Available 27 Sep 2012

The first event was held at The British Larder Suffolk where Mark Poynton and Paul Foster formed part of the lineup with Ross and all the chefs at the British Larder. James Stoddart from Enotria was also there to conduct a wine and swine pairing, which went down a storm.

Menu 29th of February at The British Larder Suffolk

To Start…
Paul Foster, Tuddenham Mills, Newmarket

Slow cooked pork neck, scratching, chicory, Walberswick sea vegetables and beer pickled sweet potato
(Gruner Veltliner, Erich Machherndl, Austria)

In the Middle…
Mark Poynton, Alimuntum, Cambridge

Spiced pulled pork shoulder, slow roast fillet, celeriac ‘slaw’ and pickled apple
(Dolcetto, Cantine Giacomo Ascheri, Italy)

To Follow…
Ross Pike and Madalene Bonvini-Hamel , British Larder Suffolk, Bromeswell

Pork belly, swede, date puree, pigs ear and puffed pork rice
(Tinto, Herdade dos Grous, Portugal)

Finally…
Ross Pike and Madalene Bonvini-Hamel , British Larder Suffolk, Bromeswell

Chocolate Brownie Caramel Popcorn, Rhubarb Meringue Pie, Goats Milk Panacotta Blood Orange, Passion Fruit Ganache

The second event was held on the 25th of April, and this time it  moved to London, hosted by the Victoria Pub. This time round we had two extra chefs joining the lineup. Ross and myself, Paul Merrit, Mark Poynton, William Curley and Paul Foster. We each cooked a course and even the pudding had a piggy flavour.

Menu 25th April 2012 at The Victoria

To Start…
Paul Foster, Tuddenham Mills, Newmarket

Pig’s Trotter Carpaccio, charred broccoli, smoked garlic, peanut, burnt onion
(Thalassitis, Sanatorini 2009, Greece)

To Follow Secondly…
Mark Poynton, Alimuntum, Cambridge

Pork rillette, braised jowl, acorn praline, pineapple and chickweed
(Larry Cherubino, Ad Hoc Wallflower Riesling, 2009, Australia)

To Follow Thirdly…
Ross Pike and Madalene Bonvini-Hamel , British Larder Suffolk, Bromeswell

Crispy pig’s head, ham scotch egg, salsify, piccalilli and nasturtium
(Peres Cruz, Cabernet Sauvignon Reserva, 2010, Maipo Chile)

To Follow Fourthly…
Paul Merrett, The Victoria, London

Aisan Dingley Dell pork: 12 hour belly vindaloo with coconut sambal, Jungle style cheeks with soured mango noodles, Dim suo with bloodorange and fennel
(Rioja El Talud Rosada, 2012, Podegas Martinez Laordern, Spain)

Finally…
William Curley, Patissier Chocolatier, Richmond

Amedei dark chocolate entremet centered with a smoked bacon caramel & served with apricot compote & lemon thyme ice-cream

(Quady Winery, Elysium Black Muscat, 2010, Madera, California USA)

From a personal point of view this is an experience of a lifetime – to be involved with something special and something I believe in. Being in the same kitchen working on dishes created by such highly accomplished and successful chefs is equally inspiring and humbling. We all have and show a lot of respect for each other and I also usually learn something new to apply to my own cooking style.

This recipe of pig’s head is only one of the elements that we served in London on our dish; if you wish to create the whole dish then add half a Scotch egg using a quail’s egg, following my recipe for Dingley Dell Scotch egg.

Bernard Zeija was the photographer for the evening and he has captured the event, spirit and feel beautifully. All credit for the images on this page goes to Bernard Zeija apart from the main image of the pig’s head croquettes which I took the following morning.

Watch this video of the first event at the British Larder, all credit to Andy, Tim and the Bruizer team who has captured the spirit of the flying visit beautifully.

Click here to view the embedded video.

 Finally all credit for this hugely successful concept goes to Mark Hayward who has put a lot of resource and time into keeping the Dingley Dell Flying Visit spirit alive.

Rhubarb is such an easy vegetable to work with and pairs beautifully with many wonderful ingredients. The combination of the white chocolate and ginger cheesecake and rhubarb works wonderfully together. The cheesecake is a set cheesecake rather than a baked one. By making an Italian meringue before adding the cream cheese and leaving it to rest makes this cheesecake light and mousse like instead of dense and heavy set. I have not lined the rings with a biscuit base as you might expect. I have a slight personal problem with cheesecake bases, they are nine out of ten times soggy and for that reason I tried something different with this recipe. I made ginger brittle biscuits separately and broke them into shards, then demoulded the individual cheesecakes, sandwiching a ginger brittle shard at each end. Not only do you have an amazing textural contrast, but it also looks amazing and is very different to the same old cheesecake recipes.

The rhubarb that’s served with the cheesecakes is simply poached, then half the poached rhubarb is made into little rhubarb pearls that are ever so easy to re-create. You do not need fancy ingredients apart from the usual store cupboard items and a syringe that you can buy from the pharmacy. I use a large one with a wide spout. To make these pearls you require a tasteless oil such as groundnut oil or sunflower oil. Let the oil cool in the freezer for at least two hours or overnight - it will not freeze, it just becomes super cold. Then use half of the poached rhubarb to make a puree and add gelatine. Using the syringe, drop the puree  into the very cold oil which will suspend each droplet – the chill will set the gelatine. How clever is that?! Once they are set, retrieve the rhubarb pearls using a spoon and drain them on kitchen paper before using. These pearls will not have a liquid center, they will be set all the way through (thought I’d better manage everyone’s expectations). For a liquid center chemicals are required and then that becomes a bit tricky and more technical. This method is simple and easy to recreate.

They are ideal for lunch boxes, picnics or served as a snack at a drinks parties. Steve makes these every day so his hand is very well trained by now shaping and making them. Shaping the pasties takes a bit of practice, it’s good fun and you can encourage the whole family to get involved. If you like the look of them make a large enough batch, freeze the raw pasties in layers divided with parchment paper and defrost the amount you need as and when required. I recommend that you defrost them completely before cooling in the fridge over night.

To create the pasty shape you need to cut a large enough circular piece of pastry, we use a good quality puff pastry, then spoon a generous amount of mix in the centre of the pastry, brush the edges with egg yolk and then fold the pastry in half to create a half moon shape. Crimp the rounded edge by pinching the pastry to create a scalloped edge. Once shaped let them rest in the fridge for about an hour before baking. This will ensure the pastry rests and prevents it from losing its shape when baking.

You can create your own flavour combination for the filling. If you are using meat and making the pasties this small I recommend you cook the meat first, and ensure the mix is as dry as possible to prevent it from leaking. If using cheese choose a strong tasting cheese, the cheddar we used is mighty strong, it’s too strong to eat neat however once cooked and mixed into something it’s perfect and very tasty indeed.

Other flavour combinations that will be just as tasty:

• Broccoli, Walnut and Stilton (use raw broccoli, finely chopped, mix in a generous amount of crumbed stilton and toasted crumbed walnuts)
• Curried Lamb and Swede (use lamb mince that is cooked with curry spices and plenty of grated swede, once the cooked mix is cooled stir in a few spoons of thick mango chutney)
• Fennel, Apple Chutney and Rocket (finely shaved fennel; mix with apple chutney and mix in chopped rocket leaves)
• Ras-al-hanout, Spiced Butternut Squash and Chickpea (grated butternut squash, add soaked sultanas, ras-al-hanout and roughly crushed chickpeas, stir in some tahini paste a spoon of honey add a dash of lemon juice)
• Chicken, Sage and Celeriac (roast chicken finely flaked - brown and white meat mixed - grated celeriac, chopped fresh sage and plenty of grain mustard)

I can hear the question already - what is a koeksister? When I started making these the team were enthusiastic and everyone asked what they are, I think they all just wanted a taster. To define something in a different language and also to describe it in comparison to what they would recognise challenged me slightly. The explanation is as follow. It’s a soft dough (including butter, flour, milk and raising agents) almost like a doughnut dough without yeast that is shaped in long spiral fingers, deep-fried till golden brown and crisp and immediately dunked in super ice cold acidulated spice infused sugar syrup. It’s best eaten after a few days and is traditionally served with tea in the afternoon. If you could make them small enough they could effectively make great petit-fours, but mine ended up a tad on the larger side.

I must say following mum’s advice and a recipe from my grandmother’s book with a few additions of my own, I was impressed with my efforts. Mum and I had a giggle whilst translating the recipe. We always get stuck on two ingredients and that is cream of tartar and citric acid, the translation causes us confusion. When she reads the recipes she always mixes the two up and after a panic and a hissyfit we always realise that she has given me the incorrect information. They are two completely different things, and in baking deliver different results. Well after a few disasters we have wised up to the errors we previously made, hence having a laugh this time round.

For this recipe you need both cream of tartar and citric acid. Cream of tartar is acidic however it also provides a creamy texture to the syrup, when the hot crispy fried koeksister is dunked into the cold syrup the cream of tartar will provide the creamy luxurious velvety texture to the syrup. The citric acid on the other hand prevents crystallization of the sugar syrup and provides the required acidity. Citric acid is also used for making elderflower cordial (acting as a preservative and preventing crystallization). If you do not have citric acid to hand use extra lemon juice instead.

Cook’s Notes:

1. Always make the syrup first, even a day in advance, and ensure it’s very cold, refrigerated and keep it over ice while frying the koeksisters.
2. Divide the syrup in two and alternate keeping it as cold as possible for the entire cooking and dunking time of the koeksisters.
3. Even though you might feel that the quantity of raising agent is a bit too much for your liking please do not alter the recipe, it is correct and will result into a light koeksister – the dough can easily become tough and heavy.
4. Leave the dough to rest for 10 minutes before starting to shape them.
5. Once cooked and dunked let them rest for one day – if you can resist temptation!
6. The cooked and dunked koeksisters will keep for up to 7 days in the fridge and even freeze well.

I made these for Mother’s Day, I know it has been and gone but I’m sure that there are plenty of other occasions and reasons to make these fabulous little morsels. I have flavoured mine with mint, however if you like it plain then exchange the mint for vanilla extract instead.

The key to success is that you must make this recipe in two stages as the coconut ice must rest for at least 8 hours (overnight will do) to set and harden. The following day cut the coconut ice into small bite size pieces before dipping them into tempered chocolate. I dipped mine only halfway into the chocolate as I liked the contrasting effect of the chocolate and white, the choice is yours if you want to cover yours completely, you will just need more chocolate.

Now the subject of tempering chocolate, well I’m not very good at it as I’m usually in a hurry and then before I even realise the chocolate is getting too warm. If you have patience and want to give it a go then follow these guidelines. To temper chocolate correctly you will need a thermometer. Start by melting half the chocolate at first to about 48 – 50 °C  then add the non-melted chocolate and stir to melt, incorporating it into the already melted chocolate. Bring the temperature down to 32 °C; the chocolate is then ready to be used.

Then lastly after all the effort keep the chocolates in a cool dark well ventilated space, avoid keeping them in the fridge or near a radiator (during the winter).

These fabulous rhubarb and champagne blancmange puddings were the fruits borne from our early morning cooking sessions. Just like the old days before we had the British Larder in Suffolk, Mr.P and I used to concoct recipes in the early mornings enabling me to take the photos before lunch as I rely on natural daylight, we certainly encountered a bit of nostalgia in the creation of these. After the photo session and stuffing our faces with blancmange for breakfast it’s back to the keyboard to write and record data. As we are doing research exactly as to what constitutes a blancmange Mr. P is reading to me from Mrs Beaton’s All About Cookery 1913. As he’s reading Mrs Beaton’s recipe it is asking for isinglass and Irish moss. Immediately I tap away on the internet researching isinglass and reading it out loud we both said “urgh!” and felt slightly queasy, as it is actually the dried swim bladder of fish and is nowadays used to make glue. Both the Irish moss and and isinglass were used in traditional blancmange as setting agents, and the Irish moss was also incorporated for its medicinal purposes.  We quickly put the book back on the shelf and decided to refer back to our own devised recipe using gelatine.

The classification of blancmange: it is a dessert using milk, cream and sugar and then set using either cornflour or gelatine. It’s also better knows in modern cookery as pannacotta or bavarois (Bavarian cream)

For my version I have poached the rhubarb in pink champagne, kept half for garnishing the plate and the rest is pureed with the champagne and set with gelatine to make the colourful pink tops that sits on top of the unctuous soft set blancmange.

This pretty little number is a seasonal delight especially for when the new season’s outdoor rhubarb make its appearance, and we start to encounter a few light and sunny Spring days.

This recipe is a delicious and innovative twist on the classic sticky toffee pudding. These puddings are light and surprisingly not as sweet as what you would expect. Using rapeseed oil and honey make a huge difference keeping the puddings soft, crumbly and moist. I bought these savarin moulds (savarin refers to the name of the mould, characteristically a savarin mould is shallow and has a hole in  the center) from Lakelands online shop and they are the perfect size. I shall definitely be using them in the summer for fabulous homemade jellies.

The savarin itself is a light soft crumbly textured cake and the yoghurt sorbet has a sharp lemony twist the combination of adding honeycomb as a garnish adds texture and the added balanced bit of bitter sweetness to the dessert.

It’s definitely a recipe we will be using for making our Mothers day at the British Larder Suffolk extra special.

Cooks Note: Instead of making your own sorbet use a good quality shop bought vanilla ice cream instead. The pecan nuts can be substituted for walnuts or hazelnuts.

Cockles, lemon sole, leeks and chicory are a few named seasoanl ingredients at their very best right now.

Lemon sole is a small flat fish related to flounder, and as a matter of fact it’s not related to any of the sole family at all. Found in the shallow waters around the coast of Britain and the North Sea, they are white underneath and the upper part is brown with yellow green speckles. Sadly its name does not relate in any way to its taste or look; I suppose it’s slightly nondescript. The thin fillets means it cooks quickly, and cooking the lemon sole on the bone is perfect as this locks the moisture and juiciness in and keeps the fillets succulent and delicious.

Cockles are bivalves and a member of the clam family living in the sandy beaches of our coastline. They are small and it might feel like hard work retrieving the salty sweet cockle flesh but they are delicious. From a labour point of view I like to serve the cockles in their shell, and I must confess they’re also pretty to look at. As they live in the sand, cockles should be washed well in cold running fresh water to remove as much sand as possible.

The sweetness of the cockles and leeks and freshness of the lemon sole makes the bitter tasting chicory the perfect partner from a taste point of view, to deliver an interesting and intriguing dish.

Personally I love eating fish and when I get the opportunity to go out, which I must say does not happen often, I like to order fresh fish in restaurants. I like it when chefs are creative with the kind of fish served on their menus and also if they really think about how it’s cooked and served. Our natural style here at the British Larder Suffolk is rustic and natural; we try to “work” the ingredients as little as possible to give you the natural uncomplicated feel when eating. Saying that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea eating fish on the bone, and if it’s served still with its head on, well then the debate sparks whether the eyes should be removed or not. I leave them there and I possibly could go on and on about this, but let’s say the less it is bothered with the better….  that is my objective opinion anyway.

Blood oranges brighten up my day and having that fabulous luxury in the deepest darkest winter, with the beauty and colour of the blood orange that makes cooking just that little bit easier and, well prettier to say the least. The taste is just as magnificent, the sharp citrus with the a hint of the flavouring of raspberry. It can be all in my mind as they say, but then that is exactly what I taste and my opinion.

Blood Oranges are a variety of orange with unusual red coloured flesh. They are smaller than common oranges. The red coloured flesh is due to the presence of anthocyanins, pigments that are usually found in flowers and rarely in fruits, apart from this particular variety.

This recipe is a play on traditional jelly, custard and ice cream, with a bit more of a sophisticated twist. The custard is the orange posset, the ice cream is the blood orange granita and well the jelly, that is a deliciously simple blood orange jelly.

A few definitions:

Granita is flavoured water/ juice that is frozen and after every hour or so the ice crystals is stirred to form ice granules rather than one solid lump. The difference between sorbet and granita is that granita granulated ice crystals where as sorbet has a smooth cream like texture without real cream added.

Posset is boiled cream that is set using fruit juice with a low pH (2.0 – 3.2) and high acidity level such as orange and that is refrigerated to temperatures below 8 °C . This mixture will set naturally once boiled and refrigerated without the help of gelatine or other setting agents. The mixture will not retain its set state once stirred, and if it comes to room temperature, temperatures over 8 °C the posset could return to liquid state.