Milestone Cookbook - First, Catch your Pig

To coincide with the release of the Milestone's first cookbook, 'First, catch your pig', me and a couple of other food bloggers responded to the restaurant's Twitter request to try out a couple of recipes.






The Milestone as been going from strength to strength recently, a brilliant run on Ramsay's best restaurant narrowly missing out on the final, a regularly fully booked restaurant, the release of a new cookbook and the opening of the 'Milestone 2' in Paradise Square, Sheffield, of which, I wrote an article about for the Culture Vulture website.

My first recipe was:
Beef Bourguignon - slow cooked ox cheek, herb mashed potato and Bourguignon jus.
I was looking forward to cooking with ox cheek as it would be the first time I had used this ingredient, however after searching several butchers and markets I failed to find any. The restaurant recommended using  Skirt steak, Rump steak or beef shin as an alternative.

The recipe was very easy to follow with clear instructions and the resulting dish was very very tasty, beef that was falling apart, creamy, delicious herby mashed potatoes with enough dairy to clog any artery and a deep flavoursome Bourguignon gravy.

Beef Bourgingnon

My second recipe was:
Chocolate and Frangipane cake with figs, red wine syrup and crushed hazelnuts.
I made a couple of errors in the making of this dessert. First, I forgot to check that I had cocoa powder in, which I didn't, so I had to make do with hot chocolate powder, hence why the cake doesn't look particularly chocolaty and the tray I used was quite big, next time a smaller baking tray will be used to make the cake a bit bigger.
Anyway that's the bad stuff out of the way, the cake itself was very good, moist, chocolaty and the almonds and the nuts gave a it a pleasing Ferrero Rocher flavour, the red wine syrup, figs and crushed hazelnuts added several delicious texture and flavour combinations to the overall dish. A very nice dessert indeed.

Chocolate and Frangipane cake

Overall as a  fairly good home cook I had little problem with these recipes but working through them, neither should anybody else regardless of ability. They are clear, every stage is covered in detail and if the rest of the recipe book contains dishes as delicious as these, then its well worth splashing out as a treat for yourself or a present for the food lover or budding chef in your family.

The book is available now either from their website or from Amazon, priced at £19.95 for hardback and £16.95 for paperback.