origamicrane

sigh!! I didn't make it onto the show as i live to far from the other contestants!!! Sonuvabeach!!! ho hum! guess i try anotehr show.

agreed Thomasina was the only one that actually created her own dishes for the final test so yeah i agree she should have won. but caroline is probably the most technicl and competent of the 3.

sorry but was that it? the final was such an anti-climax!!! was it me or did none of the dishes looked or sounded particularly amazing? and there no prize? no follow up? no book deal or tv series?

Click here for the photos Sesames Menu #1 ( Sesames is the name of the restaurant that i want to open one day ) Will serve 5. 1. Rock Shrimp Sashimi with Kiwi Mirin Vinaigrette Prep Time: <5 mins Equipment: 5 small martini glasses 5 forks Hand Blender 15 Raw Rock Shrimp 1 ripe peeled kiwi fruit ½ t mirin 2 T rice vinegar 1 T castor sugar 1 t salt Decoration : 5 lemon or kiwi slices and 20 grams topiko flying fish roe Blend the kiwi, mirin, salt, sugar and vinegar to a puree and divide into the martini glasses. Place the shrimp into the glass and garnish with the kiwi/lemon slice and a sprinkle of topiko. 2. Grilled Yuzu Miso Marinated Black Cod Prep time: 10 minutes. marinate for >24hour Cooking time: 10 minutes 5 black cod /sablefish 1 inch fillets 1 shot yuzu miso 1 shot mirin 1 T caster sugar decoration : 5 cucumber strips Blend the yuzu miso, mirin and caster sugar then pour over the black cod and marinate for 24 hours, turn the fillets once. Take out the fillets and gently wipe any excess marinade off the fillets. Grill on high heat skin side down for 5 minutes then turn skin side up and grill a further 5 minutes. Grilling time will depend on the thickness of the the fillets. 3. Foie Gras Poele, unagi, seared Scallops with Green Pea Puree, Roasted Hazelnuts and potato crisp Prep time: 20 minutes Cooking time: 10 minutes Green pea puree – shallot, peas, salt, pepper, boil and puree 5 Deep fried potato crisp 5 scallops 5 pieces pan fried foie gras or seared tuna or grilled unagi Roast hazelnut Truffle oil Balsamic glaze Balsamic glaze 1T balsamic vinegar 1T mirin 1t sugar Into a pan and reduce to syrup. Green pea puree 1 shallot 5T frozen green peas salt pepper Boil the green peas and shallots for 4 minutes. refresh in cold water and puree with a hand blender season to taste. You can warm it in the microwave when you need it. Potato crisp use a round cookie cutter, cut a round out of a potato. Then using a mandoline make 5 thin slices. Fry in butter until they have a nice golden colour and then into the oven to crisp. Brush the scallops with garlic and butter and sear on one side with a griddle pan until you have some nice marks. To assemble stack green pea puree, potato crisp, scallop and the foie or tuna or unagi or all of tehm if you want drizzle the balsamic glaze and truffle oil parrallell to the components. 4. Chicken Ballotine with a Farcies of Kurobuta Pancetta, shiitake, shallots and shiso. Mixed japanese mushrooms asparagus and rosemary jus Prep time: 45 minutes Cooking time: 45 minutes 30 mins@230C unwrap 10 mins@grill rest 5 minutes Equipment: Fillet knife muslin or cheesecloth Food processor Whole small chicken 75g fried Pancetta cubes 5 Fresh shiitake chopped 2 cloves garlic 1 Shallot 5 Shiso leaf 20g white breadcrumbs Salt/ pepper soya Classic ballotine so debone a whole chicken retaining the skin as a whole piece and seperating the white and brown meat. Take the brown meat and into a food processor with the garlic and mince. Then mix the meat well with the pancetta , shiso, shallots, chopped shittake, breadcrumbs, 1t salt, 1t pepper, 1t soya sauce. roll the stuffing into a cylinder. Lay the skin out on the table and stretch it out. Layer the breast meat along the length of the chicken skin. Take your stuffing and place it on top of the breasts. Envelope the breast and stuffing with the skin ( there a full lesson on this in the turducken thread) to make a roll. trim off any excess skin that overlaps.Take a muslin sheet soak with oil and then season the muslin on one side with salt and black pepper. put your ballotine on the seasoned side of the muslin and then just wrap it up trim of any excess muslin and secure with skewers or string. Cook for 30 minutes at 230C then take it out unwrap and then back under a grill to brown the skin. rest 5 minutes and slice. Mushrooms - saute in garlic butter. Asparagus - blanch and refresh and wearm through with a littler garlic butter before serving. Rosemary jus - 500ml good brown chicken stock, 1T chopped rosemary, 1 clove garlic chopped, 1 shallot chopped. Boil this lot on high heat after 10 minute remove the herbs by pouring stock through a tea strainer. Then reduce the stock to a jus. Sides: Edamame - boil pod for 4 minutes Wasabi Mashed Potatoes - 2 large potato boil and mashed. Mix with 2T butter, 1T wasabi, salt and pepper. 5. grapefruit sunset with Candied Clouds prep 20 minutes 20 leaves of lemon mint fresh peeled pomelo/pink grapefruit shredded candy floss Arrange the wedges into a circle. Put a piece of mint on each segment and then sprinkle the candy floss shreds on top. 6. molten chocolate souffle and green tea ice cream prep 10 min cook 8 min @ 220C equipment 5 ramekins buttered and sugared 60 grams unsalted butter 120 grams +70% cocao chocolate 4 medium eggs at room temp 2 T caster sugar decoration: icing sugar, mint sprigs, strawberries melt butter and chocolate together into a ganache. Whish the 4 eggs and sugar together until it holds its ribbon. Fold ganache and eggs together. Pour into the ramekins and bake at 220C for 8 minutes serve with vanilla or green tea ice cream and decorate with strawberries and a sprinkle of icing sugar.

well still waiting for the show to let me know if i am on or not so fingers crossed. I done two practise runs for the menu and come to the conclusion that the foie is nice but really overpowers the other ingredients in the 3rd dish also foie in the UK is just sooo expensive!!! and i don't think i be heading to France in the near future to stock up so i decided to swap the foie for unagi eel. I wanted to make this dish the second course and the black cod the third course to build upon the strength of flavours course by course. But i have found that because i only have one oven and grill combined it makes it very difficult to do this, so i will keep the courses as they are. All the other dishes are pretty much down now. Not going to use the oyster mushroom with the ballotine as it doesn't look attractive plated up. Instead i will got for a trio of enoki, hon shimeji and shittake mushrooms with the asparagus, and a side of wasabi mash and edamame. Still looking for a possible vegetarian course in the meal as want to cover as many bases as possible. Thinking of a vegetable terrine as i can premake that and it looks pretty. Or the vegetable spaghetti on puff pastry from Michel Roux Junior book Only The Best. not sure if either will fit in well with the rest of the dishes. Any possible veggy suggestions? also will post the recipes for all the dishes in a moment

as promised here are the pics. hmmm think next batch i will use less salt and back them bigger. but they are yummy all the same like really good crackling

14 hour day? pure luxury!! i remember in the good old days this is my dad, not me My old man would wake at 6am to drive to the new covent garden market to buy daily stock and then work until 1am with just a 2 hour break between 2 and 5pm. He went for 10 years without a holiday break !!! Thats why i don't really want to become a chef see myself more as a hands on restauranteur. but it is strange why cooking has become such a aspirational career move?

just fried off my first prawn crackers pretty damn good although think mine were just a little too salty for my liking. will post photos later. Now i'm thinking of making some with additions of a little chilli, more garlic, lemon grass, ginger, soya, sugar, sesame? but i'm also thinking what will happen if i use different flour? rice flour? potato flour? wheat? what about different blends of flour? different texture?

haha!! I think you are addicted? the cure? why do you need a cure? the infection will clear up in a few days time Then we can look forward to Hell's Kitchen. As cooking skills go the tests are pretty irrelevant but they are fun to watch and I think I would have really enjoyed doing some of them. But yeah if you really wanted to work in a restaurant you could just knock on a kitchen door and just ask. The law of numbers says one will bring you on as a dishwasher and then you can wait a few months before they let you cut the veggies. I would do it but don't fancy earning just £18k for a 12 hour day. But you have to admit the finalist have got to do some pretty cool stuff and meet some pretty high level cookies.

you know now that masterchef is in the final its actaully getting really interesting :) quite amazing seeing the lab in heston kitchen and the way the three finalist workied in the top kitchens today. hmmm yeah think i apply again but i wonder if i willget through again?? maybe i will change my name and use a different address? anyhoo for those that want to apply here is the application form UK Egulleteer apply today!!!! http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/tv_and_radio/mas...act_index.shtml

the only thing I could find was this... it isn't very precise though. Maybe try it in the same proportions I give for nigari? ← thanks for that the thing i'm wondering about is the concentration hmmm... time to get my chemistry books out.

you probably could crush up the dried pieces into breadcrumb sized bits and then use it as a coating. But remember that the crackers need a pretty hot oil to puff up and expand properly if the oil is not hot enough you will end up with small and pretty chewy crackers. What ever you are coating had better be already cooked or the cracker bits will burn very quickly.

another question about the coalgulant nigari i never seen it in London but we make tofu using Plaster of paris. This is what i was told to use by my mother when making tofu pudding and we can buy packets of it in our chinese supermarket. thing is as its a old chinese recipe its not really measured and its pretty much guess work with teh plaster of paris anyone got a more precise recipe?

yeah i might be breaking a chinese culinary secret and i may hve to go into hiding in case teh triad come to chop me up but the seaweed in uk restaurants is just that seasoned deep fried cabbage. Now to make it sounds easy as you just shred the cabbage and deep fry it then season with salt and sugar. But this isn't something i would recommend as you need to fry a lot of cabbage for a portion and the amount of oil used and the amount of mess made is a lot. And you will need a wok not a deep fat fryer unless it is a particularly large one. be careful if you fry this as the oil really bubbles and rises up.

ok just started to make these. Only making a quarter size recipe so as a metric baby thats 100g tapioca flour 100g minced cooked prawns 1/4 tsp of white pepper 1 tsp salt 1/4 cup boiling water 1 clove of garlic 1. mince prawns and a clove of garlic. 2. salt, pepper and boiling water into a bowl 3. water mix into flour and stir. ( at this point the flour turns int o a big clump ) 4. work the flour with fingers until its resembling breadcrumb 5. Then pour the tapioca breadcrumbs into the mixer with the prawns and blitz. 6. take out and knead a bit and roll into a cylinder 7. cover in a cheesecloth and steam for 45 minutes. so far so good will dry them out and see if they fry up in a few days time. Thanks again for this thread jackal. Got a question though the dough i had felt very soft is this right as i heard you say it should be stiff? how stiff?

ok i'm game I am a BBC1 ( British born chinese 1st generation) Family is from HK and they moved to the UK ain 1973. And like most chinese in the UK we are part of the catering Trade

try drinking cola out of them trust me its fun

chinatown main port of call for chinese produce. then maybe brewer street for japanese stuff. Think there are a few small vietnamese shops down hackneyand dalston but they mostly stock teh same stuff as the ones in chinatown. For Indian produce brick lane will have a few place. Maybe even Edgware road. really depends what you want to buy?

I am sure that they have to provide you with any special dietary considerations of the contestants. Did they ask you if you have any special diets or alergies? This show did not look like it had any evil subplots... like they do on wife swap and the lot. It seemed a little more happy go lucky. About the rules of the show.... Do the contestant get to meet before the first dinner party? I've always dreaded blind dates, but blind dinner parties. Eeeeek! Can you tweek your menu? Say for instance you cant get a key ingredient. Does the production team plug the other guests with your culinary secrets i.e packaged food. Or would they be completly oblivious if you had it catered. ← Yeah they asked me about any allergies but not like and dislikes. Not sure how any of the other rules work as the guy said there were no rules really. I doubt we get to meet each other beforehand except maybe a few hours before the first dinner party. From what they said you have to presubmit your menu and are not allowed to change / tweak it. Naturally if you can't find a particular ingredient you can substitute it but i doubt they will allow you to cook a completely different dish. No they don't tell you anything prior to the dinner itself so you won't know who is doing what. I believe the show was originally called "let me entertain you" which would have been more appropriate then "come dine with me" as the enthesis seems to be on the entertainment value of the whole night rather then the dinner. As i said thinking of sticking a veggy dish in, that way the 6 course menu should cover most bases.

we do have something like menupages.com try www.london-eating.co.uk http://www.toptable.co.uk/ hmm in barbican? carnevale pham sushi noto K10 ekachai terminus yeah quite a few things at smithfileds carluccio's , smiths, etc

I know but then again won't make for interesting TV if everyone is nice and friendly to each other. If it isn't the judges being nasty then it has to be the contestants or in this case the contestants are the judges. Yeah its true about the food allergies, religious/ethical beliefs, etc, but without prior knowledge of who is in the group its impossible to design a perfect menu unless you go for something that is very unadventurous. But having said that i might add a veggy dish think a veggy terrine would look nice in the flow of the menu.

just had the audition /interview. The Granada tv boys were an hour early!! so they had to sit around in the car waiting for me. Took 20 minutes just waundered about my house while they asked me questions about my cooking and what i was going to do for the entertaining. guess i could pull the karaoke machine out? or do some magic tricks? might even be mad enough to set up a bow and arrow in my back garden. hhmmm.. Then they asked what would be my nightmare dinner guest and what would be my nightmare dinner party.(that could be an interesting thread of its own) Well for me a nightmare guest would be someone with no social etiquette, smelly, ignorant and generally obnoxious without having any kind of redeeming feature to shout about. My nightmare dinner party would be someone trying really hard to impress with their cooking but having next to no idea about cooking. As i be watching them in the kitchen and having the overwhelming urge to go in and take over!!! think it be kinda like watch that blue soup scene in brigette jones diary. They confirmed some of the rules too, you have to presubmit your menu and you can't change it so shouldn't really matter if you go first or last. You can't give someone zero marks if you don't have a valid reason. They said 60 people had applied, they are visiting 30 of those and they will pick 9 the final 5 will be decide by the people at Channel 4. Anyway they are filming on the 25th April now and I should know in a week or so. hope i get on or all that effort practising over the weekend will be kinda lost.

oh no!! Son of a heifer!! and I thought it was serious! ho hum! guess i just go a long for the ride then and I was planning such a nice meal. ← When are you filming this? Your menu looks fab! ← thanks Foodie that was the type of food I wanted to cook in the previous two shows. I got the audition later today and they are filming 11th April I should know if i'm on the show by the end of the month. Think I will cook that menu for this show as i'm not charming enough to win anyway quite funny actually as just spotted the plating and presentation course on eGCI http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=64107 now those are pretty pictures. I got to learn to take better photos of my food or i might just blame my camera. anyhoo anyone a somellier? or good at pairing wine with food? as trying to pair some with the following dishes 1. blackcod and miso 2. foie gras, scallops and green pea puree 3. chicken ballotine with a chicken rosemary jus.

thanks for the support glad to know that i am as mad as the kiwi's!!! hohoho!

Pingu rules!! much rather watch pingu or teletubbies or even magic roundabout then any current cooking programme on tv btw Andy shame you didn't make it on the pilot but sure there will be other opportunities to see you in action.