St Luke's Hospice Summer Fair Saturday 12th June

I will be volunteering on the jewellery stall at St Luke's Summer Fair this coming Saturday.  The fair starts at 12 noon and as parking is an issue at the hospice there is a free park and ride scheme operating from Tesco's on Abbeydale Road.

I have donated a lot of my handmade jewellery to St Luke's and will be selling that on the stall along with donations from other St Luke's supporters.  I know from personal experience when I lost my Dad three years ago to the big 'C' what a wonderful job all the staff do for the patients and their families at a time when they desperately need support, so am trying to do a little bit to pay them back.  I do hope you will come and support them - they get so little government funding and have to raise millions each year just to stay open.

Keep your fingers crossed that the rain stops by Friday as predicted too please......

Bank Holiday Weekend Beading Project

As I sat to watch our usual slaughtering on the annual Eurovision "we're an island with no friends" contest, I thought I had better have something to distract me from my frustrations at our numerous 'nil points' scores so I decided to have a go at a rather complicated beading project that I've had for a while.

It is a bead weave bracelet, in pretty shades of green, blue and purple made up of 4mm bicones and seed beads.  The pattern looked pretty incomprehensible to begin with, but once I got into the rhythm of the count I only made 3 mistakes.  I wished I'd done it on fireline rather than nymo as I split the thread unpicking one such mistake half way through but I managed to knot in a new piece where the knot shouldn't be noticeable - you need arms about 3ft long with these projects to stop the long lengths of thread from kinking :-)

Anyway, mishaps aside, I think the finished piece turned out pretty well....  (you may need to click the photo to enlarge it to see it properly as it hasn't come out that well once blogger has resized it to fit the page)

Moroccan Girls Night In

I had my girlfriends round the Friday before the jewellery class for a girls night in - we've had a couple of disappointing meals out recently and I pointed out that I thought for a fiver a head I could do a better job than the professionals - and, all modesty aside, I reckon I pretty much did ;-)

 

I went for a Moroccan theme on the whole, a regular favourite of mine and a good cuisine style to try if you want to spend more time with your guests than you do in the kitchen.  We started with a mezze of hot and cold dips, with herby pitta chips.   We had hummus, coriander and lime honeyed yoghurt, roasted beetroot and cumin dip, a spicy walnut and roasted red pepper dip, all cold and my take on Moutabel, served warm, but using small cubes of fried aubergine rather than the pulp from whole roasted ones as I find their texture unpalatable.  I simply fry them in olive oil with cumin and harissa and add finely grated lemon zest (a microplane works wonders here!) and lots of chopped fresh parsley to finish.

For the main course I made my signature lamb feta filo pie, which is essentially a mixture of Moroccan spiced minced lamb with red peppers, apricots and sultanas, with a layer of spinach, feta and pine nuts encased in either filo pastry or fuille de brick.  I served this with harrisa and pumpkin seed oil roasted potatoes tossed with rocket and a refreshing Moroccan carrot salad which is just grated carrot with a dressing of olive oil, cumin, orange juice and zest, honey and/or orange flower water with parsley, coriander and sliced black olives.  We were all eager to tuck in so I forgot to do an untouched close up shot - sorry!

For dessert, I had ambitious plans of finally using my Christmas present - a much hinted at molecular gastronomy kit - but it was a work night and I had been at work all day and having spent 2 hours the night before failing miserably to make rhubarb curls, I just had to admit defeat and scale down my plans....

I served a seasonal, and particularly un-Moroccan rhubarb verrine - apparently that's the de rigueur term for something "layered" in a glass - I know - how did we possibly reach 2010 without a specific word for such a dessert ;-)  This was basically, a layer of rhubarb fool at the bottom, with a layer or orange roasted rhubarb compote, and then a layer of crushed raffia biscuits for a little crunch and texture, topped, thanks to my birthday present of an ISI Espuma a very quick and easy elderflower mousse.  My plan had been to use some of the roasted rhubarb juice and my MSK kit to create rhubarb caviar through spherification - but I just ran out of time - I even asked that lovely man Alex who didn't quite win MasterChef this year if I could do it ahead of time - and thanks to the power of Twitter he graciously replied, but alas, it has to be done at the last minute or the process continues and you get a bowl full of jelly!  So I used what bits of curls I could rescue from the sticky mess that had once been a non-stick baking sheet, topped them off and with a nod to Heston and the 80's I sprinkled them with a packet of strawberry popping candy...

As it turns out - the candy was the bit the girls enjoyed the most - so next time ladies - you're all just getting a pack each!!!!

We finished off the evening with a few games of "just dance" on the wii - which you can see brought a few laughs - and not so visibly, a broken floorboard.............

Now the sun is shining I'm starting to think about this years BBQ party - are you ready girls?

Beaded Jewellery Classes

This coming saturday, I will be teaching my first ever jewellery class, at the Craft Den on Loxley Road from 1.30 - 3.30 pm.  We will be making this triple strand silver foil lined glass bead necklace - if you want to learn how, email sales@craftden.co.uk or contact Lynne on 234 0732 to book a place.

More classes will follow for different beaded jewellery projects so keep having a look at the Craft Den's website or follow my blog to make sure you see the updates.  Please note places are limited and the first class is almost full already.

Yesterday's class seemed to go down really well - great bunch of ladies who were very patient with me while I found my teaching "wings".  Thanks ladies - hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and that you will all enjoy wearing the lovely necklace and earrings we made.

The next scheduled class is 1.30 - 3.30 pm on Saturday 3rd July.  We will be making a set of jewellery along the lines of the pieces pictured below along with a matching bracelet and learning some new techniques.

Bookings can only be made via the Craft Den and not through my blog. 

Handmade Gift Exchange

Today was the day to exchange our gifts in the Handmade Gift Exchange organised by Mains restaurant in Suffolk.

I had been paired with Ann, a lovely lady who is a regular at the "sip and stitch" nights at the restaurant, and a knitter - one of the crafts I have never managed to master, so when discussing in our various emails what to make for each other, I was hopeful of something knitted :-)   I didn't want to know exactly what I would get, but sent a wedding photo to show my favourite colours and Ann mentioned that she liked to add beads to her knitting (beads in knitting, she must be some kind of magician.......)   And when I arrived home from work tonight there was a package sitting, smiling at me on the door mat, and inside was this beautiful creation.....

Teal is my favourite colour and makes up at least 50% of my wardrobe so this is going to go with so many of my outfits.  For once I am hoping for a cold weekend so I get the chance to try it out on Saturday night.  it looks like a lot of work to me and I really appreciate the time and effort it must have taken to make such a lovely handmade gift - thanks Ann!  :-)

For my part, I offered a variety of crafts and Ann was intrigued by the idea of a beaded watch and told me that she wears a lot of brown.  I lucked out and managed to find a lovely watch component with a brown pale face and took my inspiration and colour pallet from that.  The results are below - I decided to add a matching bracelet to make it more of a surprise and added a "surpriseabella" card to go with it.  I am really pleased with the way it turned out - the colours came out great and I got a lovely email from Ann who said she liked it very much which really made my day.

There was a bit of snag along the way though, as the brown pearls I'd bought to match the watch face did not have a wide enough hole for me to cross my beading thread through twice as the design requried, so I had to get out my trusty dremmel with a very fine drill bit, and with the aid of a lump of white-tac I had to re-drill every bead to make the hole a bit wider.......   

....there were a few hairy moments (luckily I bought more bead than I needed ;-)!) but much to my surprise it actually worked - phew - disaster averted and Ann could have a new watch!

This was my first gift exchange, but hopefully it won't be my last - it was a really interesting and worthwhile experience to be involved in - and gave me something to look forward to.  If you see another gift exchange - take part - it's like getting an extra birthday and the giving is great too...........

Floral Fervour

Just a quick post tonight featuring my favourite floral stamps from Elzybels.  I really love these stamps as they are so versatile - here used for birthday, wedding acceptance and even a sympathy card.  In all these cards I've used a multi-coloured stamping technique - either stamping difference dew drop ink pads directly onto the stamp to give a patchwork coloured effect as on the daisy, or with a brayer and a big and juicy multicoloured ink pad on the dandelion clock.  I used Elzybels really useful word stamps, Martha Stewart punches and some simple matting and layering to finish the cards.

 

The Boys

I decided to make a handmade gift for my friends birthday and wanted to use photos of her 3 boys which we took last summer when we went to Magna with them on a summer holiday visit up here.

I found this lovely tripple heart frame in a local gift shop which was perfect for the job but needed a little embelishment to enhance its' shabby-chicness.  There was a floral whitewash design on it which I added dots of liquid pearls to for a bit of shimmer and sparkle.

I then used two flowers from the Wild Asparagus Decoupage Pad from My Minds Eye although sadly I think this product has now been discontinued by them, but it may still be around in the shops somewhere.  I used a simple brown brad to hold them together and added sepia glossy accents to jazz it up a bit.  I also gave the same treatment to a chipboard butterfly, which I coloured with ink pads to match the brad, and then sat on one of the spare leaves from the decoupage page.

I'm really pleased with the results and so was my friend - its almost as cute as the boys themselves :-)

Blog Hop

Blue Easles

Made a couple of easle cards, one for a boy, one for a girl but both strangely blue.  This is the first time I've had a go at easles though, so I am very pleased with the results.

This is a lili of the valley topper with some birthday ribbon and a lot of scraps from various DCWV packs.

The girls version is a sugar nellie rubber stamp, coloured with copic markers and pencils and blended with sansoder and paper stumps.  Embellished with Martha Stewart's fabulous daisy punch.  There is some glitter detail to the wings and wish and the buttons have sparkle from glossy accents from Ranger.

A Crafty Easter

Had a few craft projects on the go this bank holiday weekend, one of which was supposed to be sorting the craft room, but that's another (ongoing) story ;-)

On Friday, I did my first ever "spangling" for my friend who has recently taken up lace making and bought some lovely lace bobbins from the lace fair in Harrogate last weekend. Spangling for the uniniciated (which until recently btw so was I!) is the process of adding "spangles" to the bottom of wooden lace bobbins to give them weight and some pattern so you know which pair you are working on. As a jewellery maker beading wasn't a problem, just learning how to do the right pattern and getting the tension right. This was our afternoons work.

This is a close up on my favourite pair - the wood was such an unusal blend of black, teal, purple and claret that we were able to pick up on in the bead selection. Some of the other beads we used were ones my friend selected whilst on a recent holiday to Cambodia so hopefully using these in her hobby will act as a nice reminder of her trip :)

I also made a couple of cards, one for my Aunts birthday and one for another friend who has just become a Great Aunt and wanted a new baby boy card for her nephew.

Addy tude loves her 'tinis

I made this card for my friends birthday a couple of weeks ago but have got behind on this whole blogging mallarky...... This is a tiddly inks stamp from Stamping Bella and I just love Addy Tude - this is the first of many purchases from this range I'm sure. It's coloured with copics and the glasses are glazed with glossy accents and the fur trim is sparkling with ranger rock candy spangles.

To go with her present (a saute pan) I made her a little something more personal, a jewellery set made with the gorgeous Elzybels floral stamps and shrink plastic. I've never had much sucess with shrink plastic in the past, but these worked beautifully.

I just love the dandilion clock in this set, so started with that, and used a brayer and rainbow big and juicy ink pad to get the soft graduated colour effect. Here's the before and after effect on the earrings.

This is the before shrinking shot for the bracelet, a mix of three of the oblong stamps from the set, with holes larger than required, pre-punched with my trusty crop-a-dile. The colours look really soft on frosted shrink plastic but they darken when shrunk as you can see in the second image of the finished bracelet. I used a thin coat of glossy accents on the inked side of the plastic once shrunk to ensure it didn't smudge when worn.

If you like these gorgeous floral stamps - and who wouldn't right? Then stop by Elzybells store over the Easter Weekend (2nd - 5th April) for some great Easter discounts http://elzybells.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/03/easter-special-offers-limited-time.html

Leftover Moroccan Chicken Soup

On Saturday we had a lovely roast chicken, smothered inside and out in Lemon Chicken Spice Mix from the Spice Shop, stuffed with lemons and parsley, an often repeated recipe in our house which is rich and earthy, spicy and zesty from the roasted lemons. We were starving and made a good go of it but we had plenty of leftovers, which I normally turn into risotto, my hubbies favourite. Today though I wanted something lighter and restorative so I came up what I think is best described as a middle eastern take on minestrone. I'm thinking he wasn't so upset by the lack of risotto once he'd started eating....

Moroccan Soup with Leftover Chicken

1 roast chicken carcass, leftover flesh removed.

1 carrot, sliced in half

1 stick celery

2 bay leaves

1 onion diced

1 carrot diced

½ small butter not squash diced

1 corgette diced

1 red pepper diced

1 can chopped tomatoes

1 can chick peas

1 quarter of a chorizo sausage, diced

1 teaspoon lemon chicken mix (optional)

1 teaspoon cumin

½ teaspoon corriander

1 glove garlic finely chopped

1 inch piece of garlic finely chopped

1 tablespoon honey

handfull of fresh parsley
grated carrot (optional)

Cover the carcass in water, add the halved carrot, celery and bay leaves, bring to the boil and simmer for 30 - 40 mins until you have a light stock, rich with the flavour from the spices you roasted the chicken in.

In the meantime, prepare your other vegetables.

Fry the chorizo cubes in a large saute pan in olive oil, remove when browned but retain the oil.

Add the onion, garlic, ginger and dry spices and fry.

Add the diced squash, carrot, corgette and brown.

Add the diced pepper, tomatoes, honey and chicken stock. Cook for 5 mins on gentle heat. Add the diced left over chicken, cook for a couple of minutes until the chicken is warmed through, add the chorizo and parsley, season to taste and serve with crusty bread of pittas.

I came across a recipe for moroccan carrot soup, which cooked carrot in the broth but then finished the dish with raw carrot for a light fresh lift and added crunch. I loved it so much I tried it in this dish and it worked here too - so add a handful of grated carrot at the end of cooking just prior to serving and see what you think.

Lots of new stamps

I've been a bit carried away with rubber stamping recently, mainly due to following a great card makers blog from America - Paula Tracey - her cards are amazing and her colouring techniques from copic markers or prisma colour pencils and blending tools are hard to beat. I don't really have any of her artistic skills but I'm practicing hard.



The first card is a sugar nellie stamp coloured with copics, the background is pencil coloured and blended with sansoder with a star and swirl backgorund stamp.

My second card was a mothers's day card for my aunt and god mother. A cute magnolia girl coloured with copics and gently glittered with fairy dust, sitting on a nestabilities lable frame, with a martha stewart border punch and one of the gorgeous new flower stamps from elzybels a her circular happy mothers day sentiment.

New Elzybels Stamps

With mother's day approaching fast, my delivery of the new Elzybels "floral flourish" stamps could not arrive quick enough. It came yesterday and I didn't have much time to play last night but this is my first card made with them.
Can't wait for a bit of time this weekend to make some more - and if I concentrate, they might even not all turn out pink.........

Walnut Club Report - Must Try Harder!

Long time no blog, but life has just got in the way recently, however, a REALLY poor meal at the Walnut Club riled me enough to blog again.

8 of us went for our friends birthday meal on Friday, attracted by their caberet night. This was my first (and I have to say upfront it will also be my last) visit to the Walnut Club - the location, over a (now closed) plumbers merchants - never really appealed but for a group do, with post dinner entertainment it seemed like a good option. As they were advertising a 5 10 5 price for the 3 courses it also seemed "reasonable".

The first thing that struck me, is that without windows and the heavy handed use of frosted perspex by an ubertrendy designer - it felt like you were eating dinner inside an ice-cube. I found the decor and booths, claustrophobic and depressing. I also think it's a place with an identity crisis - is it a restaurant, a bar or a nightclub - I'm not sure and what's worse I don't think it is either! The "bar" takes up for too much space and disects the room making the individual booths feel even more isolated. The fixed frosted perspex tables in the booths are the wrong height and make getting in and out of the booths difficult and sitting there for 2 hours gave me back ache - a huge style over practicality mistake by the designer. Our booth was particularly poor as, stuck in a corner to maximise space the layout with 2 tables just didn't work and the gap inbetween the two was not large enough for chairs so we ended up a party of 8 split into 2 tables of 4 unable to converse as a group without the use of sign language.........

For a caberet night, I expected food, with soft background music, followed by a bit more volume and dancing to follow. Which is a concept I think would work. What doesn't, is a split set, starting the first while everyone is still eating with volume that would rival your average heavy metal gig, then a lull when everyone was ready to dance. Good idea, poorly executed.

Then we get to the food, the biggest disappointment of the night. The 5 10 5 menu online has 8 or more options for main and starter, there were only 3 of each on the night (it is worth noting too that the fish and chips, which were undoubtably the best offering are on the £10 online menu, but were actually only £9.50 from the á la carte....). Most of the girls opted for the parsnip soup - which was thick but tasty so I'm told but at £5 a bowl was overpriced, as was everything on their menu. Myself and a friend opted for an á la carte offering of cumin roasted buttersquash and swiss chard salad with goats cheese and toasted flat bread for a wopping £7.50, but I'd heard good reports of the food so expected something spectacular for that price. Needless to say I was very disappointed! The squash was neither cumin flavoured nor roasted - there were 3 slices of it.... The goats cheese was eventually discovered after much digging to be a little "smeer" of mouse plastered to the plate. There was no flat bread and when I questionned the waitress on this, she returned with a cold, stale half of a pitta bread. At this point, I saw no point in complaining - it was a friends special birthday party and I'm often told I'm over critical, so I let it slide and ate it (it was late, I was hungry!)

The first of the mains to arrive was the fish and chips, it looked good, so I was hopefully that my beef cheeks (one of the £10 main options) would be much improved on the starter course. It wasn't! I was already annoyed that all it came with was some roast veg and that I'd had to pay another £3 for chips (the only suitable side dish offered) to make it an actual "meal". I've had beef cheeks before, and properly cooked, long and slow, they are a delightful and very cheap cut of meat. When they are still as tough a boot leather still stock full with all the gelatinous fibers that should have been melted away by the proper cooking process - they are nothing but a chore - one girl who had them found the texture so unpleasant at one point she had to spit them out or be sick! The majority of the girls went for the sweet potato masala, which whilst very tasty was the smallest portion of curry, with an even smaller portion of rice - a HUGE rip off for a tenner.

Now, on a night out, I am NEVER one one turn down a dessert - I love to finish a meal with something sweet and delicious, but on this occassion I was dissappointed by the cooking standards and rip off prices that I passed. As did most of my friends. The only dessert that came, a chocolate creme brulee with strawberry was again astonishingly overpriced at £7 for a very tiny pot of chocolate custard with a single out of season stawberry....

As I said, this was my first and last visit to the Walnut Club - whilst I understand the need for restaurants to make a profit, particularly in this current climate, customers will not, and should not, be forced to accept corner cutting and lazy chefs palming off cheap ingredients if they are not prepared to transform them into something spectacular. I love the cheap cuts of meat - I made a great beef bourguignon for lunch yesterday with beef skirt and shin - mine was meltingly tender - perhaps I should give him my recipe???? End of term report - MUST TRY HARDER.

Bompas & Parr Inspired Dessert Tower & BBQ

Being a girl who loves jelly, I have read, with much jealousy, lots of reviews of Bompas and Parr events of late and drooled over the glorious and quirky pictures on their website. Jelly mongering is not their only skills, but it is the one that gets me excited and their Architectural Dessert Trolley in particular caught my eye as lets face it - who wouldn't fall for a tower of wobbling jelly loveliness such as this. I decided therefore to make my own interpretation of their tower as the centrepiece to my annual girlie BBQ, although not totally made of jelly as I wanted a choice of scrummy desserts for my girlies to choose from. I started my tripple layer tower with raspberry and marzipan cupcakes which the girls all raved about so I have included the recipe below, I then had my "tripple layer boozey jellies" in the middle, and topped it off with a rippled peach melba pavlova.

Now, as you can no doubt see from the photograph - my tower was somewhat less impressive than the one the genious team at Bompass and Parr created - as despite my love of eating jelly, I've never been very sucessful at making it! I think it could have something to do with my ponchon for adding booze to jelly and the catastrophic effects that alchohol seems to have on the setting agents. Whilst I did sucessfully manage to get my first jelly out of its mould in one piece - I could not, for all the tea in china, manage to make the darn thing stand upright, and I decided a roly-poly sidesliding jelly looked worse than upturning the glasses I made them in. The actual jelly was delicious - blackcurrent with cassis at the bottom, a sharp raspberry with chambord in the centre. Top off with elderflower with the peary hint of eau-de-vie - we just had to eat them from the container with a spoon.

That was my second disaster of the day as my first attempt at a gentle rippled meringue had all gone very wrong as I had followed the magazine recipe which called for me to cook the meringue like a sabayon over a water bath - the resulting bubble gum pink liquid went straight in the bin and out came my faithful Cookery Bible for Prue's unfailing meringue recipe and batch two was peaky perfection. Adding the ripples with the use of a gel food colouring on a cocktail stick reminded me of those marbling inks we used to use at school which you floated on water and stirred around to get the swirly pattern before dropping your paper in and taking the ink off the water. Very satisfying.

I served cocktails on the day which also went down very well and were greatly enjoyed in the moment of sun when the wind and rain finally died down. It was a twist on a kir-royal, instead of raspberries, I used homemade blackberry puree (as I couldn't find any Creme du Mure), added blackcurrent gin and elderflower cordial and added a tablespoon of the resulting syrup to the bottom of a glass and topped up with champagne.

Unfortunately, due to the on/off rain and juggling all the cooking, I didn't manage to get any photos of the rest of the BBQ food, just the dessert but the basic menu was as follows:

• Aubergine Vinaigrette
• Courgette & Goats Cheese Rolls
• Chickpea & Feta Salad
• Potato & Quails Egg Salad (Valentine Warner's recipe)
• Plaice fillets with Clams and Samphire in Caper Buerre Noisette
• Beef and Parmesan Mini Burgers or
  Mushroom and Parmesan Mini Burgers
• Sparkling Cranberry-Vodka Chicken Kebabs
• Butternut Squash and Corn Koftas
• Morrocan Spiced Lamb Rump

The aubergine vinaigrette is a noteworthy Spanish tapas dish which can be preparred the day before a party as it only gets better the longer it is soaked in its dressing. You simply layer griddled aubergine slices in a dish with dressing between each layer which consists of good sherry vinegar, olive oil, capers, lots of garlic, parsley and chopped roma tomatoes.

The other standout dish of the day was the butternut squash and corn koftas - a simple mix of roasted squash (sprinkled with cumin and corriander when roasting) blitzed with chickpeas, coarsley ground pistacios, breadcrumbs and tahini. Fresh corn and parsley are stirred in after blitzing and then the mixture moulded on kofta skewers. Really nice vegetarian BBQ alternative but it went great with the spice lamb rump in a pitta too....

Cheers ladies - same time next year?

My girlfriends (and the one boy allowed as he's under 1 year old.....)

Raspberry & Marzipan Cupcakes

Cupcakes

250g butter - at room temperature
250g caster sugar
250g self raising flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
150g marzipan
up to 4 tablespoons milk
raspberry jam (seedless is best)

Topping

100g butter (must be at room temperature not from the fridge)
200g cream cheese
300g icing sugar
1 teaspoon amaretto or almond extract
fresh raspberries and pearly sugar sprinkles to decorate

Method
Set oven to 175 C or Gas 4
Line 18 muffin moulds with cupcake cases
Dice the marzipan into 5mm cubes - put in a bowl with one tablespoon of flour and toss to keep the individual cubes from clumping. The flour coating will also prevent the marzipan from sinking to the bottom of the cupcakes when cooking.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy
Add the flour, baking powder and eggs and beat until combined and fluffy. The consistancy should be that of whipped cream - if its a little thick, add some milk, a tablespoon at a time and beat to combine.
Gently fold the marzipan cubes through the mixture.
Spoon one teaspoon of cake mixture into the bottom of each cupcake case.
Add half a teaspoon of raspberry jam to the centre of each cake.
Add another teaspoon of cake mixture to each case, taking care to completely cover the blob of jam.
Bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until risen, firm to the touch and golden.
Allow to cool for 5 mins in the tin then transfer to a cooling rack.

While the cakes are in the oven, make the frosting.
Cream the cheese and butter.
Turn the mixer to its lowest speed to prevent puthering and add the icing sugar and flavouring.

When the cakes are completely cool, pipe or spoon the frosting onto each cake, sprinkle with frosted sugar strands (or hundred and thousands for a retro feel) and top each with a fresh raspberry.

Learning to Cook Fish

Fish has always been my nemesis in the kitchen (anyone who saw my unfortunate appearance on MasterChef Goes Large a couple of years ago would have seen me carbonise a defenceless piece of tuna....) and so I have tended to avoid cooking fish at all costs. However, The Milestone, that fabulous bar and restaurant in Shalesmoor has recently started to offer a range of Saturday cooking classes, having done one some months ago called "Nose to Tail" where we learned how to cook pigs cheeks and all manor of strange and under-used but delicious cuts of meat and finding it to be very liberating (well if you can peel the face off a pig....) I decided to book another one of their courses simply entitled "Fish" as I hoped to learn some similar skills and overcome my fear of all things aquatic.

The Milestone's cookery schools run once per month currently and at the time of writing cost £75 for the day (10.30am til about 4.00pm) and includes drinks and lunch (often something you have cooked yourself during the class) and all your ingredients (my advice would be to skip breakfast as there is lots to eat throughout the day, but they will happily provide cartons for you to take home things you can't eat, and there is usually something part prepared to take home to cook for dinner if you've any room!) At first glance, that might seem like quite a lot to pay for a day out, but believe you me, if you take the time to compare the prices of similar courses around the country - you are getting HUGE value for money (well this is Yorkshire after all!!!) as most courses in this price bracket last normally around 2 -3 hours.

On this occasion a couple of friends came with me and the class was quite busy - around 12 of us gathered behind our tables in the upstairs restaurant dinning room which is where the classes are based. The format for the day seemed to follow the same procedure as before - head chef Simon and his sous chef James demonstrate a technique (in this case the way to fillet both flat and round fish, including the ingenious "V" boning technique which made me very happy and my fish tweezers forever redundant!) and then teach you a dish using the ingredient you have just prepared. On our course (18th July) we tackled gilt head bream, plaice, trout and mackerel and finished the day with mussels.

The bream was the first fish we got our hands on, after the guys had demonstrated all the techniques and we all gutted and scaled them and then took the two fillets off (bit tricky as for some of us it was the first attempt we'd ever made but both chefs (and the owners Mum) were on hand to point us (or our knifes!) in the right direction if we went astray. Once we had the fillets off the bones, we then had to pin bone them and this is where the revelation of the day occurred for me - in restaurants, chefs don't spend hours grappling with tweezers and bones which refuse to be extract, oh no, they very carefully follow the central line of bones and make a narrow V shaped incision on either side and hey presto, out pop the bones in one quick slice!!! Admittedly, you do loose a tiny bit of fish, but to be honest, it's nothing worth worrying about and could be slung in the stock pot if you felt overly precious about it. The fillets of bream on this occasion were to form the basis of our lunch, with the additional of a chickpea and spinach curry (very easy and delicious even for someone like me who isn't keen on chick peas). The fillets were simply pan fried, skin down (having slightly oiled the skins first) on a sheet of grease proof paper (a neat trick to make your pans non-stick if they aren't, but make sure you trim the edges so they aren't on a naked flame as it can be hard to disguise black paper flakes as pepper.......)

After lunch, which was taken downstairs in the pub, we returned to tackle the plaice. I had always been really scared of flat fish - they seem so small and thin that I couldn't understand how you could be left with any fish once you removed the bones, but here came the days second revelation for me - flat fish are sooooo much easier to fillet that their round cousins. Follow the lateral line, make and incision on one side of it, using a very flexible filleting knife (in this case the importance of a good sharp and flexible knife cannot be highly stressed enough) and side it down and along the bones, gently peeling the fillet away as you go. Turn the fish and repeat on the top fillet, and flip over and repeat again twice on the bottom. We pan fried the fillets again in the same was as we had the bream, but this time made a sauce in the pan (minus the grease proof) with butter cooked just until the browning point (buerre noissette) which you stop cooking at that point with the additional of lemon juice, samphire and capers. Quick (the whole cooking process took less than 5 minutes) and delicious - the definition of home form work cooking - even if you added the filleting into the time frame, dinner could be ready in under 15 minutes (10 with practice).

We then took on the trout, a round fish again, but this time no need to scale it, so it was simply gutted, and left whole this time, on the bone, to cook "en papiotte" (or to the Yorkshire folk amongst us - in a bag!) We simply crammed the fish with thinly sliced onion, julienne carrot strips, a couple of wedges of lemon, some salt, pepper and cardamom seeds with a big blob of butter, placed it on a sheet of grease proof paper and folded over the edges in the way you would crimp a Cornish pasty until you had sealed from tail almost all the way around. We then poured a couple of tablespoons of wine into the parcel, sealed it again and put it into the cooler. These were for us to take home and bake (hot oven for 12 - 15 mins) later for tea - and darn tasty it was too.

Mackerel was the final fish of the day, again, no scaling required, just gutting and in this instance we butterfly boned it - once gutted you simply open it up and press down on the central line of fish, from the skin side, turn it back to flesh side and the whole bone structure then just simply lifts from tail to head. The mackerel were again to be cooked at home, Morrocan style, so we marinated the fillets in a little harissa let down with olive oil, and made a cous cous, pinenut and raisin salad to serve on the side. This was a less effective dish, but I think the quality of the fish deteriorated over the course of the day in the hot room so I would be tempted to try it again with fresher fish.

The finale was a lesson in how to prepare and clean fresh mussels - the interesting point here was that the simple mantra of throw open when raw but closed when cooked is not quite right - open raw mussels may well be fine and fresh - they are alive and are just "gasping" so a sharp tap should close them. If they remain open, then yes do throw them. We made a bowl of moules marinare, simple and classic so I won't bore you with the recipe here.

All in all, the three of us had a very memorable and enjoyable day and I for one have certainly put into practice the skills I learned already and will going back to "Dinner Party Secrets" very soon. Nice one The Milestone!

My First Turbot....

I have had a thing about Turbot for quite some time now - so many chefs proclaim it the king of fish, but for me it has been a little illusive. It doesn't seem to have made it to many Sheffield restaurants as to-date I haven't seen it on a menu up here, and on the odd occassion I have seen it on a fish counter, it's high price has kept it beyond my reach (I did get a half of one weighed as possible New Years Eve dinner last year but at £65 it was too pricey for my limited purse).

Today I saw a smaller example of a whole fish in Waitrose and and a little red tag caught my eye, and I became quite excited - reduced to £12.49 a kilo, so I had it weighed - a much more approachable cost of just under £22 for the whole fish, and bouyed by success at a recent fish filleting and cookery course I snapped it up and took it home.

The first challenge came when I looked at the lateral line of the fish - this is the line we'd learned to follow on the course a couple of weeks ago - however - this line curved - on the plaice we practiced on there is no such curve! After searching many books in vain for pictures of someone filleting a turbot, I gave up and just went for it. The first fillet came off in the same way as the plaice - on the second, I ignored the curve and got a much bigger fillet, the same pattern followed on the underside, so there was easily a very good meal for 4 people from the one fish (or in our case, 2 for lunch and 2 for the freezer...)

With the fillets removed, they were simply pan fried, finished in the oven and served with asparagus (despite it's lack of seasonality as I couldn't get samphire), new potatoes and a buerre noisette and caper sauce. And how did I find my first turbot - it had a lot of hype to live up to afterall, but it definately did not disappoint. Its flesh is firm and meaty, much more so than its other flat cousins, but the taste is quite unique - not at all fishy but rich deep and earthy. In fact it was so good that my normally frugal husband was quite keen to repeat the lunch again despite the extravagent price.

Book Group's July Dinner

Now, serving courgette soup with courgette and feta bruschetta on the side may not be the obvious choice of dish to serve to someone who "doesn't eat anything green", but it is that time of year that leads to a glut or courgettes and this is a classic recipe which takes care of a such a glut so I had to risk it (particularly as said non-green eater has an alotment.....)

I can however report, that the whole of book group loved the soup, as I suspected they wood as it really is an excellent dish (credit to my friend Liz who cooked it for me some 12 or so years ago as it's been a summer staple ever since). Even our resident green-o-phobe asked me how to make it which has to be testimony to the recipe, so here it is:

Courgette and Cumin Soup

1 Large Onion, diced finely
1 Large Fluffy Potato, diced into 2 cm cubes
3 Large Courgettes, sliced into 3 cm rounds
2 Teaspoons freshly ground cumin (or good quality ready ground such as Seasoned Pioneers)
1 Garlic Clove, minced finely
1 Litre Chicken Stock
100 ml Milk (not skimmed but semi is OK)
Olive Oil
S & P
Chopped Corriander and Reduced Balsamic Vinegar to garnish (optional)


Cook the onion until soft and translucent in a little olive oil - do not allow to colour.
Add the garlic and cumin and cook out the spices for 1 minute - do not allow to burn.
Add the potatoes and the chicken stock - bring back to the boil and then simmer for 5 minutes.
Add the courgettes and milk and continue to cook until the vegetables are completely tender (10 - 15 minutes should do it)
Season generously
Remove from the heat and puree in the pan with a stick blender or transfer to a blender and blend until totally smooth.
Serve hot (with or without the garnish) with fresh bread or corgette and feta bruschetta.


There was also pudding, in the form of a less than successful update of the classic lemon tart, with the addition of an orange caramel topping to turn it into a "St Clement's" tart. However I don't want to start my blogging career with a disaster, so I'll try it again another day and post on the merits good or bad on its second attempt.

A Return to The Old Vicarage, Ridgeway

The Old Vicarage at Ridgeway, run by Tessa Bramley, a former telly chef, is currently Sheffield's only Michelin starred eatery, which in a city of around 530,000 people is a pretty poor showing. Our visit there last weekend was our second, the first being some 6 years ago. That visit was my first ever forray into the world of michelin dinning and so there was a huge amount of anticipation on my part and it lived up to my expectations on that occassion in every way, despite us being one of only 2 tables in the dinning room that night.

So, given the opportunity to return again, at someone elses expense, I grasped the chance with both hands but I have to report that my second visit was far less impressive and I was very glad I wasn't actually paying the bill myself.

I'm not sure if it has gone down hill in the 6 years since our first visit, although it was looking shabby around the edges with worn furniture in the lounge, or whether my expectations have just risen given subsequent visits to other great venues like The Ivy but my lasting impression of the evening was one of disappointment.

On the whole, the food was still pretty good, although nothing out of the ordinary and like its surroundings, felt a little dated. I also questionned "local in season asparagus" at the end of July as I haven't seen any English asparagus for a month now and it was everywhere on the menu.

We started, with the customary 'savories' served in the lounge - tiny sweet onion triangles, mini cheese tartlets, marinated olives - all very nice, and then some 70's inspired cheese straws which were dry and bland.

My biggest gripe was the wine list - it may be extensive - Tessa herself boasted that there was over 660 bottles to choose from, but barely any of them were under £50! Now I know it's an expensive restaurant, at £60 a head for 4 courses, and last time we went we paid around £35 for a bottle so knew what we were in for, but for all bottles to start at around £50+ does put pressure on the dinners who have save for such an experience as a special treat.

We were then taken through to the dinning room, and the first thing that hit us was the heat. The Old Vicarage is just that, and a beautiful building it is too, but neither openable windows nor air conditioning on an uncharacteristically hot summer evening and a crammed dinning room do not make for a pleasant dinning experience.

Our first course, a set course, was languistines in an asparagus velouté, apologies for the poor photo but there was too much flash back off the bright white dish. My husband hates shellfood so I got a double bonus of these mouthwatering little morsels which were topped with a tempting mango salsa.

For starters, my husband chose belly pork with more "seasonal" asparagus, a pork and mushroom sausage and smooth and delicious butternut squash puree with softly poached quails eggs. It certainly hit the spot and was one of the more successful dishes of the evening.

I opted for lemon sole, which came sitting on top of a tower of bubble and squeek, with garlic clams, peas and a pea and mint velouté and the now obligatory pea shoot. The fish was perfectly cooked and the clams were a revelation as prior to eating them here I didn't really like them.

For mains, we both opted for meat, beef for me, lamb for him. Again, his was the more sucessful of the two dishes. A delectable slow roast shoulder which had been pressed and cooked with a crisp crust, topped with spinach and slices of lamb fillet. On the side was a potato gratin, girolles and barrel turned courgettes. On the whole a very tasty and considered main. Mine was a little more pedestrian, apart from the unusal little bacon piroshki (dumpling) my steak, slightly rarely than requested, was served with a herby mash that was luke warm at best, with carrots and green beans.

When it came to desserts, my husband opted for the chocolate fondant with homemade custard (the exact same choice as 6 years ago incidentally!) but he is limited by his hatred of fruit a nuts which all the other desserts contained. I had the opposite problem trying to choose between a trio of stawberry desserts, a trio of raspberry desserts (again almost identical to the one I had on my first visit) and a trio of coffee and chocolate so I opted for the latter. The presentation wasn't as elegant as it had been 6 years ago, but the dessert was good - a teardrop of chocolate mousse, a coffee icecream with strange textured chocolate sticks, a tiny bowl of coffee creme brulee which was easily the nicest part of the dessert (and therefore not nearly large enough!) and a strange green sauce that may have been pistachio or maybe mint - it just wasn't distinctively flavoured enough for me or my husband to tell.

We retired back to the lounge for coffee, which was again a shock to the purse strings. 6 years ago, coffee and petit fours came as part of your 4 courses (which was only £45 a head back then btw), now it's an extra £5 a head and the chocolates are no longer home made and were a poor selection that would normally be the ones left in the box....

In total our bill, for 2 people, came to £204. We ordered a taxi, had the rest of bottle of wine re-corked to take home and waited for the taxi to arrive. Our taxi took a while to arrive (well 45 minutes actually) and we were by now the only people left in the restaurant and the fact that we were still there when she wanted to close obviously upset Ms Bramley who made little effort to hide the fact that she was ready for us to go home. Her (very young and slightly over familiar) Maitre D did his best to hurry it along and when it finally arrived it got short shrift from Ms Bramley and almost drove off and left us there. I have to say, this definately left a bitter taste in my mouth on what should have been a wonderful evening. I'm not as keen to make a third visit as I was a second which is a shame, but I do think the Old Vicarage is trading on its star and I believe there are other up and coming eateries in Sheffield now who deserve a visit from the Michelin team such as The Milestone and hopefully there will be others to follow to give Ms Bramley some competition.