...try a new recipe each month?

You know good old tried-and-tested recipes that you've churned out time and again with satisfying results? It's a little like the comfort blanket you've been having for the past 20 years - a little too comfortable, almost.

Well, I'm always up for a new challenge and not just any old challenge. But a challenge to try a technically complicated recipe each month, from the myriad of cookbooks S has been collecting at the Craven Street library.

I've always admired the precision and technicality Thomas Keller goes into in his cookbook,
"The French Laundry Cookbook". It's more than just a recipe book - almost inspirational at times and it really does make you think hard about devouring the works of art when you're at your next Michelin-starred degustation meal, eating merrily into your Course No. 6 of 10.
All top chefs must be perfectionists I reckon. Only with that kind of attitude and drive can you create plates of artwork that will stimulate all senses.

Dr O and I poured through the 60 odd recipes and due to various food exclusions, seasonality and various other factors we pondered, did a SWOT analysis (just joking!) and finally chose "Surf and Turf" (he wanted meat, I wanted fish!) on Page 162.

This "Surf and Turf" of course was not the usual fare you get at steak joints but it was a sauteed monkfish tail with braised oxtail, Salsify and Cepes.
Excellent stuff I thought! I like all the components enough so that should make one satisfying meal.

So off to Borough market we went on a sunny Saturday afternoon, braving the crowds and tourists clicking away on their big ass SLRs. As this is where I do most of my food shopping for the week, it is annoying to get through the crowds that of course, we not going to buy fresh fish and meat at the stalls! They were more spectators and were only interested in composing an "arty photographer-like" shot, not how fresh or where the fish came from.

Anyhow, 2 hours later we finally got all the ingredients needed for the dish and kid you not, the list goes on and on...with 2 different types of stock (we made one from scratch, bought the other!) a red wine marinade that had it's own separate page of instructions and ingredients and lots and lots of chopping and cutting of brunoise. (very small, the smallest cube you could possibly cut of 4 different vegetables, all must be of the same size.

Well we started with the red wine marinade for the oxtail and it needed an overnighter.

One bottle of red wine, 5 pounds of oxtail and about 10 other ingredients went into this marinade.

Into a large ziplock bag all the marinade and oxtail went and there it sat peacefully in the fridge, allowing the marinade to do it's magic on the oxtail.


That seemed sort of easy enough and we were glad we got through the very first stages.



The next day, bright and early I jumped out of bed, eager to check on last night's work and started to prep all the other ingredients.

If you happen to get your hands on this cookbook, you will begin to realise it's a big challenge.

Let's skip and hop through most of it but let's say that there was a lot of sieving, skimming, cutting, browning, braising, deglazing, chopping, sauteing more skimming and sieving involved!


Brunoise of leek (green part only), carrot and turnips.

About 6 hours later,
And this is finally what we produced...

excuse the bad photography...we were exhausted by then.

The uncanny resemblance to the real deal on the cookbook

It was such good fun but would we attempt this recipe again? Probably not.
And how did it taste? It was very yummy and gone in about 4 mouthfuls.
Note: as I was cooking and assembling it during the final stages, Dr O said it was such a tiny portion he could eat 4 portions of it. But let's just say when he finished the first portion, the amount of burre monte (butter emulsion) he had consumed left him feeling rather full.

Till the next recipe challenge!