Burts Chips

Really impressed to see some new crisps (potato chips) from Burts with no added salt, but unlike other unsalted crsisps they have flavours; plain, ketchup and vinegar.

They are really nice crisps and if you are trying to keep your salt intake down a nice choice if you like crisps.

Cupcakes

Cupcakes

BBC News reports on the rise of the cupcake.

“Buttercream frosted, pink hearts and sprinkles, melt-in-your-mouth candy and violet petals.” It might be the perfect menu for an additive-enhanced children’s party, but these lavish confections are driving a sugar-coated revolution.

Not for me though…

Photo source.

Waitrose Duck with Orange Sauce

I do quite like duck and the obvious choice with duck is an orange sauce. Though I more often than not prefer to make my own sauces, sometimes you don’t have the time, sometimes you don’t have the expertise. Shop sauces can often be too sweet or usually too salty, so I don’t like to buy them. The duck with orange sauce from Waitrose though falls into the just right category, neither too sweet nor too salty.

I use to get a similar pack from Sainsbury, however they no longer stock it at my local branch (and don’t recall seeing it elsewhere either).

Having taken out the two duck breasts from the fridge, using a fork, prick the skin side of the duck breast.Duck can be quite fatty and as a result if you simply roast the duck breast it will be too fatty and greasy. So heat a frying pan, but don’t add any oil. Place the duck breasts in the pan skin side down.

Frying the duck breast in this way renders the fat out from the duck and as a result you get nice crispy skin and little fat or greasiness.

The breasts will also shrink slightly as they cook. There is technique that you can use to stop the meat curling up, but I can’t remember what it is! Something about cutting away something. If you know post a comment and let me know.

Once the skin is nice and brown, place the duck breasts skin side up in a roasting pan. Roast in the oven for about ten to twenty minutes (depending on how you like your duck).

Serve with the orange sauce.

Egg and Chips with a nice mug of tea

Egg and Chips with a nice mug of tea

Food and class. Great article from the BBC Magazine on Egg and Chips with a nice mug of tea!

For a lower-middle class boy from Liverpool, a plate of egg and chips at five o’clock was not the done thing.

Read more.

Being middle class I would never have tea at 5pm, more likely  we would have “supper” at 7pm. For me tea was a birthday tea with cakes, biscuits, crisps and sausages on cocktail sticks. I remember being very surprised when a working class friend invited me home for tea and we didn’t have a birthday tea, but had supper!

Photo source.

Still flying high – Fat Duck retains top restaurant billing

The Fat Duck is still at the top. The BBC reports:

Television chef Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire has topped the 2010 Good Food Guide, despite a health scare earlier this year.

The restaurant scored a perfect 10 for the second year, beating Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant Chelsea.

Blumenthal is known for his use of experiments and chemistry to create his dishes.

His tasting menu always sounds interesting, not sure if I want to spend £130 on a meal, even though I expect it is worth it.

The £11,750 bottle of single malt

So would you pay £11,750 for a bottle of whisky?

Some one did.

A single bottle of whisky has sold for £11,750 at auction in Glasgow.

The 50-year-old Macallan, a bottling of three casks distilled between 1926 and 1928, sold to a private collector in California at McTear’s auctioneers.

It is the most expensive bottle sold this year and the most expensive 50-year-old bottle of Macallan ever sold.

Read more.

Dragon Fruit

Dragon Fruit, had you heard of it? I hadn’t.

Looks weird.

Dragon Fruit

Then you cut it, and it’s even more surprising.

Dragon Fruit

So what is it like?

The texture is a cross between melon and kiwi fruit.

So what does it taste like?

Not much, probably got a dud or an unripe version.

Will I get it again?

No.