Sharpham

English wine has been getting better and better over the last few years, although it's still sneered at by our garlicy cousins across the channel. I know the Camel Valley wine is probably the best in the country, but the Sharpham wine does give it a run for it's money. I'm definitely biased towards Sharpham, as I grew up in Totnes and spent many days on the river Dart where the vineyard is based.

Last weekend the lady and I walked up to the vineyard for a spot of lunch and a few glasses of wine. Attached to the winery is The Vineyard Café, the food we ordered wasn't great, but it'd be unfair for me to judge it, as we only had a cheese platter. Instead, I would recommend buying some cheese from the counter at the wine shop, along with a bottle of wine, of course, and bring some bread and have your own picnic in a field on the walk back. Remember to bring a knife, I can recommend the Opinel (they do one with a corkscrew which may come in handy).


The wine I would suggest is the Bacchus, Sharpham also make exceptional cheese in a creamery next to the winery, using milk from organically farmed Jersey cows, and the best cheese is probably the brie.

It is also good fun to swing via Sharpham on your way to the beach in a red VW Polo fully loaded with firewood and camping gear, make sure there is enough weight in the car so the exhaust scraps over every bump, otherwise it's no fun. Buy some cold Bacchus and cheese from the wine shop and jump back in the car. Proceed to swig wine from the bottle whist making cheese sandwiches on the dashboard, holding a really sharp knife. So much fun.

Dough

This recipe really works for me and it seems to make the most amazing pizza, focaccia, loaves of perfect bread, stromboli or what ever I try. Have a go you bunch of cunts.




15g of dried yeast or 30g of fresh yeast (you can get fresh yeast from bakeries for about 20p and it does freeze)
650 -700ml of water (warmish)
1tsp of sugar (any kind)
50ml (3 or 4 tbsp) of E.V. Olive Oil (you can use other oils)


1tbsp of sea salt
1kg of bread flour (Tipo '00' is the best, but you can just use normal plain flour in a worst case scenario, never use self raising, it kills the yeast!)


or


Make up you own blend of flours, a bit of semolina is always good, but make a total of 1kg in weight.




1. Mix water with the yeast, sugar and oil, you may want to whisk it up as yeast love air, along with warmth, sugar and moisture. Set aside and allow the yeast to party for a few minutes. Put on some hard-house music to dance to and join in the party. Techno will also work well.


2. Sift the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl and make a well in the middle. Add the yeasty water bit by bit and mix in the flour with a fork. Or you can put all the ingredients in a mixer and mix on a slow speed for 10 minutes.


3. If you don't have a mixer. Transfer the dough, after it has come together, to a floured surface and knead the mixture with your floured hands. Keep kneading until the dough becomes elastic. Like an extremely stretchy scrotum.


4. Transfer the dough back into the mixing bowl and cover with cling-film or a wet tea-towel. Place it somewhere warm and leave to prove/proof for a hour or until the dough has doubled in size. You can place the dough in an airtight container and leave it in the fridge overnight for a slow rise. Or freeze it.


5. Once the dough is ready, transfer it to the flour dusted work surface and knock all the air out (this is called knocking back).  Them you can do what ever you want with it. Hopefully the dough will be extremely soft and wet so you won't have any trouble rolling it out, I don't even roll it for Focaccia bread, I simply spread the dough with my hands and top it with a range of ingredients. The picture below shows this style of Focaccia where I use a very wet topping of tinned tomatoes, and it really helps keep the bread moist.

But as I mentioned before, you can  make pretty much make anything with this dough and it always comes out a winner. I won't go into oven temperatures (start at 180 to 200°C) or times (the bread is cooked when it's brown and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom), work it out for yourselves. All recipes will deliver different results and all ovens are different.






If you fancy viewing some bread making techniques check out the River Cottage Bread DVD, please have a watch (click the link to download). It's pretty basic, but shove it on your iPhone and watch it when you're bored - http://db.tt/bBwmWcU


Hope I don't get done for copyright infringement. Huge Furry-Woolyballs can suck my dick.

Rendezvous with Rendezvous

Well it was our 11 year anniversary, so we went for a meal at Rendezvous in Exeter. The restaurant or wine bar is based in Southernhay and has a kicking beer garden or wine garden. 

It was a Monday night and anyone who has read Tony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential knows not to eat out on a Monday and certainly don't eat fish on a Monday. We did both.

To start I had the Chicken Confit & Ham Hock Terrine and the Lady had pan fried Mackerel fillets in Harissa. Both were excellent, especially the Harissa as it wasn't too spicy and had an almost delicate flavour (according to Isaac the head chef, it was made with rose water and petals).

For main I had a rack of Lamb which was perfect. The lady had a Rump Streak which was very moist, although it did need a steak knife.

I was far too drunk to need a desert so I watched the Lady eat a White Chocolate Orange Crème brûlée and it looked great, incidentally, so did she.

Although the food was excellent, what really made it stand out was the quality of the wine. The sommelier really knows her shit and isn't one of those cunts who likes to embarrass simple, unsophisticated folk like myself, for example, when she poured the first wine - Honore de Berticot Sauvignon Blanc Cotes de Duras 2010 - I told her "I didn't need to test it, as screw cap wines can't be corked". She very politely told me I was wrong, and explained why. Also this Sauvignon was seriously good and although it was the cheapest wine on the menu at £14, she recommended it to us and said it was better than the expensive NZ Sauvignon, which I would normally have chosen.

The second bottle of wine was an Argentine Malbec, they're always pretty good, but this was the best I'd tasted. So after two bottles of wine we were a little tipsy and started to see weird faces in the pile of logs by our table. The faces reminded me of characters from a Studio Ghibli film. All a result of the wine goggles I think.

This restaurant can be a little on the expensive side with our meal costing around £100, but it does do a cheap set menu at £13.90 for two courses, so for a little over £40 you could have a meal for 2 with a bottle of bloody good wine. Jesus, I've spent more for a meal Pizza Express and that place if fucking dog shit piss. 

Jesus wasn't there, but I've heard he's got a great party trick. I think he can drink water, then piss wine. I love you Jesus.

Piri Piri Chickie

I've had Piri Piri Chicken once before in some remote part of Portugal, and it was rather good. I've never been to Nando's because if I'm gonna stoop that low, I'll get a KFC. So I had a go myself, with a made-up guessed recipe. 


With some Waitrose Chicken thighs (I sometimes have ethics when it comes to meat), I covered them in smoked paprika, salt pepper, lemon zest & juice and fried them off with a finely chopped chili (seeds as well) and bulb of garlic. To prepare the garlic I bruised each clove by smashing it with the palm of my hand. This releases the flavour, but kind of keeps the clove intact and the skin stops it from burning. Whist the chicken was hanging out having a good time in the frying pan, I shoved some McCain chips in the oven, cos chicken & chips love each other. Once the chicken had released its sexual juices, it was ready for a good grilling. I grilled it until all the juices dried up to a sticky glaze and the skin became really crispy.

To serve, I picked some salad leaves from the Jardin de Balcon, sent the lady to the Co-Op to get some coleslaw and put a couple cheeky gherkins on the plate, just because it felt right.

This chicken really worked and I even had a cold piece from the fridge when I came home drunk last night. On the whole the meal had a wiff of CHD (Council House Dinner), but was redeemed by the gherkins and salad.

AGB

She likes to keep it hidden, but the masses need to see, this fantastical world of an Ageing Bee - http://ageingbee.tumblr.com/

Enjoy.

Weekend Indulgence

Like many people it appears to be a common occurrence to splash out on booze during the weekend, but it's been brought to my attention that as I get older, food is eating up most of the cash in my wallet or rather, I'm eating the food that's eating my cash.


On Friday evening we foraged in the supermarket for something easy and quick, then suddenly we struck gold, well it looked like gold as the glowing rotisserie chickens huddled together clucking "eat me!". We nearly had one whole bird each, which I quite like the idea of, mainly for the comedy value, but we settled for 2 between 3 people, which was obviously more than enough. So we gobbled down some dirty, cheap, intensively farmed chicken (which we all do from time to time) and in-between mouthfuls of accompanying salad & bread, we discussed the ethics of poor meat in a hypercritical middle class fasion (I think I may be one of those people I hate). Although what we did was bad, we knew it was bad, so does that make it worse or does the awareness redeem us from eating the un-ethical meat? All I know is, we enjoyed every mouthful of our perfectly cooked, tender, moist birds. So the moral of the story is - if you do something bad, make sure you enjoy it with bread and salad.

For breakfast we had a Full English or Flinglish. I keep returning to The Tangerine Tree, which consistently delivers the best breakfast around. Everything is cooked perfectly and is the opposite the disappointing breakfast I had last weekend at Darts Farm, which was such a letdown, honestly don't bother trying it.


I skipped lunch and had afternoon tea at the famous Greys Dining Room in Totnes, which is so so so good. Their company description is - we are one of the top tearooms in the country. need i say more? 


Need I say more? They don't need a website or social network pages, mainly because it's alway full of customers and that's because it's so so so good.

For some more cardiac abuse on the old ticker I had fish 'n' chips on the Saturday evening at Jolly Rogers, in Buckfastleigh. I was actually attending the annual Lamb Pie Day, where I've never even caught a wiff of lamb pie, never mind eat one of the things. Such a con. Anyway, the fish was very good, and whist I was in the poor ethics mindset I had Cod (which I assume was non-sustainable), but this was not out of choice, I wanted the Hake, but they had sold out. I then went for Haddock, but they had sold out. So poor old Cod was the only one left. Maybe the nation has twigged onto the fact we need to change the trend of fish and Hugh's Fish Fight is fighting a winning battle on both the European Parliament and the British public (do sign up if you haven't already).


So another weekend has passed without me doing any form of cooking. The more I love food, the less cooking I do. I honestly think it has been a month since I did any cooking at the weekend, and I've booked a table at Riverford Field Kitchen for next week, so looks like I'll be doing the same again. Eating myself into an early grave (In a non-cannibalistic manner). Self Cannibalism, does that exist? Yes it does - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-cannibalism


Eat me out!

My Irish Baby

No I don't have a bun in the oven, but I do have a loaf of bread! This soda bread recipe has been perfected over a couple of years and I'm ready to give birth to it's method. 


This bread is so good because it's very quick and easy to make, mainly because you don't have to dick around proofing/proving dough. The other bonus, nobody sells good soda bread! well I can't find it anyway. My grandmother was Irish so I suppose I'm a little proud of my Irish ginger roots and love this un-pretentious style of cookery. This bread doesn't make the best sandwiches, unless it's an open one, but toasted and smothered in lots of butter, topped with a poached egg and there is no need for heaven, you're already there. Also, great for dipping in your Irish stew or Colcannon soup.


Because the bread is scone-ish, you could add other things, like cheese for example. How about Gruyère and Rosemary? A Swiss-Irish baby. Or you could use Guinness instead of milk, but that may have racial connotations.

Makes 1 round loaf or you can put it in a loaf tin or up your ass

300ml milk (none of that skimmed shit, your baby needs a healthy layer of fat)

20ml vinegar

300g flour (plain or wholemeal or a mixture of both)

160g jumbo oats

1 tsp bicarb

1 tsp baking powder (if you don't have this, double the bicarb)

1 tsp dark brown sugar or other sugar

1 tsp of salt

1. Mix the milk, vinegar, salt & sugar in a jug until everything dissolves.

2. Get a tray lined with baking paper or line a loaf tin with baking paper.

3. Sieve the flour into a large bowl. Also sieve the bicarb & baking powder. Add the oats and give a rough mix by hand and then add the milk mixture and give a good mix with one of your hands, holding the bowl with the other.

4. You should create a sloppy wet dough mixture, but don't worry your stupid self, it's supposed to look like placenta.

5.  Using the mucky hand shape the dough into a ball and dust with a little more flour whist it's still in the bowl, then transfer onto the baking tray. Or if you're using the loaf tin transfer the mix into there.

6. Sprinkle the loaf with some more oats and cut a cross shape on the top with a knife. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes at 180 degrees.

The bread is cooked when it has risen and started to turn golden, to double-check it's cooked pick up the bread up with a tea towel and tap the bottom with your fingers and the bread will sound hollow.

Leave for an hour before cutting. Freezes well, but will keep for 4-5 days and toasts like a beautiful fair-skinned Irish baby.

Have fun making babies, and remember, keep them sexy. Who doesn't like a sexy baby?