To the culinarily challenged, fusion cuisine can be created simply by stopping off at both McDonalds and Pizza Hutt on the way home.
However, to The Grove’s head chef, Josh Barlow, bringing two different styles of cooking requires just a little more sophistication than that!
And yet, we don’t need to be top cooks to create a match made in heaven (or Japan and New Zealand) to warm us up this winter, thanks to Josh’s ripping recipe for…
Beef cheek in Tokyo Dry – with bonito, charred pickled onions and pickled red cabbage
INGREDIENTS
Serves 6
• 4 beef cheeks
• 2 carrots
• 2 onions
• 1 head of garlic
• 20gr thyme
• 15gr bonito flakes
• 4 bottles of Steinlager Tokyo Dry
• 1L beef stock
METHOD
Season beef cheeks with salt and pepper and caramelise on the barbecue until they are golden brown. Slice onions and carrots and place in a hot roasting tray in the oven to caramelise.
Add the beef cheeks and all the other ingredients with enough beef stock and beer to completely submerge them. Cover with foil and leave to braise at 140 degrees Celsius for
approximately four hours.
Remove the braising liquor and pass it through a sieve to remove all the vegetables.
Reduce the liquor in a pot until it begins thickening. Pour it over the beef cheeks and put them back in the oven. Keep basting until cheeks are sticky and glossy.
Charred pickled onions
• Tokyo Dry pickle liquor
• 330ml Tokyo Dry
• 150ml cider vinegar
• 40gr honey
• 40gr sugar
• 5gr fennel seeds
• 1 clove garlic
To prepare the pickle liquor, heat all ingredients (except the beer) in a pan. Add the beer off the heat so its flavour is retained.
Cook three, medium white skinned onions in a pot of salted water until they are tender but not too soft. Leave them to chill. Peel and cut through the middle.
Char the halved onions in a very hot, dry pan until they are completely burnt on the cut side. Leave them to chill and then peel each petal away.
Place them in the pickle liquor.
Red cabbage
Slice red cabbage as thin as you can, avoiding thick parts around the stem. Season with salt and pepper and dress with olive oil and a mustard dressing.
If you really want to go all out, juice the trim from the red
cabbage, reduce this by half in a pot, then add a little bit of vinegar or lemon juice and use it to dress the cabbage. It tastes unreal plus you’ll get an amazing bright purple dressing!
Serve the beef cheek hot and the onions and cabbage at room temperature. Add some thinly sliced radishes at the last minute to add some freshness to the dish.
Most importantly, make sure to have a few cold Tokyo Dry to serve alongside.
