Sloes

Hogweed seeds

Salad Burnet

Roasting dry aged mallard ducks

Sirloin from The Butchery

Apples, fried sweet bread, quinces

Raw prawns, lardo, salad burnet

Grilling aged pope's eye

Cultured butter

Mike

Roasted mallard, jerusalem artichoke, hawthorns, sweet clover on a homemade charcoal plate

Meadowsweet

Black trumpets, chard, jerusalem artichoke, sweet clover

Duck

Sea bass, oxalis, chervil root, sea lettuce

Beef, oyster, nasturtium

Pumpkin roasted in rye dough with juniper wood

Snipe, pumpkin, sloes

Grilled beef, oyster emulsion, turnips fermented in yoghurt whey, salsify

Smoked duck blood Bloody Mary

Beef, salsify, dandelions

Pork, brassicas, carrots

Partridge, smoked pear, malt

Einkorn bread, seaweed butter

Charred beets

Tim, beetroots, chicken skin sauce

Fried partridge legs, brown butter emulsion

Popcorn pudding, preserved lemon, cake

Crystal Bennes

HOUSE OF WOLF
Islington
November and December 2012

For two months before Christmas, we took over the kitchen as chefs-in-residence at House of Wolf, a historic former music hall on Upper Street in Islington, housing an experimental cocktail bar, a live music venue, and restaurant and private dining rooms.

We cooked a set menu of six courses, featuring the best autumn ingredients we could find, sourced from small-scale producers, foragers, farmers and urban vegetable growers that we have been met and been inspired by over the last few years. The menu changed with the availability of the produce, putting less pressure on our suppliers, and demanding of us a degree of improvisation.

In October we picked ten kilos of fruit, including various hawthorns, quinces, rosehips and sloes, which all found their way into dishes over the run. We baked bread for service every night, using old-fashioned wheat varieties and accompanied by a different experimental butter, which changed weekly.

For the first month, The Butchery supplied us with a selection of cuts of 50-day dry aged beef, different with every delivery, according to their system of whole-animal butchery. We were sent wild mallard ducks from which we dry-aged for between 7 and 14 days in a repurposed fridge. We found a supply of a kind of Atlantic Prawn, pink when raw, which we served with cured back fat from Trealy Farm, and had weekly boxes of wild leaves and fruit arrive from The Forager, which included such things as melilot, dandelions, scurvy grass, and three-cornered garlic. As usual, we cooked with a lot of hay.

In December, we cooked beautiful little french partridges and various pieces of the first pig raised and slaughtered by Stepney City Farm. Mike made desserts from popcorn and parsnip, fruit from Brogdale and pickled sea bass to garnish an array of seaweeds and microherbs.

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November Menu

Einkorn wholegrain bread and yoghurt whey butter

Raw prawns with Trealy Farm lardo
hogweed, mallow oil and salad burnet

Wild sea bass in dill-vinegar, Isle of Bute dulse
purple oxalis leaf, chervil root and celery cress

Wild mallard duck with chestnuts, scarlet hawberries
jerusalem artichokes and sweet clover

Various cuts of dry-aged beef with salsify
fermented turnips, dandelions and oyster emulsion

Textures of Brogdale apples, quince, yoghurt curd
sourdough brioche eggy bread and buttered black tea

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December Menu

Einkorn wholegrain bread and sea lettuce butter

Caraway-cured mackerel with rye,
pickled orange peel, brandy crème fraiche and leaves

Wood-roasted beetroot with chicken skin sauce
brown butter and wild watercress

Various cuts of pork with rainbow carrots, romanesco cauliflower, broccoli, fondant potatoes

Roasted, aged partridge with smoked pears, sloes, salad burnet and malt

Meadowsweet pudding, yoghurt sponge,
parsnip and white chocolate ganache, chervil root

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