Part 50. The May Foodie One. What Difference Does It Make?

Avocado ice cream, broad bean custard and Salvador Dali.

If you put a like at the end of this, little Chaffinches will sing sweetly on your windowsill.

Well, this week it’s the foodie one, so no stories, well maybe a few.

Let’s go then. We may have mentioned this a few time, but we wanted to be completely different to any other vegetarian restaurant in existence. It was our goal.

But that’s actually quite a difficult thing to do.

Let’s have a look.. What actually is, different? Over the years we had many diners visit the restaurant for the ‘different’. However, one persons’ different is different to another persons’ different.

As an example, one persons’ version of different may be a macaroni cheese made with Red Leicester instead of Cheddar. That’s as far as there different goes.

Or maybe they heard that we were doing something different, and to them, that meant that the veggie curry was served with paratha instead of poppadoms. That was plenty different for them.

But for us, those differences, weren't different enough.

So when they turned up and read the menu……

Broad Bean Custard and Cheese and Onion Vinaigrette, Lemon Thyme Shortbread and Leaves

Or………

Yorkshire Feta Cheesecake with Rhubarb Chutney, Ginger Biscuit Crumbs and Cornichons

There was always some head scratching, eye rolling and tapping on Tripadvisor. For them, the different had gone on a completely different direction.

“Look at that Jean, the daft buggers have got shortbread on a starter.”

“That’s nowt Jim, there’s a cheesecake there as well, as a bloody starter.”

“Cheesecake! Oh ey, let’s go, that’s disgusting.”

And that’s what we meant by different. Taking something which is perceived as a dessert and dragging it over to a savoury version. Or taking something which is regarded as a savoury item, and plonking it into a dessert world. Or take a vegetable which should be savoury, and making it sweet. Stuff like that.

But as Jean and Jim would say, “Why?”

Well Jim, it’s a simple answer. You can get your mac ’n’ cheese anywhere, but we want you to come to us and have something you’ve never had before.

But being different is tricky, it comes with problems.

Yes, you can easily put a macaroni cheese into a pie, or add some roasted red and green peppers to that mac ’n’ cheese. You could even add a load of crispy fried onions as a topping to that dish. People would clap and cheer, they would tell you that you were a genius. You would take a bow, you’d be chuffed. A new dish has been invented.

But let’s be honest, a quick search on the internet would prove that three thousand people had already done it, years ago.

But we wanted to go further. So how about mac ’n’ cheese as a dessert? Yea, a dessert.

What about chocolate flavoured pasta with black cherries in Kirsch syrup and Ricotta ice cream? (Just made that up).

Or, pasta which has been sweetened and flavoured with vanilla and coffee. Then served with Mascarpone ice cream and brown sugar crumble.

They sound a bit odd don’t they? But they're just off the cuff, we didn't actually do those dishes. You get the idea though. When everyone else added a couple of ingredients to their mac n’n cheese to make it different, we would send it to another part of the menu.

Now, the problem with this different approach is this, some people will like it, but a large majority are likely to shoot you down for being a bit bonkers.

Or the broad bean custard mentioned earlier. That came from one of the chefs who worked for us, Peter. He suggested that we do a twist on a quiche. So he was given free reign to come up with an idea.

“And how the hell did you come up with that?”

Well Jim, the custard was egg, cream and milk, lightly cooked in a small mould with broad beans, that’s virtually the same as a quiche filling. The cheese and onion vinaigrette, because a quiche often contains a few onions, and cheese. The shortbread is basically a replacement for the pastry. OK, we added a bit of lemon thyme to marry wth the broadies, just to pep it up a bit. But it was just a form of a quiche, but cooked and assembled….differently. Easy.

If you would like to buy us a three quid coffee for mildly entertaining you, that’s the button.

And as the years rolled on, we pushed ourselves to go further. But, we had to be careful, there’s a risk that one can go too far, maybe we did sometimes.

But we ended up in a strange position. Pushing boundaries is what we became know for. It became expected of us. And as we did more pushing, the more Jim and Jean pushed back. It was glorious.

And vegetables in desserts, that’s quite popular now, but back then it was not so popular.

So on that point, we did a dessert with strawberries, vanilla panna cotta, brown butter crumble and tomatoes. After all, tomatoes are actually classed as a fruit.

But we had to remove it from the menu quickly. Why? Because it was too freaky? No. The sweetness of the tomatoes varied so much, when they were sweet it was good, almost had a refreshing note to it. But a week later, the tomatoes which were coming in, just weren't as sweet. It was too difficult to get consistency.

You live and learn.

However, a dish which did work, and it certainly shouldn't have, was this……

Espresso Sponge and Toffee Onions, Clotted Cream Ice Cream.

That dish was amazing. What actually happened was that the bitterness of the espresso balanced out the sweetness of the onions. Strange, you would have expected that the onions would have killed off any flavour on the plate, but it was the coffee which became the dominant leader. And then that clotted cream ice cream softened it all out.

It was like watching two warring nations being brought together with a soft creamy and indulgent intermediary. Where did that line come from?!

Want some more? Yes you do.

OK. We needed a light dessert on the menu, and someone in the kitchen suggested pineapple. Good call. But what else could go with pineapple?

So you let your mind start thinking about pineapple, you picture what other fruits pair with pineapple. Create an image of a shelf laden with fruits and see what pops out.

Apples? No, seems wrong.

Orange? Nah, too similar, you know, bit too sweet.

Pears? Odd!

Lime? Yea, that could work.

And did we just chop up the pineapple and plonk it in a bowl? Nope. We cooked it lightly in extra virgin olive oil and vanilla. The fruity olive oil tied up well with the pineapple.

But what else? We needed an ace card, something to make the dish stand out from any other pineapple dessert.

Coming up with new ideas is hard.*

We needed to add something which would make Jim and Jean wince.

Chilli, we added chilli.

Olive Oil and Vanilla Roasted Pineapple with Red Chilli Syrup and Lime Ice Cream.

We actually cooked the pineapple via a method known as sous vide, or boil in the bag as you know it. But put away those ideas of a rectangular piece of grey cod in parsley sauce from Youngs which you boiled in your saucepan.

No, this was pineapple with a little sugar, vanilla and extra virgin olive oil, vacuum sealed, then cooked at exactly eighty degrees. Then it was flash roasted to order, just to give a bit of colour and flavour. You see, if we roasted it from raw, it would have been as dry as sticks by the time it was cooked.

That’s the pineapple dish, we added the baby coriander because it worked with the chilli.

Did people like it? Those who were looking for it, yes. Those who were looking for fruit salad and Carnation evaporated milk, nope.

So you see, we were constantly exploring different methods of cooking food, and looking at ways to introduce ingredients into an alien location. And all along the main purpose was distancing ourselves from other vegetarian restaurants.

One more, then we’ll let you go.

When the eating of avocados was at it’s height, which was probably earlier in London than it was elsewhere. And before you start, yes it was, smashed avocado on toast has long been finished in London.

People started using avocado as an ingredient, for example, in a sponge. So because of that, we didn't use it in a sponge.

A chef who was working for us who was from the south of Argentina, told us that when he was a kid, his mother would often give him and his siblings a wedge of avocado and a bowl of sugar as a snack, to stop them moaning that they were hungry.

And when he came to Europe, he was surprised to see avocado only being used for savoury dishes. And that comment gave us an idea.

Milk Chocolate and Walnut Oil Pate with Avocado Ice Cream, Avocado Meringue, Dark Chocolate and Bee Pollen.

Yup, avocado ice cream.

Chocolate bits and avocado ice cream.

So there we go people, a few examples of how we messed with conventional pairings and forced people to remove their blinkers.

Hopefully, there a few ideas in there which you could use. Or maybe it just sets your mind whirling, that’s a good thing.

If anyone wants a recipe, give us a shout and we’ll see if we can dig it out.

Maybe on the next Foodie One we can look at how we took desserts into the savoury zone. Or maybe not.

Right, back to normal next week, thanks for reading anyway.

Andrew and Donna

*Apparently, the artist, Salvador Dali had an interesting method for coming up with new ideas for his art. He knew that as we fall to sleep there is a stage in the sleep process where we have some vivid, and often strange dreams. Salvador wanted to capture the images in the dreams, but he knew that as we fall deeper into our sleep, we forget them, or we remember very small snippets.

So, Salvador would sit on an armchair with a large key in one hand, and a dinner plate on the floor to one side. He would hang his hand over the side of the arm chair and allow himself to fall asleep. Now, as the the brain went through it’s vivid freaky stage, and onto the deep sleep section, the muscles relaxed, the key dropped from his hand and onto the plate. The noise woke him up, just as the dreams were about to fade away. Then he could capture those vivid dreams and images, which he would quickly sketch and make notes of. Some say that he also used some chemical assistance , but hey, who knows.