Create at the NHM Ice Rink

create are proudly delivering the catering offer at The Natural History Museum's Ice Rink café this season. The café is available for corporate and private hire and create's designers have enjoyed  designing and delivering  some delicious alpine themed menus over the past few weeks. The café serves a range of winter warming refreshments for those wanting to put their feet up and treat themselves after an energetic skate. 

We wanted to share one corporate hospitality party that took the alpine theme to the next level.

Our menu creator designed a standing starter course for 180 guests that included beautifully decorated soup stalls, a raclette station and passed around charcuterie boards.

winter spinach and roasted garlic soup

with a frogs leg lollipop

leek and potato soup

with parsley and garlic buttered l’escargot

 

Classic french raclette was served from a station dressed with baskets of ficelle breads, kilner jars of cornichons and baby onions in homemade pickle.

The cheese was carved straight form the wheel in front of guests into rustic tapas dishes onto hot new potatoes, home pickled baby onions and cornichons and a selection of toppings including crispy lardons, truffle oil and crispy shallots for guests to help themselves to.

Of course, an alpine themed party wouldn't be right without plenty of Glühwein and hot apple cider...

 

Call us on 020 8944 4900 to speak to our NHM Ice Rink team about corporate and private hospitality in the fabulous café.

February 'Create the Seasons'

We admit this time of year is pretty gloomy, so why not cook yourself into a good mood, as there are an abundance of seasonal fruit, vegetables and other British produce to perk you up.

Seville Oranges
Marmalade was invented in Scotland in the late 18th Century by a savvy shopkeeper who unknowingly bought a cargo of bitter oranges. In a desperate plea to get his money's worth his wife turned it into jam; it seems that behind every successful man there is a quick thinking woman! This weekend, venture to your local market and buy yourself some Seville or blood oranges and cook up a batch of marmalade. A pretty sticky affair but definitely worth the effort.

Yorkshire Rhubarb

Yorkshire rhubarb or forced rhubarb is at it's pinkest at this time of year. The rhubarb is grown in pitch black sheds in a 9 square mile triangle in West Yorkshire, deprived of natural light and picked by candle light to keep it sweet and pink. Rhubarb is technically a vegetable, however you decide to eat it, it is delicious especially with homemade custard!

create's humble pink rhubarb and elderflower custard tart

with ginger bread cream, poached rhubarb and rhubarb curd

Mussels

The general rule with shellfish is to only eat them in months that include the letter "R", but at this time of year they are at their best. Mussels are not the most beautiful shellfish, but are packed with the flavour of the sea, and the shells make the most perfect natural canapé spoon.

create's sustainably rope grown mussels 
with parsley and shallot salsa

New Year, New Food, New Trends

The create kitchen predicts what's hot 
and what's not for 2013 

(and a few trends we are going to push this year!)

Street Food
Back in October when we ate our way through the launch of KERB, the new street food market sensation at Kings Cross Boulevard, it got us thinking...so expect big things from the create 'streat' movement this Summer!

Recipe resurrections making the classics cool
History has given us some amazing recipes which have long been forgotten and we think it's about time people remembered them; our menus are going be crammed full of sippets, flummeries and heritage varieties of vegetables.

Making sweet savoury
Just like fashion, food follows trends. Some are good and some are terrible and some are just plain strange, but if you are clever and can combine the good and the strange we think, you have an excellent recipe for success. 

Our star dish of Autumn/Winter 2012 was a sirloin of beef with cashel blue and chard bread and butter pudding, and looking forward, we are thinking duck and hot cherry and beetroot summer pudding is a must. 

A few more to look out for:
Trash food - the gourmet junk food.
Gourmet grilling - spit roast cow and vertical bbqs both a spectacle in their own right and here at create, we are masters at both.
Sharing platters - the new tapas!
Eating your greens- foraged herbs and baby cress have made greens cool again.

Alan in Wonderland

Having been hijacked on Monday night and whipped up into a social media frenzy we thought we would treat you all to what the kitchen does best......cooking creatively!

And what is more creative than a Mad Hatter's Tea Party

A menu full of unexpected surprises like our bacon jam and montgomery cheddar jammy dodgers and create's now infamous edible frogs filled with passion fruit frogspawn were all joined alongside  "drink me" little bottles of mock turtle soup and Mad Hatter sandwich cylinders of mustard bread with ham and piccalilli butter, earl grey tea smoked salmon with thyme creme fraiche and beetroot bread with sweet pickled cucumber and curd cheese.

Sadly for the sales team who love a chocolate frog possibly more than they love cupcake Friday's, everything was devoured bar the crusts from the bread, no wonder they all have such straight hair, clearly no one told them crusts make your hair curl!

P.s. 'Alan' is our Executive Head Chef and you can follow him on twitter @AlanCreatefood to see what he gets up to. 

November: create the seasons

Call it an early Christmas present from create's kitchen; we are going to compile monthly 'eat the season' blog entries, which help keep you in the know of what's hot and what's not when it comes to seasonal ingredients.

What better month to start than in November, with the nights drawing in and the opportunity to roast chestnuts on an open fire! This winter, create are braising, roasting, creating rich stocks, sourcing feathered and furred game and now the frost has come, promoting the magnificent brussel sprout! 

Here is what is hanging out in the create larder this month:

Celeriac

Not the most appealing of vegetables, but once you have peeled away the knobbly exterior, they are really very delicious. Roast in the oven with lots of garlic and thyme, add to some buttery mashed potato or try a celeriac and apple remoulade (we like it accompanying delicious cold meats).

Brussel Sprouts

A firm create favourite. Whether it's the sprout tops tossed in salted butter with a grate of fresh nutmeg or the buds sauteed with crispy bacon and chopped chestnuts, we love them. Staff lunch is made all the better with leftover sprout bubble and squeak.

(Oh and if it helps... we don't believe in putting crosses in the bottom of them, which is good if you are delivering a three course dinner for 1500 guests) 

Game  (pheasant, pigeon and partridge)

create's open game pie

with smoked apple purée, mulled brambles and sloe gin syrup

This dish has become a firm tasting kitchen favourite. Game provides an excellent carrier for all of the winter flavours, and it's an excellent way to promote the very best of British. 

Late Season Apples

With over 3000 varieties of apples native to the UK, we are spoilt for choice. Roast them, bake them, purée them or (our favourite), eat them with guinea fowl and black pudding...

create's seared breast of guinea fowl

with butter roasted potato, savoy cabbage, black pudding bon bons, baby apples and herb cream sauce

Out and about with the create kitchen

We decided recently to give some of our chefs a camera to document a week in their chef shoes...

We have left out the blurry shots and all the (very artistic) self portraits, and here is a selection...

Monday
Ladies who like to lunch with a view, at OXO2 
salcombe bay crab, chilli beignet & butternut squash bisque | chocolate and passionfruit parfait

 Tuesday  
 Antipasti platters at the Levi's Launch Party

Wednesday

Awards Dinner for 600 at Old Billingsgate 

spiced guinea fowl & cauliflower terrine | blood orange soufflé with cornflake ice cream

Thursday
Canapés for 200 guests at One Marylebone
roasted chicken and bread sauce beignet | cassis macaroon with freeze dried brambles

Friday
Cooking in the dark with the Crown Jewels at HM Tower of London
fig with goats cheese panna cotta and black fig wafer

Saturday
Wedding food stations
beetroot cured salmon and potted crab station | petit fours pick & mix station

All change...

create's new Autumn Winter menus are launched!

After a summer of serving stroganoff, blinis and beetroot to hoards of hungry Russians, (not to stereotype too much), create have settled into September with the sales team’s favourite day of the year, the Bespoke AW tasting.

Here are some sneak previews of create’s brand new menu, using the finest British seasonal produce and as ever a creative imagination.

CANAPES

 tempura seaweed crackers

 with cured sea bass and beetroot cress

homemade fig rolls

with cassis cream

duck and cherry bakewell tart

with smoked almond frangipane

twice baked ham hock and smoked northumberland cheese soufflé

with parsley cream sauce served on mini create plates

hot toddy jellies

with candied orange zest

STARTERS

smoked venison carpaccio

with pickled brambles, toasted hazelnuts and shaved cacao

MAINS

sirloin of british beef

with chard and cashel blue bread and butter pudding, spinach, glazed beetroot and roasted garlic cream

DESSERT

pink yorkshire rhubarb chilled soufflé

with honeyed english mascarpone, ginger and rhubarb gel, poached rhubarb and rhubarb crisps



Say Cheese...

Since December sitting on top of a shelf in the kitchen office have been two boxes, they are nestled in between oven pumps, smoking guns and “inspirational books”, they potentially contain the key to our retirement fund.

They are a beginners cheese making kit, and this morning we made cheese!

Seems relatively straight forward...

This is Alan our Executive Chef reading the recipe, once we had coverted gallons and cups into ml we made it up anyway.

At this stage it looks particularly un-appetising…so we decided to add thyme...

This is where we made a lot of jokes around “saying cheese”

And so we had our final product, it doesn’t really look or feel like cheese but for a first attempt I think we could probably get a job at the Baby Bell factory.

KERB

Last night our Executive Chef Alan and I (Menu Designer) ventured out of our suburbia comfort zone and headed north for the launch party for KERB. 

For those of you who have had your head in the sand for the last year, street food has become cool, and the infamous eat.st on Kings Cross Boulevard was recently re-launched into KERB.

With the intention of eating as much as we could I think in hindsight we did pretty badly, quality- excellent, quantity- disappointing, only managing to attack 2 food vans.

A good portion of the evening was spent in queuing up for the Bhangra Burger with a lot of other trendy “urban foodies” with tweezled moustaches and lumberjack shirts, and had a very delicious lamb wrap, spicy enough to numb my mouth but with a lime/aubergine pickle which I found really addictive (which is worrying as I really dislike aubergine) but totally worth the wait.

After retreating away from the spiced haven we went in search of something else. The queue for the steamed pork bun was endless, the guys selling ribs were sold out and were packing up, so we decided to divide and conquer. I went to Healthy Yummies, not such a good name but amazing scallops with celeriac puree, bacon and sea herbs, it was so good that I didn’t have the will power not to eat it before taking a photo so this one is from their website.

By this point we were really full and the queues were heaving and we were running out of legal tender so rather than running the risk of dancing for money we retreated back to familiar territory where moustaches are only grown for Movember and the only check you see is on tweed.

Look what we found……

We always get excited when we find a new supplier whether it be for canapé kit, tableware or food.

Here are a few of our kitchen and design team favourites which are exploring the create 2012 trend of “literal British food”.

My new best friends

THE AMAZING CANON AND CANON

cannonandcannon.com

Specialists in the most delicious selection of British chorizo’s, parma hams and even air dried alpaca sourced from all over the UK, go and visit their stall at Borough Market. The spicy beer sticks are well worth the queue.

air dried mutton

from dorset with red cabbage remoulade, pear puree and redcurrants

Hopefully some new friends

NURTURED IN NORFOLK

nurturedinnorfolk.co.uk

Personalised cress creators. for anyone that knows create we have a love of all things cress and baby leaf related and this company funnily enough based in norfolk can grow your own bespoke mixes of cress.

rainbow trout rillete

with baby beetroot, micro sorrel, red mustard cress,  black pepper toasts and herb emulsion

TREGOTHAN TEA

tregothnan.co.uk 

The only producers of tea grown in deepest rural Cornwall ………winner.
 

Who needs friends when you have these?

Just when we thought we had seen it all the brilliant ASA have come up with these...

Yes they are exactly what you think they are…… glow in the dark pepper grinders.

Might not have any friends left, I spend so much time on these websites…..

 Once translated into English this website has become our go too page to cure our obsessions for all things that verge on the impossible, candyfloss pasties being one of them and anything miniature and made out of plastic, we love that it is almost unbreakable, even the most heavy handed chef can’t break it.

http://www.100x100chef.com/online/index.php/en

Beautiful ingredients especially the Himalayan salt plates

http://www.souschef.co.uk/

Full of some very cool kit, currently obsessing over mini sardine tins, mini pint glasses for our “pint of prawns canapé”  and plastic egg shells for our “ham and brioche soldiers with hollandaise dip”

http://www.infusions4chefs.co.uk