Why not celebrate St Patrick’s Day with Paul Rankin’s Irish Stew? Ready Steady Cook stalwart and owner of the successful Belfast-based restaurant Cayenne, has shared with us his exclusive recipe for Irish Stew. Paul’s recipe is a hearty concoction filled with meat, potatoes and vegetables – plus a few little twists of his own.
7 Michelin Stars in one week at The Pass at South Lodge Hotel in Sussex
From Tuesday 6th to Sunday 11th April, Matt Gillan, rising young talent and head chef at The Pass restaurant at South Lodge Hotel in Horsham, is delighted to welcome some of the UK’s top Michelin starred chefs to guest chef over the course of the week. Chefs participating include Martin Blunos (Lettonie, Bath and Bristol), John Campbell (ex The Vineyard at Stockcross/ The Dorchester Collection
Marmite XO – the thick black line
The people at Marmite marketing sure do know their stuff. Not only do they have one of the very few ad campaigns running right now that isn’t some peace of meaningless Euro-piffle that could be for anything from mobile phones to building societies, they also keep reinventing the black stuff.
Guerilla Burgers, London
Guerrilla Burgers is filling a family-friendly slot and doing it pretty well for the money and with no silly nonsense such as ‘added foie gras’. I liked the place even though I am not a burger afficianado. It deserves to do well and they seem to be doing so already. I guess if you don’t like it you can always burger off back to New York.
Back to Benares
Following a fire which closed the restaurant for three months, Douglas Blyde books into Benares, Mayfair.
Living the Dolce Vita in Islington
There’s still time to get to Islington and check out this year’s Dolce Vita, the Italian Festival in London.You can spend all day wandering the stands and the demos and if you buy ‘a little book of indulgences’ you get ten tickets for ‘limited edition’ experiences such as a comparative wine tasting, an olive oil tasting and a goodie bag from Seeds of Italy. It costs £10 on top of the entrance ticket and is a good
Gail’s Hot Cross Buns – apparently delicious
You leave the office for half an hour and when you come back you’re told there’s been a delivery of Gail’s Hot Cross buns in your absence. You ask where they are and everyone stares resolutely at their screens while discreetly brushing crumbs off their keyboard. Is this a sackable offence? It should be.
I’ve got a lovely bunch of Carrots
Before I went to Sicily, I thought of tomatoes, peppers, aubergine, artichokes and mushrooms as Italian vegetables. Carrots were the wrong color for my red, white and green Italian palette. But, since my daily trips to the market, I have changed my mind.
Creating the cupcake – we taste a few cookery courses to see which is the icing on the top
Apparently name-dropping the ‘cupcake revolution’ is the fashion equivalent of extolling the maxi-dress: very 2008 darling. But the cupcake trend is still on a [parchment baking] roll – except that in 2008 we were buying ’em, now we’re making ’em. Enter the cupcake class – tutorials for the disenfranchised office-worker, wondering if they too could clear four grand a month* just by knocking up a few of Nigella’s best and selling them at £2 a pop to London’s glitterati. Of course it would seem I’m suggesting that such an entreprenual venture might be as simple as it is appealing. Believe me, it’s not
A man for all seasonal food. We talk and eat with Jose Pizaro of Tierra Brindisa Soho
I love Jose Pizaro; although this may be the beer goggles talking. No, I think it’s a serious crush. The man is ‘keeping it real’ with his Tierra Brindisa; simplicity and quality and a changing menu. The train spotters have moved on, chasing the next new thing, now his restaurant has proper customers, regulars. As we leave I reflect our offices are just a Rioja fuelled stagger away, so we will regularly be back.