Monday, March 26, 2012

Brooklyn and the Pain that came with it.......

A little over six weeks ago my boss came to me and told me that I would be cooking for a very intimate but informal bloggers lunch. It was being put together by the fine people of James Clay Distribution and us at Mr Foley's in Leeds. I tried to prepare a menu in the best of my ability and hopefully I delivered a meal people liked and will hopefully remember.
Thank you to a buddy of mine Rick Furzer for helping me put together some of the menu sadly some didn't get used but I did use the starter he came up with my special fried then baked chicken wings in a spicy yet fruity sauce to pair with an exceptional DIPA Brooklyn Blast.
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I also served a side salad put together by my assistant on the day it  was served with a ranch dressing, a mayonnaise and milk based dressing with a smothering of different herbs and spices to give the heat from the chicken wings a bit of a cool down so the taste buds of my guests didn't get too over worked in the beginning of the meal.
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Next I went with a real crowd pleaser a 38 hour marinated pork shoulder that was sold to us by Mr. Meats in the Leeds Market if you need some meat and are in pinch the guys at Mr Meats will try and accommodate anything you can throw at them, I marinated it in a special dry rub and a maple syrup and bourbon glaze and then roasted it in a very low oven at 120'C for what seemed like forever but in reality was about 14 hours. I choose to served this with a very special beer that was a pleasure to drink and very rare on these shores. Mary's Maple Porter was the beer of choice and I think it paired well seeming that all the plates came back quite clean. I also made a couple of sauces with the sandwich a Mutha Sauce and a spicy mustard based sauce, some might think this a sacrilegious act but since most people don't know BBQ in the UK I thought I was safe but did get called out by Mr. Oliver but if I had a choice I'm a Tomato and Molasses based sauce which gives out a real smokiness to the pork. I believe it went down well with the amount of clean plates that came back.

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For dessert I went with a very special Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream Float. Now I knew this was a firm favourite of the guest of honour and I hope I did it justice but Leigh from the Good Stuff might tell a better tale than me about it seeing that I'm quite biased.  Overall I hope I delivered a meal that people enjoyed and maybe a meal people might try to recreate or seek out again. Loads thought and planning went into the meal and I hope it showed through the food that I served. So all in all I consider this a personal success seeing that I have never ever done anything like this before and I just hope I didn't make a fool of myself talking to the group of great bloggers, food writers, radio presenters, peers, friends, and local business people and I hope I truly delivered something that you all enjoyed on the day. A special Thank you goes out to Mr. Garrett Oliver and Ben Hodgkinson for coming and enjoying and dealing with my rambling and self doubt on the event. So I hope everyone enjoyed the food as much as I did cooking it even though I didn't get to taste any of it the empty plates confirmed my thoughts on it being a crowd pleasing lunch.

Thanks to all those that blogged about the lunch as well;
Broadford Brewer David Bishop
The Good Stuff Leigh Linley
The Beer Prole Nick Mitchell
Ghostdrinker Wont reveal the name.

7 comments:

  1. Tyler, the food you dished up was awesome, and the effort you put in was really very much appreciated by us all. The pulled pork sandwiches stole the show for me - It's one of my favourite things ever anyway, and you completely did it justice, and then some! I thought it worked great with the porter too. Thank you ever so much for all your hard work, you're truly a legend. :-)

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    1. A big thank you sir, sucks you couldnt drink too much on the day but I do hope you at least took a sip of each beer just to make sure it went together. Thanks again Beer soon???

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    2. I need to acquire some beer drinking funds first, but definitely! I keep hearing rumblings about a major refurb at The Grove which is meant to be soon. If it happens, we could hit up the relaunch?

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    3. I concur with the needing of the funds thing but I did hear this rumor as well. Relaunch sounds like a damn fine idea consider it written in pencil.

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  2. Hey Tyler - you just made my mouth water reading about this. Really sorry I couldn't make it in the end but I'm really impressed you dished this up when you were abstaining from meat. Is that some sort of puritanical self abuse going on? Any chance you'd be willing to share the recipe for the pork for a beer or 3? Thanks very much for the shout - very kind. Have to do the crab claws next time!

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    1. For you sir I will share the recipe but to be honest its just a pinch of this pinch of that, you know how its goes but the core recipe can be yours for the mere total of a guided trip round London town whenever I get down there. It sucked about the meat but if we dont challenge ourselfs every once in a while then we dont truly know what we are capable of. Sucks you couldnt make it mate maybe next time and for the next lunch.

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  3. It was an excellent meal. You never really hear about the planning that goes into making such a meal but from reading your post, it sounds like you really had your hands full, so more props to you. I'd be honored to be invited along to anything else like this that comes up in future.

    p.s. I still remember how good those pork sarnies tasted! :)

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