Chef Pierre Koffmann takes Noble Rot on a non-stop tour of his ...

London Express Chef Pierre Koffmann takes Noble Rot on a non-stop tour of his favourite London kitchens. Words by Dan Keeling Photos by Elena Heatherwick

Pierre Koffmann, Kricket, Brixton, 20th April 2016

72 Noble Rot

Noble Rot 73

T

he trouble with visiting six of London’s best young chefs with Pierre Koffmann is the sheer volume of wonderful, calorie-laden creations that demand instant hoovering on pain of causing offence. As problems go it’s a good one to have but as Noble Rot tucks into our second tasting menu of the same lunchtime we can’t help wondering whether today is turning into an I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here-style challenge to eat more top restaurant food than one of France’s most celebrated chefs. Having begun the day with fried chicken at East London’s Chick ‘n’ Sours, followed by monkfish liver at Lyle’s and a lightening quick tasting menu at the nearby Clove Club, it’s not even 2pm and dim sum is rolling out of A Wong’s kitchen in Victoria like it’s going out of fashion. As Noble Rot crunches into our second deep-fried quail’s egg we glance across the dining table at our esteemed Gallic dining companion, still enthusiastically dipping in and out of various assembled wicker steaming baskets and we steel our resolve to eat onward to glory. After all, we’ve only an Indian restaurant and a ramen noodle bar left to visit over the next couple of hours. It’s no surprise that every kitchen we visit really wants to impress Pierre. A chef’s

chef, far happier working the stoves than schmoozing on the celebrity circuit, Koffmann’s inspired blend of fine dining and rustic Gascon peasant food has been a standout fixture on the capital’s restaurant scene for over 40 years. With a reputation as a down-to-earth but demanding boss, he has been responsible for helping to train a hugely successful alumni of chefs including Jason Atherton, Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay and Tom Aikens. He clearly takes an altruistic pleasure in helping younger generations. “I’ve got a great relationship with many of my old chefs,” says Pierre, citing Tom Kitchin and La Petite Maison’s Raphael Duntoye as two he’s still particularly close to. “Tommy first came to see me with his mum and we’ve still got a good connection today. There were also guys like Gordon and Marco who were beautiful cooks. But their passion was not cooking, their passion was to be on TV.” With a reputation as a disciplinarian in the kitchen (somewhat at odds with his laid-back and friendly persona out of it) I ask whether he thought that some of his chefs were scared of him? “Of course,” he chuckles in his deep French baritone. “People called me ‘the bear’, not ‘the teddy bear’. I come from the Pyrenees, where they’ve got real bears. I think if you

want to be successful you’ve got to be tough, you’ve got to impose your ideas. If I wanted something to be done a certain way, my cooks had to do it that way, and after, when they got their own restaurants, they could do it the way they liked.” Arriving in London in 1970 to watch the French play the English at rugby and deciding to stay on for ‘6 months’, Pierre first took a job at Michel and Albert Roux’s renowned Le Gavroche in Mayfair, rising quickly through the ranks to become head chef of the brothers’ next venture, The Waterside Inn in Bray. After a few years he decided it was time to set out on his own and in 1977 opened La Tante Claire with his first wife Annie, where he held three Michelin stars until taking retirement when she passed away in 2003. It wouldn’t be until 2009 that diners who still dreamt of his world-famous food, like pig’s trotter stuffed with sweetbreads and morel mushrooms, were finally able to savour it again. “I went travelling for a while but when I came back I was doing nothing, getting bored,” Koffmann tells Noble Rot as we approach our first destination of the day. “I was getting out of bed at nine in the morning and going for a cappuccino, having lunch somewhere and then going back home for a little siesta.

I said to myself ‘Pierre, if you keep doing that by next year you’ll be dead’. So I did some consulting and then Selfridges asked me to do a pop-up restaurant on their roof for a week, which then turned into eight weeks. In eight weeks we served 3,200 pig trotters. I’ve done many other things, but I’ll always be remembered for pig’s trotters… I don’t mind,” he smiles. Following the huge success of his pop-up, Pierre had several proposals from backers to set up his own restaurant once more, before signing a three-year lease at Knightsbridge’s Berkeley Hotel: a three

years that, in true Koffmann style, has now turned into six. Our Uber pulls up outside Dalston’s Chick ‘n’ Sours and we slide off its faux-leather seats into the early morning sunshine. “One of the things I really admire about young chefs is that they don’t go for the most luxurious restaurants,” Pierre says, taking in the restaurant’s austere urban facade. “In the 1980s chefs all loved to have the best-looking restaurants, but that’s changed now. There is no décor at all in Lyle’s, or even at The Clove Club. It looks a little dirty from the outside and you don’t know if you want to go

in there, but the food is beautiful. The best of all is Kricket – I admire anyone who opens a restaurant in a sea container. It’s nice to see young people starting their own business like that. The worst is when you start a business with someone else putting up the money, and you end up working for them all your life. They’ve all started small and are successful.” Opening early to accommodate our unorthodox breakfast (Chick ‘n’ Sours is usually only open for dinner), we enter a deserted dining room and spot chef and owner Carl Clarke hard at work, through the kitchen hatch.

Above: Ready for breakfast: Pierre ‘The Bear’ surveys Chick ‘n’ Sours

74 Noble Rot

Noble Rot 75

Chick ‘n’ Sours

Noble Rot: When did you first meet Pierre?

390 Kingsland Road London E8 4AA

Carl Clarke: I got a random phone call about nine months ago saying that Pierre Koffmann was coming in and nearly fell over. NR: What do you think has made Chick ‘n’ Sours such a success? CC: It sounds simple, but we

An email address including the moniker ‘Carl Disco’ gives a clue as to Carl Clarke’s previous career. “Everything we do involves music, food and art, and a few years ago I started messing around with ideas and put on a fried chicken pop-up,” the affable Midlander Clarke

explains about his journey from DJ and dance music producer to chef serving over 200 covers on a busy weekend night. Whilst fried chicken might not be anything new, especially considering the preponderence of dreadful strip-lit fast food shops currently clogging London’s

arteries, a delicious highquality version made using the finest ingredients most certainly is. With plans to open Clarke’s vision of a Chinese restaurant downstairs (called Chinese Restaurant Syndrome) and a second site in Covent Garden, 2016 is going to be busy for Chick ‘n’ Sours. Above: Fried chicken and pickled watermelon, green slaw with fermented jalapeño and lime kosho, szechuan aubergine

76 Noble Rot

use the best quality ingredients we can find. We use herb fed chicken from a farm in Yorkshire called Hill Moor Grange Farm. The hardest thing for a poultry farmer to do is to sell the dark meat because everybody wants to buy the breasts, but we really wanted to get the best chickens we could find, so I said we’d take every leg and wing they could supply. We get our vegetables from a commune in Cornwall; these hippy new age travellers set up a farm in the 1980s, and now they’re like alchemists.

bad, and I love all styles, but if I want to eat fried chicken I come here. When you eat high quality like this, you enjoy it. Everything here is nice – the salad is beautiful, it’s crunchy, it’s not over seasoned.” NR: Carl, there are several other restaurateurs who, like you, have gone from dance music into running their own places (Layo Paskin at Palomar, James Murphy at The Four Horsemen, Luke Unabomber at Volta etc). Why do you think that is? CC: I think everyone just

grew up. It’s great that a new generation of people have gone into restaurants with a new energy, taking away a lot

of the fuss and the frills and putting a new perspective on things. PK: Everything has evolved.

30 years ago restaurants were much more traditional, where people went to eat traditional food. Young people were scared to come to La Tante Claire in case they held their knife or fork incorrectly. More casual dining is a great thing.

After tucking into Carl’s delicious house fried chicken with watermelon and a side of green slaw, we bid our host a fond farewell and arrive at Lyle’s on Shoreditch High Street a little before10.30am. Coffee please!

NR: Do you cook fried chicken Pierre? Pierre Koffmann: No, we

don’t do that in France. I’m not an expert in fried chicken or Chinese or Italian food, I keep with French cooking. For me food is either good or

Left to right: “So…you’re after my secret fried chicken recipe?” chef/ owner Carl Clarke (centre)

Noble Rot 77

Lyle’s Tea Building 56 Shoreditch High Street London E1 6JJ

Now approaching it’s second birthday, chef James Lowe’s thoughtful cooking has

established Lyle’s as one of the city’s most in-demand fine dining destinations,

employing a ‘no choice’ daily set dinner menu and a clean, pared-back aesthetic. Pierre and Noble Rot settle at a table with cappuccinos and 15 minutes later Lowe appears with a dish of monkfish liver with blood orange and fennel pollen that he’s just made. Noble Rot: How many times have you been to Lyle’s, Pierre? Pierre Koffmann: I’ve been

two or three times and always really enjoyed it. You need a special technique to cook monkfish liver. Did you slow-cook it like the Japanese, James? (Monkfish liver is a delicacy in Japan).

James Lowe: No. We

de-vein it then leave it in milk overnight, then dry it off and roast it. When you roast monkfish liver you get a really fantastic dark flavour that tastes of roast fish. I feel it’s a more approachable flavour for many people, and has a really nice texture, like foie gras. It’s a good way of introducing people to

Left: Monkfish liver with blood orange and fennel pollen

78 Noble Rot

something they wouldn’t normally have. NR: That’s delicious – would you serve it with a glass of Sauternes, like with foie gras? JL: Could do, it needs the

balance. It has to have the acidity but it can handle the sweetness, absolutely.

PK: When people go to a

restaurant they want to see something new; they’re fed up with seeing scallops on every menu.

JL: And if people come back a

lot, lunch is always different here.

PK: We nearly always go to

restaurants at lunchtime – I thought maybe it was old age. At lunchtime you can enjoy the rest of the day, but if you go at night, you leave the restaurant and you go to bed. I love to eat at midday.

very nice, but we haven’t done ten years yet, and I don’t think anyone’s really made it until they’ve done that. I really want to do other things as well, like run a bakery, because London needs better bread.

NR: With Lyle’s having now been open for two years, what’s your next ambition James?

NR: Where do you think makes the best bread in London at the moment?

JL: My ambition is still to be

PK: We bake our own (laughs).

open in 20 years’ time. Having worked at the River Café and St. John, you see those restaurants celebrate 20 years and think ‘I want that’. Any kind of awards we get in the first few years are

JL: We bake our own (laughs).

I think Mikael Jonsson at Hedone in Chiswick does amazing bread, but it’s different to my bread, it’s more airy and less sour and heavy.

Above: (left to right) James Lowe, Dan Keeling, Pierre Koffmann, Lyle’s, Shoreditch

Noble Rot 79

The Clove Club

I’ve got Pierre’s Memories of Gascony up there (points to shelf containing a collection of cookery books), which he’s signed twice now (laughs).

Shoreditch Town Hall 380 Old Street London EC1V 9LT

NR: What’s your favourite cookery book, besides Memories of Gascony of course?

Isaac McHale is Noble Rot’s favourite chef in London, bar none. With an effortless style (a simplicity that is meticulously executed, especially when he explains his elaborate processes), The Clove Club has been wowing diners in Shoreditch’s old Town Hall since its launch in March 2013. A huge fan of Koffmann, McHale is genuinely excited to have him visiting The Clove Club once again, and begins by reminiscing about a time when Pierre ate at The Ledbury restaurant in Notting Hill (where Isaac was working at the time), and ordered an instant rewind of a desert he had made.

IM: My favourite is called

Isaac McHale: Yeah – it was

prune kernel parfait and gingerbread tuile. The pastry chef I was working alongside said ‘he doesn’t care about you, he will never know your name’ – but I was very happy.

Répertoire de la Cuisine by Louis Saulnier. I don’t know if you’ve got it but it’s a small book with seven thousand recipes – it’s written for chefs more than home cooks. I used to have maybe 400 cookery books, but my wife got fed up with them and I gave them all to Tom Kitchin.

European Peasant Cookery by Elisabeth Luard. Most chefs look in a book and say ‘okay, what’s Tom Aikens’ recipe for crayfish’ and copy that, but this has just got a Hungarian goulash stew or Irish potato and onion stew, or a Spanish rabbit dish, and it’s nice because you get inspired in a different way, you’re not just making another chef’s dish.

IM: Nice!

NR: What’s your favourite cook book of all time Pierre?

NR: Have you read the NOMA cookbook Pierre? (points to the book on the shelf)

Pierre Koffmann: Escoffier.

Noble Rot: Was Pierre ordering a second helping of your dessert a special moment for you Isaac?

PK: Time flies. Also Le

NR: So you don’t own any cookery books now? PK: I’ve got two or three. I

said it’s not fair because she doesn’t want to see all these big cookery books, but she’s bought so many books about dieting, how to lose weight, how to live until you are 100... All these shit books.

PK: NOMA? Yes. What the

I like Escoffier because you have all the recipes you want and you can add to them; they’re basic. And the new Larousse Gastronomique is good – the old one was rubbish but the new is very good.

NR: So you’re not so interested in foraging?

IM: The new one is from 20 or

PK: Depends on what you call

15 years ago?

guy from NOMA has done is fantastic, he brought a lot of tourists to Denmark, but his food is not what I like to eat.

foraging. If you go out and collect mushrooms, yes, it’s

fantastic. After, if what you make is just bits from foraging, it’s boring. IM: A few companies make a

fortune from selling foraged ingredients now – people have forgotten the price of things. Somebody tried charging us £90 for three kilos of hay, I said ‘I could get that in a pet shop for £4, can you please take that off my bill’ and he said ‘it’s special hay, it’s very high quality’. (laughs) So where else are you going to today? I hear you’re going to my favourite place, A Wong?

PK: Mine too!

(After more chat Isaac departs back to the kitchen, and as we are due to leave for our next visit shortly, begins serving one of the quickest ten-course tasting menus we’ve ever eaten.) NR: What sort of wine do you like to drink Pierre? PK: If it’s good, it’s good. I

really like Château Palmer, and someone treated us to some La Conseillante 1996 last week, which was exceptional. I like to be surprised by wine – when we came to Noble Rot I had a Jacques Puffenay savagnin from the Jura, which was

Top: Pierre outside The Clove Club Above: Isaac McHale’s cook books

80 Noble Rot

Noble Rot 81

Isaac and Pierre, The Clove Club, Shoreditch

82 Noble Rot

Noble Rot 83

Left: Slow poached Cumbrae oyster, beef consommé jelly, grilled cream and Beluga Caviar

beautiful. I like to drink the very old Jura wines, but it’s not often you find them because they’re very hard to sell. But food can never reach the heights of the best wines – something like La Tâche is a one-off of nature. I can cook well, but how can you match that? NR: If you could drink any bottle of wine again, what would it be?

PK: If I could afford it, I

would drink a glass of Château d’Yquem every night before going to bed.

NR: Would you brush your teeth afterwards? PK: No, I’d wait until the

morning (laughs). This food is beautiful – if I were a Michelin inspector I’d give this restaurant two stars!

NR: What do you think of many young chefs’ obsession with Michelin stars? PK: I don’t think Michelin is

very interesting anymore. They give a star to restaurants that shouldn’t

Left: House salami & ventreche

84 Noble Rot

have a star, they remove a star from a restaurant who should have a star... It’s just a guide like any other guide. But you’ve got to think of the view of the young chefs, they want to be in Michelin because it’s like a bible. To them it’s fantastic and you’ve got to respect that. They’ve got a star here and that’s fantastic – but the most important thing is that you get to cook the type of food you want to eat. NR: Do you think Michelin was more important in the past?

A Wong 70 Wilton Road London SW1V 1DE

We leave The Clove Club woozy and benevolent, with Pierre raving about McHale’s homemade ventreche. “That was the best dish for me – it sounds stupid, but it was perfection. I don’t like to give scores, but I’d give it 20 out of 20 – it was absolutely Below: “Have you checked your Trip Advisor rating recently?” Pierre and Andrew Wong

beautiful!” Negotiating food comas and the lunchtime London traffic across town to SW1, 40 mins later we are ushered into the tail end of a bustling lunch service at A Wong, chef Andrew Wong’s eponymous Chinese restaurant in Victoria. The sense of mutual respect and friendship between Pierre and Andrew is palpable and we settle down for another

ten courses, this time of dim sum. Noble Rot: Hi Andrew. Have you been to Pierre’s restaurant? Andrew Wong: A few times, yeah. The first time was five years ago, when we pretended it was my cousin’s birthday to see what they would do.

PK: When I was young I

never thought about Michelin, I just cooked the food that I wanted to eat. If you want a Michelin star, you don’t cook pig’s trotters! In the 1970s, if you wanted to have a star you had to serve Poulet de Bresse, sweetbreads, caviar... I’ve always cooked the food I wanted to eat and I was lucky to get to three stars. It’s not that much different from here. Michelin, I don’t like it, but for these young chefs, they’ve got to think how they’re going to get their restaurants full.

Noble Rot 85

NR: Did they lay on anything special? AW: I think we got ‘happy

birthday’ on a plate (laughs). You go to Pierre’s restaurant to learn how things are supposed to be done. I used to be obsessed with soufflés, so I’d go to Pierre’s restaurant to make sure I knew how to make a soufflé. And then people start talking about pigs’ trotters, so I thought alright, we need to learn how to make a pig’s trotter – where do we go to learn how to make a pig’s trotter? So we go to Pierre’s, eat pig’s trotter, and that sets the bar.

NR: So he’s a big inspiration? AW: Pierre? Absolutely.

What I love about Pierre is how he eats. Some chefs, they come in and they start fannying around with the food, they start picking at everything, and they’re always talking too much when they eat. Pierre just grabs it and gets stuck in. Two chefs get together for lunch and you can overhear them analysing everything... Just eat it. The first time I saw Pierre eat I was like ‘yeah, this is the way that everyone should be eating’.

NR: What are your favourite

restaurants in London?

86 Noble Rot

AW: Now that we have two

kids we don’t eat out very much, but normally we go out for particular dishes... dim sum – Natalie, where’s the last place we went for dim sum? (calls over to his wife, who is the restaurant’s manager).

Natalie: We went to The Dorchester. AW: (looking sheepish,

chuckling) Shh! We go to this place in Peckham called Hong Kong City, it’s kind of family-oriented. And my friend has a restaurant in Wing Yip supermarket on the North Circular with really nice Chinese roast meats, it’s called Reindeer Café. I think the best dim sum I’ve ever eaten was in Macau. Most things, everyone kind of makes the same stuff – Shanghai dumplings, pork dumplings – but that was one of the first places I went where they were actively trying to create new stuff all the time, and also one of the first Chinese restaurants I’ve been to where it was really apparent that they were trying to put a little twist here and there and create new things.

NR: Did that inspire you to create dishes that are a little more original?

AW: Yeah, they were just

incredible. I think Chinese cuisine is changing massively. When my parents had a restaurant, every Chinese restaurant in London had exactly the same menu. My dad had three friends with restaurants, one was in Ealing, one was in Wimbledon and one was at Hyde Park Corner – they literally had identical menus. When they used to develop new dishes, they’d all come round, eat the new dish together, and then all three of them would put the same dish on their menus. It’s changing though. Now you get different parts of China, Mongolian dishes...

NR: What do you like about Andrew’s food, Pierre? PK: You see all the different

styles. My wife loves eating shredded beef, but it’s usually full of caramel. Here, it’s an actual piece of beef in your mouth. My favourite three Chinese restaurants in London are here, New Fortune Cookie in Bayswater, which is quite traditional, with nice people and good food, and Park Chinois.

Right: Steamed salted duck yolk custard buns, A.Wong, Victoria

Noble Rot 87

Kricket

Tonkotsu

49 Brixton Station Road London SW9 8PQ

7 Blenheim Cresent London W11 2EE

Next stop is a shipping container a short walk behind Brixton tube, by far the least conventional space for an Indian, or indeed any kind of restaurant. With an atmosphere akin to an old-school street market crossed with Glastonbury’s healing fields, finding the location of Kricket isn’t necessarily very easy on a first visit, but diners who do find the stairs leading to this tiny place are guaranteed some of the UK’s most flavoursome Indian cuisine. Owned and run by manager Rik Campbell and his friend, chef Will Bowlby (two young guys who look like missing members of New York band The Strokes), Kricket has developed a passionate and loyal following since opening a little under two years ago, and the pair have plans for a second, bigger, more central site. We park ourselves at one of the Kricket’s long communal tables, and pray that we won’t feel obligated to eat the whole menu as the

gracious Will approaches with a bowl of khichari. Noble Rot: Hi Will. What was the inspiration for this dish? Will Bowlby: The idea came

from kedgeree. It’s kind of a Scottish translation of a traditional Indian recipe called khichari, which uses rice and lentils and it’s a staple, a poor man’s food. The idea was to take something traditional and familiarise it with smoked

haddock and the egg, which is what we know as kedgeree. And that’s a classic example of what our food does here, taking traditional recipes and modernising them with British ingredients. NR: What was it like when you were a chef in Mumbai? Was it easy to get hold of good ingredients? WB: Some suppliers were

good but some were just so

unreliable. You’d call up to do your delivery for the next day and quite often it wouldn’t come – for a day or two days, or two weeks – or if it did come, you’d get these goat legs just thrown in with the chickens and fish, in that heat. It’s a real shame in Mumbai, which is half-surrounded by water, that there’s a lot of fish that by the time it reaches you is not in a good state. My favourite time there was going to a fish market at 4am and seeing all the boats come in and the fishermen’s wives taking orders, that was amazing. But the middle-class locals we were catering for didn’t want to eat local fish, they wanted fish from abroad; Norwegian sea bass, salmon, stuff like that.

NR: Where else have you eaten recently that you like?

Pierre Koffmann: We never

By now we’re seven hours into our gastronomic odyssey, so after taking Will’s recipe for the delicious khichari, we set off for the newest branch of noodle bar Tonkotsu, just off West London’s Portobello Road.

use farmed fish. It should be banned – they don’t taste nice. I’d prefer to eat a sardine over a farmed sea bass, by far – if you pan fry it, it’s disgusting. Fishing should be seasonal.

WB: I love Barrafina, that’s

probably my favourite restaurant at the moment. Otherwise I stay local; Naughty Piglets is always good, Salon... In fact, I’m not just saying this (honestly, he’s not – Ed) but one of the best places is Noble Rot, I went there the other day and it was really good – everything about it was comfortable, it was really nice. We’ve also done a recent collaboration with Tonkotsu. We did a ramen for them that we sold in their Mare Street restaurant for a weekend – Indian ramen.

With a menu that features pig’s trotter ramen, how could Tonkotsu not be Pierre Koffmann’s favourite ramen bar? “Emma, the co-owner, is a superb girl,” Pierre beams as we enter the long, wood-lined room, and are warmly greeted by Emma and her business partner of almost ten years, Ken. With several sushi and katsu restaurants called Tsuru located in the City, the partners have opened a successful string of Tonkotsu branches in Soho, Hackney and Selfridges Food Hall since 2012. Noble Rot: Hi Emma. How’s your noodle bar in Selfridges going? Emma Reynolds: Great – it

was a real experiment for both them and us. We went in where the old cheese counter used to be, so you’d get regular customers of Selfridges coming in for their cheese and saying “what the hell is this? Noodles?”.

Kricket’s Will Bowlby and Pierre

88 Noble Rot

Noble Rot 89

Chick ‘n’ Sours’ Green Slaw with Fermented Jalapeño & Lime Kosho A few weeks in advance, prepare the key ingredient for the lime kosho (a Japanese chilli paste). Fermented jalapeño chilli

100g jalapeño chillies, whole 10g salt

NR: So both you and Pierre have had good Selfridges experiences. Pierre Koffmann: It was

beautiful, but we worked seven days a week for two months. While I was working, it was good, the body was working, but as soon as we stopped my leg went. I was lucky because it was supposed to be for a week, and Éric Chavot and Bruno Loubet were both out of work.

ER: No way! PK: So they both came to us

and stayed for eight weeks. They are both very good chefs, I was very lucky. All the rest were Indian cooks

because an Indian restaurant had burned down. I had two Indian guys who had never cooked French before. We would buy trotters in boxes of 500, and we had to remove the bones from all of them, but it was a good challenge. NR: When you come to

Tonkotsu, do you normally have pig’s trotter broth? ER: Funnily enough, when we

first met, I made him come and try the pig’s trotter broth and tell me what he thought…

PK: It’s just good food,

that’s it. I eat everything – if it’s good it’s good, if it’s bad it’s bad.

ER: It’s all about seasoning,

isn’t it?

PK: Yeah. I have two signs

in our restaurant kitchen: ‘the difference between good and bad food can be a pinch of salt’ and ‘taste your food’.

NR: On the basis of the dishes we’ve eaten today Pierre, I’d say we’ve tasted some excellent food. Are you up going on for any more, or are you done? PK: It’s been fantastic, but I

think I’m okay!

NR: Brilliant. I’m off for a lie down.

Toss the jalapeños with the salt then tip into an airtight container. Let the chillies ferment for two weeks in the fridge, giving them a good stir daily. After two weeks’ fermentation the jalapeños are ready to become part of the lime kosho. Lime kosho

100g fermented jalapeño chillies 50ml lime juice 40g lime zest 25g Maldon salt

Lime kosho Kewpie dressing

35g lime kosho 450g Kewpie mayonnaise 3g garlic, peeled and finely minced 40g ginger, peeled and finely minced 60g buttermilk 50g white miso 45ml lime juice 10ml sesame oil 15g caster sugar 3g salt Once again, combine all of the ingredients for the dressing and purée together to make a smooth paste. This is ready to dress the green slaw.

Slaw mix

300g mange touts, julienned 150g kohlrabi, julienned 30g pickled ginger (chef’s note: not the pink stuff) Powdered nori seaweed, to serve To serve, mix 120g of the prepared slaw with just enough Lime kosho mayo dressing to bind it together. Plate, sprinkle with a little powdered nori and serve chilled. Serves 4.

Combine the whole chillies with the salt, lime zest and juice in a blender. Purée to a coarse paste. (You will have plenty of this paste left over, and it can be mixed with other ingredients including soy sauce, sesame oil, miso and tamari to make delicious dipping sauces and marinades for meat, tofu and vegetables.) The lime kosho is now ready to go into the dressing for the slaw.

Above left: Tonkotsu ramen Above right: with owners Emma Reynolds & Ken Yamada

90 Noble Rot

Noble Rot 91

Kricket’s kichri with smoked haddock and pickled cauliflower For the pickled cauliflower

500ml white wine vinegar 500ml golden caster sugar 2 whole spices (a blend of cardamom, star anise or black peppercorns) 1 head cauliflower, broken into large florets

At least a day before you plan to eat the dish, prepare by pickling the cauliflower. Put the sugar, vinegar and spices in a pan and simmer until all the sugar has dissolved. Remove the liquid from the heat to cool. Finely slice the cauliflower florets using a sharp knife or mandolin and add the slices to the cooled pickling liquid. The pickled cauliflower, stored in a sterilised jar, will keep for up to three weeks. For the kichri

100g yellow moong dhal or yellow split peas ½ tsp ground turmeric vegetable oil On the day you intend to eat, put the dhal and turmeric in a pan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 40 minutes, or until the mixture becomes a pulp. (Add more water if the dhal begins to dry out without becoming tender.) Let the cooked dhal cool, then blitz it with a stick blender until the mixture is smooth. 92 Noble Rot

For the haddock

Add the smooth dhal and cooked rice, breaking up the grains as you stir, to ensure everything is coated in the purée.

Put the haddock, bay leaves and peppercorns in a small pan and pour over the milk so that the fish is covered. Poach for five minutes, or until the haddock is just cooked.

Add the flaked haddock and butter, stirring gently to avoid breaking the fish up further, until evenly incorporated and the butter melted. The dish should be rich and creamy – add a little fish stock or water and more butter if it’s looking slightly dry.

150g undyed smoked haddock 500ml whole milk 2 bay leaves 5 black peppercorns

Drain the fish, discarding the leaves and peppercorns, and let cool. Break the haddock up into flakes and discard the bones and skin. Finishing the dish

½ small onion, chopped 1 green chilli, finely chopped 1 tsp fresh ginger, finely chopped 1 tsp fresh garlic, finely chopped 1 tsp ground cumin 200g cooked basmati rice, cooled 50g unsalted butter

To serve

2 raw egg yolks or poached eggs coriander leaves ground black pepper Spoon the mixture onto plates and top with egg yolks (or poached eggs, if you prefer), pickled cauliflower, coriander and a healthy grind or two of black pepper.

Heat 2 tbsp vegetable oil in a pan and add the chopped onion, cooking it on a low heat until soft. Turn up the heat a bit. Add the chilli, ginger, garlic and cumin, and cook for two minutes.

Noble Rot 93