Some of what you might expect next week

A very helpful customer commented earlier this week that it might be useful to have an idea of what the food looked like; before coming to formal. Always one to please, I've taken photos of a few dishes we hope to replicate next week.
Please bare in mind that these are professionally staged food photos that don't really resemble the 'actual' food they represent. However, we will try our hardest to emulate these great recipes!

Feast Night Formal Hall Monday

Amuse Bouche

White Truffle Oil Infused Custards

 Feast Night Formal Hall Monday

Grilled Trout

With cannellini bean, scallion and radish salad

Soy orange glaze

Feast Night Formal Hall Tuesday

Steamed Red Mullet

Tomato and Lemongrass Broth

Feast Night Formal Hall Wednesday

Ratatouille in Sauternes gelee

Feast Night Formal Hall Wednesday

Crisp Belly of Pork

Surf clams, pumpkin puree, pak choi and rosti potato

Feast Night Formal Hall Wednesday

Chocolate Crème Brulee

Yoghurt sorbet, cherry and hazelnut financier

Formal Hall Thursday

Crunchy Chocolate Pearls

Formal Hall Friday

Prawn and Cucumber Mousse

Formal Hall Friday

(V) Cauliflower puree, Pea and Truffle

Formal Hall Friday

Chump of Lamb

Fondant potato, spinach, and Provencal vegetables

Formal Hall Friday

Cumquat Pain Perdu

With orange blossom Panna Cotta and mandarin sorbet

 Formal Hall Sunday

Fresh Tuna Verrine

With pico de gio

Formal Hall Sunday

(V) Tagliatelle of Vegetable Verrine

Formal Hall Menus Lent Term Week 3

Feast Night Formal Hall

Monday 25th January

Amuse Bouche

White Truffle Oil Infused Custards

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Grilled Trout

With cannellini bean, scallion and radish salad

Soy orange glaze

(V) Roasted Heart of Palm

With cannellini bean, scallion and radish salad

Soy orange glaze

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Slow Roasted Confit of Duck

Anna potatoes, curly kale, and baby beet

Pomegranate and redcurrant jus

(V) Organic Stilton Tart with herb crust

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White Chocolate-Espresso Tart

Chocolate Sorbet

Feast Night Formal Hall

Tuesday 26th January

Steamed Red Mullet

Tomato and Lemongrass Broth

(V) Red Pepper, Tomato, and Basil Tian

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Roast Rib of Beef

Dauphinoise potatoes, roasted carrots, and parsnips

Yorkshire pudding and horseradish jus

(V) Nut Cutlet

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Honey-Lemon Thyme Sorbet

Lemon drizzle cake and honeycomb crumbs

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Dessert Fruit and Petit Fours

Feast Night Formal Hall

Wednesday 27th January

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

Roquefort Ice Cream

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Ratatouille in Sauternes gelee

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Crisp Belly of Pork

Surf clams, pumpkin puree, pak choi and rosti potato

(V) Pak Choi and Smoked Tofu Pancakes

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Chocolate Crème Brulee

Yoghurt sorbet, cherry and hazelnut financier

Formal Hall

Thursday 28th January

French Onion Soup

Gruyere Croute

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Free-Range Chicken Supreme with Goat’s Cheese Mousse

Roasted garlic mash, sautéed spinach and pistachio jus

(V) Stilton and Truffle Bubble and Squeak

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Crunchy Chocolate Pearls

Formal Hall

Friday 29th January

Prawn and Cucumber Mousse

Toasted Granary Bread

(V) Cauliflower puree, Pea and Truffle

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Chump of Lamb

Fondant potato, spinach, and Provencal vegetables

Basil jus

(V) Spinach and Ricotta Ravioli

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Cumquat Pain Perdu

With orange blossom Panna Cotta and mandarin sorbet

Formal Hall

Saturday 30th January

Poached Pear and Stilton Salad

Walnut and lemon

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Breast of Guinea Fowl with a Sausage Farce

Rosemary potatoes and fine beans, Calvados jus

(V) Herb Crusted Ratatouille and Mozzarella Medallion

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Warm Chocolate Brownie

Vanilla pod ice cream and chocolate sauce

Formal Hall

Sunday 31st January

Fresh Tuna Verrine

With pico de gio

(V) Tagliatelle of Vegetable Verrine

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Honey and Soy Roasted Breast of Duck

Roasted sweet potato, sugar snap peas

Orange zest and honey jus

(V) Asian Vegetable Stir-fry

With Teriyaki noodles and soybeans

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Cinnamon Tart

Fresh berries and roasted figs

Wednesday Night's Formal Hall

Wednesday hailed the return of 'business as usual' for Formal Hall with 50 (hopefully) happy customers.
We started wednesdays dinner with an amuse bouche of 'Green Pea and Mint Sorbet served in a Parmesan cornet. The idea for this came from a useful website full of nice recipes for these small and colourful appetizers. The savoury pea sorbet was made in our new Pacojet ice cream/sorbet machine.

The Pacojet machine works by Pacotizing soup, sauces, ice cream and sorbet bases. “Pacotizing” … denotes the revolutionary process, which mixes and purees deep frozen food stuff directly in it’s frozen state, without thawing it, to produce a frozen and intensely natural tasting mousse of extremely fine consistency to ideal serving temperature. Basically it's the best ice cream/sorbet machine that money can buy and produces great results!
The Parmesan cornets are a labour of love and require the chefs to mold very hot, melted cheese around small stainless steel cornet rings. Once the cheese cools it hardens into the little cornets as shown above; lots of burned fingers!
We followed the amuse bouche with Butternut Squash Soup garnished with brown butter, sage, and nutmeg creme fraiche.

After the soup came the main event!

 Parma Ham wrapped Pork Tenderloin with a cassoulet of white beans, brunois, pancetta and sage roasted potatoes. Finished with pesto cream sauce.

I have to admit being very impressed when I first saw this photo, I thought Nick our Head Chef did a great job of presenting this lovely dish.

Savino, our Italian Butler confessed that it reminded him of his Mothers cooking and made him homesick;))

To finish the dinner we served a lavender flavoured creme brulee with lime sorbet (Pacotized!) and lemon shortbread, very refreshing!

What 11 of you enjoyed for Formal Hall last night

Sous Chef Seb Little serving last night's Formal Hall Dinner.

After the disappointment of Monday’s Formal Hall, we managed to find eleven students willing to dine on Tuesday; not a great number by any means, but better than zero!
The lucky eleven enjoyed a Feast Night that began with:

Beetroot Soup

With black cumin and Greek yoghurt

The inspiration for this soup came from Moro, a restaurant in Exmouth Market, known for its award-winning Moorish cuisine. Their food is a mix of Spanish Tapas and Muslim Mediterranean, Northern African cuisine. They produced a great cookbook that we've recently aquired.

This interesting soup was garnished with Greek yogurt and had a mild cumin flavour that balanced nicely with the beetroot.

After the soup we served a great seafood recipe inspired by the amazing, award winning Pier restaurant in Rose Bay, Sydney Australia. Pier is owned by the talented Chef Greg Doyle and won 'Restaurant of the Year' awards in Australia for many years. Fortunately for us, they've written an amazing cookbook that we purchased last year.

We chose to cook:

Pepper-Crusted Fresh Tuna

With fennel risotto, calamari and red wine sauce

Below is the picture of the recipe from the Pier cookbook, nice.

And here is one from last night's Formal Hall, not a bad attempt! This dish currently sells for $49 Australian Dollars on The Pier Menu

After the tuna we served:

Ginger and Port Poached Pears

With Granité and candied ginger

This is another dish from The Last Course cookbook we featured in yesterday's Blog.

To finish the meal we served an extra course of homemade macaroons and petit fours

The stunningly perfect Macaroons were made by our new Chef Sara, who joins us from America where she was born and raised. Sara is in the UK for three years and we're very fortunate to have recruited her to our team at Pembroke; great work everyone!

What you definitely missed last night!

It was with much amazement and disbelief, when on Monday morning I realised that no one had booked into Formal Hall. I know that Monday can be a bit of a slow night, but not one single booking! Maybe the menu was not to everyone's taste, or the JP had planned a event we knew nothing of?

Well, whatever the reason, you missed an amazing meal! We served the Graduate Supervisors Dinner the same menu as we had planned for Formal Hall, hence the upcoming photos.

We started Monday's dinner with a smoked salmon and mozzarella terrine with basil and pink peppercorn dressing. The recipe for this came from the book Terrines and Verrines by Franck Pontais. You'll see more of his lovely recipes as the term progresses; great book!

After the starter we moved onto a Green Apple Sorbet to cleanse the palatte.

For the main course we served a recipe from Gordon Ramseys 3-star Chef.

Chump of Lamb with Confit Shoulder

Provençal vegetables, spinach, and bail lamb jus

Fondant potatoes and celeriac puree

The combination of med-rare sous vide lamb and slow roasted confit of lamb was amazing. The same dish is currently on the menu at Restaurant Gordon Ramsey at £90.00 a head for three-courses...

http://www.gordonramsay.com/royalhospitalroad/menus/alacarte/

The picture below comes from Gordons website, the one above from the Pembroke Kitchen; which do you prefer?

To finish the meal we served a lovely Mille Feuille of Raspberry and Mint from an exceptional book called The Last Course by Claudia Fleming.

Formal Hall costs £7.00 for Pembroke Students, the same food would cost you £90.00 at Gordon Ramseys (not to say we cook as good as Gordon, but we're close!). I hope this explains my suprise when no one came to dinner!