April 2
The Spring Menu is Sprung!
[mashshare]Spring is a wonderful time of the year for fresh and abundant ingredients. Especially at Barton House where the kitchen garden is starting to burst into life with wonderful produce.
Chef Tom is renowned for developing menus directly with clients, taking their personal memories as inspiration to create dishes exclusively for them. But each quarter, he also creates his own menu inspired by the season and what is plentiful at that time. The kitchen garden at Barton House therefore provides something akin to a sweet shop to Tom and these past few months he’s been busy harvesting fruit, vegetables, herbs and spices to work with. He has also been visiting his favourite suppliers so that he can use the best ingredients from elsewhere too.
A few new dishes on his Spring menu include;
1) Golden beetroot carpaccio, homemade goats curd with white peach puree, rapeseed and orange dressing (Starter)
#ChefTomSays: “Growing up we were mostly used to the vacuum packed beetroot available in supermarkets but fresh beetroot, especially golden beetroot is a million miles from this. Golden beetroot has a light fresh sweetness to it and goes very well with goats cheese. So for my starter recipe I incorporated goats curd rather than goats cheese which is lighter than the cheese and has a slight sourness which cuts through the sweetness of the peach puree. The carpaccio of beetroot then gives the dish texture. I’d recommend using a little elderflower and confit shallot to add sweetness to the homemade curd.”
2) Sous vide Cotswold lamb cannon, wild garlic, pea and broad bean risotto, baby onions and nasturtium leaves (Main Course)
Lamb is a classic Spring dish, and with seasonality in mind, Tom was also keen to incorporate wild garlic into this main course.
#ChefTomSays: “Wild garlic can be found in absolute abundance during Spring so for this dish I wanted to make the most of the opportunity. You only use the leaves which give a wonderful hit of garlic that softens with cooking. With this dish I wanted the Lamb to retain its tenderness so cooked it sous -vide. Using the broad beans early in the season ensures that they are sweeter and less tough than later in the season. The baby onions then add a sweetness to this dish”
3) Cox apple Tarte Tatin with a white chocolate ice cream, apple blossom and a macadamia crumb (Dessert).
Although apples are typically used in Autumn, the Cox variety in particular lasts up until Spring, so Tom decided to do his take on a Tarte Tatin.
#ChefTomSays: “A classic Tarte Tatin uses chunky apples and is like a rustic upside down apple tart. For this one the key was layering & caramelisation. I blind baked puff pastry to keep it flat and crisp, and then layer thinly sliced Cox apples (in the same way I would a dauphinoise!) with a dark caramel (which had been set and then blitzed into a powder). The process of pressing the apples keeps the juices which I then used to make a rich dark caramel butter and Calvados sauce, this is then poured over the top as a glaze which gives a beautiful sheen to the dessert.”
Tom used micro leaves from a wonderful local supplier Westlands, to finish all of the Spring menu dishes and elevate the dressing of them. Tom says “Westlands are UK growers of cut micro leaves & specialty produce. Their apple blossom in particular is a stunning way to complete a dish.”