cima Di Rape (below)

The lunch finished with Theo's Amalfi lemon tart...

If that has whet your appetite, we have 20 pairs of tickets to giveaway, courtesy of the La Dolce Vita organisers.

All you need to do to tell us what is your favourite Italian recipe, ingredient or restaurant and you will be entered into the prize draw. But hurry the closing date is midday Friday 5 March!

ENTER HERE

World's strongest beer war rages on

2010-02-16T12:07:30Z

Even hardened beer enthusiasts would probably struggle to name the world's strongest beer these days, given the number of claims to the title over the past few months.

Today sees the latest attempt to claim the crown, with the launch of Brew Dog's newest 'strongest' beer - the sensitively-named 'Sink the Bismarck'.

Why call it 'Sink the Bismarck'? Because it is a direct response to the German Schorschbräu brewing firm, which earlier this month claimed the 'strongest beer' crown with its Schorschbock beer. The 40% brew knocked Brew Dog's 32% Tactical Nuclear Penguin, which it launched in November last year, off its perch.

So how strong is 'Sink the Bismarck'? 41%, of course. And the Scottish brewers have produced a video blog explaining how the new beer was created. Although there's a strong possibility this isn't an accurate account.

'Sink the Bismarck' will only be sold online and will cost £40 a bottle.

Where will it all end? 42% probably...

How to make the perfect Martini cocktail

2010-02-11T17:13:59Z

Alessandro Palazzi, the bar manager at Dukes Bar in London's Dukes Hotel, demonstrates how to make the perfect 'Martinez cocktail'. And he ought to know. Dukes Bar was a favourite watering hole of Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond and reputedly the place where came up with the famous "shaken, not stirred" line.

Palazzi, from Senigalia in Italy, has worked at The Ritz, Paris; The Milestone Hotel, London; and The Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London. He has been at Dukes since 2001, where he worked under head barman Gilberto Preti. But he says that a great bar is not about showmen: "I am not crazy about the idea of celebrity barmen. The guest is the star, not us," he says.

Here is his recipe for the Martinez Cocktail, and below a video of him creating it:

Few drops of orange bitter
5ml of Martini Rosso
70ml of Sacred Gin from the freezer
Few drops of Maraschino
A maraschino cherry
Large wedge of lemon

All served in a frozen glass.

Hummus anyone? Israel breaks Guinness record for the world's biggest hummus

2010-01-11T11:46:20Z

Fifty chefs in Israel have broken the world record for the biggest serving of hummus, beating Lebanon just months after it also attempted to break the record.

Chefs and residents in the Abu Gosh, cooked up 4,000kg of hummus, using 21/2 tonnes of chickpeas, 11/2 tonnes of sesame paste and hundreds of fresh-squeezed lemons, as well as crushed garlic and olive oil. The finished product was displayed on a huge dish: a satellite dish nearly 20ft in diameter.

Three months ago, Lebanese chefs mashed up just over 2,000kg, an important win in the eyes of the Israelis.

Hummus is sometimes described as one of the oldest known prepared foods, is enjoyed in much of the Middle East and has probably been around for centuries.

However, much like its political conflict, the orgins of this chickpea dish has been a bone of contention.

Lebanon claims ownership of hummus and accuses Israel of stealing the product and marketing it as Israeli, according to reports. Its exact origin is unknown, though presumed to be Arab.

Despite Israel winning the title in the Guiness Book of Records, there is no doubt that Lebanon will retaliate.

Lebanese Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud told The Associated Press that his country plans to beat the new record in the spring with an even bigger plate of hummus, to be prepared on the border with Israel.

Caterer's Christmas book review round-up

2009-12-23T15:22:55Z

If Santa is kind enough to bring you a wad of book tokens along with your annual delivery of Homer Simpson socks, undersized knitwear and embossed handkerchiefs this Christmas, why not redeem them on a truly memorable cook book?

In recent years, chefs and their publishers have grown wise to a growing appetite for coffee table tomes with the production values of a James Cameron movie and the weight of a small child. Here, Caterer showcases five of the most sumptuous, wallet-lightening volumes on the market.

Coco: 100 Emerging Culinary Stars Chosen by 10 of the World's Greatest Chefs
Various
Phaidon Press £29.95
ISBN 978-0-7148-4954-5

The premise is simple: 10 stellar chefs (think Ramsay, Adrià, Ducasse) each select 10 up-and-coming stars of the kitchen who are then published with a short biography and an explanation of inclusion from their selector, along with their recipes and images of their signature dishes.

Some of our selectors seem to have stayed rather close to home in their chef choices. Ramsay picks his Royal Hospital Road head chef Clare Smyth, Maze chef-patron Jason Atherton and former Pétrus head chef Tristan Welch, not to mention Lyndy Redding, whose company Absolute Taste he is involved in. Elsewhere, Fergus Henderson picks St John alumni Tom Pemberton and Jonathon Johns. But if you can bear the whiff of nepotism and the glaring exclusions (there's no room at the inn for Nathan Outlaw or Sat Bains), this breeze-block of a book is a fantastic compendium of the global state of the industry to come.

Three Star Chef
Gordon Ramsay
Quadrille Publishing £200
ISBN 978-1-8440-0585-7

After a year that he may wish to forget, Gordon Ramsay's sumptuous Three Star Chef offers a timely reminder that, if there were a Harlem Globetrotters of chefs, the Potty-Mouthed One would be on the team.

From the silver-embossed cover onwards, this is a mission statement that oozes confidence. Fifty of Ramsay's classic dishes are reproduced, first pictorially in finished form, and subsequently in recipe form. Among them are lobster ravioli, corn-reared beef fillet with marrow crust and pan-roasted fillet of John Dory with Cromer crab. A sweary Mary he may be, but Ramsay is also a mighty fine chef, and this monolithic tome will stand as a monument to his technical brilliance.

A Day at El Bulli
Ferran Adrià
Phaidon £29.95
ISBN 978-0-7148-4883-9

For those of us that have about as much chance of getting a reservation at El Bulli as Wales do of winning the World Cup next year, A Day at El Bulli provides a fascinating insight into a day's service in the world's greatest restaurant.

Starting at daybreak and ending in the early hours of the following morning, the book encompasses visits to local markets, chefs' brainstorming sessions, mise en place and service by means of mind-blowing food photography and reportage shots of Adrià's brigade at work.

There are recipes to try for the more confident chef, but purchasers should expect a historical document of a groundbreaking restaurant at the top of its game rather than a recipe book.

Grand Livre De Cuisine: Alain Ducasse's Culinary Encyclopaedia
Alain Ducasse et al
Alain Ducasse £40
ISBN 978-2-8484-4038-5

Ducasse took the Ronseal approach when he named this volume. It is, indeed, a big culinary book - one of the biggest - and full of big numbers: 700 recipes across 1,080 pages, inspired by an A-Z of 100 core ingredients, to be precise. 'A' is for acacia, anchovy, artichoke and asparagus; 'B' is for baby broad beans, Atlantic bass... you get the picture.

The imagery is stunning, if lacking the food porn quality of other titles in this roundup, but it's the forensic approach to recipe transcription that'll have chefs slavering.

The Big Fat Duck Cookbook
Heston Blumenthal
Bloomsbury £125
ISBN 978-0-7475-8369-1

Generously proportioned, pricey and lavishly illustrated, this is the definitive last word on the Fat Duck's cuisine, a wonderland of test tubes, children's stories and conches all shrouded in an eerie, dry-ice mist. It's the fact that Blumenthal is giving away his culinary knowledge that will draw chefs to this book.

"I make no apologies for it not being 'The Fat Duck at Home'", Blumenthal told Caterer on its release. "It's not intended to be a book that turns Fat Duck dishes into domestic kitchen fare. The recipes are down-to-the-milligram Fat Duck recipes. All the secrets are given away. There's no 'if you can't get foie gras, go and buy yourself chicken livers'.

"Some of these dishes have taken several years to get right - and there may be an ingredient in there without which they will not be the same."

Win an evening at Nigel Haworth's gastronomic celebration Obsession

2009-11-30T17:00:31Z

In January, Michelin-starred hotel-restaurant, Northcote, celebrates 10 years of Obsession, its annual festival showcasing fine food and fine wine. This legendary gastronomic celebration offers up some of the UK and Europe's most talented chefs, each of whom cook an exclusive 'one night only' menu at Northcote, Lancashire.

To celebrate the festival's 10th Anniversary, chef Nigel Haworth and his business partner Craig Bancroft have confirmed a superb array of talent for Obsession 2010, which starts on Monday 25 January and concludes Wednesday 3 February 2010. Participating chefs include: Tom Kitchin, Phil Howard, Theo Randall, Lisa Allen & Angela Hartnett , Ken Hom, Jacob Jan Boema from Restaurant De Leest, Netherlands, Andrew Fairlie, Nathan Outlaw and Nigel Haworth himself.

Food critic and Great British Menu judge, Matthew Fort and food columnist and presenter Tom Parker Bowles, will be swapping their pens for spoons for one evening during the festival.

To mark the occasion, Caterersearch.com and Obsession have teamed up with industry cahrity Hospitality Action to give one lucky reader a chance to attend the last night of the event hosted by Nigel Haworth.

The prize includes:

• Dinner for two with matching wines on the last night of Obsession hosted by Nigel Haworth
• Overnight stay in the hotel
• Two Obsession 2010 cookbooks
• A set of Nigel Haworth's Food with Roots Hotpots

To be in with a chance of winning this great prize worth £500, all you have to do is donate £5 to Hospitality Action and your name will automatically be entered into the prize draw.

ENTER NOW!

Competition Terms and Conditions
1. This competition is open to all UK residents aged 18 or over except for employees of Reed Business Information Limited and their immediate families.
2. The "Caterersearch.com/Obsession" competition closes at midnight on Friday 22 January.
3. Winners will be chosen by Caterersearch.com.
4. The prizes do not cover any additional expenses incurred such as travel expenses.
5. The winners will be notified by e-mail within a few days from the date of entry.
6. No cash alternatives are available.
7. Entry is by donation of £5 to Hospitality Action.
8. The prize will be awarded to the winner picked randomly by Caterersearch.com.
9. The decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
10. The names of the winners will be available from Caterersearch.com by calling 020 8652 4424 or by viewing our winners' page.
11. By entering the competition, entrants are deemed to have accepted these terms and conditions.
12. Caterersearch.com reserves the right to cancel or amend the competition or these rules at any time without prior notice.
13. Entrants can contact Caterersearch.com at the following address: 'Caterersearch.com/Obsession competition', Caterersearch.com, Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5AS.

Video: Bjorn van der Horst, Franceso Mazzei and Pascal Aussignac showcase dishes from their Taste of Christmas menu

2009-11-24T16:17:25Z

Following on from my Taste of Christmas dining experience, armed with a video camera I spent time with three of the chefs that will be appearing at this year's Taste of Christmas at Excel, London.

Bjorn van der Horst from Eastside Inn, Francesco Mazzei, chef-proprietor of Italian restaurant L'Anima and Pascal Aussignac, co-owner of Club Gascon all welcomed me into their kitchens so that I could capture a sneak preview of what will be on offer from their restaurant during the three-day event.

Watch van der Horst cook All Cremet, Mazzei prepare Capitone Eel stew and Nicolas Bellorguey pastry chef at Comptoir Gascon demonstrate the restaurant's new signature dessert, Gascon Mess.

A preview of Taste of Christmas 2009

2009-11-04T11:33:34Z

Taste of Christmas in partnership with Waitrose, returns to ExCel from 4-6 December, for three full days of indulgent eating, drinking and shopping.

Last week I was invited to a mini-tour of four of the restaurants that will be appearing at the three-day event and sample the food that they will be showcasing.

First stop was Trishna. Trishna showcases a combination of the Mumbai restaurant's signature dishes - along with a fresh take on the coastal cuisine of south-west India. On the menu at Taste will be Lobster and Crab Salad with Mooli, Cucumber, Cauliflower Pakora, Green Chilli and Lime (below)

Next on the tour was Bentley's Oyster Bar & Grill which are offering two types of Oysters, native and Oysters Rockefeller (below). Oysters Rockefeller was created at the New Orleans restaurant Antoine's in 1899 and named after the richest American at the time, John D. Rockefeller because of the richness of the sauce. The sauce is made of spinach which is added to the top off the oyster, followed by breadcrumbs and baked.

Following on from the oysters we headed to Japanese restaurant Sumosan in Mayfair. We were presented with a plate of maki rolls which were all perfectly made - which is what you would expect for a restaurant that has gained a reputation for serving some of the best Japanese food outside of Japan.

At Taste of Christmas expect sushi including Maki rolls such as Black Cod, Unagi, California and Salmon and Avocado (above).

Our final stop was to Tarmarind which specialises in stunning dishes from north-western and southern India. Chef Alfred Prasad presented us with Masala Welsh Lamb cutlets, Green Pepper Pulao, potatoes, broccoli and toasted cumin.

All in all the Taste of Christmas menu preview was was a great way to spend a lunch hour or two...

And if this has whet your appetite then why not enter our exclusive competition to win a pair of tickets to Taste of Christmas 2009.

Caterersearch.com has teamed up with Taste of Christmas and is offering five lucky readers the chance of getting their hands on one of five pairs of tickets. All you need to do is e-mail your name, address and e-mail to info@caterersearch.com with "Taste of Christmas 2009" in the subject line.

Winners will be selected at random at midday on Monday 30 November will be contacted via e-mail.

For more information on Taste of Christmas visit its website at www.tasteofchristmas.com/2009/

Photos by Katherine Alano

Video demos with Alan Murchison from L'Ortolan

2009-11-03T10:24:37Z

The video team at Caterer have been busy bees over the past couple of months travelling to some of the top kitchens to film some food demonstrations.

In September, we spent an afternoon with Alan Murchison in his demo kitchen filming four dishes from his menu at the Michelin-starred L'Ortolan in Reading.

Watch Alan prepare confit of duck and pan-fried foie gras; pan-fried organic salmon; confit shoulder of lamb and caramel souffle.

"Produce for Pints" is order of the day

2009-10-18T16:05:35Z

With seasonality and local produce high on the agenda for most restaurants and pubs, the latest initiative that is happening up and down the country is encouraging local residents to swap their home-grown produce for a pint.

One pub to trying the initiative is the Old Bear in Cobham which is keen to promote local produce the pub is running a two-week "produce for pints" scheme.

The aim of the campaign is to get the local community involved in The Old Bear and confirm the old adage that the pub is the hub of any village.

The Old Bear hopes that home-grown/locally shot produce is brought in to the pub, shown to head chef Nathan Green, and on approval of quality and quantity, can be swapped for a pint.

Green who was appointed to the newly-refurbished pub in July, hopes that scheme will not only highlight the great produce from the surrounding area but also encourage the locals from trying out the new pub and its menu.

Green has an impressive CV, having worked in some of the best Michelin-starred kitchens including, Michael Caines's Gidleigh Park, Phil Howard's The Square, Tom Aikens and most recently Arbutus.

His presentation of food and keeness to use seasonal and less-expensive cuts of meat is testament to his experience of working with some the country's best chefs, as is his ability to present them with great depth of flavour.

The "produce for pints" scheme, which is in it's first week has already seen local gamekeepers present him hare and pheasant and locals bring along vegetables from their allotments.

If the campaign proves to be a success, Green has not ruled out bringing it back for other seasons.

View more photos from the menu at The Old Bear here >>

The world's 50 best foods

2009-09-21T14:04:16Z

The Guardian has had the hard task of tracking down the best foods from around the world and where to eat them.

With the help of some the country's best known chefs such as Richard Corrigan, Jason Atherton, Atul Kochhar and Michel Roux Jnr the list covers everything from the place to eat oysters, Filipino cuisine, currys, octopus and kebabs.

Richard Corrigan says of oysters from Strangfor Lough, Northern Ireland are worth dying for: "If I were to die tomorrow, I'd walk to Strangford, get a couple of bottles of really cold Chablis, and eat as many Strangford Lough oysters as I could. Then I'd die very happily indeed"

And if you want to tuck into the ultimate fast-food meal of a humburger then the Little Owl, New York is the place to be. "This sandwich is so copiously juicy, so rich with precious bodily fluids," says Josh Ozersky, author of The Hamburger: A History, "that it practically haemorrhages onto the plate.

And if you have a sweet tooth, then check out Pierre Herme, Paris who is described as a "chocolate god" and then head off to Corrado Costanzo, Noto, Sicily for a spot of ice-cream, "Sicily is still the best place for frozen treats in gelato-crazed Italy, and Italian ice cream, as everybody knows, is the finest in the world."

If that doesn't tickle your taste buds, let alone reignite the travel bug I don't know what will!

Read the full list here >>

L'Anima to ask public to choose restaurant wine list

2009-08-24T16:58:05Z

Top London restaurant, L'Anima is to use the power of social networking to help select wines for it's wine list.

According to Decanter.com, L'Anima will be using Twitter to put its wine list to the public vote, in what is thought to be a world-first

The initial juding will take place with a panel of six experts, who will taste the wines. The wines that split the panel will be thrown open to the public to decide. The most popular three wines will then win a place on the restaurant's list.

The tasting takes place today and voting will be open on Tuesday and Wednesday on the restaurant's website.

You can keep up to date with the wine challenge by following @zoharwine on Twitter.

Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey - book review

2009-08-18T15:52:24Z

Rick Stein's latest collection of recipes has taken him from sleepy Cornwall to the bustling streets, markets and waterways of Asia.

As usual, it's the companion volume to a major new BBC series featuring the usually fish-focused chef.

And, as ever, Auntie's high production values are plain to see, with the book's 150 recipes lavishly illustrated by mouthwatering and evocative accompanying images.

How his publishers missed the opportunity to entitle the book "From Padstow to Pad Thai" remains a mystery. Then again, "odyssey" neatly sums up Stein's approach to his work.

Whether he's traversing France by barge, touring the Med's culinary hot spots or travelling the highways and byways of his own country in search of Britain's food heroes, Stein embodies Tom Waits's belief that "the obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending".

It's all very well knowing how to approximate the hot, sharp intensity of a laksa at home, but how much more satisfying is it to learn how to do so in a Georgetown laksa restaurant on Penang island?

Stein's latest epic voyage took him to "anywhere where outrageously spicy food was the norm", for which read South-east Asia, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Unlike more scholarly works on the regions, like David Thompson's Thai Food and Sri Owen's Indonesian Food, Stein's book doesn't require you to arrange for pallets of unpronounceable ingredients to be FedEx-ed to your kitchen door from the wet markets of Saigon and Bangkok.

Nevertheless, Stein has compiled an authentic and representative cross-section of Asian dishes, encompassing all levels of eating, from snacking to feasting.

Asian food lovers will find much to enjoy here. Regional classics like fish head curry, Hainanese chicken rice, Thai mussaman curry and beef Rendang all merit inclusion. As do street-food staples like satay, Indonesian gado-gado, Thai crispy mussel pancakes with bean sprouts and Balinese nasi kuning, or fragrant yellow rice.

Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey
Rick Stein
BBC Books £25
ISBN 978-1-846-07716-6

Buy the book on Amazon here >>

Review by Mark Lewis