Wednesday, 3 June 2015

The Brunswick House Ball

I've always been fascinated by the age and origin of the building which we inhabit. The Duke of Brunswick, after whom the house is named, is a figure of particular interest, and as we approach the 200th anniversary of his death, we've decided to throw a little party in his honour.




We're taking over the whole house for a riotous evening of feasting, dancing & drinking. It's in memory of the Duke, and all the others who fell at the battle of Quatre Bras. There'll be a we'll be pouring drinks and serving canapés at the reception, from which guests will be led to table, and served a three course feast of historic dishes, including of course Beef Wellington, with much wine poured, and a talk from the historian Count Adam Zamoyski. We'll all then be piling downstairs to the ballroom for cocktails, dancing, and much carousing into the wee hours.



This June will mark 200 years since Napoleon’s defeat by Wellington at the
Battle of Waterloo.

To celebrate this bloody but compelling period in our history we will be re-creating the infamous ball that took place in Brussels, hosted by the Duchess of Richmond, just three days before the great victory at Waterloo.

The Ball in Brussels was thought to be a tactical display of strength on the part of Wellington – though it was to be the last show of frivolity for most of the Duchess’ illustrious guest list, as they were to be called to fight later that night:

“When the duke [of Wellington] arrived, rather late, at the ball, I was dancing, but at once went up to him to ask about the rumors. He said very gravely, "Yes, they are true; we are off to-morrow." This terrible news was circulated directly, and while some of the officers hurried away, others remained at the ball, and actually had not time to change their clothes, but fought in evening costume.”

from the diary of Dowager Lady De Ros, daughter of the Duchess of Richmond

Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbütte (also known as the Black Duke), owner of Brunswick House at the time, where our modern day ball will take place, was present at what has since been called “the most famous ball in history”. He died the following day at the Battle of Quatre Bras, along with over half of the Ball’s attendees.

The following day Wellington’s troops retreated to England where they, in a thrilling and unexpected climax to the war, defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.

Byron was to write about the dramatic turn of events in ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’, contrasting the glamour of the ball with the atrocity of the subsequent battles:

Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress,
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago
Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness;
And there were sudden partings, such as press
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
Which ne’er might be repeated; who could guess
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise!

FOUND Productions, Jackson Boxer and the How to Academy Present

The Brunswick House Ball



photo by the wonderful Tim ClerkenwellBoyEC1







Sunday, 10 May 2015

What Right Now?

The Guardian have asked me to take over the residency column in their excellent Cook supplement for four weeks, to translate some of the cooking we do at Brunswick House for a domestic audience. This is perfect for me, as while I'm barely qualified to claim professional cooking status (though this doesn't stop me trying) I do also love to cook at home, and often translate plates from our menu into larger format feasts for my family. In my enthusiasm for the task, the food, and perhaps too the sound of my own voice, my first column was near twice the required length, and had some pretty snippy editing done to it to squeeze it across two double page spreads. Here is the first column, so you can see what an excellent job they did saving me from myself.


There’s a game I often play with my team during quiet moments, as the clock moves inexorably toward the start of service, called What Right Now. It works whether I’m by the stoves, on the floor, or helping polish stems behind the bar. All it involves is asking the target what thing in the world they would most like right now to be consuming. Like the best games it is simple, satisfying, and often surprisingly challenging. I initially used to use it as a tool to encourage creative thinking towards service – in anticipating that the warm afternoon turning to a breezy evening called for Campari & Soda, we would better serve our guests unconscious desires, preparing to offer them the drink that they did not yet know they wanted – however in time it’s become an illustrative thought experiment in the perils of over-complication.
When I first opened Brunswick House it was a seven seat espresso bar, in a hastily tiled corner of the storage annex of a salvage yard. My brother and I had a thousand pounds each saved in tips from working as a barman and cook/waiter respectively, which we used to buy a second hand coffee machine from a scrappy, and a couple of domestic fridges from Argos. I served espresso, espresso with milk, and four differently constructed sandwiches. Over-elaboration was the least of my worries. As it’s grown over the last five years, so have I. We have now expanded to the point where we regularly feed 200 guests a night a menu of the most emphatic celebration of British seasonal cooking, complimented by a 150 bin wine list.
This is not done for ostentation, it’s not done in self-agrandisement; it is simply a reflection of my overwhelming enthusiasm for food and wine, and my desire to share as much of it as I can with as many wonderful guests as possible; however as a foil against self-indulgence, I continue to practice What Right Now in officious self-censorship. It is the overbearing nature of this enthusiasm which causes me to forever question whether what I’m cooking is really what I would like to be eating, and whether we’re not as professional cooks sometimes guilty of brow-beating our guests, presenting over-constructed plates both architecturally or technically baroque. The question therefore becomes not “what right now?” but “is this something that, right now, feeling as I do, I would cook at home for myself and those I hold most dear?”
As I’ve got older I’ve noticed my palate shifting significantly to embrace much cleaner cookery. I want to taste produce, the grass it fed on, the soil it grew in, the sea in which it swam. Suddenly all the dishes I was used to cooking at home, those comforting gratins, stews and pies, seem claggy, cloudy, indistinct. My domestic repertoire has also shifted to reflect my infant daughter’s interest in food; children have about 3 times more taste buds than us, and her discernment in avoiding anything over-embellished is one of her many qualities through which I learn ineffably more from her than she from me. It is also the case that my taste in wine has shifted in the same direction, to that which is made with as little intervention as is wise to best reflect the terroir from which it’s so arduously extracted.
Over the next four weeks I will seek to present the recipes that, while reflecting the cuisine of my restaurant, also represent exactly the cooking I do at home. I will also be attempting to discuss, as an aside, the kind of wine I would open to share with these dishes, as, while I don’t subscribe to the tyranny of ‘correct’ wine-pairing, I think that a beguiling wine can add immeasurably to the charm of a simple lunch.
Green Salad
I struggled with the idea of including a recipe for a green salad. For so many blindingly obvious reasons it seemed unwarranted, and indeed unwanted, after all, everyone can make a green salad, can’t they? Either I’m being massively condescending, assuming the readership have yet to master this high peak of culinary achievement, or crashingly dull, revealing a criminal lack of both imagination and ambition. However it is precisely because of it’s apparent unsuitability that I was immediately attracted to it – we take it so very much for granted, and fail to give it due care and attention. It feels too ubiquitous to bare scrutiny, and for that reason so very much deserves it.
Brillat-Savarin, whose work, like that of his finest translator MFK Fisher, I value more and more the older I get, certainly does bare scrutiny. Indeed, as my existence seems to get more and more complicated, it is almost a wilful inversion of his famous aphorism that I attempt to bring order to it through my diet – eat simply, and life will become so. “Salad refreshes without weakening, and comforts without irritating”…”I can recommend this dish to all”. It’s proper place in a meal to my mind comes after meat and before cheese, and is a course in it’s own right, however since I only eat with such munificence on rare occasion, I mostly make a green salad as the central component of a light lunch or supper, served alongside a good piece of cheese, biscuits, some good smoked fish or cured meat, and glass of something decent. The salad is the only dish as part of such a meal that I’ll prepare, and therefore I’m used to giving it excessive attention.
Green salads come ready washed and mixed in suspiciously inflated bags, packed into supermarket chiller cabinets everywhere, requiring only a cursory splot of dressing from one of those perma-emulsified bottles on the adjacent shelf. So many recipes seem to offer infinite means to cheer this bedraggle of leaves – canny dressings, roasted squashes, toasted seeds - health, they promise us, and not heavy or dull. While I have no objection to end result, I spend the winter waiting in quiet yearning for the return of green leaves in all their complex variation, and believe in celebrating them as such. Quite aside from the myriad health scares and environmental woes associated with chlorine-soaked bags of hydroponically grown foliage (I actually doubt that the chemical treatments they receive make them suitable even as compost), the satisfaction from breaking down a head of lettuce, picking leaves from stems, washing, drying, only compounds their deliciousness.
On my mother’s small farm in West Sussex everything is fair game for the salad bowl, and in our two plots - one, the kitchen garden maintained by my mother for our personal consumption, and the other, the market garden my father and I use to grow for sale at his wonderful deli Italo on Bonnington Square, and eventually when it’s more productive, for my kitchen at Brunswick House - the profusion of different leaves, roots, flowers and shoots offer so much variety of flavor, texture and appearance, they need no addition beyond a light dressing to constitute an entirely beguiling course.
In the restaurant we buy our leaves from Chegworth Valley, generally best known for their marvellous varietal Apple juices, but best loved by me and my team for their salad growing. Ben Deme, who runs the family farm, isn’t able to explain why their leaves are so good, beyond the expressive fine sandy loam in which they’re grown, the rich organic compost and seaweed with which it’s fertilised before planting, and the very attentive and energetic work in the fields from him and his team. For domestic use, when unable to get a delivery from the farm via Italo, I love going and buying a bag of leaves and flowers from Jane at Fern Verrow’s stall in Spa Terminus on a Saturday.
I tend to gravitate towards peppery and bitter leaves, such as old fashioned English Rocket, with its enormous, robust spears, Land and Water Cresses, and Oriental Mustard leaves like Komatsuna and Mizuna. I like to balance these with Little Gem for volume, and finely minced English garden herbs (chervil and parsley are a preference). I like a light dressing at this time of year, barely an emulsion. I don’t bind with much mustard, as the leaves are pungent enough without, and as a result the salad must be dressed immediately prior to consumption, to stop the oil’s sad wilting. No one likes a droopy salad.
1 banana shallot, carefully and finely minced
a generous pinch of fine sea salt
a small pinch of caster sugar
A good light vinegar – apple cider is broadly available, though my preference is for one made from Riesling
Oil
Dijon Mustard
Mix salt and sugar through the shallots, cover with vinegar and leave to sit and macerate for an hour.
Break any lettuce heads down, and, along with other leaves, plunge into a deep bowl of cold water, agitating thoroughly to shake free any sand, grit, or indeed caterpillars. Remove and spin dry.
Wash, dry, & pick your herbs, and mince thoroughly, tossing them up after each pass of the knife to stop them bruising to paste. Add to leaves.
Strain out the shallots and reserve. Add a teaspoon of mustard and a quantity of oil triple the amount of vinegar, and beat together thoroughly with a whisk. I prefer a neutral oil like cold-press rapeseed. The mustard acts as a natural emulsifier, binding the oil and vinegar, limiting the oil’s enervating potency – no one likes a droopy salad. Reincorporate the shallots, then mix through the leaves by hand. I like to finish with a course sea salt, for flavor and texture. Without salt it ain’t salad.

Radishes and Butter
Butter is one of my daughter’s favourite things, and I do get a little concerned by her ability to consume whole pats of it neat. She licks it spread from bread, sucks it molten off florets of broccoli, and takes whole bites from fresh sticks as it were ice cream. She gets this entirely from me, though deprived the metabolism of a 22 month old infant, I try to consume proportionally less of it.
1ltr Jersey Cream
2 tablespoons Live Yogurt
Sea Salt
1 bunch Easter Egg radishes, tops looking crisp so you know they’re spanking fresh
The above vinaigrette, made with pasted garlic in place of minced shallot
We make our own butter at Brunswick House in the same way my maternal grandmother did on the family farm. We take the best cream we can lay our hands on, culture it with live yogurt, leave it for 16 hours at room temperature to get going, then churn. After salting, the solids are left out for three days to mature. The salting is crucial as it stops it going rancid while maturing, while the maturing is crucial as it makes it taste interesting, bringing out grassy, cheesy, complex flavours, where initially it just tastes creamy. It gets a final squeeze to expel the last of the whey, which we then use in other dishes.

While I like this butter on a crust of warm sourdough bread, my favourite vehicle is a simple radish, freshly picked with lively tops not yet softened, plunged into iced water to clean. Their limpid peppery crunch is the perfect foil to good butter’s smooth, funky majesty. I like to serve with a saucer of the above vinaigrette, through which to swipe the leaves as a palate cleanser.