Med time
Bar snacks and the increasing trend for grazing food is where Mediterranean food can come into its own. PubChef reports
The trend for sharing food continues to grow and Mediterranean flavours lend themselves perfectly to pub snack menus.
Meze and tapas-style offerings are becoming increasing popular in pubs, and licensees can capitalise on this simple-but-profitable menu option - with or without skills in their pub's kitchen - and it's a style of food that can be served throughout the day.
Adrian Coulter, food development manager at Kerry Foodservice, says: "Many diners won't want a full meal or main course - we've found that Med-inspired snacks are ideal as a light-lunch option."
Whether it is Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Moroccan or Spanish food that you take your inspiration from, the key with sharing platters or plates is to keep it simple.
Graham Hames, manager of Shepherd Neame pub the Vine at Tenterden, Kent, offers a tapas menu of 16 dishes that embrace Mediterranean, Oriental and English influences. Customers can choose from dishes such as stuffed peppers, pomodori al forno, garlic mushrooms, olives, hummus, and green-lipped mussels to eat individually as a starter or in fixed-price combinations for three or five dishes, as a main course.
Graham says: "The idea is taking off nicely. It's a different approach to a meal, a way to try different things and to share between friends."
Camino, a new Spanish bar/restaurant in King's Cross, serves tapas and mondatidos at the bar. Mondatidos, the original tapa, are pieces of bread with a variety of toppings. At Camino they change daily, use seasonal produce, and span veggie, vegan, meat and fish, including tomato, oyster mushroom, green pepper and quails' eggs. They cost 90p for the simpler options and £1.40 for something more flash.
Typical examples are kikos (£1), traditional Spanish roasted corn; green manzanilla olives with Spanish paprika (£2.25) and jamón serrano de Teruel (£4).
Foodservice distributor Brakes offers a range of tapas ingredients. Brakes dairy and deli marketing manager Leon French says: "Tapas is a great way of making additional food sales between conventional meal times, as it allows for snack or small servings. But it also works equally well as a selection together for a shared platter or meal.
"It can be as simple as a bowl of olives or peppers stuffed with cream cheese that can be ordered with a beer or red wine, to more elaborate plates of Spanish meats, such as our chorizo sausage and serrano, which come pre-sliced, along with Spanish tortilla and sliced cheese like feta, manchego and mozzarella."
Brakes offers a range of tapas options, including fresh marinated mixed olives and diced Greek feta, a sliced antipasto mono pack, including slices of prosciutto crudo, coppa and salami milano. Or try Brakes chorizo tapas pieces (10 x 125g), individual-portion blister packs of 15 chorizo sausage pieces made in Spain from a traditional chistorra frita recipe. Ideal served cold, they can also be microwaved or pan-fried in 45 seconds and served hot.
For pub chefs that want to use British produce on their menus, BPEX foodservice trade manager Tony Goodger recommends substituting air-dried hams - such as serrano, Parma and Iberico - with produce from British producers in Dorset, Cumbria and Suffolk.
He says; "Chefs can now add an authentic and popular style of ham, confident that the pork has been produced to UK legislative standards. Similarly, the popular Italian streaky bacon, pancetta, is also now widely produced in the UK, enabling chefs to easily source a key ingredient in Mediterranean cuisine closer to home."
There are many opportunities to maximise profit potential with Mediterranean cuisine; from running theme nights to adding a small selection of dishes to a specials board. That way, caterers can monitor the dishes' popularity, before committing them to the main menu.
Locatelli's top tips
Chef Giorgio Locatelli has teamed up
with SABMiller brand Peroni to promote Italian food with the premium beer,
which he serves at his London restaurant, Locanda Locatelli. His cooking tips are:
l Whenever you buy Italian produce
look out for the symbols PDO and PGI
l Spend a little extra on good olive oil and vinegar and it will repay you a thousand times
l You need to season meat or fish before you start cooking it
l The key is always to concentrate on just a few flavours
l There is no shame in using good quality tinned tomatoes -
all Italians do
l When you drain pasta, keep some of its cooking water to add to the sauce
l To every 100g of pasta and litre of water, add 10g of salt
l Always take the meat out of the fridge for an hour before cooking it
l If you are serving salad leaves with hot ingredients use more robust leaves, such as wild rocket, which will not cook and wilt too quickly
For more recipe ideas visit www.peroniitaly.com/locatelli
Easy escalopes
Pork Saltimbocca
Serves 4
Ingredients
4 lean pork escalopes - pounded thin (approx 0.5cm)
8 thin slices of traditional smoked ham
100g/31/2oz mozzarella cheese - cut into 8 thin slices
16 sage leaves - finely chopped
2 dsp Parmesan cheese - grated
2 tbsp oil
150ml/1/4pt dry white wine
25g/1oz butter
Salt and ground black pepper
Method
Top each escalope with two slices of mozzarella, a sprinkling of sage and Parmesan cheese and finally a slice of ham (which is held in place with cocktail sticks that are removed before serving). Top with the remaining slices of ham. Heat 1 tbsp of the oil in a non-stick frying pan and fry two of the pork escalopes, plain side down for 4-5 minutes over a medium heat. Turn the pork over and cook, ham side down, for a further 5-7 minutes, until thoroughly cooked. Remove from the pan and keep warm. Repeat this exercise with the remaining oil and pork escalopes. Remove and keep warm. In the same pan add the remaining sage and dry white wine. Over a fierce heat boil the sauce for 2 minutes, add the butter and whisk until blended, then season to taste.
For more recipes, including pork paella and pork tagine, visit www.porkforcaterers.com
Filling fritters
Panelle di Ceci:
Sicilian chickpea fritters
(Makes about 20 fritters)
Ingredients
250g/9oz chickpea flour
600ml/1pt cold water
Pinch of salt
Handful of parsley - finely chopped
Oil for deep-frying
Method
Pour the water into a heavy pan, then steadily whisk in a stream of chickpea flour being careful to avoid lumps. Add the salt and parsley, and cook over a medium-low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until the mixture thickens and pulls away from the sides of the pan.
Pour the mixture on to an oiled, cold surface and spread it out thinly with a rolling pin or spatula. When it cools down, cut the dough into squares and deep-fry in hot oil at 180°C until golden brown.
Serve with: Peroni
Source: Giorgio Locatelli
New products
Premier pizzas
For pub chefs looking to spice up their pizza offerings, Premier Foods recommends Sharwood's Chinese, Indian and South East Asian style sauces, as pizza toppings. To save time use McDougalls pizza-base mix. Pub chefs can add ingredients like olive oil to create focaccia-style dough, sun-dried tomatoes, or even add Sharwood's sauces to the mix to make pizza doughs more interesting.
Available in 3.5kg bags, each bag produces 61 seven-inch pizzas and is available in cases of 4 x 3.5kg.
Try using Sharwood's honey and ginger sauce as a topping for a Shanghai chicken pizza. Cover your pizza base with the sauce then top with chicken, mozzarella and vegetables.
Beautiful butties
The Panino Sandwich Company from Kerry Foodservice has launched a range of hot-filled sandwich snacks that can be reheated from frozen or cooked from thawed. Comprising s
