With a week to go until Valentine’s Day, we have teamed up with the brilliant Truro School Cookery to bring a little inspiration and romance to lockdown 3.0. They have created delicious Valentine’s Day recipes that are simple to rustle up at home so you can create a restaurant worthy 3-course meal. With a night out not being on the horizon for a good while yet, here’s a little help for those who would like to make the day special with the one you love.
For those that have followed the Treseren story from the beginning, you will know that we have a long relationship with Truro School Cookery, who offer the Leith’s Certificate of Food and Wine. Emma went on some of the excellent training days before opening Treseren to get inspiration for our Welcome Meals and from there we have maintained strong connections, including hosting a very fabulous wedding! See below for more details on this, but first we are excited to share the recipes which sound absolutely divine and should be very easy to achieve at home. We love that you can make the dessert a day ahead (and anything chocolate has to be the all-time Valentine’s go to favourite!!)
Chicory, Blood Orange, Hazelnut and Speck Salad
You Will Need
1x 100g pack of your favourite charcuterie
1 blood orange, skin removed and segmented
1 1/2 tbsp hazelnut oil
1 tsp honey
6 thyme sprigs, leaves picked
50g blanched hazelnuts
250g white chicory, trimmed and leaves separated
150g red chicory, trimmed and leaves separated
1/2 lemon, zest and juice
100g feta
Small bunch of flat leaf parsley
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 220℃.
Place the hazelnuts on a tray and cook for 5-6 minutes until a shade darker.
To serve, toss all the chicory in lemon zest, juice, thyme, hazelnut oil, honey and season
Arrange on a large plate to share or individually as a starter.
Scatter with feta, blood orange, toasted hazelnuts and chopped parsley. Carefully serve with room temperature Duchy Charcuterie Speck or Spanish Serrano.
Hake En Papillote
You Will Need
2x Hake 160g portions
12 x cherry tomatoes or 2 beef tomatoes
1 fennel bulb, thickly sliced
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
2 bay leaves
1/2 orange, zested
2 sprigs of thyme
2 tbsp olive oil
8 black olives, halved
A good glug of white wine
2 pieces of baking parchment
Caster sugar
Method
Pre-heat oven to 180℃
Cut the tomatoes in half and place skin side down on a lightly oiled tray, sprinkle with caster sugar, sea salt and a little thyme. Cook for 15 mins until slightly dehydrated. You can always use sun-dried tomatoes instead.
Trim the root off the fennel and slice length ways into quarters. Peel and thinly slice the garlic.
Heat olive oil in a non-stick pan and add the fennel over medium high heat. Once the fennel begins to colour, deglaze the pan with white wine, season and leave too cool.
Heat olive oil in a non-stick frying pan, season the hake with salt and pepper and fry just on the skin side until golden brown. Remove from the pan to stop the cooking.
Lay tomatoes, fennel, garlic and olives in the centre of a square piece of baking parchment. Place the fish on top skin side up with some orange juice and zest, thyme sprig and a bay leaf. Add a dash of olive oil and seal up from one side to another – like a pasty!
Bake in the oven at 180℃ for 8 minutes
To serve open the papillote, lift the contents of the parcel onto the plate and pour all of the juices on top of the fish.
Chocolate Fondant
You Will Need – (makes 4)
4x180ml round pudding foil dishes
25g butter
25g cocoa powder
125g unsalted butter
125g 70% dark chocolate, good quality
1 tbsp cocoa powder
2 yolks (50g egg yolk)
3 eggs (125g whole egg)
60g caster sugar
Method
Prepare the small pudding tins by melting 25g of butter. Brush the inside of the tins and dust with cocoa powder, removing any excess with a light tap. Refrigerate the tins until later.
Melt the chocolate and butter in a glass bowl that fits within a pan of simmering water. Don’t let the base of the pan touch the water.
While the chocolate and butter melt, whip the egg yolk, whole egg and sugar to a foam until you can draw a ribbon on top that takes a second to disappear.
Once all of the chocolate and butter have melted, take off the heat and whisk in the cocoa powder.
Now fold the chocolate mix into the egg mix, ensure to not over mix or all of the air will be lost.
Spoon or pipe the mixture into your pudding tins until 3/4 full.
Rest in the fridge until required, but for an hour minimum. You can even make these the day before.
Heat your oven to 210℃. Once temperature is reached, cook for 9 minutes. Tip out of the tin carefully and serve immediately with your favourite ice-cream.
We want to thank Chef Aj Turner at Truro School Cookery for sending over these fabulous recipes and Maria the Head of Truro School Cookery for her endless support of Treseren. Pictured below are the class of 2019 on The Leith’s Academy Certificate course, with a visit from Prue herself. And sat in the centre, are Daisy and Connie who began working at Treseren last season and now are part of our team going forwards in to 2021. We are delighted to have them both – they bring such brilliant skills and professionalism after completing the course.
And as for Maria, we were so happy when she and her partner Neil chose Treseren as their venue and got married here with us. We absolutely loved hosting their intimate wedding, it was an amazing atmosphere and the food created by Aj was of course of the most incredible standard! Such happy memories and wonderful to have this connection with Truro School Cookery now and for the future.
Aj is a member of our highly recommended supplier list and will be creating many more fine dining experiences for Treseren weddings in the future.
Photo credits Ross Talling Photography and Truro School Cookery
