Part 24. The November Foodie One. Let Me Entertain You

Smoked paprika biscuits, pasta becomes pastry and sweetcorn in your make up.

If you can manage to lift your finger after reading this, could you put a like on it for Saturday Girl Rosie.

Right here we go again, and it’s all about food this week at Vanilla Black.

We’re sure you remember that we did mention that once a month we’ll dedicate a post to all things food at the restaurant.

We felt that the food wasn't getting enough attention, and it was proving tricky trying to shoe horn it into the weekly story.

At the end of the day, diners, and I’m sure some of the readers here, came to us for the quirky, original, unusual flavour combinations and generally, dishes that they couldn’t get in another restaurant.

Often referred to as the wacky vegetarian, restaurant we wore that title with pride. And keeping that crown took a lot of imagination and recipe testing.

We didn't recreate recipes from cookbooks or other eateries, we created our own style and approach. Sometimes, if we realised we had accidentally created a dish which resembled someone else’s, it would have to go.

In an edible nutshell, every dish we created was ours, we didn’t use anyone else's dish ideas, and every dish had to fit the menu. What’s interesting is that initially we were regarded as just a vegetarian restaurant, but over time we saw other restaurants copying our ideas. And this was mainly meat restaurants, not other vegetarian restaurants. Builders Tea Ice Cream is just one example.

Actually, and we can’t name names, we interviewed a chef who told us that their former boss, a high profile restaurateur, had taken pics of our dishes and given them to his kitchen team they were told to copy them. There you go.

So this is why we feel that once a month we should chat about food.

So we’ll share how ideas came about, how a dish starts from a thought and ends up on the menu. And we don’t mean taking a pasta bake and putting oregano in it instead of basil. Whoppee do!

This is about going deeper into food, and looking at it from across the room.

Hopefully there are some of you who read this and are inspired to experiment a bit more. If some of you aren't inspired, might as well stop right here.

OK, from the very beginning, before the restaurant was actually opened, we had eaten out quite a bit, and became disillusioned with the repetition of the offerings we were subjected to as vegetarians. Actually, even in a meat restaurant, dishes are often repeated from place to place. We often joked that you could switch menus from two restaurants, and no one would even notice. Remember ham hock terrine? In the early 2000s almost every restaurant had it on the menu. Oh no, sorry, some served it with piccalilli and some served it with mustard.

You see, as far as Donna and I see it, going out for a meal is a form of entertainment. Just as for others, going to a football match or shopping for a pair of trainers is a form of entertainment to them.

So from the beginning we wanted Vanilla Black to entertain via it’s food. And we wanted to make diners think, and to question. We wanted to create dishes that diners couldn't make at home or order from their local takeaway.

We just wanted to take veggie food out of it’s blueprint and turn it upside down. It’s about feeding the mind, not the belly.

OK, let’s start with the first thought. Hold on.

Imagine a chicken casserole, basically some onions, garlic, a few bits of veg and the chicken. And all that is bubbling away in some water or stock.

Now, if we were to add a tablespoon of curry powder to that casserole, does it become a chicken curry?

No? Why not? I mean, apart form a few different ingredients, say coconut or yoghurt, what’s the difference between the two. Bottom line, base line, they’re both very similar.

OK. Let’s try again. Try to imagine a beef casserole, beef, onions blah blah. If we decide to add some red wine and a few bits of bacon, does it then become that classic French dish, Boeuf Bourguignon? If not, it ain’t far off is it?

Confused yet? Good! That means you’re still reading, or listening.

Let’s go a little deeper, and we’ve touched on this before. The basic ingredients of shortcrust pastry, are, flour, fat, probably butter, and water. Yea yea, theres salt or sugar missing, but they are the basic ingredients, the bottom line.

OK, the basic ingredients of pasta, are, flour, fat, probably olive oil, and water.

Now I know that some recipes call for an egg yolk in both, but bottom line, the ingredients are the same. Granted, they may differ in form, butter is solid and oil is liquid as example. And yes the ratio and quantities will differ.

But when we stand on the other side of the room and look at the two in this new way, aren't pastry and pasta almost the same thing?

So in that case, isn't a lasagne just a mince pie?

Or try this. A cheese and tomato sarnie on white bread. Nowt wrong with that is there.

But let’s say that before making the bread for this simple sandwich, someone flattened the white dough and shaped it into a circle. Then this food anarchist chops some tomatoes and sprinkles them onto the uncooked bread dough, then they throw on a handful of cheese. Then they bang it in the oven until it’s cooked and the cheese has melted.

So therefore, isn’t a pizza just a warm flattened sandwich? The ingredients are the same. But you wouldn't pay twelve quid for a cheese and tomato sandwich. And if we go back turn that cheese and tomato sandwich into a toastie, it’s even closer to a pizza.

So you see, most dishes are the same, at the core that is. And if we change the way we look the the ingredients and their assembly, we can start to be more creative. We can break some rules and go further.

Let’s do that now, and this is off the top off my head. Instead of starting with a sandwich, we’ll go the other way around. Lets start with a regular pepperoni pizza, and turn it into a sandwich. Like this, white sliced bread, tomato, pepperoni, cheese and a few basil leaves. Not a bad little sarnie to take to work with a bag of pickled onion Monster Munch.

However, now take that sandwich and put it in the toastie machine, now it’s a decent light meal if you have a handful of salad with it.

Or stand on the other side of the room and look again.

Let’s say that you’re a posh person and you made a fancy cheese and tomato buttie. You’ve got wholemeal sourdough, topped with shaved Pecorino, sun dried tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, basil and thyme leaves. Sounds good eh?

Now, could we turn that sandwich into a pizza? A wholemeal sourdough base, cherry tomato sauce, sunny dried tomatoes, Pecorino, basil and thyme.

You see, once you realise that everything is the same, you also realise that you can start crossing over, with some interesting results.

Back to the pastry and pasta. And again, I haven't actually tried this, it’s from the back of my mind. How about we make some pasta, but add sugar and cinnamon to the dough instead of salt. Then shape it and cook it as usual, then serve it with wedges of caramelised apples and toasted hazelnuts.

Not sure what that would actually taste like, but if you’re catching up, you’ll get that it’s based around apple pie, the pasta becoming the pastry element.

Or, you know that dried green pasta you see in the shops, it’s made with the addition of spinach. So, could we add a spinach purée into a short crust pastry mix, as someone did with the pasta, then make a cheese filling. Spinach and cheese pie, but the spinach is in the pastry. So the pastry is copying the pasta verde.

Hybrid dishes, created just by looking at food in it’s basic form. Anyone lost yet?

Now, Donna and I were chatting, and because we like you all, we did an experiment..

Eggy bread, 2024..

Let’s go. Eggy Bread, Gypsy Toast, or French Toast, what actually is it? Without using those titles, it’s just bread dipped in beaten egg and fried.

Or if we look again, it’s a piece of bread wrapped in an omelette. Got it?

Or could it be a fried egg sandwich? The ingredients are the same, and the process is almost the same.

In what what other form do we see an egg sandwich? An egg mayonnaise sandwich. Yes the eggs are boiled instead of being fried, but the bottom line is the same, egg and bread.

But hang on, why is egg mayonnaise made with boiled eggs, they don’t taste of very much.

It’s a well known fact that fried or roasted food has more flavour than boiled or steamed food. For example…….

Do you want roast potatoes or boiled potatoes?

Do you want fried onions or boiled onions?*

So the omelette, which is wrapped around the bread on Eggy Bread, is fried. So why can’t we have fried egg mayonnaise?

We’re going down some crazy thought paths here.

So this is what we did. We made a cheese and onion omelette, let it cool, then chopped it, as you would if you were making egg mayo sarnies, then folded in a tiny amount of mayonnaise.

Then, instead of putting it in a sandwich, we took the bread element and swapped it for brioche. The brioche was dry fried to give it a bit of flavour, then cooled a little, then the omelette mayo was served on top.

So all the elements of Gypsy Toast, but in the form of a sandwich, but with increased flavour.

Now, we don’t expect you to make this at home, but if you wanted to it’s pretty self explanatory, a basic omelette with some fried onions and cheese, cooled, then chopped and mixed with a little mayonnaise.

But think again. Could you take the omelette and add chopped herbs instead of cheese and onion? Sourdough instead of brioche?

Get it?

Eggy bread is just a pice of bread wrapped in an omelette, or a sandwich, or…. .

But wait! Let’s really mess things up. Get ready.

In the later years of Vanilla Black, we would have taken the eggs, mixed them with sugar and cream then frozen them into ice cream. Then we would have taken some brioche and dried it in the oven until golden and crispy. And then, we would have broken the brioche into pieces and folded it into the ice cream.

Toasted Brioche Ice Cream.

Isn’t that just a frozen version of Gypsy Toast? After all, the elements are the same, just put together in a different format.

If you’re finding this a little bit interesting and think we deserve a cup of coffee, you can drop three squid through that button and we would be dead chuffed.

Which brings us very nicely onto an incident which shows how this all actually happened in the real world.

We had a huge white board in the kitchen (left over from the internet cafe), which was used for the prep list and things to remember, such as stuff we had to buy from suppliers.

To one side of the board was a column which was reserved for menu ideas, and everyone in the restaurant was encouraged to stick an idea on there, no matter how daft. This was useful, but also a way of involving the whole team in the food.

Now, who do you think was the first to come up with an idea? No, not Tony Cannelloni, Tricky Vicki of course.

She suggested BBQ sweetcorn**. Tricky knew it wasn’t our style because we didn’t do casual food. And because of that, she thought it was funny. It was so funny, we still laugh like giddy gibbons all these years on. Oh look, my sides are splitting. 

However, the fashion designer, Paul Smith, once said, “If you can’t see inspiration in something, look again.”

So, this is what happened..…

We looked again.

We wanted to burn the sweetcorn, to barbecue it, but in a different process. So what about crème brûlée, that has burnt sugar on top.

But to continue the smoky theme, we focused on smoked paprika, and that works well with sweetcorn. We’re getting there.

Now these favours are a bit heavy, we needed some freshness. So if you were at a a BBQ with Tricky Vicki, what would you have with your barbecued sweetcorn? Some salad maybe?

OK, good ideas. But how did it all come together we hear you ask……..

Sweetcorn Crème Brûlée, Smoked Paprika Biscuits and Tomato Salsa. 

This became a popular starter on the menu in York, and it all stemmed from BBQ sweetcorn and TV.

Sorry, should have mentioned that it was a savoury dish. But hang on ………

Using this approach to dish development was helpful for front of house. When quizzed by diners, front of house were encouraged to tell the story behind a dish. So, Blackhead could tell a diner that the sweetcorn crème brûlée was the Vanilla Black take on BBQ sweetcorn, and explain how the different elements worked.

So you see, when we take the basic ingredients and focus on each one, we can create new dishes, which have possibly never existed before.

Cheers Tricky!

Thanks again for reading our ramblings, if you have any questions about the above, give us a shout. Or if you remember any particular dishes from the restaurant, let us know, we’ve forgotten a lot of them.

Next week it’s back to stories about running a restaurant and the daft things that happen.

Andrew and Donna

*This whole browning thing which is used to increase flavour is called the Maillard reaction. Google it.

** Did you know, the starch from sweetcorn is used as an absorbent in cosmetics to manage the shine on oily skin.

That’s what an omelette looks like close up..