Great British Menu ™
Baker:
Season:
Week:
Challenge Type:
Clean the Sea (Glan Na Mara)
Calum: "I'm just going to make this muscle butter, which is basically 50:50 mussels and butter. Hot, hot, hot. The title's in Gaelic called 'Glan Namara' which basically means clean the sea. And it's inspired by a man called Dave McKay, who spent a lot of his career cleaning all the shorelines around Scotland, basically. He was a marine environmentalist.'
Calum: "These scallops have actually just been picked up coming down for the competition. Some sea spaghetti as well, some celeriac purée, some muscles and cockles and things like that as well."
Notes taken during cooking
Calum works on his sauce made with champagne fish stock and vanilla pods.
Later ...
Calum's blitzing the root vegetables with milk and butter for his celeriac puree. He's also prepping his foraged seaweed.
Calum: "This is a dulse that I've pickled with champagne vinegar."
Aktar Islam: "I do like seaweed in plates of food, but I just hope it's not too much."
Plating
Calum is serving locally sourced shellfish, foraged seaweeds, and a coral shaped pastry made with milk, gram flour and olive oil. Next, his champagne sauce is finished with vanilla.
Celeriac puree is first onto the shell dishes.
Steamed clams, cockles, and the edible deep fried coral pastry are next.
Each dish is finished with the seaweeds, followed by the champagne and vanilla sauce.
Aktar Islam: "Are you happy with the cooking of the scallop?"
Calum: "If I'm totally honest, no, I'm not. The. The induction maybe got the better of me. Actually not done the way I'd like them to be done."
Peers, tasting behind the scenes
"I like what he's done. This is, you know, you'd go along the shore side and get this type of stuff and, yeah, I think it really celebrates it."
Back in the Judging Room
So is the vanilla prominent enough for it to be counted as an ingredient in the sauce?"
I don't know whether the champagne and the cream combination, the fish stock maybe is getting lost slightly in there.
Peers, tasting behind the scenes
"Almost tastes like white chocolate."
"It's quite high in vanilla."
Final Judging
Aktar Islam: "Callum, for your dish, "Glen Na Mara". The roasted scallop, I had three pieces. Two were quite dark, overcooked, but one piece was beautiful. The champagne and vanilla sauce. The vanilla notes were very well balanced. Celeriac puree was lovely, smooth and rich. You left out the sea spaghetti that was pickled. I think if you'd got that on the plate, it really would have helped. You know, you just get some nice, fresh, lively notes into that and it'll be a great dish."
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