On a typically unpredictable sunny/hailing/windy day in May, we met Chef Ivan Tisdall-Downes at Deptford Little Farm.
As you might expect, what a museum is to an artist, as is a farm to a chef. So after a thorough tour and plenty of exploring, we set to work. Ivan excitedly tumbled between rows of green garlic and spring seedlings to pick some ingredients for his hero dish featuring on his upcoming menu at The Culpeper this June, Native breed pork chop with Parlourde clams wild garlic & cider. From bronze fennel fronds to coriander flowers (a lesser-known delicacy), we filled our pockets with fragrant herbs and headed north to Spitalfields where a juicy pork chop and a lit grill lay waiting.
‘What I like most about cooking over an open grill is the intimacy of the cooking, you have to know the heat of the fire, you move the meat, not the fire. It’s reactionary as opposed to scripted cooking.’
Once a couple of pints of Umbrella cider had been secured (one for the dish, one for quality control) Ivan began to cook. Over the white coals the thick, native breed pork chop was slowly carmelised and moved from hot coals, to rest, back to the grill and so on. Fat oyster mushrooms were grilled hot and fast, and then slowly bathed in a cider, onion and wild garlic sauce, spiked with mustard and soothed with thick double cream. Parlourde clams (the sweetest and juiciest of the UK clams) clacked loudly in a pan while they were bubbling in more cider and then married with the sauce. Ivan finished the sauce with the chopped herbs we’d lovingly carried from the farm, carved the pork (juicy and just cooked) and plated.
If the team’s reaction (absolutely silent, continuously eating and cleaning every clam from its shell) was anything to go by, the first of our Sundown Suppers is going to be a good one.
Ivan’s Menu - £85pp
WildFarmed Focaccia
Taramasalata & Radish
Green Garlic Hummus
Charred Garlic Scapes
With Miso Bagna Cauda & Strattiacella
•
Whole Chalk Stream Trout with Elderflower Beurre Blanc
•
Native Breed Pork Chop with Palourde Clams Wild Garlic & Cider
BBQ Oyster Mushrooms with Mushroom XO
Wild Rocket & Caper Salad
•
Pavlova with Woodruff Crème Patisserie, Strawberries & Wood Ants
To book your tickets to Ivan’s longtable rooftop dinner on 2nd June, follow the link below. We’ll be there with bells on.
