Food ‘n Drink

Welcome to Food 'n Drink, a personal site about food, drink, cooking and basic gardening / grow your own. Born out of a love of food, I hope this site has something for everyone - Sarah

More about Food 'n Drink.

First Attempt at Custard

Last night we had some desserts for dinner but no custard or icecream to go with them, so after a quick look in one of my cookbooks I found a simple custard recipe that needed egg yolks, milk, sugar and a vanilla pod, all of which I had.

So I followed the recipe and it came out okay and tasty enough but I don’t think my first attempt was great! Possibly should have used a whisk for stirring rather than a spoon, especially once I put the full mixture back into the pan. However it certainly tasted nice and I’ll definitely give it another go. The method was fairly simple:

4 egg yolks
1/2 pint (283ml) of milk
25g of sugar
1 vanilla pod

Heat all but 3 tablespoons of the milk in a pan with the vanilla pod in it. Bring it to the boil and then put to the side for 15 minutes. Beat the egg yolks, sugar and remaining milk in a jug. Remove the vanilla pod from the milk and mix the hot milk into the egg mixture. Then strain the mixture back into the pan and heat and stir until you get a custard consistency.

I must admit I forgot to strain it but it still came out okay. I also squeezed out some of the seeds from the vanilla pod to give it a bit of extra taste. Still, it wasn’t bad for a first attempt :D

Chefs – Stop Seasoning My Food For Me!

I love flavour in food, who doesn’t? Seasoning food whilst cooking it is how it should be. Getting the flavour right and serving it, maybe with a sprig of parsley on the side.

However, in recent years we’ve found that restaurants are choosing to decide what seasoning you may want on top of your food too. On Monday we went out to the cinema and grabbed a quick dinner beforehand. On ordering Tomato and Mozzarella salad I was given a plate with a couple of slices of tomatoes and mozzarella, plus rocket drenched in olive oil, some garlic dough balls and some olives. So a little different to what was on the menu! Most of it was fine (not really liking olives!) however it was all completely covered in cracked black pepper! So the first five minutes were spent scraping the pepper off the tomato and mozzarella, and I didn’t bother with the rocket as I couldn’t get rid of the pepper. In a previous meal (from the same place) I once ordered a main meal and instead of the sprig of parsley on the side it was chopped up and thrown all over it.

This isn’t just happening in one restaurant however, I’ve had it in several different ones now. I really don’t understand why chefs have suddenly taken to adding their own seasoning on top of the meal. Within the food, fine, but this additional seasoning on top is just not essential for serving. We should be allowed to add our own seasoning to our own taste! Assuming what our tastes are when it comes to seasoning just isn’t a wise move. I like salt and vinegar on my chips, my Mum doesn’t, David likes plenty of pepper on his food, I don’t want any pepper on mine (except for a little smidgen on eggs!), in other words we all have different tastes so why try and second guess the seasoning we want?!

It’s frustrating as it doesn’t cross my mind to say ‘please don’t cover in seasoning’, simply because you don’t expect to have to say that! Yes you could send it back and ask it for just what you’ve ordered without the extra seasoning (which isn’t mentioned on the menu) but that usually means more waiting and the hassle of having to complain and send the food back.

Why is this suddenly becoming more and more frequent though? Is it just a ploy to try and disguise the food below the seasoning? Or do chef’s and restaurants honestly think that they know what we want? Regardless of the reason they do need to start realising that people have different tastes and adding unnecessary seasoning is just that, unnecessary!

Lobster Thermidor at Cromwells

Back in August I wrote about Cromwells Restaurant, a local restaurant in Wirral that we had visited. We were so bowled over by the food and the service that it didn’t take long before we returned.

After asking on Twitter for local recommendations for a restaurant that sold Lobster (as our previous local restaurant the Lobster Grill has closed down), Kay from Cromwells mentioned that they could do it for us as they do offer it but to order only. After we thought about it for all of five minutes we decided to go out for a swanky meal of Lobster!

We arrived at 7pm, had the first bottle of wine (yes there was more than one!), and shortly after our starters arrived. I had decided to try the warm prawn and ginger salad. It was gorgeous. David had a starter combo for one which consisted of garlic ciabatta bread, scampi, onion rings and potato wedges, all cooked perfect and that looked very nice too!

Then came the Lobster thermidor. Perfectly done and, I must admit, much better than the Lobster Grill used to do it! The meat was perfectly cooked and the cheese sauce was spot on. It was what I’d be thinking about for the past 48 hours and was certainly worth the wait!

Our desserts were again perfect. I had a mud pie cake, and fancied two different types of ice cream and couldn’t decide, so I was given both! (Although David stole half of one of my scoops!!). Plus two further bottles of wine and a latte, our evening was complete.

To give an example of how comfortable we were made to feel, we realised after we left that we’d been there for 4 hours! This wasn’t through being kept waiting for food, far from it. We’d just been so relaxed and chatting with Kay, the general manager, that the time simply flew by! Such a relaxed atmosphere and top notch food and service.

We’ve already booked to take our friends and family here for a meal on the evening before our wedding, to save everyone searching for somewhere to go. Despite not fully knowing the final figures they’ve been happy to accommodate us, offering a special menu, table decorations and a table plan!

When it comes to Cromwells, the food speaks for itself, the service speaks for itself and you’re certain to have a fantastic meal out. They’re currently taking Christmas bookings and they’re open on Christmas day! :)

Review: Three Horseshoes Country Inn, Near Leek

Last week we met up with my brother, his girlfriend and their 16 week old son at a reservoir just outside Leek in Staffordshire. We had a bit of a walk around in the gorgeous sunshine and then drove back to the Three Horseshoes Country Inn for lunch.

The pub was quite typical in how it dealt with orders. Choose your table, choose your food and go and order and pay for it at the bar. We opted for paté and garlic bread with cheese for starters between us, and their own burger with goats cheese for our main course. My brother and his girlfriend chose their Carvery.

Our starters were brought to us, and were all pretty good. Then my brother had a ticket for his carvery so that he could just go up to the serving area and get his food. This is pretty standard with carveries. Of course with us having a set menu item we assumed they would just bring the burgers to us. However one of the waiters then came to our table to tell us that our burgers were ready for collection… which confused us a little as surely he could have just picked them up and brought them with him?! So David went to get those whilst I looked after my nephew (no complaints from me!).

The burger itself was very good, however that was about it. The salad and chips had clearly been put on the plate when we’d ordered the food, as the salad was limp and uninviting, and the chips were not too nice either. Luckily the burger made up for it, but considering we had to collect our food, I don’t understand why fresh salad and chips couldn’t have been put on the plate on collection (although I don’t know why it couldn’t have just been brought to the table!).

So unfortunately it doesn’t really get top marks. The main food was good but the service and effort on the additions seemed to be lacking.

Chilli Plant Update

Back in July I mentioned that our chilli plants had gone a bit dormant after I repotted them and moved them outside. Clearly our cold British climate is just not making them happy! Since moving them all back indoors (we now have a conservatory which is almost as good as a greenhouse!) they’ve woken up, the small plants have grown with very large leaves, and they’ve all been producing flowers.

For a while I wondered if bringing them indoors was the right thing to do as the flowers were coming but just dying and falling off. Then I remembered what a friend of mine had told me last year about how he had manually pollenated his plants and cross pollenated them as well, and that suddenly hit me. Of course, being indoors, there are no bees/wasps/flies to help with the pollenation process, so with a little brush I’ve been keeping an eye for any newly opened flowers and get them pollenated, and most of them so far have started to product the chillis.

Chilli Peppers At present they’re still growing and still green, but judging by the packet they came out of they should turn red so I’ll just keep tending to them and hopefully they’ll start to turn to red at some point :)

So note to self, next year keep them in the conservatory and remember to manually pollenate them!

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