The BBC Great British Menu is back and starts with a great collection of Local Northern chefs, Andrew Pern from the Star Inn at Harome, Stephanie Moon from Rudding Park, Harrogate and Tim Bilton from The Butchers Arms, Hepworth and from over the border another local and previous winner Nigel Howarth of Northcote and Great British Menu judge.
You can watch how they get on at 6.30pm on BBC2 all this week…
Great British Menu Series 6 on BBC iPlayer
Saturday Kitchen this week again featured a Chorizo dish as Food Heaven! Yorkshire Chef James Martin made a Chorizo & chickpea stew with chorizo butter stuffed chicken.
The Chorizo butter is a really great and very versatile idea, it can be used as in this recipe or served on top of a steak, the chorizo & chickpea stew would also be good enough to serve on its own.
to make the Chorizo butter James just blitzed some cured chorizo with an equal amount of butter, you could just chop the chorizo and mix by hand with knobs of soft butter. He then stuff the chicken breast fillets with the chorizo butter, breadcrumbed and deep fryed. This was served on the chorizo & chickpea stew. Picante chorizo lightly fried with chopped onion & garlic, a glug of olive or rapeseed oil, tin of chopped tomatoes, 2 chopped fresh tomatoes, a tin of chickpeas, teaspoon of smoked paprika, chopped small red chilli, splash of chicken stock & a handful of fresh spinach leaves.
My Secret Supper Club & Twitter friend Olly Smith’s wine match was a Bodegas Age Rioja 2009 from M&S @ £6.99 you can follow Olly on Twitter here Olly Smith on Twitter
The full recipe is on the BBC Saturday Kitchen website here
Also on the programme Antonio Carluccio cooked up a wild boar sausage and lentil dish from Umbria. The lentils were cooked with celery leaves & garlic and served with the cured wild boar sausage.
During the snow a couple of weeks ago a cheese van was shipwrecked crashed in The Dales and adhering to the strict principles of “waste not want not” a small quantity of this cheese has been recycled! The cheese appears to have been distributed far and wide throughout the Dales and includes some splendid local crumbly white cheese as preferred by animated dogs! some with red fruit, some with yellow fruit and even a smoked variation of the same white local cheese! More cheese anyone! Brand names & locations withheld….
Camping food favourites:-
The Classic Campsite Fryup
The Campsite Fryup, comprising any or all of the following, all cooked in the same pan if possible, Bacon, eggs, sausages, black pudding, tomatoes, mushrooms & baked beans, couple of slices of bread, fried in the fat from above if possible! to save on the washing up the beans can be warmed in the trusty frying pan after you have fried & plated up.
Yorkshire Chorizo
A fantastic campsite staple, Yorkshire Chorizo can be stored as ambient so no need for a fridge, it is so universal as it can be eaten from the pack when you have the munchies, after the pub, after a big walk or climbing session, you can even just pop one in your rucsac to chomp on the trail! If you mange not to eat all the chorizo before you get back to the campsite you can slice & fry up a little, release the paprika infused oils and stir in some hot boiled pasta and you have a fantastic dressing/sauce for your pasta dish. The same lightly fried sliced chorizo can be drizzled over a nice mixed salad for a fab light lunch, maybe add a little rapeseed oil to give you more dressing.
For something a bit more substantial & warming how about adding chorizo to some, dried or tinned beans, e.g. broad or borlotti or even the baked beans leftover from breakfast! add stock cube & water, boil up until the beans are cooked & soft if you used dried and you have a substantial Chorizo Stew! you can add other bits depending on what you have, even better with added bacon or sausages for a cassoulet slant on the dish, or maybe more veg? some cabbage, spinach, carrots, potato, whatever….
Campsite BBQ
The other classic BBQ food is the campsite BBQ, you can cook pretty much anything on a BBQ! from beer can chicken to steamed fish (BBQ bags or just tin foil) or more traditional sausages, burgers, ribs, chops, steaks, my top tip for quick barbie food is the minute steak, thinly sliced toprump, cooks in seconds and great as party food!
If your camping in the Yorkshire Dales around Malham & Settle this summer or maybe staying in a bunk barn don’t forget to order your bacon, sausages, free range eggs and maybe some Yorkshire Chorizo from Paganum Online Famers Market in Kirkby Malham and we will deliver direct to your campsite!
I just love this advertising message for French Connection & somehow I find it apt so decided to share !
We all sat stunned as the pictures of the earthquake were broadcast round the world. New Zealand is a proud and prosperous country but in moments its second largest city, Christchurch was devastated. Its iconic cathedral lay in ruins, the proud symbol of the city reduced to rubble. As sad as it was to see, its a building, and buildings can be rebuilt, the lives however that were just as devastated may be far harder to repair.
Last Monday I was chatting on-line to Kiwi chef and Masterchef winner Mat Follas, it was just a general chat about maybe meeting up for a beer later than evening as Mat was going to be in London overnight. Needless to say we began to talk about the earthquake and I said if there was anything he was doing to raise funds then I was more than happy to help. The idea of a supper club was mentioned and we figured that we could do a supper club or pop-up for 20-30 people with Mat doing most of the cooking and me putting my event management background to use organising it. Then we both Tweeted the idea and everything changed beyond recognition.
Within 30minutes the 30 people idea was a distant memory, the numbers increased and the offers of help of all sorts flooded in. From chefs wanting to cook, to producers offering their best products to be used for the menu, to people who were happy simply wash up or wait tables.
I grabbed hold of a friend of mine John Comyn, who has kindly offered to take care of the admin on this, and we met up with Mat in a very late night pub in Borough about half past midnight to try and make sense of it all, the numbers were mind-blowing, the offers of help were humbling and the task facing us was daunting but one thing we agreed on was that we would take this as far as we possibly could and raise as much money as possible. I immediately recruited chef Grant Hawthorne to oversea the technical side of the meal and let us know exactly what was achievable with what time, personnel and produce we had to work with.
There is so much talk of social media these days and how it is changing the world and to be honest it is something I have always had a somewhat sceptical view of but now I see just how true it is. Twitter has taken this to a place we never even dreamed of. From a 30 person supper this is where we now stand.
The date choosen was the 4th of april, this is the soonest we could pull this together but more importantly it is the last day of the tax year so the tickets for the event and the raffle can be written off against this years tax bill! You can also go nuts at the auction safe in the knowledge that if you don’t spend it the government would only waste it!
200 guests attending a 7 course dinner cooked by a variety of very highly rated chefs, including the likes of
DominicChapman, Head Chef at The Royal Oak and Michelin Star holder
Mark Poynton, Chef Patron at Restaurant Alimentum, 3AA Rosettes and listed in the UK’s Top 60 Restaurants
Russel Brown, Chef Patron at Sienna and Michelin Star Holder
Alex Wood, Head Chef at St Stephens Club London
Adrian Oliver, Chef Patron of Margot’s Padstow
Mathew Tomkinson, Head Chef at The Montagu Arms and Michelin Star Holder
Darren Goodwin, Head Chef at Losehill Hotel and Spa
Not only that but
Mat Follas and Dhruv Baker winners of the last 2 series of Masterchef will be cooking alongside these guys
Just like Steve Groves winner of Masterchef The Professionals and now working alongside Toby Stuart at Roux Parliament Sq.
We even have Celebrity Masterchef winner Lisa Faulkner and Master Chef Judges Jon and Gregg on hand to help out on the night.
I can’t even begin to list the prizes that will be auctioned or raffled on the night, full details will be on the website soon but if you have been following us on Twitter @KaiWeCare then you know there are some truly amazing things already offered by so many generous people.
We plan to stream the auction and raffle live as well as make the raffle tickets available to those who won’t be able to make it on the night.
The ticket price will be £150 per person and include wine.
A full menu will be up on the site in the coming days once all the chefs have had a chance to swap ideas and steal the donated ingredients from each others courses!
We will also show the incredible quality of the produce and who so generously donated them.
The auction too is surpassing all expectations and a catalogue of items and those who were wonderful enough to give them to us will be available to view so you can be prepared to get your wallet out on the night. We are hoping to allow people bid via Twitter who are watching the live stream
Vanessa Kimbell contacted me and insisted that she be allowed organise the raffle, those of you who know her know how hard it is to say no to her and those of you who don’t just take my advice it’s pointless, just buy the tickets, it will be far easier and the prizes which will be announce shortly will be mind blowing.
What I ask now is this, those of you who have blogs will you please reprint this on your sites and put the links there for those who wish to contact us.
Twitter @Kaiwecare hashtag #KaiWeCare
Website: http://kaiwecare.weebly.com/
email: kaiwecare@gmail.com
Thank you all for your help and amazing support, it is ye who have changed this and helped make it what it is, Mat, John, Grant and I have merely tried our best to cling on.
There will be far more to follow but for now all I can say is that we are staggered and humbled by the out pouring of generosity
Regards
Dave Ahern
Aka @CorkGourmetGuy on Twitter
Some recent very kind visitors to Malham ordered a selection of meat from Paganum for their stay at the Bunk Barn in Malham and mentioned they would be bringing their own black pudding to go along with my dry cured bacon and Paganum sausages. What a pleasant suprise then when I delivered the order they had brought along some extra for me.
Chadwicks Original Bury Black Pudding is as the name suggest a fantastic traditional black pud and very good it was indeed… I swapped them for a couple of Yorkshire Chorizo so hope they were happy with the trade!
Watch out for the The Secret Supper Club starting on C4 Saturday February 5th from 4pm featuring lots of regional Food. Olly Smith presents this new format food show with a twist, food producers showcase their produce and then two are chosen to set up a Secret Supper, prepare all the food and host in an unusual location. 
Back in October Channel 4 spent three days in Malhamdale filming the Yorkshire episode of The Secret Supper Club. Foodie producers from all over Yorkshire were invited to showcase their produce at Malham Village Hall (no secret bugging devices this time!).
The Malham Tarn Boat House episode will be shown on C4 on Saturday the 19th at 3.50pm. More info on the C4 website here or if you missed the episode you can watch on C4oD here.
Yorkshire Chorizo is available from www.yorkshirechorizo.co.uk
Traditional dry cured cured bacons v mass produced….
Traditional dry cure bacon with either salt or a rub on cure, preserves and flavours the bacon and a percentage of moisture will be lost to the atmosphere during the curing process creating a firm dry bacon, the lost moisture and hence weight is a bit like the “angel’s share” in Whisky distilling and you have to be happy to lose this as it results in a better product. But some modern methods actually add moisture or brine to the meat either by imersion or even special brine injection systems. So when you cook bacon and you get that white scum, lots of moisture loss and shrinkage you can tell it has been cured the modern way with added water or brine.
Whereas Traditional dry cured bacon will cook beautifully, evenly and without the moisture loss or the scum and you can see and taste the difference…..
British Bacon? or is it? Current legislation allows foreign pork to be imported, cured in the UK and then labeled as British Bacon! is this OK with you? or is the legislation an ass!
After I had written this post I found The Telegraph Newspaper are also reporting on this “Save our Bacon – too much water in your bacon”
As part of our Fresh Radio Podcast Series (now available on iTunes here) myself & Ian Smith visited Rudding Park near Harrogate to meet up with Stephanie Moon for a spot of Wild Food Foraging. Stephanie the acclaimed Yorkshire Chef and local lass, a Farmers daughter from Tosside who trained at Craven College in Skipton then went on to ply her trade with Anton Mossiman at The Dorchester before returning to Coniston Hall and then Rudding Park. Stephanie was full of enthusiasm for local food and loves foraging for the seasonal wild food available on her doorstep in the splendid grounds of Rudding Park Hotel & Golf Club.
Stephanie took us on a tour of the grounds & golf course at Rudding park, we whizzed around in golf buggies stopping now and again to forage for all manner of edible goodies. Possibly the poshest foraging I have ever done! We collected all kinds of wild food bounty including Nettles, Wood Sorrell, Aleshoof, Blackberries, Hazelnuts and Sloes.
The wood sorrel or ground ivy as it is also known was the hardest to find and I am sure we must have walked over it several times until we eventually found a nice patch,
similar to clover but with a folded appearance to the leaves and with reddish brown stems, a slightly sour, citrus taste like the first bite of a green apple.
Aleshoof so called as Stephanie explained as it was used by the monks in brewing to flavour and clarify the beer before being superseded by hops. 
We also spotted some Hazelnuts and Blackthorn Sloes.
After all our foraging we retired to the bar for a coffee and Stephanie suggested we try the Yorkshire Tapas. A fantastic plate of miniature bite size dishes including mushroom soup in an espresso cup, fish & chips with tartare in newspaper, Whitby crab fishcake, bangers & mash with onion marmalade but the mash was piped into the sliced open sausage, Yorkshire cheese rarebit and Roast Beef in a mini Yorkshire pudding and belly pork with Apple sauce, all were delicious and a fantastic Yorkshire Dish.
Stephanie also has her own blog where she talks all things foraging along with a group of other chef’s, well worth a read here The Wild Cooks’ Blog
You can also listen to Stephanie talk about foraging on our podcast about our visit to Rudding Park here
Yorkshire Dales Food 