With my Head Chef, Rob Weston.
If I had had any idea just how much would be entailed in writing this book, I have no doubt in my mind that I would not have written it. It begs the question why I wanted to write it in the first place. I guess the time came when I simply felt that The Square deserved a book. The truth is, over a 21-year period, this place has not only become an immense part of my life, but has played a part in the lives of so many guests who have walked through its doors and given the dining room its heartbeat. Without diners, for many of whom food is hopefully a great passion, a restaurant is nothing but a kitchen without a purpose. The kitchen at The Square has thundered along relentlessly throughout this time, producing food with one primary purpose – to give pleasure and sustenance. The Square represents the best part of half my life and has provided a vein so rich in experience and of such a rewarding nature, that the blood and sweat I have given it pale into insignificance in the light of what it has given me. This book is, of course, primarily written for you, the reader. It is a straightforward cookbook containing an extensive repertoire of dishes that have emerged from the kitchens over the years. Whether it graces a coffee table or a kitchen shelf, I can only hope that it provides a pleasing and possibly useful insight into the food and cooking at The Square. Rather indulgently it is also for me. A solid, tangible reward for 21 years’ service!
I have been a lucky man: both the women in my life have been fantastic cooks. One most certainly helped pave the way to my becoming a chef and the other has been instrumental in my journey as a chef. Not only have my Mum and my wife been key contributors, but they have been magnificent followers and supporters too.
To say that my culinary upbringing was a quaint, cultural gathering around the kitchen table would be far from the truth. There was no peeling of chestnuts by the fire, nor family trips to the market. We moved to London from my birthplace of South Africa when I was eight and, given the dire state of cooking there until relatively recently, that was possibly the first significant move for me. I remember little about eating in South Africa, heady food moments were few and far between. Koeksisters and biltong are perhaps what I remember most – the former a deep-fried twist of pastry steeped in syrup and glazed with enamel-stripping icing, and the latter strips, chunks, shavings or any other form of salted, spiced and air-dried meat. I could carry a bone-dry strip of meat around for hours, gnawing, chewing and sucking on it until it had a soft, gobby, frayed end. I also remember the bait my grandmother’s gardener used to cook for us – meali-meal – a stiff, polenta-style preparation that my brother and I would eat while waiting for fish to bite.
Things changed when we arrived in London. My mum did do some of her shopping at a market in Hammersmith and, with two hungry boys to feed, excelled at producing endless meals. A combination of her own ideas and foraged recipes gave rise to bowls of brains soaking by the kitchen sink, the likes of calf’s liver with garlic, and epic lemon surprise pudding. The fact is, my brother and I grew up on delicious, home-cooked food. It is only now, given the current state of home cooking, or lack of, that I can appreciate not only how much effort this must have taken but how important it was. I have no idea what exactly influences the development of one’s own palate, but of all the assets I possess as a chef, my palate is the one I value most, and it is fair to say that the flavours I appreciate and enjoy now must be deep rooted in these early years.
I have no recollection of cooking as a child. I passed through my years at boarding school eating institutional food, and developed an appetite for cereal that has stayed with me. I have never been too choosy about exactly what it is that I eat, I just like it to be delicious, and the truth is that a bowl of cereal seldom disappoints.
I set off to the University of Kent with not the slightest idea how to cook. My mother sent me packing with three recipes – clearly assuming that most students would be too poor to afford meat. Spinach soup, scrambled egg with courgettes and a forgotten third constituted my debut repertoire. But cook I did, and I recall it all in the glorious technicolour it deserves. As it happened, I lived with two vegetarians, both a decade older, wiser and craftier in the kitchen, and as much as they suffered through my early culinary output, they did, in the haze of student digs, leave me to assume the role of in-house cook. The novelty of mulching overcooked spinach through a rusty sieve wore off quickly. Stir-fries took centre stage. Brief skirmishes into the arena of desserts bore shocking results. Cookies, legal and illegal, were more plentiful and successful.
It was also while in Canterbury that I ate at my first Michelin-starred restaurant: Restaurant 74, owned by the outstanding chef, Ian McAndrew. It opened my eyes to the dazzling world of haute cuisine. I will never forget that meal, although I didn’t appreciate its significance at the time. Another restaurant that had a great impact on me was a tiny place in the South of France called La Farigoulette. Tucked away on the side of a hill village, it was run by a man who often wore little more than an apron and over whom all women seemed to swoon. A typical meal might have consisted of tarte au thon, tagliatelle au pistou and gigot d’agneau aux cèpes. Pasta was rolled to order and it was this that seemed to strike such a chord with me. All these years down the line, the rolling of pasta has lost none of its appeal. The restaurant still thrives, the proprietor, Jean Claude, still rolls, the women still flock and, in many ways, it was one of the early contributors to my progress as a chef.
Three years later, with a degree tucked in my back pocket, I knew one thing for sure: my love of cooking far exceeded my abilities as a microbiologist. Although I genuinely found the world of modern science fascinating, I was neither bright enough to pursue research nor focused enough to envisage a fulfilling career. Thanks to some nifty work by my parents, I immediately travelled to the Dordogne with the agenda of testing this newfound passion as a genuine career contender. The venue was a château run as a language school for those who wanted to combine a swift but complete immersion in learning French with an abundance of bourgeois French food. A tyrant of a patron and a witch of a food and beverage manageress rattled me to the core, but against their better efforts this experience saw the seeds of my future career fall on mighty fertile soil. I wrangled with my future that summer. A self-imposed conscience pressed me to reward my privileged education with a more conformist journey into business. Challenging this was a calling from within to pursue what was fast becoming a passion, the like of which I had not experienced before.
Confused, I returned to the UK and set off on a long-planned trip with my greatest schoolmate, Jonny. Truth be told, the focus of our friendship was more on liquids than on solids, and we had a year of wild adventure. I worked for a while as a waiter in a small Italian restaurant in Sydney to muster the funds to venture further afield. Zia Pina Pizzeria was also run by a tyrant – this time in the form of a small, wiry Italian rather than a large, overweight Frenchman. I worked like a dog for this man and it seemed to me that the harder I worked, the more he disliked me – it was only ever me scrubbing the ductwork on a Saturday morning. There was little scope for revenge, but the scales of fairness swung back to my side at least once a day. The waiters had to descend into the cellar to decant and plate the filthy desserts – frozen, hollowed-out lemons filled with industrial-tasting lemon sorbet and the like. The profiteroles, however, were very edible and in the two or so minutes of subterranean activity I would consume as many as I could fit down the chute and, re-emerging with freshly wiped lips, would smirk my way past this miserable man and serve them to his endless stream of customers. I can’t say I aspired to much that took place in that restaurant, but I certainly enjoyed it. Restaurants are many things but they aren’t boring.
By the time I left Sydney the internal voice was getting louder. It seemed to coincide with a waning sense of duty in relation to my education and a feeling that, should I break away and follow this profession, the thousands of miles between me and my parents would serve as a useful defence if they met the news with disapproval. We travelled from Sydney due north in a 1969 VW Kombi. I think I cooked every meal over this two-month period and by the time we arrived in Cairns the English breakfasts were long gone. Prawns with chilli and garlic had become the norm and my relationship with cooking was set in stone.
I duly informed my parents that I wanted to be a chef and no finer display of parental support could have been shown. The truth was that this whole issue was entirely my own creation. My father had given me endless career advice but, being a businessman, this was naturally the direction that the majority of it took. I had watched him work tirelessly throughout my childhood and was now concerned he would have reservations about the demands of life as a chef and, I dare say, the improbability of earning a decent crust. This was new territory for the Howard family, and food for much thought. I continued on my trip through Thailand and Indonesia and eventually arrived back in the UK chomping at the bit.
I bought copies of the Michelin, Egon Ronay and Good Food guides and compiled a list of the top London restaurants. Given that I had no experience whatsoever and that I was set on starting in a top kitchen, I spent my first week back composing a letter with a precarious balance of charm, desire, pleading and, dare I say, arrogance. Nico Ladenis seemed to find it quietly insulting that I should even dare apply to work in his stately three-star mothership, Chez Nico; Sally Clarke was charming, but was not in a position to take on a novice; most did not respond, but Roux Restaurants Ltd, that empire towering over Albert and Michel Roux’s two three-star restaurants, offered me a job as an apprentice in their contract catering division. It was shortly after accepting this exciting opportunity that I first crossed paths with Simon Hopkinson, the chef-proprietor of Bibendum. If I recall correctly, it was the nature of my handwriting in my application letter that he responded to, rather than what it said. His interest in my letter left a mark that would play a part later in my career.
I spent the next year immersing myself in work. The main kitchen of the staff canteen at Kleinwort Benson, my first post, was closed for refurbishment and I found myself making sandwiches for 800 people a day for months on end. This, of course, was not what I had joined the legendary Roux brothers for and, through a combination of working hard and inappropriate demands and threats, I managed to pester my way to promotion to the management restaurant on the twenty-third floor of the building. Ill-equipped in every possible way, I was left in charge of the cold buffet. What I lacked in experience I made up for in enthusiasm, and I worked tirelessly to improve day after day. Some of the very same directors who used to look down their noses at the buffet chef at Kleinwort Benson I now, rather smugly, observe emptying their wallets at The Square. Full circle, I say. It was while I was mastering the art of the buffet that I got a Sunday job at a restaurant in Fulham called The Left Bank. Owned by the legendary Fernando Peire and managed by my best mate Jonny, this was my first venture into running a kitchen – albeit for one day a week. The poor resident chef who worked Monday to Saturday never understood how I managed to use all his stocks in one day – those glossy little Roux sauces didn’t come cheap.
Back at Kleinwort Benson, I had been paroled from the cold buffet and spent several months cooking for the directors’ private dining rooms. It was here that I first saw really special food. Turned vegetables, veal stocks, mousselines, lobster, plus equipment I’d never set eyes on before: super-fine sieves, pasta machines, mandolines and terrines. I will never forget the excitement of those early days. It was also here that I first tasted foie gras, and I can remember clearly how completely blow away I was by the experience. How could anything not only be so delicious but simultaneously overwhelm so many other senses? I learned how to make the Roux speciality of papillote de saumon fumé – a rich and indulgent parcel of smoked salmon mousse wrapped in a perfect slice of smoked salmon. This required a specific technique and I derived huge pleasure from taking a whole, untrimmed side of smoked salmon and transforming it into 20 perfect parcels – the trick was not only to trim the salmon immaculately, but to generate just enough trimmings to make just enough mousse to fill the 20 parcels – a perfect run left nothing but a string of bare bones, a line up of identical papillotes and a large smile.
To begin with, I worked, thought about work, slept to recover from work and got up to go back to work. I was living at home and in many ways shared the experience with no one but my Mum and Dad. I had found something so all consuming and fulfilling that I had lost the desire to do anything else. Until, that is, the younger sister of my brother Greg’s girlfriend walked into my life. Greg had met Sarah during my university days, but the younger sister had remained undiscovered for some years. In Jen, I found someone to share my passion for all things, including food and restaurants. Quite how we financed all our fine dining remains a mystery to me to this day, but eat we did, from top to bottom of London’s finest restaurants. I find it impossible to put into words the enormity of those experiences. Indulgent though they were, there was a sense of excitement and purity, a true voyage of discovery coupled with a constant unveiling of new and tantalising things. We had a thirst, a thrill-seeking search for the ultimate experience. That thirst took us inevitably to Harveys – the Wandsworth outpost of Marco Pierre White. In 1989 Marco had well and truly arrived on the scene and was on the launchpad of his meteoric rise to superstardom.
It took only the first mouthful of his infamous tagliatelle of oysters with caviar to see why. I remember the entire meal to this day. These were dishes of such spectacular beauty and finesse that I knew right then and there that I had to find my way into that kitchen. We met The Man that night and, with a follow-up call the next day, I secured the opportunity of a lifetime and one that would have an impact on the rest of my career. Yet nine months later, I found myself on the phone to Marco venting my anger that he’d sacked me the night before. During those nine months, the most exhilarating of my life to date, I’d given everything I had to that kitchen. This was work the like of which I’d never endured before and it was here, in the so-called SAS of kitchens, that I worked alongside a young Gordon Ramsay. In the very same way that there can never be another Rolling Stones or Beatles, there can never be another Harveys. So much ground was broken so fast and in such startling fashion that an equal is out of the question. Marco’s kitchen was as much a way of life, as it was a life-changing experience for me. The misconduct for which I was sacked was ‘boiling’ his then-famous creamed potato. I remember the night well – a string of events had launched the volatile Boss into one of his tirades that left anyone likely to get a red card. I may well have contributed to the catastrophic outcome for me that night, but the injustice I felt, rather pathetically, prevented me returning after a ‘recall’ during our phone conversation the following day.
Instead I turned to the missed opportunity of Simon Hopkinson’s at Bibendum. Upon starting a job in his also groundbreaking kitchen, I embarked on another steep learning curve. Here was a man whose entire focus was the ingredient – in terms of quality and, of course, flavour. My previous employers had also placed huge emphasis on the size, colour and shape of the ingredient and I struggled initially to grasp the enormity of this lesson in purity. I heard the mention of seasons for the first time and a whole new vocabulary of kitchen terminology revealed itself, all concerned with maximising flavour and general deliciousness. My days at Bibendum were full of learning and I made many great friends – none more so than Bruce Poole, then embarking on his own cooking career, now chef and owner, in partnership, of the iconic Chez Bruce (coincidentally, the reincarnation of Harveys after Marco’s move to the West End) and two of London’s other neighbourhood gems, La Trompette and The Glasshouse.
The food at Bibendum was magnificent, but it was so different from all that had gone before that I too felt as if I was starting all over again. Bruce and I sank like lead weights in more services than we conquered. My eagerness to learn and improve led me to cook for endless dinner parties for paying clients – mostly unsuspecting friends of my parents. Dramas from this particular sideline could fill a small book. Hit and miss though they were, they did enable me to acknowledge and see my own progress – albeit at the expense of others.
The cornerstones of the Bibendum kitchen were the Harris brothers. Matthew is still there, now in charge, and Henry has his own restaurant, Racine, in Knightsbridge. The brigade at Bibendum at that time was a special group of chefs and the brilliance of Simon’s cooking has helped us all to go on to achieve. Jeremy Lee had many years of phenomenal success at the Blueprint Café and is now standing proud over Quo Vadis, in Soho; Ian Bates has given pleasure to many in the West Country at The Old Spot in Wells; and the talented Matt Jones, rather anonymously, provides more people than know it with bread from his wonderful bakery, Bread Ahead. The Bibendum days were as inspirational as they were enjoyable and it was during my time there that Jen and I got married. It was also perhaps here that my confidence as a cook began to grow. By now I had amassed a bit of experience in all areas of the kitchen. Little did I know that this bit of experience was all I was going to amass before I opened The Square.
Rather surprisingly I found myself back at Harveys in 1990. Marco and his partner, Nigel Platts-Martin, had set their sights on a second property in the West End and I was recruited back to the stable to be groomed for the job. It appeared to me that I had missed out on about a decade of experience, but an opportunity presented itself and it was not one I was going to turn down. As it happens, this second site became a solo venture for Nigel, and – I assume without many options – he turned to me! And so a partnership was born. I had not met Nigel prior to this and the rather fragile and bizarre nature of our coming together was to have no bearing on our partnership’s ability to endure.
The Square opened its doors for the first time rather ominously on 13 December 1991, in King Street, St James’s. Those first intrepid customers accessed the dining room and Nigel’s welcoming smile via a wooden plank spanning a lobby of wet cement. I think this was the only aspect of the restaurant that Nigel’s long-time soulmate and builder, Arvind Vadgama, had not managed to complete. There was no reason for anyone to know who Nigel was at that point. His legal background had not fulfilled him, but had given him the opportunity to eat well, and his extensive travels round the vineyards and restaurants of France had resulted in a desire to open one himself. Harvey’s was his first venture and, with Marco Pierre White in the kitchen, one hell of an experience. The Square was to be different.
While I focused my attention on the cooking, Nigel and Arvind had spent a year in real terms, a few more in mental terms, putting together a vision of what a contemporary restaurant should be. Their coalition with the then unknown, now superstar of the restaurant design world, David Collins, bore comfortable, yet funky results. In recession-gripped London, The Square was a quietly groundbreaking restaurant. It is fair to say that Nigel and I were both grossly lacking in restaurant experience at the coalface. Nigel had amassed razor-sharp views on restaurants, mostly by frequenting them, and, of course, his ownership of Harveys had given him an insight into the colourful world behind the scenes. I had a little knowledge of fragments of the French repertoire in my armoury, but a complete lack of experience in any aspect of kitchen management. The Square was a fantastic career opportunity for me but for Nigel it represented far more than that, and failure was out of the question.
I cannot recall the opening night in any great detail but suffice to say that those opening weeks exposed many chinks in our armour. Most importantly, however, there was a steady and ever-increasing footfall to our door. These were tough times, recession was biting but, through the sheer hard work of Nigel on reception, forging relationships with hotel concierges and driving deals with the theatres, we stayed afloat. Many fine receptionists have come and gone at The Square, but none has ever matched his ability to maximise a dining room’s potential. For him, a reservation page is a mathematical game, a giant Sudoku and one where anything less than logarithmic perfection is simply unacceptable. After all, reception’s ability to harness demand and distribute it intelligently is one of the most important aspects of the restaurant business.
With Nigel’s focus completely set on creating demand and mine on catering to it, precious little time was set aside to ensure we had a profitable business. To assume that bums on seats equates to bulging bottom line is an easy mistake to make but, with my employee status upgraded to partnership with Nigel, he helped me in his inimitable way to see that the profit margins in the kitchen are vital to a restaurant’s financial success. The problem here is that chefs are creative people, and endless judgement makes us very self-seeking in our motivation. We are, by default, far more concerned about the quality of our dishes than what it costs to put them on the plate, yet it’s crucial to be aware that nurturing a bit of profit from every customer is of paramount importance. With this in mind, we focused on overheads and eventually found ourselves with a stable business. Furthermore, The Square had steadily forged itself a fine reputation as one of London’s top new restaurants – indeed, our first, and much treasured, bit of recognition came in the form of Time Out’s Best New Restaurant award in 1992.
In the early years the menu was updated and reprinted for every service. It was a constantly changing collection of dishes based on what was in season, what was affordable, what I had remembered to order and what I was in the mood to cook. Spontaneity played a part in its creation and, despite being a relentless and exhausting way to operate, it kept us all on our toes. It was the enthusiastic and quick-fire response to market availability that made the cooking full of vitality. Constant change, however, breeds inconsistency and although I genuinely believed that we were cooking some of the finest and most vibrant food in London, I also knew that we were making life hard for ourselves. With a full dining room and a chaotic kitchen, I made the decision to write menus that would roughly span the seasons. These seasonal menus enabled progress and allowed the brigade to focus on detail, with the result that the consistency of the cooking improved enormously. And with that in December 1994, out of the blue, came our first Michelin star. My brief career prior to The Square had left me relatively naive about the world of judgement and I had not given a moment’s thought to what we might or might not achieve. This award, however, sparked an ambition to take The Square onwards and upwards.
The Square moved to its current location on Bruton Street in Mayfair in 1997. The relocation gave us a vastly improved kitchen, which enabled us to make quantum leaps with the quality of the food. Our philosophy remained the same: to cook delicious seasonal dishes to the best of our ability. With a larger brigade of chefs and a more rehearsed approach to the cooking in general, we started to produce dishes that were notably more consistent and slightly more elaborate. My right-hand man at the time, Anthony Ely, was not only a fantastic cook, but infinitely more organised than I was. Systems, procedures and operational streamlining all began to play a part.
We had set our sights on gaining a second Michelin star but we were absolutely aware that looking after our customers was as much a priority as any formal recognition. In the kitchen, all emphasis was placed on delivering dishes that were not only consistently pleasing to eat, but ultimately nourished the soul too. The very best cooking can come in myriad different styles, but above all else it must be satisfying to eat. It is this that will bring customers back. With a new, highly ambitious manager, Jacques Carlino, running the dining room, looking after diners and making friends and Nigel, in collaboration with our outstanding sommelier, Christopher Delalonde, compiling a world-class wine list, The Square was quietly maturing into a restaurant of some standing.
Michelin rewarded our progress in the kitchen with a second star in 1998. An increased, albeit self-imposed, sense of responsibility settled on our shoulders and my attention turned to recruiting some highly able and ambitious talents into the fold.
Rob Weston had first walked into the kitchen the week before we opened in 1991. The friend of another chef, Andy Thomson, who I had recruited for the opening of The Square, he was relatively fresh from a long spell of cooking and sunning himself in Australia. The opening kitchen brigade, all six of us, contained several able chefs, but none more so than Rob. As much as we worked as a team, his contribution was immense and he played a significant role in helping to forge our early reputation. Two years down the line, fuelled by ambition, he moved on. Stints at three world-class restaurants in London and Paris transformed Rob from a talented young lad into an outstanding chef. He had become a great mate and had kept in touch while he worked at Restaurant Guy Savoy in Paris. The Square, too, had progressed enormously in his absence and to have him back in Bruton Street was, I hope, as rewarding for him as it was beneficial to me. Since then, Rob has been the head chef and cornerstone of the kitchen. He is one of the most gifted cooks in the country, yet our friendship, amongst other things, has fortunately kept him happily at The Square. His time will come.
What I have learned above all else in the last decade at The Square is the importance of strong partnerships, be they formalised or not. During the first decade, through a combination of constructive criticism and honest self-assessment, I became very aware of my strengths and weaknesses – as a human being, as a chef and as a restaurateur. On a professional level, it has been liberating to acknowledge that I am either ineffective at, or have limited desire to excel at, various aspects of the business of running restaurants. While I like to think that I am, hopefully, the most important, or central, piece of the jigsaw that is The Square, the awareness that I am just a piece of the jigsaw is key. The restaurant is all about teamwork. It is not the extraordinary work and vision of one man or woman, as is sometimes the case; it is the combined efforts and contributions of many talented people being consistently led by one. Through good old-fashioned luck and wise decision making, I have managed to work and live alongside some truly great people. I say work and live, for success in the workplace best stems from stability at home. Nigel and I are very different people, yet as a partnership we make an absolute whole. Very little escapes us. He is no chef, but has taught me as much about food as anyone. He has the rare ability to see food from both a chef’s and a diner’s perspective, and he understand what contributes to a dish’s enjoyability. Most importantly, he sees through the cheffiness of us cooks. We tend to derive huge satisfaction from the process of cooking and, while there is, of course, nothing wrong with that, it is only the end product of this process that is of interest to the consumer. Nigel taught me to strip away the superficial aspects of a dish, to see it for what it is and not how it came to be.
Rob and I could not be more different in our approach to running the kitchen. On a day-to-day basis we share the same goals and ultimately need to orchestrate a team. I pick up his slack and he picks up mine; it is a partnership that has become so fine-tuned as to need minimal communication.
It is to the restaurant managers, sommeliers and reception team that one must delegate responsibility and work with and listen to, as well as instruct. It is the long-term relationships nurtured with suppliers that guarantee us the best ingredients. The longevity of The Square has only been possible off the back of such partnerships. Personally, I have also had the benefit of an understanding, supportive and wonderful wife. In the twenty years of The Square she has brought up two fine children, Millie and Ali, mostly singlehandedly. We are a phenomenal unit that has managed to coexist with a career in the catering trade. My sense of worldly security is also due to having two magnificent parents, who have been a critical part of the journey in their support of both their son and the restaurant.
Another noteworthy partnership is that with Brett Graham. Brett arrived at the back door of The Square in 2000. Fresh faced and bursting with energy, he was one of many young cooks who travelled to London to learn their trade. The Square had developed quite a reputation in Australia, thanks to several chefs who had achieved success here and then returned home. Brett worked his way around the kitchen and plainly had extraordinary talent. He was as demanding as he was able – always wanting to run specials in the evening and requesting time and headspace to discuss options. Ambition took him on from The Square, but a relationship had been struck that would in time bear extraordinary fruit. The Ledbury, which I co-own with Nigel and Brett, opened in April 2005 and has gone on to achieve great things. There are many highly successful restaurants, but none has a chef with the ability to unite a deep-rooted understanding of what makes food delicious to eat with great finesse, quiet innovation and flair in quite the way Brett does. He is also a great mate.
On 13 December 2012 The Square celebrates its twenty-first birthday. It thunders along with the momentum that only a mature restaurant has. We always get there, we always make it to service, we are not perfect, but I hope we will continue to cook and serve delicious food for many years to come. If I think back to the early days, it feels like an awfully long journey, but I believe we have, above all, delivered great hospitality to a great number of people. The food at The Square has retained its integrity through the passage of time. It is perhaps lucky that I have little desire to reinvent or innovate. I love to eat, and it is with my eating hat on that I still create new menus. That is not to say the food stands still. On the contrary, we are constantly on the move, driven by two inescapable forces: nature and the seasons, and the need to progress and remain motivated, enthusiastic and inspired. The goal remains, as always, to cook wonderful food. Currently we have come full circle on a quest to cook perfect meat. We have tried the multitude of techniques out there but have come to the conclusion that meat cooked on the bone, roasted in butter, is the only way. The resting rack on the meat section looks extraordinary, considering the appearance and style of the food that guests actually receive. Whole best ends of lamb, ribs of beef, rumps of veal and ducks all sit, flavourful and succulent, waiting to be carved and served. The combination of traditional, flavour-focused techniques with low roasting temperatures yields truly outstanding results. That’s progress!
What is really amazing is that I have found the time to write a book and fill it with recipes that I truly believe in. Cooking has changed enormously over the last two decades for a variety of reasons, but none more so than in the professional chef’s relentless search for the new. The Square has progressed, our cooking has progressed and the dishes in this book genuinely reflect this. However, every dish, without exception, is conceived with one overriding focus – what will it be like to eat? It is so very important that this does not get lost in the quest for change, because ingredients that are beautifully prepared and cooked with understanding can come together to deliver pleasure in a way that nothing else can. I guess it is this that keeps me heading back to the kitchen after all these years. I only hope this book gives a few more people the opportunity to indulge in the satisfaction that cooking can bring.
With my business partner and co-owner of The Square, Nigel Platts-Martin.
USING THE RECIPES IN THIS BOOK
The one thing that has struck me about glossy, high-end and, for the most part, ‘fine-dining’ cookbooks over the years is that the information given in a recipe is generally insufficient to achieve results even remotely close to those depicted – that is, if you are lucky enough to have a picture to look at. It is hard enough, given that the reader is probably lacking the resources a professional chef has to hand. I therefore decided that if I was to write such a book I would be as thorough and comprehensive as possible. To this end, the recipes may appear longwinded and rather laborious, but hidden in their detail is enough guidance for success, I hope.
Prior to the ingredients list and method for each recipe is a section of four short introductions. These are intended to give a clearer understanding of what the dish is about, what to focus on, what difficulties lie ahead (if any!) and how to tackle them chronologically.
Overview
This gives a sense of what is required to cook the dish. It outlines its contents and how they will be cooked.
Focus on
In every dish there are inevitably ingredients that require careful selection or methods that require careful execution. These are highlighted here, with tips given to ensure success.
Key components
This is simply a list of the key assemblies that constitute the dish. It gives an indication of how many elements require attention.
Timing
Cooking long, sometimes complex, dishes can seem daunting, but all these recipes can be broken down to enable the cook to make intelligent use of their time. Guidance for this is given here.
Most importantly, read the whole recipe first. Each dish has a photograph and it is worth studying it carefully, as a picture can provide an awful lot more insight and help than any amount of words. Don’t embark on the recipe until you have a genuine understanding of what you are required to do, and ensure you have everything to hand, in terms of both ingredients and equipment. Not all the procedures require hours on end to be spent in the kitchen, but if you want to enjoy what you are doing and achieve success, make sure you give yourself sufficient time to cook. Use the timing guidelines to break the cooking down into manageable workloads and re-read each section before you start on it. Make space, keep clean, work tidily and clear away constantly. Keeping things manageable is of utmost importance – especially when you do not have an army of chefs and kitchen porters to help. You cannot cook with refinement and finesse if you are out of control and in a mess!
OVEN TEMPERATURES AND COOKING TIMES
The fact of the matter is that not only do stated temperatures vary from oven to oven but an oven’s ability to return to its set temperature when the door is opened is a significant variable too. Whilst the first issue can be simply remedied with the use of an oven thermometer (available at most kitchen shops), the second is more difficult to account for, as the problem, if it exists at all, is very much oven specific. The thermometer will certainly help and will guarantee that the oven at least starts off at the right temperature. Large, solid and powerful professional ovens are built to perform consistently even with constant opening and closing of the oven door. The temperature of most domestic ovens will inevitably drop to some extent and this must be taken into account when judging the cooking time of a dish. It will not have a drastic effect, and my intention here is not to add confusion, but it is important to understand that things may take a little longer to cook than stated recipe times and that, as always, some personal judgment will be required. It is also worth mentioning that the length of time that a piece of protein takes to cook will also depend on its temperature when it goes into the oven. It will take longer for a chicken to roast if taken straight from the fridge, for example, than one that has been brought to room temperature beforehand.
The timings in this book are, unless otherwise stated, for meat that has been allowed to come to room temperature before cooking. This is actually a better way to cook meat, as the cooking time will be reduced overall and the exterior surface will be exposed to less heat (and overcooking) in order to achieve the correct core temperature or ‘doneness’.
EQUIPMENT
It is a fact of kitchen life that if you want to achieve sharp results you need to have the correct equipment at your disposal. Having said that, I can confidently state that the cooking at The Square, while very particular in its process, is not overwhelmingly baffling or technical. You will not, on the whole, be constructing things, measuring things or worrying whether a technique will work.
Casting an eye back over the recipes, I would say that there are several items of equipment that are truly indispensable if you wish to achieve consistently professional results.
A set of heavy-based, preferably ovenproof, saucepans
A pan’s ability not only to distribute its heat evenly, but to maintain it when ingredients are added is of paramount importance. The raw energy of the flame must be captured and harnessed in a thick layer of heat-conducting metal on the one side and redelivered as a constant, controlled and consistent source of heat on the other. Every process from the gentle sweating of an onion to the caramelisation of meat is severely compromised with poor pans. Quite often, cooking over a flame is followed by a period of time in the oven. Ovenproof pans are therefore invaluable and, whilst the entire range does not need to be so, if I had to invest in new pans, top-quality, stainless steel, ovenproof ones would be top of my list.
Knives
I am not a knife fanatic, but if the simple task of chopping an onion becomes a hair-pulling chore, then you might as well call off the whole show. It is so important to execute knife work effectively that to have anything other than sharp knives is disastrous. Simple maintenance will achieve 80 per cent sharpness and this alone will transform not only the cooking results you achieve but the results the cooking will achieve on you! At the very least, you should have a sharp paring knife, two sizes of cook’s knife – the general chopping knives – a carving knife and a boning knife. A steel, sharpening stone or the user-friendly Chantry knife sharpener is then a must.
A fine-gauged, spindle-style vegetable peeler
Invest in two or three spindle-style peelers – the ones with the swivelling blade. They vary in terms of the thickness of peel they remove, so try to get a brand that peels off as fine a layer as possible. Once you have found a good brand, buy several so you never go without. In my opinion, the simplest lightweight, U-shaped metal peelers are the best. Do not get tempted into buying gimmicks or any of the single, fixed-blade varieties – they are a waste of time, vegetable and money.
A fine conical sieve
Having mousses, purées, stocks and sauces completely free of textural pollution is key to achieving refined results. Texture and contrast are hugely important in cooking, but if you are trying to achieve a truly clean, pure, smooth preparation, any bittiness will greatly compromise the outcome. For the best results, stocks and sauces should be passed through muslin as a final procedure.
Blender
Domestic blenders will simply not give the same results as a powerful professional equivalent. If you invest in a top-quality machine, it will not only deliver a superior result, but will achieve it in half the time, and should last significantly longer too.
Chopping board
The two things that infuriate me above all else in rented holiday accommodation are shoddy knives and a small, miserable, usually warped chopping board. It winds me up just thinking about it. It is not possible to work accurately on a cramped, unstable surface. Fact. Buy a large, solid chopping board, lay a damp cloth underneath it to prevent it moving and your cooking life will be transformed.
Scales
An accurate set of scales is critical for successful pastry work, and for many other kitchen tasks.
Foam guns
Foams are in. My thoughts on foams are documented on Foams, Cappuccinos and Airs. There are alternatives for most cooking procedures but for the delivery of foams an old-fashioned cream whipper, or foam gun, is required. A 500ml bottle should be ample for all the recipes in this book. Buy a solid, stainless steel bottle with one-head assembly and plenty of gas cartridges. Well looked after, this piece of equipment should last for years.
Thermometer/probe
It is very useful to have a temperature probe nearby when cooking – it’s handy, for example, to get to know the core temperature of a roasted piece of meat cooked to your preference. A simple probe will come as a handheld battery/display unit with a cable attached to a slim metal temperature probe.
Oven thermometer
Ovens can be inaccurate, with the actual temperature not always matching the selected temperature. A simple solution to this is to buy an oven thermometer. These are readily available in most kitchen shops. Cooking is not an exact science but knowing what temperature you are cooking at is a very important factor in understanding how to cook accurately and well.
