The Traiteur - Christmas is coming….don’t we know it!

You know when Christmas is on your back and your Menu should be finished when you sit down after a day at the market to be overwhelmed that the ‘Coca Cola’ christmas advert is on the screen in front of you!!

With now under four weeks to go until that day our family try to avoid, we have been rushed off our feet with enquiries as to WHAT, WHERE, WHEN and HOW we can cater for our customers’ family, friends and those ever important office parties!!!

Because of our French background and our passion for lovely goodies at this time of year, we like to think we can offer our customers a delicious alternative to that traditional Christmas Lunch so many of us are accustomed too.  By popular demand, last years menu is back for everyone to behold and choose what they would like in order to make that hard slog a little easier this year!

We have organised an ordering service by which such dishes as our ‘Ballotine de Saumon et Truite’ and ‘Pintade Gasconne’  can be selected, prepaid and even delivered to your door just in time for those festive celebrations to begin.

Not only has this kept us busy but with Office gatherings starting to take place, we and our fantastic Paellera pans have been appearing in locations across London to offer that something different to maybe the standard cheese and pineapple party food!!  Hot, fresh and tasty recipes cooked and served in front of the employees to get their bash started!!!

More to the point…..this week thermals have emerged and that ever important woolly hat has come out of the wardrobe because those markets can’t run themselves!

The Coffee Connoisseur - Bolivia Cup of Excellence

Last week saw the latest ever cup of excellence auction. The Cup of Excellence is the most esteemed award given out for top coffees. These awards come from a strict competition that selects the very best coffee produced in that country for that particular year. These winning coffees are chosen by a select group of national and international cuppers and are cupped at least five different times during the competition process. Only coffees that continuously score high enough are allowed to move forward in the competition. The final winners are awarded the prestigious Cup of Excellence® and sold to the highest bidder during an internet auction.

At my company we often buy these auction coffees, and this one was no different. Last year I was part of the international jury with judges from all corners of the world, my second time doing this in Bolivia and one of six competitions I’ve participated in the past.

We have picked up a great coffee from the competition that we look forward to receiving early next year, good times ahead. The thing I love about this auction is it can bring longer term relationships, many of the coffees we buy have been discovered through the program.

The London Forager - Man, Beast and Tree

 

The Greenwich Park squirrel community actively approach people in the flower garden.  I imagine they see humans as huge monkey nut dispensers. They are accomplished emotional blackmailers, fixing you with their shiny jet-black eyes and holding their hands up to their chests.

 

In autumn they run around the ornamental pines and cedars that shed their cones at this time of year. I collected some large cones at the weekend, with a view to extracting some nuts. In theory all pines have edible nuts, but some are so difficult to get to that people rarely bother. But I was intrigued, and I wouldn’t need many nuts to make a pesto for one.

 

I put my oven on a low heat and laid the cones on a baking tray. Before long my kitchen was filled with the warm, ecclesiastical fragrance of pine resin. After 45 minutes I removed the cones, which had now opened out slightly. I tried prizing open the layers but could see no nuts, so I twisted one of the cones as if opening a bottle. It collapsed into hundreds of triangles, each with a pocket at the tip. I cut one open and it oozed sticky resin that clung to my fingers and got everywhere. Floating in the resin was a tiny, almost translucent pine nut. I gave up half an hour and five nuts later, dejected and covered in pitch.

 

 I wondered how the squirrels managed to get at these nuts, or whether the tree, after millennia of pillaging, had developed state-of-the-art cones impenetrable to animals and birds. I guessed on the latter.

 

In any case, perhaps I was overlooking the real treasure. Could I use the resin for homemade Retsina?  Some sort of mastic-style gum or liqueur? Google suggested that I use it as a temporary tooth filling or to wax a violin bow, but I haven’t got any cavities and I don’t play the violin.

 

Eventually one culinary application came up. The lumberjacks of British Columbia used to boil a huge vat of pitch and cook their potatoes in it. They would then remove the outer skin of the potato that had made contact with the pitch and eat the inside.

I gave up on the pines after this.

 

The Italian Personal Chef - One HUGE risotto

The Traiteur - What does it all mean….?

 Traiter - verb. Means to treat, to receive, to welcome one to the table.

Madame Gautier is set up like any traiteur you may visit in the villages of France, but instead of a shop front, we wanted to catch a greater customer base so that’s when we decided to branch into the Farmers Markets around London.

With our debut appearance at Fulham Farmers market in the spring of 2005 which, unfortunately no longer exists, we had such a great response from some very loyal customers, we have grown and expanded from strength to strength throughout London at not only farmers markets but Events, festivals and even customer Weddings!!

Our ethos has been to provide something fresh, traditional and using our background - classically French quality products for customers to purchase and enjoy at a time they choose. Our aim is to source all of our ingredients locally and carefully to create well executed dishes, with many suppliers being farmers and producers from the markets we attend.

With the Farmers Markets being our prime location for customers to buy our weekly changing menu of products, we also offer an ordering service with delivery, and an opportunity to hire us for events.

 

Due to popular responses we also run a successful cookery school.The courses and classes take place in our professional kitchen in NW10, under the guidance of myself where participating students learn, prep and cook, we wash up! Ingredients are provided and students get to take home their creations to savour with family and friends. Our courses offer a structured and detailed series of lessons to enable the simple cook to blossom into a confident gourmet. Using only the best and freshest ingredients they will master methods and techniques in a relaxed environment at a pace to suit their culinary ambitions.

The idea of us becoming bloggers is in the hope we can provide you with our up an coming events, a weekly menu that tells you what we will be cooking up on markets as well as answering anything else people would like to know!!

I’d like to finish with a quote that I feel best sums up what we are about:

Brillat-Savarin around 1770 said that ‘ strangers had as yet very few sources in the way of good cheer… they were forced to have recourse to the innkeepers who were generally bad.. And he who wished to entertain some friends had to order in advance, so that those who had not the good luck to be invited to some wealthy house left the great city without knowing the resources and delights of Parisian cuisine’

Physiologie du gout - Meditation XXVII

 

 

The Coffee Connoisseur - Ten Commandments of Coffee

The aim of this short post is to get you to think about the basic principles of brewing good coffee.

1. Thou shalt know your machine.

Whether it’s an expensive espresso machine or a simple french press it is important you learn as much as you can about the particular method. A good place to start is reading the instructions. Ok, you may already know how to use a french press, but the instructions can let you know exactly how it was intended to be used. Knowing the “ins and outs” of brewing can only make the final product that little bit better.

2. Thou shalt have basic machine hygiene

Hygiene of the machine is of vital importance. You can have the freshest, highest quality beans from your favourite origin and farm, but with a dirty brewer it will taste awful and not show the final drink at its best. It never ceases to surprise me visiting some high volume coffee shops that we supply, with some of the finest espresso machines money can buy, how dirty they allow their machines to become. Have a routine that suits you, but keep it clean at all costs.

Something as simple as taking apart the mesh filter from a french press or cleaning the funnel on a moka pot can have huge benefits to your brew. Cleaning products like cafiza are widely available and help you keep your machine clean.

3. Thou shalt grind

The biggest asset to fine coffee is a quality grinder. If you buy nothing else, get a good burr grinder. Spending wisely at this stage can save the need for upgrade later (see coffee on a budget).

Spending as much as you can will reap its rewards. “So should I buy pre ground coffee?” I hear you cry, and the simple answer is no. Without going into too much detail here, (another topic for another article), coffee when ground releases CO2. CO2 acts as a delivery service for all those lovely unique tastes. Once the CO2 is released those great tastes are stranded without a courier to deliver them to your tongue.

Grind just before brewing (or as close to as you can). When I first became involved in coffee, I was once told as an experiment to grind coffee, and smell it straight away. Then after ten minutes return and smell again. In just ten minutes what was great coffee had become good coffee. Just imagine what days and months can do to it.

Practice with your grinder to find the perfect grind for you and your machine. I have used many hundreds of kilos in the past “dialling-in” grinders but not a gram has been wasted. Don’t be afraid for the short pain for a long term gain, again there are rewards to be reaped.

4. Thou shalt use quality water

An underestimated factor in coffee brewing surprisingly is water. Considering it makes up to 99% of the drink, I’m amazed more attention isn’t paid to it. Fresh water is a must, for some machines it is imperative it goes through a softener, although in a recent experiment with a friend we discussed that overly soft water in some brewing methods is a bad thing. Filtered water is a good idea and even bottled water can be used with the correct amounts of calcium (low), if your mains water is particularly bad.

5. Thou shalt use the correct water temperature

I feel a contentious issue coming on here. There are many schools of thought here but for the sake of this article I’m right they’re wrong. Water should be just off boiling at around 95-97ºC. Too hot and it will taste nasty and bitter (boil the bean spoil the bean), too cold and you will not get a proper extraction which is vital in the pursuit of the perfect cup.

6. Thou shalt extract correctly

Just as important is the amount of time the water is exposed to the coffee grounds. With a drip brewer this isn’t as much of a problem (although making sure the grounds are evenly distributed helps) but, for example, with espresso or with a vacuum pot, boy is this important. I’m not going to go into each individual method and discuss this here, but hopefully over the next few months there will be an article for the most common brewing methods were this will be discussed. Again instructions will help you understand the perfect extraction time.

7. Thou shalt Drink it fresh

If I ever see a filter brewer with a hotplate I’m 99% sure the coffee is going to be bad. If I see my espresso pulled and sitting on the side whilst the others are pulled I’m fairly sure its not going to be good. The simple message here is to drink as soon as it’s brewed. If you must keep say filter or french press then putting it in a vacuum flask is best. Never re-heat, never keep warm with a hot plate.

8. Thou shalt only drink speciality coffee.

9. Thou shalt think about the farmer and workers who produced your coffee, whilst drinking it.

10. Thou shalt enjoy your coffee

The London Forager - Lets Forage

First blog, so I’ll start with an introduction. I live, work and forage in London, where I grew up and where I returned to live five years ago. It’s not the most obvious foraging ground, and our website www.londonforager.com (still in development) is a stab at providing a realistic foraging …

The Italian Personal Chef - Spooky!

Zoë comes home from work

“I had this weird feeling we won £ 1,000,000 at the lottery and i was spending it already!” 
I startle
“Actually, i bought a ticket last week”
“Did you?” 
I produce a wrinkled ticket from the dark depths of my wallet
“You better check it then”
“Yeah, whatever”
Still, i check it online. The web page congratulates me for being a winner. My legs tremble. I check again.
My ticket matches three numbers: i’ve won the grand total of £10.

I tell the website to bugger off. Then i tell zoë that she was right, we had won the lottery but unfortunately she had wrongly guessed the number of zeroes. I politely request her to fine tune her female intuition.

The only way out is food. Nice, simple and comforting food. Nothing fancy, a classic like seppioline con i piselli. This dish is at its best whit tiny little baby squids. I only have two medium sized one so i cut them into rings. I sweat some red onions until soft with chopped garlic and coriander roots, then i add the squid rings and a glass of wine to the pot. Another glass of wine goes to comfort the cook. When the wine has evaporated, in goes some tomato passata. Squid doesn’t like half measures. Cook it either for a few seconds or for an hour and you’ll eat a lovely tender fish. Anything in between and you’ll end up with hardened chewing gum. When its almost ready i add some tiny peas straight from the freezer, from the same bag i used not so long ago to soothe my aching back (frozen peas, aren’t they magic?).

I should serve it with polenta, or potato mash but i opt for cous cous instead because its quicker, and looks better.

The Game Chef - THE GAME CHEF

Mark Gilchrist is the head chef and director of ‘Game For Everything’. He specialises in cooking game and only uses wild meat and seasonal produce to make his signature game pies and cater for events and dinner parties. He’s not afraid to experiment either and will confidently add an unusual twist, safe in the knowledge that ‘it just works’.

www.GameForEverything.co.uk

The Teamonger - THE TEAMONGER

Alex Fraser has been a consumer of east Asian teas for over forty years. His more than twenty year involvement with the Japanese Way of Tea (a.k.a.Japanese Tea Ceremony) brought him a scholarship to study it full-time in Kyoto for three years. He sells tea and utensils at London’s Borough Market and is an Associate Lecturer at the University of the Arts London, involved in Cultural Studies and Ceramic Design, which link strongly with his involvement with tea culture.

www.eastteas.com

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