Tag: wild mushrooms

Posted on

Time for chicken and wild mushrooms

I was in London and staying at The Fox and Goose close to Hangar Lane. The restaurant is in the older part of the hotel, as the hotel part is now a new build at the back.  The menu changes every so often, and they always seem to have a range of choices, that means it can be difficult to choose what to have.

I generally don’t choose the chicken when ordering from a menu. Usually as it something I can cook easily at home. When out and about I like to order stuff I don’t, wouldn’t, or couldn’t cook at home. However when I read corn-fed chicken supreme with truffle mash, wild mushroom sauce & crispy kale, I was like, well that’s what I am having. The idea of wild mushrooms sounds nice, and the truffle mash sounded delicious. So, it was pretty much a no-brainer to order the dish.

It looked great when it arrived.

corn-fed chicken supreme with truffle mash, wild mushroom sauce & crispy kale

The chicken was perfectly cooked, it was nicely seasoned, tender and moist and had a crispy skin. The wild mushroom sauce was excellent, creamy, nice mushrooms, and a tasty sauce. The truffle mash needed a lot more truffle but was smooth and creamy. The kale added much needed colour and texture to the dish.

I really enjoyed the dish, it was well balanced, cooked well, and delicious. This is something I would order again if I had the chance.

Posted on

Truffle & Pancetta Carbonara

Kings College Chapel

I was over in Cambridge doing some work stuff and was looking for a place for lunch. I had another voucher for free main course at Zizzi, having used one recently in Bristol on a rustica pizza.

There are two branches of Zizzi in Cambridge, one on Regent Street, next to Parker’s Piece, the other on Bene’t Street. The Bene’t Street branch use to be a bank, and before that (as in before 1917) a wine merchants. It’s an impressive building with lovely ceilings and decorative walls.

I was given a warm welcome and allowed to choose a table. I looked over the menu and decided that I would have something different to pizza. In the end I chose the  Fresh Creste di Gallo pasta with wild mushrooms in a rich pancetta, pecorino & truffle-infused carbonara sauce. I have a thing for wild mushrooms and I do like fresh pasta. I checked that my voucher was valid, having had an issue with my previous experience. All was fine and dandy. No problems there then. Placed my order and waited for my food.

I wasn’t that impressed with the look of the dish, but then again it was fundamentally past in a carbonara sauce.

I did enjoy the pasta dish, but felt it lacked the depth of flavour of mushrooms and truffle I was expecting.

Overall a really pleasant place to eat, good service and nice food.

Posted on

Missing my Wild Mushrooms

mushrooms
Photo by Sweetyoga Justine on Unsplash

Back in the day, my local Tesco use to sell wild mushrooms.

Since the lockdown in March 2020, they’ve obviously had trouble getting them in, and have stopped selling them.

On a visit to Oxford earlier in the year, there was a stall in the covered market which was selling wild mushrooms, however I was just passing through on my way to London, so didn’t have the option of getting any.

Locally I have tried a few places, such as farmers’ markets, farm shops, but not really seen the kinds of mushrooms I use to be able to buy from Tesco.

Posted on

Enjoyed that pizza

I was fancying pizza for lunch so I headed to Franco Manca. I have had pizza from here before, but have not written about it.

I went with their £10 lunch deal of a pizza and a soft drink.

You can choose from five pizzas and I went with the sourdough pizza with roasted cured ham, mozzarella, ricotta & wild mushrooms. The menu states that this comes with little tomato. This is more a white pizza.

The place wasn’t busy, so my pizza arrived very quickly.

It was a really nice pizza, I liked the mushrooms. It was a much better pizza than on my previous visit, but that time I had also enjoyed the pizza.

Service was excellent and friendly.

Posted on

Wild Mushrooms

I was staying up in Manchester. I was staying at the Macdonald Manchester Hotel. I had stayed at the hotel before in 2015, though back then I didn’t have dinner in the hotel. This time I was eating in the hotel.

After enjoying my Barnsley Chop, this time I went with the Wild Mushroom dish.

This was described on the menu as assorted wild mushrooms, asparagus, white truffle oil, port wine cream, mini fondants, puff pastry and tenderstem broccoli.

This dish had huge potential to be an outstanding plate of food, alas it wasn’t.

Well, firstly, I couldn’t find any mini fondants. the puff pastry was a little flat and I did struggle to find the wild mushrooms in the dish. Having said that I did enjoy the asparagus and the tenderstem broccoli. The sauce was nice, but I did struggle to taste the truffle.

Overall I did quite enjoy the dish, but this a mediocre plate of food and I wish it could have been better.

Posted on

Conference Dining

As part of my job I will often attend events and conferences. Sometimes these will be in hotels and other times they are in dedicated conference centres. I usually have lunch, which usually defaults to some kind of buffet lunch. For some events and conferences I stay over and that means having dinner. Over the years I have had some very disappointing meals, I remember one conference dinner in Sheffield Town Hall which was really quite awful. It comprised an over-cooked chicken breast wrapped in a rasher of bacon, served with soggy tasteless vegetables. Other times I have had some outstanding food.

In September I was attending an “away day” at the Ashorne Hill Conference Centre near to Leamington Spa.

It was a lunchtime to lunchtime event, so there was dinner in the evening.

What I did like was that we could choose from a menu and so we didn’t all need to have the same food.

For my start I chose the crispy chilli beef.

crispy chilli beef

Well this was disappointing as it wasn’t crispy chilli beef, well not like other times I have eaten crispy chilli beef. It was rather chewy and the sauce didn’t really work and certainly could have had more chilli.

For my main I went with the chicken, something I wouldn’t usually choose, but it was served on a bed of wild mushrooms.

chicken

The chicken was tender, moist and full of flavour.

For dessert I went with cheese and biscuits.

cheese and biscuits

This was a nice selection of cheese, nice chutney and a selection of biscuits and bread.

Overall it was a meal I enjoyed, but certainly not one of the best conference dinners I have had.