food, reviews and of course coffee
I recently had duck at a hotel restaurant.
Slightly overcooked and slice, it was served on a bed or oriental vegetables in a overpowering and salty oyster sauce. Bizarrely it was served with deep fried potato balls rather than rice, which would have been my preference.
I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would.
So do you fancy a continental breakfast?
There is something very nice about a proper freshly baked croissant in the morning with coffee.
I have enjoyed many dishes from Marks and Spencer’s The Cook Menu range. The Chicken Roulade with pork, caramelised shallot and sage stuffing with herb butter was something that sounded very tasty.
The end result was in fact quite tasty.
However at five pounds I am less sure about the value for money.
A simple but delicious recipe for steak. In this case I used rump steak, but generally I now prefer ribeye.
I seasoned the steak with crushed peppercorns.
I took a heavy based frying pan and placed it on the heat. I put in a splash of olive oil and once this was hot placed the steak in the pan.
Cook the steak to your liking, I cooked mine to medium.
Once the steak is cooked, remove to a warm plate and let it rest.
Add the mushrooms to the frying pan and cook on a high heat. After cooking the mushrooms, remove and then remove the pan from the heat and then add some creme frache or cream.
I sliced (carved) my steak and then added the sauce and mushrooms.
I really found this blog article on taking photographs of food and the importance of lighting interesting and useful.
Lighting is the most important element of photography. After all, photography means writing with light. Yes you can buy a super expensive professional camera and lots of expensive lenses, but if you do not know how to control the light, then these are useless. Hopefully these three tips will help you understand how to control the light and make great pictures.
If you are a regular reader of this blog you know I take a lot of photographs of my cooking, and I know that these could be better. Taking on board these tips I sure hope so.
This is Bottelino’s Special Pizza.
Very nice it was too! With cheese, olives, onion, pepper, anchovies and then some…
Bottelino’s is an independent chain of Italian restaurants in Bristol and North Somerset.
They do a lunchtime special at my local branch where any pizza or pasta is just £4.95. This makes this £10.95 pizza even better value.
I do like a cooked breakfast now and again. I also like to vary what I have. I saw Traditional Hogs Pudding in my local supermarket and thought, this is similar but different.
The instructions indicate the best way to cook it is slice it and grill, which I did. It was an interesting taste and texture, reminded me of the inside of a sausage roll.
Nice for a change.
Made me smile.
Gareth Richards: “Wooden spoons are great. You can either use them to prepare food. Or, if you can’t be bothered with that, just write a number on one and walk into a pub…”
From BBC.
Too often when I have curry it looks like this!
A brown dish made of some meat with a brown curry flavoured sauce?
As though curry is a single flavour in its own right!
Supermarket curries, though not much better, at least realise that there is more than one kind of curry.
Personally I much prefer to make my own curries rather than have something like you see above.
What about you?
I have been quite impressed with the Seriously Good pasta sauces and very easy to use. Unlike other sauces I have used in the past these taste very fresh, though obviously they’re not! I used the Bolognese and Red Wine sauce in the above picture.
An authentically rich tomato Bolognese sauce which puts the rest to shame. Loaded with balsamic vinegar, red wine and thyme – it’s all you need to make a classic Spag Bol or Lasagne al Forno. Perfection.
I used it with some Casarecce pasta, finished off with some fresh parmesan.
I served it with some Jamie Oliver Italian Sausages, which I was less impressed with.