Thai Prawn Soup Again
We were planning on cooking moules mariniere tonight, but neither of the shops that we visited had mussels, so we scrapped that idea. Then we thought we would do some sort of spaghetti with prawns, so we bought some prawns. When it came to discussing exactly what sort of “spaghetti with prawns” we would have, we strayed from that plan too and decided to have a Thai style soup with rice noodles, similar to Nigel Slater’s one that we cooked recently.
However, we didn’t have all the ingredients that we used last time so just made it up as we went along. We didn’t have lemongrass, but gave it a lift with a squeeze of lime juice and some lime leaves. Also, we played around with the method and did it more like we usually do our green curry – cook the thick part of the coconut milk until it splits, fry the paste in that, season it with fish sauce, and then add the rest of the coconut milk and simmer. It turned out rather well; next time we fancy something similar we will probably just make it up completely rather than follow a recipe at all.
A Tale of Two Roasts
We spent the weekend at my mum’s in Kent and, knowing that we had a busy day ahead, decided on slow roast shoulder of lamb for Sunday’s lunch. One of the great things about this dish is that it cooks on a low heat for a long time which gives you plenty of time to get on with other things.
We eat this a lot and usually serve it with the caper and mint sauce, this time we decided to make a simple gravy from the cooking juices and serve it with roast potatoes. We did stud the lamb with some whole anchovies this time but should have cut them up as, even though the meat cooked for three hours, the anchovies stayed rather large.
One of the not so great things about this dish is that the whole house inevitably ends up smelling like lamb which can be painful when you have to wait so long before you can actually eat it. By the time the food arrives at the table you generally end up eating far too much and can’t move very well by the time you’ve finished. We got over this in the traditional Sunday fashion though, by laying on the sofa watching James Bond until it was time to head home, via a friend’s house for a cup of tea.
We thought our friend’s were out when we arrived as there was no answer at their door. The reason there was no answer is because J had found an old CD and was busy listening to the Pet Shop Boys at high volume while he prepared their dinner of roast beef. Unable to just stand back and drink our tea while there was action happening in the kitchen, Stephen and I quickly armed ourselves with various knives and peelers and leant a hand. It was at this point that J said we should stay for dinner. Still completely full of lamb and not wanting to intrude, we declined and continued to do so until J suggested he and Stephen went for a traditional Sunday-night pint at the local. Then he produced a selection of very interesting wine and told us they had plenty of food for a mini-roast for the two of us. A quick call to my mum to tell her we would be back later and off they went to the pub while the other J and I stayed behind to keep an eye on the dinner.
So, about four hours after we’d eaten roast lamb for lunch, we sat down to a (mini) roast beef dinner*. None of us could think of a time we’d eaten two roasts in one day and, as lovely as they both were, I don’t think we’ll be doing it again any time soon. We did all think a whole day of roast dinners, starting with breakfast, was a good idea though so who knows, we could make it to three next time.
*The picture above is not the mini-roast Stephen and I ate, our portion was much more restrained.
Sausage Pasta
Neither of us felt very inspired when it came to Friday night’s dinner and there wasn’t much to work with in the cupboards or fridge either.
Having found some sausages in the freezer we excitedly considered sausages and mashed potatoes or toad in the hole but we didn’t have any eggs or potatoes, it was late and we were hungry. What we did have was spaghetti so we ended up with sausage pasta which wasn’t particularly pleasant but was our own fault really for being so disorganised and lazy.
I could type up the method we followed but I wouldn’t want anyone to accidentally eat this when they could be eating toad in the hole instead so I’ll leave it.
Thai Muslim Oxtail Soup
Kerri was out having lunch with a friend today and I volunteered to find something for dinner. After all the soup that we have been eating lately, Kerri said that she wanted something quite hearty and not soup-related for dinner today. I set to work looking through the excellent Thai Food by David Thompson, which has loads of little bookmarks sticking out of it to remind us of dishes that we thought sounded good. One of these was the Muslim oxtail soup. Only once I had planned everything for it did I realise that oops, it was soup again. Regardless, I was sure that it would be hearty and would try to make it thicker, into more of a stew than a soup.
I bought an oxtail at Sainsbury’s; they sold all the pieces of one whole tail tied up together with string, which I thought was an interesting way of doing it. And there was one that was just a little larger than the amount that we needed, which was convenient. As it needs four hours to cook and quite a lot of preparation beforehand, I set about the task well ahead of time.
This recipe is from the south of Thailand, where many dishes are heavy influenced by the proximity to Malaysia. After the recent discussion on how common turmeric was in Thai food, I can confirm that this one definitely includes it because I managed to turn a lot of the kitchen yellow with it. The dish is made using a curry powder rather than the pounded paste that is used in so many Thai dishes. I made half of this recipe and it served three of us quite well, with a little left over. The quantity of curry powder seemed to be double what the recipe actually needed.
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
3 tablespoons coriander seeds
3 tablespoons cumin seeds
1 tablespoon cloves
1 tablespoon fennel seeds (I thought we had these but we didn’t, so I used a small piece of star anise instead)
20 Thai cardamom pods (I just used green cardamom)
15 long pepper – optional (I didn’t use these)
3 tablespoons chilli powder
2.5 tablespoons ground ginger (or 5 if you are using your own home-dried ginger)
3.5 tablespoons ground turmeric (or 7 if you are using your own home-dried turmeric)
Briefly dry fry the whole spices, then grind and combine with the powders. Sieve the mixture to get rid of any husks or bits that weren’t ground small enough. This powder was lovely and aromatic, and as I said above, we only used half of it, so we have kept the left over powder and will try to find another use for it.
3 kg oxtail, cut into pieces
5 white or brown onions, chopped
5 cups ginger water (details on this below)
pinch of salt
a few chillies (bird’s eye if you can get them), to taste
pinch of ground white pepper
1 tablespoon chopped coriander leaves
3 tablespoons deep-fried shallots
lime wedges (I completely forgot about these actually… just realised now!)
Start by blanching the oxtail twice from a cold water start, rinsing it in between and replacing the water. This cleans the meat and reduces the cooking time, which is good because it is still rather long. While you are doing this, make the ginger water too. Chop up and bruise some ginger, then add it to some water with a little sugar and bring to the boil, then simmer for several minutes. These two steps and making the curry powder do lead to quite a long prep time for this recipe.
When that is all done, add the onions and the blanched and rinsed oxtail to a large pot. Add 4 heaped tablespoons of the curry powder, the ginger water and salt. Add some more water to cover the oxtail, bring to the boil and simmer for 3 to 4 hours. Skim occasionally, and I found that I had to top up the water every now and then to ensure that the oxtail remained covered.
This bit is optional, but it is what made this richer and heartier: Remove the cooked oxtail from the liquid and let it cool, then pick the meat off the bones. The recipe said that the onions should have been completely dissolved by this point, but they weren’t so I sieved the stock and then pushed the onions through the sieve, then mixed it all back up together with the picked-off oxtail meat.
Season with the chillies, pepper, coriander and deep-fried shallots, and serve with lime wedges on the side. Of course, we didn’t have the lime wedges because I forgot. I imagine that a squeeze of lime juice would have balanced out the rich flavour well. It was indeed rich and hearty and was more like a stew than a soup. And Kerri really enjoyed it, which was the main thing!
It seems a little boring in comparison, but we had a simple cucumber salad to start, which was simply dressed with coriander leaves, fried dried chilli, Schezuan peppercorns, salt, sugar and rice vinegar. Having had the pomelo salad recently, we decided always to try to have some sort of simple, refreshing salad when we have time to prepare it.
With the “soup” we drank a New Zealand Gewurtztramminer which was off-dry and lovely and fruity and aromatic and went with it very well.
Sweetcorn Chowder
As a child I used to love the sweetcorn chowder that my mum cooked and when she made it, I usually ate it until I was too full to move. Kerri and I have been in soup-making mode lately and the topic of sweetcorn soup came up, so I was keen to try sweetcorn chowder. Whenever I think of chowder I am reminded of a Simpsons episode (part of the brilliant Season 5) where Mayor Quimby’s son takes exception to the way a French waiter pronounces “chowder” and an argument ensues. Which of course means that I almost always pronounce it in the “French” way now, just to be silly.
I always think of chowder as containing potato, which many of them do but it isn’t mandatory – some are thickened with crushed crackers or biscuits. We stuck with potato though. Traditionally, bacon or pork fat is fried in the pot first in order to release fat to enrich the soup but we fried ours separately and then removed it from the fat and added it in at the end in the name of reducing calories.
My mum did actually write down her recipe for me, but we didn’t follow it very closely on this occasion as we found a Gordon Ramsay recipe that looked interesting, so combined the two and made use of what we had at hand. Gordon Ramsay’s recipe actually included crab which we didn’t have. Just after I had added the ginger and cinnamon, we figured that the reason that they were in there was to go with the crab. Too late by then of course, but they did work well and gave the soup and gentle spicy warmth.
Milk is often used in chowder, but we had some crème fraîche that we needed to use up, so we added that along with some weak chicken stock instead. My mum’s version uses creamed corn, which melts in to the soup and gives everything the flavour of corn, whereas we used fresh corn kernels which had a nice texture to them, but their taste didn’t blend into the rest of the soup. Next time we’ll blend / purée at least half of the corn and leave the rest of it whole as a balance between the two styles. We didn’t have any leeks, but they would have been good in this.
Our recipe:
2 tbsp olive oil
2 small onions, finely chopped
1 large garlic clove, crushed or finely chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 large potatoes, about 600g, diced
½ tsp celery salt
½ tsp dry English mustard
Pinch of ground cinnamon
Pinch of ground ginger
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs of thyme
Salt and pepper
700ml chicken stock
250ml crème fraîche
200g sweetcorn kernels
Parsley, chopped
Pancetta or small slices of bacon
Sauté onions for 4-5 minutes until they begin to soften and become translucent. Add the garlic and celery, stir well and cook for another 3-4 minutes.
Add the potato, celery salt, mustard, cinnamon, ginger, the bay leaf and the thyme leaves and season with salt and pepper. Stir and cook for 3-4 minutes, then pour in the chicken stock and crème fraiche. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook for about 15 minutes until the potatoes are tender.
While the liquid is simmering, fry the pancetta and set aside.
Add the sweetcorn and simmer for 2-3 minutes until the corn is tender. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Stir in parsley and serve topped with pancetta.
Bibendum “Grape Expectations” Wine Tasting
We have been to a few of the tastings organised by Dan from Bibendum and they have all been really good. At most of them, I have attempted to make notes and then given up at some point. This time though, I was determined to persevere and mostly succeeded. The previous tastings have been around a particular country theme, e.g. there was Italy and then there was Australia. This one was about grape varieties, and comparisons between different wines made from the same or similar grape varieties from around the world. This is the sort of tasting that makes you really think about the wine itself, rather than regional wines simply being a vehicle for someone to ramble on romantically about some particular corner of the world.
I wrote most of this post up about a week ago and have since been thinking about how to edit it down a bit, being as it was just a big list of tasting notes with a little commentary in between. I failed in that. Mostly because seeing as I had taken the trouble to write the notes in the first place and then to type them up, I couldn’t bear to delete any of it. So apologies if it’s all a bit long-winded.
There were quite a few people there and we chatted for a while before the very entertaining Willie started introducing the wines that were laid out for tasting on three different tables. A gesture from Dan quarter of the way through let him know that he was going a tad slowly, so he sped up his explanations for the rest of them. After that, people slowly morphed into groups and wandered towards tables. Kerri and I both found ourselves at the white wine table first, which suited us fine as it meant we could go through the wines in the generally accepted tasting order. Each table was split into two halves, each of which would be a variety or type of wine and each half would contain three wines. Dan had put these together from what he could easily source from Bibendum’s impressively wide wine range.
The white table was split into chardonnay and Rhône varietals. The first wine was an Italian chardonnay and pinot grigio blend rather than a straight chardonnay. This was Alois Lageder Biodynamic Chardonnay Pinot Grigio 2008 from Dolimiti, Italy. I have put down “pale gold” for the colour of most of these wines; not sure if that is genuine or if the lighting made me put that or if I was just a bit blinkered. Medium intensity wine with a biscuity aroma reminiscent of some Alsace pinot gris wines (clearly the pinot grigio side of this wine does not fall into the normal neutral / boring Italian version), with white flowers and light peach and a medium length finish.
Next up was St Romain Clos sous la Chateau Domaine des Forges 2006 from Burgundy in France. This had significant vanilla, toast and oak flavours to it; more so than most white Burgundies. Probably something to do with it coming from the same town in which one of the world’s largest oak barrel producers is based. Also peach, citrus and mineral notes. A potential favourite amongst the whites for me.
The last of the chardonnay section was Howard Park Chardonnay 2007, Great Southern, Western Australia. Australian chardonnay has had something of a bad rep for being over-oaked, over-sweet, flabby and not very interesting. But this one was different. Coming from Western Australia, which is one of the cooler wine regions in Australia, the grapes have a lot more character than those that go into the notorious Australian Chardonnays of the mass producers. Winemakers from Western Australia often point out that they only make 5% of the wine in Australia, but win most of the awards. This wine had ripe fruit, with peach standing out, which was balanced by good acidity and a light toasty note with some mineral characteristics too. A lovely wine, showing off Australia’s quality white wine potential very well.
The second half of the white table was entitled “Rhone White Varietals”, which was a collection of varietal wines (i.e. made from only one grape variety) from across the world that were based on varieties that were originally grown in either the northern or southern Rhone regions in France.
The first was from McLaren Vale in South Australia. We talked about Western Australia being a quality wine region rather than a bulk region and McLaren Vale is similar, and particularly known for Shiraz. This wine was 100% Roussanne, which is grown in the Rhone but can be a difficult grape to grow, being low cropping and prone to disease. Because of this, Rhone producers usually grow just a small amount of it and usually blend it with the more reliable Marsanne. In these blends, Marsanne gives the body and Roussanne provides an aromatic fruitiness. This being 100% Roussanne was aromatic and fruity indeed, very ripe from being grown in sunny McLaren Vale and tasted of cooked or tinned apricots with orange blossom and honeysuckle notes. It had a medium to full body and a slightly oily texture.
Next up was our new friend Marsanne, which was produced in its spiritual home, the Rhone itself, specifically in Crozes-Hermitage which is the younger sibling of the well known Hermitage. It had a low acidity and also had some honeysuckle notes, along with a light spice reminiscent of aniseed. It had a very oily texture which gave it a full body.
The last on the list was a Viognier which is grown around the world now but used to be mostly confined to Condrieu in the northern Rhone. In fact it almost died out as a commercial grape variety and there were very few acres of them left due to difficulty in growing it. However, over time people recognised its potential… as well as the money they could get for a bottle of it… and started planting it more widely. This particular example is from California and I found it well balanced, which I wasn’t expecting – both California and Viognier are known for high alcohol content which particularly in combination could lead to a rather unbalanced wine. Apricots again, this time dried rather than tinned, and more honeysuckle notes along with spice. Fullish in body again. A favourite of the table with some people in our group.
All the groups did manage to finish their first table visits at roughly the same time, so we moved onto the next. We were presented with three roses and three pinot noirs. In fact there were four pinot noirs because the last of the roses was made from it too. First up was a pale pink rose made from 50% grenache, 35% syrah (shiraz to some people) and 15% mourvedre and produced in Lirac in the southern Rhone. It didn’t seem to have greath depth of flavour and not many people felt it would be one of their favourites. It did have light strawberry and redcurrant notes with a creamy texture and some light space on the finish.
The next rose was a slight step up in flavour concentration and was made entirely from grenache, in this case in the guise of “garnacha” from just across the border in Calatayud, Spain. It was a medium pink colour, with strawberry, floral and orange notes and an interestingly nutty savoury finish.
The last of the three roses was a pinot noir from Adelaide Hills in South Australia, again a higher quality region of Australia which gives well balanced wines. This was off-dry rather than completely dry and tasted of red cherries and strawberry, with light leather aroma and noticable acidity. My favourite of the roses.
The first of the reds was the top contender for my favourite of the evening. It was a red Burgundy from Volnay, which is made as all quality red Burgundy is, from 100% pinot noir. It was a medium garnet colour, with cherry and meaty flavours, along with some light vegetal or forest floor notes and a cinnamon and clove spice. There were noticable tannins but they were not astringent and gave the wine a firm backbone to hold the other flavours together.
From there we moved onto a Chilean pinot noir, which was a ruby colour and also had a nose of cherry and spice, but the fruit had a jammy quality rather than being refined as in the Burgundy. It also tasted quite strongly of vanilla and had a tarry note, giving the impression it had had a little too much cheap oak contact.
The next pinot noir was from New Zealand, and in particular from Marlborough, which is better known for its sauvignon blanc. This one was ruby with a purple tint, with a cherry flavour and floral lavender notes. It seemed that it should have promise bit came across as a bit one-dimensional to me, it probably needs a couple of years to develop.
On to the final table, which was all reds and was split into Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz / Syrah, two of the best known red grapes from around the world. The first cabernet that we tasted was a 2004 from Mendoza in Argentina, produced by Catena who recently won the Decanter magazine’s Winemaker of the Year award. It was a garnet colour, showing its 5 years of age, with intense blackcurrant, dark plum, cedar and toast flavours. Medium acidity and a medium to full body. From the description that I wrote down, it sounds like it should have been good, but I didn’t give it that good a score, so it must not have impressed at the time.
Next up was a wine from the spiritual home of cabernet sauvignon – Bordeaux. This wine was from 2005 and hailed from Pauillac, a sub-region of Bordeaux which is well known for being the home of some of the biggest names in Bordeaux. Bordeaux wines are usually a blend of cabernet sauvignon with merlot and cabernet franc, with a couple of other grapes added in small amounts. Again, it had a medium garnet colour, with quite a deep core and on the nose there were notes of cedar, cigar box, plums and licorice. It was medium bodied, with medium to high ripe tannins and medium-high acidity too. Would be brilliant with roast beef.
The last of the cabernet trio was my second favourite of the evening, De Trafford 100% cabernet from Stellenbosch in South Africa, again from 2005. A deep garnet with a pronounced nose and flavour of blackcurrants, blackberries, cedar, violets, earth and eucalyptus. It had a full body with a lot of ripe tannin and medium acidity.
On to the first of the shiraz selection, which was 100% shiraz from California, 2008. It was a medium ruby colour with garnet tint and notes of flint, spice, licorice and smoke going well with the black cherry fruit and violet floral aroma. Quite a complex wine for one of this price from California.
The next was a blend from Cotes du Roussillon in the south of France. It contained 40% syrah along with 40% grenache and 20% carignan. It had slightly confected cherry fruit with white pepper spice. Notes were getting a bit sparse at this point!
The last was from Hunter Valley in Australia, from 2005. It was a bland of 92% shiraz with 8% tannat. It had lots of black cherry fruit, with a little plum fruit too, ripe bit not jammy.
After all the tasting, people filled up with a little of their favourites and continued to chat for a while until it was time to go. I tried to get another taste of the Volnay but it had disappeared by the time I got there, so I settled for some of the De Trafford cabernet instead.
A really interesting and informative evening, so many thanks to Dan for organising it and to the other Bibendum staff who presented the wines. We paid a (not so) quick visit to the pub afterwards of course and it was really interesting chatting to them all about the wines and of course wine and life in general.
Tuscan Bean Soup
This has been on our “to cook” list for some time and as soup season seems to be fully underway, tonight seemed like a good time to finally get on with it.
As ever, Delia’s instructions were pointlessly long-winded but it was worth sticking with as the final result was pretty good. The blended beans gave the soup a rich and creamy texture without the need for cream and the flavour was deep and earthy. I wasn’t overly-keen on the sweet shallots but it would be easy to leave those out. The bacon however was essential and provided a sweet contrast to the soup itself.
We halved the recipe to make just two portions but needed to add a lot more liquid than the original recipe stated, it didn’t actually produce a huge amount either so I would recommend making the full amount and freezing any leftovers – which is probably a sensible thing to do with soup anyway, since it re-heats so well.
Khmer Chicken Samla and Pomelo Salad
We had planned to cook rack of lamb tonight but we’re having lunch with Stephen’s sister tomorrow and she told us she’s planning to cook roast lamb. As much as we both love lamb, we didn’t want to eat it twice in a row so found ourselves in a bit of a quandary this morning while we were working out what to eat. I can’t quite remember how we got to this dish but I do know that as soon as Stephen suggested it, there was no other option.
We have cooked the Khmer Chicken Samla with coconut milk before and it worked out very well, but tonight’s version was even better. We only made half the sauce for the same amount of chicken and that seemed about right. It all came together perfectly and we found ourselves fighting over the leftovers and the rest of the sauce in the pan.
It isn’t a quick dish; you need to spend some time making the paste and then leaving it to simmer but it’s definitely worth it. It is rich and creamy but well balanced at the same time so it doesn’t feel heavy. Spicy but not too hot and perfectly rounded with the coconut milk mellowing a punchy lemongrass, garlic and ginger hit and the earthy notes of the roasted shrimp paste filling in the gaps.
For a starter, we had pomelo salad. For those that haven’t encountered it before, a pomelo is a large grapefruit-like fruit. It has a very thick skin and is a lot drier than a grapefruit and is not as sour. As it turned out, we had a salad in the Prince of Wales last night that included it which made us decide to try it ourselves soon, so this was a perfect opportunity.
The recipe for the pomelo salad comes from the book Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, which was also where we got the recipe for our main course. We did pick both the recipes because we liked the look of them, but as it turned out they were both Cambodian in origin, which seemed to imply that they were meant to be together and that we had to make them both.
Ingredients – the book says this serves 4 but we ate all of it between the two of us
3 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon palm sugar, or brown sugar if not available
1 pomelo
2 tablespoons dry-roasted grated coconut (we left this out as we didn’t have it)
2 tablespoons dry-roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon chopped shallots
1 cup mint leaves, chopped
2 bird chillis, finely chopped
lettuce leaves, washed and dried
Mix the fish sauce, lime juice and sugar together until the sugar has all dissolved. We ended up with chunks of undissolved palm sugar in ours, but stirred it every ten minutes over half an hour or so while we prepared everything else and eventually it was all dissolved.
Peel the pomelo and separate into segments. This took us quite a while as the skin is very thick… people who do this in restaurants must be very skilled and have a lot of patience. Then skin each segment and remove the fruit into a bowl. When ready to serve, pour out any juice that has accumulated into the bowl (we didn’t have any, our pomelo was quite dry) and then mix in the coconut (if using), the peanuts, mint, shallots and chilli. Pour the dressing over it and mix well. Adjust the seasoning if needed – we found it just right and didn’t need to do any adjustments.
This salad was really brilliant, and different to the one that we had had at the Prince of Wales because that one included crab and green papaya. This was very fresh and vibrant with a bit of chilli bite and a well balanced combination of ingredients and dressing, bringing the hot, salty, sour, and sweet together in just the right proportions. It felt like it was a palate cleanser as well as a starter and woke up the mouth ready for the main course.
Nigella’s Nuts
We make these nuts a lot and, looking back through old posts, they do feature but there isn’t an actual recipe so, this evening, we give you Nigella’s Nuts. According to the recipe, they’re from the Union Square Cafe Bar in New York. Nigella visited, loved them and asked for the recipe so that she could re-create them at home. They’re really good, quick and easy, as well as that it’s a great way of using up any half empty bags of nuts you might having lurking in your cupboard.
We always follow the recipe but it would work well with any combination of herbs and spices. Don’t be tempted to over-do the cayenne though, we like spicy food and have added extra in the past but it over powers everything and doesn’t allow the sweetness of the nuts to shine.
500g assorted unsalted nuts, including: peeled peanuts, cashews, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans and whole unpeeled almonds
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh rosemary (from 2 8cm sprigs)
Half tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp dark muscavado sugar
2 tsp Maldon salt
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
Preheat the oven to 180C/ gas mark 4.
Toss the nuts in a large bowl to combine and spread them out on a baking sheet. Toast in the oven till they become light golden brown, about 10 minutes.
In a large bowl, combine the rosemary, cayenne, muscavado sugar, salt and melted butter.
Thoroughly toss the toasted nuts with the spiced butter and serve warm.
Prince of Wales, Putney
Luckily, we didn’t have to wait too long until our table was ready and we could get on with the real food. I started with the scallops with Jerusalem artichokes and truffle puree while Stephen had the crab and papaya salad with pomelo. I enjoyed the scallops; they were perfectly cooked and the whole dish was very well executed. It was rich and earthy though and as soon as I had tasted Stephen’s salad I realised that I would have preferred something light and fresh. There wasn’t a huge amount of crab flavour but the other ingredients were light and bright and really woke up the taste buds.
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One of our friends had the giant puffballs on toast. We were all intrigued as to just how giant the mushrooms would be and, having asked the waitress, she brought it out to show us. The picture is rather fuzzy but it does at least give an idea of the size, enormous! Although I didn’t order it, I tasted the finished dish and was very impressed, there was a strong, earthy flavour that was reminiscent of soy sauce.
Next, I opted for the hare because I haven’t had it before (I actually had it at the Bull and Last but didn’t remember until afterwards). The inclusion of “baklava of hare leg” worried me slightly but I assumed it would be a savoury version. It wasn’t though and that, paired with the rich, almost chocolatey sauce made the whole dish very sweet. The hare itself was very good, densely flavoured and melting in texture but unfortunately completely over-powered. I didn’t like the bulghur wheat accompaniment either; I assume it was included to lighten the flavours and while it probably was more appropriate than something like mashed potato, it just didn’t work with strongly flavoured hare.
Stephen had the deer, which came with some very good fries and bearnaise sauce. The portion looked very small to me but he was happy with the amount. Again, it was well cooked and both the flavour and the texture were perfect. The chips were very good too and I was happy to see proper, thin fries rather than those ridiculous, huge chips many places are still serving.
And then, on to dessert. We don’t often eat dessert but I noticed the peanut butter ice-cream as soon as we arrived and was really keen to try it. I like peanut butter but am always slightly disappointed that it’s a savoury spread. For me, this was perfect and the real highlight of the meal. A good balance between sweet and salt and the perfect way to finish off.
Stephen had the cheese plate which was also very good; a selection of four cheeses which we should have asked about, but didn’t. One was definitely stilton and the others seemed to be British (and possibly Irish) too but we didn’t identify them. They were all tasty though.
While I didn’t enjoy my main course, I was impressed with everything else I tasted and, in retrospect, I probably should have ordered something like fish and chips to give me a better idea of how good the food can be. I’m keen to go back and sample more of the menu and, given it’s much closer than the Bull and Last, it shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve.
