Light Collective

©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
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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
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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
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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
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(Vegetarian alternative)

  Colour-changing Cocktails
'Bizarregaritas' and Citron Pressé
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  Gilthead Bream | Beetroot | Microleaves
  Dawn Apple | Beetroot | Microleaves
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  Butternut Squash | Yoghurt | Saffron
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  Red-Legged Partridge | Cavolo Nero | Broccoli
   Jerusalem Artichoke | Chervil Root | Broccoli
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  Pork Belly | Blue Potatoes | Radish | Wild Mushroom | Medlar
  Hedgehog Mushroom | Blue Potatoes | Radish | Medlar
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  Bitter Chocolate | Beetroot | Viola

 Suppliers
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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
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  @blanchandshock
  @lightcollective
  @RobinRadio
  @castlegibson
  @sannafp

A winter Canape Menu..

 

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

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

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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

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

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.