Viva Lewes Issue #150 March 2019

RECIPE
Carrot Cake
Chris Bailey, Head Chef at Rathfinny Tasting Room
I used to have a Michelin star restaurant in
Winchester called The Black Rat. When I
moved to Brighton, I was working as a private
chef and doing pop-ups, one of which was
here at Rathfinny. I loved the space, and then
they asked me to come and discuss having a
restaurant here. It’s such a beautiful location,
and the people who own it are lovely.
It’s all about the produce, for me. Local
means the closest place I can get the best
quality. People get a bit caught up with ‘on
your doorstep’ which is great, but you have to
remember taste, how it is raised, relationships
with suppliers. That whole farm-to-fork theory
is the way I like to work. It makes me happy to
cook with nice produce, whether it’s a carrot or
some wild teal, like we had in at the weekend. I
use Namayasai farm in Lewes, who have such a
lovely ethos. We use charcuterie from Beal’s at
Devil’s Dyke and I try to integrate the produce
grown here as well.
All the food here is meant to pair with the
wine, so there are things to consider, such as
high acids don’t go well. So far, we’ve taken the
vine leaves from the different grape varieties,
chardonnay and pinot noir, while they’re
young and tender. We use those to wrap things
like scallops before steaming. The leaves have
different flavours and do different things,
much like the grapes.
The wine is pressed here, underneath the
restaurant, so we took the first pressing
straight out at three-days-old and made wine
gums. I like the idea that people can taste the
wine at different stages. We’re pruning at the
moment, so I’ve taken a lot of the wood to dry
and hopefully cook over.
The idea for this dish came from these
amazing heritage carrots from our Scots
supplier. It’s a light carrot cake with white
raisins and a goat’s curd frosting that has a
slight sourness to it. I top the cake with thinlysliced
carrots poached in a meadowsweet syrup
I made last summer. It goes with a roasted
walnut ice cream and meadowsweet carrot
gel atop a gingerbread crumb. It’s not super
technical. At home, you may not have the
meadowsweet, but you can still make the cake,
the frosting, the ice cream. That’s what my
food is about: simple, clean, not lots of aerated
bubbles. It’s about flavour, really.
Ingredients: 125g plain flour, 125g wholemeal
flour, 25g baking powder, 2tsp cinnamon, 1tsp
nutmeg, 100g desiccated coconut, ground, 5
eggs, 260g golden sugar, 175ml pomace oil (or
olive oil), 500g grated red carrots, 100g white
raisins. For the frosting: 125g goat’s curd, 380g
icing sugar, 250g soft butter
Method: To make the cake, line and grease
a 12” tin; whisk up the eggs, sugar and oil
until doubled in volume. Mix the remaining
ingredients into the egg mixture then pour
into the tin and bake at 180°C for 40 minutes.
To make the frosting, whip all ingredients
together thoroughly, not forgetting to let the
cake cool on a wire rack completely before
icing. As told to Chloë King
rathfinnyestate.com/tasting-room
77