|
| Home RSS Directory F.A.Q Suggest A Feed Try Custom Feed Sonneries Portable |
Latest Flows from this sub-category: random selection from this sub-category: |
 As you can see, I still have lots of mint in the garden, so we decided to have lamb chops with mint sauce for dinner tonight. I apologise in advance for the poor picture quality on this post, I had to use my phone and its got no flash on it and its "only" 3 megapixels - I remember the days (well a couple of years ago) when that was loads! Anyway, on with the mint sauce...Ingredients
Pulse a couple of times in the mixer, and then blend until the mint is finely chopped (you can also do the chopping the old fashioned way - with a knife - but this is a lot quicker if you do have a blender or food processor).  You might need to add a little more liquid, depending on exactly how much mint you picked, but I wanted mine to be about this consistency here...  And what goes well with mint sauce? Lamb, obviously! So here it is, grilled lamb chops with mint sauce, new potatoes, coleslaw and freshly picked tomatoes. 
 This weekend just gone we had some friends over, nominally for a barbecue. I say that as we had invited them for a barbecue, with optimism in the weather that is a very British characteristic. This is the same optimism which sees some men wearing shorts from April through to October, irrespective of how hot it is, "because it's summer". We got up on Saturday morning, the sun was shining, the sky was blue. The sun dance we did the night before seemed to have paid off. So, off to the supermarket, to buy up all the meat and charcoal around. All going well so far. I probably don't really need to tell you what happens in the rest of the story, as I am sure you can guess that it did indeed start to pour with rain. Right after I had marinaded all the meat, made some burgers, and plenty of salads, the heavens opened. The food was looking good... classy retro potato salad and coleslaw. Chicken. Sausages. Beef burgers. So, out i went with my umbrella to the garden, and lit the fire. And then held the umbrella over the grill to keep it dry. I managed to get the cooking done, and all the guests stayed inside nice and dry. So what about these grandmothers burgers? Well these are made using a tip gleaned from Drew over at How to Cook Like Your Grandmother. I read his stuff quite regularly and there are often some good tips there. Like this burger trick. There was a bit of confusion with US and UK Smarties there, the ones they call Smarties in the states are more like Refreshers that we have here. Anyway the point is that if you make concave burgers the end up a flatter shape when cooked, instead of how they normally end up which is eat in the middle and thinner round the edges. So thanks Drew, your trick does work. The picture above shows the barbecue in the rain, with the umbrella poking into the top of the photo. What is cooking on the barbecue now is those special concave burgers. The picture was taken on my phone so its not too easy to make out, but it did work well at getting the burgers to stay nice and flat once cooked! This is what I knocked up for dinner this evening, a nice hearty, cheesy and rich pasta meal. We had leeks, bacon and stilton in the fridge left over from some other recipes from the weekend, and so this is what I decided to cook. Not too bad for a make-it-up as you go along kind of a meal! It was initially going to be a pasta bake, but in the end we were too hungry and decided to eat it straight away. If you do make it into a pasta bake, then just bake in a medium hot oven, maybe with some more cheese on the top, until it is nice and browned on the top.
Ingredients
 Chop the bacon into little pieces (or use lardons if you have them). Melt the butter in a medium hot pan and then fry the bacon in the butter.  Whilst the bacon is frying, remove the outer leaves and ends from the leeks, then slice them and wash them.  Add the leeks to the pan along with the bacon. You will need a rather large pan. Now that is a lot of leeks! Don't worry, they will reduce once cooked. Mix well so that all the bacon and butter is evenly mixed in with the leeks. Saute/steam the leeks for about 5 minutes - I say steam because it is difficult to fry the ones at the top with so many in the pan.  Now the leeks have reduced in size quite a lot, reduce the heat to low and sprinkle the flour on the top. Mix it really well and cook on the heat for another minute. You are forming a roux here mixed in with the leeks, which is the base for a white sauce.  Add about a glass and a half of milk to the pan.  How big is a glass I hear you saying? Well, I am quite short on measuring implements in my kitchen so this is how big MY glass is! No you need to know the size of my hand.. well, not telling! But the glass is just a regular tumbler size, probably about half a pint, maybe a bit less.  Keep the sauce over a low heat, and stir frequently until it just begins to thicken and bubble. Remove from the heat and mix the sauce in with the pasta. Now, crumble the Stilton into the pan whilst stirring. The heat pf the pasta and sauce should be enough to melt the cheese and form a nice sauce.  Serve immediately with some salad.
 This is a salad of my own devising, based on a few similar recipes I have seen around - and one in particular in a random salad recipe book, although they said to put in pasta which I don't think would work very well. In any case, this was very tasty - the crunchy nuts, strong tasting stilton, and the salad leaves combined very well together. I added in the watercress for a bit of a spicy peppery flavour as well. If possible, try and use the salad leaves that come with finely grated beetroot included - the colour is amazing and livens up the salad immensely.Ingredients
 Cut the stilton into little cubes, although depending on how crumbly your cheese is you may find it easier to just kind of crumble it into the salad.Peel and grate the carrot. In a large salad bowl, combine with the pears, walnuts, salad leaves, basil and stilton cheese. Mix the olive oil and vinegar together to make the dressing, along with some salt and pepper. Now pour over the salad and mix into all the leaves. Serve immediately.  This is another easy to make salad, which goes well with barbecues and summer meals. The amounts for the ingredients are a bit rough here, and the amount of mayonnaise depends on how saucy you want it, how big you cut the potatoes, that kind of thing. What I am trying to say is, I didn't write anything down as I made this, but its so easy to make intuitively, just whack the ingredients into a bowl and you will know when it looks right. Ingredients
As soon as the potatoes are cooked, drain off the hot water and immerse them in cold water to prevent any further cooking, and to cool them down to salad temperature. If you have no environmental conscience, you can leave a cold tap running into the pan, but if you are concerned about wasting water then make sure you don't do this! Once the potatoes are cool, drain them and make sure they are nice and dry. Add the mayonnaise, chopped herbs, mustard, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix it all up together, and garnish with a sprig of fresh mint.  Coleslaw is really easy to make, and its far cheaper to make at home than to buy the ready made stuff, which normally is too sharp and vinegary for my tastes anyway, as well as being really over priced. Cabbage and carrots are so cheap! It is a bit of an old fashioned salad, but great for barbecues for that retro feeling. Ingredients
Finely slice the cabbage - get it as thinly cut as you can! Aim for a similar size to the grated carrots. An easy way to do this is using the grater attachment in a food processor. Finely slice or grate the onion - you get the picture, same as for the carrots and cabbage, you want it as fine as possible. Mix everything together in a bowl with the cream, vinegar, sugar and seasoning. That's it! All done. Its really quick if you use a machine to do the grating, but even doing it by hand it doesn't take too long.  I am struggling to find ways to use up all my courgettes, which are growing at a rate of knots in the garden at the moment. I picked a few this morning, and decided to have a go at a grilled courgette salad.Ingredients
Slice the courgettes lengthways, as thinly as you can... I used a carrot peeler to do the slices, although if you have a mandolin this would probably work better. Brush the slices with olive oil, and then grill under a hot grill for about 3-4 minutes each side, until they start to brown and blister. Leave to cool on the wire rack of the grill. Do not stack them up on a plate, because courgettes are quite watery they will just become soggy. Once cooled, scatter with finely chopped garlic, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and squeeze some lemon juice over the top - a tablespoon should be enough, and if you want to drizzle a bit more olive oil on the top.  Whilst at the Big Chill festival this weekend, some of the food we had was amazing. No rubbish burgers and hot dogs, it was all top quality food. You could get anything you wanted, well virtually. One of my favourites was the pies from Pie Minister. A huge pie, with a choice of fillings including the ever popular Heidi Pie filled with goats cheese and sweet potato, the PM Pie stuffed with the classic steak and kidney, and my favourite is the Minty which is a lamb and mint pie. For some reason the Heidi Pie is hugely popular with the girls, although I think that girls love anything with goats cheese in. Not only do you get pie, but also a massive pile of mash, mushy peas, gravy, crispy shallots, cheese and gravy. Plenty of fuel for a weekend of partying. In the picture above is a breakfast smoothie, which is berries, banana, yogurt, muslei and honey. This was a great start to the day! Other food on the site included Mexican, Goan curry with Cornish fish, noodle bars, all kinds of vegan and vegetarian delights, wraps (I had a delicious one with Italian organic meat balls), pancakes, waffles... The list goes on! Festivals are Definitely a great foodie experience! We have just got back from a weekend of festivaling at the Big Chill, we had an amazing time, with not enough sleep, plenty of booze, sun, music, comedy and partying. The highlight of the weekend for me was definitely seeing the Mighty Boosh, and also coming 5th out of 20 in the music quiz. I think we will definitely be going back next year. And the weather was good as well, despite the forecast being awful it was sunny almost the entire weekend, bar a few small showers, I hardly had to wear my wellies at all!
Anyway, today we got home and with no food in the house and feeling pretty tired, we couldn't decide what to have for dinner. Then I went out into the garden, and found plenty of basil, some courgettes (zuchini for those across the pond) and the first set of ripe tomatoes. Here is the results of my hunting and gathering...  So, I thought the best thing to make with this harvest is some pasta and pesto. So that is what I did! It was my first go at making pesto homemade, although I did make a salsa verde before (which is basically just pesto without the parmesan and pine nuts).First of all, take a good handful of pine nuts and gently toast them in a hot, dry, non-stick frying pan. No oil needed here. The toasting brings out the flavour of the pine nuts, but you can also use them untoasted too.  They should be lightly browned, something like this...  Now, into the food processor (yes its that wretched Magimix again) with the basil (as much as can fit in the bowl comfortably), about 50 g of parmesan, the pine nuts, a sprinkle of salt and two cloves of garlic (peeled, obviously). Splash in a good amount of extra virgin olive oil. This is the olive oil I have been using lately, which my fiancees parents bought back from France for me, it is brilliant, nice strong flavour so perfect for the pesto. It comes from Moulin de Saint Come.  So, all the ingredients in the machine (I used the small bowl this time) - only one thing for it, blend! It looks a little dry to start with, so I added some more olive oil.  This looks more like pesto now.  Whilst some pasta was boiling away, I sauted some courgettes.  Once the courgettes had browned a little, I added in the tomatoes just to cook through a little bit.  The pasta was then cooked, so everything got mixed up together - the pesto, vegetables and pasta. That's it, done! Now I am off to have a bath and get an early night ready for work tomorrow.
This is another recipe which I made using my Magimix 4200 - my current favourite kitchen toy! It is a very rich and chocolatey cake.
Ingredients
 This took about a minute or so. Then I added in the flour, and blended until smooth again. The final ingredient is the chocolate and butter. This was melted in a bain marie, and then poured into the rest of the mixture via the feeding tube with the machine still running. Bake in the oven at 200C for around 20 minutes, until firm. The cake is pretty gooey so I don't think you will ever get a clean fork out of this one! As you can see, there is a really sticky chocolatey middle with a nice crispy top.  The best bit, apart from enjoying the cake itself, is that it only took about 10 minutes preparation time!  This is another recipe made from some freshly picked garden vegetables. In the recent got weather, all my veg have started to grow like mad. I am getting about half a dozen courgettes to pick every couple of days. So, if anyone has any good courgette based recipes i would love to see them. I am writing this post on my mobile, a new feature i have just discovered so i can post whilst out and about. Right now i am waiting for my a train in the under ground station fully aware that i will miss my mainline connection. Anyway, back to courgettes? This is a pretty basic soup recipe, and ready in under half an hour, like a lot of my recipes. Finely cos some garlic and an onion, and fry in a little oil. Meanwhile, wash and slice the courgettes, then saute for a few minutes with the onion and garlic. Cover with vegetable stock, and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 5 minutes then add some Spinach, and herbs... I used thyme as this goes well with courgettes. Simmer for another couple of minutes til t.id Spinach is cooked and remove from the heat. Liquidise, season to taste, and serve immediately. You can see in the picture i swirled a little bit of cream into the soup when serving. Well, i say swirled maybe glooped is a better word!  This is my mint plant now. I planted in spring and it is contained in a 9cm plant pot in the ground. There is tons of the stuff! So what can i do with it? Suggestions please, I am looking for sweet and savoury please and I like the idea of a cool, minty drink like lemonade but with mint.. Does anyone know a recipe for such a drink? Answers on a post code please, or using the comments box below.  We have had a few nice hot days this week, and as a result my garden is doing very well. I still don't have any ripe tomatos but some are nearly ready. My mint plant is going crazy and the cucumbers are coming along well too. These are two ingredients i can put to good use in a quick simple Tzatziki. I picked one cucumber and a big bunch of mint, washed and chopped everything up very small. In went a pinch of salt and a large spoon of yogurt. Mix it all together and thats it ready. You don't get food much fresher than that. Ryan's Recipe Blog Store - Kitchen bits and pieces
I have just set up an Amazon store to go with my recipe blog, I will be adding more of my favourite products as I get time, so please have a look! Yes, another recipe using the famous Magimix 4200. My previous blender was not powerful or sharp enough to chop meat, so I was pleased to read in the instruction manual that this one is. What better way to test it out than making beef burgers. I am always a bit unsure of exactly what minced meat is really made from, and I assume it is not the best quality meat and all the left over bits. Now I can make minced beef right in front of my eyes.
Take some beef, roughly cut into chunks, an onion, a few chillies, and some garlic.  Place the big blade in the bowl of the food processor. Chuck in the meat and other ingredients. Grind in some salt and pepper. You can add other ingredients - herbs, spices, tomato, peppers - or whatever you fancy.  Pulse the food processor a few times, until you reach the desired consistency. Now shape into burgers, using your hands. Cook in the normal way. I find you don't need to use egg to hold the meat together, and I don't like to use bread crumbs in the burgers either.So, another thing the Magimix can do - mince beef to make burgers, quickly and easily. I mentioned earlier about how great my Magimix 4200 is and what I have been making with it. Well, here are some of the things you can do.
Fix in the slicing/grating blade - one way up for slicing, the other for grating - simple! There are two of these blades, a thick one and a thin one. Then just feed in whatever you want processed.  And here we have a carrot and a pepper, grated and sliced respectively in under 30 seconds each. I liked the way that the slices are nice and uniform, but that may be my OCD coming into play. I probably do have new food processor syndrome still. Even though it is very quick to do the processing, I think unless you are making a LOT - like for a big family meal or something like that, then the time taken to wash up the bowl and the blade afterwards kind of wipes out any time saving on the preparation. Later, I did some sliced potatoes for pommes boulangere, and it was here that I found the Magimix 4200 to be pretty useful. I was able to slice the potatoes really thinly, and evenly all the way to the end. I seem to have forgotten to take any pictures of that though.  I am really pleased about my rediscovery of liver and onions! We used to have this as children and hated it, something about the texture of liver. But I had calves liver recently in a French restaurant and loved it, so when I saw these lambs livers at 69p in Tesco I just had to buy them. I was checking out the reduced-to-clear bargains but in fact its only 89p a packet normally so a really cheap meat. Its really quick to cook, and the trick is not to over cook livers - that is when the texture goes all tough and dry. I sliced them quite thinly, floured them, then quickly browned each side in a hot pan. Next, out with the livers and in with some sliced onions, fried them on a high heat until starting to brown, then back in with the livers, some gravy (I used instant), and a splash of white wine. The whole lot was then left to simmer for about 10 minutes, meanwhile I cooked some new potatoes and peas to go on the side. All done in under half an hour and on the table! The result was quite tender, and not too dry. Even better, liver is good for you too - it is packed with lots of iron, fairly low in fat, and lots of protein too. I have been suffering from "new food processor syndrome" of late. What is that? Well, it is a propensity to process everything whether it need it or not. I mean, how often do you need to grate a carrot? Well, since I bought my Magimix 4200
 I have been going processing mad. I have grated carrots, thinly sliced potatoes for making pommes boulangere, juiced oranges, mixed cakes, kneaded some dough and minced some beef to make burgers. I opted for the 4200 rather than the 4200 XL as I thought I am never likely to need an extra large feeder tube, and everything else is pretty much the same. So it obviously works well! It looks good as well, it has those classic clean lines that one could associate with an iPod! It is the sort of thing that won't look dated in 10 years time, which is good as the motor is gauranteed for 12 years! The look of it has a practical purpose too, it is very easy to wipe off. When running, the motor is pretty quiet, and certainly quieter than my old blender I used to use before I got this. There are tons of attachments with it - Regular blade Dough hook Whisk 2 slicing/ grating blades of different thicknesses Midi sized bowl Mini sized bowl with mini blade Orange juicing attachment And a storage box to keep them all neatly in as well, which is a nice feature. It means no chance of slicing your finger off on the blade whilst rummaging in the kitchen drawer for something else. There are some bad points about it - the handle feels a bit flimsy and I can't see it lasting the full 12 years that the motor will, and the orange jucer is a bit tricky to clean out, but all in all I am really pleased with it and I will continue to process away! At least until the novelty wears off. As I continue with my processing adventures, I will post what I have made so you can get an idea of just how amazing it is! I will tag all the posts with Magimix 4200 so just click on the link to see all the other magimix related posts! As part of my birthday celebrations, on Sunday 22 June 2008 my girlfriend (now fiancée) and I went to Launceston Place for Sunday lunch. After we went I read this review by AA Gill at The Times, we saw some similarities to what he said but he didn't rate it as highly as us. Maybe we are not so experienced at being foodies, or maybe he went on a bad day. We thought it was pretty good. We had booked the table for 3 pm, but at 2.45 we got a call from the restaurant asking where we were. We were just outside at the time, having just arrived. Anyway, we went in and found the restaurant closed at 3 pm so expected to be rushed through the meal so they could shut up quickly. I am not sure why the booking was taken for the closing time, but in any case we didn't feel rushed at all. The service is quintessentially French, all the waiters are French and wearing black and whites. The décor is modern and fairly stylish, although quite dark. The paintings are a bit hotel style, so I would agree with Gill on that!
 We got some nice bread to start with, and then a "pre-starter" which was home made crisps with a cheese dip. Posh crisps and dips, but still that was all it was - crisp and a dip. For the starters, my lady had nettle soup, which was served at the table from a tiny copper saucepan, and poured over the bread and cheese. There were some weeds or other under the bread, but we liked it. I had the pork rillet (yes I did eat a lot of pork this weekend) which was very nice and light, and a rather large portion too. An unusual selection of leaves and flowers were served with it, and what tasted like bits of sweet pickled onions. As it was Sunday, we opted for the roast dinner. I had pork, below, and she had beef, next picture down. The pork came with apple sauce and crackling, very traditional, and great crackling. Just the right amount of crunch. The beef came with horseradish cream and both meals came with Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes and vegetables.I found my pork to be cooked to perfection, but very salty. A little oversalted in my opinion. My measure of Yorkshire pudding quality is to compare against my girlfriends mums as hers as the best I have ever had. The Launceston Place Yorkies were about 7 out of a maximum 10, a bit too crispy but otherwise not bad.  The roast beef was absolutely gorgeous, really tender, melt in your mouth texture. Still pink in the middle, just how I like it. Now look at these beautiful roast potatoes, golden brown on the outside, lovely and crispy, soft and fluffy on the inside. Perfection!  A nice bowl of vegetables to share...roasted parsnip and broccoli. Now the "pre-dessert" - quite a surprise this one. Served in a silver egg cup with a silver spoon, a hollowed out egg shell, filled with cold set toffee cream custard with crunchy toffee bits and a toffee stick to dip in it, like a boiled egg with soldiers. The novelty value of this was matched by the flavour of it, really good fun to eat. I didn't order it, but I really liked it! Now the main course of dessert - my girlfriend had rhubarb and ginger crumble with custard cream. I had a toffee ice cream sundae, I might have opted for something different if I knew I was getting the toffee cream egg, but it was still well received. The ice cream was very light but creamy at the same time. A good finish to a good meal. I don't know what you are talking about Gill!
I already posted a little bit about my visit to the Taste Festival on 21 June 2008, but have finally found the time to write about what we ate whilst we were there. This blog was supposed to be a blog of my recipes, but now it seems to be turning more and more into any kind of food experience! Still, its all good and fuels my love of food. As I said earlier, the Taste Festival was a chance for chefs from all around London to showcase their food, and for foodies (like me) to taste it all. Each resturarant had three dishes on offer, and there were about 40 restaurants in total. My girlfriend and I sampled about nine different dishes in total. We could have stayed and had more, but unfortunately we ran out of time, stomach space and money.
The first thing I tried was from Trinity, in Clapham. They are AA restaurant of the year for 2007 and 2008 and you can read more about it on the website. The dish I ate was "Pigs trotters with crackling on pain poilane with sauce gribiche" and as you can see there is also some green puree which I think was pea. I had never eaten pigs trotters before, and it was delicious. The only way I can describe it is as the essence of pig concentrated. Very tasty.  The next stand we called on was Fortnum & Mason, and I am sure most people will have heard of them before. The delight you can see below is twice baked goats cheese souffle with fig and onion marmalade. This was my girlfriends choice, she is crazy about goats cheese in any shape or form, and unsurprisingly she loved this dish. I had a little nibble, and I thought the onion marmalade was top notch.  Now this is a proper posh meal, as served on the Orient Express. It was a lamb nicoise salad, a bit of a twist on the classic tuna nicoise I think. The lamb was loin of Farmer Sharps Herdwick lamb, and then served with beans, olives, sun dried tomatoes, quails eggs (just like normal hens eggs but smaller if you ask me), mint, olives, and I think the purple things are some kind of rare breed of potato. I am a big fan of lamb, it is my favourite meat ever - so juicy and flavourful.  Next stop on the foodie tour around Regents Park was the stand from Broad Stripe Butchers. The only reason we stopped there was to enter a competition for a top chef to come and cook for you and eight friends at home, but then we were given a free sample of the sausages in a cute mini hot dog bun, complete with mustard and a flag as well. A good example of a tasty sausage! Worth buying if you ever find them in a shop near you. I believe they do mail order meat as well.  Now onto the pies - this one is from Bumpkin, a sort of old fashioned traditional country style food. This pie was packed with chicken, leek and bacon in a very creamy sauce. Just the right amount of puff pastry on the top, and no pastry sides balanced it out very well.  This next dish was probably my favourite of the whole day, just because of the novelty of its presentation, and because it was so tasty and unusual. As you can see, it looks very much like a Mr Whippy ice cream cone, so much so that I was tucking into it and a girl asked me where I got it from, thinking it was ice cream. As she was a Muslim, I was a little embarassed to tell her it was roast middle pork risotto topped with creamy apple sauce and some pork crackling, from Launceston Place. It was delicious, the apple sauce, despite its appearance, was not too sweet, and went very well with the creamy risotto beneath it. The crackling was not as good as that which came with the pigs trotters, but did make the dish look like a 99 ice cream.  Also from Launceston Place, due to their "Buy One, Get One Free" offer was smoked salmon with watercress. Nothing too amazing about this one you may think, but it was smoked right in front of me before serving. The dish below came with a lid on, and just before it was served, some wood chip smoke was puffed into the tub before it was sealed again. This gave the fresh salmon a very rich smokiness, both in flavour and even more so in the aroma. The food from Launceston Place was excellent, and I spoke to the chef as we were planning on going there the following day for Sunday lunch, he said he was not working in the restaurant as he was at the festival, but his sous chef would look after us well. Nearly at the end of the Taste journey now, we got a taste of India from Cafe Spice Namaste in the form of Xacutti de cabrito - Andrew Sharps' renaissance herdwick mutton curry made using twenty two ingredients and served with pilao rice. Apparently this is the worlds most complicated curry, as it has so many ingredients, but it did not taste complicated, all the flavours were well balanced and the mutton was incredibly tender too. I suppose you could not really pick out the individual spice flavours, but that for me was the good thing about this dish - it was such a good balance of flavours.  I had read about this last dish in the Metro paper the day before we went to the festival, so I wanted to try it. The staff of the paper had some of the chefs from the festival in their staff canteen cooking up some food for them, and this dish by Aldo Zilli sold out the quickest. It was a lobster ravioli with shellfish cream sauce. A great dish to finish the day with, and I can see why it sold out so quickly, filling, comforting, warm and tasty Italian food.  So that is all my tastes from the taste festival. You may be thinking, what about the sweet things?! Well, I am not so bothered about puddings but my lady did try some chocolate brownies and some ice cream from a couple of places, and I obviously had a little bite. But I forgot to take any pictures of it! I think I mentioned in an earlier post that for me, the Taste of London festival was a very pork orientated event. So, here is some more pork....
We walked past the "Simply Sausages" stand, on the sniff for free samples. There were none to be had just yet, but were told there was to be a demo of sausage making soon, and then tasters. So we hung around for a bit longer to wait to see the sausage making in action. Simply Sausages are a premium and traditional sausage making company, made with only natural, fresh, proper ingredients - no fillers, flavourings, preservatives or any other rubbish. The company is run by a chap called Martin Heap, who as well as being the founder of the company is also Executive Chef and a self styled sausage guru. He started the company in 1981 from a London market stall at Smithfields Meat Market and it has grown from there, and the sausages are now popular in Morrissons and Waitrose. It was actually Martin who was making the sausages for us today, so we felt quite privileged! The sausages he made for us were pork, apple and acacia honey, and you can see the ingredients all laid out below. There is pork, with just the right amount of fat and meat for a juicy sausage, apple (dried so it does not go brown), herbs, amongst the main ingredients.  The pork has now been minced to sausage meat consistency... Mixed together with all the other ingredients (this was all done in a Blue Peter, here's one I made earlier style)... Now here is the sausage filling machine. The filling is stuffed into the chamber here, where Martin's hand is. Now twist the lid onto the filling machine, and he takes a sausage tube (intestine I believe) and threads it onto the machine, ready to be filled with sausage meat.   The machine that was in use at the Taste festival was foot pump operated, so he is gently pumping the machine, which forces the pork out from the nozzle, into the sausage tube, and then gently pull the tube away from the machine. Now it is starting to look more banger like...  Now the end is knotted off.
According to an email I receive after the event, the Simply Sausages team, sold and sampled nearly 25,000 sausages Taste of London festival over the weekend, Britain's most prestigious food event. They were inundated with sausage lovers, desperate to buy the sausages and as a result sold out every single day! The proof of the sausage is, as they say, in the eating! And we got to try these as well. Not the actual ones prepared in the pictures, as someone was frying them in the background whilst Martin Heap did his demo. The smell of the frying was rather mouthwatering, and we were desperate for a taste. The pork and apple sausages were delicious, and the hint of cinnamon really went well. They were nice fat sausages, and juicy too. Of course, some people are not into fruity sausages and so there are also other more meat based ones as well. The Smithfields No 1 with nutmeg might be a better one for pure meat lovers!
 As part of my birthday celebrations, my girlfriend had bought me tickets to the Taste of London festival, which luckily fell on the weekend just after my birthday.
It was a really good day out, the clouds looked threatening the whole day but it stayed dry for us. We went for the Saturday afternoon session, form noon till 4 pm and there were over 8000 people there sampling food from about 40 of London's top restaurants.  We tried food from a whole host of top chefs, from restaurants like Bumpkin, Cafe Spice Namaste, Fortnum & Mason, Launceston Place (and this was a good introduction to the following day when we went there for lunch - more to come on that later), Orient Express and Trinity. I took loads of pictures, so will tell a bit more about each of the places in a later post. Apart from the top restaurants, there were all kinds of other stalls going on, most of them offering free samples and tasters. The first thing we did when we got there though was went to a free wine tasting introduction, just a very quick 10 minute intro to tasting wine and matching the flavour of the wine with the foods. We were given a glass of red, then white, and shown how to swirl the wine around the glass, and look at the legs to see how much alcohol and sugar are in there. Then take a sniff, and try and detect the different flavours. I have been on a wine tasting course before, but I don't think my nose is yet fully attuned to it... when the somellier told us what he could smell, it clicked and I thought "O yes, I can smell that", but apart from that just general fruity smell is what I can detect. Berries, vanilla and a bit of oak in the red, citrus scents in the white. But then when the guy said there were, for example, hints of melon in there, it starts to make sense. Anyway, that was quite a good start to the day. Amongst the other free stuff was some chocolate, a favourite of my girlfriend. It was from a chocolate company called New Tree, and it was a new one on me. They had some really unusual flavours, like the "Tranquillity" lavender chocolate. This is a flavour I would normally associate with old ladies, but it worked pretty well. Then there was apricot, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and the rather racily named "Sexy" which was made with dark chocolate and ginger.  We went on and bought a beer then, Chang, which is a Thai beer and came with complimentary Thai snacks - as you can see here, some spring rolls and fish cakes. A nice little nibble whilst walking around the show. There were all kinds of things to look at whilst walking around, including a garden laid on by Rocket Gardens of Cornwall (my home land so I have to give them a plug). Now I will admit I found the guy running the stall, who turned out to be the owner of the company, a bit sarcastic and annoying but still he had a good concept and I recommend you check it out. Sorry, I forgot to take any pictures. But I did get a shot of this lovely ice statue - advertising some beer or other, I forget which one now!  And another nice picture, a spit roasting pig. Pork seemed to be the order of the day for me, and I think I had about four or five different pork based dishes! I don't normally eat much meat, and even less pork, so this was a bit of a change, and quite a tasty one too.  Throughout the day there were various chef's performing in the Taste Theatre, which as you can see below is a bit like a TV cookery program but you get to be in the audience. We managed to catch Gary Rhodes, who seems to think he is very good looking I must say, and kept making bad jokes about how young and good looking he is. Anyway, he did make some quite nice recipes in half an hour - a smoked duck and orange salad, and then then a fish dish - I think it was pollock! Unfortunately no tasters with this though, I don't think he made enough for everyone. All in all a really good day, it was a shame that it only lasted for 4 hours since we could have stayed there longer and felt somewhat rushed to go round it all. I guess though that if we had stayed much longer, we would have eaten and eaten until we could eat no more. I still have more to post on this, including some sausage making, a bit more about all the food we tried, and some new oil which I discovered there!  Last week was my birthday (19th June for anyone who wants to get me a present and card next year) and my lovely girlfriend baked me a cake. As you can see, it is quite a work of art. It was a marbled cake, made from chocolate and banana, in the picture below you can see the marbled effect. Then filled with jam, iced with lots of chocolate icing, some marshmallows, and those lovely shiny silver ball things that you can actually eat (although they are a bit tough on the teeth).  The cake was really light and tasty, and I was very lucky to have it baked for me, and have happy birthday sung as well. We just had the last slice today. In the evening of my birthday, we went for a meal at Zizi's near by. I am in principle against chain restaurants, as it homogenises every town and there is nowadays very little variety, although I often find myself eating at them. I am not sure what sort of people want to have the same meal every place they go, but it is not me. Actually, I know my girlfriend does like it as she can get a goats cheese calzone all the time. The food was actually quite good, traditional Italian style cooking. The service, on the other hand, was diabolical. It started off well, with about half a dozen different waiters trying to take our drinks order, and it went down hill from there. When we were actually ready to order, we could not get the attention of anyone for love nor money. We finally ordered, but then we waited ages for the starters to arrive. They were pretty good I must say, despite the wait. Onto the mains, and this is where the real delays started. It must have taken over half an hour for them to eventually bring out the wrong meal for me, and it took some prompting from us to even get this. Never mind, we had some free drinks given to us anyway. I sent the main course back, I asked for chicken ravioli, not mushroom, so chicken is what I wanted to eat. They took my lady friends back as well, to keep warm. Lucky they did, as the promised "2 minutes" was another 30 minutes or more. Still, we got more wine in the interim, and the ravioli was pretty good when it actually arrived. And to keep us happy, we only got charged for the starters and the first drinks, so it worked out a very cheap night out. I have no idea why the service was quite so bad, but it was terrible! It was fairly busy for a Thursday night, and there were 3 other birthday parties in, but that is no excuse! Anyway, I am sure we will end up going back there again, as the food was tasty, but not for a while. I am aware that this blog is not so much about recipes any more and more about food in general. In keeping with that, I have got some more foodie type posts coming up from a birthday weekend spent in London. To whet your appetite, I will be posting about the Taste Festival, sausage making, tapas, hotel breakfasts, and finally a dinner at the rather posh Kensington restaurant Launceston Place. Hopefully I will get those done this week, if I manage to find the time! A sweet potato omelette is a nice alternative to Spanish tortilla omelette and is very easy to make. Take one sweet potato, peel and chop up into small cubes. Heat some oil in a large non stick frying pan, then add the sweet potato. Fry for about 5-10 minutes.  Now add in a chopped onion, clove of garlic and chilli, and fry for a further 5 minutes or so, until the potato is soft and the onions are translucent. Beat 3 large eggs together, and now make sure the pan is very hot. Pour the eggs into the pan, then reduce the heat down very low. Why is this? To seal the eggs, you need the pan hot, but you don't want to burn the bottom of them, so reduce the heat to low to slowly cook through to the middle. Now the egg will start to cook, gently push a spatula around the edges just to tease the egg away from the pan. When it is fairly solid, but still a bit runny at the top, remove from the heat. Grate some cheese on top, and season with plenty of salt and pepper. Now, finish off under a hot grill until the egg is cooked solid and the cheese is all melted and bubbling. Serve it up straight away and enjoy!  And on the subject of sweet potato, I thought this was an interesting read...
|
  |
contact |
All rss from this site
Print this article
Webmasters ! Get this feed on your site
