New year & a new menu for dining club

I've finally settled on the menu for January's dining club dates.  I'm a big fan of Korean food (no surprise there) and have been playing around with kimchi for a few months now.  I wasn't sure how well noodle soup would sit as a main course.  Soup always makes me think starter.  But it's too substantial for a starter, especially served with the tofu and seawood cakes.

I'm excited about making panipuri.  I love this Indian snack, and for me it's the perfect amuse bouche.  It sings on sweet and sour and spicy notes with lots of soft and crispy textures.  What could be more perfect?

The dessert was inspired by a restaurant in Kathmandu called Fire & Ice.  They served hot brownies with ice cream, which after ten days in the mountains and living on dal bhat (the simple Nepali dinner set of soupy lentil dal and steamed rice, with fresh green chillies and salt on the side) it seemed like food from the gods.

There are still some places available for the upcoming dining club dates.  There are just 3 spaces left for Saturday 12th January, and there are places available for Thursday 17th and Friday 18th January.  The Hungry Gecko dining club is £29 per person for five courses.  To book a place, email us at thehungrygecko@gmail.com

     

January Menu

Panipuri

Classic Indian street food snack

with tamarind, chilli & chaat masala

Kedgeree

Spiced rice in panko croquette

Served with a poached quail egg

Kimchi noodle soup

Korean style red pepper broth with traditional fermented cabbage

Served with tofu seaweed cakes & egg noodles

Raspberry lassi sorbet

Fire & Ice Brownie

Hot sticky brownie with hint of chilli,

served with star anise & vanilla ice cream

  

Thali thali thali!

I have to be honest, Indian subcontinent food is my favourite food of all.  In my family, we eat more home cooked Indian food than anything else.  I love cooking it and eating it.  Simple as that really.  My children often caused a small furore with their chilli eating while we were travelling.  People were so surprised to see such young children adore spice so much.  But if you grew up on dal and rice instead of bangers and mash, it's not that surprising really.

So we've been enjoying lots of lovely recipe testing in our house in preparation for thali night.  And here it is.  The first draft of the menu...

Cauliflower & chard pakoras

Paneer & cashew koftas in yoghurt curry

Kali daal (creamy black lentils)

Baigan ka bharta (roasted aubergine mash)

Pappu dosaki (dudhi gourd with channa :)  

Stir fried lotus root

All served on a banana leaf, with steamed rice, salad and pickles.

Well all that's certainly made me hungry! The evening is now fully booked, but if it goes well, we could be looking at v2....

Check out the lovely new dining club menu... yum yum!

I'm looking forward to cooking my new menu for the dining club from next weekend.  Places available for Fri 18th (2 left) and Sat 19th November.  To make a booking, send an email to: thehungrygecko@gmail.com 

Amuse bouche
Sweet & sour popcorn tofu

Starter
Buddha’s Delight, noodle soup with exotic mushrooms & bean curds, served with vegetable crackers & chilli cashews

Main
Balinese satay sticks, lemongrass skewers of smoky tempeh, served with spicy candlenut sauce & sticky rice

Pre-dessert
Duo of jackfruit & mango sorbet and lime sorbet

Dessert
Pear & frangipane tart with vanilla & star anise ice cream, served with salted almond praline & goji berry sauce

There are several highlights for me with this menu, but I am most proud of the dessert.  I think it sings and my dessert loving daughter agrees.  She says it's the best dessert I've ever made.  Slightly biased I suspect.  I'll post some photos when I get the chance.  

I made the Balinese satay sticks during the fine dining challenge week on MasterChef.  Posh Bertie said it wasn't posh enough, but JT said he 'missed a trick'.  I know who's opinion I'd trust! 

The starter is based on a rather ubiquitous noodle soup from China that uses a variety of beancurds and fungi, including lily buds, wood ears and black moss.  Some versions have over 19 ingredients.  My version has 16.  It's also delicious.  But then I would say that, wouldn't I  :0) 

The Hungry Gecko dining club is now open!

I thought I'd have a quick blog about last night while it's still fresh in my mind.  I thoroughly enjoyed cooking for 12 guests.  Such a perfect number to make beautiful plates of food and I have to say, feedback on the service was great, so my husband seems to be a natural.  The lack of stress was a joy and I think the bliss of cooking like that showed in the food.  I was really happy with what I produced, and to be fair, it's not often I say that about my own dishes.  I've been trying to keep a quote in my mind...  it makes me feel better about my food and that can only be a good thing.

“When you acknowledge as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving towards perfection becomes clear….to make people happy. That’s what cooking is all about” – Thomas Keller

The dinner guests were lovely people too and it was nice to see new friends being made.  The garden annexe room is a delightful setting for a table for four and the adjoining main dining room was kept more spacious for eight guests.  I think it worked really well.

So I didn't get the best pictures of the food - too busy cooking obviously, but we managed to get a few....

The menu included an amuse bouche I have been trying perfect the flavour in (and the construction of) soy infused tempeh with wasabi sesame seeds.

I've been working on my paneer shashlik too.  I don't have the space to make my own paneer at the moment and the packet stuff is very rubbery and lacks flavour (I'm really selling it here :)  But I managed to find an awesome supplier of fresh paneer in Rusholme, so I've very happy with this dish now.  It's a shame the nasturtium season is almost over, but I'm excited to be working on a new menu for next months dining club dates. 

I made this pudding 3 or 4 times before I perfected the recipe.  For a start, I find most recipes for Banh Gan (Vietnamese coconut creme caramel) are much too sweet.  If you're using good quality coconut milk, there's a natural sweetness that needs to come through I think.  Then there's the cooking method and times.  I found the water bath technique was too much for the custard.  A nice long steam bath is what was needed.  By now it was half one in the morning but I held my patience and was justly rewarded in the end.  I love that the dining club gives you the opportunity to strive for perfection! 

This cute little pudding is making an appearance next week, alongside some gorgeous accompaniments, for my collaboration with Tampopo at the Manchester Food & Drink Festival.  

Tickets are still available, from Tampopo Albert Square or the Triangle, or via their website http://www.tampopo.co.uk/five-course.htm

There are also still a couple of places remaining for my dining club on Friday 18th November.  New dates will go on my website soon
http://www.thehungrygecko.com/

Open a restaurant? You must be mad!

I have been thinking long and hard about the next steps on my food journey.  I still have the restaurant dream.  It doesn't matter how many times people tell me it's a terrible idea and that it'll ruin my life and my finances, I still want to open The Hungry Gecko somewhere in Manchester.  Then Liverpool, then Leeds...

But let's be realistic about these things.  I have neither the money nor the experience (yet) to pull that off successfully.  I also feel that those friends who tell me the timing's not right just now, and I should be cautious in this climate, are probably right.  It takes a mighty amount of money to back a restaurant and they have a tendency to haemorrhage any profits.  Rent, staffing costs, insurance... and hanging over all that, the fear of financial uncertainty and risking my own home, as that's the only place I could raise the kind of money that would encourage the bank to listen.

I also have other doubts.  I'm starting to learn that the restaurant business is very competitive, and so are many of the people who work in it.  Not all places are like that, and I have been privileged to work in some amazing kitchens amongst what seem like 'zen' chefs by comparison to some of my previous experiences a waitressing student.  But the fact is, there is a lot of jockeying for position amongst chefs and many want to reach the top.  The problem for me is that it then stops being about the food.  Well that, and the fact that I'm a forty year old woman who's too old and has worked too hard to go back to playing those games.

A friend at work, when I told her my feelings about this, reckoned it was just like the erotic triangle in English literature (stay with me here guys - it will make sense eventually).  In literature, there's the girl, and then the guy who really loves the girl and the other guy, who also really loves the girl.  Except the story is never about the guy's total love and adoration for the girl - it's about the competition between them to win the girl.  My friend reckons the girl is like the food - it stops being about the food and it's all about competition.

So feeling like this, I arrive at Sara's last week to help prepare a few gorgeous little puddings for the charity dinner to raise money for York ICU.  107 mango parfait with a passionfruit glaze, and a cute little edible viola.  I had so much fun and it was just great to spend some time together after so many months.

Sara's dining club is just wonderful and growing nicely.  And most important of all, Sara is making her beautiful and delicious food, on her terms and without having to compromise on the things that are important to her.  She then spent the next 12 hours convincing me that a vegetarian dining club would be a great way to move forward with my food, without turning my life upside down - well anymore than it already has been anyway.  Seeing her at home, doing what's she's doing, made me ask myself, why not?  And the answer is, no reason not to try... 

A dining club would give me the chance to create great vegetarian dining, on a scale that means it is fresh, beautiful and a standard worthy of MasterChef.  It would also make it affordable dining to others - more egalitarian even.  The idea greatly appeals to me.  I still want to do pop up and other dining events, and open that restaurant one day, but plans are now afoot for Manchester's first vegetarian dining club...

Friday 21st October - hold that date!