Spencer Barlow’s Blog

Verjuice – The premium food flavour enhancer

As you have a passion for food and wine, I’m sure you’d be interested in knowing about an old medieval ingredient that has got many foodies around the world talking. It’s called Verjuice or Verjus, and is making quite a big impression in the gourmet kitchens worldwide.

Verjuice is simply unripe grape juice that has very low acidity, making it the premium alternative to cooking with lemon juice, vinegar or white wine. It’s not as tart or sharp as vinegar so won’t distort the flavours of your food but enhances them instead.

Wine connoisseur’s will be interested to learn that Verjuice has the same acid base as wine, and therefore won’t destroy the essence of good wines served with a meal.

Nigel Slater recently had a fabulous Verjuice chicken recipe in The Observer Newspaper which has sent many people looking for it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/25/nigel-slater-grapes-casserole-focaccia

The Good Web Guide also has a review of Verjuice here:

http://www.thegoodwebguide.co.uk/?PAGEID=012218

Other well known chefs including Heston Blumenthal and Gordon Ramsay use Verjuice at their restaurants. The Independent Newspaper food writer, Skye Gingell, rates it as one of her favourite ingredients in her kitchen.

Until now, Verjuice has been very expensive and difficult to find yet that’s about to change, as a new company (www.verjuice.co.uk) is importing a new Verjuice from South Africa, and will be distributing it exclusively within the UK and Ireland.

Verjuice is set to become an indispensable ingredient in every kitchen, so if you’re interested in trying Verjuice for yourself, head over to www.verjuice.co.uk and order yourself a bottle – you will love this stuff!!

What is it about Foie Gras

On the show they were making a dish using Foie Gras, and this is what I just want to give a few facts on, as opinion is still divided on this topic.

Foie Gras in English means, “Fat liver”. It is made from the liver of a duck or goose that has been fattened, this process is called “gavage” i.e. force-feeding.  This practice is thought to have originated in ancient Egypt, and this is where the problem comes in, as the process of force-feeding the birds is a controversial issue.

The correct method is to force-feed the bird just until the point of death, which is when the bird is slaughtered.

According to wikipedia- Fattened liver can be produced by alternative methods without gavage, and this is referred to either as “fatty goose liver” or as foie gras (outside France), though it does not conform to the French legal definition, and there is debate about the quality of the liver produced. This method involves timing the slaughter to coincide with the winter migration, when livers are naturally fattened. This has only recently been produced commercially, and is a very small fraction of the market. While force-feeding is required to meet the French legal definition of “foie gras”, producers outside of France do not always force feed birds in order to produce fattened livers that they consider to be foie gras, instead allowing them to eat freely, termed ad libitum.

Click on this table below to see the main producers of foie gras

I just want to let you know that I am staying neutral on this matter. Yes I do have an opinion but I would rather keep it to myself, all I am trying to do here is just show you why so many people object and choose not to eat foie gras because of the cruel method of producing the foie gras.

Cooking with old friends

I know Steve and his lovely wife Sam through my brother. Steve asked me  to come around and teach him and his friends something unique in the kitchen and have some fun whilst doing it –  it just so happened to fall on Halloween.

We had a big menu to get through, so I made sure that we started early enough to ensure that we wouldn’t be eating too late. On our menu for Halloween was a scrumptious starter of Fresh Green Asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce along with a Marinated Salmon and Crab dish.  For main course we made individual Beef Wellingtons with seasonal vegetables and roast potatoes. For dessert I came up with three choices as everybody was keen to learn something different; we made Eton Mess with a twist, Chocolate Fondant and for Gordon, Passion-fruit Soufflé.

 A few of the guests already knew how to make the basic dishes, but what I hoped to show them were the little secrets of each dish that would make them just that little bit special and based on the feedback it looks as if I achieved my goal.

The cooking went well with everybody enjoying themselves and getting involved but what is an evening of cooking without great wines?  We started with chilled champagne, moving on to a smooth Sancerre.  My favourite however, was a lovely bottle of Tignanello 2005 and we then rounded off the meal with a Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos 1995 (a sweet wine) with dessert.

I am going to leave it there as I think the photos say it all  –  just wanted to say thank you to Steve, Sam, Charles, Gordon and Nadyne for a very enjoyable evening. See you soon guys!

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