Battered Creme Egg in Bruton

Wow. I am ashamed to say the fish and chip shop selling these crispy, coronary inducing confections was closed so I haven't had a chance to sample one. But, rest assured when I next visit Bruton I'll give one a try and tell you all about it.

I just love the line, "Cadbury's may splatter 'em, but we batter 'em". Surely someone from Publicis is behind this!

Oh Cutlery Drawers (OCD)

There are few things in life more annoying than the dangerous mis-use of cutlery drawers. Who in their right mind puts knives on the left, forks on the right and spoons in the middle!? Madness. Surely you lay the drawer out as if it was a place setting. Fork on the left. Then knife to the right and spoons on the far right.

I hate it when I reach into the cutlery drawer to grab a spoon to remove my tea bag and am lacerated by a steak knife. It looks like I've decided to indulge in a spot of casual self harm. It's a bit like deciding that you are bored of driving on the left and recklessly veering across the central reservation and ploughing into oncoming traffic for a laugh.

If I was Prime Minister I'd make this my number one priority and the world would become a safer place.

Rant over.

Awesome Decal

Essentially a large sticker to apply to a nice plain white wall in the kitchen. I love it. All I need is a house of my own and a kitchen I can take control of!

Cowie... would Granny like one of these in her new bungalow?

From Harmonie Interieure via Daily Olive.

Poisonous and Tasty Mushrooms at Stevington

It's Autumn and I've got a semi about all the fun fungus growing in the hedgerows. Little outcrops of joy. Wondering around our garden I only found a few mushrooms... Dad was far more successful. As he was mowing the grass he kept on unearthing more mushrooms. Here's a selection of the tastiest and most deadly...







This first set smelt nicely of aniseed. I am relatively confident that they are field mushrooms... or possibly horse mushrooms.. either way I am pretty sure they would have been edible and tasty too. I never plucked up confidence to eat them... and found that they were riddled with little insects which had eaten a fine matrix of little holes.

The second set of shrooms were even more exciting. Dad yelled and I ran out. He'd found a green mushroom growing beneath a cherry tree. The more we looked the more we found. Within 10 minutes we'd found bucket loads. They were all thriving in the mulch all over the garden. Excited at the prospect of an adventurous free lunch.



As you can see they were a weird green colour and covered in white specks... enough to make me refer to a proper text book.



I am glad I did because it turned out these green bad boys were poisonous, called Vedigris Agaric. Thank God I didn't fry them up and serve them on toast!

Dans le Noir

In a sudden fit of bravery we decided to take our wonderful Client out for an adventurous dinner. She is based in the States so we rarely get to see each other face to face.

This will now seem like a non-sequitor...

So we took her to Dans le Noir in Farringdon for a fabulous night of dining in the dark. We are working on a project that is all about sensual experiences, so it made perfect sense to finish the day's hard work with a meal that would push all of our sensual boundaries.

Arriving at the restaurant we were greeted in the foyer by a collection of very engaging maitre d's. They made us put all of our kit in a locker so that no mobile phones or watches with illuminated faces could disturb the sheer blackness of the dining room.

I don't think any of us were ready for the attack on our senese that was to follow. After a quick cocktail to instil a bit of Dutch courage in all of us, we queued up behind a blind waitress/guide and were led into the pitch black room. Some squealed. Others were a bit more stoical. We found our table using our hands and all sat down around what we all thought was a round table, but turned out to be oblong!

We groped around the table looking for water glasses and bottles. The only way you can pour everyone's wine is to put your finger in the glass and keep pouring until your finger gets wet! Not very hygenic. But great fun.

We all spoke very loudly to begin with as we acclimatised to the dark. Towards the end of the meal our voices became more calm and we shouted a lot less! It's bizarre just how reliant we all are on our sense of sight.

I found it really hard to determine what I was eating and to be honest can't quite remember. Memory works very badly when you remove the sense of sight. My starter may have involved something resembling spring rolls filled with what I thought was minced chicken and somebody else thought was tuna - which turned out to be duck.

Likewise I got terribly confused by my main course which I still swear to the this day was lamb, but turned out to be a mixture of ostrich fillet on one side of the plate and venison on the other. But we all recognised the distinctive smell and flavour of the truffled risotto that acted as a division between the two meats.

Personally I loved the whole experience. There is something very liberating about being in the dark. It may have been the amount of wine I was drinking because I was thirsty and couldn't find my water glass... but I found myself saying things at a work dinner that I would never otherwise have said. I've never had so much fun chatting a joking around a (now clearly rectangular) table. Everything seems funnier in the dark.

Be careful about coming here if you know people are claustrophobic or are a bit strapped for cash as it isn't cheap. But remember you are coming here for an experience and not simply a meal. In many ways this is the idea of a restaurant pushed to the extreme. It's not about the food. It's about opening your mind and having an entertaining time. We learnt a lot about each other during the course of the meal and feel like we all bonded along the way.

Will any of us return? Unlikely. But not in a bad way. We've all been talking about the experience ever since and won't ever forget that crazy meal we all had in the dark! It's a great place to come if you want to break the ice.

The Yorkie Bar of the Chilli World

This chilie is not for girls!!!

Hotter than Britney Spears in an underage pole dancing competition dressed in PVC. And then imagine that you were watching her perform this erotic showstopper in a sauna that had caught fire. Then imagine, if you can, that the fire brigade had turned up with no water and instead of them all being burly men they were all Jessica Rabbit clones. And if you can stretch your imagination any further... just remember the times that you have run a bath, tried to adjust the hot tap with your left foot and landed up scalding yourself to within an inch of skin catching fire.

This badger looks really innocent. Just don't trust it. We only read the seed packet after we had got a bit too macho and popped a red chili in our mouthes at the same time. I almost blacked out, and hiccuped my way to the kitchen where I forced a shovel of ice into my mouth followed by 3 pints of chilled milk. I couln't really see straight for about an hour, not to mention the fact that my lips swelled up and made it hard to speak.

They aren't called Prairie Fire for nothing!

Chilli Pollination

Our chilli plants are doing brilliantly at work. The first batch of chillies have been harvested so we are now at the stage of pollinating the flowers for a second growth.

To see our unique way of pollinating our plants have a look at the video below. Be sure to turn the sound up nice and high.



Dug a dug a dung.

7 Deadly Sins Glassware

This is awesome!

Hamilton Design have created these brilliant 7 Deadly Sins themed glasses. I can barely express how badly I want a set. Druel...


Pride

Sloth

Wrath

Envy

Gluttony

Greed

Lust
If anyone is listening... can I have a set please?!

Via Boing Boing

Welsh Bank Holiday Cookoff

After a long week with work in France, Cowie and I zoomed off to Pembrokeshire for the bank holiday. I slept. Cowie drove. I got told off for farting. 7 hours after being picked up from Reading we arrived having exhausted all of the 49 junctions of the M4 and then some!



The journey to Wales is all about the road signs. From the civilisation and high brow English signs with one language and clear directions... to the multi language gobble-de-gook of the Welsh ones. Best of all near Carmarthen there is a brown road sign for McDonald's. I rest my case.

Without going into too much detail we had signed up for a weekend of cooking with James and Henry, experimenting with easy to eat foods. James and Henry had slaved over a fabulous hunk of pork belly which made me feel like I was having a picnic in an Elysian field. Soft, warm, salty, oozey and so moreish and naughty! Well stuffed and still exhausted we slept with a view over the coast towards Ireland and America and woke to see the sea crashing against the rocks.

Saturday brought military precision and military drinking. After a well paced breakfast started the cook off. I was despatched to the second kitchen to make a leek and bacon quiche. Armed with Thomasina and a big fat reliable cook book I went to work. Bacon, onion, leek and garlic got sweated and reduced to a satisfying filling. At no point did it look like I had got the quantities right. It seemed like the contents in the frying pan would overwhelm the pastry case and splat all over the floor. With the pastry case blind baked with gravel on top and the cream, milk, eggs and cheese whisked up, all I had to do was pour. And remarkably it all fitted! There was room left for me to place an egg yolk in the centre for artistic effect! If all else failed at least we'd have an egg in the middle!

Astonishingly it worked. I might be able to rival Tamysn's medium rare quiche afterall one day!



Meanwhile the chaps and chapesses were busy cooking, peeling, soaking, drinking and generally being what my Mum would call good "doers".

Henry made a trout and potato cake...



Which emerged, quite incredibly, looking like this.





So far, so camp!

Henry's tortilla was a little less gay and tasted delicious.



By this point we had burnt our way through the Welsh parsley quota, so our garnishes started to take a less prominent role.

As the gin and tonics started to flow from our charming yellow watering can...



... and Willy's jokes began to seem funnier...





... and the drinks began to take their toll...



... everything was perfect.

Before we knew it it was time for afternoon tea. Henry, Lucy and James laid on an incredible spread of chocolate tiffin cake, fruit cake, macaroons, cookies and flapjack. All of which was fantastic. The highlight being James's moist flapjack which got thumbs up from everyone.









Henry's fruit cake was a little overdone. We worked out that this was because Henry had cooked it for 4 Pimms rather than 3 - which works out in everyday language to be 15 minutes too much!

Post tea we larked around playing extreme boules.



Before settling in for dinner which involved us being overwhelmed with bulgar wheat, cous cous, chick peas and a vast array of delious dishes. Highlights included a mackerel and beetroot salad, grilled haloumi and apparently, my quiche!



The day's activities soon started to take their toll. Cowie couldn't move for fear of farting from all the grains and pulses, Willy had a brief snooze on the sofa and James seemed to go all blurry!



We chatted well into the early hours with our creativity rising as the wine stocks plummeted. If only all of creative sessions at work involved a cook off and a small cellar of wine, we would be winning awards left right and centre!

Thank you James and Henry for a wonderful weekend. Cowie and I are in love with Pembrokeshire and can't wait to return with more time and a surfboard!

Self Stirring Tea Cup

From the Telegraph - that bastion of tea drinking:

"The teaspoon could become a thing of the past after the invention of a mug that can stir liquid by itself.

All a drinker has to do to work the clever cup is gently swirl it. This sets in motion a ceramic ball positioned at the bottom of the mug that stirs the contents.

The device was invented by two French designers, who recently displayed it at the London Design Festival. Florian Dussopt, 23, said: "The cup aims at introducing a new way of drinking tea or another warm drink without using a spoon.

"The ball is put into a slightly protruding base to keep it in place when stirring and drinking.

"Users gently move the cup, like you would when swirling a glass of cognac, and the action pushes the ball around.

"The ceramic ball mixes all various sugars and milk at the same time, thus eliminating the need for a spoon. When you drink it the ball is blocked by the gravity in the recess of the glass. This eliminates the need for a spoon. Ceramic is a material that is hygienic and beautiful at the same time. The combination of glass and ceramic is aesthetically appealing in its formal interpretation of the traditional cup and saucer."

Bad news for teaspoon manufacturers everywhere. Personally, I don't see what's wrong with mugs? They've got these clever inventions called handles that stop you from burning your hands. They come in lots of different styles and it could be argued that they are a British icon. So why do we need some sort of Jamie Oliver Flavour Shaker device for our tea?

Chef Guevara

I got this for Cowie in Buenos Aires and think it's the best T-shirt. EVER!

Master Chef Final

Cowie and I are both very excited about the final of Master Chef tonight. James has got to win, but we are both big fans of Emily who we are predicting will create something absolutely bonkers tonight. She's certainly got a lot of friends. My colleague is in love with her!

Here's what Cowie would cook if she was in the final:

Cerviche of trout.

Anjou of pigeon, with an velvet jus, Jerusalem artichokes and greens

A trio of chocolate puddings... a mini chocolate and hazelnut soufflé, mini chocolate fondant, mini white chocolate moose with raspberries.. It would somehow all marry together and be really light!

Maybe a twill bicie on top!

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And here's my menu:

Skate cheefs, sous vide with black pudding foam. Served with a yuzu tuile

Venison fillet with 80% butter mashed potato

Tuna with sugar cane rammed through it Cuban style

Candy floss with rose petals

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It's got me all excited. Looking forward to the showdown tonight and very disappointed that it will all be over so soon.

Why do celebrity chefs pose like this?

What is it about celebrity chefs that makes them pose with their arms crossed on the front cover of their books? I saw these books by James Martin and Wozzer side by side in Waitrose and wondered whether it was a trait that other chefs had too. You can see below that Jamie has also dabbled with the arms crossed technique. But not in anyway near the way that Wozzer and James Martin do.





If you have a look at Jamie's other front covers a patern emerges. The arms crossed thing is a bit of a red herring. In all of his front covers he looks relaxed. Informal. Making cooking look like a piece of piss. He doesn't need to do the whole arms crossed thing to look important or commanding.









Maybe you could say that Jamie's got his arms crossed to add a bit of gravitas to his "Cook" book. And in the Jamie at Home book it's a fairly relaxed bit of arm crossing afterall.

Gordon's front covers are interesting too. But a bit harder to decypher. It seems that he's gone from being a bit shy about his face by covering up his chin and not looking to camera to a place where he is now very happy to act as a model - almost like Tom Cruise in Cocktail. See what you think...









During the course of Gordon's rise to fame loads of girls have fallen head over heals with Gordon for his gruff, assertive masculinity. His contoured face has become iconic and he's stopped hiding it away.

Hugh's front covers are the most consistent of all. Very Hugh. You get a picture of Hugh eating or holding whatever sums up his latest book. Simple. So Wittingstall.







It all goes to show that celebrity chefs are major brands these days. The same rules of branding apply to them as they would to any of the brands I work on. The look and feel is crucial and consistency of image is really imporant too.

I hope my amateur interest in body language hasn't bored anyone too much!