Corrigan Loves Food
Chef patron Richard Corrigan is a pioneer of ingredient -led Irish cooking in London, garnering multiple awards and two Michelin stars across the fine dining and bistro-style eating establishments in his growing portfolio.
Multi-award winning chef and food entrepreneur Richard Corrigan has been a trailblazer for Irish food, blending contemporary cooking with traditional ingredients, in Britain - cooking for the Queen, the Obamas among many other luminaries. He is a famers son from Co Meath where he learned his love of simple food from the land. He continues to be “fanatical about simplicity and about the provenance of ingredients”. He appears regularly on television, hosted his own television series, Corrigan Knows Food and a quadruple winner of the Great British Menu. Having served his time in Ireland, the Netherlands and in London with Stephen Bull (gaining a Michelin star at Fulham Road) and Mulligan’s in Mayfair, he opened his first restaurant, Lindsay House, in London’s Soho. He was awarded a Michelin star soon after and held on to it for ten years until the restaurant closed in 2009. He bought Bentley’s, a bistro-style seafood and oyster restaurant and bar in Piccadilly, in 2005 and then his fine dining Mayfair restaurant Corrigan’s in 2009. Bentley’s Sea Grill at Harrods followed in 2012. In between times he also led some stellar fine dining establishments in London opening the private restaurant and bar at the top of St. Mary’s Axe (The Gherkin) in 2004, the Brasserie at The Barbican, House and The English Garden. He fulfilled a long-held dream when he purchased Virginia Park Lodge, an 18th-century hunting lodge in Co Cavan, in 2013. He got married to Maria there in 1985. In recent times he is one of a joint venture trio of Irish men that launched Daffodil Mulligans in London’s Shoreditch.
For more visit corrigancollection.com
PROPER SHELLFISH COCKTAIL
Serves 4
Ingredients:
A mixture of seafood: picked white crab meat; Dublin Bay prawns; Atlantic prawns, the pink ones; cooked lobster tails; brown shrimps, peeled
Extra virgin olive oil
A squeeze of lemon juice
Baby gem lettuce
1 small cucumber, peeled, deseeded and diced
Cocktail sauce
1 parts mayonnaise
1-part tomato ketchup
A splash of brandy
A dash of Tabasco sauce
A pinch of paprika
A squeeze of lemon juice
Method:
The quantities of seafood you use are up to you: just try to get a good mix of everything. How much sauce you make is really up to you, too. Keep tasting it and adjust it until it makes you smile. Simon Hopkinson had a nice idea of mixing a little cottage cheese into a cocktail sauce; it lightens it up a bit and makes it less cloying, but you just know that no one has ever come up with anything as good.
Mix together all the ingredients for the sauce. Take four old-fashioned cocktail glasses. Season all the seafood with a little extra virgin olive oil, salt and a drop of lemon juice.
To assemble, put some lettuce and cucumber at the bottom of the glass, which will give a lovely crunch, then layer up your seafood, put a dollop of sauce on top and let people mix everything up, or keep everything separate, as they choose.
Richard Corrigan’s soda bread
Makes one large loaf
Ingredients
250g plain flour
10g salt
15g sodium bicarbonate
150g whole meal flour
150g jumbo oat flakes
1 tbsp clear honey
1 tbsp black treacle
500ml buttermilk
Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 200°C and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.
2. Combine all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Make a well in the centre, then mix in the honey, treacle and buttermilk, working everything together lightly with your hands until you have a loose, wet dough.
3. Flour your hands and shape the dough into a round and lift it onto the lined baking sheet. Cut a cross in the top (as the loaf cooks this will help to separate it into quarters).
4. Transfer to the oven and bake for about 45 minutes or until the loaf sounds hollow when you tap the base with your knuckles.
5. Transfer a wire rack, cover with a damp cloth and leave to cool. Don’t even think of putting dairy spread on it. This bread needs and deserves butter.
RICHARD CORRIGAN’S BEEF WELLINGTON
For the Mushroom Stuffing
Ingredients
50g unsalted butter
2 pinches sea salt
2 pinches of pepper, ground black
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
500g Button mushrooms, hand chopped
Sweat the mushrooms, garlic and butter until dry and season. Place in the fridge to cool down for later.
For the Savoury Crepe
150g plain flour
1 large egg
325ml semi-skimmed milk
30g unsalted butter, melted
1 pinch of salt
Mix the eggs and flour first, then slowly add in the milk and then the butter – the final mixture should be able to pass through a strainer.
Heat a lightly buttered pan and pour the mixture in, turning the pan as necessary to ensure an even layering. Flip once one side begins to lightly brown. Chill in the fridge
The Beef
300g Irish Hereford prime fillet
2 pinches of sea salt
2 pinches of pepper, ground black
30ml vegetable oil
50g of English mustard
Season the beef with salt, pepper and seal around the side of the beef rib in mustard, then roll in clingfilm and chill in the fridge.
Lay out the crepe on a cold surface, spread the mushroom stuffing evenly and place the beef on top. Roll the meat and wrap again in clingfilm to set. Cut the clingfilm off and wrap in the puff pastry, then glaze with egg yolk and season with salt
The Puff Pastry
500g puff pastry, all butter, rolled to 15cm x 30cm and ½ cm thick 2cm
The Glaze
1 egg yolk
1 pinch salt
For the Red Wine Sauce
2 tbsp butter, unsalted
2 small shallots, finely sliced
100g button mushrooms, finely sliced
250ml red wine
350ml brown chicken stock
1 tarragon leaf
Reduce the above to a glaze, then add the butter and tarragon (the butter will thicken the sauce)
Heat the oven on 270 degrees and place the Wellington in, immediately reduce the temperature to 210 degrees. If you have a meat probe, remove once the core reaches 47 degrees. If not, this should take approx. 40 mins.
Rest on a cooling rack for approx. 40 mins
To serve, slice and pour your red wine sauce on the side to finish WW