Continuing our tour of the Peak District we visited the Bakewell Show; an annual riot of food, drink, cattle, dogs, manure, mud, wellies, dogs, smells, jousting knights, dogs and farm machinery that can take your arm off in seconds.
Peeking around Chatsworth
Part two of our Peak District visit finds us checking out the glories of Chatsworth, and rifling through the Duke’s rooms, gardens and restaurant.
Peak of perfection – The Peacock at Rowsley
Looking for a weekend break that combines stunning scenery, a fabulous hotel and fine dining? Us too, and always. We found it in the Peak district where the people are charming, the Peaks marvellous and the Peacock Hotel an oasis of quality service and food.
Greens Cornhill
It’s a cliché of course to say that restaurants like Greens offer comfort food for the upper classes. This is a notion based on the idea that the upper classes don’t like ‘fancy’ food or stuff from Johnny Foreigner. They’re supposed to only like food that reminds them of nursery or public school. Well, as it happens, I am an ex-public schoolboy meself doncha know and we were never served oysters or lobster at our place. No doubt things were different at Eton.
No fudging the quality – we try premium biscuits from Fudges
The Fudges believe a biscuit should taste wonderful and so butter is what they choose to use, just as they use real lemon zest in their lemon biscuits. In fact all the biscuits in their large arsenal are made from fine ingredients carefully sourced. The biscuits themselves are hand crafted, shaped and baked using methods not much different from those used fifty years ago.
Smirnoff to launch its new flavour vodkas in grand style.
The Smirnoff Co. Has announced recently that it will be simultaneously unveiling five huge ice sculptures across the UK on the 11th of September celebrating the national launch of two new flavours of vodka; Green Apple Smirnoff and Lime Smirnoff. Appearing in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Liverpool and London, the ice sculptures will recreate iconic landmarks from each of the five major UK cities in the form of scaled-down replicas.
Mongolian Lamb Skewers with Peanut Noodles
Wonderfully aromatic marinated lamb with a hint of chilli, perfectly complimented by a cold noodle salad with a peanut and chilli dressing. Absolutely delicious as a main meal or snack and involves very little cooking.
Call My Bluff at the Meet & Wine Club
At their meeting on Tuesday 1st September, at the Meat and Wine Co., the Club tested our taste buds and knowledge of wines. Accompanying the tastings we had canapés, and afterwards some lovely steak, cooked medium rare, which had been cut into bite sized pieces and chips, for us to pick at. At a cost of £20 per head it seemed to us to be remarkably good value for what we had.
Kasturi launches its fish festival
For those of you who don’t think that seafood works with curry, we can say, that provided that the mix of spice is right, it does. Kasturi’s menu is very reasonably priced and it is well worth going along and trying the fish menu, or just selecting one or two dishes as part of your meal.
Chef Alan Coxon launches a taste of the past for kitchens of the future
Chef and ‘Food Archaeologist’ Alan Coxon has recently launched his Historic Food range. This range of products will enable you to explore reproductions of some of the flavours and ingredients that once may have adorned tables of Mediaeval Knights, mighty Roman Emperors, and Ancient Greek temples with his Historic Vinaigre and Historic Pickles and Chutneys ranges. We can recomment all three wholeheartedly.