L'Aletiers des Chefs Macaron Class with Trusted Places

Good old Trusted Places. Not only is their site brilliant, but they also look after their bloggers as if they are family. Niamh, the TP community manager, who also writes the fantastic Eat Like a Girl blog, organised an afternoon of macaron making at L'Atelier des Chefs on Wigmore Street.



I must confess I had to lie to most of my friends about what I was doing... it was only on Friday evening that the penny dropped that the macaron class clashed with the England vs Australia rugby match. Whoops. My house mate found out and I suspect it is going to take some time before I'm allowed to live it down! Not only is he now doubting my sexuality, but a bunch of the great food bloggers I met thought that Cowie is a man!!! I can assure you all that Cowie is very much a girl!



So a whole bunch of keeno food bloggers (me included) rocked up on Saturday afternoon to get stuck in. I was in a cracking team of 4 tasked with making foie gras macarons died with squid ink. Rather than tell you how to do it, just have a look at the pictures below.





There was something very amusing about the environment with around 2,000 pictures being taken! You can see from the picture below that it wasn't your normal cooking environment!



Here's some of the photographic highlights...















It was great to meet such fun and passionate people. For instance I had a fascinating chat with Shuna about bread, sandwiches, The French Laundry and sourdough... who you can see masterfully piping the scarlet macarons below



Here's a round up of the team - it was great to meet you all. I can't wait to do something fun as a group again. Food blogging is a funny old thing. It's great to meet so many like minded souls.

World Foodie Guide
Eat Like a Girl
Hollow Legs
Cooking the Books
An American in London
Food Rambler
London Eater
Food Flunky
The Princess and the Recipe
Food by Mark
Tamarind and Thyme
Londonelicious
Trusted Places Blog



So a massive thank you to Trusted Places... and specifically to Niamh. You're a star.



And to Laura for being the chief videographer.



And also to L'Ateliers des Chefs which offers a great experience. I can't wait to return for more fun and games.

Trusted Places San Lorenzo Prize!

Miraculously I won a prize! The lovely peope at Trusted Places thought I'd written some half decent reviews so they sent out the following announcement:

"Congratulations to the winners of our December competition! Angella, Amel, OnScotland, Browners and Cedric have already tucked into their San Lorenzo hampers. We'll have a new competition soon so keep an eye on our blog."

It's absolutely brilliant to get a pat on the back for doing something you love doing anyway. I'm looking forward to giving all the amazing San Lorenzo goodies a whirl. Inside the big brown box are 2 bottles of very nice wine, a bottle of olive oil, various types of pasta, some sun dried tomatoes and lots of white polystyrene cheesy watsits! It couldn't have come at a better moment as well. Right at the time that I'm having to stretch my pennies out as far as possible.



The box has been sat on the scanner next to my desk and everyone who has walked into my office has asked what it is. Great for word of mouth for San Lorenzo. It's such a good idea to sponsor this informal competition. It's all about clever new media ideas like these. I can feel myself becoming a San Lorenzo enthusiast already. I must have told about 20 people about it already!

I'll write a little bit about each of the items in the box as and when I give them a try.

The Easton with Trusted Places

I went for dinner with Walid, the genius behind Trusted Places, tonight at the Easton in between Farringdon and King's Cross. I had steamed in from Somerset and Walid had flown in from Berlin which made my measly commute seem pretty pathetic.

It's a run down, shabby looking pub very close to Mount Pleasant Post Office. It's in an area that is awash with gastro pubs. The legendary Eagle is down the road for instance. I had a pint of Red Stripe whilst waiting for Walid and was really keen on every dish on the chalk board menu. Beef and red wine pie, roast salmon fillet, rump of lamb and rib eye steak all sounded great. Classic gastro pub fayre.

Red Stripe is a sure sign of being in a cool pub. Well done Charles Wells. It amazed me that a Carribbean lager brewed in Bedford can have such cache value and say so much about a bar... hell I'm even writing about it!



Walid is a bit of a hero really. He's managed to set up Trusted Places which is a fantastic social networking places designed to enable people to share their views on bars, restaurants, hotels etc. in a way that's fun and allows you to meet like minded people. It's doing really well. Every day sees their user numbers rise and the feeling within the usership is that it's about to reach a much wider mainstream audience. Walid is brilliant at involving his core members to evolve the site and use this energy to keep the site in a state of perpetual beta whilst driving the site forward. He's full of energy and ideas many of which we are due to see soon.

My salmon was delicious. I very rarely have salmon in a restaurant. And I am so glad that I did. It was only just cooked but also crispy on top and really well seasoned. I love it when chefs over season food. It's just have I would do it! The potatoes it rested on were equally well salted and just as awesome! Maybe if salmon was always this good in restaurants I would order it more often.

Walid's lamb looked great too. We were both majorly impressed.

London Food Festival

On Sunday Cowie and I visited the London Food Festival on behalf of Trusted Places. Walid sent me off with an open brief and a free ticket. It gave me a chance to eat some free food and Cowie a chance to play around with her new and amazing camera...



We got a feel for the scope of the event by checking out their website in advance. Having been to Taste of London in Regent's Park earlier in the summer were a bit underwhelmed by the line up of chefs and exhibitors. The fact that the website was still advertising for more exhibitors wasn't the best sign either.



I don't want this to be negative because it is the event's first year. They have chosen a great and really accessible venue in the London Business Design Centre in Angel. It's huge and is frequently home to some very prestigious events. It's a great space for an event, so long as you fill the room and have plenty of visitors.

We arrived on Sunday morning eager to get stuck in. My immediate concern was that my pre ordered ticket was 15% more expensive than buying one on the day. This is probably a teathing problem and down to the quirks of online ticketing. Still, this was a bit of a luke warm start.

So far, our expectations were fairly low.

A brass band greeted us as we entered the exhibition space. Spurred on by this we spent the next couple of hours exploring the 40 or so exhibitors. Initially the atmosphere was a bit flat due to the lack of visitors. But in a way that is what made this event work. Whereas at the Good Food Show in Earl's Court there was a constant threat of being crushed, at the London Food Festival you had the space to move freely and the chance to have lengthly conversations with the people on the stands. I remember leaving Earl's Court with bruises and a sullied view of the world. It was too successful for its own good. This show on the other hand allowed you the intimacy of a Farmers' Market but on the scale of something much larger.





Exhibitors ranged from well know brands such as Tanqueray gin, Brown Brothers and Rachel's Organic to smaller scale, more personal enterprises such as Diablo toasty makers and Royal Berkshire Pork. Most of the stalls were companies I had never heard of. Very few of the big foodie brands had turned up which seemed bad to begin with but actually turned out for the best. It gave me a chance to talk to some really passionate people who love food.

Cha Dao

Peter Green is from the South Coast and loves tea. He and his wife visited somewhere on the continent last year and were amazed by the quality of speciality teas on offer. Inspired by this they brought the concept over to England and set up their own speciality tea company 6 months ago. By the look on Peter's face he was enjoying every moment of being a tea merchant. His philosophy is simple. He wants people to experiment with tea and try new things. He aims to do this by using clear packaging which shows off the beauty of the tea leaves inside. So often with other tea companies the leaves are hidden by opaque packaging. Not so with Cha Dao. It's all on show. He is passionate about the art of tea with style. I walked away from Peter's stand understanding what this show was all about. It's a great platform for emerging foodie companies to get themselves on the foodie map.



We then met a man demonstating Diablo toastie makers. I'm all for gadgets, but am conscious that they often go unused so was a bit sceptical when watching the demonstartion you can see below. But it was brilliant and looks so cool. It's great when products are simple, functional and have a personality too. This little gadget is clean, efficient, fun and makes great toasties. You can get them on I want one of those.





We then spent the next half and hour talking to the two charming chaps on the Berghoff cookware stand. They were demonstrating their range of non stick saucepans in such an engaging way that Cowie bought an entire range of non stick pans. They looked fantastic. The ultimate non stick heavy duty pans. Currently they aren't well know in the UK. They mainly produce white label products that are rebranded by Siemens and Bosch. Good value and heavy duty. But above all, they guys showed the art of good salesmanship. Cowie bought me a new frying pan which I am currently knocking in! Cowie simply couldn't cope with the twisty removeable handle which could cause a few problems!



I was completely duped by the charming Indian stand serving very tasty chicken curries that are about to launch on the UK market. Succulent chicken turned out to my shock to be soya! But it tasted fine and I can imagine them doing very well indeed.

We briefly watched the demonstration by Ready Steady Cook's James Tanner but lost interest through a combination of not being able to see because of the camera pointing at the wrong thing and a lack of excitement for what he was cooking. We saw Ramsay at the Good Food Show along with Greg Wallace so I couldn't help but judge them in this bracket. Maybe next year there will be some more interesting demonstrations.



By this point we were starving. So we had a spot of lunch on the balcony. We loved the look of the quiche and palma ham on offer which was lucky because that was the only option! Unfortunately they ran out of palma ham and the quiche despite looking fantastic was really dull. It's a bit of a shame that a food festival can't sort out decent catering. On the other hand they did sell Belu water and they do have Dyson Air Blades in the loos. Giles Coren from the Times would love it!



We finished our lunch and decided against doing a wine tasting given the delicate nature we found ourselves in from the night before. The speaker looked energetic, but it all looked a bit forced from a distance.



Once we understood what this show was all about we loved it. Don't expect big glitzy foodie brands and top of the range celebrity chefs. The London Food Festival is all about up and coming producers and small companies reaching hardcore foodies. It's a great chance to have a personal chat with them and you get a realy feel for their passion. We're looking forward to seeing how this evolves next year and will be back for year 2.

Trusted Places Beta Test

Walid very kindly invited me along to his Trusted Places beta testing evening last week where a group of keen Trusted Places enthusiasts put the new and updated site through its paces. You can see from the pictures below that this quickly moved onto eating enormous (and very tasty) pizzas in Exmouth Market outside of Moro.



It was great to meet such interesting and like minded people and to catch up with Helen who's now working at Waitrose / John Lewis as a foodie... what a job!

Also bumped into Amelia who writes a blog called Life Moves Pretty Fast who was sitting opposite Helen and me... really nice to meet someone whose blog you read on a regular basis.

So we're all pretty excited about seeing how Trusted Places develops and keen to get involved in any activity that can help the community grow and develop.

Thank you Walid for the invitation and look forward to joining in again soon.