Salad Season

The Bank Holiday has been a busy one with visiting relatives, good food, showing how much of a geek I can be at a Pub Quiz plus a visit to a Beer, Wine & Cheese festival. With the beautiful weather and the fact I had to cater for a crowd we had a delicious meal of salad leaves and radishes picked straight from the garden along with Hubby's recently cured salami, honey & mustard ham, cottage loaf baked by me plus a large cheeseboard. To accompany all of this food we also tried some new Farrington Oils products.

I've been a big fan of Farrington Oils for years and have written before about how much I enjoy their products before. When I was offered the chance to try some of their new products, I jumped at the chance. Plus my family who buy their Mellow Yellow dressings from Waitrose were also interested in trying the new vinaigrette and mayonnaise.

The first to try was the Classic Vinaigrette. In the garden we are growing a mixture of rocket along with other strong tasting salad leaves and this vinaigrette accompanied them perfectly and managed to bring the flavours out well.

The mayonnaise is the newest addition to their ranges and it quite unlike any other mayonnaise out there. I'm not usually a bit mayo eater, but this version is mouthwatering. With the subtle taste of Dijon mustard plus the lemony sharpness, we have tried it with numerous dishes over the last few weeks. From chip dunking to more refined chicken salad each time it has been delicious. I think I will struggle to eat any other brand since tasting this version! As you can probably tell by looking at the jar in the pic it was rather empty by the time I got around to photographing it proving how much we enjoyed it.

One Perfect Ingredient

I have been lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of Marcus Wareing's new cookbook One Perfect Ingredient - three ways to cook it, a follow on from his successful How To Cook The Perfect which was released in 2007. The cookbook is all about taking one simple everyday ingredient, using a simple recipe and ending up with great home cooking. My kind of cookery!

To say the cookbook was inspiring is an understatement. Within 30 min of me receiving the book I was in the kitchen whipping up the gingerbread on p188. As you can see from the photo below, it was delicious and perfect with a cuppa.

I love the way the book is split up into sections with my personal favourite being "store cupboard". There is great recipes throughout the book using everyday ingredients in a different way. For example with the humble carrot he makes makes Carrot & Coriander Galette, Three-Carrot Salad with Feta and a Carrot Cake with cream cheese frosting; all of which sound delicious. The photos accompanying the recipes are mouthwatering.

To have a chance of winning a copy of One Perfect Ingredient pop along to Maninas: Food Matters. Be quick the competition closes on the 7th April.

Quest for the perfect coffee

I'm known for my love of coffee, be it an ingredient in a cake or drinking it, I'm a huge fan. However I'm very fussy when it comes to coffee. For me a perfect coffee as to be so smooth I don't need sugar to take away the bitterness.

While at Chantry on Saturday, Adrian from Azurieblue was there offering samples of his espresso. Not one to turn down a sample I gave it a go. I have to say it was one of the best coffees I have ever had. It was so smooth. Even Hubby who doesn't usually drink coffee thought it was good.

The coffee is ground from ethically sourced Brazilian arabica beans (something that is important to me) and I found it rich, without being bitter and overpowering, with a hint of nutty chocolate. Naturally I was so impressed with the sample I bought some for myself, even better that the coffee tin matches my kitchen perfectly...I'm such a girl!

Over the last few days I've tried different ways of using the coffee. As an espresso, latte and mocha and each time it was delicious. I don't think I've ever come across a coffee that is so versatile.

Azorieblue are due to have a stand at the Real Food Festival in April and I seriously recommend you visit them to taste their wonderful coffee.

Your Eggsellency

It was a Hotel Chocolat Easter egg I was given as a gift about 2 years ago that bought this chocolate company to my attention.

At the beginning of the week Hotel Chocolat sent me anYour Eggsellency Easter Egg. (You can win one of your own Hotel Chocolat Easter egg here) The packaging it arrived in was so beautiful and enticing. I opened a black embossed box to find a large keyhole that led me to perfect silver foil-wrapped egg. It sounds odd, but I think chocolate tastes better when it's been wrapped in foil, just like KitKats did until they wrapped them in plastic...anyway slightly digressing there... Inside the two extra-thick eggshells were 10 truffle eggs. As I'm a huge lover of dark chocolate I was really pleased to see that half of the egg shell was 72% dark chocolate with the other half being 40% milk chocolate. The dark chocolate was beautiful not too bitter and with a hint of orange. The milk chocolate shell was incredibly smooth, not too sweet with the subtle taste of caramel.

The truffles came in 10 mouthwatering flavours including Bellini, Amaretto, Whisky and Calvados. My personal favourite was Pink Marc de Champagne that reminds me of Hotel Chocolat's delicious strawberries and cream chocolate that appeared in one of their tasting selections a few months back.

Hotel Chocolat haven't let me down with this Easter selection and anyone who loves their chocolate would love to receive this for Easter.

They call it Mellow Yellow

I've been using Farrington's Mellow Yellow cold pressed Rapeseed oil for about a year now and thoroughly believe it is the best thing since sliced bread. It is one of the most versitile oils I have in the kitchen. Not only can it be used in dressings, but also in baking, roasting & stir-frys. In addition to it's versatility it is lower in saturated fat than olive oil and high levels of omega 3,6 & 9 plus vitamin E. Mellow Yellow makes cracking crackling on roast pork, fantastic roast potatoes and the most perfect Yorkshire Puds. It's not surprising to hear that their oil has won awards.

Toward the end of 2007 Farrington Oils launched Honey & Mustard Dressing and Blackberry Vinegar Dressing. I tasted them both for the first time this weekend and they were gorgeous. The honey & mustard dressing is perfectly balanced and not overly sweet. It's delicious drizzled over salad or hot and cold new potatoes. The blackberry vinegar dressing is unlike anything else currently on the market and is a refreshing change. It's stunning with cheese and I have it on good authority it's lovely with smoked fish.

Farrington's Mellow Yellow products are sold in over 600 shops throughout the UK including Waitrose and Harvey Nics. Trust me, give it a try and you'll never go back to other oils and dressings.

Season of Love

I admit, I (well both Hubby & I!) have a bit of a reputation when it comes to chocolate, especially chocolate that comes from Hotel Chocolat. It all started a couple of years ago when my cousin gave us a gigantic box for Christmas. Now it has escalated to the point where we put "Anything from Hotel Chocolat" on our wedding list and for birthdays my friend and I send each other various new Hotel Chocolat products. So you can imagine when Hotel Chocolat said they would send me The Love Selection to try both Hubby & I were ecstatic!

The Love Selection features 4 of their mini slabs. Although I seem to have eaten my way around most of the Hotel Chocolat stock, I'd never eaten the slabs of mini slabs before. The Love Selection contained a milk Love Slab, dark Love Slab, Crostini Fruit & Nut plus Praline Fusion.

The Love Slabs feature a pink cherry coloured ripple, crispy feuillentine praline textured with small pieces of crispy, oven baked pancakes, decorated with sour cherries and engraved with a chocolate heart. Sour cherries and chocolate are a seriously underated combination.

The Praline Fusion slab had milk chocolate swirled with white chocolate hazelnut praline. It was perfect nutty, melt in your mouth chocolate with a completly different texture than the Love Slabs

Finally we taste Crostini Fruit & Nut. A milk chocolate slab filled with cranberries, sultanas, almonds, crostini biscuit and hazelnuts. I've always been a fan of the famous fruit & nut, but this was delicious. The tastes, the textures, perfect.

Go on treat yourself...