The common adage goes: when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But if you’re chef Kirk Westaway of one-Michelin- starred restaurant Jaan, you go the mile to make lemon tarts and even work them into various courses of your menu.
These are of course no ordinary lemons, but a variety from Amalfi – a sunshine-drenched region of coastal southern Italy.
“I never get tired of them,” explains Westaway. “Every time they get delivered to my kitchen, the whole room would be intoxicated with the smell of lemons and lemon leaves. It really wakes me up and I get happy and excited.”
He first discovered this ingredient as a chef de partie at London’s one-Michelin- starred restaurant, The Greenhouse. “The head chef Anthony Bonnet introduced me to this lemon. It was an incredible ingredient. I love the sharp delicate notes, the zest the pith the juice, it’s like a fresh orange and has inspired me to create,” says Westaway.
Thoughtful Interpretations
So inspired in fact, that it touches nearly every dish on his menu, sometimes in such subtle ways that the flavour goes undetected.
“They go on the canapé, they go on the mousse, they go on all the starters and the fish courses – we even use them on some of the main courses and pre-dessert as a palate cleanser as well as in desserts and in petit fours,” he reveals. “We hide it just to enhance the dishes, make them a little sweeter and lighter. You don’t taste the lemon in every single dish but just a little fragrant touch to really make it a little more interesting in a delicious sense.”
Inventing New Possibilities with Artisanal Ingredients
At Jaan, Westaway boldly conjures up elegant yet intense combinations of flavours and textures, delivering them artfully with refined techniques. The artisanal produce-driven menu sees him pushing boundaries when it comes to selecting and curating nature’s finest.
“I am always trying to source for new ingredients and exciting new items that we can use in our menu. I love this. It has been an incredible journey for me because everyone is still learning, my team is still learning so for me to experience new ingredients that nobody else is using is very exciting.”
He adds: “It's very important that my staff are as excited as I am so our excitement is passed onto the customers. A lot of people have not experienced this type of ingredient before so they come in and have a little lesson.”
This season, as nature awakens for spring, guests at Jaan get to savour a popular European spring meat: rabbit. Minced rabbit meat is seasoned and wrapped in a thin rice tuile, deep fried, and topped with sweet coriander cream cheese.
Other exceptional ingredients include the St. Vincent Asparagus from Domaine Saint Vincent, Westaway’s current favourite for its clean, fresh flavour with no hint of bitterness.
Produce from the English countryside features high on Westaway’s menu as well. There’s also the organic Welsh lamb from Rhug Estate as well as hand dived scallops and lobsters sourced from the deep waters of Scrabster in Scotland. After all, he was born and raised in Devon – the idyllic seaside town on the southwest coast of England.
Creative Strategies
As with any new ingredient, Westaway who has amassed a decade of cooking experience, would first spend time getting to know its unique properties. He does this by cooking it in a myriad of ways.
“I try and boil it, bake it roast it and fry it,” he says. “And I boil it to dehydrate it to make a powder for a crumble.”
His ways of experimentation with ingredients was inspired by the time spent as chef de partie at D.O.M. in Brazil with Alex Atala – the Brazilian chef known for innovating with local Brazilian produce.
Other chefs he looks up to includes Anthony Bonnet, who taught him that the true expression of respect for an ingredient meant exploring ways to use every part of the ingredient in a dish.
This is best seen by how he worked the Amalfi lemon into his menu first, and then into his lemon tart. “I put lemon zest in the crust, I put the lemon zest in the juice, in the curd. I put the lemon zest on the finishing part of the tart. What better way to really showcase one of my favorite ingredients than to do it as a sweet lemon tart that everybody can enjoy?” he asks.
Still, the chef doesn’t think it’s enough to create beautiful food with complex techniques. His dishes must embody comfort and strike an emotional chord with guests.
“These are the dishes people remember long after the meal,” he says.
Special Promotion: Simply key in a promotional code KA152017 and be entitled to 15% off all KitchenAid products. For more details, click here. (This promotion is only applicable to Singapore from now till 19th May, valid for online purchases only. Not valid with other promotional deals. )
