Warm Poached Plums with cloves,port,orange and cinnamon.

For many years this is what we served at 1 Sallyport for Breakfast. It comes with Greek yoghurt and if you desire home-made granola. I personally adore  warm poached fruits and could eat them at any time of day whether it be pears poached with  a vanilla  pod or necterines with a brandy marinade...........and the accompanyment of home-made vanilla ice-cream would I think be devine.

Here is my recipy for the plums.

Take 1lb 8ozs of Plums(best quality you can find)
A wine glass of port
half a stick of cinnamon
2 peices of orange rind with two cloves stuck through
4 ozs of soft brown sugar

Put all the ingredients into a pan with a tight fitting lid, and slowly bring to the boil. Once the liquid starts bubbling turn the gas down as low as you can and let the plums everso gently cook until a beautful sauce is formed . The plums are ready when you can pierce the plums with a knife and there is no resistence.
Allow them to cool until tepid and serve as part of a luxury breakfast or  why not indeed ,some home-made rice pudding.now we are talking nostalga (when the kids were small in our family it was who ever could get to it first to eat that lovely golden skin!)

Scottish Shortbread home-made

 Like many of you I too have been  watching The Apprentice on Television  tonight where the two teams had to source 10 items for the Savoy. I wish I had been team leader  don't you,all the products were from the hospitality business and it would have been huge fun to do.Alan Sugar gets alot of stick but at least he has a strong mind and kept the integrity of the programme whereas Masterchef has gone all silly ........more like X Factor.I think Lord Sugar is cool.............and Karen Brady is fantastic too. A great business role model for women.
I'v been making shortbread since I was a kid. I was brought up on it and I have to say my mothers recipy was delicious. Not only was she a teacher but she could bake well too. I make shortbread every week at Sallyport and customers get it in their rooms on their tea tray as well as being sold in the brasserie. Shortbread is great with a very light pudding like a lemon posset and this time of year we are trying to make lots of light fruity puddings. The secret of great shortbread is to use real butter and to cook it gently. Here is my recipy.Enjoy

11b Butter
8ozs Caster Sugar
11b Plain flour
1 teasp of salt
8ozs Ground Rice

Method
Beat the butter and sugar together in a Kenwood Mixer( really important that you have one if you want to bake regularly) then add the other ingredients. Knead into a ball and roll out and cut into circles or at Xmas Christmas Trees!
Bake at 170 for 20 mins. When lightly brown remove and sprinkle immediately with caster sugar.
 For various changes you could add some grated orange  rind or a teasp of cinnamon or a hand full of best quality chocolate drops

The Great Britsh Cheeseboard

These is our personal selection of British Cheeses that we are proudly serving this week at 1 Sallyport.

Tunworth
With the great British Menu being on the television screen at the moment and with this years amazing Royal wedding we feel we should wave the flag for great British cheese makers!
Tunworth a rare unpasteurised camembert style cheese. Cows are now grazing the new growth of grass and flavours. Made by Hampshire cheeses was voted best cheese in britain at the british cheese awards. The soft white cheese won the accolade of supreme champion ahead of 840 cheeses. Tunworth has a rich, milky and nutty taste.The box alone that it comes in is beautiful.

Tor and Driftwood

This is Craig's favourite and it certainly looks and tastes amazing!
We have put this one into our goats cheese salad.
Fresh cheese so goats are now grazing and milk yields are up.Tor is Ash coated pyramid and the Driftwood is an ash coated log. They have natural mould rind that develops a degree of surface ripening and has a smooth soft paste.

Winterdale Shaw

This one is in our Ploughmans platter as well as being on our evening selection.
One year old,coming into season as of May last year his cows were starting to graze the Kentish Weald.Situated high up on the north Downs in the heart of Kent. Winterdale Shaw is a hand made  hard cheese ,which once cloth bound is placed in the cellar to mature for a minimum of six months. The natural stone cellar is dug deep into the chalky North Downs of Kent, which gives the cheese its unique characteristic full of flavour.

Barkham Blue
We feel so lucky and privileged to have this cheese
Although a pasteurised cheese this rich creamy blue is lovely and soft and perfect for the summer. Produced in Wokingham,Berkshire. Barkham Blue is a gold award winning blue cheese. It is a big flavour cheese with great depth. With a lovely texture,colour and great taste this is a frim buttery cheese made from Channel Island pasteurised cow's milk. Suitable for vegetarians

Caerphilly Gorwygg
I'v been baking 100 oatckes today and we have made a beautiful chutney to match this cheese.
Even the paper it comes wrapped in is stunning. It seems a shame to open it.
Trethowans Gorwydd (pronounced Gor-with) Caerphilly. Matured Caerphilly made to a traditional recipe,using raw unpasteurised milk and GM free traditional animal rennet. These ingredients combined with working with the curd by hand,keep the cheese true to the origins of how traditional Caerphilly is made. Gorwydd Caerphilly is matured on the farm for 2 months and exhibit's a fresh lemony taste with a creamy texture to the outer (known as the breakdown) and a firmer but moist inner.

Sparkenhoe Red Leicester

This is perfect for our ploughmans platter as well as on our evening selection
Joe and David Clarke have reintroduced this unpasteurised,clothbound,cows milk cheese made on their farm in Sparkenoe,near Market Bosworth. They use milk from their own herd of Pedigree Holstein Friesian cows.It is around 4 months old and has a incredibly vibrant orange colour and a rounded,mullow,nutty flavour with hints of citrus. The texture is firm and 'snaps' as a Red Leicester should

Fresh spring Vegetables

It is now getting very close to when the baby beetroot should be available also British grown carrots and  Scottish peas ,broad beans and baby turnips. We are really fed up of the fine beans our veg supplier has been giving us...............................they are pre-cut and pre-wrapped and generally something you don't want to use. When we complain he just says there are non others in the market.If we had time ,we would go to the market ourselves but it is a 120 mile round trip so that isn't the answer.Getting someone to grow vegetables for us locally would be ideal. Roy already grows herbs for us and brings in Lovage ( a relation to the celery family) and wild garlic, mint etc. We get our heritage potatoes from Tiptoe farm at Cornhill. So  my next project is  to get all our veg grown locally especially as they will be so healthy for us all and full of flavour.At the end of the day that is what our job as chefs is, to present the general public with the best flavours  a food can produce and its not about adding lots of butter and cream.............but cutting down on food miles and eating food in season. I'm on a special detox diet at the moment of fruit and vegetables and nuts for 10 days .My nutritional advisor has said that I'v got all these aches and pains and I'v got to detox! I'v got a frozen shoulder and arthritis in my knee,terrible sore feet and generally falling apart . Richard has given me sulpher to take for my frozen shoulder so we will see what happens.............watch this space.It was great at the Royal Wedding reception all the vegetables came from ''Highgrove'' and what was wonderful was they were served without cream or butter!!

Slow cooked leg of Scottish Border lamb with red wine ,fresh mint,tomatoes and bacon

I don't get to see much television but I was able to see the Great British Menu the other night where Tony Singh from Olorosso in Edinburgh was competing against Head chef  Michael Smith from The award winning Three Chimneys on the Isle of Skye. They both did a marvellous job and it was real boys banter in the kitchen ................lol. Goodness gracious I wonder if they were told to behave like that or it just came naturally!  Michael did a wonderful barbeque for the table where he cooked three types of lamb and served lit with Asparagus and it looked great with heather in the presentation. Tony did fabulous Langoustines and presented them beautifully with a marvellous arrangement of tiered  plates( like a huge cake stand)  with a divers helmet at the top.. It was such a pity they couldn't mix the two menu's for the peoples banquet as they were both equally as good.

Lamb is our best seller in the evening, without a shadow of a doubt, we put this dish on the menu and it sells straight away.

We take a stunning leg of lamb and cut it into large 2 inch peices then pan fry it so that is is brown and sealed. We fry some onion and bacon add some tomatoes ,herbs and wine,redcurrent jelly  etc and cook in a gentle oven for 3 hours. It is absolutly  devine but it all depends on the quality of lamb you start with. Remember 90% of great cooking is good shopping.. Buy the best from a local producer and you will be able to talk about the  history and what the lamb is fed on and because it  has cost  alot of money( as it is going to be much more expensive than supermarket lamb) you will cook it with great care and attention which is what I try and teach in my kitchen.

Dauphinoise potatoes

At 1 Sallyport we offer a choice of potatoes in the evening and Dauphinoise is one of those choices. It is prefect I think as an accompanyment with rack of lamb. It is a creamy layered garlic and potato side dish, full of calories but a little goes a long way. !

You need 3llbs of thinly sliced potatoes,2 garlic cloves,12 fl ozs of milk 2 teasp of salt and 1oz of parmesan cheese and 6 fl ozs of double cream

My boys in the kitchen have done a fantastic job tonight , led by Craig( I had the night off to watch my favourite TV show the Apprentice) They have had a full house  including a private business men 's dinner party and  they  have coped brilliantly. I am extreemly proud  of them.

Packed Lunch

My son Dean came in to the hotel kitchen today, he had one of our famous packed lunches to take to work  this morning and he said it was delicious. (He builds marquees so he needs lots of great food to keep him going.) A stottie filled with a ham salad, home-made shortbread, coffee and walnut cake, grapes,apple., scone etc

There is nothing more stronger in the world than the love a mother has for her child, there is nothing  that can bring more happiness and joy  and more sadness when the relationship brakes down.I should know as a mother of two boys aged 22 and 23.