Late night smoking by torchlight for Farmers Market

Posted on 20/11/2014 by streetfood1340

Preparing for the Tunbridge Wells farmers market – just finished (8.00pm) smoking the pork shoulder for our famous pulled pork. The shoulder has been in our smoker for 8 hours slowly slowly cooking over apple and oak chips – finally finished in darkness – smoking by torchlight is always fun.

DEli Truc, Street Food, Pulled Pork, smoked

Pork shoulder 6 hours into it’s smoke – just two hours to go.

Our menu for The Farmers Market this Saturday is tried and tested and last time we tried it we sold out. Some real crowd pleasers here –

1. Our famous 8 hour smoked pulled pork served with our spicy BBQ sauce.

2. Our home made Salt Beef sandwich on rye with mustard sauce and pickle.

Our home made salt beef – We brine it for 8 days in a secret mixture of pickling spices then gently simmer for three hours.

3. A warming tasty pleasurable seafood chowder – rich with four types of fish and seafood including haddock, wild salmon, pollock and mussels. Finished off with a bacon, creamy sauce

4. And finally our heart warming Mac and Cheese. A cheese sauce made of cheddar, parmesan and emmental is mixed with pasta and bacon and served with a crunchy fried breadcrumb and parmesan topping.

And we will also be serving our usual homemade potato and coleslaw salads as sides with the pulled pork and salt beef. So please come and join us at the Tunbridge Wells Farmers Market this Saturday 22nd of November between 0900 and 1400.

Making our sea food chowder – right now

Posted on 24/10/2014 by streetfood1340

Just started the prep for our Boston Seafood Chowder as part of our menu at the Tunbridge Wells Farmers Market @TWBCFrmrsMkt tomorrow – Saturday from 0900 – 1400. Our Chowder is packed with fish and other goodies including sustainable and tasty pollock, salmon, smoked haddock, mussels, bacon and cream. Yum Yum.

Some of the fish in our chowder. Salmon and Pollock

Great menu this Saturday at Tunbridge Wells Farmers Market

Posted on 23/10/2014 by streetfood1340

Hope you can join us this week at Tunbridge Wells Farmers Market – we had a great time two weeks ago and met some fabulously well informed foodies, including a former New York City cop – who appraised our salt beef sandwich as one of the best he’s ever had. The Menu this Saturday (25th of October) will be our regular largish meals – Our famous Salt beef sandwich and our 8 hour smoked pulled pork sandwich. Also we realise that a lot of people want just a snack or something small to warm up with so we will be doing a Boston seafood chowder, jam packed with white fish, mussels, salmon and cream and served with crackers or our own home baked mini chowder buns. Our our fish and seafood are both sustainable and organic.

Boston Seafood chowder

And we will also be baking one of Americas’s most famous comfort foods – a cheesy, creamy “mac and cheese” Or as we’d say over here a maccaroni and cheese bake. We start this with a creamy white sauce to which we add obscene amounts of organic cheddar, parmesan and mozzarella and top with a crunchy topping for even more flavour. Both these smaller dishes will be available for under £5.00.

mac and cheese

Deli Truck debuts at Tunbridge Wells Farmers Market

Posted on 07/10/2014 by streetfood1340

Great excitement as the Deli Truck appears at the Tunbridge Wells Farmers Market this Saturday for the first time. We have a special gourmet menu for the occasion with a selection of our big hits including our homemade Salt Beef on Rye, our famous 8 hour smoked pulled pork, BBQ ribs with potato salad and our renowned Cajun Sea bass Sandwich. Miri will be making her outrageous chocolate brownies as well. We’ll be parked up on Civic Way, just outside the Town Hall from 9 am through to 2 pm this Saturday. Hope to see you.

French gastro-tour

Posted on 14/09/2014 by streetfood1340

Just back from a gastro-tour of France. This time by bike (Horatio the Harley) as part of a much needed break after such a busy and fun summer, cooking great food for fantastic clients. So – an early start for Portsmouth to catch the fast Sea Cat crossing to Cherbourg – followed by 10 days of tasting, drinking, buying fresh and unusual produce, cooking and visiting out of the way small local restaurants including little known French truck stops. I predict these humble establishments will be the next big thing in France – try the one on the N12 – between Ernee and Fougeres if you ever get a chance. But all good things come to an end – after much laughter and sharing of food with French and English friends and hard work in the garden of one friend – I had a two day ride back to Calais via Rouen. Horatio behaved and all in all it was a great trip with the added bonus of the discovery of wonderful new food ideas for the Deli Truck – including what could be a winter favourite – pork loin, roasted-off and finely sliced – slices then dunked in steaming hot onion-chassuer sauce and piled high in a buttered crispy crunchy baguette.

A full service for he Harley before departure. Typical HD. Its takes 3 different oil changes.

Leaving at dawn for Portsmouth and the fast sea cat to Cherbourg

Street food – French Style – a truck at he Ernee Fete serves Toulouse Sausages cooked over charcoal. We’ll be doing this next summer on the the Deli Truck. A lot more of our food will be cooked directly over flaming charcoal. Can’t beat the flavour

A stop of at the Harley Davidson shop in Le Mans for a coffee and chat and some oil. Wonderful welcome.

On the boat back to Blighty after a fabo ten days in France.

A great lunch

Posted on 18/08/2014 by streetfood1340

Always looking for more and better flavours – so cooked this up for lunch today. Little gem lettuce tossed with some of our home made coleslaw and topped with our cajun blackened sea-bass. Wow fabulous light lunch with a crunch from the lettuce topped with the lime-mayo sauce from the coleslaw – topped with crispy spicy fish. I think we may be doing this from the truck at some time in the future.

Great night at “tarte” in Brasted

Posted on 18/08/2014 by streetfood1340

We’re resting up today after an very very busy night at “tarte” restaurant in Brasted. A huge success with well over 100 customers satisfied by our food and the ministrations of the wonderful “tarte” wait staff. A great evening. we set up outside the restaurant on the High Street and first orders started at 6.30pm.

The Deli Truck set up outside “tarte” in Brasted about an hour before the crowds turned up all at the same time. Crazy first hour of service.

The Deli Truck at the end of service -a very successful first night at Taste

We had started preparing for our one night only appearance at tarte 4 days before the evening – as we rested our pork shoulders (for our pulled pork) on our secret Texas rub for 48 hours before they went into our smoker for ten hours over oak and apple woods.

Our special rub is used to flavour the pork for 48 hours before cooking . Made up of paprika, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, cumin, oregano and a few other things…

The burgers we made came from one large piece of Black Angus top side.

We cut the topside from a 10 kilo lump into a five 2 kilo strips so we can hang them in our commercial fridge in the Deli truck. This dries the meat out and ages it for a couple more days. The dryer meat means a much better texture to the burger – it holds together better – and great flavour.

The topside has been minced and formed into largish 7oz burgers. Thie went well with our other menu items for our night at “tarte” in Brasted – We served our famous spicy pulled pork sandwich and our cajun blackened Sea Bass.

OUr menu board on the truck for the night.

Getting ready for our one night at “taste” in Brasted

Posted on 11/08/2014 by streetfood1340

This saturday coming we are teaming up with “tarte” restaurant to bring the taste and flavours of the Deli Truck to the public. This is a special one night only affair starting at 1800 and ending when everybody is full. The Deli Truck will be parked outside the restaurant, opposite the village green, for service from 6.00 PM on the evening of the 16th of August. We have created a classic Deli Truck menu for the evening including our famous pure beef bacon and cheese burger, our spicy Cajun blackened Sea Bass sandwich served with our home made potato salad and finally our very successful 12 hour smoked pulled pork sandwich.

The Deli Truck at Camden Market in London

As many of you knowThe Deli Truck tries very hard to be a responsible and eco minded food truck. For example all our disposables – that’s takeaway plates, cutlery and cups – are all bio-degradable and compostable. A number of clients have asked me what a compostable plate or cup means. So to clear up any ambiguity – the plates and cups we buy, if shredded and put into a compost heap, will have disappeared within 3 months. They are made of either vegetable starch for cellulose starch.

We try to be a responsible with our food sourcing. For the event at taste this Saturday – our burger meat comes from one 11.5 kilo piece of beef from the topside. ThIs will make around 65 x 6oz burgers. We cut the beef into manageable pieces that will fit through our grinder. When the beef is ground we form it into 6oz patties and add absolutely nothing to the meat at all. A good burger with good meat should be treated like a steak, add nothing to mixture – with only salt and pepper on the outside added during cooking.

The same for our pulled pork – we get many compliments about this dish mainly because we take the time to do it traditionally. There are no shortcuts. we roll whole bone-in shoulders of pork in our special rub texas rub. 24 hours later we smoke it for up to 12 hours over oak and cherry wood. We then “pull” it apart and serve it with our spicy rich BBQ sauce, also home made to our own recipe. Our pork is locally sourced from Batchelors the butcher in Riverhead.

Deli Truck pulled pork – 3 large shoulders of pork covered in our special texas rub for 24 hours before hitting the smoker for up to 12 hours.

Hope you can join us on Saturday night – if the restaurant is booked out we will still be able to have some of the fastest American Style food in the South East – as will also be doing takeaways.

A garden Party for 100 people in an idyllic setting

Posted on 11/08/2014 by streetfood1340

The organisers of this very stylish birthday party wanted a relaxed atmosphere in the garden and they got just that. With outdoor lounges and coverings for a shill-out area, a fully staffed wet-bar and the Deli Truck – the feeling was informal, chic, elegant and fun. And the guests certainly had fun. Guests started dropping in from 4.00 PM until 9.00 PM, with mosts staying on to drink and talk the night away until well into the small hours. We served a hot menu selected by the hostess from the truck with an accompanying buffet of salads and our home made lemonade – later we served freshly brewed coffee and tea.

The menu was chosen in consultation with the hostess (it was her husbands 50th birthday) and turned out to be a real winner. We ended up cooking our spectacular burger which everyone seems to have heard about and always wants. We accompanied this with our 12 hour smoked pulled pork which was a huge hit and chicken breast stuffed with chorizo and parmesan cheese, then poached in chicken broth, white wine and butter – served with a dollop of home made pesto on top. More details on the Menu are listed below.

A big thanks to the most gracious and delightful hosts for their many kind words and support. We had a ball.

I’ll leave the final words to the hostess who emailed us 48 hours after the party. She said “Thank you for such wonderful food and ambience at our Garden Party – wow what a wonderful day. Everyone was blown away by the Deli Truck and I am sure you must have run out of your info sheets. Thank you also for organising such thoughtful and helpful assistants – it meant we could both relax and enjoy the company of our guests.”

Taste Test

Posted on 23/07/2014 by streetfood1340

Still recipe testing for our public appearance @tarteofbrasted. Have upped the flavour in our cajun rub – with more chilli and a little more cumin. Tried it tonight on sea bass, with our own organic salad and a fabo valpolicella from Italy. Great summer supper in the country.

Cajun Sea bass from the Deli Truck

Loved this wine