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Elder is a modern British Indian Chop House. Chop House is very different than the regular steak house. If a guest wants a fillet, but if they want it a little bigger or smaller, we can always cater to that. We try to use our steaks but with the techniques of Indian cuisine. We do a 32 age ribeye with a nahari, which is very traditionally Indian stewed broth. On the HF at Elder, I've got to learn a restaurant, how to bring in people, and the creative ones, and the most skilled ones, and create a team which I can work with and move forward. Good morning. It's 9:00 a.m. in the morning. I'm Iqbal Siddiqui, head chef at Elder. Please come on in.
We are doing 100 covers tonight, so we need to get prepared. Welcome to our kitchen. This is a huge kitchen. We work with around 15 cooks. We are going to do the meats or the proteins for the day. Right now, we have a Berkshire pork chop over here. Our chop house is better than most of the steak house. What we do is custom every order. If the guest wants it maybe 16 oz, we weigh them out and we cook it accordingly. That's what we expertise in pretty much giving what guest wants. We take a little bit of fat off. It's more about how we make a simple ingredient shine better or look better. And on a plate, it looks just fantastic
like the white bone coming off the grill. After the pork chops right age, we brine them in the brown sugar and little soy, and then cook it on the grill. We let it rest on top of vindaloo, which is like a very Portuguese gravy from India. So, it has a little wine, a little vinegar, a little chili. It's a definitely a little spicy dish than the rest, but it's one of my favorites. If you see like the bones coming off clean and nice, that what makes a difference. You have to sharpen your knives every day because it makes your work way easier. The most of the big knives cannot go through just because they're big and long. I use a pairing knife because again it can go through right seemingly in between the bones and it
makes the cut much more cleaner and sharper, too. And it's easy to maintain. So, we are done with the pork and now we are just going to wrap it. Um I'm very tedious about like how we wrap our pork. I want no wrinkles when it comes to wrapping. It gives you a little edge over like how you your work ethics flows in the kitchen and it just makes your work and look better. Once the pork is fired, what we do, we take over it to the grill, give it a nice, really good sear, 2 minutes on each side. If you look at the grill, it has both the charcoal and the fire. It generates more of a heat, which is more even. If you see the racks inside, there are
different levels to it. We can definitely rest some of the meats over here or let them dry or get them a little more color than the usual and it gives a lot of flavor to the meat. Now, we are going to work on our paneer, which is made out with buffalo milk. The milk comes in a big bag like this. If I can lift it up, it's too heavy. Yeah. That's like a 5 gallon of milk, which is maybe run through half of the week. We don't use the regular milk because of buffalo milk having a lot of high density and fat and cream. We use What we are going to do is layer the paneers like a lasagna with a little bit of filling and the sacha and other nuts like cashew, a little spices from India. Serve it over like a sag, which is another very
traditional Indian gravy. This is Sidharth, he's my morning sous. So, he's basically worked with me almost for 3 or 4 years. Pretty much he knows me better than I do. We have a huge tilting span which can hold up a liter of 30 gallons. That's a lot of liquid cooking or simmering. We can cook in it and tilt it down, too. And that makes it much more easier to get the milk or any liquid out of the tilting like cooking pan. It's It's quite mechanical. It's fun. We'll let the milk simmer to separate the whey from the water. What we do, we add a little vinegar and it cuddles up right away. You can see the difference the water and the whey separating. We
need to press it as fast as possible and cool it down to get the even shape. If you're too slow, you won't get the paneer at the right time for the service. So, we see we even out all the paneer. Make sure there's no air bubbles. So, we try to use the same pans with regular sizes. We put on a little weight. We press it down so that the water gets dripped down and caught at the bottom. Let's cool it down. We have a blast chiller. We'll throw it in for like say about 10 minutes, 15 minutes and then put it back into the cooler. Jared over here, my sous, he's trying to help me out with the paneer. As soon you put the weight, you see the water gushing out. That's what we
want but in the pan, not out the pan. The paneer is all set. Meanwhile, I have all my sous chefs coming in. Let's have a little chit-chat with them and then move on with our whole day. Jared is my evening sous where Vidal is my morning sous. We'll get a little brief on how the day looks like. We're definitely waiting on the ribeye. Yes, chef. So, as soon the ribeye comes in, we'll jump onto that, too. Yesterday, we had a little problem with the boiling water next to the pasta. So, make sure the water is already salted, ready to go. My sous chefs are involved in everyday
daily to daily cooking. It's a really, really tough job because we work almost like 12 or 15 hours every day. And we have to be on our point. You can get on with the other stuff. My beef delivery is here. We got our steak. I think this is the time to break it down. So, 32 oz and 30 oz are standardized weighing. We definitely want people to choose what they want. If they want the whole rack, we give them the whole rack. I am trying to get the sinew out and we want that beautiful white bone shining over the ribeye. I sharpen only my tip of my knife. Sharpness is on the edge so I can go back and forth with my finger. And that gives me if I want to go too deep,
I can go either hold my knife back forth and then go too deep or when I want to go little sharp, so I'm not puncturing the meat all the way through. Perfect chop. Take the oxidized meat and we'll use it some of them which is little cleaner for our sauces. Now, as you see, this are really heavier steak than the rest of them. We will keep it to dry it a little longer. Maybe do a 42-day aged ribeye. So, if somebody wants it, we custom clean it and then we give it to them on the table. We definitely do our taste check just the salt to check the quality.
We salt it really hard. It's Remember, it's 32 oz ribeye. Last week, we sold a ribeye 72 oz. There was a table for eight people and they took the whole ribeye. When we call out a chop house, what we exactly mean, like if our guest wants it, we deliver. Really, really market really well. And you see the smoke? That builds up like the whole flavor. The grill marks, I like it like a crisscross. It just makes the whole presentation much more better. So, our steak is well grilled. You need a little charness, a little nuttiness. That brings out the whole flavor of a aged ribeye. We'll do a little bath of tallow. Tallow is a great lubricant for any steak, and it adds up more of a nutty flavor. It enhances the aged
ribeye, and it has a high melting point or a heat level. Put it in the oven, cook it to temp, and then we see how it's done. And on the side, Nahari is like a thick broth made out of lamb stock and lot of spices and yogurt. And that looks like a wonderful steak. We are doing a very classic roulade out of chicken with Indian spices and flavors. This is like the integral part of British Shophouse. The filling is more Indian, and the terrine or the roulade what we make is more British. By itself, it's like a very cohesive dish on a makhani. So, it's pretty much the whole elder together in one dish. This is ivory chicken from up city market. It has the right amount of fat to meat
ratio. Just because if you see most of the birds won't have under like the skin fat. So, that keeps the chicken much more moist and tender. So, I try to break it down from the back. The history goes back either from the Canolian region or even from France. But, it's more of a technical term like where you make a roulade is like rolling up anything or any meat. But, we made it our own just because this dish was taught by Chef Sujan. And then even I brought in a little idea that why don't we do the whole chicken rather than doing just half a chicken or like a full chicken. Every roulade is like a full chicken folded into one whole row. It
requires a lot of strength and skill. I did martial arts for a little while. That gets me a little more strength to butcher this chicken. I stepped away from fighting. I still love it. I'm still passionate. I train every day. There are so many commonalities with fighting and cooking. So, you have to be disciplined. You have to put in your hours. You have to train every day to get your skill right. You're mostly like 15 or 18 hours away from your family doing it every day, every day out. Imagine on a holiday where you want to sit, have a cup of
coffee, chill with your friends and family, you're working. But I love it. I love every aspect of it. We have separated the breasts and the skin. It's going to be noisy. So, just a heads-up. This is where my martial arts skills comes to play. I'll just You want to pound it to the point where it stays together, but it's flattened out. So, I don't use all the time the tip of it. I use the other side of it. So, if you see why we use the clean wrap, because it clings. And so, it's easy to maneuver all everything on intact. I have a little slurry made out of cornstarch and salt. It's kind of a natural glue.
What we did over here with the leg is made of like I would say a filling for the chicken. This just got made yesterday from the other chicken we butchered. So, it goes through the grinder, and then we add a lot of spices, a little a lot of cilantro, a little fat. So, it keeps the chicken moist as well and more flavorful. Make sure the roulade filling are firm and filled in a proper size. I use a slicer longer efficient to roll it up. Now, we encase it in the skin. We'll roll the clean wrap. This is the trickier part. So, we want our chicken to be tight. We take out the air, because if you see the it has like a air bubbles or air gaps, when you cook it, that will cook much more faster than
the other stuff. So, it bulges up, which we don't want. In service, and we sear it to golden brown. We cut it into pieces and lay it out on a makhani, which is a very Indian traditional tomato sauce. We do a briefing every day just to make sure that everybody is aligned up knowing what they're doing. Today, we have 85 plus 20 105 on the books. Uh make sure there's no allergens on the table. The rush we are getting around 6:30 6:35. Then the second rush would be around 7:30 or 7:35. Okay. We have Chef Sujan. Uh pretty much very busy. He's in my mentor. He's the chef too. Everyone is happy. That's good part. Okay.
We are getting busier now. So, we have to pull out our A game. That's what it is. Yeah. Thank you, guys, and I'll see you in the evening. Thank you, Chef. Thank you. 1 2 3. There you go. Good job, guys. Me and Chef Dada going to jump in too because I think we are really low on it. Celeriac is a root vegetable like piece between a cassava and a potato. The consistency is much more thicker than a potato. We talk about Wellington from England or Wellington from Europe.
Everybody thinks like Wellington can be done by a meat or a tenderloin. But we want to showcase like how authentic we are to our cuisine. We do very traditional Indian method, which is like doing a kebab out of it. We do a duxelles, which is very British. And then we do a confit celeriac cooked in a very slow heat of oil for say about 2 hours. We wrap around with the filo layering it up. We'll start the switch hard around the bowl. So, we'll take one by one. We'll try to place the other ones over here. The idea was to do a Wellington really good Wellington incorporate the British ethos in what's new and what's different. Do a celeriac, which is gives you a more room for the vegetarians coming into a steakhouse, which is quite repulsive like for a
vegetarian or a vegan, but we made it sure that we have enough dishes on the menu that they can come to a steakhouse and enjoy vegetarian dishes. We'll hand it over to the pastry department and they're going to finish it up for us. Uh this is our Shogan, now our pastry chef. Me and her have been working for many other restaurants, so I know her really well. She's like my elder sister. This is for you. Thank you. Bye. Bye for today and then we can continue tomorrow. Yeah, thank you so much.
So, I'm going to set up for my station, which is the expeditor. Keep all my mise en place, all little garnishes. This is like a walnut crunch. We do it with a little panko, walnut. This is like a crispy garlic. And this is we call it like a walnut dukkah. Basically, nut mix with little bit of cumin, fenugreek spices mixed with it. And this is the barista, which is very traditional in India. We just shallow fry them. I would say like more caramelized onion. It has the sugar breakdown really well and it tastes like a little umami and sweeter on any meat. We are going to go in service in like 10 minutes. Basically, I
stand here, call out the tickets, manage everything, taste everything, plate everything. I would love to have you over here, but I think it's time to leave. Um have a good day. Bye.
