Crudo: Three recipes

And the Sous Chefs who caused me no end of grief

‘If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month’

Theodore Roosevelt 1858 - 1919

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West Berkshire, March 2025

The ideas and the execution behind three dishes today.

A piece that discusses the why’s and how’s of putting together a plate of food.

Using raw fish in three different ways I thought I might share with you how I build plates like this. There are no rules, but more-so suggestions instead. No specific recipes as such, just techniques to use, and flavours to explore.

And in addition, some different stories about those that have at least at some point ‘had my back’.

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Something special for you

I’ve been told by a recent unsubscribe, that they wanted free recipes with less flowery words, as recipes on the internet should be free.

I very much disagree with that.

And I quite like flowery words.

For the month of April, here’s a link that will give you a HUGE DISCOUNT on all new subscriptions. There’s plenty to trawl through in my archive, and I’m always happy to answer questions in messages if you are stuck in a culinary conundrum.

Onwards

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The trouble with Sous Chefs

I was going to tell you a story today but decided instead to share recipes, though I changed my mind again and therefore today there are both.

Recollections of some of the fine men and women who have stood next to me (so to speak) over the decades that I have spent at the coalface. Stories of characters that still make me shudder, though with rose tinted reminiscence, some of the harsher edges have been smoothed out of the years.

Those of us who in hindsight could have done better in their dealings with others, myself included.

Sylvain (not his real name) who held the waiting staff in such disdain that at staff meal he would add a dash of anything vaguely edible he could find to a simmering meat ragu. Coffee granules, old meringues, jam, pickled artichokes, lamb’s brains, eggs even.

‘Bastards’ he would mutter as he tore open a couple of used teabags and stirred them into the sauce, concentrating as the clumps of old tea leaves were absorbed into the rich ragu, tiny peaks of white unmelted meringues sitting like the tips of little iceburgs in the thick meat sauce. Anything that was lurking in the back of the fridges was fair game for the staff pasta. I’m sure that the front-of- house knew this by now, as when it was Sylvain’s turn to make food for the staff, the chefs would invariably go for a cigarette and a coffee rather than eat what he’d made, a wry, mirth-tinged grin would appear on his face as he’d theatrically slam down the trays of staff food with a loud ‘Ça marche’. Schooled through the now disproven ‘hard knocks’ method in the best Michelin starred restaurants of Burgundy the old habits died hard with this one. Ground beef and egg ‘soup’ was another of his specialities. Forty eggs, (bits of shell optional) and four kilos of ground beef mixed over a slow heat till the consistency of something that the dog might bring up, served in the pot on the pass with bread. He was proud of this one.

There was also the incident with the brain pie that still haunts me to this day.

I can’t.

I just can’t.