Gor blimey, a trip to the East End last night culminated with a meal under Hoxton station rail arches at Beagle. A restaurant that only opened this year with two rooms - bar and restaurant - both big and noisy. We liked the interesting menu and high quality ingredients used in all of their dishes but their service was some of the best we have experienced; very knowledgeable, very friendly and unpatronising young staff - who are clearly having everything explained to them in the kitchen and probably tasting most of it too - hooray! Mutton was served pink with a plate full of runner beans and anchovy. The Essex Bird in the picture (from Radwinter Wild Game) is partridge, with Jerusalem artichokes and watercress. It's still early in the season for partridge so wait a little longer for the weather to get cold, then they will have a nice layer of fat to make the meat more tender.
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We don't want you all to know about this pub because it's busy enough as it is but we just had a tasty and great value home made lunch here, two courses for £5.70. The bill for four was under thirty pounds - including four drinks from a selection of guest and house ales. We had plaice and chips, chicken veronique (a bit like chicken supreme with grapes, but we didn't find any grapes in ours...) peach mousse with Archers, and bread pudding. There was a dish of fresh veg each; a choice of mashed, chipped or sauted potatoes, and custard or cream on the puddings. When the puddings ran out they put on new ones - hot chocolate pudding or whisky and raspberry trifle. This is how to fill up a pub or restaurant - very friendly staff welcoming lots of older local people who were brought up on this kind of home-made food and who know how good it is.
At the Menta Trade Fair and Food and Drink Expo at Ickworth today we tasted various offerings but our favourite was the curry from 'Our House of Spice'. Two lovely sisters, Nadia and Julia, who make ready meal curries and spices you can cook with at home. Lovely presentation, hot food to try and smiling faces to sell it. You can find them on their facebook page or contact them by e mail on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We would have tweeted it there and then but there wasn't any internet at this trade fair...derrrrrrr.
Near suffolkfoodie hq we have an old airbase where lots of trees planted in the war are still producing fruit, including these lovely plums that we are about to turn into jam. You don't need an airbase to forage to get wild fruit - just look at the side of the road where people have chucked out their apple cores. The cores are now fully grown trees. But professional foraging can cause problems as people strip the contents of everywhere wild. Leave some behind for the future!
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It's a long drive for us but inspector x drove, so I had three glasses of cava and a sloe gin at this evening's launch event at The Plough, near the coast and only three miles from Woodbridge. There was generous hospitality from Ruth the landlady, introducing her new chef Jerome and the autumn menu to a group of foodie friends and supporters. We ate mini-burgers, toad in the hole, welsh rarebit and fish and chip canapes, followed by mini strawberry pavlovas and treacle tarts.
I love you Tracey - I buy the Independent on Saturday just for you. Now I've got that out of the way let's see where she went. This time she came to eat in Beccles, at Upstairs at Baileys, and gave it four stars (out of five) for the food. With lots of seafood, stews and casseroles and chefs brought over from Barcelona to cook it all. Haven't been there yet but will be going there very soon - when I've remembered where Beccles is.
Anyone fancy a plate of my leftover curried goat? Leftoverswap in the USA and shareyourmeal in the Netherlands both offer subscribers a chance to swap leftovers. Now I think that's a really good idea and they cover the UK too, linking you up with people who have food to share. But look at their map - there's a big empty space devoid of sharers in East Anglia!
This rice pudding is a little healthier and lower in fat than our other full cream recipe. You bake it in the oven - it takes minutes to prepare and two hours to cook. Well worth the wait.
- Ingredients
- 100g short grain/ pudding rice
- 50g caster sugar
- 700ml semi-skimmed milk
- freshly grated nutmeg
- (1 bay leaf, or strip lemon zest for a different flavour)
- Method
- Heat oven to 130C/Gas 2.
Butter an 850ml heatproof ovenproof dish.
Pour the rice and sugar into the dish and stir in the milk.
Sprinkle the freshly grated nutmeg over and top.
(Add lemon zest or bay leaf into the milk if using)
Cook for 2 hrs or until the pudding has a brown skin and the rice is slightly wobbly.
Today I made rice pudding because I had loads of milk to use up and it seemed cold enough outside to consider a winter pudding. It's so easy and with semi skimmed milk a low fat dessert. Try adding a bay leaf for a change, it works very well.
Why are the British embarrassed about asking for a Doggy Bag at a restaurant? Why do we still pretend that we are taking the leftover food home for the dog?
More...
African pot cooking Caribbean food and the end of a very nice summer.
Tonight I made Pakora with a bag of out of date spinach which was just begining to wilt. Use any vegetables that you have shrivelling in the bottom of the fridge. Just cut the vegetables into slices, or shred according to their density. Remember that courgettes will cook a lot quicker than chunks of carrot. I have yet to find anyone who doesn't wolf down a plate of these delicious Indian snacks. Gram or Chickpea flour is easy to find, usually with gluten free products on the supermarket shelf, from wholefood shops or anywhere 'ethnic'.
Pakora are always popular in our house. Very often I make them with chard as I have it growing in the garden. Pakora are one of those snacks that you can whisk up quickly if people turn up for happy hour and you want something hot and crispy to nibble on.
Grow local, buy local, eat local. The thirty mile food challenge is encouraging us to 'consume only food and drink grown, raised, caught, produced and/or processed within a 30-mile radius of wherever you live throughout September 2013. The 30 miles is ‘as the crow flies’...that’s a pretty big area: in fact it gives you nearly 3,000 square miles to choose from!'
We don't have to go that far... I was trying to run over a muntjac down my road for nearly two years.