The Hand and Flowers

Our next book was the rather exciting prospect of cooking from the impressive Tom Kerridge’s, The Hand and Flowers Cookbook. The Hand and Flowers was the first two Michelin Star Pub. We’ve been a couple of times, and I have to say the food and experience was amazing. One of the most memorable things I ate there was the smoked haddock omelette – inspired by omelette Arnold Bennett.

I’ll make no bones about it; this is a proper chef’s cookbook with each dish requiring multiple components to be prepared and then assembled in unison at the end. What’s more, it’s a bit like a “Choose Your Own Adventure Book” where you have to keep hopping to other sections of the book to make a sauce or some other such base component. That said, it is brilliantly clear, and we followed it, and all was well. Now we have some pretty high-end kitchen tech that made some of the recipes much more straightforward than most home cooks would have it. The thermomix made short work of crème patisserie and cream anglais for us. Our ice cream machine also came in handy this week.

Our dish of the week was Apple Crumble Soufflé served with Apple Sorbet and Crème anglaise. I have to say the final thing looked pretty impressive. It was a little too sweet for Mrs b, but the children loved the sorbet. I loved it and was pleased with how it came together.

The Hand and Flowers Cookbook is and amazing book. Yes it was a lot of work to do this dessert but I was pretty proud with what we achieved.