Formal Hall Menus

On Wednesday we start Formal Hall Dinners. Formal Hall is a 3/4 course dinner that is plated and waiter served, we provide this dinner seven nights a week during term. We charge the students £7.25 for the food and they may each BYOB one bottle of wine. Normally we set capacity at 50 early in the week, and betweeen 100-150 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

We are incorporating various aspects of sous vide cooking into each nights menu; the sous vide puree of fennel, the sous vide puree of almonds, the compressed melon with caviar, the cinnamon ice cream and many other items are all made possible by vacuum packing and controlled cooking. In almost every case we are sous vide cooking in a Hobart Combi Oven set to steam, the results are exactly the same as if we'd used our small Clifton water bath. During the week I will document and photograph as many of these dishes as possible!

Feast Night Formal Hall
Wednesday 7th October

Amuse Bouche
Pea and coconut veloute with coconut foam

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Citrus cured confit of salmon with caviar
Orange confit and coriander coulee

(V) Roasted Fennel with pureed almonds
Pernod and saffron

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Free Range chicken Fillet
Mango puree, olive sauce, champ potato with brunoise

(V) Homemade Linguini with broccoli and Stilton cream

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Carrot cake, cinnamon ice cream, cream cheese frosting and carrot powder


BA Dinner in Hall
Thursday 8th October
No Undergraduate Formal Hall Tonight

Amuse Bouche
Compressed Water Melon and salmon Caviar
Lemon oil

(V) Petit Gateau of Compressed Melon
Orange confit

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Baked Trout Fillet
White beans, scallion and radish salad, soy & orange glaze

(V) Roasted Palm Heart
White beans, scallion and radish salad, soy & orange glaze

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Roulade of Duck with Swiss Chard
Wild mushrooms, creamed corn and fondant potato

(V) Roulade of Sweet Red Pepper, Mascarpone and Basil
Wild mushrooms, creamed corn and fondant potato

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Hazelnut and Cherry Cake, Yoghurt Sorbet
Cherry coulis and dark chocolate crème brulee


Formal Hall
Friday 9th October

Salad of Haricots Verts, Tomato Tartare and chive oil

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Roulade of Trout with a Prawn Mousse
Pomme de terre puree, spinach, vanilla and saffron sauce

(V) Sweet Potato Ravioli
Sage Cream and spinach

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Lemon Sabayon-Pine Nut Tart with Honeyed Mascarpone Cream


Formal Hall
Saturday 10th October

Parmigiano- Reggiano Crisps with Goat Cheese Mousse

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Twelve Hour Glazed Belly of Pork Sous Vide
Mustard Vinaigrette, Parisienne potato, carrot

(V) Organic Vegetable Cobbler

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Milk Chocolate Ice Cream
Vanilla Bean Cake, pistachio coulis


Formal Hall
Sunday 11th October

Salmon Pastrami with Toasted sourdough

(V) Beef Tomato and Whipped Brie Quenelle
Reduced balsamico

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Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding
Traditional condiments

(V) Chestnut and Vegetable Roast

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Glazed Lemon Tart
Raspberry syllabub

new stoves

Our new Bonnet stoves by Hobart. These stoves are absolute beasts and can boil a litre of cold water in under two minutes. These are the same stoves used in Hells Kitchen.

The Foundress Feast

The Foundress Feast

For the matriculations of 1964 to 1966
Friday 25th September 2009

Black Sea Bass with Sweet Parsnips, Arrowroot Spinach, Saffron and Vanilla sauce

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Medallions of Elysian Fields Farm Lamb
Garden Vegetables and Bagna Cauda Sauce

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Chocolate crème brulee with cherry and hazelnut financier
Sheep’s milk yoghurt sorbet

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Whipped Brie de Meaux en Feuillete with pepper and baby mache

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Dessert Fruit, Petit Fours and French Macaroons

Pembroke College, founded in 1347 by Marie de St Pol, Countess of Pembroke, is the third oldest of the Cambridge colleges and a great place to work. Tonight we are hosting a dinner in honour of our Foundress with alumni members from 1964 to 1966.

Roulade of Poularde wrapped in Swiss Chard with applewood smoked bacon

Tonight we served a dinner for an important corporate client that needed to be first rate. For the main course we tackled Roulade of Poularde wrapped in Swiss Chard with applewood smoked bacon and Pruneaux D’agen. This is a fairly simple dish comprised of ‘gluing’ two breast of poularde together using Transglutaminase (AKA food glue) and then rolling in cling film to create a roulade. The poularde roulade is left in the fridge for 6 hours to set the ‘glue’, we then wrap the roulade with blanched Swiss Chard and rewrap in plastic.



We then cook the poularde sous vide at 62 C for 1 ½ hours, or so the book states. In reality we cooked ours to 68 C for two hours and they turned out perfect; we all feel that some Under Pressure recipes need a higher cooking temperature to ensure food safety.

We serve this with prunes soaked in a red wine syrup, crisp applewood bacon garnish, blanched spring onions, champ potato with cabbage and brunoise vegetables. We finished with a caramelized shallot veal jus.

The rest of tonight’s meal consisted of two dishes from The French Laundry. The first is the iconic Salmon Tartare with Sweet Red Onion Crème Fraiche, and the second is Dungeness Crab Salad with Cucumber Gelee, Grain Mustard Vinaigrette and Frisee Lettuce. The cornets were a last minute decision as we had time to play and thought it would be a nice surprise for our guests (which it was!). Dan Reed, our Australian Chef and I knocked up the tuile mix and salmon tartare in record time only to find our mix was to short; the pastry broke each time we tried to shape the cornets. Not to be outdone, we remade the mix and plowed on to victory! The crab salad is very beautiful with the cucumber juice jelly lifting the dish incredibly well. A special thanks to Shane Miller the Chef pictured on the left in the photo below; Shane, Dan, and Ioana our Sous Chef produced a great dinner! Also pictured below is Savino our Senior Butler; Savino and the front of house team served a splendid meal and provided first class service!

Chestnut Stuffed Four Story Hills Farm Chicken with Celery and Honey Poached Cranberries- The Dinner

This post is meant to be an opportunity to show the Four Story Hills Farm Chicken dish from Under Pressure, we cooked this dish tonight for 24 VIP guests. I described the chicken dish in yesterday's post so I won't repeat myself now, other then to say it tasted great!
To begin tonight's meal we served citrus marinated salmon with orange confit and pea shoot coulis from The French Laundry Cookbook. The salmon was cured with citrus zest, salt and sugar for 3 hours. Tonight we confited the salmon in olive oil at 38 C for 10 minutes; this is one awesome dish, tastes and looks incredible!


Then came the chicken, great dish but needs many hands to plate quickly.



And to finish the meal we served poached fruits in a warm pomegranate sangria with honey ice cream. This great dish came from the cookbook Pier by Greg Doyle; Pier is reputed to be the best seafood restaurant in Australia and is situated in Rose Bay NSW.