Blanch & Shock Development

Dinner at The Russet

2011-12-07T17:39:00.001Z

The last food we shall cook this year will be at The Russet, a new café opening this week in Hackney Downs, a new venture for Steve Wilson - Blanch & Shock associate chef and founder of The People's Kitchen at Passing Clouds.

We will be cooking four courses, and a few snacks at either end, and Steve will be running the bar. The menu will be not be a traditional Christmas spread but will instead serve to glorify the winter ingredients that remain despite the cold. There will be no turkey...

There are forty seats available at our table.
They cost forty pounds.

The Menu

Carrots, juniper, rye, dill seed

Mussels, cauliflower and watercress

Pork, parsley root, medlars and chestnuts

Russet apples, fresh cheese, raisins

We are providing two options - a standard menu, and a vegetarian menu. If you have any allergies or intolerances, please inform us at the time of booking or e-mail - josh@blanchandshock.com

The Russet

Hackney Downs Studios

Amhurst Terrace

Hackney, E8 2BT

Map

The Lido Cafe Takeover III

2011-08-02T11:53:00.001+01:00

Heritage English Tomatoes

Toasted Almond Milk, early Blackberries, Mint and Hampshire Rose Cheese

Monkfish Cheeks,

Twice-cooked, with Marsh Samphire, Pickled Lemons, Chicken Skin and Parsley Sauce

Oxtail 'Tartare'

Cooked for 48 hours and aserved medium-rare with anAlderwood-smoked 62° Egg Yolk,Ruby Chard, Fried Garlic and Rye Bread

Suffolk Large White Pork

16hr Belly with Muscat Grapes, String Potatoes, Wild Fennel, and Chard Leaves

24hr (Sous Vide) Malt and Seaweed- glazed Pork Spare Rib with Plum Sauce

Nitro Aerated Dark Chocolate Parfait
Genoise Sponge, Kentish Cherries and Marsala

Coffee and Snacks

The Lido Cafe Takeover II

2011-07-15T19:47:00.008+01:00

The Menu

Tuesday 19th July, 2011

____________________________

High Easter Sourdough Bread

Homemade Goat's Cream Butter

English Tomatoes

Green Almonds, Quail's Egg, and Homegrown Garlic

Pig Cheeks

English Peas and their shoots, Summer Savory Vinegar

American Signal Crayfish

Brined, and as a broth, with Wild Fennel and Meadowsweet

Woodpigeon

New Season's Cherries, Toasted Wheat and Wood Sorrel

Roasted Hay Cream

White Currants, Blackcurrant Sauce and Charcoal Tuile

Coffee

Snacks

Crayfish Bob's at Two Degrees Festival

2011-06-05T15:42:00.004+01:00

We will be serving crayfish caught by Crayfish Bob at Art Admin's Two Degrees Festival, taking place at Toynbee Studios between Monday 13th and Friday 17th June. It is both a chance for us to serve an ingredient we haven't cooked before, and a chance for Bob to explain his quest to eradicate the American Signal Crayfish, an introduced and highly invasive species which has decimated stocks of our native White-Clawed Crayfish. We shall be dressing the crays with foraged and sustainably-sourced garnishes.

The dinner will be served in the courtyard of Toynbee Studios (Map)

The price is 5 pounds per head. More is revealed, and bookings can be made at the
Two Degrees website.

Twitter
Arts Admin - @artsadm

Two Degrees Festival - @two_degrees, #twodegs2011

Crayfish Bob in action

Download PDF

Images © Crayfish Bob 2011

Gwangju Biennale Celebration Dinner, June 6th

2011-05-25T22:47:00.007+01:00

DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES,THE LONDON DINNER HAS HAD TO BE POSTPONED.
WE SINCERELY APOLOGISE...

We shall be cooking a special dinner at The Gopher Hole on Old Street on Tuesday 7th June, in celebration of the 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale in South Korea. The dinner, curated by Dr. Crystal Bennes and Beatrice Galilee, will be a performance designed by Food Artist Caroline Hobkinson for which we shall be providing a menu based on food preservation. The dinner will be filmed and the resulting film will be projected at the Biennale in September, at which a similar event will happen.

Tickets to the dinner, which will include four courses and a glass of wine from Chapel Down are available via Paypal and cost 40 pounds each. Tickets are limited, and we would urge you to move fast if you would like to dine with us.

Please advise us of any allergies or dietary requirements at the time of booking either through Paypal or by email - enquiries@blanchandshock.com

'Not For Sale' Exhibition Dinners, March

2011-05-24T23:18:00.006+01:00

The retina of a Zebrafish' by Dr. Steve Wilson, 2011

As part of 'Not for Sale', an exhibition curated by Dr. Crystal Bennes (writer, critic and founder of SALON) we cooked a series of three dinners in the offices of Spoonfed in Angel Islington over the course of ten days in March. The menu evolved over the course of the project - we wanted to develop dishes that would feature repetitions of certain ingredients throughout the meal, and some replacements had to be made as the seasons were changing.

Chris at Buntings Butchers in Peckham taking the skin off a Middle White Pork Belly.

Brining Pork Belly, Cheeks and Ribs

Dehydrating Apple Peels to make a sweet/sour powder

Red Apple Peel after being dehydrated and ground with sour Malic Acid (derived from Apples)

Using our Polyscience Smoking Gun and Alderwood chips to smoke a reduction of Chicken Stock, Barley Malt Extract, Thyme and Mustard for the pork belly sandwich.

The last of the season's forced Champagne Rhubarb from Yorkshire, procured for us by Tim Sheehan at Franklins Farm Shop in Dulwich. We cooked the stalks en sous vide with honey, parsley stems and sugar to garnish the pork. We prepared more rhubarb in the same way to extract the juice for the Rhubarb 'Custard' Dessert.

Cornish Mackerel fillets, curing in Sicilian Lemon-infused Salt and Sugar

Brioche buns rising. We have recently been attempting to make our own bread rather than buy it as we used to. We have been experimenting with various recipes from chefs we admire, and have almost reached our perfect method.

Portobello mushroom 'steaks' curing in Thyme Salt for the vegetarian alternative to the pork. they were served with Samphire and Seaweed Powder.

Pork Cheek, cooked en sous vide for 8 hours and deep fried until crispy, to be served with 63°C poached Hen Eggs. Later in the week, the meat garnish changed to Oxtail, slow-cooked in veal jus en sous vide for 24 hours and garnished with Leeks.

The Belly Pork Skin roasted and subsequently crushed into crumbs for the sandwich.

We didn't have time to photograph all of the plates, and so some images of different iteration of each dish will have to be imagined, but here are some we managed to get...

Lemon-cured Cornish Mackerel
Marsh Samphire, Apple Gel, Channel Wrack Kelp Powder

63°C Poached Hen's Egg
Slow-cooked and fried Pork Cheeks

Middle White Pork Belly Sandwich
Brioche, Malt Sauce, Dried Wild Garlic, Poached Rhubarb and Crackling

Pears
Pecorino, Rocket Sauce, Quince Gel, Hemp Oil

Lemon Polenta CakeRhubarb "Custard", Applemint

Apple Balsamic Vinegar Caramel
Maldon Salt

Guests were invited to fish out their poached eggs from the circulating water bath which was installed and cooking the eggs thoughout the exhibition and first courses. We gave instructions on how to break open the eggs, and the diners plated the first component of the course. We then plated the garnishes at the table.

Mike explaining the plating of the egg course.

The Lido Cafe Takeover - Menu

2011-04-12T17:10:00.005+01:00

Writing the menu for our dinner at The Lido Café has involved the recent splendid weather enticing some of our favourite vegetables to the surface, and, trusting that nothing catastrophic befalls usgetting hold of them this week, we propose to serve the following:

Scallop

Samphire, Leek, Radish

Mackerel

Hay, Yoghurt, Seaweed, Apple

Hen Egg

Asparagus, Wild Garlic, Toast, Goats' Butter,

Beef

Oxtail, Bone Marrow, Yellow Carrot, Wild Leek

Beetroot

Strawberry, Mascarpone, Mint

-

Coffee and Petits Fours

Food Shopping in Berlin

2011-04-09T18:07:00.006+01:00

The first international job for Blanch & Shock has come in the shape of an invitation to Berlin from Light Collective, with whom we had the pleasure to work last year on a dinner inspired by the spectrum of colours. The dinner was served at Castle Gibson - where the entrepreneurial BBC reality show Dragon's Den is shot, and for this version, we are to take over a disused power substation in western Berlin. We build our kitchen on Thursday, supplemented with a staggering amount of equipment which Amy and Mike bravely drove over from London in our new van. For now though, we have been trawling the city for hard-to-find ingredients and esoteric cooking equipment (a spätzle maker...) and planning the menu as we unearth its content. We are used to knowing what we can get hold of and where when we are in London and we are faced with the possibility that the menu may change significantly at the last moment if the food seasons differ drastically to our own or we fail to break the language barrier..

Armed with technology, GCSE German and a diverse catalogue of abstract food-related hand gestures and noises, we set about translating what we thought we wanted into a new menu.

A dry-aging cabinet in FILETSTÜCK, an elegant brasserie and butchery in Prenzlauer Berg, where delicious looking Irish beef was lined up on perfect slate slabs and the air was perfumed with the smell of caramelizing meat, coming from the tiny kitchen in the back of the shop. It was 11 o'clock in the morning, which went some way towards dismissing our hunch that good food was going to be hard to find.

At LPG Biomarkt, also in Prenzlauer Berg, we found locally grown organic vegetables, including the famed Teltow Turnip, foraged wild garlic leaves, sea buckthorn in many guises (including Gummi Bear) and chunks of Beef Belly, which we hadn't encountered before in London.

At FrischeParadies, a smart food emporium to the east, we found fresh fish, Samphire, and an array of colourful varieties of fish roes. We lost our trains of thought in the meat department, transfixed by huge, vacuum-packed slabs of beef from around the world. Mike lovingly held an entire fillet of Australian Wagyu, and for the briefest of moments we considered blowing our entire food budget on it and serving it on its own, with a pot of mustard. Or taking it home and eating it ourselves.

In spite of the warnings from people concerned about our finances and state of mind, we headed to KaDeWe in the west of the south west of the city. KaDeWe is the biggest department store in Europe. it has been since 1925. The food hall on the top floor is a massive collection of 'stalls' and departments groaning with food - fish from around the world, a condiment section that could be measured in acres, and once again, a meat department at which the rest of the world seemed suddenly insignificant. Apart from beef from Argentina, Australia and USA, and more amazing-looking Wagyu 'Entrecôtes' (at €280. Per kilo) there is an offal department with such delights as Sheep Lung and Veal Oesophagus (for stock) and a whole game stand, with Boar, Venison, Antelope, Rabbits and poultry hearts and stomachs.

We tasted smoked Freshwater and Sea Eels, admired the colour clash of tropical fish amongst those we recognised, drank expensive coffee and made a mental note to become staggeringly wealthy and spend the rest of our lives shopping in the great food halls of the world.

Next: The Dinner

The Lido Cafe Takeover

2011-03-25T15:53:00.002Z

©The Lido Cafe

On Tuesday 19th April Blanch & Shock will be taking over the kitchen of the Lido Café in Brockwell Park and cooking a tasting menu inspired by the ingredients that are beginning to emerge after our harsh winter and showcasing some tricks and ideas we have been working on recently.

Following a recent refurbishment The Lido Café has re-opened to the public as a smart local restaurant with a delicious and carefully-sourced seasonal menu and gwine list, overlooking the terrace of the much loved Brockwell Lido. We are delighted to have been given the opportunity to use a professional kitchen and to cook and serve dinner in such a nice space.

There are 40 seats available for the dinner, priced at 40 pounds per person, which includes five courses and coffee.

The Lido Café will offer suggested pairings from their Wine List.

To book a seat, please contact The Lido Café:

E-Mail - info@thelidocafe.co.uk
Telephone: 0207 737 8183

or book in person:

View Larger Map

The Lido Café
Brockwell Lido
Dulwich Road,
London
SE24 0PA

Salon de Thé & Launch of Repurpose

2011-02-22T00:44:00.004Z

©Alan Fletcher

On March 4th Blanch & Shock will be collaborating with Leicester company Metro Boulot Dodo to host an event at their building, comprising an open discussion about art and theatre in repurposed buildings, and culminating in a pot luck dinner. The event builds on both of our experiences working with ex-industrial and ex-retail spaces and marks the launch of our toolkit document Repurpose: Space for the arts.

The event is open to all, free of charge, but please click on this link to register. We would love to see you there, please see the full invitation for more information.

   Metro Boulot Dodo is found at:

   10, Dryden Street
   Leicester
   LE1 3JP

Map

Twitter:

@blanchandshock

@MBDtweet

@CulturalEx2011

Eat Your Heart Out

2011-01-31T19:04:00.001Z

Blanch & Shock will once again be cooking the food for Eat Your Heart Out, an immersive theatrical experience devised and produced by our frequent collaborators, Kindle Theatre. We have worked with Kindle on various versions of Eat Your Heart Out, and have developed a new menu for this show, which will be staged in the Debut space in London Bridge as part of the inaugural Coming Up Festival, funded by IdeasTap and Old Vic New Voices.

The show will run for two nights, Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th February.
To buy tickets, see maps, and set the scene rather more poetically than we have here, head over to the
Eat Your Heart Out site.

Click to see previous posts on Eat Your Heart Out

Twitter:
@KindleTheatre
@ideastap

Adventures in Yoghurt

2011-01-24T18:34:00.003Z

We were asked to create a spread of miniature dishes for a corporate event in January produced by Polly Betton of Teatime Productions. The dishes were to be based on a range on yoghurt and fruit products, but given new textures and forms. Having not worked much with yoghurt in the past, we set about testing how we could affect it with hydrocolloids and gelling agents, and we ordered provisions of amazingly colourful liophilised (freeze-dried) fruit powders from Sosa Ingredients.

Powders (clockwise from left) Apple Peel, Raspberry, Strawberry

Walnut Shells containing Bee Pollen

Walnut - Honey Glass set into the Pollen

Apple Juice Gel Spheres set with Alginate and Calcium

'Strawberry Cheesecake', containing three fluid gels, Biscuit, Mascarpone and Strawberry, to be licked from the plate.

In the large side of the container we heaped a pile of Liquid Yoghurt Spheres atop a bed of freeze-dried Crispy Yoghurt, and in the other side, a pile of Cherry 'Caviar' made with Agar Agar, and finished with Cherry Froth

We stuck down the lids with Honey

A shard of Raspberry 'Glass' made with Pectin and Raspberry Puree in a pile of Yoghurt and Raspberry Powders.

Apple Spheres with dried Apple Peel and Puffed Rice powders and Apple Blossom leaves.

The Menu
_________________________________________________________________________

'Apple Rice Pudding'
Liquid Apple Spheres with Apple Peel and Puffed Rice Powders, Apple Blossom

Raspberry Yoghurt
Raspberry Glass, Raspberry and Yoghurt Powders

'Cherry Fruit Corner'
Cherry 'Caviar' and Froth, Liquid Yoghurt Beads and Dried Yoghurt Pieces

'Strawberry Cheesecake'
Biscuit, Mascarpone and Strawberry Gels

Light Collective

2010-12-14T01:40:00.003Z

©Sanna Fisher Payne

For a recent dinner commissioned by Light Collective for the launch of a range of high-quality LEDs with amazing colour rendering, made by Xicato. We served a five course tasting menu for thirty guests held at the mighty Castle Gibson in Stoke Newington (see Bees & Honey).

The dinner, based around the spectrum of primary colours, was preceded by amazing colour-changing cocktails, made by Robin Fegen of The Robin Collective, and served from a bar within the beautiful and dilapidated house/set adjacent to Castle Gibson.

Below are a few phone pictures from the kitchen during prep and service, followed by some much better images of the plates as they were sent out to the guests, taken by
Sanna Fisher-Payne

Prep
____________________

Red Legged Partridges awaiting their dissection.

Salt-Curing Gilthead Bream, to be served with Beet Spray and Microherbs.

Wild Blueberries, foraged by Amy in the summer. They were destined for a Blueberry Whipped Cream.

Roasting Partridge legs and thighs before slow-braising.


An attempt to make a sheet of Broccoli stem by freezing overlapping slices. In the end they were too thick to adhere to one another.


Grading Viola Flowers for the purple dessert.

The Drinks
_________________________________________________________

The Robin Collective, and their array of colour-changing drinks. The PH Values of the cocktail ingredients were manipulated to add a magical twist to Margaritas with their "Bizarregarita' and Citron Pressé.

The Courses
_______________________________________________________


Gilthead Bream cured for ten hours in Rock Salt and Sugar, garnished with Apple Blossom and Amaranth (Scarlet Cress) Leaves. At the table a sauce of Beetroot and Cider Vinegar was misted onto the plate from an atomiser.

For those not having fish, Flash-Pickled Beetroot and Dawn Apple Slices with garnishes as above.

Roasted Butternut Squash with Saffron infused Yoghurt, Lemon Pudding, Dehydrated Squash Crisps and Freeze-dried Yoghurt Powder.

Partridge breasts cooked en sous-vide with Cavolo Nero Purée and Partridge Jus, and Braised Leg and Thigh meat with blanched Broccoli and Cavolo Nero Tempura.

7 Hr Pork Belly, cooked en sous-vide and seared, with Mashed Blue Potatoes, Alkali-dyed Radishes, Mousseron and Chestnut Mushrooms and Medlar Purée.

Bitter Chocolate and Beetroot Torte with Wild Blueberry Whipped Cream, Viola Flowers and Parma Violet Powder.

The Menu
________________________________________________________
(Vegetarian alternative)

Suppliers
______________________________________________________

Fish
Moxon's, Dulwich

Vegetables, Fruit, Mushrooms
Pretty Traditional, Dulwich
Franklin's Farmshop, Dulwich
The National Fruit Collection at Brogdale, Kent

Microleaves
Wild Harvest, New Covent Garden Market

Meat
William Rose Butchers, Dulwich

Edible Flowers
First Leaf, Pembrokeshire


Steve Wilson (The People's Kitchen) Josh Pollen, Mike Knowlden (Blanch & Shock)

Twitter
_________________________________________________________

@blanchandshock
@lightcollective
@RobinRadio
@castlegibson
@sannafp

A winter Canape Menu..

2010-11-26T19:58:00.001Z

As London begins to freeze we are preparing for a small private event at which we will make canapés and cook a main course for 30 guests. Inspired by the onset of winter and some of the esoteric british ingredients that are still bountiful despite the cold, we shall prepare a tasting menu in miniature, as follows:

Scallops with 'Belle de Jour' Apples

Cured Mackerel with Sea Buckthorn and Sea Aster

Beetroot, Butternut Squash and Wigmore Cheese

Jerusalem Artichoke with Black Truffles

Beef with Horseradish and Cavolo Nero

Smoked Venison with Celeriac and Sourdough Toast

Malt Meringue with Whipped Chestnut

After the small bites, there will follow:

Lamb Noisette with Chervil Root, Baby Carrots and their Tops

Gilthead Bream with Parsley Root, Brussel Sprouts

Bone Dinner Pictures

2010-11-21T02:22:00.003Z

Some Pictures from our recent collaboration with Companis, Juneau Projects and Elizabeth Short at Eastside Projects Gallery in Birmingham.

See previous 'Bone Dinner Post' for more backstory...

Images by Chris Keenan, courtesy of Eastside Projects, and Josh Pollen


The Welcoming Commitee

Dining Room with Ribcage Audio Feed

The first canape - Rare Roasted Rack of Lamb

Mike with the second canape - Bacon, Apple Pudding and Thyme, served on a mixture of chicken thigh bones and veal shin bones.

After the bacon had been eaten, the bones were transformed into jewellery by Elizabeth Short, who had set up a drilling station on one corner of the dining table, and who created 35 unique pieces in just under three hours. The jewellery was labelled with the guests names to be taken away at the end of the night.

Elizabeth Short making Bone Jewellery

The Juneau Project, having installed wireless microphones in the kitchen and other strategic places in the dining room, twisted the recorded sounds into an epic piece of free noise which was played back into the room to accompany the sounds of flesh being eaten, Bones thrown to the floor and drunken laughter from the assembled carnivores.

Into a section of egg carton containing a thistle on one side and on the other, a hollow duck egg containing cubes of beetroot jelly and orange Jelly 'caviar' was slowly filled with a heavily-reduced Veal Consommé. The diners were instructed to drink the soup from the whole assemblage. Every single course was eaten without cutlery.

Josh plating Prawns for the 'Sucked Course', in which diners were presented with two prawns, seemingly attached to one prawn head. The prawns were poached in a bisque of their shells and legs, and the head was stuffed with a fluid gel of the Prawn brains cooked with reduced bisque.

A spinal column-shaped lickable course, consisting of a reduced, mint and thyme infused Chicken Stock. The stencils were made on a laser-cutter by Dipa Patel, with whom we have been working recently.

Josh hacking the roasted chickens in half with a meat cleaver

The table of bracelets and necklaces custom-made for the guests to take away.

All the shells, bones and carcasses were added to the growing, and by now primitively aromatic pile of bones in the centre of the room, and in turn the microphones turned the sounds into a twisted flesh- inspired soundscape.


Service over, Mike and Dipa take five.

The Menu

- Bone-Roasted Bacon with Apple Pudding and Thyme Leaves
- Roasted Rack of Lamb

- Veal Consommé with Beetroot Jelly, Orange Jelly Caviar, Tarragon Leaves
- Poached Prawns with Brain Sauce, Radishes, and Roasted Broccoli

- Chicken Stock Gel with Mint and Thyme
- Roast Chicken with Pumpkin, Leeks, Hazelnuts and Giblet Gravy

- 'Whitepot' Brioche and Veal Bone Marrow Pudding and Poached Quinces, Crème Fraiche

We were supplied with great racks of lamb and chickens from Berkswell Traditional Meats. Searching for ingredients for our commissioned project "Repast" for Arts + Media last year, we found this family-run farm shop and butcher outside Coventry who provided us with delicious cuts of locally sourced meat. When we needed to find enough food to feed BE Theatre Festival last July Richard Tuckey from Berkswell delivered more than a hundred kilos of bits of animals, all of them wonderful.

This event was kindly supported by Eastside Projects and Fierce Festival's Arts Council funded 'Platinum' artist-practitioner development programme.

'Bone Dinner' - 5th November, Birmingham

2010-10-03T00:33:00.002+01:00

Blanch & Shock will be serving a special dinner at Eastside Projects in Birmingham on Friday 5th November.
The evening is being developed and will be curated by Companis, a partnership of art practitioners based in Birmingham. The dinner will be based on, and influenced by Gordon Matta Clark's carniverous 'Bone Dinner', originally designed to be performed at Food, the experimental restaurant Matta Clark co-founded in New York City in 1971.

Tickets costs £ 25.00 per person, and are available to buy via Paypal here

Eastside Projects,
86 Heath Mill Lane,
Birmingham,
B9 4AR,
UK

Map
http://www.eastsideprojects.org/

BE Theatre Festival, July 2010

2010-09-23T22:27:00.003+01:00

There has been such a rush of jobs that the documentation of some has fallen behind. So, dating back to July, there follow some pictures of our participation in, and feeding of, Birmingham European Theatre Festival. Our task - providing lunch every day for the casts and crews who had come from around Europe for five days of theatre, and dinner every night for these and the public, up to a 'full house' of 120 people.
We devised a menu which we thought achievable with three of us (Mike couldn't be there and so Steve Wilson (of Treehouse Café) - with whom we have worked and collaborated before - joined us. Over five days we had delivered over eighty kilos of amazing meat from Berkswell Traditional Meats in Coventry, who had supplied us on previous jobs, as well as deliveries of produce, cooking equipment, dry goods and construction materials from all around Birmingham.
On the final night of the festival, we provided a Menu to illustrate another incarnation of
Eat Your Heart Out, a chilling piece of immersive theatre devised by the
Kindle Theatre Company, our frequent collaborators.

The Dining Room, and location of our second 'kitchen'.The last time we were in this room, it had been transformed into a post-apocalyptic junk kingdom for Eat Your Heart Out. We filled it with two 140' tables to seat 120.

Soaking Kidney Beans

A lunch sitting

Prep Fun

We had lovely volunteers to help us get food to the diners, wash up and calm our frayed nerves throughout the week. Above is Flamische for lunch one day.

We made bread for lunch almost everyday, which we kneaded with the help of music and dance, as shown by Steve and Amy

Cooking a lot of sausages on a paella pan, kindly lent to us by Steve at SDS Produce, who also supplied a lot of our fruit and vegetables over the week.

Steve tackling a whole mess of Peri-Peri Chicken

Ingredients for almighty burger-making session

We were serenaded by these guys under the kitchen window.

Brum

Barbecuing some of the 25 kilos of beef brisket, which was to be followed by a long braise.

The braising station. Electrical power around the complex of the AE Harris building was conditional on extreme proximity and careful judging of the power needs of our machines. We tested its capacity and blew the power several times with our induction hobs, and so had to cook on makeshift cooking stations. The pot above held fifteen kilo of beef brisket, while the other ten kilos braised in an improvised dutch oven in the barbecue.

Some member of Kindle Theatre warming up before the performance of Eat Your Heart Out.

Steve checking, and saluting, the brisket.

Cans to hold the stew for Eat Your Heart Out.

Like a knight in shining white whites, Mike turned up on the last day and is seen here 'plating' Charcoal Sherbet for Eat Your Heart Out.

EFS Spectacular, 25.09.10

2010-09-20T22:30:00.003+01:00

Along with other society members, Blanch & Shock will be curating a stall at the annual Experimental Food Society Spectacular at The Brickhouse on Brick Lane on Saturday 25th September, at which we will be presenting various delectable items. We have also designed two of the ten courses that make up the banquet which follows. For ticket and venue information, head over to the Experimental Food Society website, or to buy tickets, follow these links:

Tickets for the exhibition: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/87872
Tickets for the banquet: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/87875

Summer Cooking

2010-08-04T11:19:00.002+01:00

In the midst of a whirlwind summer of cooking jobs, an update, to precede proper blog posts about each.

June
Having cooked and made cocktails for 70 at a summer birthday party, we headed to the West Midlands to cater for the casts, crews, production staff and the public at Birmingham European Theatre Festival (BE Festival). Over four intense days and nights, and with washing-up help from festival volunteers, we served 800 plates on four long tables set for 120 people each, culminating in a new version of Eat Your Heart Out, a long running and ever-evolving production by the Kindle Theatre Company. (see previous EYHO posts)

July
Almost as soon as we had arrived back in London, we were off to Leicester to do a week-long project at Wyvern Primary School for Creative Partnerships. This was our second school project, after our recent trip to Walkwood Primary in Redditch in May. In a marquee erected in the school playing field we built a kitchen classroom in which we taught classes of Year Twos and Sixes about Sweet, Salty, Bitter and Sour foods with tasting sessions, cooking lessons and theatrical direction and storytelling workshops run by our friends Nina and Kathryn, the 'Taste Inspectors'

BE Festival

2010-07-02T09:42:00.006+01:00

Blanch & Shock are in residence at BE Festival at the wonderful AE Harris building in the Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham, cooking lunch for actors, festival volunteers and production crews, and dinner for these and the public every evening.

On Saturday night, we will be collaborating once again with the Kindle Theatre Company on a specially designed version of Eat Your Heart Out, which we worked on in October last year. (Eat Your Heart Out, 2009 post)

For information and tickets for the last two days of theatre and repast, go here

Check back here in the next few days for pictures and writing about the festival.

We are also Tweeting as much as time allows, follow us - @blanchandshock

'Royal Jelly', Bees & Honey

2010-06-11T15:38:00.003+01:00

Blanch & Shock were commissioned to create canapés for a fashion networking event at the amazing Castle Gibson in Stoke Newington. The food and drinks were centred on the theme of 'Bees and Honey', giving us a chance to experiment with a some new techniques and cooking with Honey, one of our favourite things...

The morning's offerings at Franklin's Farm Shop

Infusing Wildflower Honey with Alderwood Smoke with our Smoking Gun for a Pork Belly Glaze

Grated Frozen Bacon, about to be dehydrated to garnish Quail's Eggs

Mike with our epitomic soft-boiled egg. We tried three different Delia Smith recipes, all of which resulted in dry, overcooked yolks. Two minutes, forty-five seconds and an icy water bath proved perfect.

Soft-Boiled Quail's Egg with Dehydrated Bacon Powder, Maldon Salt, Black Pepper and Crumiel Freeze-Dried Honey.

Poaching Strawberries with Black Pepper and Wildflower Honey. We used the resulting juice to marinate hulled Dwarf Strawberries under vacuum.

For the 'Royal Jelly', we set Marinated Dwarf Strawberries into layers of Elderflower Jelly.

Marinated Strawberry, Elderflower Jelly, Bee Pollen

Due to the sudden proliferation of Elderflower in our garden, it made sense to use it to make the Jelly, which we did. Here are Elderflowers infusing in water with Lemon Peel, Sugar, Citric Acid and DH Perkins' West Dulwich Honey (see Foraging post)

Washing the Rhubarb before Juicing it for the cocktail.

After searching everywhere we could for a decent Brioche with no luck - apparently the freak hot weather makes brioche loaves go rancid too quickly, due to the butter. I can't see why they think eating an entire brioche is an insurmountable goal...After some brilliant last-minute help from Tim Franklin, who provided a Joël Robuchon recipe, 20 grams of fresh yeast, and some invaluable advice, we set about making our first loaves of bread, eliminating one more shop-bought item from our minds...

Proving one tall and two wide Brioche Loaves

Fin

Mike showing Honey Glass, made by melting Crumiel and stretching it as it cools.

The Event

The first course, which was not photographed, was of Asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce and Apple Balsamic Vinegar Reduction.

Next was Woolesy Cheese, Damson Paste, Thyme and Onions Lyonnaise on Rough Oatcakes

Quail's Egg on Brioche Crouton with dehydrated Speck Ham (Dust of Speck) and Honey Glass.

Pork-Belly, cooked en sous-vide with Thyme and Garlic, then pan-fried with Smoked Honey and Butter, and topped with Radish Disks and Borage Flowers

Amy preparing to serve the 'Royal Jellies'

(Strawberry-Compressed) Strawberries in Elderflower Jelly with Bee Pollen

The drinks, of which we sadly failed to get pictures were:

+ Rhubarb Juice, West Dulwich Honey, Krupnik Honey Vodka, Lemon Juice, Edible Flowers

+ Juices of Bramley and Jonagold Apples and Mulberry with Fresh Mint Bubbles

Balcony Foraging, June Morning

2010-06-09T09:44:00.000+01:00

With a day of prep for a Bees & Honey-themed canapé party ahead, and using the newly-acquired and hated scaffolding surrounding the house and highly sophisticated harvesting tools, Josh stocks up on Elderflower blossoms for the Elderflower Jelly with Marinated Strawberry and Bee Pollen.

Elderflower Tree, unaware of the nearby hunter.

Josh with Elderflower Rod

In further Kitchen Garden News, the Strawberries are reddening nicely

..and even more excitingly, the Alpine Strawberries have started their annual explosion of unimaginably delicious fruit

Four Tomato varieties

This flower doesn't know it yet, but it's offspring will form part of an elaborate Tomato Course in about three months time

'Parade' at Chelsea College, May 22nd 2010

2010-05-28T18:53:00.004+01:00

As part of Critical Practice's 'Parade', Blanch & Shock cooked a barbecue for speakers and guests in the courtyard of Chelsea College of Art, in the shadow of Tate Britain and the full glare of the summer sun. The Menu was devised whilst shopping that morning at Borough Market and cooked on portable induction hobs and our new charcoal grill, overlooking a metropolis of black milk crates, in which micro-seminars were being held.

The Menu

+ Beef and Marrow Bone Burgers

+ Lamb and Thyme Burgers

+ Grilled Portabello Mushrooms with Monte Enebro Goats' Cheese

+ Panzanella Salad with English Cherry Tomatoes, Sourdough Bread, Basil

+ Warm Jersey Royal Salad with Tarragon

+ Courgette and English Asparagus Salad with Lemon and Herbs
+ Mixed Leaves (Oakleaf, Radiccio, Lollo Bianco, Frisée)

+ Homemade Lemonade

As soon as service was finished, and the barbecue doused, we headed straight off to Dungeness Beach in Kent to sit under the stars and listen to Dan Jones and James Bulley's amazing sound installation Variable 4.

Suppliers

+ Meat - The Ginger Pig
+ Vegetables - Booth's
+ Cheese - Brindisa

Tableau at Passing Clouds

2010-05-17T14:27:00.010+01:00

25 - 05 - 2010

Tickets for Tableau have now sold out

Blanch & Shock, in association with Treehouse Café and members of Arachne Theatre Company will be serving a six-course Tasting Menu of seasonal British ingredients in the beautiful, bohemian surroundings of Passing Clouds in Dalston, London

40 Tickets are available, at a charge of £ 25.00 per head, payable via Paypal below

Passing Clouds is at:

1 Richmond Road

London

E8 4AA

View Larger Map

April Dinner Party

2010-05-04T16:05:00.005+01:00

Blanch & Shock cooked a surprise Birthday Dinner for a private client at her home in London. We were keen to get our hands on some of the new fruit and vegetables that had come in to season since our last cooking job, and to try a few new tricks and surprises we have been interested in recently.

Testing and Prep:

Provençal Lavender for a pudding to be served with Rack of Lamb. We briefly infused the flowers in hot water, and then set the aromatic liquid into a jelly with Agar Agar, Citric Acid, salt and sugar (seen below). We then blitzed it until it was smooth.

Miniature Meringues for our petits fours service, drying in the dehydrator.

Granny Smith Apple Crisps for the Cheese Course

Dehydrated Fennel Stalks and Fronds about to be powdered for the Beetroot Course

Heating Dried Chamomile in a vaporizer to extract the aroma, which we fed into test tubes for the Flower Course (see recent Chamomile Post)

Fish head for a fumet

Channel Wrack Kelp for the Fish Course, sent to us by Iain McKellar of Just Seaweed For Iain's blog and more information about his business harvesting seaweeds from Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, go here.

Bitter Chocolate Truffle for the petits fours, before being cut and dressed with Stem Ginger.

Edible menus, protected in plastic from the spray of Beetroot Juice

Dinner:

Apéritif of Champagne served with a Sphere of Rhubarb Juice infused with Rose Petals. The Rhubarb from Franklin's Farmshop in Dulwich, was force-grown by candlelight in Yorkshire.

Plating the first course . The three preparations included Beetroot as a Bloody Mary, shredded and macerated in it's own juice, and as a pudding (made in the same way as the Lavender)

Trio of Beetroot: (l-r) Cinnamon Toast with macerated Beetroot and Juniper Crème Fraiche, Goats' Cheese Crisp with Beetroot Pudding, Fried Dill Fronds and Fennel Powder, and Beetroot Bloody Mary with traditional accompaniments.

Sadly there was no way to both serve and photograph the fish and main courses and get the food served on time or hot, so you will have to imagine a pan-roasted fillet of Gilthead Bream atop planks of braised Salsify, surrounded by Steamed Clams, Channel Wrack Kelp and Salmon Roe and a velouté of Lemon Thyme...

Preparing the test tubes of Chamomile Vapour.

Plating the Flower Course. The flowers in the salad included Viola, Primrose, Rocket, Purple Shamrock (Oxalis) and leaves of Lamb's Lettuce. The flowers were from Derek Lewis at First Leaf. We served Derek's glorious Snapdragons at 'Eat Your Heart Out' in October 2009, and were glad to try some other varieties.

Salad of Flowers, Leaves and Bee Pollen, served with a test tube of warm Chamomile Vapour and an atomiser of Honey dressing.

The next course was also sadly unrecorded.

We served a Rack of Salt Marsh Lamb with a Purée of Pink Fir Potatoes, a glazed baby Carrot, Wild Nettle Fluid Gel, Wild Mushrooms, Lavender Pudding and Olive-Oil-poached New-Seasons' Garlic, with Lamb Consommé

Due to the hosts' preference of cheese over dessert, the next course was a selection of British Cheeses, served with homemade Chutneys and garnished as follows:

Cheese Course (l-r): Stichelton with Apple Crisp and Apple Chutney, Ogleshield with home-pickled Spring Onion and Damson Chutney, and Tunworth with Coarse Oatcakes and Fig Chutney.

With coffee, we served the petits fours:

Bitter Chocolate Truffles with Stem Ginger, Salt-Caramel Dipped Physalis and Pistachio Meringues

The Edible Menu, presented with the petits fours

Suppliers

Salt-Marsh Lamb
William Rose Butchers, Dulwich, London

Fish
Moxon's Fishmongers, Dulwich, London

Vegetables and Fruit
Franklin's Farmshop, Dulwich, London
Pretty Traditional, Dulwich, London
SMBS, Dulwich London

Honey
DH Perkins' West Dulwich Honey, London

Cheese/Dairy
Neal's Yard Dairy, Borough Market, London

Chocolate
Cacao Barry Alto el Sol Plantation Organic 2008 Vintage Chocolate, Peru

Flowers
First Leaf, Pembrokeshire, Wales

Constructed Jelly Trifle

2010-04-13T17:35:00.001+01:00

Blanch & Shock was commissioned to produce an edible sculpture for an event to mark the beginning of a new initiative of regeneration in the Fargosford area of Coventry. The scheme, created by Coventry City Council and Advantage West Midlands will offer subsidised warehouse and studio space for young creative businesses in the area, as well as access to community of media and arts based-companies.

We decided to serve a (de)constructed Trifle, based on the shape of the warehouse the event was held in, and broadly interpreting the stained glass of Coventry Cathedral in the form of 'bricks' of sponge cake and jelly.

The Perspex structure on which we built the trifle. The supporting boxes also housed clusters of LEDs which would shine through the multi-coloured jelly at the event

Beetroot Spheres in various distilled water baths (the calcium in tap water can affect the gel formation). Alongside the trifle, we served a cocktail composed of Bramley and Cox Apple Juices, with Cinnamon Bubbles and Beetroot Spheres ( some of which can be seen in the Drink post).

Needle used in sphere making

Mike with his Amontillado Sherry Jelly, for the roof of the structure

Mint Juice, showing some precipitating Chlorophyll

..and once set

Cinnamon Broth infusing for Bubbles

Ginger Jelly bricks cut and ready to be built with

Building the structure in the space

The Trifle

⁺ Victoria Sponge Cake

With jellies of:

   ⁺ Pomegranate
   ⁺ Fresh Mint
   ⁺Root and Stem Ginger
   ⁺ Mandarin
   ⁺ Amontillado Sherry

Served with:

   ⁺Chantilly Cream
   ⁺Vanilla Custard

Jelly Layer Test...

2010-04-13T14:35:00.000+01:00

...in which Blanch & Shock try to set an 18 Litre tub of coloured Jelly, in five layers. The aim - to serve an 'augered' core of each layer of Jelly, representing stages of the life of Arts + Media, who commissioned us to design a menu for their closing party.

Dues to lack of cavernous fridge space, we set the jelly on the balcony

Its escape from the mould was heralded by an amazing SCHLOOOOOOOP-y sound.

Some jelly had stayed put, somehow landscaped into contours shaped like a clam

Slicing Test

The intensity of the test got the better of the jelly, which, starting with an innocuous crack, suddenly split, releasing a 4 litre iceberg of sticky colourful squish.

The verdict - FAIL. The reasons - as subsequently explained to us by Sam Bompas, the jelly was not tapered enough to be able to support itself, and without adding industrial amounts of gelatin (rendering it inedible) it was destined not to work. Back to the drawing board...

Chamomile

2010-04-12T01:42:00.000+01:00

With plans to serve a vapour of chamomile as part of a salad of flowers, mache, bee pollen and honey spritz, we tested the vaporizer with dried Chamomile Flowers from Neil's Yard Remedies.

Catching the vapour in a Jar to test the effects of letting it sit

A plucky chamomile flower

Vapour swirling in the jar

Condensing vapour on the roof of the jar.

Guiding the vapour into a sealable tube using a funnel

Chamomile Vapour.

Preparations for Two Commissions, Coventry

2010-03-21T02:22:00.003Z

We are preparing to produce food for two commissions in the next five days, both to be held in a warehouse which we are renovating especially, and which will be used after we have gone. Our kitchen is a 40ft Portacabin, was strewn with council office ephemera, print-outs of bomb warning protocols, and about forty power points.
Some pictures from notable moments so far...

Our new kitchen for ten days, freshly hoisted in by crane

' Thrash Till Death ' (Local Scenery)

' Refus Resist '

Carpet delivered from light

Carpet brilliantly laid on the wrong side, and scuffed

We covered the floor of our portacabin kitchen with special super-tough carpet-protecting clingfilm. Every step we take makes a sound like Velcro being slowly pulled apart, but we shall not leave stains when we leave. We do not believe in stains...

Our bank of new portable Induction Hobs. Blanch & Shock are going modern

We brought four different kinds of tweezer, sixteen different machines, and a balloon pump, but we forgot mugs for delicious tea. Porcelain rice bowls are better looking, and you get slightly more.

Making a Sodium Alginate Bath in which we shall persuade liquids to conform to shapes as if solid.

Part of rolled loin of lamb from the AMAZING Berkswell Farmstead Meats, who are just outside Coventry, stock meat from Rare Breeds of many kinds, and are purveyors of some very delicious flesh. Above is a Rolled Blackface Lamb Loin all dressed up with with Rosemary, Garlic and Hemp Oil before being seared and roasted

A last minute menu addition, decided upon after Mike discovered some great-looking Rhubarb, force-grown by candelight in Yorkshire. We are working on making a cordial, infused very lightly with Dried Iranian Rose Petals from Persepolis in Peckham, South London. We cooked the rhubarb en sous vide for two hours, and left it to macerate in the fridge. If we had a bigger freezer, we would ice filter it. but we don't

A bag of Beetroot Juice, heated gently with honey and Calcium Lactate Gluconate. Yum

This kind of arrangement is screaming to have a drip attached to be fed into a person. Maybe a gory Medical Feast is on the horizon

To be continued................................

Kitchen Notes, Early March, three jobs imminent

2010-03-13T00:27:00.001Z

New Hypodermic Syringe in action.

Pork Belly cooked en sous vide with Rosemary, then fried.

Pork Belly, English Mustard wrapped in Beetroot Gel Sheets

Raw Salmon, Fried Salmon Skin, Bergamot Lemon, Coriander

Dehydrated Carrot Purée

Powdered Carrot

Oxtail, Bay Leaf and Bitter Chocolate Stew

Clementine Purée

Testing our Values

Hibiscus, Pomegranate, Ginger Jellies

Drink Development

2010-03-07T17:13:00.001Z

Creating a drink to go with a deconstructed trifle.

So far -

Ida Red Apple Juice, spiced with Cinnamon Bark, Bay Leaf and Clove
Fresh Mint Foam

Eat Your Heart Out at Bitesize Festival

2010-03-07T12:51:00.001Z

Remnants of the performance by Kindle Theatre, at the Warwick Arts Centre

The 'Menu'

   ⁺ Parma Violet 'Blood'
      Parma Violet Syrup, Arrowroot, Red Colouring

   ⁺ Ground 'Bones'
Toasted Rice Cakes, Beef Fat, Tapioca Maltodextrin, Bacon

   ⁺ Candy Floss 'Hair'
Chilli Powder, Yellow Sugar

'Eat Your Heart Out'

2010-03-06T09:32:00.001Z

Eat Your Heart Out will be performed today in a Bitesized version by the wonderful Kindle Theatre Company at the Warwick Arts Centre. The production will include a menu of surprises created by Blanch & Shock.
For more information or to buy tickets (last chance), click here

image © Steve Davies / Kindle Theatre

Development Day for 'Repast' Commission

2010-03-04T19:19:00.003Z

Testing day for the A+M party in Coventry at the end of March.

Dehydrating three versions of Parsnips (clockwise from bottom left - blanched, raw, cooked en sous vide

Dehydrating Vegetable Stock ingredients for Soup

After 6 hours

Mike holding a bag of Vegetable Stock Air, drawn from the vent of the dehydrator

Mojito Spheres

Eat Your Heart Out Development Day

2010-02-18T20:32:00.005Z

A day of testing recipes for the Kindle Theatre Company's upcoming performance of 'Eat Your Heart Out' at Bitesize Festival at Warwick Arts Centre on March 6th, 2010. For more information and to buy tickets, click here

`Dried Bonga Fish' from Brixton

Dried Bonito Flakes

'Fish Floss'

Dried Seafood Platter

Taiwanese Dried Tuna

Blackened Bonito Flakes

Dehydrated Sesame / Tuna / Bonito / Puffed rice

Blood Station

Blood Samples (Violet Syrup, Red Colouring, Arrowroot)

Guilty

Furtive Chopstick Use

Roasting Rice Cakes

Rendering fat from Pancetta Afumicata

Charred Rice Cake

The best Pork Scratchings EVER.

Powdered Pancetta fat 'bonemeal'

Staying

2010-02-10T19:14:00.001Z

Testing Baked Beetroots

Drying Candied Chilli Pieces for Garnish

Some of the 125 variations

Tweezering the canapés and garnishes into the boxes

Mike standing guard over boxed bites until service

Detail of boxes showing edible printed excerpts from Staying text

Boxes showing bites. At this stage the contents of the boxes were beginning to suffer from the heat of the lights above. They stood strong until service began and throughout !

The audience were talked through the boxes and their contents at the table, some removing the food with their fingers, others braving the whole package.

The Menu

___________________________________

Any of:

Pomegranate Jelly

Bitter Chocolate Truffle

Butter-poached Carrot

Baked Beetroot

Raw Pear

Garnished with any of:

Candied Chilli

Powdered Salt Caramel

Dried Lavender Flowers

Stem Ginger

Orange Zest

Sitting on leaves of:

Mint

Coriander

Flat-Leaf Parsley

Rocket

Basil

Lost and Found

2010-02-05T18:40:00.007Z

Blanch & Shock were invited to participate in 'Graham Hudson & The Centre of Attention', a show curated by the Lost and Found group at the Milton Keynes Gallery in December. We produced an evening canapé menu using locally-produced ingredients bought at Towcester Farmer's Market in the morning. After a quick planning session, we prepped the food in a makeshift kitchen setup across the courtyard, and served six 'bites' to the visitors of the show.

Cockerels fighting outside Pottersbury Farm Shop

Milton Keynes Gallery

An Onion Squash from Towcester Farmer's Market

Prepping in an improvised kitchen.

Ashmeads Kernel Apples

Plating Apples and Goats' Cheeses in Foyer

Serving the Squash

The Menu
____________________________________

SQUASH
Chilli-poached Onion Squash, Goats' Cheese, Candied Beetroot + Stems, Fennel Powder

APPLE
Ashmeads Kernel, Goats' Milk Cheddar, Elderberry
Egremont Russet, Goats' Milk Blue Cheese, Chestnuts

REMOULADES
Beetroot, Celeriac Tops, Hemp-Oil Mayonnaise
Celeriac, Beetroot Tops, Hemp-Oil Mayonnaise

PEAR
Comice Pear, Toasted Squash Seed Pudding

Recipe Test + Box Assembly for Artangel Project

2010-01-18T19:09:00.001Z

Testing Pomegranate Jelly

Bitter Chocolate Truffle

Printing box maps on rice paper with edible inks.

Box designs ready to be cut

First day of cutting the boxes, using surgical scalpels

300 boxes, 6 hands, 1. 5 days

Coriander, Butter-poached Carrots, Carrot Toffee, Sea Salt

November Dinner Party

2009-12-09T23:12:00.005Z

Lally with a basket of Medlars and Hawthorn Berries.

Dried Crushed Chestnuts

Wild Pigeon Hearts destined for Pigeon Pate. The carcasses went on to be a Pigeon reduction for the roast partridge, and the breasts and livers await their fate in the freezer.

Partridges from a shoot in West Sussex

Hawthorn Jelly Sheets.

The Menu

⁺Raviolo of Jerusalem Artichoke and Chestnut, Jerusalem Artichoke Broth and Bubbles

⁺Roast Partridge, Bone-Marrow Beignet, Cider-braised Turnips, Medlar Pudding, Pear Crisp

⁺Bitter Chocolate Cake, Quince Semi-Freddo, Hawthorn Jellies

Eat Your Heart Out, with Kindle Theatre, Birmingham, November

2009-12-03T04:33:00.002Z

The Box Office, containing Claire, The Tickets, and The Disclaimers...

( more )