After a Monday evening dinner at La Trompette I can definitely understand what all the fuss (and it’s Michelin star) is about. We had a marvellous dining experience! Welcomed warmly and shown to our table we were quickly asked about apéritifs and water, offered advice on the wine menu from the sommelier and offered some ... Read more »
Charles Campion’s Banana Cake Recipe
This banana cake recipe is from Charles Campion’s Fifty Recipes To Stake Your Life On and makes a really, really gooey banana cake. Campion describes the recipe collection as “fifty, sure-fire, tried-and-tested recipes and fifty stories to go with them” and its a great starting point for those just getting into cooking and looking for ... Read more »
Mini Restaurant Reviews: Cardiff, Wales
Pete and I spent a weekend in Cardiff recently, to attend the Cheese Festival and to celebrate my birthday. Here are reviews of the following: Dinner and Breakfasts at Ty Rosa B&B Coffee & Cake at Craft in the Bay Lunch at Madame Fromage Woods Brasserie Dinner and Breakfasts at Ty Rosa B&B This is ... Read more »
Restaurant Review: Maze, London
Yesterday was my birthday (and my sister’s too) and we celebrated with dinner at Maze, one of the Gordon Ramsay stable of restaurants, run by head chef Jason Atherton. We opted for the Tasting Menu which was the reason (along with hearty recommendations from foodie friends) that I picked Maze: unlike most of the GR ... Read more »
Restaurant Review: Silk restaurant, Great Marlborough St, London
A friend and I met for dinner at Silk this evening. I picked it (only this morning) because I was intrigued by the idea of Indian Thai fusion, had read some good reviews about both the food and the service, had also read that the setting itself was very nice and saw that it happened ... Read more »
Variation on Angela Nilsen’s Carrot and Coriander Soup
On the way to somewhere else we passed a farm shop and popped in for a quick look. We ended up buying a huge bag of carrots for £2. I think about 4 or 5 kilos! Coincidentally, last weekend we picked up The Ultimate Recipe Book by Angela Nilsen, featuring a rather handy Carrot and ... Read more »
Kitchen Equipment Geeks
Pete and I are definitely becoming kitchen equipment geeks. Hence this long and rambling post about our new pans, ice-cream machine and food processor! A few weeks ago we (well, Pete mostly) decided we wanted to replace several of our very aged and cheap pans with some really decent new ones. We weren’t fussed about ... Read more »
Restaurant Review: Moti Mahal, London
Friday night one of my best friends treated me to dinner as her Christmas gift to me. We went to Moti Mahal in Great Queen Street (between Holborn and Covent Garden tube stations). Last year we went to Zaika for Christmas and we’d been planning to visit Benares this year. My friend lives in Canada ... Read more »
The Soda Bread Diaries
Having enjoyed the soda bread my friend made for a picnic in her garden recently, she sent me the recipe. It’s published in a book called The Baker’s Tale by Catherine Brown but is credited to James Burgess. The first time I made this soda bread (last Wednesday) I followed the recipe exactly and the ... Read more »
Restaurant Reviews: County Cork
We got back on Sunday from a week in County Cork with friends… Dinty’s in Union HallA tiny, simply decorated, casual pub restaurant on the harbour in tiny Union Hall, the setting belies the excellence of the food. On the first night several of us had deep fried brie as a starter – two tranches ... Read more »
Kavey Nibbles
The Place of Onions, in old Lille
The Place of Onions, in old Lille. After last night’s rainstorm the intense sticky heat has broken and today is cool, breezy, fresh… I love it! A drop of… [more]
We went to Star Wars
We went to Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire at The Void this morning, an amazing VR experience where we got to be Rebel Alliance members going undercover as… [more]