1 Jeremy Chan A Journey Through Bold Heat with Recipes2 introduction origins opening bold heat forget everything you know: creating reference points the birth & death of a concept the setting: a cow foot in piccadilly the menu the recipes snacks seafood vegetables meat desserts improvisations base recipes notes 8 11 19 31 37 39 43 44 46 48 86 124 144 166 194 228 2412 introduction origins opening bold heat forget everything you know: creating reference points the birth & death of a concept the setting: a cow foot in piccadilly the menu the recipes snacks seafood vegetables meat desserts improvisations base recipes notes 8 11 19 31 37 39 43 44 46 48 86 124 144 166 194 228 2414 5 It was a cold October day in 2016 as I prepped away in the basement kitchen of Iré’s family home. Like me, Iré had recently left a career in finance to pursue his passion for hospitality. We had met more than fifteen years ago through mutual friends, and had become close when we’d both moved to London in our twenties. Iré’s idea for the restau- rant was for him to look after our guests and manage the business while I focused on the cooking. We had just agreed to cook dinner for sixty guests at a gallery in east London. It was as much a test of whether or not people liked our food as it was a chance to understand whether or not we were indeed capable of being in hospitality. The day began with us collecting produce from around London and arranging everything in neat piles across the dining table. As the octopus baked in his mother’s small oven, I blitzed mountains of papaya in the small blender Iré’s younger sister normally used for her breakfast smoothies. I’d read interesting articles about a digestive enzyme found in papaya; although normally used as an anti-inflammatory remedy, this enzyme could also act as a tenderizer, soften- ing the protein strands in tougher cuts of meat. I had two whole sides of goat resting on the freezing garden bench outside, and I needed to quickly process the fruit with salt and aromatics so I could apply the resulting cure to the meat for a full 48 hours. I’d never cooked goat, nor had I used papaya in this way before, but I decided to brave this risky experiment, taking the gamble that it would produce something sublime. On the second prep day, 10 kilos (22 pounds) of wild salmon arrived through the back door, and I began to sweat anx- iously, wondering whether I could pull this off. As members of Iré’s family came and went, I rushed to scale the giant, slimy salmon bodies that slid around on the small marble countertop. The tiny cutting board, fit for a supermarket onion, wobbled precariously as I continued to break the fillets down into respectable tranches; a portion of them were already cured and chilling in the frosty garden. With little space in the family kitchen, I was lucky to have the wintry garden to serve as a kind of ‘walk-out’ refrigerator. I just hoped the foxes wouldn’t eat my goat. With sixty mouths to feed and five courses promised, I somehow had to produce 300 plates of food in a small do- mestic kitchen on the opposite side of the city to the event’s location. My hands ached from crushing and squeezing fresh tamarind, which was now reducing into a tart, slick, dark purple glaze for the fish. Groundnuts toasted over the open flames in a basket on the stove as I walked in and out of the sliding back door to burn plantain leaves over the barbecue. I reeked of smoke. The tea-like aroma of the smouldering leaves seemed to fill the inside of my head as much as my hair. I entered a delirium of anxiety and exhaustion. I had visited the gallery before agreeing to do the dinner. We were so taken with the idea of cooking in such a beautiful space that we hadn’t noticed the fact that the building and its kitchen were not particularly suitable for an ambitious culinary event. But I was truly inspired, and my menu would not be held back. We’d spent days in the British Library re- searching the produce of Sub-Saharan West Africa, amassing lists of all the possible ingredients we might use, from seeds and peppercorns to plants, exotic fruits and fermented beans. I was confronted with a wealth of new flavours accented by fiery chillies, piquant umami and rich starches. While it felt like I was learning a new culinary language, there was strong undercurrent of familiarity, particularly in terms of the intensity of these spices and the burning sensa- tion they inflicted, which reminded me of certain dishes of my childhood, eaten in Hong Kong and mainland China. As I developed the menu for the event, I drew inspiration from my instinctive reactions to these flavours, rather than considering the traditional usage in their regular context. Iré had told me of a rich stew he’d eaten growing up, mi- yan taushe, a northern Nigerian soup of pumpkin and goat seasoned with palm oil, peppers, crayfish and peanuts. I’d never eaten such a combination of ingredients, but the idea sparked the potential for a deeply powerful dish that would both comfort and stir my guests to their core. I dreamed of slowly extracting the sweetness of winter pumpkin into a rich broth, imbued with the collagen of meltingly soft goat, and the perfume of roasted shellfish and buttery rich peanuts. I’d read about the synergistic effects of combining the amino acids of fish and meat proteins, inosinic and glutamic acids, to create a kind of ‘super umami’. Layering this bond- ing of flavours with mellow pumpkin and savoury nuts could only lead to disturbingly delicious results. I was captivated by the idea of pushing the sensation to its limit. Could some- thing be too delicious? I began with a base of very slowly caramelized onions, pep- pers, garlic and crushed Scotch bonnet chillies cooked down into a delicately aromatic paste. Earlier, I had butchered the goat and slow-roasted its bones and residual flesh, releasing these animal flavours into a stock left to bubble the night before. The goat meat, now marinated for two days in the papaya cure, was already tender. I grilled the pieces before adding them to the vegetables. Heads of giant prawns kissed the flames before their brains oozed out into the goat broth along with their golden pink shells. I took a handful of the peppercorns and nutmegs I’d received from Iré’s family friend, who’d brought them back from Nigeria. Toasted and blitzed to a fine powder, they smelled like a burning forest of eucalyptus and resin. I threw these into the broth after taking note of their weight, then strained the stock into the large pot, along with the smoky goat meat, diced pumpkin, a few large spoonfuls of home-made roasted nut butter and the concentrated, sweet meat of the prawns I’d left to brown throughout the day. opening4 5 It was a cold October day in 2016 as I prepped away in the basement kitchen of Iré’s family home. Like me, Iré had recently left a career in finance to pursue his passion for hospitality. We had met more than fifteen years ago through mutual friends, and had become close when we’d both moved to London in our twenties. Iré’s idea for the restau- rant was for him to look after our guests and manage the business while I focused on the cooking. We had just agreed to cook dinner for sixty guests at a gallery in east London. It was as much a test of whether or not people liked our food as it was a chance to understand whether or not we were indeed capable of being in hospitality. The day began with us collecting produce from around London and arranging everything in neat piles across the dining table. As the octopus baked in his mother’s small oven, I blitzed mountains of papaya in the small blender Iré’s younger sister normally used for her breakfast smoothies. I’d read interesting articles about a digestive enzyme found in papaya; although normally used as an anti-inflammatory remedy, this enzyme could also act as a tenderizer, soften- ing the protein strands in tougher cuts of meat. I had two whole sides of goat resting on the freezing garden bench outside, and I needed to quickly process the fruit with salt and aromatics so I could apply the resulting cure to the meat for a full 48 hours. I’d never cooked goat, nor had I used papaya in this way before, but I decided to brave this risky experiment, taking the gamble that it would produce something sublime. On the second prep day, 10 kilos (22 pounds) of wild salmon arrived through the back door, and I began to sweat anx- iously, wondering whether I could pull this off. As members of Iré’s family came and went, I rushed to scale the giant, slimy salmon bodies that slid around on the small marble countertop. The tiny cutting board, fit for a supermarket onion, wobbled precariously as I continued to break the fillets down into respectable tranches; a portion of them were already cured and chilling in the frosty garden. With little space in the family kitchen, I was lucky to have the wintry garden to serve as a kind of ‘walk-out’ refrigerator. I just hoped the foxes wouldn’t eat my goat. With sixty mouths to feed and five courses promised, I somehow had to produce 300 plates of food in a small do- mestic kitchen on the opposite side of the city to the event’s location. My hands ached from crushing and squeezing fresh tamarind, which was now reducing into a tart, slick, dark purple glaze for the fish. Groundnuts toasted over the open flames in a basket on the stove as I walked in and out of the sliding back door to burn plantain leaves over the barbecue. I reeked of smoke. The tea-like aroma of the smouldering leaves seemed to fill the inside of my head as much as my hair. I entered a delirium of anxiety and exhaustion. I had visited the gallery before agreeing to do the dinner. We were so taken with the idea of cooking in such a beautiful space that we hadn’t noticed the fact that the building and its kitchen were not particularly suitable for an ambitious culinary event. But I was truly inspired, and my menu would not be held back. We’d spent days in the British Library re- searching the produce of Sub-Saharan West Africa, amassing lists of all the possible ingredients we might use, from seeds and peppercorns to plants, exotic fruits and fermented beans. I was confronted with a wealth of new flavours accented by fiery chillies, piquant umami and rich starches. While it felt like I was learning a new culinary language, there was strong undercurrent of familiarity, particularly in terms of the intensity of these spices and the burning sensa- tion they inflicted, which reminded me of certain dishes of my childhood, eaten in Hong Kong and mainland China. As I developed the menu for the event, I drew inspiration from my instinctive reactions to these flavours, rather than considering the traditional usage in their regular context. Iré had told me of a rich stew he’d eaten growing up, mi- yan taushe, a northern Nigerian soup of pumpkin and goat seasoned with palm oil, peppers, crayfish and peanuts. I’d never eaten such a combination of ingredients, but the idea sparked the potential for a deeply powerful dish that would both comfort and stir my guests to their core. I dreamed of slowly extracting the sweetness of winter pumpkin into a rich broth, imbued with the collagen of meltingly soft goat, and the perfume of roasted shellfish and buttery rich peanuts. I’d read about the synergistic effects of combining the amino acids of fish and meat proteins, inosinic and glutamic acids, to create a kind of ‘super umami’. Layering this bond- ing of flavours with mellow pumpkin and savoury nuts could only lead to disturbingly delicious results. I was captivated by the idea of pushing the sensation to its limit. Could some- thing be too delicious? I began with a base of very slowly caramelized onions, pep- pers, garlic and crushed Scotch bonnet chillies cooked down into a delicately aromatic paste. Earlier, I had butchered the goat and slow-roasted its bones and residual flesh, releasing these animal flavours into a stock left to bubble the night before. The goat meat, now marinated for two days in the papaya cure, was already tender. I grilled the pieces before adding them to the vegetables. Heads of giant prawns kissed the flames before their brains oozed out into the goat broth along with their golden pink shells. I took a handful of the peppercorns and nutmegs I’d received from Iré’s family friend, who’d brought them back from Nigeria. Toasted and blitzed to a fine powder, they smelled like a burning forest of eucalyptus and resin. I threw these into the broth after taking note of their weight, then strained the stock into the large pot, along with the smoky goat meat, diced pumpkin, a few large spoonfuls of home-made roasted nut butter and the concentrated, sweet meat of the prawns I’d left to brown throughout the day. opening 7 12 In a sense, I’d forgotten my main motivations for becoming a chef: bringing people together and making them happy through food. introduction 7 12 In a sense, I’d forgotten my main motivations for becoming a chef: bringing people together and making them happy through food. introduction5352see p. 64corn, ube & razor clams see p. 70razor clam pancake5352see p. 64corn, ube & razor clams see p. 70razor clam pancakeNext >