One of my favourite restaurants in London is Core by Clare Smyth, located in Notting Hill and with three Michelin stars. Back in 2017, my friends visiting from California told me about this new restaurant. I visited twice that year and loved the food, presentation and casual, classy ambience. Since then, I have visited a number of times. The classic menu has many favourites with small variations throughout the year. Additionally, there is a seasonal menu. Although I have tried both, I usually decide to stick with the Classic menu. I bought Clare’s Core cookbook and was very pleased to have her sign it during one of my visits. Making Clare Smyth recipes is a financial and time commitment, but I was happy with the results. My creations were not as beautiful as the original but the tastes were definitely recognisable.
When I was visiting California, I did my best with making Clare Smyth recipes for my family. My parents had been with me to the restaurant and loved it! They wish they could visit again one day, but are getting too elderly to make the long journey to London so it is unlikely they will get to go back to Core. That was a great motivation to try to make a few of the recipes!
Menu choices
First, I wanted to make Cheese and onion gougères as a starter along with the classic Potato and roe. I had to make a quadruple batch of Potato and roe for it to be enough to feed 6 hungry people. Also, since I had invested in all of the ingredients, I figured it was probably worth it to have some extra.
For the main we had the Truffle Fried Chicken, which I have never had at the restaurant, but the recipe sounded delicious. It was also easy to double the recipe.
Clare Smyth had recommended to start with something easier from the cookbook such as the Warm chocolate tart. This is one of the extra desserts served at Core along with the Sauterne wine gums.
Finally, for the actual dessert I chose to make a double-batch of The other carrot. I have tasted the carrot sorbet and part of the carrot, but I can never order this at the restaurant because it contains walnuts. Luckily, I could substitute with pecans at home.
Finding Ingredients
The list of ingredients to make these recipes was very long! Eventually I decided to count them and the total was 79 ingredients. I was going to be cooking in California, so I checked with my sister to see what she had in her kitchen. I had to shop for many ingredients in England to take over in my suitcase. For example, dulse seaweed for the potato and roe is difficult to find, and I purchased it online from a Cornish shop. I ordered a lot of the powders, such as vinegar powder, for the pre-preparation online and had them sent to my sister.
Then, when I arrived, I went shopping at the upmarket chain called Bristol Farms for truffle, trout roe, etc. And from the normal supermarket, I could buy chicken, carrots, and other more common ingredients. Some ingredients were not available at all including the garnishes, chervil and sorrel. In the end, I just found some micro-herbs and greens and Whole Foods that looked similar. In total, the cost of ingredients was over 400 British pounds.
Pre-preparation
Normally, I do some preparation beforehand, but for this meal I needed to start with pre-preparation about 4 days in advance. I made an Excel sheet with a schedule of what to prepare each day, and then the remaining tasks on the day.
First, I prepared the chicken coating spice mix. That would keep well in a container. The next day, I marinated the chicken in the buttermilk mixture. I also prepared the carrot sorbet and cream cheese mousse. The following day, I prepared the sauterne jellies and used the sous-vide to cook the potatoes in a butter and seaweed mixture. Another day, I prepared the Parmesan truffle purée. And later I made the cream cheese mousse cones and dipped them in the carrot jelly. I chilled the jelly a bit too much before dipping, so it was not as smooth as it should have been.
On the morning of the big dinner, I made the mini pastry shells for the tarts and prepared the carrot salad. Carrots tend to turn brown, so that needs to be made pretty fresh.
Cooking
The gougères did not rise as much as expected so the flavour was ok, but I could not fill them. Fail! The American oven I was using was old, and I think this recipe works better with a fan (convection) oven because I make choux pastry a lot in London. Luckily, we could still eat them as the taste was good.
For the potato and roe, the potatoes were already cooked with sous-vide, and needed to be reheated in the bags to prepare for the assembly. I had some salt and vinegar crisps from the UK, as well as dried flowers for decoration.
My sister was on duty to fry the chicken while we prepared the other items. The fried chicken on its own was very tasty due to the seasoning. However, it was better with the parmesan sauce. At short notice, I was only able to get a summer truffle, so it was not as strong.
The other carrot took days to make with lots of different steps. Separately, I had to make sorbet, cream cheese mousse, cake, glaze and garnish. The end product was tasty, although my niece and nephew thought it tasted too much like carrots to be a dessert.
Chocolate tarts were not difficult to make but the pastry shells need to be made before preparing the chocolate filling. And the wine gums were simple, but spraying the mould is necessary so they don’t stick.
Plating
Luckily, by the time it got to plating and serving, my niece and nephew were in the kitchen to help. They both enjoy cooking and were happy to lend a hand. I gave them instructions and they helped to add sauces and garnish for the different dishes. In the end, due to the time it took for preparation, we decided to use platters for serving instead of plating each item individually. Also, everyone was hungry and ate more than one of each item.
For the potato and roe, we put 9 of the potatoes on a serving platter and then had the sauce on the side. Each person could decide how much they wanted to pour on.
Family dinner
First, we had some of the flat gougères, but I didn’t take a photos since they didn’t turn out. Here is a photo of what they should look like.
Next, we enjoyed the potato with roe, with its seaweed butter sauce. It was quite a treat to eat a few of them since normally we would only get one. I had the sauce on the side to pour on as we ate them. The recipe called for Charlotte potatoes, but I did not find those in California so I used a mixed bag of small potatoes including white and purple potatoes.
Truffle fried chicken was the hit of the evening, and disappeared quickly. It was good that we made a lot. This is our nice plated version, and then we had more that didn’t look quite as pretty. My niece and nephew did a wonderful job with the plating.
The other carrot was our main dessert, and it was larger and less refined than the Core version. However, the taste was very similar and I could eat this one since it had pecans instead of walnuts. At core, I was only able to try the sorbet and a small bite of the carrot. The dessert has a lot of textures, and a beautiful taste of carrot.
Finally, we had the warm chocolate tarts and the wine gums. The wine gums were still quite alcoholic, so the kids were only allowed to try a little bite. As Clare had suggested, the chocolate tarts turned out really well. They were smooth and creamy, and the pastry was tasty and delicate. In the restaurant, the wine gums have a sort of oval shape, but mine were half-spheres based on the mould I had available.
