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.

Raymond Blanc at Adam Byatt's Trinity Restaurant

A legend of the culinary world, Raymond Blanc, visited create's Consultant Chef's Trinity Restaurant recently, regarding his experience there as "exceptional" on his blog. Here at create, we have long been fans of Trinity and indeed Adam Byatt and are delighted to be in partnership with him, offering our corporate and private clients the opportunity to enjoy Adam Byatt's exclusively designed British menus and presence at tastings and events.

We agree with Raymond in his blog post below, if you haven't been to Trinity, you must go!

Raymond said, "Yesterday I was treated to lunch by my good friend James Steen. He took me to Trinity, a restaurant in Clapham, London, to which I hadn't been before. What an exceptional lunch, full of seasonal ingredients, beautifully cooked and beautifully presented in a lovely and comfortable environment.

Here is a young British chef, Adam Byatt, cooking with great verve and flair. It is wonderful to see young and talented chefs observing the guidelines of sustainability, the best ingredients and offering great value too. Trinity is a lovely restaurant with very much its own style. I loved the way the food was presented, at one with its surroundings: hare and partridge served on a beautiful amber-coloured piece of burnished wood. A truffle from Perigord - the very essence of the season - allowed to speak (I should say to sing!) for itself. 

I will post the whole menu later, but for now I must say thank you to James for a wonderful lunch and to Adam and his team! I can only urge you all to go yourselves."

If you would like a 'create with Adam Byatt' menu at your event, perhaps the celebrated Chef himself at your tasting or awards dinner, call our sales team on 020 8944 4900 to discuss create's exciting new partnership.

Read Raymond's full blog post here

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.

Create's Exciting Partnership with Adam Byatt

As Chef Patron of Trinity and Bistro Union restaurants in Clapham, Adam Byatt has won over the likes of London's most ruthless critics. Giles Coren of The Times regarded his experience at Trinity as, 'As close to an absolutely perfect experience of eating out as it is possible to have.' Trinity was named 'London Restaurant of the Year' at the AA Hospitality Awards in 2008.

Adam has joined forces with create in an exciting new relationship. Adam is exclusively available to create, designing a range of seasonal menus whilst offering his culinary expertise and presence at a selection of tastings and events. Caroline Gardiner, Managing Director of create said "This exciting partnership adds a new dimension to create, with a celebrated consultant chef on board whose love of food design and sourcing of great British suppliers has a close synergy with create's food ethos. We are delighted to be working with Adam". 
 
Adam's first book How to Eat In was published by Random House in April 2010 and is full of enduring recipes that take classic heritage cooking techniques into the modern era. As one of Britain's leading chefs and culinary experts, Adam's skills can also be seen on top-rated BBC 1 programme Saturday Kitchen, on which he regularly features as a guest presenter.

"As someone who is passionate about locally sourced food & using the best in British produce, I look forward to working with create, whose approach to delicious food is based on sound traditional kitchen practices & is totally in line with my way of thinking. The way create offer apprenticeships to local people really appeals to me too, they are a fantastic company to be associated with & I look forward to getting started!"
Adam Byatt

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

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