Building a Bistrot in France

And now I’m the receptionist!

chefinheels — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:25:50 +0000

Pretty much since the beginning, we’ve had an absolutely adorable old lady who lives here in the village as a regular customer. She has quite a large and far-flung family who also come regularly when they’re in the area. She has a son who lives in Collioure, and another son who is a retired chef and who lives in California with his kids and grandkids and they all come over in the summer. She is tiny and white haired and I cannot help myself but run out of the kitchen to give her a big hug whenshe comes. She probably finds this quite alarming, but I just can’t help myself.

Well today she came with her daughter and was even more tiny and bundled up in a fur (fake, I hope-but I doubt!) Having made it to her table downstairs having been hugged to death by me, she commented to Dave that the receptionist is so charming……

Well, good job I’m not precious about job titles! However, chuffed at being thought charming, natch.

And now I’m the receptionist!

chefinheels — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:19:56 +0000

Well, good job I’m not precious about job titles! However, chuffed at being thought charming, natch.

A tad nippy! ( And a gammy arm)

chefinheels — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:43:24 +0000

It’s probably nothing compared to other parts of Europe, but it’s -6.5° as we came home, and falling. We’ve split the dining room into two to make it easier to heat and the outer part is at 0°! Obviously we heat the inner part, in case you think we don’t heat any of it!! A solitary couple of guys ventured out into the nippiness tonight to give us something to do, so we are home quite early, hence a blogortunity.

Also, been suffering with a really sore left elbow and related muscular pain down to my wrist since just just after Christmas (mysteriously coincides with having a go at a new dance-ercise dvd that I got from Santa, but shh, don’t tell anyone!) So finally went to the Docs today for a diagnosis. Of-course I was convinced that it was bone cancer and Dave bet me €1 I’d get anti-inflammatories. Of-course he was right and I rightly paid up. He reckons he could go into business as a Doc and just oscillate between prescribing anti-inflamms, and anti-biotics. The other point here, really, is the oddity of knowing your Doc on a social level as well, it’s just more interesting to talk about skiing! It’s kind-of odd, but also a bit comforting. I know he finds it a bit wierd too – he socialises with loads of his patients!

So anyway, no bone cancer, thank heavens, just tennis elbow, torn tendons that join the muscle of my forearm to my knobbly elbow bone. So it has a name and I can plead weak and feeble! However rest is one of the treatments……I’ll have to teach Dave to cook…..on second thoughts…

Well, there’s only one thing you can do in these circs, and that is to go off and meet some good mates in a fab apartment in a new resort (to us)a 5 hr drive away for a couple of days and completely skive off for an extra couple of days. So we’re off on Sunday after the lunch service and back on Weds. Can’t wait!!

Curry Night

chefinheels — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:01:47 +0000

Curry Night for Feb!!

OOTD – (one of those days)

chefinheels — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:28:05 +0000

You know those days when you amaze even your own self with your stupidity and/or clumsiness? Well that was my day today. I have 2x8L deep fat fryers – pretty dinky by most pro kitchen standards- but even so they need rigorous oil changing, and today was the day! The procedure is that I grab some empty plastic 5L containers ( which the new oil comes in), insert a sort of removable tap in the bottom of the fryer and open the tap and it starts pouring into the container. Now, if you have been paying attention, you will notice that the fryers are 8 l and the containers are 5. So I have to survey closely the progress of drainage and nimbly change containers when the first one becomes full. Well, I started making bread …..lost my concentration ..and next thing, about 1 l of oil running across the floor… Arghhhhh and then the midday bells struck and we were open. Damn.

My commis chef!

chefinheels — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:33:18 +0000

Starting preps for curry night on Friday and getting a hand from my commis chef!!

A lovely set of beets!!

chefinheels — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:14:53 +0000

They had this tray of lovely heirloom beets at our cashncarry so I snapped them up. I wrapped them up in little foil parcels and roasted them with butter, lemon and thyme. There are orange, white and pink ones. The pink ones are particularly pretty. I have to say, though that they are really time consuming to prepare, I couldn’t consider using them in summer. Although they peel quite easily once cooked, it takes time.

Thank God that’s over – oh and happy new year everyone.

chefinheels — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:54:27 +0000

Well that was a bit of a supercharged week, I must say. We get quite a few people remark that – phew, we must be really busy in the run up to Christmas when quite the opposite is true. I suspect that it’s quite different in the bigger towns and cities where you may have office workers …. well…workers, having office parties, but not here in bumpkinsville, no siree. This year was even deader than usual with reports in the papers of the French staying at home this year for the holiday. No doubt everyone’s been scared to death with constant talk of Eurozone collapses, financial crises and so on.

However, there was a little surge between xmas and new year – a lot of snowless skiers included! It’s so warm and sunny here it all feels wrong (especially to the ski station owners).

I think I excelled myself, pulling off in one week 1. A 6 course xmas lunch 2. Maintaining our permanent menus 3. Lunch menus 4. Curry night and 5. Something special for new years lunch. Phew!!! I was cooking like a demon constantly. However, I think it all went well, people seemed happy. Have sympathy for the teams in restos if you go out for a special occasion meal like xmas lunch – it’s quite a bit of pressure to get it right as you will be remembered – more than usual – as being a part of their great, or crap! christmas. Arghhhh.

However for xmas lunch I went for it, so to speak, threw caution to the wind and used sous-vide tech which is reasonably new to me, so was a bit of a risk to use it xmas day morning!! However, I did turkey ballotines wrapped in pancetta and stuffed with cranberries, chestnuts and sausage meat for the main course served with truffled potato puree, pumpkin batons and morels. The pumpkin was also cooked long and slow sous-vide and as a result retained its vibrant orange colour and texture. The ballotines I had rolled up in cling film and then sous-vided and cooked for one hour at 64 degrees and
Then held at that temp until the table was ready for mains when I just finished them off in the frying pan to caramelise them. then cut them on the diagonal into 3 and perched each piece on mash and dressed the plate with the rest. It all went smoothly, you’ll be pleased to know, and the great thing is that it is just impossible to overcook anything – in fact the meat just stays juicy and yum, even more special, given that turkey is notoriously difficult to keep moist.

Needless to say, am feeling rather smug. Mostly knackered, but quite pleased with myself! Heres hoping you all are pleased with yourselves this year!!

Merry christmas everybody!

chefinheels — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 21:37:48 +0000

I think we’re about to make ourselves a bit unpopular with the locals – or really, to be more accurate, one of our lovely customers is about to make us a bit unpopular, I suspect. An elderly second homer is back for Christmas and came for lunch today. We must have moaned like billy-ho about the church bells the last time she was here which was just before we closed for holidays. Well apparently she met up with the mayor and told her that she was in ‘danger’ of us selling up and moving on as we couldn’t stand the bells all through the night!! Apparently she seemed a bit surprised that we should think it was a problem. She said that they were electronically controlled and easily changed! She didn’t sound offended or even bothered!!! OMG, it might actually be easy to get them stopped during the night!! Actually we heard complaints all summer from tourists who couldn’t sleep for the incessant ringing. I don’t think I notice anymore, except when I go away I sleep SO well, that I actually notice the ABSENCE of the bells. Just in case you think I’m being a bit neurotic, to be fair, they go every quarter and twice every hour, then at the 7′s of the clock are the Angelus bells which go on in a seemingly random fashion for several minutes. To make matters worse, one of the bells is cracked and they’re not even in tune!!

When we’ve mentioned the bloody bells before to people we’ve been told how proud the Catalan villagers are of their church bells, so haven’t wanted to rock the boat. However, Lovely Mme second homer said she was going to follow it up with the mayor this trip. Apparently we give people a reason to come to Vernet, and the mayor shouldn’t upset us!!! Yeah. Grrr. Watchout. Actually, Dave and I have a plan to take out the church tower, we’re just trying to source a rocket launcher….

On a different note, I have been glued for the last few weeks to Masterchef the Professionnels with Michel Roux Jr (hero!)and an array of amazingly talented chefs. I’m afraid I can’t bring myself to mention the twit Greg Wallace (what is he doing on it??!!). I consider myself fairly self taught, and an everlasting project. Also, I don’t have much contact with anyone else in our profession, which must be quite rare. So I get a bit starved of the watch-and-learn culture that other chefs have access to if they work in a large kitchen or even in a large town where there may be some networking between each other. So I was GLUED. Even Dave watched most of them – which is great because it also gave him another perspective of the kitchen – i.e I’m not necessarily neurotic when in full service – just stressed! He has actually stopped moaning about how long I take getting the plate finished just right to send out with the final decorations and touches etc. So it has been a valuable insight and source of inspiration for me – I feel inspired and invigorated and raring to learn new techniques and technologies (I have teach myself, though, that hasn’t changed!) Starting with the christmas day menu. Feel really excited about it!

Merry christmas everybody!

Our first curry night!!

chefinheels — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:02:00 +0000

So for winter we are doing a curry night on the last Friday of every month. I have spent the last year trying and testing curries on Dave (it’s a tough job….) and myself, of-course and have come up with some pretty special, really authentic curries, with complex mixes of spices. Really nerve wracking to have the first one, as we were as full as we could be with only two of us working. All Brits (well, two Belgians), so a tough crowd who know their curries, and I really wanted to live up to their expectations and not let them leave disappointed. Here is the menu:

The menu for our first curry night

You will have to zoom in on that, I think! We had Indian music (some great stuff by AR Rahman, the composer of Slumdog Millionaire), we had cocktails; ‘Mangalore’ liqueur based – an amazing find with Indian spices and chilli – a bit sweet, but really aromatic and with a subtle kick of chilli. We had Bombay mix, we had it all! I have forgotten what bloody hard work it is to do these set menus – cooking for 30 or so is tough- loads of chopping, arranging, and the cooking pots are heavy and dangerously hot to get in and out of the oven…very hazardous and lengthy. Also, a bit of a phenomenon we didn’t expect was that people came in relatively bit groups, tables of 10, 8 etc, and they arrived more or less together, so I ran out of plates (!) and trying to get out lots of plates all together in my tiny space and all hot requires a fast action! However, despite some onion bhaji stress (for some reason at the last minute they decided to just disperse in the fryer, ending up with hundreds of little onion bits all over the fryer, arghh!), comments were positive, hooray!

Tomato and raisin chutney

Spicey prawn and pineapple kebabs, onion bhaji, with tamarind and date chutney

My one disappointment is the presentation of the curry – all plated a bit ’70′s fashion. What I would give to have some of those cute little balti dishes, you know, like the little mini woks. However it represents a bit of an investment that would negate the curry nights. Shame.

Good thing, though, I discovered what an absolute joy it is to cook with all thses wonderful spices and flavours. I am absolutely in love with Indian cooking, so much so that Dave is a bit worried we are going to transform into an Indian restaurant!