A return to Roganic

I’ve been to Roganic, Simon Rogan’s London restaurant, twice, once during its opening week and a few months later. Their lease is running out in June so I wanted to make sure I had another meal in case the restaurant disappeared. However, I was assured they are looking for new premises for a permanent site.
The food is just as exquisite and perfectly cooked as before (they changed head chefs last year) and the new front of house team is just as welcoming, efficient and gregarious as the previous one. I obviously had to have the 10 course tasting menu:

Pig skin and seaweed crisp

Bread and butter

Mushroom and garlic

Swede, sea kale, veg broth

Millet, stilton, pear, celery

Raw veal, turnip. This was the standout dish for me, incredible flavours and textures.

After that, the artichoke dish was a bit disappointing. Still very nice but lacked a certain oomph.

Oyster, hispi cabbage, silver onions, ale sauce. This poached oyster dish on the other hand, returned the meal to its previous heights.

Plaice, broccoli, cockles

Beef cheek, bone marrow, salsify

Buffalo milk ice cream, sea buckthorn, mint

Rhubarb, honeycomb ice cream, gingerbread, sorrel

Sweet bites

The spoils of a local farm shop trip

Yesterday @Cambridgelass (who is one of the organisers of Eat Cambridge) and I had a look around a few of the farm shops in Cambs, starting at Gog Magog Hills Farm Shop (where I bought the steak, potatoes, smoked garlic and chard used below as well as some eggs and cheese). Even for the time of year, their selection of vegetables was nicely varied and the butcher’s offers were great, too. It’s times like this I regret not having a kitchen big enough for a freezer because I would have loved to sample more of their wares. As it was I only came away with a ribeye steak. Our next stop was the Shelford Deli in Great Shelford. Luckily for us and without us knowing in advance, the farmers’ market was on at the Memorial Hall across the road so we had a look around there first. A market at a village hall might sound a bit odd but it worked. There was local veg, meat (including from Cam Cattle) and lots of small stalls selling other produce and things like bread, cakes and pastry. I came away with a chunk of osso buco, an Indian savoury chicken pastry thing, a chocolate/lime slice from Gourmandises and some cheese.
At the deli, I bought some bread to go with the cheese and some proper Italian pasta. The deli was very busy indeed as their lunch service had just started.
Our final stop was Burwash Manor in Barton where I bought some more veg and two curry sauces from the larder and a bottle of Montepulciano from Cozzi & Boffa where we had a good chat with the owner. He specialises in wine from small producers and if the quality of the wine I had is anything to go by, the rest of his selection will be excellent, too.

So, what did I cook? On Saturday I cooked the steak:

As I wanted the heavy fat marbling to render properly, I cooked this steak to medium and it came out beautifully tender and juicy, seasoned simply with salt and pepper. Probably the best steak I’ve ever cooked. I had roasted the head of smoked garlic and added about half of it to the mashed potato. The piece of marrow bone, also roasted, was from the piece of Cam Cattle osso buco. The rendered fat from the marrow and the resting juices made a great little sauce. The chard leaves were simply wilted in the hot pan in which I had cooked and basted the steak with butter.

On Sunday, I simmered the osso buco in a jar of medium curry base from Panjaban, adding leeks, the chopped chard stalks and sliced mushrooms:

Steak & Honour popup at Fitzbillies, 13/02/13

Leo Riethoff aka @steakandhonour gave up his antique Citroën van for the restaurant at Fitzbillies this evening to bring his burgers to a more civilsed setting. On offer were the classic, a cheese and a mushroom burger, sides in the shape of “Mack ‘n’ Cheese”, “Lettuce Wedges” and “Slaw” as well as “Shoestring Fries” and two desserts options by Jack of Jack’s Gelato, “Peanut Butter Sundae” and “Baked Alaska”.

The custom placemat with attached menu. Click here for a closer look at the menu.

First thing to arrive was a bowl of shoestring fries, nice and crunchy.

The main act: Cheeseburger and “lettuce wedges” with blue cheese dressing and bacon bits. Nice brioche bun, good pickles, medium cooked local beef patty (no horse here!), no fancy sauce, just American mustard and ketchup. Brilliant. The lettuce was crunchy and worked well with dressing and bacon.

The second side I opted for was a portion of Mack ‘n’ Cheese. Perfectly cooked pasta with a nice cheese crust, not gooey at all.

There was also a really nice American beer called Brooklyn Lager which was quite rich for a lager.

Despite feeling quite full, I felt the need for dessert especially as those were provided by Jack, who you might have seen with his gelato bike around Cambridge last summer. For some reason I always missed him so this was my chance to try one of his creations. I opted for the “Peanut Butter Sundae”:

This was just as decadent as it looked, with peanut butter ice cream, chocolate sorbet, whipped cream and salted caramel sauce. Nicely balanced and not too sweet.

Here’s the man himself serving burgers.

Spiced Blood Orange Sorbet/Slushie

Kavey Eats has a monthly ice cream challenge called “Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream” in which I have taken part twice so far. This month’s challenge is any theme from the last year so I thought I’d try my hand at a sorbet.

My Riverford box contained blood oranges which were ideal. I zested the oranges then instead of juicing them I peeled them and blitzed them with my stick blender. In a saucepan I combined the juice, zest, half an inch of grated ginger, half a vanilla pod, two short cinnamon sticks, one star anise, five or so bruised cardamom pods and quite a bit of demerara sugar (don’t ask me how much, I did this by eye but enough to make the mix taste really sweet), heated the mix until the sugar was dissolved, pulled the pan off the heat, put a lid on and let it cool off and infuse with the spices. After the mix was cool, I strained it into a tupperware container to remove the spices and put it in the freezer.

I don’t have an ice cream machine so I took the container from the freezer every hour or so and stirred it through with a fork to break up any ice chunks that were forming. In my low rated freezer compartment it took almost 24 hours until it resembled sorbet or, to be honest, more like a slushie as it melts quite quickly. It tastes nice, though, fruity, tangy and spicy so I’m really happy with it.

Served in a tumbler with (shop bought) brownie pieces