Brian Turner Demo

On the 12th October, I was lucky enough to be asked to prepare a demonstration kitchen for Brian Turner at one of our Primary Schools in York.

We had just won Bronze Food for Life status in York and Brian was invited to be our guest of honour and do a cooking demo for some of the kids, serve lunch and then judge a cake competition later in the day.  My role was to set up and manage the schools demonstration kitchen so that Brian could show off two of his classic recipes.  Yorkshire Puddings and Fat Rascals.  Make sure you pronounce the Rascals correctly though.  It is rAscals, not raaascals!  Brian was quite emphatic about this little fact.  With a glint in his eye of course.

The recipes are (with compliments of Brian Turner):

Yorkshire Pudding

INGREDIENTS

1 cup plain flour

1 cup eggs

1 cup (½ milk, ½ water)

Pinch salt

1 tsp malt vinegar

4oz lard

NB! Use the same sized cup throughout the recipe

METHOD

• Put plain flour into a bowl
• Add cup of eggs and the milk & water
• Whisk smooth
• Add salt and vinegar
• Leave for ½ hour to rest
• Heat lard in muffin tins(straight sided preferred) until smoking point in oven
• Beat lumps out of mix
• Pour the mix quickly into tins and put back into oven on 220˚C for 15 minutes
• Turn down to 180˚C for remainder of time
• Serve immediately

and...

Fat Rascals – Biscuit Style

INGREDIENTS

8oz unsalted butter

1lb plain flour

Salt

4oz currants

1oz unrefined brown sugar

Milk and water mixed

Caster sugar

METHOD

• Rub the butter into the flour mixed with the salt
• Add the currants and sugar
• Add the milk mixture to make a stiff dough
• Roll out 1 inch thick
• Cut into 2.5 inch rounds
• Brush with milk
• Sprinkle with caster sugar
• Bake at 200˚C until golden brown (10-12 minutes)

I spent the morning setting up 4 stations for the children and the main station for Brian.  This involved weighing and setting up the recipe ingredients into 5 different areas so that all the stations had a full set of ready to go ingredients for both recipes.  This took a lot longer than I expected and I only just managed to complete the set up and clean up the kitchen before everyone arrived.  Thank god they were about 10 minutes late!

I even remembered to turn on the ovens before everyone arrived so there was no time wasting there.  It was the second thing Brian said to me after he entered the kitchen.  The first was 'Good Morning Chef!' accompanied by a very firm handshake and then, 'Are the ovens on?' to which I could safely and happily respond, 'Yes Chef!'.  Just as well I had the forethought...

I definitely felt part of a little club that morning, a special and entitled chef's club to be exact.  My boss, Mark, even commented on it that Brian treated me with a different type of respect and attitude to the others in the kitchen.  Yup, chef's club! 

Brian quickly jumped into his Yorkshire recipe and got the kids involved early on with beating the mix and adding this and that to the bowl.  Just after the extremely hot pan with the smoking lard and sizzling batter had gone back into the oven, Brian came round the counter formed a circle with all the children and said a prayer to the Yorkshire Pudding god's to make sure his yorkshire's rose as they should. 

Next, Brian demo'd the Fat Rascals and then sent the children to their benches and let them get on with it.  Both Brian and I walked around and assisted the children as needed.

Once the biscuits had been placed into the oven, Brian went back to the main work station and after asking all the children to action bicycle pumps to blow up the yorkshire's, he took them out of the oven.  WOW!  I can honestly say I have never seen yorkshire's that have risen as much as these outside of pictures in recipe books!  Brian cut a small hole in the top of each yorkshire and spooned in a sausage and onion stew he had made earlier to create his 'posh' version of toad-in-the-hole.  I got to try a little...  yum!

Brian also took out his Fat Rascals and showed the children how to plate up and display items attractively.  Yes, by putting the worst looking ones at the bottom!

All in all, I had a fun day and it was great meeting a very humble, down to earth and knowledgable celebrity chef.  For all my hard work, I was happily presented with a signed copy of one of his cookbooks and you'll be happy to know that this book is one of the titles in the cookbook lottery so hopefully you'll get to read about my experiences of a few of the recipes in the book.