This weeks du jour menu

Chilled white gazpacho with compressed melon, cucumber and white grape

Wild halibut fillet poached in a tumeric and lime leaf nage, curry cured duck egg yolk, mango vinegar froth and thai basil

Herefordshire beef fillet glazed with brioche and morels, Cheltenham beetroot, foie gras veloute

Barkham blue cheese mousse, balsamic caramel, red grape curd

Roasted Herefordshire beef fillet, bone marrow dumplings, morels and shiitake mushrooms, horseradish broth

This dish was on my tasting menu this week. The dumplings are made by high temperature roasting some bone marrow until it has a nice brown colour. It is then chilled , then chopped and mixed through a very light chicken mousse and poached in the broth.

It was a nice light dish to eat and packed with flavour. Keeping the horseradish as a broth style sauce also lightened the flavour in the mouth without overpowering. Also poaching the mushrooms in the broth bring an earthiness which pairs well.

Mushrooms and madeira

One of my weak spots is beef tartare. We get a superb quality Herefordshire beef from Laverstoke Park once every two weeks, so it is always a pleasure to use it on the weekly tasting menu. Morels this year have been terrific. This has been due to the frost we had in Febuary/March.

I decided that i wanted to do a tartare but change the ingredients up to include the morels. I also wanted to incorperate madeira as a classic pairing with the mushrooms and the beef respectively.

The dish is Laverstoke Park beef tartare, pickled morels, mushroom gel, glazed vegetables.

I seasoned the beef with:

shallot

parsley

madeira

pickled morels

salt

pepper

egg yolk

The vegetables are slowly cooked under vacuum with butter and thyme.

The mushroom gel is a very concentrated mushroom stock. 800ml to 12g gellan F.

Assiette of corn fed chicken, asparagus oatmeal, stuffed morels

This dishcontains 4 different chicken preperations. There is roasted breast, poached thigh, confit and honey glazed wing, and braised drumstick. The asparagus oatmeal is made by sweating shallots and garlic in butter, then adding the oatmeal and chicken stock. Once the oatmeal is cooked, asparagus puree is added, with a little butter and salt and pepper. The morels are stuffed with asparagus puree and chicken mousse.