Many are fascinated by how menus are compiled; what we sell, how we cook and prepare enough for each day – hopefully without running out. Well, I can tell you – it’s no secret – we occasionally do run out of certain dishes. But after a while, you build up an understanding of what sells and what is slow or less popular. It’s also useful to have a number of common ingredients on dishes so if, for example, you buy a box of wild mushrooms, you might feature it on two dishes but in fact you use it on three or four dishes, including a starter, not always naming the ingredients in the dish.
So here’s today’s tip for any budding amateur cooks:
If you have ever made a sauce and you’ve added enough salt and pepper but it still doesn’t taste right, try adding a few drops of lemon juice. We all know what lemon juice does to your palette – just try licking a lemon. So how does this work? That little bit of acid that you’ve added to your sauce changes its characteristics and livens your taste buds. It’s a tip I learned from Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons.
Finally, on the 5th of June, we have one of the the UK’s finest food & wine matchers and author of 20 books, Fiona Beckett, as guest speaker on our Wine Evening. I’m looking forward to working with her again and over the course of this week, she will be matching wines to go with a five course meal.
Our starter features burrata, the king of Italian soft cheese:
Braised beetroot, burrata, horseradish cream, leaves and rapeseed oil
Tomorrow, another tip and another course, and I will let you know what Fiona matches with this at the end of the week.
