All posts filed under: Food & Drink

Café Direct tasting

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Coffee. I love the stuff. Give me a creamy strong Flat White in the morning and I’m happy for the day. But although I love the taste, my knowledge is pretty limited. So I was glad to be invited to a coffee tasting by Café Direct last week. Despite the event being held at L’Atelier des Chefs, I didn’t realise that we would be donning our aprons and showing off our baking prowess. I was half an hour late and when I arrived to a flurry of bloggers running around the kitchen, cracking eggs, melting chocolate and frantically beating butter and sugar, I was confused. I then learned that everyone had paired off and each ‘team’ had been given one of three Café Direct coffees and been asked to create a dish using a host of ingredients provided. I was paired with the lovely Kate from What Kate Baked who had decided, after watching a recent Nigel Slater programme, to make chocolate bark using dried fruit, nuts and fair-trade dark chocolate. I was quite happy …

The Good Table review

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This is the age of the foodie. The amount of emerging talent is quite fascinating but there is only really one person who can get me truly excited about cooking, who can make any ingredient sound like king. Valentine Warner burst onto our screens in 2008 with his seasonal ingredients programme ‘what to eat now’ and wowed us all with his cheeky charm and utter passion for fantastic ingredients. But it’s not just watching his adventures that gets me excited, it’s his way with language and the way he describes the dishes in his books. I have all three but was recently sent the newest ‘The Good Table’ by publisher Mitchell Beazley for winning a Twitter competition. From the outside the book is enticing, the graphic simple yet endearing. I also love the title, although I wasn’t sure what it meant until I read in the foreword. I’m glad the polisher let Val role with it. Inside the book is literally jam packed with my favourite kind of recipes. Bold, simple and packed with flavour. …

Quadrille guest post – Enjoying your Fish Responsibly

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You can see this post on the Quadrille website here. Over the last few years, mine and I’m sure a lot of others attention has been brought to the sensitive issue of overfishing, which is happening in seas all over the world. This in turn has lead to a huge shortage of certain species. Celebrated chefs have done their part in educating the masses about which species should and shouldn’t be consumed. Restaurants also had to sit up and realise the problem. And if they continued to serve endangered species, they would be frowned upon. Probably the most well known example is when Nobu continued to serve Blue Fin Tuna, but recommended that their diners either don’t eat it, or ask for an alternative. Odd. You see, if we carry on eating these endangered species, they’ll quickly fade out and we’ll have to kiss goodbye to them forever. What the likes of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver have been telling us is to substitute certain species for ones that do exactly the same job. …

East India butter shortbread with clotted cream

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I really wish I could have a butter and clotted cream shortbread with my tea now. But I can’t because I ate them all. I was sent a packet of Butter Shortbread with Clotted Cream by the East India Company a couple of weeks ago and as soon as I opened the packet and started munching on the biscuits, I knew I was in trouble. I adore shortbread but even more so when it contains clotted cream. Unfortunately, I have a REAL taste for anything creamy and buttery. The biscuits are pale in colour and slightly chewy. At first the texture reminded me of biscuits that have just started to go stale but I realised quite quickly that the clotted cream makes them chewier than usual. Apparently they were a favourite of Queen Victoria and go great with afternoon tea. I wouldn’t know if they do because I ate them all before I even had a chance to think about afternoon tea. The packet that they come in is pretty too and I would definitely …

Win a Francis Francis X7.1 coffee machine!!

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To celebrate the arrival of the month long pop up Galleria illy in London, I am offering one lucky Food For Think reader the chance to win a gorgeous Francis Francis X7.1 coffee machine (worth £199), courtesy of Espressocrazy. Now, I know that this is a good little piece of kit. I have recently been to a few photo shoots at Georgia Glynn Smith’s house and she has one in order to provide her guests with delicious coffee. It’s easy to operate, simply pop in an illy coffee iperEspresso capsule and press the button. The milk frother on the side is also very good, considering the size of the machine. After runs in Berlin, New York, Milan and Istanbul, Galleria illy will run from 13 September – 16 October. It’s free to get in and you’ll be able to enjoy a programme of gastronomy, art, literature and design events. I’m really looking forward to popping along and learning a trick or two from the Università del Caffè illy baristas. I’ll be there mid September so …