Part 14. Under Pressure

Raised garlic mushroom, thyme and white wine pie, our Keanu hits warp speed, and what....... no grains?

Hiya one and all. As you know, it’s 2004, and it’s December, Britney Spears was never off the radio, and the final episode of Friends was aired. But more importantly than that, we had opened a vegetarian restaurant in York, it had been open for less than two weeks, and it was going really really well, plus, the stainless steel bench had finally arrived. York was packed with Christmas shoppers looking for gifts, and drinking mulled wine from those decorated sheds. Lots of them visited us for lunch, and promised they'd be back in the New Year.

We were busy, very busy, the three of us spent each day trying to keep up, it was knackering, but so enjoyable at the same time. It was such a buzz to hear happy diners chattering, and blocking out the Keane tracks. We often said to each other, on our late night drive back to Teesside, that we should have done it years ago.

Donna and I were in our early thirties, and the fuel tank was full of enthusiasm, ideas and plans were constantly brewing for the future. All we ever wanted to do was to get better, and not stand still or become stagnant. Our Keanu was in his early twenties, so he was on warp speed, he moved so fast, you couldn’t actually see him moving, or maybe he wasn’t.

As a tiny team of three, we worked well together, and often we didn't need to speak to each other, we read each others thoughts. Weird eh?

So, although it was fast and furious, we were running with it, days felt like minutes, no sleep required. But overall, we felt that all our hard work (so far) was being recognised.

Now, initially we were only open for lunchtime service, but as we had finally managed to get hold of a liquor license, we could open for evening service also. Financially, we couldn't manage on lunch services only, so opening evenings was important. And, it was Christmas, so we would definitely be busy. This would be, in a way, our second opening.

We were excited about this, lunchtime food was still interesting, but we kept it safe for those wanting a quick meal. But we pushed it a bit further for evenings.

So what is meant by pushing it a bit?

OK, compared to the restaurant world today, it was as tame as a tortoise, as meek as a meerkat and as safe as James May. Want some examples? A warm Gazpacho with sweet potato dumplings, a savoury bread and butter pudding and a minted pea and creme fraîche soup. Oh yea, and a popular starter of fried Haloumi with caramelised peach chutney, and some rocket leaves, of course.

Donna tells me not to cringe when we recall these old dishes, but I can’t bear it, to me they seem amateur, dull, unadventurous and to be honest, embarrassing. A bit like when you look back at old photos of yourself at a family wedding, you know, that perm, the blue eyeliner, the pale blue shell suit, or that blazer, with helicopter landing pads in the shoulders.

Same with me and old menus.

But lets remember, it was very different twenty years ago, diners even asked Donna what Haloumi was, they didn’t know that it was cheese. And when they read that it was fried, well, lots of bemused faces.

So there we go, we’re open lunch and dinner now, how easy was that. And luckily, evening service was causing a lot of interest, people were inquisitive, intrigued, and they were pleasantly surprised. We were feeling quietly confident, we even took a handful of reservations for the New Year.

Well, isn't there always a but? Most people were pleasantly surprised, some of them were not. There was another reaction from some diners which confused us. You see, as far as we were concerned, vegetarians were bored daftless of pasta bake, chickpea curry and knitted mung bean quiche. But we were wrong, there was a defiant group who were determined to keep the stereotype alive.

Let’s have a little story which explains this quite well.

A guy knocked on the door one day, in the afternoon when we were closed. He said he wanted to book a table for six people, but first, he wanted to have a look around. To look around at what? What could he possibly want to see? The kitchen? The toilets? Me and Donna?

No, none of those, he just wanted to look around, and to tell us how great he was. So, he stood in one spot and glanced around for all of five seconds, then started to tell us that he was a poet, that was his occupation, but people didn’t want to pay for his type of poetry, so he supplemented his occupation with a job as a teacher. So, basically he was a teacher, and in his spare time, his hobby was writing poetry, which nobody liked, that’s how I saw it. You can probably guess that this wasn’t going to be a positive experience. Well, he decided that we were worthy enough, and he booked a table, how lucky we were.

And when the joyous evening arrived, as soon as they walked through the door, we knew that they wouldn't be happy. You can tell, the crossed arms, the little sniffs, and zero enthusiasm. And after a few seconds of briefly looking over the menu, one of them blurted out, in horror, “what, no grains, no pulses?”. Chances are, even if there were some mung beans and quinoa on the menu, they still wouldn't be happy.

And this reaction continued forever, both in York and in London, along with another ongoing grumble. The price.  Certain diners believed that veggie food should be cheap and cheerful, as if we were offering a public service, a place to refuel, a vegetarian community centre.

For some unknown reason, over all the years that we traded, this was a continuing theme, some refused to enjoy, or even like what we did. It’s as if we had broken some unwritten rule which said that all vegetarian food should be stuck in 1979, and if you dared break that rule, your name would be blackened on Tripadvisor for eternity. So we were wrong. Back to Beanbag Café for them.

But, there was lots of diners who were thankful for Vanilla Black, as, like us, they were bored stiff of the usual dull suspects. Some even told us that they often avoided dining out, as there was no point.

But, something else happened, which also took us by surprise, pleasantly. What we found was that the newer generation of vegetarians were enjoying this new food adventure, they encouraged us to break that hippy rule, not that we needed much encouragement.

Plus, and even more of a surprise, the meat eaters embraced us, they were interested in what we were doing, not the meat and two veg type, but those who were interested generally, in food. This was a good thing, they were regarding us as an experience, and not just a vegetarian restaurant.

So, we’re running two services by this point. Our Keanu is happy with the extra hours, money grabber, and as expected, it’s very busy. It’s so busy that we’re running on auto, no time to think or digest what is happening. It’s a case of opening the doors for lunch, run around very quickly, close the doors, work a lot, open the doors, run like billyo, close the doors, drive home, sleep.

One night our Keanu, moving at warp speed remember, transported himself into the kitchen, and appeared in front of me, flustered, agitated and almost breathless. Turns out that some bloke had complained because his locally brewed ale was thick. “What does Donna say?” I ask him quickly, while I’m whisking, stirring, heating and burning foodstuffs. “She’s busy at a table, they're talking her ears off”, so I tell him to tell the bloke that the ale is hand made, locally produced, and all that type of thing, it contains real ingredients, it’s bound to have some body. “And Keanu, if he wants a crystal clear pissy brew, we’ll get him a Stella”.

Keanu vanished as quickly as he appeared, and I continued to move like a culinary ninja.

About an hour later, which is a minute in restaurant time, our Keanu was back in my vision, asking for more bread for Bed 2. As I was slicing the bread, with arms number seven and eight, I remembered the ‘thick’ ale situation. “Oi Keanu, what happened with the bloke and the beer?”, “well I told him what you said about it being local, and that it was supposed to be like that, but he just shook his head at me”.

“You see our Keanu, some people just don’t get it. Here’s your bread.”

And that’s that, no time to think about our Keanu and beer bloke.

Well, the service came to a slow down, we washed, swept, cleaned and inhaled the warm, atmospheric air. Everyone had left and I opened the kitchen door, so we could all hear each other. As we had a shouty conversation between the two rooms, beer bloke came back to us. Our Keanu remembered that he had kept the brown bottle of beer as he didn’t know what to do with it.

Donna was confused because our Keanu hadn't had time to tell her, she was in the dark, just like the real ale.

So our Keanu retrieved it from behind a stack of dirty glasses, and poured some for us, to see the alleged thickness. What we saw was something we had never seen before, or since. As he poured the ale, it trickled into the glass like half set jelly, it was gloopy, lumpy, and yea, thick.

Me, “Keanu, what have you done?”

Donna, “what happened?”

Me, “Keanu was trying to give this to someone”.

Our Keanu, “eh, I told you the bloke said it was thick”.

Me, “yea but not like this, you didn’t tell me it was like jelly, no wonder he complained”.

Donna, “Keanu, why didn’t you tell me?”.

Our Keanu, “you were too busy talking to Bed 7”.

Donna, “but I wasn't talking to them all night, you could have told me afterwards”.

Me, “I thought you said it was just thick, he’d need a spoon for this.”.

Our Keanu, “why am I getting the blame? I didn’t make the stuff.”.

Donna, “Keir, you should have told me I could have spoken to the guy.”. (Please note that Donna called him Kier, it was only me who called him Keanu).

Our Keanu, “I did communicate, to Andrew. He told me to tell the bloke that it was meant to be like that”.

Donna, “Andrew, why did you tell him to say that?”.

And there we go, all of a sudden it becomes my fault. And maybe it was, even though I was about ten metres away, and didn't even see the bloke, so yea, my fault.

So as you can see, when your head is down, and the restaurant is bouncing, there’s no way you can control everything.

You're tired and your feet hurt, you have oven burns on your arm, you didn’t have time to eat, so there’s no space in your head for anything else.

The one thing we all knew is that we needed another member of staff to join us in the New Year, hopefully. But if business slackened off in the new year, would we need a new member of staff? We needed a crystal ball to run the restaurant. We didn’t have the time or head space to organise it now, it would have to wait.

Leave a little wine in the mix

Now, isn't it funny how some things fall into place? A day or two later a lass walked into the restaurant as we were setting up. Turns out she worked in the  office next door, she was looking for some part time work after Christmas, just a few hours a week, and only for a few months. Sorted, after Christmas, Tricky Vicky would join us, so let’s hope the busyness continues.

Leave a little pastry overhang

Well, time for a recipe. This is another adaptation from the early days of Vanilla Black, it was very popular, raised Portobello mushroom and lovage pie. But we’ve changed it a little. If you've never made hot water pastry before, don’t worry, it’s dead easy to make, and handle.

However, it’s usually associated with pork pies, and it’s made using lard. We won’t be using lard, and we won’t be using lovage either, it’s a pain to get hold of.

Quick fact, the reason lard is used in pork pies is because as the pork is put in the pie raw, it obviously takes a long time to cook. If you used butter in the pastry, by the time the meat was cooked the butter would have burnt and given a bad taste to the pie. Fact!

Raised Garlic Mushroom, Thyme and White Wine Pie

Dairy free and makes two pies. Pre heat the oven to 180c, 160c fan or gas 4.

Ingredients

1/4             Small onion, finely chopped

4 cloves Garlic, finely chopped

300g White mushrooms, wiped clean and cut into quarters

6 Sprigs of thyme

Glug of white wine

Salt and oil

Pastry

80g Water

70g Sunflower oil

½ tsp Salt

180g Plain flour

Method

-Add a little oil to a saucepan and gently fry the onions for five minutes.

-After five minutes add the garlic, cook for another two minutes. Basically you just want the onions and garlic to brown a little.

—Now add the mushrooms and thyme sprigs. Don’t bother chopping the thyme or trying to remove the fiddly leaves, just throw the sprigs in.

-Cook until the mushrooms are softened and slightly browned, about five minutes on a medium heat, depending on the size of your mushys.

-Next, add the glug of wine and cook for a minute, however, try not to boil away all of the wine, leave a couple of tablespoons for moisture. Season with a quarter teaspoon of salt then taste to see if you need more.

-Transfer to a bowl to cool, keep the dirty pan.

-For the pastry, add the water, oil and salt to the dirty pan (saves washing up and adds flavour to the pastry), bring to a boil, then add the flour. Remove from the heat and mix thoroughly to form a ball.

-You don’t want the pastry to cool down too much as it is difficult to mould, but as soon as the pastry is cool enough to handle, push it into a metal ring mould and use your fingers to shape it into a pastry case shape. Keep some for the lids.

-If you don’t have a ring mould use a small jam jar to shape it around until you have a pastry bucket. You will need to chill them so that they hold a shape. Then remove the jar.

-Then fill the pastry ‘buckets’ with the mushrooms, don’t forget to remove the thyme sprigs, push the mushrooms down a bit if needed. Add any last bits of liquid to the cases.

-Leave a little pastry overhanging, we’ll deal with that soon. Dampen this edge with a little water, then use your fingers to flatten the saved pieces of pastry into lids.

-Pop the lids on top and use your fingers to seal the lid securely in place. Pierce the top with a knife to give a steam hole, brush with a little soya milk, or regular milk if you want.

-Use a little knife to trim off the excess, keeping the blade angled away so that there is a little available for shrinkage.

-Cook for around 30 to 40 minutes or until the pastry is golden, if they need another five minutes, let them have it. Remember, the filling is already cooked, you’re just cooking the pastry.

-Once cooked, allow to cool in the mould until you can handle them. Then carefully remove the rings. If you didn't use rings, but shaped the pastry over a little jar, you don't need to do this bit.

-Eat them.

Join us next week as we are hit by the final Christmas rush and a vegetarian demands a job.