We thought with summer now becoming a distant memory our menu would reflect the change of seasons. We felt it should perhaps include some of the bountiful produce still available and represent the seasons.
Following a welcome drink and assorted nibbles we felt to kick the meal off we would start with a dish inspired with Mackerel and gooseberries – a combination made in heaven as the fruit cuts wonderfully with the oiliness of the fish.
The main course will be a slow cooked shoulder of lamb with a Moroccan influenced spicing served with Cous Cous and a bean salad dressed in a yogurt and mint dressing
This will be followed by our selection of cheeses served with the porridge oat biscuits that take some three days to make… then finally for dessert a fresh plum and almond cake served with mascarpone.
This will then be served with a glass of Muscat de Rivesaltes specially imported from our french home.
Dates: Friday 23rd & Saturday 24th September 2016
Time: 7:30pm welcome drink 8:00pm Dinner served
Suggested Donation: £35.00 per person (service not included)
Menu
Mackerel & Gooseberries – our interpretation
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Spicy Moroccan Lamb Shoulder served with a herb Cous Cous
Green Bean Salad with a yogurt & mint dressing
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Hari’s selection of cheeses with Porridge Oat Biscuits
& Homemade Banana Jam
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Plum & Almond Cake served with mascarpone cream
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Coffee or Tea served with petit fours
MENU SUBJECT TO MARKET PURCHASES
AND INGREDIENT AVAILABILITY
To book your places please complete the following form and we will contact you within 24/48 hours to confirm your booking with a credit card number
Well it has been a very hectic month for us with some charity gigs and then a plethora of private functions… We are just about to complete our last one before heading off to France for our annual break. It will be twinned with sadness as we have now sold our French home so it will be the last time we will be staying there!
We have lots already planned for the Autumn season and we will soon be taking bookings for our September & October dates… So do watch this space where we will be publishing full details in the next couple of weeks.
I hope you all have a great summer holiday and come back rested and refreshed! We will!
We did say never again but well our arm was twisted and it is all in a good cause!
We are hosting another dinner on the roof of Yalding Church… in fact we are inviting 20 couples to come along for a Paella themed supper and on the night there will be a further prize draw and three couple will be invited to partake of their dinner on the roof!
To be able to partake of this event we are requiring you enter our prize draw by heading over to our fundraising page here
For every £1 donation your name will be placed in the virtual hat one time. So a £5 donation will mean it will be there five times… and so on
It will be a fun night and the whole raison d’etre is to help this charity raise much needed funds to continue its support of the upkeep of the fabric of this building and hub of the village community.
Just remember it could be dinner on a “hot lead roof” with a great view and some fascinating company so just get donating!
Well with the weather warming up we are thinking about our June events and the menu we are going to produce. We have decided to reprieve some of our favourites and we hope you will like them…
We will serve a selection of seasonal nibbles to kick the evening off along with a suitable summery drink. We will then as the first course serve a South American inspired starter of a “Ceviche” a mix of smoked haddock and raw prawns that are marinated for a few hours in a citric marinade and then served shaped like a tartare with a celeriac remoulade (dressed in a mustard mayonnaise)
Main course will be a roasted fillet of beef served with a mixed wild mushroom sauce a rosti potato cake and our veritable “haricots verts” (green beans).
For our cheese course we will make it a selection of suitable cheeses served with our infamous Porridge Oat Biscuits and home-made Banana Jam.
To complete the meal we will serve Damian Allsops “Water” Chocolate Mousse. A really light and flavoursome chocolate mousse that allows the true flavour of the chocolate to shine through as it contains no cream!. Some local summer berries and also serve up a cold pressed iced coffee to help wash it all down.
It will hopefully be a warm and sultry night and we look forward to welcoming old and new guests to our secret venue (well to the newbies at least)
To Book please complete the booking form below and we will contact you normally with 24/48 hours to confirm your booking with a credit card number.
Dates: Friday 10th & Saturday 11th June 2016
Time: 19:30 Welcome Drink & Nibbles
Dinner: 20:00 Dinner Served
Suggested Donation: £40.00 Per Person (Service Not Included)
Menu
Ceviche of Smoked Haddock & Prawn with Celeriac Remoulade, served with corn bread
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Roasted Fillet of Beef served with a Wild Mushroom & Cognac Sauce, Crispy Rosti Potato Cake, Haricots Verts
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Hari’s Selection of Cheeses served with Porridge Oat Biscuits & Banana Jam
I have always enjoyed the idea of small plates of food that you can share so that you can sample what a kitchen has to offer and also a great way to share a meal. I have recently sampled a few meals like this in the last month or so. Firstly on a recent hook up with world renowned chocolatier Damian Allsop in Girona Spain we sampled some beautiful tapas in a back street establishment called Restaurant Curcuma. It was right in the city centre and had a modern simple decor but some great tasty and innovative tapas.
Cod with Sobrassada SausageTurmeric scented Croquetas
Highlight for me were the turmeric (the name of the restaurant) scented croquetas, crispy cased and soft unctuous centres and some steamed cod topped with roasted onions, honey and Sobrassada sausage. Innovative flavours simply presented and reasonably priced.
Then more recently we found ourselves back in the town of Whitstable at one our favourites – the infamous and highly popular Jo Jo’s Restaurant where they specialise in Mediterranean meze, – large sharing boards of assorted well sourced cold meats, cheese and small bowls of Hummus, Tzatziki etc as well as small plates of other ever changing specials and regular favourites. The cod or haddock goujons in a beer batter highlight the fresh fish that are ever so popular.
Crispy Pigs Ears…
I also quietly ordered one of the blackboard specials of the day… Crispy Pigs Ears with a Remoulade sauce. This was a very generous portion of crispy crumb coated slivers of porcine goodness that were to put it mildly rapidly devoured by even the youngest of our party ( a 4 year old) with gusto.
All that sharing ensured a very respectable and celebratory lunch was had by all.
Then most recently I was invited to a restaurant in the centre of Canterbury that was not on my radar or I had any idea of its existence. I was joining a friend who had been invited for a lunch at Deesons Restaurant where head chef Ross Barden was keen for us to try their newly launched “British Tapas” dishes in this quintessentially modern British restaurant.
The tapas idea here was both innovative and at time quite unexpected and as a whole worked well with some good skilful thought out dishes but then some not so well executed ones.
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We actually sampled the entire menu and were generally impressed but did feel the kitchen was trying just a shade too hard. Dishes that worked really well and were outstanding were a twice baked “Old Winchester” cheese soufflé with a carrot pureé that needed a little more seasoning and sweetness to cut against the savoury nature of the cheese. The Confit hen’s yolk with buttered leeks and crispy chicken skin soldiers was inspired. The Crispy Haggis with a poached egg and parsnip crisps was also flavoursome but technically the haggis was a tad dry from over frying/baking so needed the soft egg to add liquid!
Cider Braised Beef Shin with apple juice and ginger with mash and cabbage was a wonderful unctuous dish but again lacked in seasoning. The Spring Greens with wholegrain mustard worked beautifully as did the charred broccoli with cheese sauce and flaked almonds whilst smoked mash potato was less popular than the the plain one – it did need more butter, cream and salt.
In fact the seasoning overall throughout the meal did raise the question did “Chef” smoke as a lot of the dishes seemed under seasoned. This is a common situation in many a kitchen and for me something that was drummed into me in my formative years how important it is to season the food correctly and also taste it.
We also sampled a couple of croquette style dishes that when compared to a “Spanish croquetas” sadly missed the mark. The Smoked Cod Kedgeree was a good idea but the large cake like croquette was just to big and clumsy, a good livid coloured curry mayonnaise was much needed to moisten it.
The Pork and Potato Croquette served with an an apple butter was also oversized and would have been better smaller and perhaps served as a threesome. The apple butter on the tapas version did not pack the same punch that it did when served with the a la carte main course of Pork Tenderloin along with Black Pudding crumb and candied walnuts and a cider jus (to die for)
So overall this was a highly enjoyable delve into how we can equally compete with our continental partners and it can well showcase our own culinary heritage.
Deeson’s is a a little gem and I look forward to a return visit as I think if Chef Ross can sort out the issues we encountered he will be a place to watch in amongst the plethora of those uninspiring tourist eating establishments of Canterbury.
Well our May dinners will be a bit of a Spanish Fiesta with us cooking an authentic Paella freshly before your very eyes in central Tunbridge Wells.
The plan is over two nights we will be based at the Scallywag Café where we will taking over the premises on the Friday 20th & Saturday 21st May on each evening.
We will serve up a simple selection of Tapas to kick the evening off and then serve up a classic one pan Paella comprising of Chicken, Chorizo and Prawns (Vegetarian option is also available)
To finish it all there will be a simple Almond Tart Served with Taywell’s Honeycomb Ice Cream.
There will be a selection of drinks available for purchase direct from Scallywag Café and owner John is also planning some live Iberian themed musical entertainment to get you all in your own sombrero stomping mood!
To book the event you can do so via our dedicated page the Billetto ticketing web site here.
No bookings can be made directly with Scallywag Café or via the Hari Covert web site they can only be made via the Billetto ticket site.
We have limited spaces each night so please do book early to ensure you get the places your require.
We are showcasing a fledgling company with our next dinner when it comes to our coffee service at the end of the meal.
The brain child of Maidstone Boys Grammar School 6th Former Dan Westby, he has been a big fan of coffee for a number of years. After much internet searching along with a loan from the bank of “Mum & Dad” he set himself up with a coffee bean roasting machine.
Dan has thought through the whole business he has set up from the very clever name to the whole structure and set up. Velo Coffee is designed to be sustainable by selling their roasted beans at local farmers market in Bearsted each month to then being hand delivered by bike as that is Dan’s second passion.
So after much research and some clever branding Velo Coffee was born and Dan now sources his bean choice with the help of his customers and effectively small batch roasts to order the coffee to ensure the maximum freshness.
His current choice of bean is from Rwanda , and precisely Gashonga a small region close to the Congo and Burundi.
This “Red Bourbon” Variety is hand-picked by smallholders at 1600 plus meters above sea level in ideal growing conditions that is then fermented and dried at the “Gashonga Station”. He describes them as having a Chocolate & Brown Sugar flavour with a citrus acidity and a syrupy mouth feel.
Dan will normally buy 30kg of the chosen green beans that he will then roast to order in batches of 250g at a time – a process he will do at last minute before delivery by bike to ensure they are at their optimal freshness. He will then also grind the beans for the desired method of brew. A finer grind for the filter method and a coarser grind for a Cafetiere or “French press”
The smell is evocative as the beans roast in circa 12 minutes and Dan brewed me a fresh cup on my visit to his set up that illustrated well the citrus notes of the light roasted bean that when drank black and without sugar was a perfect way to appreciate his passion.
He has promised to be on hand each night to talk about his business and the way it operates from his monthly stall at Bearsted farmers market to the subscription service that he offers to local residents where he delivers a freshly roasted pack by bike or for those further afield he will also send by Royal Mail.
For someone so young it is an enterprise to be admired and what is so evident is the passion he shows for the product – the care and attention to detail from the branding to processes involved is to be commended. I trust you will come and support him at our next dinner.
Well things are getting warmer and we seem to be enjoying longer daylight hours as the clocks are about to change… Spring really has sprung and we are keen to reflect that further in this next month’s menu and event.
As the 14th April is deemed to be “St Tiburtius’ Day” when cuckoos start to sing we will be celebrating this event with a suitably seasonal menu!
Following a welcome drink on arrival – “a glass of sparkling perry with the addition of creme de cassis” served along with some seasonal nibbles we will then as a first course be serving a classic combination of wild garlic pesto spiked risotto garnished with some sweet tasting crab meat. I really love making a risotto and the challenge is always to get it creamy and unctuous with a full flavour.
We will then move onto the main course of a pink roasted Rump of Lamb that will be served with a piquant tomato and ginger sauce and a compote of spring onions. The vegetables served with this will be Green Beans (Haricot Verts) and duck fat baby roasted new potatoes.
Our cheese course next will reflect our market purchases and we will also serve our porridge oat biscuits infused with Ile de Re Sea Salt along with our homemade Banana Jam.
Finally we will complete the meal with our pudding… a Vanilla Panna Cotta, a lightly set cream that will be topped with a compote of fresh Rhubarb and then more than likely we will serve some warm fresh out the oven Butter Shortbread biscuits. A great combination and we hope a fitting end to this month’s meal.
Coffee this month will be courtesy of Velo Coffee Company of
Bearsted – we will be showcasing their freshly roasted single origin coffee from Rwanda. More about that in another post!
Suggested Donation: £35.00 per person (Service not included)
Dates: Friday 15th & Saturday 16th April 2016
Arrival: 7:30pm – Welcome Drink & Nibbles
Dinner: 8:00pm – Served
Menu
Crab & Wild Garlic Risotto
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Roasted Chump of Lamb, Tomato & Ginger Sauce
Green Beans, Roasted Baby New Potatoes
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Hari’s Selection of Cheeses, Porridge Oat Biscuits & Homemade Banana Jam
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Vanilla Panna Cotta with Poached Rhubarb Compote,
Warm Butter Shortbread
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Velo Coffee or Tea & Petit Fours
Menu subject to market purchases and ingredient availability
To reserve your places please complete the booking form below – we will contact you within 24 to 48 hours to confirm your booking.
With Spring nearly upon us and also Easter just around the corner we thought we would celebrate the Roman calendar date of the “Ides of March”.
The 15th of March reputed to be the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44BC is a couple of days before our next supper club event on March 18th & 19th. So we thought we would have a little bit of a Roman feel to the menu.
I make no apologies for borrowing as a starter a dish that I sampled at Sprig of London’s pop up in January – Cauliflower Romesco . A roasted cauliflower that is then served with a roasted and dried red
Roasted Cauliflower with Romesco Sauce
pepper sauce with the addition of almonds and olive oil that is renowned in the Mediterranean region of Catalunya that is often served in spring time with those new season onions called “Calcots”.
Next we aim to serve a baked fillet of Sea Bass served on a bed of crushed new potatoes and a classic beurre blanc (butter sauce) with lemon and capers. All served with a garnish of Purple Sprouting Broccoli.
Our Cheese course will reflect our market purchases and will be served with our now infamous porridge oat biscuits.
To complete the meal we are serving thinly sliced pineapple with pink grapefruit segments and a light local honey dressing and the addition of a Taywells Yuzu sorbet. A good citric finish to a spring meal that we hope will excite the tastebuds.
With Mediterranean nods what better way to celebrate the Ides of March… well nearly.
Dates: 18th & 19th March 2016
Arrival: 7:30pm Welcome drink & Nibbles
Dinner: 8:00pm
Suggested Donation: £35.00 per person (service not included)
Menu
Cauliflower Romesco
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Baked Sea Bass Fillet, Lemon and Caper Beurre Blanc Sauce Crushed New Potatoes, Purple Sprouting Broccoli
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Hari’s Selection of Cheeses with Porridge Oat Biscuits
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Pineapple & Grapefruit with a honey dressing Taywell Yuzu Sorbet
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Coffee or Tea & Petit Fours
Menu subject to ingredient availability and market purchases
When we launched “Covert Cook School” in the autumn of 2015 we were not sure what was the best format to pursue.
We feel now the best way forward is to structure the lessons to suit you. We are flexible on dates and the format the class will take… all we ask for is you choose the style of class you have that will then dictate the size of the class so the number of friends or acquaintances you come with.
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If you want a one to one lesson that is fine – if you want it hands on then we ask for just two attendees. If you want just a demo class then four people is the ideal number.
We will then discuss the content of your lesson and tailor it to what you want to learn. It can be tricks of the trade or perhaps something more complex and involved. Just remember the lesson will be bespoke to you.
To book your own Covert Cook School please complete the form below or go to the Covert Cook School dedicated page.
Following a welcome drink and assorted nibbles we felt to kick the meal off we would start with a dish inspired with Mackerel and gooseberries – a combination made in heaven as the fruit cuts wonderfully with the oiliness of the 
fish.
