Great British Menu ™
Baker:
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Challenge Type:
Surpise, surprise
Liv: "The name of my dish is "Surprise, Surprise" and it's in honor of Cilla Black.
Liv: "I'm going to be basically cooking liver, bacon and cabbage. That was Cilla Black's favorite meal, I've made my own bacon with the pork belly, so I've got a really nice cure on that. And then for the liver, I'm actually going to make a parfait. I'm going to pipe that into a little tartlet and top that with a really nice orange jelly. And then I've got the Hispi cabbage. I'm going to blanch it in a little bit of water and pork stock.
Paul Ainsworth: "You're going to make sure you've got the Konro hot enough and you're going to get a proper char?"
Liv: "Yeah."
Paul Ainsworth: " I see a ... stock cube!!"
Liv: "One of Cilla's little favorite snacks is that she used to rub a little stock cube over an orange. So that's going to be the finishing touch over the top of the orange jelly."
Notes taken during cooking
Liv gets going on the chicken liver parfait. She combines chicken livers with a syrupy port reduction.
Liv plans to top her liver parfait tarts with a layer of orange jelly, a nod to Scylla's favorite snack.
Liv: "Typically, with a parfait, you'd always have a sweet element served with it. And this is just that."
Later ...
Liv, meanwhile, is lining her chicken parfait cases with pastry before blind baking.
Liv: "This is just the livers with a little bit of the reduction with port. I'm just blitzing this together and then I'm going to emulsify it. So I'm just getting my hispi cabbage started."
Liv came unstuck with the Japanese barbecue in her fish course as the coals weren't hot enough.
Liv barbecues her home cured bacon and finishes her sweetbreads in foaming butter.
Plating
Liv is plating first and is feeling the heat as she trims her home cured bacon.
Liv fills the tart cases with parfait, and the orange jelly is added.
She asks her peers for help: "If you can just follow behind with a slice of bacon. And then it's just going to go a piece of hispi cabbage and then sweetbread after that."
Livia crumbles beef stock cube over the jelly, and the dishes are served with the red wine jus finished with garlic buds alongside.
Paul Ainsworth: "Let's start with the bacon. Is that how you wanted it?"
Liv: "Maybe just a bit more rendered. A bit more heat for it as well. It's not really rendered.
Paul Ainsworth: "The sweetbread. Happy with the cooking on those sweetbreads?"
Liv: "Yeah, I really like the cooking on them."
Peers, tasting behind the scenes
"I would like it a bit more cooked. It's a little bit too snotty for me. The sauce is delicious. It's very sticky."
"The sauce is the best thing on the plate."
Back in the tasting room
Paul Ainsworth: "The parfait. Is that what you were going for?"
Liv: 'Color's great. But it's just not set."
Peers, tasting behind the scenes
"I want to hear about how the orange and the stock cube come together."
"Cilla might have been on to something. Sounded really weird. But actually, that savory with the orange is kind of nice."
Back in the tasting room
Paul Ainsworth: "Liv, if you were to score this dish, what would you give?"
Liv: "A six or a seven? I think it just needs that little fine tune."
Final Judging
Paul Ainsworth: "Liv, for your dish. Surprise, surprise. The pork jus, it was rich. It was dark. It was really well made. I love the textures in there. The pork belly itself, unfortunately, it was just undercooked, almost raw. The fat was very white. It just wasn't well executed. I like the glaze on your lamb sweetbreads, but unfortunately, the texture was just all very pappy. The chicken liver parfait, I think, you know, it wasn't set enough. I know that they're Cilla's favorite things. However, I think you were probably just a bit too led on the brief and the inspiration and didn't have enough focus on the actual execution.
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