Stagiare: Preston House

About a week after our chance meeting and subsequent meal at The Preston House, Kate came home from a day of work at the Gallic Kitchen Café and told us that Danny, the proprietor/quirky waiter had stopped in and told her to have Jonathan call him.  Did this mean that our day in the life of a Preston House kitchen staffer is going to happen after all?  Sweet!

A couple of days later, it was arranged.  After a few chores around the house and a product delivery to the café, we arrived at The Preston House, our Japanese knives in hand and armed with a gift of hedgehog mushrooms, which were later stuffed into rabbit legs along with beer braised onions, bacon and chives.  Firstly we met the chef, an Englishman named Chris Denney, whose resume and list of fascinating experiences ranged from a stretch in a two Michelin star restaurant in Italy to guest cheffing at an event in India.  We then met a bloke whose real name was an Irish name too difficult for Chris to pronounce so was simply called “Feacle”.  Then came Andy (later dubbed “Butterfingers” for managing to drop both mine and
Jonathan's Japanese paring knives on their points), a young Irish lad who had apprenticed in a butcher shop for a couple of years and found his calling in food.  Finally the red-headed dishwasher whose real name I don’t remember because they always called him “Eddie the Swine with the scarecrow girlfriend”, and they meant that one literally.  Yup, apparently Irish kitchens are the same ass grabbing, dirty name giving, male part measuring saloons that American kitchens are.  Except there was a lightness to the air.  Constant toothy grins, needling each other with quick witted jokes, Chef Chris challenging Andy to eating 20 hardboiled eggs in a half hour, “Cool hand Luke” style (Andy accepted btw), all without sacrificing the precision and seriousness of the food.

Newfangled Gnocchi

Ironically, without any prior PigWizard knowledge, Chef Chris first tasked Jonathan with deboning a poached pig head while my first job was to trim the gnocchi pouches (newfangled technique mentioned in the previous post) and prepare them for poaching.  Traditionally, potato gnocchi is rolled out into a long ¾ inch diameter tube, cut into approximately inch long chunks, boiled and then tossed in their sauce.  These newfangled gnocchi were stuffed into a long tube of plastic wrap, poached until cooked through, and chilled.  When a ticket came up, they were then sliced into perfect two inch tubes, submerged in hot oil to heat them through and basted in butter to finish.  No wonder they were so delicious, right?

Next Jonathan deboned a dozen or so sous vide chicken breasts while I attempted to keep my fingertips intact while slicing raw turnips paper thin on the mandolin.  Ever tried a raw turnip?  Very nice.  Slice them thinly like a watermelon radish and toss in your salad…way better than boiling them to death in the typical Irish way.

While I was sorting through the perfect and the mutilated turnip slices, the first lunch order came through: the seven course tasting menu, €50 per person, €70 if you wanted the matching wines.  The tasting menu is typically the best bits on hand at the time, manipulated into perfect little mini courses designed to take your pallet for a spin.  First up was the Sweet Corn, Salt Cod, which I missed being so immersed in my turnips, fearful that chef Chris would fire my free labor for not producing enough perfect slices.  Not to worry, knowing that we were not so secret offal lovers, he made a special version of the dish for us to share, substitute the salt cod for deep fried lamb brains: crisp on the outside, creamy on the inside, compare to an extra crunchy croquette.  The richness was cut with the sweetness of the charred corn and garnished with one of my expertly sliced turnip slices and other tasty treats from Tanguy’s garden.

Scorched Tomatoes in an Ice Bath

My next task was so engrossing that I honestly have no idea what Jonathan was doing, probably eating bonbons.  Prep cook, Andy equipped me with a paring knife, a mini blow torch, a bowl of ice water and a box of heirloom tomatoes and preceded to instruct me on how to peel the tomatoes without blanching.  Stand back.  Step one: score the tomato skin lengthwise in both directions just enough to break the skin but not enough to cut the tomato.  Set the tomato on a non-flammable surface and torch it until the skin bubbles and starts to peel back.  Submerge in ice bath to cease any cooking from the torch.  When cool, gently remove the skin with ease.   

You are left with a hauntingly perfect exterior of a slightly smoky skinless tomato, glossy even, ten times firmer than if you tried to blanch it for peeling.  Mesmerizing, right?  Eat your heart out.  We then roughly sliced the tomatoes in to six sections and left them to marinate in olive oil, salt, rosemary and crushed garlic.  Serve with a section of fresh buffalo mozzarella and a few crostini.  Clean and perfect.

My clean and perfect task was interrupted half way through with a little plate of creamy and dirty, the second course on the tasting menu: Foie Gras Parfait, Madeira, Fig.  Two smooth squares of foie, topped with a sheet of Madeira geleé, surrounded by dollops of fig preserves and scattered with peanut butter sponges, garnished with micro greens and an edible orange flower petal.  Again, Chef Chris slightly modified our humble taster plate keeping with the fig preserves but substituting sponges with a delicious lightly buttered house made bread.  I savored (I refuse to spell it savoured, even though I am in Ireland) the creamy rich foie gras, knowing that when we do finally return home, our sources for such a delicacy will be slightly limited due to the July 1^st ban on the sale and purchase of foie gras in California.  Don’t feel too sorry for us, we know people.

As some of you know, one of the few foods that Jonathan has an aversion to, along with mayonnaise, avocados, and eggplant, is salmon.  So when our scoobie snack of the next item on the tasting menu arrived, Salmon, Nettle, Horseradish, Apple, Jonathan graciously allowed me the slightly larger piece of salmon.  Sucker!  Even he thought this salmon was delicious!  The low temperature sous vide salmon (yes, it’s fully cooked for the Irish pallet even though it appears raw) was slightly spiced with the cool, smooth horseradish panna cotta while the garnish of oats and a julienne of fresh apple provided texture and a little sweetness.  

I have mentioned nettles in a couple of The Preston House dishes so far (see previous post for the original Preston House food experience).  See that bright, beautiful splash of impossible green in the center of the salmon panna cotta cluster?  That is made from the self-same stinging nettles (and trust me, their sting is the gift that keeps on giving) that rule the Irish weed culture.  Nutritious and a brilliant green, they are blanched and pureed in a little liquid, funneled into a squeeze bottle and used to spruce up any plate that needs a pop.  I think their purpose in this preparation is not so much as a flavorful compound, even less for their nutritional value but more to exploit the beauty of their color, maybe giving a slight nod to their health benefit and definitely providing a thumb in the eye to the next nettle in your garden waiting to sting you.  Haha! I’ve used your evil for good, nettle!  Having said that, nettles are used here in Ireland for their nutritional value in soups, teas, and even in cheeses!

The next two items on the tasting menu, Beef Blade, Shallot, Bone Marrow and Plaice, Shrimp, Grape were a lookie no tastie operation, however, I did manage to snap a shot of the plaice (a halibut-like flat fish) garnished with my expertly formed gnocchi.  A touch of smooth potato puree held the fish in place and balanced its richness, as well as the sharpness of the radicchio and sweetness of the grapes.  Notice how the top of the fish is white, not browned as if should have become in the cooking process?  That’s cause it was cooked skin side down until the skin was crisp and delicious but then removed to again please the mild Irish pallet.  The missing crispy skin was fully enjoyed by Chef Chris, Jonathan and yours truly.  You snooze, you lose, Irish pallet.

In a tasting menu, having more than one dessert course is not entirely unusual; this menu offered two.  The first was a plate of “arranged chaos”, a plating technique which is, for better or for worse, becoming more and more popular.  The Goat’s Curd, Black Olive, Raspberries was truly a unique combination of the cool and creamy goat’s cheese, the salty earthiness of the delicious olive caramel and the sweet and tangy raspberries.  Not being a huge sweets person (once again, I am sweet enough), to me, this dessert was a homerun.  For those of you who crave the rich and decadent, not to worry.  The second dessert course was Peanut Butter, Caramel, Banana, a description which in no way does this plate justice.  Banana two ways, an ice cream with a toasted slice of fresh banana, positioned next to a shining pool of caramel and garnished with a delicate peanut butter brittle.  As a side note, don’t you just love those edgy slate plates?

As the bustle of the kitchen drew to a close in preparation for a couple hour break before the dinner shift, we chatted outside with Chef Chris, laughing (and nearly retching) at his tales of eating “foie gras” in India, which in reality was just a fly-covered mess of leftover offal scraps thrown together and allowed to “marinate” in the scorching sun.  Ultimately I determined that the nationally and culturally experienced chef, a witty and gritty man with an easy but demanding demeanor, ran they type of kitchen perfect for any cook with desire to prove his skills and learn along the way, truly a chef you’d happily bust your butt to please.