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Report
New menu at Queens Hotel, Southsea
The News, Portsmouth
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20/03/2024
Our reporter took a trip down to one of the most beloved hotels in the city to get a 'behind the scnenes' taste into the brand new menu at Queens Hotel, Southsea.
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00:00
So today we're here at the Queen's Hotel in Southsea and we're going to be going
00:06
behind the scenes doing some cooking and having a little look at how they've done
00:10
their new menu and I think we're going to do some scallops as starter and some
00:15
chicken for their main and we're even going to get to have a little look at
00:18
how they do all of their tasty pastries. Wish me luck!
00:27
I'm Simon, I'm the executive chef at the Queen's Hotel in Portsmouth and I've
00:33
been here for about three years now. So today we're making our scallop starter
00:39
which is scallops with masala sauce and onion bhaji and then the main course we're
00:45
going to be making is roast chicken with champ, wiltwood spinach, cheese and leek pie and
00:54
chicken butter sauce. So the chicken dish we're using supreme of chicken which is
00:59
basically a breast with the top end of the wings still attached to it
01:04
which we've trimmed down. We're going to pan fry that skin side down till it
01:10
goes nice and really starts to go golden on the bottom. Then we'll
01:15
put some garlic, thyme into the pan, more butter, baste that over the top so it
01:21
seals the outside of the chicken so we cook it the whole way on the skin.
01:24
Baste that until the outside of the chicken is completely sealed, place that
01:28
into the oven for 12 minutes and just let all the time cooking on the skin in
01:33
the pan so it's just got that constant heat on the skin it will just draw all
01:36
the moisture out of it, give you lovely crispy skin. Then for the champ we've
01:41
just got dry mashed potatoes at which we basically make jacket potatoes, scoop
01:45
them out, mash that, butter, salt in the pan with that, a little bit of pepper, then
01:52
just to finish it some spring onions in there for about a minute before it comes
01:56
off the heat and then the cheese and leek pie. So the base of the cheese and
01:59
leek pie is we make our own shortcrust pastry for it, then it's a basic Mornay
02:05
sauce as a base so bechamel with cheese and we just really slowly cook the leeks
02:09
down with loads of garlic, thyme, shallots, let that cook down for a good couple of
02:13
hours just without any colour so the leeks all just cook down beautifully
02:17
without caramelising, then make really strong cheese sauce using Wookie hole
02:21
cheddar, bind that all together and then we use it to fill our pies which we all
02:26
hand make here and then our sauce for it is our chicken butter sauce which is
02:31
basically a really intense chicken stock that we basically make 60 litres of it
02:37
we reduce that down to 2 litres and just gives this really intense chicken
02:42
flavour which we just finish that with also believe it or not a bit of butter
02:49
okay so the scallops get into a nice hot pan with some oil just a bit of salt on
03:07
there let them cook for two minutes or so on the first side on the angled side
03:13
so you got a nice golden colour on there then while that's cooking we'll get the
03:18
onion bhaji in the fryer, get our masala sauce warmed up and then we'll plate
03:24
that up some masala sauce, the scallops, the bhaji and then a little bit of coriander
03:28
crust just to finish it off
03:31
[music]
03:50
I've never actually tried these before
03:54
[music]
04:06
so yeah so we've just come out of the kitchen we've spent kind of half an hour
04:12
making some of the dishes so we made the scallops with masala sauce and like a
04:18
mini onion bhaji and we also made the roast chicken with pie, mash and spinach
04:25
it is yeah we've just I've just had a little bit and it's absolutely delicious
04:30
it feels a little bit weird you know eating the food that I've just stood and
04:35
watched in the kitchen but it's really really cool and yeah so it was really
04:40
really interesting and to see kind of what goes on behind the scenes see all
04:46
the staff you know running around and getting ready for the kind of lunch
04:50
crazy hour and but yeah so we spent some time doing that Simon the executive
04:57
head chef spoke me through each dish and kind of how they came together all the
05:01
staff they came together to put the new menu together and they kind of all it's
05:06
a combination of everybody's ideas which is really nice you know and so the new
05:11
menu launched last week so we kind of went through the two of the most popular
05:17
dishes so far and yeah no it was really really interesting we kind of spoke
05:22
about some of the main techniques on how to you know do a really really good
05:26
chicken breast and I'm gonna be taking some of these tips home with me so I can
05:31
perfect my terribly dry chicken so yeah that will be much better dinner for us
05:37
and yeah it's just been really really cool to kind of see the ingredients how
05:42
long things are cooked for how things are supposed to be done and and it's
05:46
really nice to hear obviously Simon's been telling me about his kind of
05:48
background and how he's got into how he's got into the industry and yeah it's
05:56
really nice to kind of go through everything step by step but I think the
06:01
only downside would have to be the heat I was absolutely sweating and the entire
06:10
time I could just feel myself slowly melting away so I massively take my hat
06:16
off to all of the staff behind those doors because I could not stay in there
06:21
for much longer they could see that I was absolutely dying with just you know
06:25
the heat is constant and you know every time you get closer and closer to the
06:29
ovens it's just more and more it's so full on but yeah it's been a really
06:35
really nice morning and we're just gonna I'm gonna carry on munching and then I
06:39
think we're gonna go back in and you know have a little look around and do a
06:43
little bit more
06:46
[BLANK_AUDIO]
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