Cooking with Tallyrand

Welcome to a new Dawlish online kitchen (forum)

a new section in conjunction with Dawlish.com for all those budding cooks or those with culinary aspirations; an agony aunt of culinary conundrums if you will. Ask a question, request a recipe and Chef Tallyrand will get back to you. 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 might have finally been answered. 

Post your culinary cunundrum here and have it personally answered.  A professional Chef with 20+ years experience worldwide (just Google Chef Tallyrand, to see his pedigree) He will also post some of his favourite and seasonal recipes online. 

This is not a live blog, but every evening he will come online and answer as many as he can within the hour, with recipe requests posted online or can be emailed out in PDF format if you wish. 

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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