Foodie Adventures in York

Hubby & I have just returned from a wonderful few days in York to celebrate our 1st Wedding Anniversary. We stayed in the plush Hotel du Vin just a short walk from the city centre. Usually Hubby and I are the self-catering kind of people, but this time decided to treat our self. We would certainly stay in a Hotel du Vin again as not only were the staff lovely, the bed was huge and comfy, the bath big enough to wallow in and the shower...well enormous!



For the first night, Tuesday, we booked The Tasting Rooms. I had been recommended this place by lots of people and we were both looking forward to it. So it was a bit of a shock when we turned up to find the restaurant closed, void of furniture and a bailiff notice plastered on the door. That night we ended up eating in the Bistro at the hotel. Thankfully Hotel du Vin is renowned for good food and wine and they certainly didn't disappoint. We both started with a beautiful pea and ham soup, I then followed it with supreme of chicken, baby spring vegetables and red wine jus whereas Hubby ate Pork cutlet, fondant potato, swede and carrot purée with a calvados sauce. All washed down with a french white wine (sorry have totally forgotten any more information about it!) that was recommended by the sommelier.




Wednesday in between visiting the minster and the museum we decided to treat ourselves to Afternoon Tea at Little Bettys on Stonegate. Little Bettys belongs to the same Bettys chain, but as it is hidden down a little street a lot of people don't realise it is there and the queues are far shorter than the bigger Bettys just around the corner. Nothing prepared us for the glories that the Waitress presented with. A huge pot of tea, ham and chicken finger sandwiches, a giant scone with clotted cream and jam, lemon madeleine, dark chocolate filled profiterole and mini summer fruit tart. It was if I had died and gone to heaven! It was all delicious and next time we're in York we'll be heading straight for Little Bettys for Afternoon Tea.



Wednesday we had booked a table at The Blue Bicycle, thankfully this restaurant turned out to be open! Given it was midweek the restaurant quickly filled up. There was a really nice atmosphere. While we waited we were served bread baked in mini terracotta pots and a whole roast garlic to smother over the freshly baked bread. For starters I had a very enjoyable Tempura mixed Vegetables (including asparagus and sweet potato) with Wasabi and a Soy & Sesame dipping sauce. Hubby ate home-cured Beef Fillet with Straw Potatoes & Horseradish dressing, he commented on how delicious the home-cured beef fillet was. It was cut very thin and had the texture of Parma ham. For mains Hubby had Grain-fed Chicken Breast stuffed with Oyster Mushrooms & wrapped in Parma Ham, with Crème Fraîche Mash & a ratatouille of Vegetables and I had Fillet of Yorkshire Beef with Fondant Potato, Beetroot Purée, Red Wine Jus & a Horseradish Crisp. My steak was cooked perfectly. No pudding as we were still full of Afternoon Tea!



On Thursday we spent the morning touring the foodie haunts of York. A little gem we discovered was The Hairy Fig. A fab little deli down Fossgate. The little shop was packed to the rafters with amazing food. We were drawn to the cheese counter where we ended up buying some peccorino, 2 year matured gouda and intriguing Katys White Lavender, a white cheese made from sheep's milk and rolled in lavender. Another great find of ours was Rafi's Spice Box, where I was able to stock up on great Asian produce, including some Bombay mix that is very different and far better than any you can buy in the supermarket. It was so good it has already all been eaten.

I love York and is the perfect place for a romantic city break.

Love Food, Hate Waste

On the 8th May a report was released highlighting that as a nation, on average we throw away 6.7 million tonnes of food every year, roughly a third of everything we buy which in turn equates to around £460 per household. I find this an incredibly frightening statistic. Over the last few months, with the ever increasing food bills I have been looking seriously at the amount of food we throw away (which thankfully, for my own conscience, has never been as much as a 1/3). I genuinely feel guilty when I throw away food.

The more experienced I'm getting with cooking the better I'm getting at planning a week of meals with minimal waste, plus rustling up a tasty meal from more or less nothing. The Love Food, Hate Waste campaign has published some great tips on how to cut down on food bills and waste.

My tips:

1) Have a well-stocked cupboard/fridge with good quality essentials like rice, pasta, flour, sugar, eggs, milk, bread, tinned tomatoes, dried lentils, cous cous, tinned beans, dried herbs, salami/chorizo, cheese, butter, tomato puree. It's amazing what meals can be knocked up with seemingly basic ingredients.

2) As much as possible try and buy all meat, fruit and veg from the butcher/greengrocer. Not only is the quality usually far better than the supermarket, which in turn means it lasts longer, but you can buy exactly what you want. No more wasteful packaging.

3) Ignore "buy on get one free" offers unless it is an item that will be eaten in the coming weeks and has a long shelf life

4) Cook from scratch. Not only is it cheaper and far healthier than ready-meals you can make things with the left overs. In our house left over veg and sometimes meat is often made into soup, but who has heard of leftover ready-meal soup...ummm that's not even worth thinking about!

5) Cook once eat twice - A great deal of the meals I cook are for 3 or 4 people although there is only 2 of us in the house. These are usually called double dinners and are designed to do us for 2 evenings or appear in our lunchbox the next day.

6) Where possible buy in season. Food bought in season is not only tastier, but lasts longer.

7) Plan your meals weekly and make at least one of those meals veggie. Before writing the list check through cupboard, fridge or freezer to see if there is anything that needs to be used up. In our house Wednesday is usually the night saved for leftovers.

I have quite a few favourite leftover recipes that I come back to time and time again.
Oven-baked Frittata
Thai Pie
Cauliflower Cheese and Bacon pie
Courgette & Feta Fritters
Mushroom & Spinach Pancake Bake
Bread & Butter Pudding
Queen of Puddings
For more recipes have a look at the Love Food, Hate Waste website where there is great ideas.

Foraging for wild garlic and snowdrops

Near our house is a beautiful wood. Not many people know about it. As the weather was so glorious today we decided we had to visit our favourite haunt and get a glimpse of the snowdrops. This woodland is also where we forage for wild garlic, sloes and blackberrys when they are in season. The snowdrops looked stunning, providing a bautiful white blanket over the currently colourless ground. I love snowdrops as they are a sign that spring is just around the corner.

As soon as we entered the wood we could smell the wild garlic, but we just couldn't see any. Not knowing if we were too early for wild garlic we carried on. All of a sudden in a clearing we spotted what we were after, the wild garlic. I'm making my thai green curry again tonight and think I may put a bit of the wild garlic in there. It is also lovely in risotto.

Happy New Year!

With the dawning of 2008 I'm also on my 100th blog entry. Looking back over the last year I can't believe how much my confidence in the kitchen has grown, I've been introduced to the wonderful world of Food Blogging and I've also tried a lot of foods I wouldn't have dreamed of a year ago. I didn't always like some of these foods, but I tried them!

Some of my favourite recipes for 2007 have been:
Guinness Brownies
Cinder Toffee
Granola
Eccles Mini Mince Pies
Cauliflower Cheese Pie

The biggest foodie event of 2007 was at our wedding (& Honeymoon) back in June. The food was stunning, so much so I was ready to burst out of my dress by the end of the day!

2008 foodie resolutions:
* To cook something with fish (I've only just started to eat fish)
* Become more of an instinctive cook
* Tick off at least one place on my "Must Eat There" list
* Keep trying new foods

Ruddy Muddy Marvelous!

We've not long returned from the highlight of all UK foodies calendar - The Good Food Show. We visited the show in Birmingham and have spent most of the day eating/drinking our way around all the stalls. Well as Hubby was driving I was doing most of the alcohol drinking! We got there at 9am and although we had to queue for 20 min on the M42 to get to the NEC we seemed to beat the crowds and this was when we got the best freebies.

There were some fantastic stalls and we did see Gordon Ramsey and Angela Hartnett ...oh and the bloke who looks after the Guinea Pigs at Jimmy's Farm! Some of my favourite stalls included:

The Really Garlicky Company - we brought some oak smoked garlic from here and hope to use it in the next couple of weeks.

Farrington Oils - I've been raving about their rapeseed oil, Mellow Yellow for a while now and today was given the opportunity to taste some of their new products coming out. Their honey and mustard dressing is delicious.

Jimmy's Farm (aka The Essex Pig Company) - We brought some Essex Beer Pork Sausage and Peppered Steak Sausage. The steak ones are currently cooking and I'll be interested to taste them. For lunch Hubby had a pork pattie from their stall and said it was delicious.

Ocean Spray - Gave some of the most generous freebies in the shape of a carton of cranberry juice and snack pack of dried cranberries.

Walkers Crisps - had one of the most entertaining stands with a bloke dressed up as a eccentric farmer shouting "Ruddy Muddy Marvelous"! Also were serving freshly cooked crisps where you could add your own flavourings. Thanks to Claire for recommending this stall.

I'm in Season - An interesting stall with accompanying website.

In amongst all these gems there was some truly awful tasting products. The worst included a fortified wine with chocolate (tasted like really bad musty red wine mixed with cheap chocolate) another was a coffee cream liqueur that tasted of oil. yuk.

Any chance of healthy eating before Christmas has been blown. I've just seen Lidl's TV advert promoting their Christmas range. I spent 3 years of my childhood growing up in Berlin and have fond memories of the Christmases there. A great deal of my memories relate to the food that is traditionally eaten in Germany over the festive period. The Glühwein, stollen, pfeffernüsse, lebkuchen herzen and chocolate coated marzipan. I can vividly remember staring through a bakery window watching them construct a huge gingerbread house.

I could happily swap traditional British Christmas fayre with the German traditions. I have made my own stollen and pfeffernüsse before, but they still are not quite as good as the originals. Lidl's mini stollen and dark lebkuchen herzen are addictive.

...oooohhh I'm hungry now and craving lebkuchen!

We've just added Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook to our cookbook collection (you can see the rest of our cookbook collection on the left and scroll down) and I have to say it is one of the most beautiful cookbooks we have ever owned. The photography and recipes are so inspiring and it is handily set out in season then produce order. Thanks to this book I now want to grow purple brussel sprouts because they are so pretty!

Tonight I'm planning to make crushed new potatoes with garlic and rosemary from it. I'm also going to make a batch of cookies for us staff going on the residential trip tomorrow.

Until I sorted out my cookbooks last week I never realised how much my cookbooks are geared towards British chefs, British cookery and grow your own.

Heston Inspired Chips

I've been on a course all day about Special Needs Education & Therapy so I left the food shopping in the capable hands of hubby. Tonight he cooked me a very very nice black pepper crusted fillet steak with chips inspired by the chips Heston Blumenthal cooked on his TV programme - In Search of Perfection. Hubby would love to go to Heston's The Fat Duck, but I'm not sure I could stomach Snail Porridge and would adore to dine at Claridges.

Hubbie's Heston inspired chips
serves 2

4 medium sized maris piper potatoes, peeled and cut into chips
sunflower oil
salt

1) Boil in slightly salted water for 8-10 mins, or until the potatoes are about to break up.

2) Drain potatoes, place on baking tray and drizzle with oil. Cook at 240oc for 15min, or until golden brown.

This evening I started to sort out my cookbook collection and have decided I should cook at least one new recipe from my cookbooks each week. The past fortnight has been British Food Fortnight. It has been quite well publicised near me..well apart from Morrisons trying to pass off a well known Russian dish as British food!

A few years back Hubby (then boyfriend) and I decided to get on the property ladder. Our perfect house came on the market and we knew we had to buy it. Our cottage was originally built in around 1780 for mill workers (the mill is still opposite, but no longer a working mill). Sadly it is only one bedroom so in the next couple of years when we start a family we'll have to move and buying a property big enough with the same type of location is going to be expensive.

Disadvantages of living in a 200+ year old 1 bedroom cottage:
* No central heating (but we do have plug in heaters)
* When the fields out back are harvested we get little furry visitors coming to have a nosy/nibble of our sofa.
* Lack of storage space. We've become very inventive with hiding things.

Advantages:
* Beautiful views from the front and back.
* South facing, which helps to heat the house up
* Big thick walls, great for insulating.
* Open fire, that radiates heat throughout the house.
* Lovely and cool in the Summer, cosy in the winter.

So it is now officially Autumn in our household as we lit the fire for the first time in around 5 months, so bring on all the classic Autumn comfort food. We do cook occasionally on the open fire. We have a cast iron kettle to boil water and we have been known to cook chestnuts and potatoes plus toast the odd marshmallow. I put my foot down at hubbies idea to spit roast a chicken over it! The fire is essential as we don't have gas in the village, plus in winter we often get powercuts.

I've also joined the Foodie Blogroll. Scroll down and the link is on your left.

Clay Oven Pics

The summer holidays are over and I'm back in work so my blogging & baking hasn't been as regular as before.

As requested a picture of the clay oven hubby made. He was inspired by a pizza oven Hugh F-W made on one of his TV progs. The clay was from his fathers garden, was left to dry for a day, then he lit a fire inside to completely dry the clay. To cook he then lit another fire in it, let the flames die down to embers, pushed the embers to the sides, places the bread dough in then put a piece of wood up against the hole to keep the heat in.

It cooked really good bread and new potatoes. Our neighbour was so impressed he now wants to build one!

Ginger from Dinner Diary tagged me with this questionnaire.

Four places you’ve lived

Berlin - Lived there for 3 years as I was growing up and saw the wall fall down. Although I was young at the time I still vividly remember the food. I especially miss the breakfasts that go on for hours and the Christmas Markets, nothing in this country compares.

Hull - The haunt of my student days and the only place you can get chip spice. Not exactly the cosmopolitan gastronomic capital of the UK, but they do have the best Veggie restaurant. If your ever in Hull you have to visit Hitchcocks. Be warned you will have to book.

Derbyshire (not being any more specific than that ;) ) - My home now. Full of fantastic pubs, curry houses and local produce.

North Liverpool - Where I'm "from". Although the village I used to live in has a tonne of places to eat my family are yet to find one that isn't 1)awful 2) overpriced.


Four places you’ve been on holiday

Peebles - 1st half of our honeymoon was spent in Barns Tower. Lovely scenery.

Isle of Harris - Spent the 2nd half of our honeymoon on this breathtaking island. We stayed at the fab Blue Reef Cottages. If you ever go to the island Skoon Art Cafe is well worth a visit.

Prague - Went about 9 years ago, before it is as popular as it is now. Food wise, all I can remember was that nearly every dish contained pork!

Amsterdam - Visited a few years ago to celebrate my parents wedding anniversary. Really enjoyed all the different cuisines on offer and would love to go back soon.

Four favourite foods

Raspberries - my all time favourite food. I adore them. Just a shame they are not in season for long.

Potato - I love them no matter what form they are in. Chips, crisps, mash, gratin...yum!

Lebkuchenherzen - Usually only available in Aldi/Lidl in the run up to Christmas so I stock up.

Bread - Nothing beats the smell and taste of a freshly baked loaf of bread.

Four places you’d rather be

Sitting in a beer garden on a sunny day with a large glass of rose.

Walking the Peak District/Lake District.

Berlin

Chilling in a spa.

I tag:
Eat the right stuff
Love Carrots
Cherrapeno
A Slice of Cherry Pie