Have had lots of great food and parties this year, so just going to quickly blog those.
Back in February, we celebrated Valentine’s Day by going to Royal Hospital Road aka Gordon Ramsay’s. This had to be the best eating experience ever-now that might seem like an overstatement, but the whole thing from start to finish was just amazing.
The service was impeccable, we were made to feel welcome and not like we shouldn’t be there, which some top class restaurants can be like. After much deliberation over the menu and the phone directory sized wine list, we made our choices and waited for the delicious food to arrive.
The appearance of the food just blew us away and each plate of food looked like a picture; in fact it was a shame to eat the food!!! My apple parfait dessert was presented on a plate layered with thinly sliced overlapping apple. But as expected each mouthful was mind blowing and we savoured every last crumb from the amuse-bouches to the petit fours. In my usual fashion, I couldn’t help but look at what other people were having, and I wondered what the silver container with dried ice was, we discovered that this contained the white chocolate covered strawberry ice cream petit fours that were melt in the mouth! The chocolate mints were presented looking like something out of Willy Wonka, a silver tree type ornament with edible ‘balls.’ I would recommend eating here to everyone who loves their food and enjoying the whole experience, we are already planning when we can next go! (maybe for a big birthday but thats a few years away!)
Entertaining wise this year, have had an 80s themed dinner party- it originally had this theme as we were doing a murder mystery night with it (we had fun last year with an Italian themed one!) but at the last minute, we had to drop the murder mystery element. I had already prepared the food so we had the dinner party anyway.
We had retro parma ham and melon to start, followed by steak and saute potatoes (another of my signature dishes inspired by Queen Nigella, Vodka Marinated Steak-exactly what it sounds like-steak marinated in a mix of vodka, herbs and lots of garlic!) and dessert was profiteroles-my first attempt at choux pastry. Or should that be my 2nd attempt as in the morning, I had tried a James Martin recipe, but they came out of the oven looking like biscuits! So I went back to my trusted friend Nigella and used her recipe; this gave me more successful looking profiteroles but I think I got the sizes wrong, some of them looked like tennis balls!!! Anyway I tried to fill them with cream but it looked like a cream explosion in my kitchen!! I carried on regardless and then went to serve them the ‘cheffy’ way by putting chocolate sauce in a squeezy bottle to delicately squeeze over the top of it! But it was not meant to be as the first go resulted in a large plop of chocolate sauce all over the plate! Never mind, I thought as I heard Dave Lamb’s voice in my head “whoops, now look what she’s done!” So I tried again for it to happen again!! “can you believe she’s done it again?” So I gave up with the bottle and dipped each profiterole in the plate of spilt sauce!!! They may not have looked as I wanted them to, but they tasted good and guests wanted seconds!
The other food related gathering we have had this year has been my husband’s birthday afternoon tea. We laid on a lovely spread (0ne of our guest’s comments!) with a variety of sandwiches and bridge rolls-salt beef and mustard, chicken mayo, prawn, smoked salmon, egg mayo; a lemon loaf that I had to turn upside down to pour the lemonny syrup over as the loaf had risen more than anticipated in the oven and hit the top so got stuck and had to be pulled out from the oven!; scones-sweet and savoury-I expected these to rise and they didn’t, hadn’t made them thick enough so they were more like biscuits but with lashings of cream and jam, it didn’t matter; the extra cheesey scones again were more like biscuits but were yummy and went very quickly! Something on the table that I didn’t make but went down well was the Bakewell tart actually from Bakewell, as we had just returned from a break in the Peak District. I preferred the Bakewell pudding when we tried it in the Original Bakewell Pudding Shop, was less almondy which is why I don’t like Bakewell tart!
Talking of the Peak District, we ate in an excellent restaurant for hubby’s birthday. A modern English restaurant called Stones in Matlock provided us with some delicious tapa style food. We started with simple appetizers of olives, sun dried tomatoes with parmesan and pesto and breads with flavoured dipping oils; it may have been the alfresco eating but the flavours of the food was sublime, there may have only been a few ingredients, but they were top quality and we savoured every last mouthful of salty basil oil from the tomatoes, fighting each other over who was going to mop it up with the bread!
Moving inside due to the British summer, a selection of dishes were presented on slate tiles. To begin with portions didn’t look big and we were wondering if we had ordered enough. However the food was rich and filling and we definitely did not need to order anymore! We had lamb, sardines with a chunky tomato salsa on rye bread, scallops with cauliflower puree, ham hock casserole and butternut squash risottor-very creamy and almost like scrambled eggs.
A yummy pudding of warm Bakewell tart for hubby and creme brulee for me were done well.
The whole evening was a delight and they had an excellent Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc (my fave wine of the moment!) which the birthday boy enjoyed immensely!
Summer always ends up being a food fest for me as I eat out more in the holidays. The last week of my hols was spent enjoying a few days in Torquay, Devon. Have been going there every year for nearly 10 years and after eating in some truly terrible places (think some of the places are stuck in a 70s time warp), my best friend and I have got the choosing of a good restaurant down to a fine art!
Our favourite is The Orange Tree. Just reading the menu has me dribbling!!! And I can never choose what I want. Some years we have gone twice in one week just so we can at least try to try everything!!! This year was no exception and I tucked into a white onion soup with blue cheese duxelles; now wasn’t sure what they were, thought they might be some form of crouton as you would have with French Onion Soup; they were actually choux pastry balls filled with a delicate blue cheese that complemented the soup perfectly. To follow, hailbut gratineed with mussels and the Orange Tree signature mash-every time we go, it’s slightly different, I was chuffed the year it was Parmesan mash as my best friend hates cheese and I got it all! This year was wholegrain, which was yummy. Pud to follow was a mango and lime cheesecake, just the right level of tartiness, not sure it needed the huge dollop of chocolate ganache on the top but then I am not a big chocolatey dessert person. My best friend tried her first ever creme brulee and loved it, however she now worries no brulee will ever compare! Before we left feeling stuffed and satisfied, I managed to eat the plate of petit fours-homemade chocolate fudges and coconut macaroons! The Orange Tree has got to be up there as one of my all time favourite restaurants, just such a shame it is hundreds of miles away!
The next night in Torquay we had another great meal with even better mash-I did not think any mash could surpass TOT’s mash but the No7 Fish Restaurant did with it’s herby speckled creamy mounds! This was the side dish to go with my grilled brill with scallops-my first try of brill, found it to be very like cod and I would eat it again, it was a good alternative.
At the beginning of the hols, we had gone to Brighton to celebrate our second wedding anniversary. We planned to end up on the beach for evening fish and chips so wandered around the lanes and town to look for somewhere nice for lunch. After the realisation that our original ice cream shop-Marble Ice was no longer there, we were feeling down and couldn’t seem to find anywhere that wasn’t too fish orientated (not easy by the sea!) We walked down a side street and saw a huddle of people outside a restaurant- we then realised that it was Jamie’s Italian. We decided to join the huddle as I remembered reading that you couldn’t book there, it wasn’t even open yet! We waited for 5 mins or so and then were let in and shown to a table. A feast for the eyes, there was lots to take in and look at, including open kitchens and Jamie’s books on shelves! (as I own most of them wasn’t that bothered at looking at them!) The service was extremely attentive at the beginning of the meal, not so much towards the end but by this point they were packed with students and parents fresh from graduation! Our food was typically Jamie Oliver, fresh flavours and well executed and thought out and we throughly enjoyed it, my highlight being the mushroom and italian smoked cheese starter.
After a few weekends with a poorly hubby, I decided to do the Jewish housewife thing and make him some Chicken Soup to cheer him up. I have made chicken soup before but the more as a way to use up leftovers and according to hubby it was never quite the same as what he was used to. So after seeing it in the new Jamie’s America book, decided to give it a go.
