Last Night's Formal Hall 26/01

Tuesday's Formal Hall began with what quite frankly is a spectacular fish dish. Lightly steamed red mullet set on ripe tomato concasse and served with a lemongrass and tomato essence, wow! This is another inspirational dish from the Pier cookbook, one of Australias best known fish restaurants.

Following the fish we served rare rib of beef with dauphiniose potatoes, roasted carrots and parsnips, Yorkshire pudding and horseradish jus. The rib of beef is my favourite cut; it's more tender than sirloin and has more flavour than fillet. Some people don't like it because of the eye of fat in the centre, to them I say 'don't eat it!'

After the rich beef we served a refreshing honey-lemon thyme sorbet with lemon drizzle cake and honeycomb crumbs. The honeycomb was made with freeze dried raspberries and fizzy powder.

The evenings 'extra' course was dessert fruit and homemade petit fours

Last Night's Formal Hall 25/01

Last night we served a savoury, trufle laced custard as an amuse bouche. The custard was served in an egg shell with toast soldiers. I've been asked to explain how we managed to top the eggs and fill them with the custard.
Firstly you need to buy one of these:

This is a small device we use to crack the top off the eggs so neatly. You place the base of the tool on the top of the egg, pull the spring loaded handle and release; this causes the internal rod to bang the top of the egg and crack it neatly. A video showing how this is done can be found here. The recipe and idea came from the French Laundry cookbook by Thomas Keller.

Following on from the interesting amuse bouche, we served baked trout with cannellini bean, scallion (spring onion), and radish salad finished with an orange and soy glaze. This is a very colourful and flavourful dish that we also nicked from the French Laundry cookbook.

After the fish we moved onto slow-roasted confit of duck with curly kale, baby beets, Anna potatoes and pomegranate jus. The baby beets have a lovely 'earthly' flavour that is perfect for serving during the winter. All the ingredients (except the pomegranate) for this dish were sourced locally and are in season.

To finish another Pembroke Formal we served a white chocolate and espresso tart with a bitter chocolate sorbet. I've not been lucky enough to taste this dish, but I imagine it tasted quite good!

Please let me know if you enjoyed the sweet?

Last Night's Formal Hall 24/01

Sunday's Formal Hall Menu tends to be a more traditional meal due in part to the Fellow's who dine on High Table after Chapel. It has long been tradition to serve fish, followed by roast meat and to finish with a traditional British sweet; last night was no exception. We began the meal with baked salmon, garnished with sun-blushed tomato and olive dressing.

Following on from the salmon we served traditional roast leg of lamb with lots of other traditional stuff....yawnnnnnn...

After the lamb came traditional apple crumble, and custar........zzzzz

Awake again, OK, next Sunday we're cooking a much more interesting menu that hopefully will keep all of us awake.

Fresh Tuna Verrine

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Honey and Soy Roasted Breast of Duck

Roasted sweet potato, sugar snap peas, orange zest and honey jus

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Cinnamon Tart with fresh berries and roasted figs

I've posted a few photos of what next Sunday's starter might look like here.

Last Saturday's Formal Hall 23/01

Heirloom Tomatoes featured on Saturday's menu in the form of a savoury tart. An heirloom tomato is generally considered to be a variety that has been passed down, through several generations of a family because of it's valued characteristics. These are probably the best tasting, most organic tomatoes available and are widely used in top end restaurants, especially in California. Our Heirloom tart was served with an olive tapanade as seen below.

Following the tart we served grilled sea bass with sweet parsnips, spinach, wild rice and a saffron cream sauce. The parsnips are vacuum packed with cream and cooked sous vide, thus retaining all the great flavour of the sweet vegetable. The vanilla/saffron cream sauce is flavoured with the juice of fresh mussels-delicious!

To finish the meal we served espresso-orange panna cotta parfaits with coffee gelee from The Last Course cookbook.

I'm eating one as I type and it tastes great; must go as I'm a bit busy:)))

Last Friday's Formal Hall 22/01

Last Friday's Formal Hall started with a prawn salad set in a light cucumber jelly, we've done this dish in the past with crab (which is a lot more expensive). The prawns are bound with a light mustard mayonnaise and topped with micro-herbs. The jelly is garnished with diamonds of cucumber and dill.

To follow the prawn salad we served a roulade of free-range chicken wrapped in Swiss chard. We make the roulade by dusting two chicken breasts with transglutaminase, AKA food glue, and rolling them into a barrel shape. The chicken sets in the fridge for a few hours before being wrapped with the cooked Swiss chard. Once again we wrap the chicken in plastic and cook sous vide for 90 minutes.

To finish the meal we served caramelised brioche puding with blackberry cream, fresh blackberries and ginger ice cream; this must have tasted great even if the presentation needs improving..

We hope you enjoyed your meal!