9 March 2010

SPRING again and The Great British Menu is back with us shortly. It only seems a couple of long tasting menus ago that Nigel Haworth raised the flag for the north west at the culinary summit by being chosen to cook his hot pot main course for the final banquet.
The loser, in the north west heat of the BBC’s national, professional chef’s competition was Aiden Byrne – a man who seems to have winner (metaphorically) tattooed across his Liverpool council estate-raised frame.
According to ruthless Michelin-starred mentor Marcus Wareing, it was his pud that let him down. Lemon sponge with poached rhubarb, raspberries and lemon yoghurt, as I recall.
I can exclusively reveal, as hacks like to say, that’s not going to happen this year as Aiden transports judges Prue Leith, Matthew Fort and Oliver Peyton into the Land of Milk and Honey, literally.
Towards the end of a substantial tasting menu, the like of which Aiden’s starry team dished up for us on our return to Church Green, the palate can feel sated.
Our pre-dessert of rhubarb and ginger custard with clove ice cream was a soothing nursery treat, Rhubarb Triangle meets Spice Islands on a slate. Our assiduous sommelier, James Deveraux, road-tested a new sweet wine from Austria’s Burgenland on us, whose balancing acidity matched the rhubarb well.
But nothing prepared us for the intensity of what was to follow. Paired with Fernando de Castilla Antique Pedro Ximenez sherry, a stupendous figs and molasses in a glass sweetie, Milk and Honey kicked in like a final whistle World Cup winner from Wayne Rooney.
It’s a deceptively simple title for a delicious dish that has had much thought put into it – just like Nigel Haworth’s Northcote Manor hot pot. That was a world away from over-peppered neck chops and watery potato slices swimming in grease.
Milk and Honey then? Aiden talked me through its complex genesis, matching the tenets of this year’s GBM, where raw materials have to be primarily sourced from a local stately home. Step forward Dunham Massey’s prodigious bee hives.
The dish is built around a very sweet caramel parfait frozen in honeycomb moulds. Aiden found this initially too cloying. So to counter it with some acidity he now hollows a hole in the centre, filled with a thickened lemon, thyme and honey sauce.
A bridge of caramel tuile is made out of fragrant bee pollen, which is also scattered around the dish, honey ice cream, made with double cream, on the side.
I suspect the final throw of the creamy dice may yet roll out of the equation – an accompanying dollop of curds from milk seethed six hours at 40 degrees, I can’t see the point of.
The dish is showcased on Aiden’s Great British Menu tasting menu for the next three months in the build-up to the screening of the tense telly cookathon.
In the north west he is up against Haworth protege Lisa Allen and a Lancastrian exiled in London, Johnnie Mountain. Nathan Outlaw is another chef in the contest. It’s beginning to sound more like Gunfight At The Ok Corral!
A sign that Church Green is really taking off as a destination restaurant is the availability of a ‘Prestige’ Menu, where, with 48 hours’ notice, they prepare you 12 surprise courses. Cost? £98 (with wines £138). We settled for the seven course tasting menu sourced from the a la carte, available from Monday to Thursday (£68 a head) and allowed James to match wines to each course for an additional £30 each.
A duck and fungus dense appetiser set the tone of the meal. The message: you can take the Michelin out of the man but... This was not pub food. There is a noon to 9pm bar snack list that takes care of that and a trad Sunday lunch set-up.
No, just as the once run-down Church Green slowly transforms itself on a tight budget, so the food aims high and mostly succeeds.
Perhaps a couple of sauces were over-reduced giving, in particular, a tiring intensity to a combo of hand-dived scallops and braised pork, where the deep-fried sweet onions were quite odd.
Aiden smokes his own foie gras. This he pan-fried with and paired with a monster langoustine on a gorgeously chewy hazelnut risotto. The smoke slightly overpowered a lovely dish.
Milk-fed Pyrenean lamb was the meaty main (and the only dish calling for a red wine), the chef ignoring his usual insistence on our own regional produce because he believes this is the worst time of the year for native lamb. A case of ‘mutton dressed as’? It was just a mite fattily soft for our taste, though perked up by artichokes and green olives.
Minor quibbles really against the mastery of his French classically-based but questing technique. Our exquisite starter consisted of poached salmon inside a wafer-thin casing of beetroot, infiltrated by caviar and sharp orange.
Later poached brill was draped in large black truffle shavings. Another risotto accompanied it, this time pumpkin, equally exquisite, lubricated by an upmarket cheese ball unleashing a runny parmesan cream.
Fish is a genuine strength of a chef, who trained in top kitchens alongside the likes of Tom Aikens and won a Michelin Star for the previously lacklustre Dorchester Grill.
At Church Green, there are homelier imperatives – such as funding a posher carpet in the conservatory dining room.
A monogrammed frosted glass panel now divides dining from pubbing, which is a big step forward from when I first reviewed it over a year ago.
Aiden brought a talented brigade with him then and they have now settled famously in the tiny kitchen. Only Northcote Manor, Chester Grosvenor and the Alderley Edge Hotel (see my recent review on this site, http://www.tasteofmanchester.com/news.php?news=447) match Church Green’s three AA rosettes in the region.
Michelin stars are being belatedly doled out to pub/restaurants these days. A high profile via the Great British Menu can do our own genuine contender no harm.
Church Green, Higher Lane, Lymm WA13 0AP (01925 752 068, www.thechurchgreen.co.uk). ‘Great British Menu’ selection, £55 a head (£80 with wines).