Monday through Wednesday we serve special 'Feast Night' Formal Hall's. These special dinners include the additions of a fourth course, tableclothes, silver plated cutlery and best China. We normally limit capacity to 50 covers on these evenings and strive for an 'exclusive' ambiance. Formal Hall has traditionally been served seven nights a week at Pembroke, with Friday through Sunday being the most popular nights. About two years ago we introduced the Feast Night dinners in order to boost attendance early in the week; it's been a big success!
Wednesday's Feast Night was the first of Michealmas Term and followed on from the Undergraduate Matriculation dinner the night before. We started the dinner with a warm Amuse Bouche of pea and coconut veloute topped with a coconut foam....mmm, delicious!
We followed the Amuse Bouche with citrus cured salmon confited in olive oil at 38C for twelve minutes. The salmon is topped with finely sliced chives and avrouga caviar. The salmon is set on warm orange segments steeped in stock syrup and white wine. The salmon confit is finished with a coriander coulee. This dish is from Thomas Keller's famous 'French Laundry' cookbook.
Next came a dish from 'Sous Vide' by Joan Roca and Salvador Brugués. This groundbreaking cookbook was the first to focus entirely on sous vide cooking, and is considered by many as a text book reference guide for under pressure cooking. The dish consists of a chicken breast cooked sous vide at 65C for 60 minutes and then briefly pan-fried in olive oil and butter. With the chicken we served a black olive jus, mango sauce and champ potato.
To finish we served a variation of a recipe from Thomas Keller's 'Under Pressure' cookbook. Carrot cake is served with cinnamon ice cream, cream cheese frosting and carrot powder. In hindsight the dish lacked a contrasting colour element to 'lift' the presentation, next time we will do this slightly differently. Nevertheless this sweet tasted great and the plates all came back empty!
I've two of these dishes before and I have to say they are sublime. I presume you got the pea and coconut veloute from the "Essence" cook book? It is wonderful.
ReplyDeleteAs for Thomas Keller's salmon dish I have to say this is a firm favourite of mine too.
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