Welcome to my kitchen!
A new section for those with culinary aspirations; an agony aunt of culinary conundrums if you will.
Need to know what to do with those excess fruits in the garden? Want a recipe for special occasion? Having problems with your gravy? Tired of trying to Google them and not finding what you want? Your prayers have finally been answered. Post your culinary cunundrum here and have it personally answered byTallyrand, a professional Chef with 30 years experience worldwide
This is not a live blog, but every evening I will come online and answer as many as I can within the hour, with recipe requests emailed out in PDF format if you wish.
I will also post some of my favourite and seasonal recipes online, as I get used to the software here at dawlish.com
Happy Cooking - Tallyrand
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from Chef Tallyrand
My personal cooking philosophy has always simply been; "I hold nothing back and always share as many tips and tricks as I can. I do not closely guard recipes or tricks of the trade. My reputation as a Chef or as a mentor always relys on my trainees going on to better and greater things. There is no prouder moment for me, than when the student becomes the master"
As you look through my recipes, one thing you might notice is that I often challenge tradition. Tradition has its rightful place in the kitchen, but only when its based on truth. And often what we have always done in the kitchen is based purely on tradition ...... in other words, just because that's the way we were shown and have always done it that way (usually without questioning it and then often wonder why it doesn't quite work). Let me give you two examples
- a student asks at a cooking demo why must a lamb leg be cut in half prior to roasting? Which of course it doesn't, but she insists, she does it, her mother did and her mother before her did. It turned out on further investigating, that the great grandmother started this "tradition", and was simply because she had a small domestic wood fire oven and a whole lamb leg wouldn't fit in!
- a recipe states, "seal the meat in hot oil". we dutifully brown the meat to seal in the juices - wrong! Meat is browned purely to add flavour, browning the meat caramelises the natural sugars, which in turn intensifies the flavour. It has nothing to do with sealing in the juices, if it did we wouldn't be able to make gravy from all those lovely juices that come out during roasting. Or the juices or blood wouldn't run out of a steak when placed on the plate
Of course, often it is based on what used to be thought to be right (tradition) rather than truth (based on scientific fact). Cooking of course being part science and part art.
So if you have a question about such things, or want to know why a recipe of mine seems to go against the grain, just ask and I will explain
Kia Ora & Bon Appetite - Chef Tallyrand
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