This is the new beef dish on the winter menu. Due to customer demand we always have to have a beef dish on the menu. This can be a good and a bad thing. On the down side it can mean that we can't always have as much choice in the meat section as I would like but on the good side it can really stretch your imagination to constantly come up with new and interesting dishes.
The inspiration for this dish was the classic French Onion Soup. I love the soup and can think of nothing better on a cold winters day than a huge bowl of it topped off with a Gruyere gratinated crouton. So that was the starting point. The marriage of onions and beef is nothing new but I wanted to introduce as many different members of the onion family as I could. This is something I like to do a lot, explore different cooking techniques and presentation of one ingredient in a single dish. As I said the soup was the starter for this so once we'd decided to make a consomme out of it, the rest of the garnish fell into place. We replaced the crouton with the terrine which turned out great and when we warmed it up the layers of cheese turned a beautiful golden brown. The flavour of the browned cheese was just the thing to bring back memories of the soup.
So the rest of the onion elements are glazed spring onions, pearl onion rings, chive tips and onion sprouts. To this I added another classic flavour match, mushrooms. We had some beautiful Girolle's arrive this week imported from France and they went straight into this garnish. In the restaurant we deliver the garnish to the table first. The waiter then silver serves the tenderloin on to the plate....
.....and sauces the dish with the consomme. The completed dish eats really well with all the flavours coming together in the consomme.
With the weather on the turn here now, dishes like this are very comforting for the dinners. So far our faithful beef eaters are really enjoying the dish andf at the end of the day thats all that really matters.
The inspiration for this dish was the classic French Onion Soup. I love the soup and can think of nothing better on a cold winters day than a huge bowl of it topped off with a Gruyere gratinated crouton. So that was the starting point. The marriage of onions and beef is nothing new but I wanted to introduce as many different members of the onion family as I could. This is something I like to do a lot, explore different cooking techniques and presentation of one ingredient in a single dish. As I said the soup was the starter for this so once we'd decided to make a consomme out of it, the rest of the garnish fell into place. We replaced the crouton with the terrine which turned out great and when we warmed it up the layers of cheese turned a beautiful golden brown. The flavour of the browned cheese was just the thing to bring back memories of the soup. 
So the rest of the onion elements are glazed spring onions, pearl onion rings, chive tips and onion sprouts. To this I added another classic flavour match, mushrooms. We had some beautiful Girolle's arrive this week imported from France and they went straight into this garnish. In the restaurant we deliver the garnish to the table first. The waiter then silver serves the tenderloin on to the plate....
.....and sauces the dish with the consomme. The completed dish eats really well with all the flavours coming together in the consomme.
With the weather on the turn here now, dishes like this are very comforting for the dinners. So far our faithful beef eaters are really enjoying the dish andf at the end of the day thats all that really matters.
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