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Mexican Cooking comes to The Dock Kitchen

Stevie is an old friend who I met at Ballymaloe, rather a long time ago now. He is an amazing cook with a passion for exotic spices from around the world, beautiful ingredients and unfussy food. The result is a wonderful mix of simply presented food from around the world, never with too many ingredients competing for attention. His flair with spices produces some sensational marinades, delicious chutneys and daals and he makes a mean biryani. One day he is going to teach me how to make his chaat masala too.

He occasionally lets me come and play at the Dock with him. A coulple of weeks ago we cooked Mexican together. We sat down with three-week old Samuel, his first-born and devised a menu together which we cooked all of this week at the Dock (I only did Tuesday and Wednesday as had other menus to do at Wahaca).

It’s a delight cooking there, as like Petersham Nurseries, you can just pop out of the kitchen to the herb garden to pick whatever herb you think might make all the difference to your chillie paste, sauce or soup…

The kitchen is also completely open lined with glass, rather than the conventional walls. How Stevie moved from the River Cafe, with all that beautiful light, to the only other kitchen in London that I know of, that is also an ode to light, is beyond me, but fairly typical of his natural jamminess. On August 21st they are closing for a fortnight and building a souped up kitchen courtesy of Wolf/Sub-zero, possibly the sexiest, coolest kitchen makers in the world, and the restaurant will double the number of seats it has to 80. What excitement.

Meanwhile a brief sypnopsis of our menu. We started with some corn which we shaved off the cobb and sauteed with sweet onion, garlic, a chipotle paste I made and masses and masses of butter. The result, a sweet, smoky, fiery filling for a white corn taco. It was so popular that I think I am going to put it on the wahaca menu next summer. Yum.

Next up was courgettes, a thoroughly Mexican vegetable, sauteed with girolles and summer herbs…

And then a plate of octopus which we rolled in crumbed crisy pig skin, deep-fried and served with a fruity, fiery habanero salsa…

This recipe was thanks to a friend Roberto Solis of the restaurant Nectar in Merida. Totally yummy, thanks for the idea Roberto, I hope you are enjoying Noma this week, you lucky so-and-so.

We did a sopa de guia next, which is a broth flavoured with wild herbs and leaves, which I first had at Casa Oaxaca, cooked by the wonderful Alejandro Ruiz…

And finally a slow-cooked shoulder of saltmarsh lamb, marinaded in ancho, chile de arbol and pasilla de oaxaca chillies and slow cooked over a bed of carrots, celery and onions and served with the classic shredded cabbage, radish and coriander slaw.

The pudding, which I failed to capture (please excuse my crummy photographs) was blackcurrant, hibiscus and tequila made by the lovely Hannah (ex-Ballymaloer) and Mexican wedding cookies made by the equally lovely Lewen (also ex-Ballymaloer maybe?). I had to go back to take these picces on Thursday, when I was no longer cooking and bumped into Mary Portas, Queen of Shops, who was eating there! Quelle excitement! I love Mary’s love of independent shops, what a woman. She was looking as stylish as ever.
So all in all an idyllic week, cooking with Stevie’s amazing team (here is Stevie and Lewen).

Creating food, talking to great people and feeling that life is good.

Thanks so much for having me guys, good luck with the refurb and thanks for the cooking tips.

tommi xxx

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Food & Drink, Food Topics & Trends, News, Our News, Wahacos, Window to the Kitchen

Baja California’s best sashimi ever

I’ve just returned from the most amazing week of cooking, eating and fishing in Los Cabos, Baja California, Mexico. An amazing trip where I learnt the secret to a great batter for fish tacos, how to cook mole negro and the delights of a good recado blanco (from the Yucatan).

Fishing was amazing. We went with Angelo, the chef behind Nick-San, possibly the best sushi restaurant I’ve ever been to. Last week we had the steamed head of a wahoo and some deep-fried seabass and snapper at his place with an evil habanero sauce, but that’s for another blog post. Here is him making up some ceviche and sashimi on a boating trip we went on…

and here is me eating, as usual…

Here is a plate of the delicious sashimi which Angelo whipped up in a flash (nothing to do with me I’m afraid, though the soy-serrano dressing I have made once or twice before and yes, it is yummy)…

Finally here is a picture of one of the beaches we visited… it is ridiculously beautiful and unlike my last ten trips to Mexico, this time I managed to get out of the kitchen and actually hit a Mexican beach! My first one in six years….at last!

Thanks to everyone who helped me make the trip so much fun! More stories to follow soon.

tommi x

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Food & Drink, Food Topics & Trends, Recipes & Cooking Tips, Wahacos, Window to the Kitchen

More menu testing …

We’ve just had our second round of menu testing for the new winter menu to launch in early October and I have been dreaming of some of the dishes since… below are a few of my favourite. 

Vegetable Tacos

Our new menu will be more seasonal than before and I am just loving the introduction of roasted squash to the Autumn Veg Tacos along with autumn greens, ancho chillies and  other goodies.

Then as the weather gets colder we will introduce the winter greens and mushrooms – topped off with a little Feta which has a richer flavour. These will keep you happy and warm through the winter months…

And the best of them all…

Tommi and our team of chefs created a new dish that we are really hoping to get on the menu as a main course. Our fish always has to be sourced from the best sources – and at the moment we still have a bit of work getting the prices down on this dish. It may not get on this menu but we are working hard at it! This dish has lemon sole goujons (from an MSC certified source) in tortillas served with salad, tomato salsa, chipotle crema with rice and Wahaca coleslaw on the side…

We have a little more testing to do with some of the fish dishes as we experiment with grilled or baked options. We also aim to get as much MSC certified fish on our menu. We will update you on this shortly.

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Food & Drink, News, Our News, Recipes & Cooking Tips, Wahacos, Window to the Kitchen

Recipe Testing for Winter Menu

Our new menu is set to go live towards the beginning of October so we were testing some new dishes in the White City kitchen the other day. There were a few things we were playing with.

Vegetable Taco

For our seasonal vegetable taco we were debating whether to go back to the savoy cabbage/ mushroom mix that we’ve had before. Or trying it with seasonal greens (spring greens at the moment). Firstly we made a rich chilli sauce with ancho chilli’s, which have a slightly sweeter flavour than the pasilla chilli’s we have used previously. Then we cooked off our veg on the flat top and mixed it with the chilli sauce.

It has quite a meaty taste to it, thanks to the mushrooms and the rich ancho sauce.

Chilli Squash Winter Burrito

We used fresh butternut squash which we dice, mix with a little cumin and our home made mojo de ajo (a potent garlic concoction) and roast it in the oven. Really delicious in a vegetarian burrito.

Black Bean Tostada

The black bean tostada omes from our intense love of our frijoles and black beans. It’s such a simple snack, but so delicious. In our first attempt, we took a tostada (fried pure corn tortilla) topped it with some frijoles, shredded lettuce, salsa fresca, crema, and Lancashire cheese.

It was a very tasty combo, but perhaps not the most attractive looking tostada. Especially since I was a little over generous with the frijoles and it started oozing over the sides.

The second more attractive attempt created by Tommi and Gavin, utilised our whole black beans, and corn, which gave it some welcome texture and a meatier, more robust consistency.

Our next step is testing different MSC approved seasonal fish for the menu – something we are really passionate about and keen to get right. If you’ve got a point of view on what we’re up to let us know by leaving a comment.

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Wahacos, Window to the Kitchen

Window into the Kitchen

The world of Wahaca revolves around what happens in the kitchen. Our team of chefs are incredibly talented and are frequently devloping new recipes and coming up with new ideas. We are going to share our favourite stories with you here as and when they happen.

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