The Cake Café has teamed up with Irish chef Giles Clark for a pop-up banquet featuring Irish ingredients foraged or sourced around Dublin on June 1st and 2nd next. Vegetables will be the star and are sourced from Jenny McNally and Denis Healy and foraged treats will include sea purslane, meadowsweet, elderflowers and gorse syrup. Wines on the night will be from The Corkscrew.
Cost: €30 per person
Date/Time: 7.30pm 1st and 2nd June
To Book Call The Cake Cafe on 01 4789394.
Leslie Williams was one of the lucky few to attend a preview of the Cake Café summer fest, and reports below.
A phone call from the ever resourceful Michelle Darmody of Cake Café on Pleasants Place to experience a preview of her Summer Supper Banquet cooked by Giles Clark is not something you pass up.
Clark is young and hungry (in all senses) and presently cooking with the reigning kings of pop-up the Young Turks in London (http://youngturks.co/). Before that he worked in Noma in Copenhagen and has done stages in a collection of famous kitchens including Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Alinea in Chicago.
The evening began with a Gorse Syrup and gin cocktail – a little sweet perhaps but interesting nonetheless.
From the first couple of courses it became clear the star was going to be the vegetables and the presence at the meal of Denis Healy and Jenny McNally promised good things ahead.
The show began with some oysters nestled in a baby lettuce heart, topped with deep fried onions and enriched with a little horseradish to bring out the sea flavours. Simple but satisfying and nicely balanced by our glass of Picpoul de Pinet supplied by the Corkscrew.
Jenny McNally's sweet baby beets were served with a creamy egg based emulsion of rapeseed oil and mead and topped with a tiny elderflower to add a little spike.
Denis Healy's baby carrots came next were nestled in a bread sauce accompanied by some crisp chicken skin and lovage.
The sauce for the beets and the herbs and chicken skin with the carrots were there to pay homage to the vegetables. These perfect vegetable seemed to brighten our palates and focus our minds before the onset of protein.
Egg on toast (from Le Levain sourdough bakery) with a little hollandaise sounds simple enough but this was one of the most remarkably cooked eggs I have yet to taste. The white was fully cooked (if barely) and yet the yolk remained liquid with just a hint of warmth. The consistency along the table was remarkable and no amount of questioning of Giles afterwards revealed the cooking method: we merely received a Zen-like smile.
Lamb suet dumplings had a seductive texture and a mouth pleasing stickiness cut through by the beautiful purity of the onion broth and the accompanying sorrel leaves to add a final flourish of freshness. I found out from Giles later that the broth was made by sweating a huge quantity of onions for 12 hours and simply straining them.
Poached hake added some textural balance to the real stars of the next plate -char-grilled baby cucumbers and the immaculate crunchy, salty sea Purslane sourced that morning from Bull Island.
Meltingly sweet Oxtail was next counterbalanced with thinly shaved raw cauliflower. The cauliflower did offer some nice resistance to the richness of the oxtail but was not particularly successful in itself.
Verjuice sorbet topped with some shaved almonds had a refreshing sweet-sour tang and sat atop a poached pear.
We finished with a taste of many an Irish childhood – cold creamy buttermilk to drink with some Sheridan's-supplied fine cheese – Ardrahan, Cratloe Hills and a Triskel goats cheese – all – inevitably – in perfect condition.
The key to the success of this meal was the balance of flavours. Proteins were used to highlight the fresh farmed and foraged produce, and sauces were there to enhance not swamp.
Summer was made for food like this.
The venue for the Cake Café Summer Banquet on June 1st and 2nd is the girls National school beside the Cake Café. Details and booking on 01- 4789394.
@CakeCafeDublin @Lesliesrealfood
