A very foody weekend.

As is traditional in the lead up to Christmas, I have spent much of my time eating.  I am very happy to spend my time eating so long as my fussy tastes are catered for.  I will try to avoid any form of pre made supermarket bought 'party food' as I have an aversion to filo pastry and little tarts and I would rather that people actually put a little effort into the catering if they have decided to entertain at home.  Demanding, picky, impractical, rude?  Perhaps, but that's my view.

This particular weekend of piggery starting off with a very nice meal at a posh pub in Knutsford, The Dun Cow (amazingly, it has no website).  We had been invited round to friends' for supper and due to last minute dramas ran out of time to cook and instead treated us to a slap up feast (smoked salmon, lamb hotpot) as we watched the light and fluffy snow gently fall from the sky to carpet the countryside in glorious white.  This prettiness did rather hinder our departure time and we hurried home at a stately 40mph in my little Smart Car which is really rather splendid in the snow.  We're glad we didn't have further to travel and felt sorry for all the poor people stuck in drifts and cold all over the place.

The next evening we had been invited to our neighbours for supper, we have been waving to each other in the car park for a few years and finally met and chatted in the corner shop buying our Sunday papers a couple of weekends ago.  That led to coffee and much chat and then an invitation to supper along with another set of neighbours (yes, it's a friendly place).  We were treated to the most yummy home cooked Indian feast with mutton, prawns and monkfish, lamb and a chicken dish.  It was all delicious.

Then Sunday saw us at local friends for our now traditional pre-Xmas seafood feast which consists of lobster, crab (claws and dressed brown), smoked salmon, oysters, sea bass carpaccio, giant prawns roasted with garlic and chilli, all washed down with a magnum of Prosecco and followed with more delicious white wine and two massive chunks of Mrs Kirkham's tasty Lancashire and a super tasty Lancashire which were gorgeous.  Home made lemon cheesecake finished us of very nicely! 

Here are some pictures from our seafood feast:

Mmmmm gooey cheese!

Pave d'Affinois cheese from the Rhone-Alpes and some smelly Roqufort served with juicy Conference pears and walnut bread makes the perfect pudding to follow a roast chicken dinner!

Delicous and very wicked fish and chips.

We had an impromptu meet up with friends last night.  We ended up at the newish fish and chip shop down the road where Peter and I hadn't been before despite it getting very good reactions from friends.  I didn't really want to go as I'm in one of my sporadic trying not to be a total pig periods where I am generally careful about what I eat when I go out, try to exercise as much as possible and try to stay off the booze.  I've been at it for a week and it's all going well.  I went to the gym in the morning and been very productive and according to my heart rate monitor had burned a handy 900 calories or so (I don't usually go on a Tuesday, but as it turned out, it was just as well as no gym would have definitely been a no no for fish and chips!).  After a discussion lasting for about two minutes we ended up at Frankie's Fish Bar and it was really very good. 

The décor is nice and simple with a real feel of a traditional fish restaurant.  The menu is pleasingly small and there's a tiny offering of wine, but we had tea and ginger ale instead.  We all went for the cod and chips which came with home made Tartar sauce and a wedge of lemon - the (Heinz) ketchup, salt & vinegar were on the table.  The seats are at the front of the tiny shop, the hot and smelly frying stuff is right at the back which is a very thoughtful layout as you don't end up hot and smelly during your meal.  If you want a take away you just queue (and queue they did) down the side of the shop.

There's some serious frying history behind this modern chippy, Frank Hayes, the grandfather of the current Frankie's people opened his first fish and chip shop in Stockport in 1949 and served meals there for 19 years! From here he was in the business in one form or another for many years. I think that it's great to have the latest product from such a long and successful line of fryers just down the road!  My waistline might disagree though......


The meals when they arrived were seriously impressive, the fish was golden, crisp and BIG.  Inside the cod was perfectly white and steamy hot and the batter was very nice indeed.  The chips were perfect, no little slimy grey offering here, just golden yumminess.  I ate almost every morsel!

Frankie's Fish Bar
178 Burton Road
West Didsbury
M20 1LH
0161 445 3300

Lunch at Love 2 Eat on Burton Road - Take Two.

I posted a little review of a lunch at a local cafe - Love 2 Eat a while back, you can see it here.  It had been a nice enough pit stop, a first visit to a new venue, but there were a few little things which just stood out for me and spoiled what would been a pretty good lunch.  Anyway, recently I had an email from the owner who had read my review and wanted to invite me and some guests back for another try!  I was very impressed with her response and one day when we had a friend over on a work day, I booked us in and off we went.

We were greeted with great friendliness and shown to a table which had been reserved for us, just inside the door with lots of room to spread out.  The lovely array of cookery books were there and I did get a good look at the Moro one this time!

I went for a baguette which is what I had last time, but on this occasion I chose the hot roast chicken filling as I've always got a soft spot for a bit of roast chick, and I could see them slowly and juicily turning in the rotisserie at the back of the tiny shop.  The menu listing mentioned 'lashings of butter' so I asked for somewhat less than lashings and for the mayo to be served separately (which is how it came anyway).  The boys ordered pies.....any excuse for a pie!

While we were waiting, we were pleasantly surprised by a plate of very nice brown bread, butter and some seriously good olives.  I tried not to eat too much bread before I had my bready main course, but didn't resist very well.  I'll definitely order olives on my return visit, it's one of my pet hates at restaurants and cafes when they promise you deliciously marinated olives, and you can taste that they are just out of the jar with that sort of 'instant' flavour you get.  These had a good dose of cumin seeds.  I do like to taste real, whole seeds on my olives.  Luckily I remembered to take a photo before they all disappeared!

 

My baguette when it arrived looked very tasty indeed, plenty of soft, just roasted chicken, no slimy bits in a slim brown baguette.  The salad was excellent, not a slimy letuce leaf in site, good green beans, little gem type leaves, nice ripe tomatoes and a few rather over rosted hazelnuts, which added a really good and unexpected depth.  The mayo was standard mayo which I don't eat, so I wasn't concerned with it.  I tried to stuff some salad leaves into the baguette as it only contained the chicken (and a very reasonable amount of butter!), but the bread sort of collapsed in a very messy and buttery manner, but I'm not afraid of getting myself messy by eating with my fingers so dug in and made a mess. I'd have liked to have seen some greenery bedded in under the chicken. But I am a pedant.  It was delicious and I ate every little bit.

The boys played with their food and made smiley pies!  They both had steak pies, one had very nice looking new potatoes and the other salad, they said they were very tasty.

Then is was greedy chocolate brownie and tea time for me.  The brownie was very good indeed and ate all of it.....My tea did not come with hot frothy milk this time!

 

So thanks, Penny for reading my original post and inviting me back for another lunch.  I hope you're more happy with this write up!  We'll see you again, perhaps for one of your evening meals next time?

Love 2 Eat
190a Burton Road
West Didsbury
0161 434 7077

Sunday in Harrogate - Toast and Macaroons.

We'd been at a homewares trade show in Harrogate for the afternoon on Sunday and were feeling a little worse for ware from the huge variety of junk and tacky we'd been looking at for several hours and we didn't want to head straight home as the weather had perked up and the early evening was lovely.  We rather conveniently parked near Toast where I indulged in a little retail therapy (spending some birthday money, thanks dad!) where I bought a fabulous long blue and white striped linen skirt

and an amazingly bright knitted linen top.

After this, we wandered up the hill to one of our long time favourites, the famous  Betty's of Harrogate.


We were in the new Montpellier Cafe Bar which has appeared since our last visit, it's in the area where the shop area used to be, on the ground floor at the front, the shop has now moved to the other side at the front where they have expanded into the next door shop.  It's what they are calling a 'Continental Cafe Bar' and it's great, just a smallish range of delicious open sandwiches - Peter had the crab, prawn and avocado one which was on a lovely thin sliced sourdough and came with some very nice, if slightly gritty leaves.  As well as the open sarnies, there's a small range of very delicate cakes and pastries and I chose the fresh raspberry macaroons which was one of the most yummy cakey things I've eaten;  the raspberries were rich red and soft and squishy with that lovely tartness mixed with rich sweetness that you don't often find in raspberries which I often find disappointing.  In the centre of the fruits, hidden, was a small but perfectly formed dollop of rich and delicious raspberry butter cream, just enough to give it a lift.  The macaroon itself was as light as a feather with a lovely fruity flavour and altogether it made one of the best cakey things I think I've every eaten!  It's not a cheap place for a bite, but the service is so perfect and and the setting so lovely that it really doesn't matter.  Top marks!

Lunch at Love 2 Eat on Burton Road

As the weather was unexpectedly delightful this afternoon with warm sunshine instead of the forecast rain that we popped out for lunch to sit in the sun and watch the world go by.

Silver Apples hadn't quite opened when we got there, so we went a few doors down to the lastest cafe on Burton Road, called Love 2 Eat where we've been meaning to go since it opened, but it's always been full.  It's a tiny little place with four tiny little tables outside and we were lucky enough to find one empty.

The menu is pretty small and on blackboards on the walls inside (there's a proper menu on the website) with sandwiches, soups, pies and the odd casserole.  There's a glass fronted deli counter with cakes and pies all looking tasty.  There's a great collection of cookery books dotted around (even in the tiny, very clean loo out at the back), I could have a jolly good browse through them and have my eye on Moro East for next time.

I went for a hot apple juice cured ham sandwich which came in a nice thin brown baguette and I narrowly avoided the horror of industirally produced coleslaw as I'd spotted it come out to the ladies next to us who also had baguettes.  Our kind waitress instead gave me a portion of really delicious tiny new potatoes drenched in butter with fresh herbs, much nicer than oniony coleslaw smothered in cheap mayo.  There were very nice salad leaves which were almost all manky which was a shame, but for some reason, I did eat them.  The ham was in nice big chunks like it had just been hacked from a propper piece of meat which was a pleasant surprise and was nicely appley but not too sweet.  Some rather odd orange chutney came in a wee espresso cup which once inside the bread with the sad leaves and tasty ham was good.

Being greedy we shared some 'bounty cake' which was a lovely light sponge with little coconutty bits and a rich chocolate icing on the top and in the middle, it was a bit dry but still enjoyable.  The tea somewhat bizarrely, came with little jugs of frothed warm milk, not exactly ideal for tea, but it was okay and we were running a bit late and didn't have time to ask for some more.

Love 2 Eat
190a Burton Road
West Didsbury
0161 434 7077

Chicken Pie Has Begun

Everyone know that you really should make your own stock. I confess to being a little lazy in this department but for my dinner tomorrow night where I want to impress I have done the right thing.

My very smart chicken was butchered for me beautifully at Watirose in readiness for it's destiny in my pie. I roasted the the remaining carcass and bits and pieces along with two packs of wings before covering in cold water and adding leek, carrot, onion, garlic, thyme and celery and simmering gently for three and a half hours.

Here's how it looked at the start.

Chicken stock in progress., originally uploaded by Eyeshoot Photography.

And here's how it looked three and a half hours later.

 

It smelled delicious and I was a bit peckish by the time it was done at about 10.00pm so I had a little private feast from the soft and tender meat clinging onto the wings and the delicious soft carrots!

I'm off for a run in the park now with my new Nike+ for the first time, I'll set the timer for thirty minutes and see how I do.  It's been a very long time since I ran out in the real world and I suspect that I'll find it very hard work.  But any calories burned in preperation for tonight's binge will be fantastic!

Lunch at Silver Apples on Orchard Street.

Lunch at Silver Apples on Burton Road in West Didsbury., originally uploaded by Eyeshoot Photography.

We popped out for a quick local lunch with a photographer friend who had delivered to beautiful prints which we'd bought at his latest exhibition.

This was our first visit to Silver Apples and it was very nice indeed. It's lovely and eclectic inside with all sorts of retro posters, photos and books all over the place. There's a mix of furniture with sofas and an upright piano as well. There isn't a menu as such rather a range of blackboards dotted around with lists of sandwiches, salads, pies, hot chocolates and milkshakes.

I had the bagel which you see in the photograph which was healthily stuffed with smoked salmon and cream cheese with a little salad. It was very nice but could have done with a bit of a dose of lemon juice. I couldn't be bothered to ask for some, so my fault really.

The boys had Pieminster pies, one chicken and one minty lamb with a good dollop of mash and mushy peas. We didn't have time for pudding, but there's a very tempting display of home made cakes which may result in a return visit.

Silver Apples on Orchard Street.
Burton Road (corner of Orchard Street)
West Didsbury
Manchester
M20 2LW
Tel: 0161 445 3130

I was interviewed!

My friend Laura is promoting a brand new drink called Carnaby Brown which is a lightly alcoholic fruit based tipple in two flavours, a melony, muscatty one and strawberry/watermelony one.  Both have a zingy sparkle.

While I'm a dedicated drinker of gutsy Italian and Spanish reds Laura bravely decided to interview me over a glass or two (actually quite a few) glasses of each variety.  During the interview we were chatting about who I thought the drink would appeal to and I thought that it would be a great drink for people who didn't really want to drink too much - perhaps at lunchtime or the afternoon when you still have to be able to function and not have a snooze......Part of drinking at those times for me is to be able to have a nice nibble at the same time - anyone who reads this blog knows how much I like my food and anyone who shares a bottle or two with us at home will be presented with olives from my Olive Pot and some toasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds.  Click here to read Laura's interview with me!

I mentioned lemon marinated nuts in my interview which is something I've never actually made as I tend to use spices with nuts.  I've had a go at remembering what it is I actually do when I pop to the kitchen to rustle up a nibble or two for unexpected guests.

Non-marinated nuts to have with an afternoon tipple:

Melt some butter in a sturdy frying pan.
Add to it:
Soft brown sugar and let it melt gently
A couple of handfuls of almonds and cashews - actually any nuts you have will do
Maldon salt to taste
1.5 teaspoons cumin seeds
1.5 teaspoons ground coriander
Fresh rosemary sprigs
A squeeze of fresh lemon juice and some finely grated lemon zest
Dried chilli flakes to taste if you like

Let all of this heat through in the butter, stirring it all the time with a wooden spoon until the nuts have taken on a healthy colour and smell delicious.  The spices should smell fragrant and toasty, if you smell any burning or acrid, remove the pan from the heat immediately.

When they look delicious and tasty spread the nuts out onto a flat surface, don't heap them on top of each other.  This will let them cool and crisp up a bit.  Eat when cool.


This is one of my favourite things to make when I need to find a nibble, a tried and tested method.

Savoury Seeds in Tamari

Heat a heavy frying pan and add to it a handful of sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds.
Move them around constantly until they start to smell yummy, the sunflower seeds will start to jump up at you and the pumpkin seeds will start to puff up.  They will both begin to colour.
When they are nicely coloured but not burnt, remove the pan from the heat.
Stir in a couple of good glugs of soy sauce - I like to use wheat-free Japanese Tamari but I'm sure that whichever type of soy sauce you have in your larder will work perfectly well.
Once the cold liquid hits the hot pan it will steam and will seem to stick, so you need to have a wooden or silicone spoon/spatula to hand to start stirring immediately.
Keep stirring until all the seeds are coated and again, not burnt!
Remove to a flat plate or tray until cool and crisp.
Enjoy with a glass.  Or two.

I have written a blog post about my Olive Pot and here's a link to it: Click here to read about olives.

More Easter Food

Here's what our Sunday lunch looked like in the end!

Watercress soup

Roast spring lamb with rosemary and garlic

Rhubarb and ginger brulee

Easter food.

 There's nothing like a long bank holiday weekend to prompt a foodie post and Easter's no exception.

We've got a small gathering for lunch tomorrow, Easter Sunday when I shall be serving:

Vintage pink cava
Smoked salmon on something

Watercress soup with crème fraîche

Roast leg of spring lamb with garlic and rosemary, home made mint sauce
Home made lamb gravy
New potatoes
Chantenay carrots, with butter and parsley

Rhubarb and ginger brûlée

Tea and mini eggs.

I had some time this morning to make the soup and the base of the brûlée while Peter was busy on an Easter egg hunt in the woods next door with his daughter and her four children who were visiting for the day.

It was a nice peaceful hour and a half or so where I did what needed to be done and it was all super easy and relaxed.

Here are some pictures of my progress - if I remember tomorrow I'll take some pictures of the finished dishes and of course, the roast lamb.

The ingredients for the watercress soup - leeks, white potatoes, watercress, butter, creme fraiche.  

Also used was Marigold vegetable stock, freshly ground black pepper

 I know it doesn't look too tasty, but it did!  Here's the soup after about twenty minutes 

simmering and just before being liquidised for the final assembly tomorrow.

Yummy ingredients for pudding - Yorkshire rhubarb, crème fraîche d'Isgny, Greek
yoghurt, stem ginger in syrup, ground ginger, muscavado sugar.

This is how tasty it the rhubarb looks when all the non-creamy ingredients are
mixed together before roasting for twenty minutes or so until tender.

Peter's grandchildren bought us a treat too, at first glance they looked like chocolate cornflake cake, but were actually marshmallow, pecan, coconut and chocolate cakes and were very nice indeed with a cup of tea!

I seem to have spent all weekend eating!

It's been a busy few days.....

We returned from a very intense but successful trip to Holland, a 4.30am start followed by a 5.00am start isn't my usual schedule, but I survived!  The rest of the week passed in a normal fashion with the added excitement of subjecting my car to it's annual MOT and subjecting my eyes/contact lenses to their twice yearly poke and prod at the opticians.  Both examinations were passed with flying colours.

Friday was a good day on the Etsy front as I found out that I'd been featured in the Etsy Finds Euro Finds, Go Euro which was showing my April Calendar page in my new Sale section.  I sold two to one person, one plus May to another and a whole calendar to someone else and once I realised what was going on and that the last of my April pages was gone, I relisted the expired print version of the image which promptly sold too!  That was six items in about twenty minutes plus the fifth print to my lovely customer in Australia made a very good day indeed!

 

 Pink on Blue $35 at Eyeshoot at Etsy

In the afternoon we had friends round for drinks and then a splendid supper at The Great Khatmandu where my choices were my usual bbq mackerel, tarka daal and plain rice, I don't think I even tasted the other dishes so my current phase of calorie counting wasn't too damaged.  

On Saturday morning I met up with the Manchester Etsy folk and we had our monthly gossip and muffin gathering which is always a very civilised start to the weekend, a quick (that's quick to eat not quick to arrive) vegetarian chilli with hummous at Teacup followed and then home for newspapers and bit of catching up with the telly before our evening's entertainment.  We were destined for an evening of theatre at Joshua Brooks which was the venue for JB Shorts 3 which consists of six short plays all written by TV writers.  Apart from the fact that the venue was appalling, totally cramped, cold and uncomfortable it was an enjoyable evening with a nice variety of plays (each 15 minutes long) ranging from a very stylised party political party to a Big Brother wannabe.  Each one held my attention but I couldn't have coped with more than six.  A very good evening out.  Fingers crossed for a better venue next time.  From there we wanted food and had spotted ZOUK on the way in and liked the look of it, but when we got there it was totally packed and there was a forty five minute wait at 9.30 which we didn't fancy so we popped into Rice next door which was a bit odd really.  I've only just found out that ZOUK is an Indian restaurant, we all thought it was Chinese.  So it's probably a good thing we didn't go as Indian food on consecutive nights isn't such a great idea.  Anyway, Rice next door looked as if it would fit the bill with a range of noodle, rice and stir fry dishes.  I've never seen such a bizarre menu, there were dishes from absolutely everywhere, China, Japan, Jamaica, USA, Persia, France, Thailand, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, Spain, Morocco, Indonesia and South America!  Someone was a bit indecisive at the menu planning stages.  I ordered pad Thai with chicken which came nice and quickly, obviously just out of the pan, with lovely soft noodles and plenty of chicken, it was a massive portion but unfortunately totally tasteless but somehow managed to be enjoyable.....everyone else liked theirs but I think that the Persian saffron fish kebab sauce looked really suspect, but it was all devoured so just me then.  Home to bed, knackered.

Sunday started with Peter having a breakfast meeting at 9.00 I was up not long after that (actually 8 am as the clocks changed last night, so pretty early for a Sunday), a reviving breakfast of mango and cottage cheese did the trick and we were planning a leisurly day mainly at home until a chum phoned with the news that he will shortly be moving to Mumbai and did we want to join him and a friend for Dim Sum at Tai Wu at 2.00 - naturally we said yes, our stamina for dining out is unrivalled after all!

Dim sum was great, it's the first time we have been to that restaurant, the size and location had previously put us off and I'm very slow to adopt new Chinese restaurants as they are generally very disappointing.  Since we stopped eating at the Yang Sing I don't think I've ever have a truly fantastic Chinese meal, which is a shame as we really did take it for granted there for many years.  It was very good and unreasonably cheap at £35 for five of us, we had loads of steamed dumplings, a main course dish of gai lin, some steamed ribs and various things I don't know the names of.  We'll definitely go there again, it's a bit less hysterical than Glamorous and I think the food might be better.  I'd need to try some dishes from the main menu to make my final decision on that.  I think I'll be able to manage that!

Considering I'm meant to be on a diet at the moment I have managed to eat out four times this weekend.....I feel a bit of an epic session coming on at the gym tomorrow morning.

I'll sign off with this lovely Treasury (I've been watching the Treasury clock like a hawk for the last week of so as I have a lovely Poster Sketch lined up but seem to have lost my knack of snaging a slot.  Perhaps this week will be lucky for me!)
 

A Bunch of Hearts

by Anakim

New Year's Eve at home.

Often on New Year's Eve we're very happy to just spend the evening at home with some nice food, fizz and usually Jools Holland on the telly - how middle aged does that sound!?  Going out becomes a hassle as you've got the taxi issue if you're not offered a bed by your hosts and that's a pain and a dull end to a nice evening, so that's why we often stay in.  This year we were planning the same but our neighbours called to say they were coming home and did we have plans so of course we invited them round and two more friends so I was planning a meal again.....We had three omnivores, one fish eater and one pregnant lady, so no meat, raw fish (was thinking of sushi for a starter), no raw egg (was considering chocolate mousse) and no unpasteurised cheese.  So a menu was forming:

Spiced pumpkin laksa.
Nice a spicy and coconutty, a perfect soup for a cold night, I'd never done this before and wasn't too thrilled with it, there was a subtlety of flavour lacking somehow, a late addition of nam pla made it a bit better.  Everyone seemed to like it though.

Whole baked salmon with tomatoes and salsa verde.
A tried and tested favourite, very simple but impressive.  It's a whole salmon filleted into two pieces, laid on a bed of tomato, capers and garlic, with a layer of salsa verde making a filling between the two pieces, then baked in the oven.  The hardest part of this is serving it as it's nearly impossible to slice through two seperate pieces of soft fish with a differently textured filling.  It totally fell apart, but tasted lovely!

 

Baklava.
No cooking involved, not heavy or filling, nice easy finger food to nibble.

We played the Logo Game after food and helped along by several bottles of fizz, the baklava, some Carluccios chocolate stars and a smattring of advertising and marketing people who knew almost every single answer we arrived at midnight very happily.  We popped out on to the terrace in the freezing cold and crystal clear night with Jools in the background (we had to fit him in somewhere) had more fizz and watched the fireworks erupt around us. 

Hot stuff, a Treasury appearance and a little shopping.

We popped into Manchester this morning to brave the shops.  I wanted some jeans and shoes and ended up with jeans and a nice long, sloppy aubergine coloured Merino wool cardigan from Gap.  Not exactly thrilling stuff, but I'll be able to chuck out some similar but dead items of clothing.  The shoes are altogether more of a nightmare, I have fairly big feet which are a strange shape so for me shoe shopping is a dreary experience with shops full of things which I love which either don't exist in my size or they never have it in stock.  I have the worst shoe wardrobe of anyone I know. 

Then we met some chums for lunch, our first plan of Yo Sushi in Selfridges didn't happen as the queue was epic and they'd never have got us four seats together, so we regrouped in Tampopo.  Peter and I had to queue for a while there, but it wasn't too bad and finally we had a very tasty lunch from their excellent value Express Menu which is £6.95 and is actually quite a substantial amount of food.

Pad Krapow Chicken breast quick-fried with red chillies, fresh Asian basil & red pepper.
Served with steamed jasmine rice.
Very tasty and seriously hot!  Washed down with copious quantities of green tea.


Yasai Gyoza Three griddled dumplings of water chestnut, bamboo shoot & carrot, with a soy dip.
A bit of a non event really, but nice enough.

Also, here's another Treasury - many thanks for including my Path Through Moss Print.

Peter Pan

by Masaoms (Inspired by this song)

Chinese Feast.

Tea Anyone

By Fffflowers

I love this Treasury from Fffflowers who's based just up the road from me in Wirral, there are some great items here;  I'm particularly fond of the clothes brush, it's such a lovely old fashioned piece.

We've had another epic meal today, which, thank goodness, I wasn't cooking.  There were 30 of us, all Peter's family plus my parents, for a massive Chinese feast at Glamorous a huge Hong Kong style restaurant in Manchester, all neon, fiber optics and gold.  They have dim sum trolleys circulating and a seemingly never ending range of little steamed and fried morsels.  We were there for hours and finished up with a little light shopping the Wing Yip supermarket below (choi sum, pandan leaves, jasmine tea, chillies for the freezer and sweet chilli sauce).  Then all back to ours for tea and my Christmas day chocolate and chestnut terrine which has almost gone now.  Now we're in front of the telly and I have a stiff g&t in my hand.

This was lunch on Xmas Day...

Christmas lunch was totally untraditional this year, I've never cooked a turkey (my mother always does on one of the holiday days, in fact, this year today is turkey day).  I cooked the beef and the pudding on Xmas Eve and had the ingredients for the nibbles all ready to go on Xmas day and just sort of made them up at the appropriate time.

Here's what we ate to start with nibbles to go with out fizz:

Prawns in my special made up marinade (coriander, fish sauce, ginger, garlic, red chilli, sugar), smoked salmon with horseradish creme fraiche on blinis, smoked salmon pate also on blinis, Dolcelate and Blackstick's Blue on chickory leaves.

 

For our main - shin of beef casserole with herby mustard dumplings, sprouts with bacon, cabbage and cavolo nero and squashed new potatoes.

Pudding - Chocolate and chestnut terrine - seriously rich and rather nice!

A Splendid Afternoon's Noshing!

Yummy food from Back's Deli in Manchester

We had Peter's Xmas works do yesterday. For the first time we decided to have it catered at home because in the past we've been to various nice restaurants and had their set meal things which is usually okay, but it does cost at about £25 each plus the wine, you end up on a long table so you can't talk to everyone and you have the noise of a restaurant full of other people and the hassle of attracting the staffs' attention. So if we were going to pay for the event we wanted it to be a bit more relaxed and a few weeks ago we'd been to a friend's birthday do and they had great food so I found out who the caterer was and we were set to go.

The food was cooked by Back's Deli in Manchester and it was excellent, they have a very extensive menu of very tempting things, but I wanted to keep it simple and ordered for the main, Moroccan Spiced Lamb with Apricots, served with CousCous with Garlic Green Bean Salad, and for nibbles they marinaded some stone in green olives in some Moroccan(ish) flavours. All of the food was delicious, especially the green beans which were seriously garlicky. All of the hot food arrived in chafing dishes, the cold things I decanted into my own bowls, all the crockery and cutlery was provided even small plates for the pudding which I didn't buy from them, which I thought was very nice. Everybody ate their fill and then all the empties and dirties were taken away as if by magic at the end of the afternoon. Perfect!

We'll be eating the leftover lamb for ages....which isn't such a bad thing. I think it will make a fantastic spicy pasta sauce.

The hob man came yesterday as well, just before the food arrived, and now we have half a working hob which is an awful lot better than the no working hob we've had for almost two weeks. There's a little bit of rewiring to be done next week and then hopefully the whole thing will work. Fingers crossed...

Cooking, but not cooking

On Tuesday I had a super busy day with a shoot in Oldham which meant me rising from my bed at a very unpleasant and dark 6am. The car was thick with ice and the sky was black all the way to our initial meeting at the Sainsbury's cafe at 8am where I had a surprisingly tasty and welcomingly warm bowl of porridge. Then it was out in the cold to shoot (in a photographic sense) a gang of architects, designers and other clever folk outside the Art Gallery and then a few more locations which took us up to a still chilly 3pm. On the way home I was mentally planning a delicious tomato and onion based seafood pasta dish - nice and quick, nice and satisfying, and after recovering from the day's exertions, the cooking began. Then it stopped very quickly as all the electricity went out and we were plunged into darkness and silence. After some detective work, it turned out that our oven and hob or the oven or the hob had died a death and taken all of our electricity with it. That was Tuesday, today is Friday and we have no means to cook and we have a friend coming for supper. The obvious thing, I appreciate is to go out for supper, but after the abandoned seafood pasta we popped to the excellent Persia Grill, the next day we had a splendid and surprisingly un-greedy take away from the excellent Great Khatmandu and last nights disappointing first time visit to Green Tea (Chinese), I really didn't want to eat out again. So after much consideration I took myself off to a brand new and literally very shiny Waitrose to carefully choose my ingredients for my no cook supper.

To start:
Salmon and smoked salmon terrine served with rocket and brown toast - yes I know that I could have made this very easily myself, but it was reduced and I could't resist!)

Main:
Spicy couscous (only a kettle needed) with lots of coriander and mint.
Coronation flavoured cold roast chicken (I say flavoured because there will be more chicken than sauce), using a cold roasted organic chicken to be shredded and mixed with pots of Waitrose coronation chicken as I couldn't cook onions and garlic to go in my own, I plan to loosen it a bit with yoghourt and tart up the zing a bit with some mango chutney and extra spices.
Delicious little green French olives.

Pudding:
Gu chocolate mouses - any excuse for a Gu.

I think it sounds yummy - I hope it will be enough.

(Edited to add)

Yes, it was enough, there's loads left. The chicken and cous cous were delicious and we were all very happy!


This is the first picture on the blog from my new camera which I really haven't used yet - I must get back in to the habit of photographing my food like I used to. The restaurants we've been to recently have had such appalling lighting that the photos have been utterly unusable.

The weekend will remain a hot food free zone. We're out with chums for lunch on Sunday at the Knutsford Wine Bar where we haven't been for a million years since we were very friendly with the former owners and I used to work for them for five minutes.

I miss my porridge and boiled eggs for breakfast!

The engineer is coming on Tuesday or hopefully on Monday and will poke the hob and no doubt tell us that it's not mendable and we'll have to spend a small fortune on a new one. Apparently the oven is okay as the first engineer came on Thursday and poke and prodded it and plugged it into things and proclaimed it good.

Look at these three lovely Treasuries!

I'm featured in three gorgeous Treasuries today - how wonderful and many thanks to the three clever curators for taking the time to find my work!

A Woodland Walk
by Paisley Chainsaw
Hurrah - made it to the Front Page!!

Black and White
by Mr Yen

We are all Human Beings....fragile as eggs
By Heidi Burton

Despite my lack of posts, I have been busy, or perhaps that's why there's been a lack of posts....
I have had some major software glitches and was without CS4 for some time and only got it all back if full working order yesterday and have been busy making the print your own version of my 2010 calendar which should be in my shops very soon.

I've been busy working with my mother, we spent a day in the Lake District which was totally stunning, the autumn colours were perfect - we didn't do much work, but somehow managed to be in the car for 12 hours which isn't great, but at least it was pretty!

Then I did a proper shoot for Balfour Beatty at a school on Friday afternoon which went well and will hopefully lead to plenty more similar work in the future. I'll be getting on with the post production for that on Monday.

Tuesday and Wednesday mum and I are off on our travels again to Yorkshire and then over to Lincoln where we will stay overnight. I don't think I've ever been before, but I do have a major soft spot for cathedrals and must make the effort to get to see it properly before we get on with our work, and take my camera.

Then we're off on Friday to London for a family Bar Mitvah on Saturday which will take us through to Sunday. It will be good to see family I haven't seen for ages.

Off shortly for Dim Sum at Glamorous with friends, and I'm looking forward to indecent amounts of steamed prawn dumplings and choi sum with garlic, yummy!

Chocolate Pavlova

Here's the yummy pudding I made for supper last Sunday, if you want to read all the detail, just click and it should pop up in another window large enough to read.

It was very delicious!