Chef Wise

Those looking for ways to entertain restless teens during the holidays can turn to Leiths. The top UK cookery school has developed Let’s Cook! , a range of one day to one week classes for teenagers. From pasta to pastry; curries to cake, teenagers can get excited about food and at the same time develop an essential skill for life. Learning needn't stop in the holidays and when it's this much fun it won't feel like school. Teenagers will be inspired by the abundance of summer produce and enjoy the perfect summertime activities of cooking and eating at Leiths.  In their Let’s Cook! one day classes, students will learn to make their own colourful Pasta and Ravioli with ricotta and lemon and whip up a delicious sauce using store cupboard ingredients; test their spice levels learning to recreate Gujarati chicken dhal, Persian rogan josh and Thai green chicken curry in Curries around the World ; bake cheesecake brownies, syrup cakes and soda bread in Baking for Teena...

Now I am asked a lot of time how do you know what will work and will not work as a restaurant. How do you know what will be a place that makes money and will not. The true answer to that is I do not, and I do not think that anyone really does.  It comes down to  the welcome,  warmth, interest, confidence, personality, pace of service, training, knowledge, skills, value for money, perception  of the customer and their willingness of customer to recommend. If you get all of that right then you will be half way there but there is one other toll that you can use and that is the plan how much you need to make. To maintain a level of service you need so many staff, a good waiting staff should be able to serve a twenty to thirty cover section in a restaurant all depending on the table break down and when they are coming in, same with a chef or bar person.  So by knowing this you can calculate what you need to do to make your establishment work. Say that ...

1.        Add some flavoured texture to your cheeseboard by dropping plain bread in favour of a fruit & nut bread such as apricot & walnut or prune & hazelnut and serve it slightly stale, cut into thin wafer slices 2.        Fruit and cheese are a classic combination but give your grapes some extra character by serving them frozen – simply wash a bunch of grapes and shake off any excess water, place on a plate and pop in the freezer, serve directly once frozen onto the cheeseboard giving a more interesting texture with extra bite 3.        Add a simple twist on the traditional by pairing your cheese with fruit that has a sharp acidity such as: cherries, raspberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, nectarines and tangy plums – these work well frozen too 4.        Turn your cheeseboard into a visual feast by serving long celery stems in a vase of...

The Hovis Hill , a very famous hill that has appeared in many adverts for that very bread brand. And making your own bread can be a bit like walking up that hill, a little like hard work, you are half way up and wonder why you are doing it , you ask there must be a quicker way. But when you get to the top you look at the view and then you know it was all worth it. Now there are any number of reason why when you are making bread it will not work out as well as you expected. And a number of thing can effects why the bread goes wrong but here is a list of common failing and the reason why they might have happened. Close texture, stale yeast, too much salt or sugar, insufficient kneading, too much liquid, too little liquid, second rising to short, dough left to rise in to warm a room and finally the oven to cold. Poor rising of the dough, stale yeast, too much salt or sugar, mixture to dry and rising time to short. Uneven texture and holes, too much liquid, too much salt, insu...

Now this is not so much a recipe but a list of idea that you can take to embellish the bread recipes that I posted in 'Basic bread part one' . The good thing about the recipes on this post is that you can start to make them all very special very easily and all very different. In fact I only limit it the ideas that you can have. Here are some of the things that I have done to spice them up. Now if you are going to make this kind of bread but want to add something of a flourish to it then start by doing this. Take one large onion and slowly sweat it of in a little oil. Then them you are mixing the bough for the first time add the onions and you have onion bread. Or is you like add a good deal of fresh ground black pepper or lots of fresh herbs, basil, chives, sage, rosemary or fennel. They are perfect to blend in to the dough. Also you can think of adding whole grain mustard, curry spices and even dried tomatoes.   The only thing you have to do is make sure that you have c...

Judging from the amount of interest in a press release that I posted the other day about a bread festival in London I have decided to do a few bread recipes. The trouble is I have rather a lot of them and when you actually get down to it bread is just four basic ingredients flour, yeast and water. It is that basic mix and the inclusion of fats salt and other bits and bobs makes it so different. But the real trouble with bread is that you have to make it a certain way to get the right result. This recipe works for either brown or white bread all you have to do is decide what kind of bread you want. Ingredients 750g/1 ½ lb strong white or strong brown bread flour 500ml/16floz water or milk 15g/1tsp salt 12.5g/2 ½ tsp dry yeast or 15g/ ½ oz fresh yeast. 250ml/8floz lukewarm water 125g/4oz strong white or strong brown bread flour A pinch of sugar (Optional) Start by taking the yeast small amount of lukewarm water and small amount of flour and mix this in a bowl. Just crumb...

Basically running a restaurant is very simple. You open people come in and you serve them, the customer is satisfied, they pay. The customer comes back, tells friends and family. More people come and you serve them, they pay and so on. You build a customer base and you go from strength to strength. Like many things in life it’s not that simple. You need to be aware of four things Staff. The right staff for the job that you require them to do with the right level of training is so important. This splits in to two groups, front and back of house. The front of house staff are the people who deal with your customers. They are so important as they meat greet, seat, serve and deal with the customer and if they do it badly then no matter how good the food is you will not get people back in the door. Bad inattentive service and a lack of product knowledge is what has been the undoing of many a restaurant. And the right staff for the job what is good for one restaurant is not so good...

To have and own a restaurant is what some people dream of. It is strange to me how many people I come across who would love to own a restaurant and work in a place like that. But have never really work in the industry apart from one summer as a student. The idea of being in charge of your own place greeting customer who would be your friends and getting them to eat what you have loving cooked and they will appreciate your fantastic taste in food, wine and surroundings. You will be the host of host as the rich and famous beat a track to your door. Be discovered, do a television show and write many cook books. Or the idea that there is loads of money in food. I can buy a steak for £2 from the butcher and sell it for £15, bottle of wine for £3 and sell that for £10, you spend £5 and make £20. That is the way to do it you must make loads of money in food. The truth is that if you think you are going to do ether of the above you are sadly mistaken. It is a tough business to wo...

This is the sort of thing that people are always asking me and I always say the same thing it all depends on what kind of wine you like. If all you have ever had is light sweet wine and I recommend a dry wine as you are having fish is that what you want. Probably not, so why recommend a dry white wine, because that is what is commonly suggested to go with fish. But that does not mean that it is for you. Now for me to do what I am about to do I am only going to use examples of old world wines. His is for two reason one, one I know them and two new world wines do not follow the same rules that old world wines have to follow. This means that you can have a wine that you expect to be one thing , is completely different. That is not to say that there is anything wrong with this , it just make a exorcize that is trying to simplify wine a lot more complicated. Already   think I have started to make this more complicated that it needs to be so let’s just start by splitting the wine i...

21 February 2012 ONLINE SUPERMARKET Ocado has cracked more than eggs ahead of Shrove Tuesday.Teaming up with one of the country’s top physicists, the innovative grocer has mastered the art of perfect pancake tossing. With more batter expected to hit ceilings than the roofs of our mouths this Pancake Day, Ocado has created the ideal equation for a flippin’ good time. Working with Dr Mark Hadley, researcher at the University of Warwick ’s Department of Physics, the formula behind the year’s trickiest culinary feat is: Perfect pancake toss v=√2gh ,  ω=√(2gh/(a+p/2)^2 ),   θ=4h/π(a+p/2)   Perfect Pancake Altitude h=π/4  (a+p/2) Where v is the launch velocity; g is the acceleration; h, the height of the toss; a is the length of the forearm; w, the spin; θ is the number of pancake half turns; and p, the pan diameter Don’t be daunted by the science though. Ocado has simplified things, claiming that the recipe for a splat-fre...

Valentine's Day can be exhilarating for some but excruciating for others. A bit like life really or as Forest Gump say in the film it is like a box of chocolates you do not know what you are going to get. So how can I help well that is a good question and the real answer is I do not know but al I can say is this is the kind of atmosphere that I have tried to create in the past in the many restaurants that I have managed to make things go a little smoother. The best way any one has ever summed it up to me was an old restaurant manager who referred to any couple who came to eat at the restaurant for any occasion we had to create an area of “Stress-free seduction coupled with a personal touch.” to ensure that, whomever you are with, you enjoy the occasion. To surprise your valentine is not easy and you will have to do a little hard work but to do this all your self says a lot more than just booking some thing.  It shows that you have put in the effort and time esp...

Well it is all over for another year and you have probably like every one else in the land had to much to eat , drink and now feel that you have over done every thing. I know I did no new years day. So you are probably thinking of going on a diet and getting healthy, and want to know what is the best way of going about it.  You probably are thinking about joining a Gym, and why not the actual memberships to health clubs and gyms go threw the roof in the month of January and it is well know that they join go for one or two times and then never do it again . So here is my advice if you are thinking of doing any thing like this.  And no matter what diet book your read or what plan you go on or what doctor you talk to all you have to remember is this Eat less and do more. You eat less food and do more exorcise and you will find that you will lose weight. Its not difficult really but that is the basic diet industry in a nut shell , and it is worth thousands...

The big question that I am always asked at Christmas is how do I cook a turkey. Followed by we always get one that is to big for us.  So for every one who want to know this is the basics. For one serving, you will need about 200g or 8 oz per person.  Now if you are roasting a whole turkey you will have a lot of bones in that so you have to take them out of the equations so say a quarter of the bird will be bones, half barest meat and one quarter leg meat. So a 4.5kg/ 9lb 15oz bird will have 2.25kg/ 4lb 15oz  white meat so  and 1.125kg/ 2lb 8oz brown meat approximately. Now in cooking it you will get about a 40% loss in roasting the bird so you will get 1.35kg/ 3ld 1 oz cooked white meat and 675g / 1lb 4oz  cooked brown meat .  Therefore, that will go round and make servings for 10 people. So you will need 450g or 1ld of raw bird for each person if the bird is whole . So if you are getting a turkey crown then you will need 280g or 12...

Christmas is just around the corner, do not panic it’s only food. Here are my top tips for trying to get the Christmas dinner on the table with out you ending up in a nervous wreck. I remember a long time ago I was a guest to some ones house who was cooking Christmas dinner. Back then it was unusual for me as I normally would have been working but not that time. I turned up a bottle of wine in hand to find the lady of the house as stressed as a person with OCD and nothing to do. The husband was looking for salvation in cooking sherry. And the children wonder if all mummies and daddies did this at Christmas. Things where not going well. So as you do if you’re ill and you see a doctor everyone looks at the doctor to save the day, every one looked at me. The truth was we needed more time to cook the turkey and every thing else was just about ready. Not a big problem and easily sorted by carving the turkey a little under cooked laying it in a try of boiling water from the ...

The weekly shop or the monthly shop can be a big drain on the amount of money that you have. And it’s not just food; it’s all the things that you need as well such as soap, washing powder and all the other cleaning materials that you need.  Sometimes, it can seem like you have got nothing to eat and the fridge looks empty.  But you have spent a fortune on all sorts of things that you need for the house.  So the last thing you want to do is come home with a load of things that you do not want or worse then that food you end up throwing away as you have not eaten it. Now it is the retailer’s job to get you to part with your money and they will employ any number of tricks so that you do. They are not subtle and are easy to spot and that is what they want you to do.  To see them and be tempted to get what ever it is so that you spend and they make money. And to be truthful there is nothing wrong with this. If a supermarket did not discount or ...