Street Feast Wedding

Street Feast Wedding Menu

What Fun! I recently catered for a friends wedding. Being a young couple and very much lovers of New York and cool eateries combined with my love of street food we thought we would go with a street feast themed wedding menu.

Using personal ideas suiting the lovely couple, our little touches brought the food to life. Collecting jam jars for a year, spending hours stamping brown greaseproof paper with their personalized stamp to the love that went into the tender melt in your mouth lamb shoulder. All contributing towards a fun interactive wedding feast.

Menu below

On Arrival

Individual Nachos With Guacamole Sour Cream & Salsa Or Melted Cheese & Jalapenos

To start

Braised Lamb Shoulder In Brioche Bun With Fine Slaw & Chicken Wings

Vegetarian

Seared Halloumi In Brioche Bun With Fine Slaw & Cherry Tomato Basil Salad

The Main event

Slow Cooked Juniper Berry Beef Brisket With ‘Our Fave’ Mac n Cheese & Seasonal Veg

To Finish

Apple Jam Jar Apple Crumble with a Takeaway Hazelnut Chocolate Brownie

The evening munch

Hog Roast Crackle Pork Buns, Anti Pasti Board With Grilled Focaccia , Selection Of Cheeses

Down to the Cooking

ON ARRIVAL

Individual Nachos’

Not just regular nachos but wraps that are cut and baked so they are a far more delicate flavor allowing the guacamole, sour cream and mango tomato salsa to target the taste buds (rather than the strong after taste that nachos leave in your mouth). A little piping of each topping onto the mini nachos and hey presto, one of the couple’s favorite foods turned canapé.

 Mango Tomato Salsa

A subtle little twist by adding mango to a regular tomato salsa. Just giving it a little gumption as we so love to do. I wont write the recipe, add as much or little as you would like yourself. Small tip: Unless a lover of red onion dont add too much as raw onion can over power some salsa. Ingredients as follows. Mango, Tomato (no flesh), Red onion, Red Chili, Lime zest and juice, fresh coriander, Olive Oil, Salt, pepper

Braised S U C C U L E N T Lamb Shoulder Mini Brioche Buns with Fine Slaw & Chicken Wings

 Lamb is hands down my favorite meat. Its full of flavor, however pairing lamb with other flavors isn’t as easy as we assume. Marinating chicken with anything we wish, it’s easy but lamb… It needs to be a fairly robust flavour to enhance or perhaps compliment the lamb. On this occasion, its saffron tomato lamb shoulder. (Marinated overnight).

 MARINADE

Heat a little olive oil with garlic, add the saffron (do not burn), add tomato paste, season and there’s your marinade. Don’t forget to seal off the lamb shoulders in a pan to a nice golden coloring prior to marinating.

 COOK

Place the lamb shoulders into deep gastro’s (a deep cooking tin) and cover with a large tin of chopped tomato’s, lamb stock and season. Cover with 2 layers of foil. Place in the oven @200 degrees for 45mins then down to 140 degrees for 4 – 5 hours. You will know when the lamb is ready, as it will fall from the bones. Leave lamb to cool gently in its own liquor when you remove. When the lamb shoulder is cool enough to touch and pull from bone, start to shred. Leave the lamb in nice pieces not small mushy lumps. This is so that when you re warm the lamb with the desired sauce it will continue to break apart. Do NOT let the lamb go cold as the meat doesn’t pull from the bone as nice. It needs to be warm for this process.

I reduce the cooking liquor, blitz to make a sweet delicious tomato saffron lamb sauce.The rest is up to you – Serving with a sweet brioche bun and crunchy fine slaw works a treat in the mouth.

 Chicken Wings

 Firstly, wings HAVE to be crispy. Who likes soggy chicken wings?

We marinated the chicken wings in Harrissa. Harrissa is a dry chili garlic mix with herbs. It’s a great spice/ seasoning. Enough punch of flavor but not too much to blow your head off with its heat. Marinate overnight. Cook high @180 degrees and keep turning them so all of the wings crisp up. Easy!

 Vegetarian

 Nicely seared Halloumi is the winner for this dish. OK, we don’t want rubbery halloumi here. 1cm thick slices, add a sprig of rosemary and drizzle of olive oil onto the halloumi, then add it to a hot non-stick pan. A nice colour on each side and remove from pan. Set aside until ready to serve in bun. Serving with a cherry tomato rocket, chive, and basil salad worked well. Using a white balsamic for subtle punch.

THE MAIN EVENT

Humm, who can say if this is the Beef Brisket or the mac n cheese. Well, it’s your preference ;)

 The B E A U T I F U L Braised Beef Brisket

Even with me being a chef andwith much experience in slow cooking meat, I still did plenty of research on how to get the PERFECT brisket. I must admit there is a lot of difficulty and not very positive talk on beef brisket. What an under stated meat, this brisket comes out just heavenly. Big long strands of meaty (not fatty) beef that entangles your tongue as you eat it. When cooking brisket its about confidence in the cooking method that I’ll happily share with you. Always remember the start products needs to be good to achieve a good result. If your brisket is fatty then trim it up so that you’re starting with a beautiful piece of meat.

 Conquering the Beef Brisket Marinade

This always depends on the amount your cooking – I’ll write the recipe in cup form. Aiming at a small flat beef brisket for home size (3kg). If you do this for a larger function such as above then increase and you predict. Example: 2 x 6 kg weight would mean 4 cups instead of one. Recipes are about trial and error. That’s why us chefs love cooking so much and when we get a ‘Golden’ recipe we use it always, even then, tweaking the recipe as we like.

 The Marinade Recipe

 Marinating the Brisket over night (Based on 5kg weight)

Smoked Paprika x ½ cup

Mango Powder x 1 cup (this isn’t easy to come by so don’t worry if you cant find it)

Jerk seasoning x 1 cup

Juniper Berries x 15

Salt x ¼ cup

Sugar x ¼ cup

 Cooking Your Beef Brisket

Add the briskets to a deep enough tray to cover with liquor. This brisket has a flavorsome marinade so we added water as the liquor, just enough to cover the brisket. No need to add salt as this is also in the marinade. Cover with 2 sheets of foil. Put in oven @200 degrees for 45 mins, then drop down to 140degrees for 4/5 hours. When we pulled it out the oven it was falling away just as you would want it to. Again, as we did the lamb you must leave the brisket to cool its in own liquor, Leave for 30- 40 mins on the side resting in the tray you cooked it in.

We couldn’t have wished for a better outcome, this tasty beef came off in gorgeous strands. I would honestly say we had 95% beef. Very little fat. Glorious! It may seem excitable to boast of the beef but when you produce slow cooked meat that not takes overnight to marinade but over 4-5 hours to cook and then it comes out perfectly, not much more could make your happier.

The cooking liquor now packed with flavor, reduce it if you need to add any back. We left the now pulled brisket in this liquor until we needed it. Heated up the brisket and adding liquor back to it until the correct moistness achieved.

DONE!

 The Mac N Cheese

Stringy, cheesy Mac N Cheese. There are a few tips with this dish and an improvement I learned from cooking mac n cheese in big volume for the wedding.

 TIPS

1. MUST cook the macaroni al dente. Remember the macaroni is going to continue cooking when you add it to the sauce and then gratinate. We do NOT want mushy macaroni do we?

2. Flavour your milk for your béchamel. This is your preference – I add bay leaves, Thyme, Garlic and peeled onion to the milk heating it slowly, brining it to the boil. This allows all those flavors to release into the milk not to mention giving your end product depth of flavor. Add nutmeg to the finished béchamel.

3. Choose your cheese – Again this is preference. I add Cheddar, Parmesan and now (my new improvement) grated mozzarella. This helps with the stringy consistency, people so like to see

4. Timing – It’s not a case of adding all into the pan and leaving it to cooking the side. You need your finished béchamel hot and ready, the macaroni cooked and refreshed so it can be heated with the hot sauce, the cheese added at the correct times.

5. When to add the cheese – As your béchamel is heating add the grated cheddar and Parmesan. Add the grated mozzarella just as you are about to add the béchamel to the pasta. This giving the mac its stringy texture.

6. HOT Salamander (see pic above as this is sometimes called a grill) – Make sure the salamander or grill at home is hot and ready as soon as the pasta mixed to your positively yummy béchamel and your cheese is added at correct times, you want to gratinate and serve immediately

7. Serving your mac – For the wedding we served this in black pans lined with greaseproof. The guests helped themselves creating a buzz at the table.

 RESULT - YUMMY MAC N CHEESE

 Seasonal Vegetables

 Vegetable are awesome, we just need to be creative. It’s about different textures exciting the palette as we eat them. For the wedding, we chose sugar snap peas, carrots, broad beans (shells removed), peas, braised leeks in butter and stock, shallots cooked slow and sweet with a sprig of thyme. Ensure the greens vegetables are cooked separately and refreshed (this keeps them vibrant green). Adding them all together in a pan at the end combining all the flavors and textures. Lovely Jubly.

TO FINISH

Click on image below to see slideshow

 Apple Jam Jar Crumble with a Praline Chocolate brownie

One of the couple’s favorite deserts is apple crumble. Its just doesn’t seem right having hot apple crumble on a summers day so we’ve tweaked it to suit the occasion.

Collecting Jam jars over this previous year. We went with warm apple compote with pre baked crumble on top. Giving a nice bite to the apple crumble. Serving cream in miniature milk bottles on the tables.

       A Praline Brownie to take away

Instead of favors at wedding we gave each person an individually wrapped praline brownie to take home or possibly munch later on after a good dance. 

Praline Chocolate Brownie – This is one of those ‘golden’ recipes that I’m afraid I cant give away but I can give Tips to help you achieve a damn good brownie.

 TIPS

1  Good Chocolate – In any cooking you’ve got to have good ingredients to start with. If you want a rich brownie I would recommend dark chocolate. Try to avoid anything over 75% as this can a tad bitter.

2  Don’t overheat or burn the melting chocolate butter mix. Cover the bowl with cling film as you melt the butter and chocolate together S L O W L Y. Mix with spatula and be sure to scrape all the chocolate into your mix.

3  Follow the method for your recipe – Baking is specific for a reason. Baking is science… appreciate this.

4  Brownies MUST WOBBLE! This is probably the biggest contribution to people ruining their brownies. Follow the time, even if wobbly take it out of the oven and leave it to cool in the tray it’s cooked in.

5  Cut when cold. I would recommend putting the brownie in the fridge, cutting it later when it’s cold. Never put food in the fridge hot. Once cooled you can remove from the tray and cut into perfect pieces you require.

6  Best served from the freezer – Mega tip. If you’re cooking for a function. Freeze the cut brownie and remove from freezer on the day. They are delightfully gooey after an hour or so. Far better than room temp.

The Evening Munch

After the protein meat feast I could hardly imagine people would be hungry for the hog but they certainly were after a few drinks. Slow cooked Pork with Crackling, stuffing and apple sauce in soft floured buns. I actually used an outside caterer to provide this as it works our more cost effective rather than hiring a hog machine. I used Michael Courtney butchers and very much recommend them. Nice staff and very good hog pork buns.

We served an anti pasti platter with sliced chorizo, Parma ham, salami, peppers, courgettes and red onion with grilled rosemary focaccia alongside a delightfully large cheese board with the favorites of course…oozing brie, English cheddar, Sussex blue and subtle red Leicester.

And that my friends is a street feast wedding themed menu… a great deal of fun, relaxed, quirky with just enough gumption to wow the guests.

Weddings, all the planning that goes into them for the perfect day. Food being as big or small a part as the couples so wish. I must admit this particular wedding was a joy with the couple themselves being very relaxed, it set the tone for the whole day. Me and my catering team organised and calm, complimented on our smooth runnings. Service obviously throws a few unexpected spanners in the works. A power cut during the canapés, luckily not the main course with Ridge Farm staff being rapid and exceptionally efficient fixing the problem. When you have a good team on board things always seem to come together. I thank my team Andrew Fuller, Ben Spearing and Immre Fekete for making the day as smooth as it was. Our shared experience and knowledge made it an absolute pleasure. Thank you also to the photographers Piers Fearick and Marcus Fenton for understanding timings, working hand in hand throughout the day.

A last praise for the couple... it was an absolute pleasure to have catered for you both. You and your families were a delight and Im sure you have many years of happiness ahead of you (filled with delicious food...of course) x

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