So Winter Is Here

Hello guys, welcome back to the wonderful world that is my blog! Hoping everyone is well and had a good few days. Right let’s get started, For the first time in my career I got to use monkfish cheeks which turned out to be amazingly versatile and delicious, we did the two dishes with them. The first dish was pan roasted monkfish cheeks, spinach, cauliflower puree, beer battered shallot rings & red wine jus.

The second was a lightly spiced beer battered monkfish cheek, crushed peas & tartar sauce, again it went down really well.

This week has been a bit of a trial really but we got though served some great food and also managed to have a smile and laugh though it all. Like the evening when our oven decided that it didn’t want to set at the temperature that we wanted it too. So thinking about the coming weeks we start our Christmas parties soon, so I’ve got a whole lot of turkey to look forward to not to mention the Brussels sprouts. This will be my first Christmas in charge of everything myself which I’m really looking forward to, having written the menus back in April we have had plenty of time to get a game plan into action. So got all my ducks in a row it seems just missing the vital ingredient of a great sous chef to work alongside me.

As promised another little recipe for you guys to try out

Goats cheese crème brulee

Half a bunch of thyme

400ml double cream

150ml milk

6 egg yolk

250g goat’s cheese

50g parmesan grated

White pepper to taste

A pinch of paprika

Break up the goat’s cheese with no rind

Bring the milk and cream to the boil with the thyme

Take of the stove cover and leave to in fuse for ten minutes then strain in to a new pan

Put back on the stove and bring to a simmer

Pour over the egg yolk and stir return to the stove and cook to thicken slightly

Take off the stove and gently whisk the goat’s cheese and parmesan in

Season with pepper and paprika (the parmesan should have enough salt in it already

Pour into ramekins and chill

To finish and serve make some caramel glazed hazelnuts and when cold blitz into a fine powder to put on top the brulee to act as the crunchy sweet crust.

I like to serve this with really good sour dough and red onion chutney.

Right hope you enjoyed this short post and hopefully will be back soon with another recipe and a few words about the life of a chef.

But remember live to eat don’t eat to live