[slideshow]Top chef’s Richard Fox and Beverley Glock starred at the Chilterns Harvest Festival of Food last weekend (October 1-3).
Beverley, who writes for The Times, newspaper focused on creating gnocci, with a gorgonzola sauce as main and a distinctive Black Forest trifle for dessert.
Gnocci is described as a classic Italian dish, a suitable alternative to pasta, made with potato and flour.
Ingredients for four people should include 500 g of old potatoes peeled and chopped; 200 g of plain flour, 1 egg, salt and pepper.
Beverley defined a three point plan to make the dish successfully. First bring a pan of water to the boil and boil the potatoes for 10-15min until soft, drain and mash really smoothly.
Second, add the flour, egg and seasoning and mix to form a firm dough. Knead the dough for 1-2 min and roll out into a sausage shape approximately 1cm thick. Cut into 2-5 cm pieces, gently squash with a fork to make nice indentations. Transfer to a floured baking tray while carrying on with the rest of the preparation. Lastly, bring a pan of water to the boil and cook from 1-2min until they rise to the surface. Scoop the gnocci out and serve with tomato sauce, or sprinkle with parmesan cheese and eat with a green salad.
The gorgonzola sauce should be made from 100 g of gorgonzola cheese, 60ml of double cream, 25g of grated parmesan, and rocket. The gorgonzola and cream should be placed in a small saucepan over a low heat and stirred until the cheese melts, season with a little pepper and pour over the cooked gnocci, serve on a bed of rocket.
The dessert, which should serve four people, comprises half a chocolate loaf cake, kirch, a small carton of double or whipped cream, one tin of cherries, drained, and grated chocolate.
The cake should be sliced into chunks about 2cm in size, kirch should be added, not too much, the mix should be topped with some cream and black cherries, and grated chocolate added.
Beverley is pursuing a career of great variety. She runs her own cooking school at Princes Risborough and she is no stranger to television, having designed a bouquet of cupcakes for Channel 4’s The Wedding House series.
Beverley said her tasty recipe could easily be achieved within a timeframe of 20 minutes.
Experienced chef Richard Fox made a smoked haddock fishcake in double quick time to delight the audience at Great Missenden. He said it was “a tasty snack” and the offering was achieved with the efficient use of boiled rice, parsley and potatoes lemon juice was for good effect as well as a poached egg, flour, and breadcrumbs. Grated cheddar provided another aspect as did a judicious mix of garlic to achieve: “a pesto dish in under 10 minutes”.
For dessert Richard served up a peach based helping which went down well with the audience. The demonstration was launched in conjunction with The Bucks Waste Partnership which aims to highlight the amount of food wasted in a typical household. The aim, according to spokesman Graham Smith, is to get people to think more clearly about using food already bought and avoiding unnecessary waste. Each year, said Mr. Smith, British families throw away a total of 8.3 million tonnes of food, something which is unacceptable and even anti-social, argued the County Council advisor.