food, reviews and of course coffee
My book choice this week is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s excellent River Cottage Meat Book.
Certainly if you are looking for a meat book which covers why you should be ethical about buying and cooking meat, then this is the book for you.
Buy the book from Amazon.co.uk
I do find it interesting that the US version of the book
Do we not like to see raw meat in the UK high street?
This is my version of the classic Beef Wellington.
I used sirloin steak, which I cooked in a pan until it was cooked medium rare. You can of course cook the steak how you prefer it. Ensure it is cooked to a point before you would call it perfect, as it will cook more in the oven.
I then cut the steak into portions, about two inches square.
The steak was then spread with a mixture of chopped mushrooms and mustard. I used French whole grain mustard.
Using some puff pastry (and I will admit I do buy ready made puff pastry as I have no idea on how to make it).
I cut out some circles, about four inches in diameter. Placed one circle on the baking tray, added the steak. Using beaten egg and a pastry brush I brushed egg around the edges of the circle and placed a second circle of puff pastry on top. This top puff pastry circle was then brushed with beaten egg.
The parcels were then baked in an oven for about ten to fifteen minutes until golden brown.
I served mine with a mix of salads.
Sometimes you wonder why the catering establishments in various tourist attractions act surprised when they get busy…
Today at Bristol Zoo Gardens when buying lunch, the catering team seemed surprised that a lot of people were visiting the zoo.
It’s August!
It’s the school holidays!
It was a sunny day!
What do you expect?
I also think that it is very cheeky to serve okay or ever poor quality food at expensive prices – service stations on the motorway have the same philosophy.
Today I ordered a pizza meal deal and though it was still quite early they had run out of garlic bread! So that I had to wait for.
The pizza was freshly baked, though for my liking too much tomato sauce and not cooked long enough.
Coleslaw was okay, but having made my own I didn’t think too much of it, but it was much much better that coleslaw from other places.
Generally I think it is to be recommended to take a picnic, rather than rely on the catering at the zoo. True you have to contend with the wasps, but the food will probably be nicer.
I do wonder if there are decent places to eat at visitor attractions?
John Lewis, the retail chain, has been at Cribbs Causeway in Bristol for ten years now.
Their restaurant at the top of the store has always been one of the better places to eat at the shopping mall, away from the KFC and Burger Kings.
True their original outside eating area was rather windswept, but at least the majority of the hot food was cooked to order, the salads were fresh, the cakes scrummy and the service was pretty good too (when it wasn’t too busy).
Over the last few months, John Lewis has revamped their eating places, making their top floor restaurant larger and by adding an espresso bar in the basement.
The espresso bar is rather nice and cosy and despite no windows did not feel claustrophobic.
The coffee was good, the tea was good, the scone was good and the service was excellent. It was even reasonably priced as well.
I was very pleased and will go there again.
BBC reports on the restaurant which is breaking the law by selling Polish beer in litres.
A restaurant owner has described laws which ban him from serving beer by the litre as “barmy” after he was threatened with court action.
Nic Davison was served an infringement notice by trading standards officers for selling beer illegally.
Mr Davison, who owns the Kuchnia Polska restaurant in Doncaster, was told to change his glasses within 28 days or face a court hearing and a £2,000 fine.
The 1988 Weights and Measures Act says draught beer must be sold in pints.
Photo source.
Found a couple of nice squid risotto recipes on the BBC Food website.
Squid ink risotto with chargrilled marinated squid by James Martin
Squid risotto by Nick Nairn
Going to try them out, will let you know how I get on.
So there you are, a famous chef, Antony Worrall Thompson, writing in a magazine distributed all over the UK. You are talking about salads and you recommend the weed henbane, to be “great in salads”.
All well and good you might think.
Okay let’s just check the definition of henbane.
A coarse and poisonous plant of the nightshade family, with sticky hair leaves and an unpleasant smell.
Sorry.
Poisonous?
Nightshade (as in deadly nightshare)?
Unpleasant smell?
Methinks that Antony Worrall Thompson may have made a mistake!
From the BBC
In a magazine interview about watercress and other wild foods, Mr Worrall Thompson said the weed henbane was “great in salads”.
Healthy & Organic Living magazine’s website has now issued an urgent warning that “henbane is a very toxic plant and should never be eaten”.
The chef had meant to recommend fat hen, which is a wild herb.
I quite like eating tiger prawns.
However after reading this (slightly old) article in the Guardian, now I am not so sure…
The article starts on a positive note…
Something happened to prawns in the 1990s. Like the girths of western gourmands discovering fusion food, they started to grow and grow. Once a mere shrimp of a thing, a fiddly heap of shell for every tiny mouthful, the prawn miraculously turned into a great tiger, an effortless bite as good as lobster but at half the price.
Evidence of this startling evolution is everywhere. Prawns feature prominently on bar menus and in top restaurants. Thai spiced prawns have even infiltrated Delia’s Summer Collection cookbook. Healthy and fashionably south-east Asian, but not too exotic or rare any more, they have flown into our lives from apparently teeming tropical seas where everything grows bigger and better.
But then issues the following warning!
The price of providing an everyday luxury for consumers in industrialised countries has been a catalogue of damaging consequences in developing nations. Serious environmental degradation, disease, pollution, debt and dispossession, illegal land seizures, abuse of child labour and violence have afflicted the dozen or so countries entering the market. Western diners, meanwhile, are eating a food dependent on the heavy use of antibiotics and growth hormones.
Hmmm, may now need to reconsider what prawns I buy and eat – difficult to do when eating out!
BBC reports on the world’s biggest sandwich.
Mexican caterers have made what they say is the longest sandwich in Latin America, throwing together a 44-metre (48-yard) “torta” in five minutes.
Dozens of people from sandwich outlets in Mexico City came together to produce the monster baguette at the start of a three-day torta fair in the capital.
Each section of the 600kg (1,320lb) sandwich had a different flavour and 30 ingredients went into the mix.
In theory the Theory Cafe, part of the at-Bristol complex should be the perfect place for families visiting at-Bristol, however that theory is flawed on a few levels.
The Theory Cafe does have a kids menu, which for a city centre location and at a location for a family day out, are reasonable priced at £3.95 – the macaroni was only £2.95. The food is not just kiddes food and comes served with salad.
However first flaw, no high chairs!
If you are a toddler, sitting on a proper chair and eating dinner is not an option. Sitting on a sofa is fun, but pity the poor customers who have to sit on the sofa after the toddler has gone!
China plates are nice to eat off, less nice when they fall on the floor and smash – not that happened to me, but it is possible.
Final big flaw is, yes we sell food for children, but we don’t sell drinks for children!
The Theory Cafe is a nice environment, and a huge improvement over the Nescafe cafe it replaced. The food is good and not processed. However it needs to do a few more things to make it a place to take the family.