Canadian Wild Rice, House Of Fraser, Asian Food

Well?..another busy week at Your Chef! We had a couple of dinners , a cake buffet, which was a dream to prep for ( I love baking cakes) and a lunch. We rounded off the week yesterday with a harvest festival lunch for 80 people, the excellent topside of beef supplied by Waters butchers in Brigg went down a treat.

Coming up?.if you are in Lincoln on Thursday pop into House of Fraser (Binns) and I will be cooking up some curries along with Maff Huda of Mr Huda?s Surma secrets. We will be cooking and distributing samples of some great Asian dishes. If you pop in come and make yourself known.

Weddings are getting booked up for next year at a nice rate of knots. I have even had an enquiry for 2011 !

What is in season this week?well I though I?d go for Damsons, my friend Joyce makes the best damson jam ever. I had a bash at it last week with some damsons that my neighbor gave me and I was quite pleased with the results. The recipe I used was on the following website http://homepage.ntlworld.com/family.lindop/Jam/damson.htm
It worked very well for me.

I have some Canadian wild rice to cook up and try this week so I will have some recipes involving that next week.

Thanks for reading, have a great week

"YourChef" Chris Sharpe

Surprise party, figs, Olympics

I am in trouble for not doing my blog last week, many apologies, I was very busy at the beginning of the week and then the weekend loomed and before I knew it the week had gone. Anyway, we have obviously had another busy week. The surprise party was truly a surprise to Sally and her husband Glynn had done a great job of organizing it all, she turned up to a garden full of 50 of her friends and family, a live singer, a hot buffet and more present and flowers than you could shake a stick at! Both Sally and her surprise guests all had a great time, and what a nice crowd of people they all were. I hope there were not too many sore heads the following morning.

We had dinners, lunches and a buffet to cater last week and have the same mix to cater for this week, I have an afternoon tea to deliver tomorrow and I’m looking forward to the baking this afternoon, I don’t very often get the chance to bake fancy cakes so that will be something different to do.

Following my recent efforts in the race for life I have decided to up my training and try and get fit enough to do the great north run next year. If anyone has any training tips or fancies a running buddy let me know.

What’s in season this week, well, in my garden my Fig has just delivered me my very first figs! I have had 5 of them and they are the first I have had from my 5 year old fig tree. So I thought I would give you a fig recipe as they are a delicious fruit and hugely under rated.In ancient Greece athletes would eat figs in training for the Olympics so I am going to eat my 5 and hope they help me in my training!! This is a really easy recipe and great if you haven’t cooked or eaten fresh figs before. Fresh figs will only keep for about 2 or 3 days so don’t buy them too far in advance.

Ingredients

12 ripe fresh figs
4tbsp clear honey
200g tub of Greek natural yoghurt
25g flaked almonds, lightly toasted

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180C. Trim the end of the stalks off each fig and then cut a cross into the top of each one and open it up slightly.
2. Place the figs in a non stick oven proof dish 3. Spoon the honey equally over the fruit cook at around 180C for 15 minutes until tender.
4. Add a good spoonful of Greek yoghurt to each one, sprinkle with the nuts and eat while they're still warm.

Thank you for reading, enjoy your week.

Hull Food festival, Curried Crusted Cod, Surprise Party

Another varied week at ?Your Chef?, a rather wet demonstration at Hull Global food fest and a couple of buffets thrown in for good measure!

In conjunction with Mr Huda?s Surma Secrets I did a demo at the Hull Global Food Fest last Friday, I demonstrated Tikka salmon, balti cous cous, a mushroom bahjee and some mint and tamarind dip. All the dishes went down very well, despite the weather deciding to degenerate just as I went on stage. Helen Philpot was an excellent host on stage and kept amazingly cheery and up beat even in the grey drizzle that persisted. So thanks to her for that. All the recipes that I did can be found on Mr Hudas website which is www.mr-hudas.co.uk they all went together really well and were very well received by the cagoule clad spectators!

This week we have a function on Wednesday night and a garden party on Friday, followed by a surprise party on Saturday. (I believe it is still a secret so details cannot be given as yet?!)

Seeing as I did some Curry demonstrations last week I thought I would carry on the spiced theme and give you this recipe for Curry Crusted Cod, it?s much, much healthier than fried fish and in my opinion its tastier. I really like this on Pollack as you can still taste all the flavours once the dish is put together. Its great served with a green salad and a small jacket potato, and the Mint and Tamarind dip goes perfectly.

Curry Crust for fish...
A quick easy dish that is healthier than deep fried fish but just as tasty...

This topping will be enough for 2 decent sized fillets (8-10oz each) of white fish such as Cod, Haddock or Pollack

2 thick slices of stale white or granary bread
2-3 tsp Mr Huda universal curry paste
A handful of fresh coriander..chopped
1 oz melted butter (can be ommitted or substituted for something more healthy)

Place all the ingredients except the butter in a food processor and pulse until your have something that looks like the texture of crumble topping, when this is done add the butter and pulse half a dozen times to mix the butter through the crumb mix. Put the crumb on top of the seasoned fish and pat down lightly, if you press too hard it will be too heavy and it you don't press it hard enough it will be too crumbly, so use your best judgement. Bake on a greased baking tray at about 180-200 C for about 20 minutes.Serve with a large mixed salad and some mint and tamarind yoghurt dip..

I always welcome any feedback from anyone who tries my recipes. It is always nice to know if they were easy to follow etc?so please do let me know if you try one.

If you cannot find a supplier for Mr Huda?s Curry spices let me know and I will let you know where your nearest supplier is located. It?s a great product and deserves to be tried.

Thank you for reading, enjoy your week.

?YourChef? Chris Sharpe

Hull Global food Fest, RAF, Reunion, weddings, Mr Huda's

What a very productive week we have had. We catered for the whole weekend for the RAF reunion at Elsham and what a lovely atmosphere it was, and what lovely people we encountered.

We are doing a demonstration at Hull Global food fest this week and can be seen on stage at around 11.30 on Friday 4^th September. We will be demonstrating several dishes using Mr Huda’s Surma secret spices. If you come and watch please come over and say hello. If you can’t catch us at the demo itself then come to Mr Huda’s stand and make yourself known.

We have a surprise party to cater for next Saturday so I obviously can’t give you any more details at present in case something gives the game away, but I will report back after the event and let you know how it went.

I think next year is going to be a good wedding year as we have had several bookings already, and more enquires are coming in each day.

This weeks recipe is using Plums, which are in season and extremely plentiful. The sharpness of the vinegar and the sweetness of the plums complement the pork really well. You can also make a plum compote to go with roast pork by using the same ingredients and simmering it for around 25 mins in an uncovered pan. Give it a try I hope you like it.

INGREDIENTS for 4 people

• 4 (3/4 inch thick) boneless pork chops
• 4 ripe plums, pitted and quartered
• 180 ml pineapple juice
• 30 ml balsamic vinegar
• 40 g brown sugar
• 2 g ground cinnamon
• 0.4 g ground ginger
• 0.8 g ground nutmeg

DIRECTIONS

1. Place the pork chops, and plums into an oven proof casserole with a lid. Mix together the pineapple juice, balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg in a bowl, stirring to dissolve the sugar, and pour the mixture over the pork chops and plums. Cook on 180 for around 1 hr 30 mins then remove the lid for 20 minutes and return to the oven. .

Thank you for reading, enjoy your week.

"YourChef" Chris Sharpe