Dinner at The Russet - The Pictures

We cooked a dinner at The Russet, a recently opened venue in Hackney Downs Studios, renovated and run by our friend and frequent gun-for-hire, Steve Wilson (Passing Clouds, The People's Kitchen). Though days away from Christmas, we were not keen on reinventing or deconstructing traditional fare, but on cooking as delicious a dinner as we could from ingredients at their best in December. We prepped dinner on overturned apple crates, helped by David Boycott (@birdfoodblog) and rewarded at the end of our prep day with Steve's rum barrel-aged scrumpy.

The snacks. We served Hackney Wild sourdough bread made by Ben Mackinnon at e5 Bakery, along with our freshly churned, lightly salted butter.

Chopped beef fillet, lightly cured in salt and pepper, egg yolk and capers in raw brussel sprout leaves.

Raw baby turnips and their tops with fried grey mullet skin, lemon gel and lemon thyme.

Yellow carrot 'custard' with fried jerusalem artichokes, purple carrots, chervil and rye streusel.

Steve and Josh

Mussels poached in mussel stock. Roasted cauliflower with mussel powder, watercress juice and charcoal oil.

Mike plating his pork belly main course.

Slowly cooked pork belly with spleen paté, medlars, chestnuts, parsley root and cavolo nero.

Slow-cooked hen's egg, wild mushrooms, cavolo nero, fried broccoli and beet,  for our vegetarian guest.

For the final course, we set up a station in front of the guests with a Kitchenaid and a dewar of Liquid Nitrogen. The dish started with Russet apples, poached and then frozen in nitrogen before being shattered and thawed and golden raisins rehydrated in cider vinegar.

Mike removing raisin meringues from the dehydrator trays and Josh beginning to churn apple ice cream with nitrogen.

David and Mike plating.

Russet apples,  russet ice cream,  raw chervil root,  raisins and apple peel powder.

We served two little sweets with coffee - a mace sponge with caramelised butter and a piece of butternut squash with burnt sugar and membrillo.

An origami frog left for us by a guest