promised recipes

a couple of weeks ago I reactivated my twitter account for one message. it was because we were trending due to our wonton starter. I don't know if two tweets and a couple of re-tweets qualifies as a trend but to us it did, this was the recipe I promised and I've stuck another one on for good measure Wontons Finely chop an onion and sweat in a little oil. Add a teaspoon both of garlic and ginger and fry for a minute or two. Chop about 250g of mushroom and add to the pan, cooking until most of the moisture has gone. Add a teaspoon of green curry paste and a slosh of kecap manis and cook for a couple of minutes. Put some stale bread in a food processor and process to a fine breadcrumb. Reserve. Add the mushrooms to the processor and blend until finely chopped. Add breadcrumbs to soak up any excess liquor. To make the sauce, fry a couple of medium onions in a little oil until soft. Add a few teaspoons of a good curry paste, not too hot, and a splash of lemon juice. Add a couple of hundred ml of stock and cook out. Blend with a hand blender until smooth and taste. I like mine quite lemony. To make the wontons, either make your own fresh pasta or buy some wonton wrappers in a Chinese supermarket. Place a little of the mushroom mix in the middle of the wonton wrapper and seal using a little water. Steam or poach until cooked, place in a bowl and cover with the curry broth. Spotted dick I’m guessing here because after the first one, which I made with Leanne, Leanne made all the rest. I’ll give some ingredients and correct the errors in the next newsletter. 125g vegetable suet 300g self raising flour 75g of caster sugar 100g of currants/raisins 120ml of soy milk 50ml veg oil Three tablespoons of plum jam Zest and juice of one lemon Place the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix. Place the wet ingredients in a jug and mix together. Add to the dry ingredients and mix with a fork. Now you can line a bowl etc and make a pudding or you can place a large piece of baking parchment on your worktop and put your mix on it. Form it into a sausage shape and tie off the ends with some string, allowing some room for the pudding to expand. Steam for a couple of hours. We’d put it on at seven and be serving from it all night. Serve with custard.

in memory of roly

many of you who have been to the restaurant over the six years that we have been open may have seen a portly gentleman enter towards the end of an evening, come down to the kitchen for a little sample of the food and a chat; that gentleman was roly. when we first took over the place the first face that we saw was roly. he had thingummyjigs opposite, an Aladdin's cave of goods that could not be accessed because he could not stop buyimg stock and seemed reluctant to open that often to sell the stock that he had. when woolworths shut he bought binbags full of sweets and I've no idea what became of them, maybe stuffed in a corner. our first conversation was about how much we'd charge him for a mug of tea and I think that we settled on 50p but that soon became free. over the six years that we knew him, he struggled with his health and on Thursday evening he told us how he'd collapsed in Asda a couple of days before and had been taken to hospital where they'd found a problem with his heart. he was on drugs for it and we assumed that the bottle and sponge that he was carrying in a plastic bag had something to do with that but, typical roly, he'd brought in some stain for our two banquet tables, and he set about sorting the tables before service. roly delivered gas most of the time and he died while doing that on Friday morning. we'll miss you roly, wayne, tony, Leanne, mel, jay and kelly