Mat Follas, MasterChef winner 2009, will be opening his new restaurant on Friday and Saturday evenings, starting on Friday, March 7th.

Mat’s new restaurant will take the award winning food from his former restaurant in Beaminster, The Wild Garlic, as its starting point. 

As chef at The Wild Garlic, Mat and his team were awarded two AA Rosettes for three years until it closed; were listed by The Michelin Guide and The Good Food Guide; and were highly recommended in The Guardian and The Telegraph with scores of nine and a half and nine out of 10 respectively. 

Jasper Gerard of The Telegraph described The Wild Garlic as “sensational” and Matthew Norman of The Guardian said Mat is “an exceedingly rare talent”. Mat wrote an introduction for the AA restaurant guide for 2014, focusing on food trends and specifically foraged and wild ingredients, which are elements included in his dishes.

Mat said: “I’m delighted to be heading back to the kitchen, this time it’s just me cooking for a small restaurant, no partners or other people involved, it will only be open when I’m there. 

“The Casterbridge is a delightful, classic, small hotel with two wonderful dining spaces, a small dining room and a lovely conservatory area for guests to choose between. 

“My food will match the surroundings, with a more classic menu than I have done in the past, we will take the best of The Wild Garlic’s dishes as my inspiration and we will maintain a comfortable and relaxed dining experience.”

Melvin and Monica Curtis of The Casterbridge said: “We’re thrilled to have Mat cooking at our hotel. Dorchester has recently had an influx of chain restaurants and hotels and this is a great opportunity to balance that with a high end, bespoke offering, this provides great choice for Dorchester and surrounding area residents. 

“We know Mat will help bring tourist trade and interest from outside Dorset to Dorchester too.”

For more details visit www.matfollas.com.


To book a table at Mat Follas at The Casterbridge Phone: 01305 260884

I have had a fascination with chocolate for a very long time.  I am not a chocolatier but for the last 15 years I have been making chocolates for petits fours as well as using chocolate widely in desserts.  My knowledge has grown over the years through experimenting, quite extensive research (and a little consumption!).  Books, the internet, talking to other chefs and suppliers have all helped but perhaps the steepest learning curve was about 10 years ago when I did quite a lot of flavour development work for a chocolate manufacturer.

The mysteries of tempering, moulding, enrobing, hand dipping, the creation of centres and the use of inclusions, oils and extracts were all slowly revealed.  I was taking this information back to my own kitchen and adapting it to suit a very simple set up with very limited equipment. The only thing slightly out of the ordinary you really need to make chocolates is a good digital thermometer.  Everything else is pretty standard, bowls, whisks, knives, trays, mixing spoons , etc.

I recently spent the day in the kitchen with 2009 MasterChef winner Mat Follas, for a bit of a chocolate workshop.  Mat was planning a Valentines pop-up for 80 people and was intending to make a range of chocolates for petits fours.  800 pieces was mentioned!  We looked at the basics of tempering chocolate where, through a series of heating and cooling processes, you control the crystalline structure of the chocolate to produce a finished result that has a good snap and a good shine.  We also looked at ganaches and caramels.  We made moulded chocolates, dipped chocolates and ganache sandwiches.

I tend to work with around 1.5 kilos of chocolate at a time.  A larger mass tends to stay at working temperature for longer.  If you have water baths in the kitchen they are useful for melting the chocolate overnight, either in a bain-marie sat in the bath or in vacuum bags.  I would double bag the chocolate for security!  I also use the water bath to hold the tempered chocolate whilst dipping.

The best method I have found for small quantities of chocolate is to melt the chocolate on low settings in the microwave and then to cool it by placing the bowl of melted chocolate in a tray of cold water and stirring.  Then use the microwave to heat back up to the working temperature.

Testing the chocolate for temper is easy, just dip in the tip of a palette knife and leave for 3-4 minutes.  In this time the chocolate should be almost set and should have no streaks in it.

Once tempered, place the bowl of chocolate in a deep tray of water at the working temperature. This will help the chocolate to remain workable for longer.  Ideally you want to be working in a room at around 20-23°c, with somewhere cooler to place chocolates to crystallise.  Avoid putting chocolates in a cold fridge as this can lead to condensation forming on the surface when you take them out.  Mat and I had the oven and the hot cupboard on full on a cold day to warm the kitchen up!

On the day Mat and I made the ganache by hand, generally I find it is better to learn to do something by hand, you get a better feel for the process, the textures, colours and smells this way. Once you have gained an understanding then start to take advantage of the technology available.

I use a Thermomix for making virtually all my ganaches as well as fresh nut pastes and pralines.

Melt the chocolate, ensuring the temperature doesn’t exceed 50?.  Combine the cream, butter, salt and sugar in a pan and heat just to a simmer.  Whisk the cream mix into the melted chocolate. Don’t worry if the mix appears to split initially; this is the mix changing from a fat-based emulsion to a water-based emulsion and the mix will re-emulsify as you add more of the liquid.

(The link at the end contains a fuller clear explanation as to what happens when water is added to chocolate.)

Once all the liquid is incorporated check the temperature of the mix.  If it has dropped below 45°c warm it back up on a low setting in the microwave.  Now cool the ganache by placing the bowl in a tray of cold water and stirring gently but constantly.  Cool to 30°c and then transfer to a piping bag or spread into tray or frame.  If using a frame place it on an acetate sheet, alternatively line a tray with cling film.  Spraying the tray with an aerosol grease spray will help the cling film to adhere to the tray.  This technique of tempering the ganache is one I found in the Ramon Morató book Chocolate.  This is one of the most influential books on chocolate I have read.  The technique gives a much more even set to the ganache.

Allow the ganache to set somewhere cool, ideally over night.  The ganache can be cut with a warm dry knife.  One of the issues I have had with hand-dipping chocolates is that the centres need to be fairly firm to avoid them sinking into the prongs of the dipping fork and becoming stuck.  The way I have got around this problem is to spread a thin layer of untempered chocolate onto both sides of the centre and allow it to set before cutting.  For really soft centres, chill slightly before trying to cut, but be sure to let the centres come fully back to room temperature before dipping them.

This ganache can also be used to fill moulded chocolate shells or, for a really easy but stylish chocolate, pipe dots of the ganache onto discs of tempered chocolate and sandwich them together.

To make the discs, polish an acetate sheet with a soft clean cloth and pipe buttons of tempered chocolate onto the sheet.  Have the sheet on a board or tray so you can lift it up and tap on the bench to settle and spread the buttons into thin discs.  Allow to crystallise fully and then sandwich with the ganache.

Dipping chocolates allows you to produce a great product without the need for moulds or any special equipment.  A purpose-designed dipping fork and a couple of Silpat non-stick mats are a good investment however.  Just drop the chocolate centres one at a time into the bowl of tempered chocolate, lift out with the dipping fork and tap the fork to remove excess chocolate.  Wipe the fork on the side of the bowl or even better have a stiff wire fixed over the centre of the bowl so the excess falls directly back into the tempered mass.  Slide the chocolates off the fork onto the silpat mat to set.  If you make sure that the chocolate is slightly over the end of the fork it should slide off easily. If they stick, pressing down on the fork and twisting slightly will usually release them.

If the chocolate starts to thicken as it cools just give it a few seconds in the microwave on a medium setting and stir well.  Just be careful not to over heat.  It’s worth checking the temper with a palette knife each time you do this.

The dipped chocolates can be decorated in various ways; piped tempered chocolate, nuts or dried fruit added while the chocolate is still wet, gold leaf or lustre powders.  One of the simplest ways is to mark the chocolates with the dipping fork.  A single diagonal line across a chocolate looks very stylish.

Your choice of chocolate to work with will be very personal; most chefs have a preferred brand and cost will play a part.  Valrhona, Cacao Barry and Callebaut are all popular choices and widely available.  My primary choice is the premium range of couvertures from Chocovic imported into the UK by specialist Spanish food supplier Mediteria.  All of these companies supply great chocolate, the most important thing is to choose something with a flavour profile that works with your centres or fillings.

Work flow is perhaps the real key to making chocolates in a less than ideal environment.  If at all possible, make centres on one day, cut on the second day and dip on the third.  If I was making a volume of moulded chocolates I would make shells one day, make ganache and fill the shells on the second day and back the shells off on the third day.  Having said all that, if push comes to shove, it can all be done in a day!

http://baking911.com/learn/ingredients/chocolate/problems-and-solutions

http://www.ramonmorato.com/index.php?lng=en

http://mediteria.com

http://www.valrhonapro.com/Accueil.aspx

http://www.callebaut.com/uken/

http://www.cacao-barry.com

http://thermomix.vorwerk.co.uk

@Ramonmorato_

@Matkiwi

@Siennadorset

All European countries have a deep-rooted culture and understanding of wild foods, yet in Britain, foraging is generally seen as something for the sandal-wearing hippy crowd, and is often referred to in the same breath as collecting road-kill and other unsavoury practices.
Historically, though, we foraged for key ingredients as much as any European country, yet this seems to have been lost as a result of land clearances during and after the Second World War, and the rise in the 1970s of ready meals as a status symbol, which really meant that eating meals prepared from wild foods was looked down upon as lower status dining.

Thankfully, this is something that is slowly beginning to change. Led by restaurants like L’Enclume and Le Champignon Sauvage, who consistently produce some of the best cuisine in the world, highly skilled chefs with a passion for amazing food are showing us how it can be enhanced by the remarkable flavours that wild ingredients can give.

My personal inspiration for wild foods came as a foreigner to this country: I saw one of my neighbours come back from a walk with a

basket of leaves and flowers he’d collected, which he then proceeded to turn into an amazing meal, with the only additions being a few potatoes and some chicken wings, bought for 10p each from the butcher. His thrift was more than a little admirable, but what shocked me was the explosion of remarkable flavours he achieved, and the underlying fun of what, to him, was an everyday occurrence. It's no surprise though that he hasn’t introduced foraging to his family, despite it being a lifelong habit (he's a man in his 80s) as, he says, "they wouldn’t eat this type of food".

My first wild food dish was scallops I’d dived for myself, barbecued and tossed in some melted butter with a few wild garlic leaves chopped through. Simple but absolutely delicious, and flavours that no shop-bought scallops or regular garlic could have provided. It’s a dish I replicated when I was on MasterChef and gained huge praise for from the judges. It made me appreciate how lucky I am to live in this part of Britain, and was the start of my journey to understand the produce that’s freely available.

The revival of wild food in popular culture has to be laid at the feet of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who brought an awareness that the green things often can be eaten, can be fun and, more than anything, can taste good.
A bunch of red-nosed farmers in a shed sampling scrumpy cider in the depths of winter is about as far away from the overly corporatized, manufactured life that so many of us were leading; it seemed a kind of nirvana, but in a terribly British way.

It lead us to Dorset on holiday, and we were lucky enough to get the opportunity to make the break from our old lives to something more real - we moved to Dorset and found ourselves in an area where farming and living off the land are part of the everyday. That way of living is a delight to us and part of the experience we want our guests to enjoy too.

Not everything about wild food foraging is great. It needs to be remembered that just because you can eat something, it doesn’t necessarily mean its good - a lot of things that you can eat to survive frankly don’t taste very nice, or of anything, so why bother?
I’ve seen cooks making the mistake of using a foraged ingredient to be trendy rather than trusting their taste buds when it’s obvious the ingredient is really adding very little to their dish.
I’m also not a fan of using wild ingredients sourced a long distance from a restaurant - I believe it should be something special about the area the restaurant is in and that the picking of the wild ingredients is tightly controlled to minimize damage to the environment. Many plants I pick in small amounts for personal use I would never use in my restaurant as the impact on the environment would be too great.
Keeping it local can often seem like a buzzword, but for restaurants that do it well, like those in this guide, do bring something truly special to the whole dining experience.

We need to be sensible when foraging: wild chervil and hogweed are great unusual ingredients, but they also often grow alongside a variety of Hemlock that can be mis-identified and is very poisonous - as Socrates found out to his cost. Similarly, lords & ladies, which is known to cause anaphylactic shock, often grows alongside wild garlic, and without care, can be picked by mistake. A death cap mushroom looks, to the untrained eye, like a common field mushroom.

My advice is never, ever start to forage using just a book to identify. Begin with two or three simple plants, such as wild garlic, nettles and blackberries, and thenget someone with proper experience to show you. I recommend you don’t forage for mushrooms at all unless you

are really committed to learning and take care - there are plenty of very good cultivated mushrooms for very little cost. However, there are some mushrooms that are more identifiable: hedgehog, chanterelle, puffballs and porcini are the only mushrooms I forage for - the rest I leave to the real experts.

A good friend of mine and a forager who used to supply our restaurant, the late Jo Francis, spent her life learning about mushrooms, and she had the best philosophy on the subject I’ve come across - there are 50 or so varieties of mushrooms that you can eat, and frankly only about 10 of them taste any good.
I believe her philosophy holds just as strongly for most wild foods. It is worth the effort to have, say, a top ten plants which are simple to identify, create flavour combinations that cultivated plants can’t easily achieve, and have a minimal impact on the environment. As you might have guessed, wild garlic would be at the top of my list!

Restaurants are windows to different worlds. There’s the classic formal restaurant we all know, with white starched tablecloths, silver service with fawning waiting staff, which still has its place in modern restaurant culture, but at the other end of the scale, where we The Wild Garlic sit, is more experiential, albeit a fairly gentle introduction to some of the more unusual flavours that can be found in this part of the UK.
Others certainly do it better than us: L’Enclume, Le Champignon Sauvage, The Elephant - all three AA Rosette awarded and above. We’re still on our journey and frankly delighted to be one of just 19 restaurants in Dorset to hold two AA Rosettes. We choose a casualness of style that reflects the type of restaurant we like to dine in, but I have seen foraged ingredients used abundantly in far more formal dining environments too.

So what next for foraging as a food trend ?
Trends come and go by their nature. We now see that Copenhagen's Noma, is no longer ranked as the number one restaurant in the world, and The Fat Duck and other restaurants that focus on molecular gastronomy are now struggling to stay in the top 50.
The next movement, in my humble opinion, will focus on elegance of presentation and using a mixture of recent trends - molecular gastronomy and foraged and unusual ingredients - but with a deep-rooted style based on classic techniques and classic dishes. By classic, I mean classic to that region, country and culture, and in that, I think British restaurants really can, and do, hold their own. We have a rich heritage of traditional dishes, many of which are being re-introduced into restaurant culture as we start to take a real pride in great British dishes, cooked well.

As part of that whole movement, I believe foraging is now moving into the mainstream, as many restaurants now use ingredients that would have been considered foraged and really quite daring only a few years ago. Samphire is now ready available; specialist companies supplying the restaurant trade now grow ingredients like sea kale, a Victorian delicacy that was cultivated until the 1970s and is now making a slow comeback.

I’m delighted to have played a small part in bringing wild food foraging into the mainstream of the restaurant trade and into the public awareness - it’s a special and fun part of our cultural heritage that should not be lost.

You can learn more about foraging by joining Mat Follas on one of his one-day wild food courses. The course starts with a drink and a chat about edible wild plants, followed by a few hours exploring the countryside and seashore looking for plants of culinary value, before heading back to The Wild Garlic for a late three-course lunch hosted by Mat.

Fish Market is excited to announce a series of one-off seaside suppers this January with former MasterChef winner and foraging champion Mat Follas.

Mat will be cooking as guest chef alongside Fish Market head chef Barry Macmillan on

Saturday 11th, 18th & 25th January 2014, serving up a 5-course fish supper with a difference.

A celebration of local and wild Dorset produce from the coast, dishes will include Land & Sea Snails, Smoked Mussel Gratin with Sea Beets, Surf Clams with Samphire Mayonnaise, Day-Boat Bouillabaisse, Hot Ginger Granita with Lemon Balm and Bitter Chocolate Fondant with Lavender Ice Cream. With a few foraged surprises from Mat awaiting guests, each evening promises to be a fantastic showcase of seasonal British fish and seafood.

A specially selected wine & cocktail list will be available on the night for guests to order from.