St. George’s Day – 23rd April 2010
This St. George’s Day Bentley’s and Nyetimber have come together to create a specially themed menu with wines matched throughout. More information on this special event will follow shortly, if you would like to receive more details, please call Jane Sturgess on 020 7758 4141 or email jane.sturgess@bentleys.org
St. Patrick's Day - 17th March 2010
The Jameson Room at Bentley’s will play host to this exclusive St Patrick’s Day event on Wednesday 17th March. The celebrations will start from midday where Bentley’s will be serving a delicious Irish buffet style lunch. There will be Smoked Salmon on Irish Soda Bread and a selection of Oysters to start. Guests will then be presented with a Whole T J Crowe’s Sucking Pig which will be carved in the room with freshly baked rolls. As an accompaniment, there will be bowls of Richard Corrigan’s classic Irish Stew. To finish, there will be Irish Apple Tart with Whiskey Cream and Crozier Blue soaked in Banyals.
Guests of this exclusive occasion can make a day of it, enjoying the private Jameson Room from 12.30pm until late with a fully stocked cash bar including Guinness on draft!
Due to the high demand of this event, Bentley’s will also be putting on a special St Patrick’s Day menu on offer in the Grill Room from 2pm-6pm serving Smoked Salmon, Richard Corrigan’s classic Irish Stew and Irish Apple Tart with Whiskey Cream for just £32.95.
Back by popular demand, Hungry Grass will be performing their brand of energised traditional Irish music. There will also be internationally acclaimed singer/pianist Anna Corcoran playing between 6pm and 10pm.
Tickets cost £40 pp for the full day event or £32.95pp for the afternoon menu. To book spaces or for more information, call 020 7758 4141 or email jane.sturgess@bentleys.org
Bentley's at Taste of Christmas
The annual overindulgence starts here. Top chefs from the UK’s best restaurants will be serving their seasonal specials and cooking up some culinary delights at the ultimate festive food celebration.
Whether you’re looking for ideas to inspire your own Christmas dinner or you simply want to taste some top class tucker, Taste’s chefs have something for you. From the classic to the contemporary, the traditional to the exotic, Christmas has never tasted so good.
Switch on the Christmas Tree lights by Linzi Stoppard of FUSE
Thursday 12 November 5.00 pm - Switch On the Christmas Tree lights by Linzi Stoppard of FUSE outside St. James’s Church and illumination of the Jermyn Street Christmas lights – everyone in the street in invited. Many of the Jermyn Street shops will be open late with special offers, drinks, mince pies and entertainment. Jermyn Street will be closed from 4.00 to 6.00 pm between Regent Street and Duke Street St. James’s.
Regent Street Christmas Lights 2009
The world renowned Regent Street Christmas lights will be switched on 3 November 2009 and will be part of the first ever joint West End switch-on with Oxford Street. At the same time, the City of London will also join in the celebrations to mark the launch of the festive season in London. The event will coincide with the world premiere of Disney’s A Christmas Carol in Leicester Square with both famous shopping streets sharing the theme. Download the full press release here
What top chefs eat at Christmas
By Giorgio Locatelli, Raymond Blanc, Richard Corrigan, Thomasina Miers, Tom
Parker Bowles, , Tom Aikens, Jason Atherton, Jeremy Lee and many more Sam and
Eddie Hart: Suckling pig
There is nothing quite like a whole suckling pig for a special occasion. If after the
initial 2½ hours’ cooking the pig is not perfectly crisp, return it to the oven until it is. If
you allow 3 hours to cook the pig and it actually cooks in 2½, it will happily rest in a
warm place until you are ready to eat.
Serves 10-12
5-6kg suckling pig
2 heads of garlic
2 shallots
2 dried red peppers
5 sprigs of thyme
5 bay leaves
2 sliced lemons
olive oil
salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 180ºC/gas 4.
On a large board, splay the pig flat so that its legs stick out the side. Push down on
the backbone to open up the ribcage and flatten it down onto the board. If the pig is
too big to fit on one roasting tray, cut it in half horizontally with a sharp, heavy knife.
The pig should now fit into two domestic oven dishes, the head and shoulders in one,
legs and tail in the other.
Pat the pig dry with kitchen roll, then scatter the garlic, shallots, peppers, thyme, bay
leaves and lemons underneath it. Rub with olive oil, then season well with salt and
pepper on all sides. Place the two trays in the oven and roast for 1 hour. Swap the
trays around, moving the top to the bottom and vice versa. Cook for another hour,
then swap them over again. Cook for another half an hour. Check the pig - if all the
skin is wonderfully crisp and deep brown, it is ready. If not, don’t worry, just return the
pig to the oven for another half an hour. To carve the pig, firstly remove the legs and
shoulders and carve the meat from them, taking care that each slice of meat has a
portion of crisp skin attached. Then carve the meat from the saddle and the ribs,
again taking care to keep the skin attached to the meat. If you don’t like wobbly bits
or are squeamish about what you eat, sprinkle what you have with plenty of salt and
serve at once. If you are an offal fan, read on!
Now there is the great treat of the head. Remove the head from the body, then slice it
in half lengthways. Inside you will find delicious brain and tongue. On the other side
of the head the snout, ears and cheeks all make excellent eating. Oh, and don’t
forget the crispy tail! Serves 4
More recipes on Observer Online
Bentley's Oyster Championships
On Monday 1st September 2009 Bentley’s and Mon Plaisir went head to head in an oyster shucking competition to launch the start of the The Native Oyster Season.
Click here to see some images of the event
The scene was set with an oyster boat grounded on a yellow line outside the restaurant and Nigel Barden, BBC radio 2 food correspondent, providing the running commentary. Press and guests gathered to sample a wonderful selection of oysters, including Vietnamese oysters plus fish and chips washed down with Guinness and Champagne.
Filippo Salamone from Bentley’s and Sebastien Torres from Mon Plaisir were given 24 oysters each to shuck and present on a tray as fast as possible. Having shucked 11,500 oysters at Taste of London earlier this year, the crowd may have thought Filippo had the upper hand?
The judge’s panel consisted of Richard Corrigan, plus Peter Manzi and Angelo de Bernardo, both oyster shucking ex world champions. They were looking for a combination of speed and presentation.
After much deliberation, Filippo was awarded the winners prize presented by broadcaster Amy Lamé.
Four different sizes of native oyster are available and best served natural with Bentley’s brown bread and butter. Oyster Bar guests can sit at the marble-topped bar to watch the oyster shuckers at work, relax in cosy red leather banquettes, or, for as long as the weather holds, enjoy the elegant and peaceful alfresco dining area, on traffic-free Swallow Street. Oysters are also served upstairs in the elegant Grill Rooms. Oysters Rockefeller, Vietnamese style oysters and Honey and Black Pepper oysters are also available.
SHUCKINGLY CLOSE
By Joe Warrick, London Evening Standard, 3rd September 2009
Download review
2009 Calendar of Events
April Asparagus Season
May Launch of our ‘Al Fresco’ menu
June Taste of London
July Wimbledon in the Jameson Room
August English Lobster Festival
September Bentley's Oyster Championships
October Bentley’s Game Season
November The Return of the Goose
December Celebration of English Puddings & Spices
By Xanthe Clay 07 Nov 2008 The Telegraph
It feels like a missing scene from Brief Encounter. The bar at Bentley’s Oyster Bar in London’s West End is all sophisticated old-school luxury, wood-panelled and softly lit. White-jacketed waiters carry silver trays of oysters (the restaurant sells 10 thousand a week) past the marble bar and you feel that Trevor Howard might walk in at any moment.
It’s a far cry from the bucolic childhood that Richard Corrigan, Bentley’s owner and chef, describes in his latest book, The Clatter of Forks and Spoons. Born in 1964, he grew up with his six brothers and sisters on a small bogland farm in County Meath, southern Ireland. There was no electricity until 1973, so his mother used a turf-burning stove to bake soda bread.
Corrigan sees no conflict: "It’s a grander environment, now, sure. But I ate as well as a child – effortless, confident food – as I do here." He shrugs, tousled and ruddy from riding the scooter he uses to rush between Bentley’s and his new Mayfair restaurant, Corrigan’s, a simpler "reinvention" of Lindsay House, his Soho fine-dining restaurant (whose lease will expire next year).
A close friend of the chefs Mark Hix ("I love his dry Devon sense of humour") and Rowley Leigh ("the most over-educated chef I know"), Corrigan has a reputation as a bon vivant. But he insists his days of heavy drinking at the Groucho Club are over: "My bar bill was bigger than my mortgage. It’s the madness of Soho."
Corrigan loves to entertain and his chaotic home style is heart-warming. "It’s a standing joke that I have to ring people up to bring things I’ve forgotten, like olive oil or butter." He encourages guests to get involved. "It gets rid of all the nonsense quickly. We get everyone to roll up their sleeves and, say, make toast or try their hand at mayonnaise."
His advice for a successful meal is to prepare everything ahead so you can enjoy the food. "Once I sit down, I don’t like to stand up again. I’ll have the meat resting and the pudding ready on the side. You have to relax." Corrigan slathers a piece of treacle-dark soda bread with Lincolnshire butter and piles fresh crab on top. "Some beautiful crab, home-made bread, butter, salt, pepper – that’s all you need. You don’t have to make a fuss."
He is optimistic about opening a restaurant in tricky economic times: "Some of the best ones open in recession. Life just goes on."
BAKED RED MULLET WITH CREME FRAICHE AND MASHED FENNEL
I love the idea of poaching meat or fish in crème fraîche. Along with poaching in milk, it’s a way of cooking I’ve often come across in Scandinavia. Milk, especially, is used for gently cooking pork and elk, and it has a way of tenderising the meat. With fish, it lends a clean, citrussy, creamy acidity, which is also great with the delicate taste of the fennel mash. When you put the fennel fronds into the mash at the end, you get a wonderful, natural green colour that is quite stunning against the reddish skin and white flesh of the fish. Ask your fishmonger to pinbone the mullet for you.
(Serves 4)
A good knob of butter
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves chopped
4 heads of fennel, finely chopped (fronds reserved)
5floz/150ml good-quality crème fraîche
4 large red mullet fillets, skin on and pinboned
1 tbsp dill leaves
Heat the oven to 350F/180C/gas mark 4.
Heat the butter in a pan, add the onion and garlic, and sweat them very slowly until they are tender.
Add the fennel and put a circle of baking paper on top (a cartouche) to create steam inside and cook the fennel more quickly. Cook gently until the fennel begins to soften.
Transfer the contents of the pan to a blender or food processor and whizz, adding the fennel fronds, until they are roughly mashed.
Warm the crème fraîche until it melts. Pour into a shallow ovenproof dish. Season the red mullet and place it on top.
Bake for about 5 minutes, until the fillets feel just firm.
Spoon some of the fennel mash into the centre of each warmed plate. Carefully lift out the fish, skin-side-up – the colour will look amazingly red.
Season the crème fraîche, add the dill then spoon a little around and over the fish.
BENTLEY’S SODA BREAD
Corrigan uses porridge oats to give his soda bread an authentic Irish texture. Covering the just-baked bread with a damp cloth stops it drying out so fast but, even so, this is best eaten the day it’s made.
(Makes 1 large loaf)
9oz/250g plain flour
2 tsp salt
½oz/15g bicarbonate of soda
9oz/250g wholemeal flour
5oz/140g jumbo oat flakes
1 tbsp clear honey
1 tbsp black treacle
14floz/500ml buttermilk or milk
Heat the oven to 390F/200C/gas mark 6. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment or grease and line a large loaf tin.
Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Make a well in the centre, then pour in the honey, treacle and buttermilk, working everything together lightly with your hands until you have a loose, wet dough.
With floured hands, shape the dough into a round and lift it onto the lined baking sheet or into the tin. Use a knife to mark a cross in the top (there’s no need to do this if you are using a tin).
Put into the oven and bake for around 45 minutes, or until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the base.
Transfer to a wire rack, drape a slightly damp cloth over the top and leave to cool.
SLOW-COOKED FIELD MUSHROOMS
When you cook field mushrooms very gently for several hours with garlic and thyme, they become soft but still keep their shape, and the flavour is phenomenal. Serve them with a rocket salad, or for breakfast with fried eggs.
(Serves 4)
16 big field mushrooms or Portobello mushrooms
Lots of olive oil
1 head of garlic, sliced across
Bunch of thyme or rosemary
Heat the oven to 275F/140C/gas mark 1.
Peel the mushrooms, but leave on the stalks. Lay them in a roasting tray, stalk-side up.
Sprinkle on lashings of olive oil. It will be soaked up by the mushrooms.
Sprinkle on the garlic, thyme leaves and some salt.
Cook very slowly in the oven for a minimum of 4 hours, until really soft.
'A little place I know'
Richard Corrigan
Saturday October 13, 2007
The Guardian
The Village at Lyons
Celbridge, Kildare, Ireland
My first port of call whenever I’m home - it’s the perfect antidote to the stress of London. I’m involved with the restaurant here, but it’s the cafe, Le Serre, I head to, for Garratt Hennessy’s brilliant bread and pastries.
The Porterhouse
16-18 Parliament Street, Dublin
One thing about the gastropub revolution is there are now few places where you can just get a good drink - they’re all geared up to bloody food. The Porterhouse gets it right. The owner, Oliver Hughes, brews all his own lagers and beers - I love his oyster stout so much that I serve it in the restaurant.
The Ginger Pig
8-10 Moxon Street, London W1
If you need to put together lunch or dinner in a hurry, this is the place - they have great charcuterie, pies and an extraordinary white pudding, all made from rare-breed livestock they rear on their own farm. Added to which, La Fromagerie’s next door - throw in a bit of cheese from there, too, and you’re set.
Banger Bros
225a Portobello Road, London W11, 020-7229 9147
I bumped into a friend the other week who told me this place was brilliant. They were right. It’s a quality fast-food sausage joint. In fact, you’re talking more than quality: you’re talking superb artisan sausages in a bun with beautiful mustard. I had chorizo, which was great, and Polish smoky, which was even better.
The West House
28 High Street, Biddenden, Ashford, Kent
To start cooking professionally at 30, as Graham Garrett did, is one thing. To earn a Michelin star so soon after is quite another. His food is modern British and uncompromisingly seasonal, and he understands ingredients. I love the Sunday lunch.
Jack O’Shea’s
11 Montpelier Street, London SW7
This butcher’s opened last year, and took a risk opening halfway between Harrods and Harvey Nicks, but it paid off. Their meat is sourced from the best producers and it’s all fantastic. I love their flank steak and offal.
"Corrigan Knows Food"
Join us for the new series of "Corrigan Knows Food" on RTE Television. It is a chance to sample some of Richard most passionate moments in the kitchen and with local producers.
The Michelin starred chef has always had a reputation for choosing the best quality produce Ireland can offer. But now he wants to take it further and make sure whatever he uses is sustainable too.
He’s just spent the last few months travelling around the country for his new RTÉ One series in his pure plant oil jeep and he’s been making a big splash.
“You can put plant oil in your chipper, in your salad and in your car,” says Richard. “It’s a wonderfully environmental idea and the great buzzword is – no carbon footprint. Plus it’s three quarters less than the price of diesel and there’s no excise duty.”
On the new series of the RTE Cork produced Corrigan Knows Food, Richard discovers how those vivid yellow flowers produce oil for cars and animal feed so there’s absolutely no waste. And best of all, if you run out of cooking oil, you can siphon it out of your car!
Why not try a Signature Recipe at Home?
Daube of Pork
Serves 6-8 people
Ingredients
Pork
1 kg Shoulder of pork, cut in to large chunky pieces. (Roughly the size of a lady’s fist)
Sunflower oil
3 carrots
2 large onions
4 sticks of celery
1 leek
Marinade
200ml red wine vinegar
375 ml red wine
Good quality brown meat stock
200ml olive oil
Black pepper corns
A few sprigs of thyme
Two cloves of garlic
Fennel seeds- pinch
Cumin seeds- pinch
Salt
One bay leaf
Apricots
100ml white wine
200ml orange juice
12 apricots
2 teaspoons of castor sugar
Finishing touches
3 eating apples
25 grams butter
2 teaspoons of castor sugar
Day before
Pork
Heat a thin layer of sunflower oil in the bottom of a frying pan along with any extra fat that’s been trimmed from the pork.
Season the pork with salt and pepper. Brown the pork on all sides.
Vegetables
Cut the vegetables into pieces the same size as pork and put the vegetables and browned pork in a large bowl along with all the marinade ingredients. Mix thoroughly with your hands. Cover and allow marinade in a fridge over night
Apricots
In small saucepan pan add orange juice, white wine, sugar and apricots.
Bring to the boil for 2 minutes, rest in the mixture over night.
On the day
Take pieces of pork out of marinade bowl place in a casserole dish; pass the rest of the mixture through a colander catching the liquid in a jug.
Put the uncooked, marinated vegetables into the casserole dish.
Reduce the marinade liquid by half in a sauce pan on the hob.
Return the reduced marinade liquid to the casserole dish.
Cover the casserole dish with tinfoil and put the lid on.
Place the casserole in a heated oven for 3 hours at 180°C.
1 hour before serving
Fruit
Peel, quarter and core 3 apples. Heat a thin layer of oil and 25g butter to the frying pan, when melted add the apples and 2 teaspoons of castor sugar.
Cook the apples until caramelised and golden, remove from the heat and add the apricot mixture to the pan, heat through.
Just before serving
Pork
When you remove the casserole from the oven there will be a layer of fat on the top, skim the fat off. Remove the pieces of stewed pork allow rest for 10 minutes on a plate while you finish off the sauce.
Pass the vegetables and stewing liquid through a sieve into jug. Discard what in the sieve ensure that you press all the juices out of the vegetables.
Put your casserole dish on the hob to reduce down the stewing liquid.
When the liquid has reduced by a quarter, add the apple and apricots to it and bring to the boil.
To serve
Return the meat to casserole pan with the reduced liquid and fruit. Serve with mashed potatoes.
