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

oops i did it again

well it looks as though we have one or two problems with the new menu, mostly regarding my attempts to use my elderberry jam and free apples. the apples are fine and i'll be picking some more now but, as usual, my crumble mix (vegan and gluten free) will take some more work. the lack of gluten means that is goes a little powdery so I need to add some more fat I think. as for the elderberries, I though it would be nice to add them to our vegan custard; it certainly tasted nice but purple custard appears to be quite off putting. solution, leave custard as nature intended, yellow, and thin the jam down to make a syrup that can be liberally squirted over the crumble and custard. job done (badly). hopefully everything else will go ok.

Recipes for Mr and Mrs Turner

so last night I was working and Mrs Turner asked for a couple of recipes, these are those. Italian filo pie the filling for the pie is a mix of roasted vegetables, herbs and caponata. caponata a southern Italian accompaniment, chop a couple of onions and sweat until soft. add some chopped parsle, root and all, and some finely chopped garlic and add to the onion. allow to cook out for a few minutes then add a sprinkle of chilli flakes, a dash of wine vinegar and a sprinkle of sugar and allow the vinegar to reduce. throw in a couple of punnets of sweet baby plum, or cherry, tomatoes and cover. cook over a low heat for ten to fifteen minutes to allow the tomatoes to pop a little. take off the heat, grate in the zest of a lemon and the lemon juice and add a few tablespoons of chopped capers and a 100g or so of chopped olices. season, taste and allow to cool. dice a couple of good sized aubergines, season and mix with oil and roast at 180C until browned. do the same with a decent sized butternut. take a couple of courgettes and cut into large dice. bring a slick of oil to a high heat in a flat bottomed pan. in batches fry the courgettes until browned. drain on kitchen roll. add the courgettes, aubergine and butternut to the caponata and mix together. chop a bunch or parsley, basil, chives and mint and add to the vegetable mix. if the mix is too oily then add some breadcrumbs. brush some filo pastry with oil and make a parcel three or four layers thick. place some mix onto the filo and shape as desired. in the restaurant we make pasty shapes but if you're cooking for a few people make a swiss roll shape and let everyone dig in. baked nectarines. the most important ingredient is fresh nectarines, halved and de-stoned. to make the filling you will need some vegan ricotta, made from cashew nuts blended with soy milk, lemon juice and a little salt. it should have the consistency of ricotta, so quite thick. sweeten with agave nectar and add a handful of chocolate chips and some chopped biscotti. top the halved nectarines with a spoonful of the mix and bake in an oven pre-heated to 160C. cook until lightly browned. Some biscotti recipes: My basic recipe for biscotti is pretty foolproof and you can add chocolate chips and chopped fruit if you like. 335g of self raising flour 165g of caster sugar 100g of chopped almonds 2 medium eggs 50ml of vegetable oil One teaspoon of almond extract Place the dry ingredients into a bowl. Put the eggs, oil and almond extract in a jug and mix well. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well. Knead the dough together. At first it will be quite dry but continue working and the sugar will start to dissolve and it will come together. Cut into three equal pieces and place on a floured surface. Take each piece and form into a ball. Now take the ball and roll into a sausage shape, roughly 10” in length and place onto a flat pan covered in baking paper. Once you have rolled all three, place the tray into an oven pre-heated to 180C. bake for 10-15 minutes until browned and risen. Take the cooked sausages and place onto a cutting board and cut into individual biscotti. It’s best to work when the sausages are hot, so watch your fingers or use a tea towel to hold the biscotti. Place the cut biscuits back on the baking paper and place the tray back in the oven for a further 5 minutes. Take out and allow to cool, and store in an airtight box.   Vegan and gluten free biscotti: when we need to use biscotti in desserts, for example baked nectarines, we tend to use a version that is suitable for all our customers. This recipe works pretty well. 100g cornflour 100g polenta 120g doves farm gluten free bread flour 1 tsp baking powder 150g golden caster sugar 150ml soy yogurt 50ml veg oil 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp almond extract 80-100g chopped almonds Mix dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately, then bring together and form a dough; it should not be too sticky. Using some more flour split dough into four and roll into sausage shapes. bake at 180C for 20 minutes or so on greaseproof paper, until still slightly soft. Remove from the oven and cut each sausage at an angle to make biscuits. Place back on the greaseproof and bake for a further five to ten minutes, turning the biscotti once. This will dry them and lightly brown the sides.   cheers wayne

well it finally happened

much to everyone's lack of surprise, it finally happened. last night was the first night since our opening weekend that we had no bookings and we closed the restaurant at seven. at 6:10 we had one booking and were ready for service; we weren't going to set up, but were going to take the food out as needed and then a phone call. hooray. i poured the boiling water onto the rice, ready to start cooking and leanne joked that it would be a cancellation. one minute later, with the rice cooking, she was correct, our table had cancelled and the rice was not required, nor the poppadoms nor the ..... if you don't laugh you'll lose your hair, oh christ i am ...... aargh

much more majestic and a bad backscattering

many thanks to majestic who responded very quickly to the problem that i brought up in the last blog; it looks like we have vegan wine again. on a more serious note we noticed some serious backscattering last week. this is simultaneously not as bad, and worse, than it sounds. a problem became apparent when i accessed, as did leanne, our bookings page. what we found were 100s of rebounded emails that had been sent from our account. of course they had not but the account had been hacked and the undelivered mails were bounced back to us; backscattering. the account has had to be suspended, at least for outgoing mail and the webmaster is on the case. you should be able to book but we'll reply from a different account. many apologies to anyone who was affected. cheers wayne ps ian, you couldn't spare us 5 minutes to press buttons on our phone again. now the answer machine isn't working. usual rates apply

bloody majestic

as you may be aware we use majestic wines for our wines. the reason; they give more information about provenance than any other supplier. so we opted for a vegan wine list, or so we thought. apologies to the couple who ordered the chenin blanc, still advertised as vegan on the website, who discovered that is contains traces of milk products. i've emailed majestic to complain, expect nothing to be done but will change the white wine tomorrow. cheers wayne

thanks to keith and chris

we are always surprised when customers come back to the restaurant after our one week christmas break. we decided to take that break because we had no bookings for the period between new year and christmas in our first year of business and it has stuck; it's also very nice to have a week with no cooking. this year was special because, in the past we have had the odd booking in the book, we had no bookings. we went in on thursday to start the prep for the weekend and still nothing. the menu started to take shape, 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock and still nothing. on friday we had three tables and the same on saturday but it looked like being a flat thursday. at 5.30 the phone rang and we had a booking, for just two people, but a reason to make a pie or a risotto cake. it stayed at two and leanne and i were done by 9:15, but we were off and running and a restaurant again. the reality contrasts starkly with what people think. we regularly get emails that ask for tables weeks ahead who ask for a specific time but will take whatever is available; the restaurant is usually available.

To hal and byron and .......

this is a moan so stop reading now. for the past two weeks evenings have been spoiled by no-shows. i don't try to turn tables because i don't like to be rushed myself when i eat out but we may have to start because we have lost 20% of our turnover on two nights when we have also had to turn tables away. on top of three of the worst months since we have been open and we simply cannot afford to be wasting money in this way. i realise that the people who read this blog, all 6 of you, are also the people who ring to cancel a table but this has to be said somewhere. it's not good enough to ring a table of 5 who have not bothered to turn up or to let us know that they wouldn't, to be told 'oh i really should have rung'. so thank you byron and hal and all of the others who can't be bothered to ring, you make running a restaurant so much more of a bind.

sorry

apologies to a new diner who ordered our meat dish by mistake on friday. this is my fault entirely because for the first time i used the name of the dish without the name of the meat. doro wat is an ethiopian chicken (usually) stew and i should have made that clear. many apologies wayne

tofu or not tofu

this weekend i did a food demo at the cowbridge food festival and the theme for this year was tofu. this is a very versatile ingredient that may not have great flavour but can carry flavours. here are the recipes, fresh tofu bring one litre of soy milk to the boil and add a coagulant. i use one and a half teaspoons of nigari flakes to 150ml of cold water. dissolve and add to the hot milk and let the soy milk turn into curds and whey. you then need to mould the mix. i think that the best moulds would be 2 500g containers of margarine. put some holes into the bottom of one of the containers to let the water run away and line it with some muslin or a clean tea towel, pour the mix in and let the water drain. once the curds are separate, fold the tea towel over and place the second container on top, squeeze and weigh down. place in the fridge overnight, then store in cold water. tofu done simple. cut your tofu into squares and marinate in a mix of tamari or soy sauce and sweet chilli sauce. you can leave this for a couple of minutes or a couple of hours and eat it like this or fry in veg oil. cook like a chef burgers break up 200g of tofu and add 100g of mixed ground nuts and breadcrumbs. add a dash of tamari and a tablespoon of tahini then chop up some dill and add. mix together with a fork and taste for balance of flavours. add about 30g of rice flour to help the bind and form into burgers. fry in veg oil until golden brown. thai tofu cakes as above but rather then dill add a tablespoon of red curry paste and some chopped coriander. lebanese tofu cakes as above but add a mix of mint, coariander, parsley, lemon juice, lime juice and ras el hanout. red curry paste. Thai Curry paste 8 chillies. The long dutch ones are the best because they tend to be not too hot. If you like it hotter, use a couple of thai chillies as well. You should probably taste the chillies to decide whether you want to go seeds in or seeds out. Green for a green paste and red for a red paste. A thumb sized piece of ginger. You can also use galangal if you can get it but if you can’t, don’t sweat it. 6 cloves of garlic 1 or 2 shallots, only one if it a good size banana shallot. A small bunch of coriander A few teaspoons of thai basil and kaffir lime leaves. You can buy jars of these in good supermarkets or Asian stores. If you cannot get them throw a few leaves of basil and a few leaves of mint in. The juice and zest of two limes A teaspoon of tamarind extract Half a thumb of palm sugar A tablespoon of ground cumin and ground coriander. Put all of the above into a food processor or blender and blend until a paste forms. You can add oil or water to encourage blending. cheers wayne

newsletter

Dear all I’ve decided to change the menu after three weeks because we ran out of the boar chorizo. We source this from a supplier in the east of England so for one week it didn’t seem worthwhile. This means that the next menu will last for 5 weeks and will be one of our infrequent ‘specials’ menu. Each week some of the dishes will be changed, some may remain for the menu, some may appear just once. This gives me a chance to rid our freezer and store cupboard of ingredients that we bought/stored for previous menus but did not use. In the freezer at present, we have a box of wild garlic that was picked in the spring for the soup and pesto, so we may use this to make some malfatti. I’ve also got a portion or twenty of the filling that we used for our rice tamales and i’ve been wanting to do some thai style wontons in a coconut broth for some time; two birds etc etc. I could continue but i’ve got some more digging to do. For dessert, i’ve been fancying poached apples since we started poaching them for the crumble. We’ve poached pears plenty of times and we’ve baked apples but not poached and maybe there is a reason for this but we’ll give it a go, use my preserved plums for a sorbet and maybe find something to stuff in the middle. The other dishes, at least to start with, will be a treacle tart and the sticky toffee pudding. (since trying to send this the first time, i came across some Sharon fruit so we’ll be poaching these and serving with sorbet and a thuile) I hope that those of you who ate with us on the last menu enjoyed the food, it was quite popular with the workers. I made three sorbets, plum (beautiful), peach (apparently tasteless) and pear (my favourite), for the crumble and about ten different varieties of crumble. As always it was impossible to plan; different days meant different orders and having had two quiet days on the crumble at the start of the menu, i decided to not bother making any new crumble topping for the first Saturday. The time inconsistency of that plan became apparent when all of the prepped mix went in the first three or four orders. We were then frantically making crumble at 8:45, crushing up some biscuits that had been ordered for Christmas and generally panicking as the crumble refused to brown. Ten minutes later, panic over and from then on plenty of crumble mix wasted at the end of the weekend. The girls were very scathing about my attempts to make peshwari rotis and as these do not exist outside our restaurant, it was a recipe that changed quite alot over the menu. This is how it finished. Place 50g of dessicated coconut and 100g of raisins/sultanas into a small blender and blend until the raisins are finely chopped. Add some kalonji/black onion seeds/nigella and some black cumin, 20g sugar and 50g of ground almonds and blend together. This makes a very nice chutney as well as roti mix. Add a little coriander and chilli and serve it with a thai curry. To make the roti place 300g of flour into a bowl, add 100g of you coconut mix and a tablespoon of oil. Mix together then slowly add water to form a soft bread dough. Cover and place into the fridge for a couple of hours. (if you prefer a more naan-type bread, use a little yoghurt instead of some of the water and add a sachet of fast action yeast). To cook, break off some of your dough and roll out on a floured surface. Heat up a heavy bottom, non-stick frying pan and throw the roti on. Cook until well browned on both sides. Serve with a curry of your choice. The other dish that took a few turns was the chocolate and hazelnut tart. Initially i put the hazelnuts through the sweet pastry mix like so. Place an egg, 40g of caster sugar and 100g of soft butter into a food processor and blend together. Add 100g of ground hazelnuts and blend. Now add plain flour and pulse until a dough forms, up to 200g. The nice thing about this method is that, without the hazelnuts, the dough can be rolled immediately or can be placed in the fridge and rolled later. To bake, roll out the pastry and place into a loose bottomed pan. Because the hazelnuts affect the consistency of the pastry you may have to mould it around the edges to form the crust. You can freeze the pastry and grate it in to the pan. Place a sheet of baking paper in the pastry shell and fill with baking beans. Cook at 180C for ten minutes then take the beans out, turn the oven down to 160C and bake for a further ten minutes to dry out the base. Filling: Heat up 200ml of double cream with 80g of caster sugar, dissolving the sugar. Whilst hot add 7-8 oz of 70% chocolate and whisk to melt. Now add two medium eggs, a teaspoon of vanilla extract and 250g of crème fraiche. Blend with the chocolate mix. Pour into the cooled base and cook in a 140C oven for 40 minutes. Allow to cool and serve. The pastry made with the hazelnuts was a little too biscuity and the edges tended to take a little bit of eating because they were a little thicker than usual so version two changed it up a bit. Now make the sweet pastry without the hazelnuts, this can be rolled out more thinly and will be a lot crisper. Place the hazelnuts in the chocolate mix and proceed as above. This weekend i shall be doing a food demo at the cowbridge food festival and i’m still a little unsure about what to do. I may do a tofu demo, starting with making from soy milk, through to all of the different ways that we use it in the restaurant. We’ll see. This is the new menu, starters and mains are not fully decided yet. Imam bayeldi purse with white bean hummous and green sauce “Chicken” skewers with satay sauce Panelle fries with red pepper ketchup Mushroom wontons with curried onion broth Thai-style wontons in coconut broth Wild garlic malfatti in cheese broth Quesadilla/fajita with slasa, guacamole and sour cream Doro wat with injera Chakalaka Herb gougeres with lemon and parsley ricotta and tomato sauce Thali plate Poached apple with plum sorbet Treacle tart with ice cream Sticky toffee pudding with toffee sauce and ice cream Nick and the muso medics haven’t got back to me with anything for this newsletter so the choices are all mine and all heaven 17. If it’s not to your taste, do something about it and let me have some choices. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s-liPuUv4I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-YCmncMCro http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKZgdNomKYs my favourite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On8j46vLc-o and this seems to be shadowed in the previous song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPfLOIrfemI and i’d forgotten this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b83R2ujZENM all that remains is to say that the 2-4-1 winner is elin. Love and light wayne

new menu and sorbet recipe

i quite like the new menu; it's very busy in the kitchen, lots of pans on the go at the same time, the polenta need constant beating, but it's enjoyable. as always there are plenty of problems, not least the rice tamales. these are in the shape of a tamale but made using a blend of thai rices; jasmine, black and sticky. by friday i was losing my mind trying to shape the bleeders with the back of a wet spoon. just as i was about to start flinging it around the kitchen i decided to use my head and mould the basic shape with a piece of greaseproof (they're steamed in greaseproof anyway) and then flatten it with my hand. success! it took the same time to make the final ten as it had to make the first two; breakdown and inevitable tears averted. feedback has been positive for the most part and presentation has improved through the weekend but two issues arose. the first regarding the filo pie. it was said that the taste of the filling was lost because of the spicy tomato sauce which cover the green beans. having eaten one myself i had to agree. this week we'll be aiming for a brighter presentation of the pie filling, more herbs and more vinegar/lemon, but the sauce will remain the same. the second issue is down to the gardening skills of the webmaster. i had hoped for bucketloads of free plums but his trees are bare, so we had to go out and buy. we bought some british and some spanish. the spanish ones looked prettier so we used those for the poached plums and i used the british ones to make the sorbet and it was a shame that we din't have (free) welsh plums for both. one customer thought the sorbet the best she had had, so here is an approximate recipe. 300ml of stock syrup. this is about 200ml water and 150g of sugar, brought to the boil and allowed to simmer for ten minutes. put a little cinnamon stick, star anise and vanilla in. once the syrup is made take out the aromatics and add about 250g of plums. poach until soft and then blend. pass through a sieve and allow to cool. measure out 500ml and add a dash of lemon juice, then place into the bowl of an ice cream maker and have sorbet. you can freeze and whisk, freeze and whisk for not such a good outcome. cheers wayne

teething problems and nutty issues

first night of the new menu and the usual problems; i hadn't made at least two parts of the menu, the koftas are a little bland and it's a nutty menu. the first problem is easily resolved, apologise and hope for the best. the koftas are a perennial problem, it's very difficult to get the seasoning right on the first night but i didn't mind the slightly bland flavour because the rest of the dish had loads of flavour; i'll bump up the seasoning tonight. the more involved issue is nuts, or rather the amount of them on the menu. we had three new diners in last night, one of whom had a serious nut allergy. the problem with mexican food is that lots of the moles are thickened with nuts so that nuts are used in the kitchen very frequently. we are as vigilant as possible when it comes to nuts, different boards/knives, but could i guarantee that everything has no traces of nuts? no and so a new diner left whose allergy was severe whereas another diner with a less severe allergy ate and everything was cool. nuts

a kiss but no tongues

we very much enjoyed saturday night. the menu came together nicely, not bad for three weeks in, and service was nice and busy. one table came in and left without eating and we had a no-show but to counter we also had a few new diners and one comment struck home. we've always made the meat dish as flavourful as we could but it has also been the poor relation. historically many of our dishes were one pot dishes, tagines, curries etc but as we developed the menus the vegetarian dishes tended to become more complex whereas the meat dish stayed the same. chatting to one of the new customers on saturday and they asked why we have the meat dish on. as i have explained many times to many people, in my social circle i am the only vegetarian and i wanted to provide this dish as a welcome to everyone; tony would have been happy to go 100% veggie. on the whole it has worked, although it is mostly interpreted as a gimmick. on the current menu the meat is a stew and rice whereas the veggie equivalentish dish (ethiopian wat etc.) has a beetroot raita, dhal and a chutney. the lack of the accompaniments was described as a kiss but no tongues. here are the recipes for the tongues. beetroot raita. fry onion in oil until lightly browned, turn up heat and add black cumin seeds and brown or slightly blacken. allow to cool. for the best result roast fresh beetroot in foil in 180C oven for one hour, to cheat use vacuum packaged but you will lose the colour. finely chop the beetroot. place a pot of yoghurt (we use yofu, but greek would work very well) chop some dill and add together with the beetroot, onion mix to the yoghurt. season with lime juice and salt and pepper. chutney finely chop an onion and lightly fry. add a teaspoon of black cumin and panch pooram (a mix of whole indian spices) and a sprinkle of chilli flakes. shred or grate some carrots and add to the onions. throw in a tin of chick peas and add 100ml of rice vinegar and 150g of caster sugar. cook until syrupy. season to taste. my brulee recipe this is different to any that i have seen but the results are pretty decent and it takes significantly lees time. makes 10 four egg yolks and two whole eggs in a two litre jug. add two teaspoons of vanilla sugar or a teaspoon of extract and 150g of caster sugar. add 200ml of milk and 800ml of double cream. there should be 1200ml of liquid, add more cream if there is less. use a hand blender to bring everything together and pour in to ramekins. (you can put anything in the bottom of the ramekins, at the moment we have a mix of stewed rhubarb and blitzed stem ginger). place in a deep oven tray and fill tray with boiling water to 2/3 of the way up the ramekin and place in an oven at 130C. cook until there is only the slightest wobble left in the middle of the brulee. place in the fridge for 3 hours minimum. to serve sprinkle sugar on the top and brulee with a kitchen torch. cheers wayne

6 dinner ladies and some recipes

just spent a very interesting ten minutes reading the dissection of the restaurant undertaken by the 6 dinner ladies. i was not working the night that they came in but they will, hopefully, be happy to know that most of what they subsequently wrote in their blog, was relayed to me the following day; reviewing service and dishes on a daily basis is one of the things that we try to do. you can read their opinions here http://6dinnerladies.blogspot.co.uk/ i've put the recipe for the umeboshi tofu in the newsletter so i'll do the crespelle here. one of the comments that i didn't like, and it is one that has been made before (and i didn't like it then either) was the accusation that we use the correct terminology to confuse or look clever. we don't and when i say we i mean me, the language that i use is the langauage of the food. every pie that we do, whether it be a b'stilla, spanakopita, fatayer, pithivier could also be called a pasty. what would we gain by doing so, we would be doing a dis-service to the food. what should we have called ravioli, cannelloni etc when they were not well known. umeboshi plums are umeboshi plums, there is no alternative. we could call tofu soy cheese but would that be any clearer. i'll continue to do what i do and that is try to produce decent food. i'll call it the name that it was called in the place that it originated and if this upsets you, please feel free to close your mind off further; gregg's sell pasties, we do not. anyway with that off my chest, the pancake recipe. this is a simple dish that is anything but, involving as it does, several different processes. pancakes wild garlic or spinach, a handful plain flour soy milk silken tofu salt and pepper put about 250g plain flour in a jug and add two teaspoons of silken tofu, the salt and pepper and the garlic/spinach. add soy milk and blend with a hand blender. continue adding until you have a pancake batter. using a good non-stick pan make the pancakes. filling. vegan ricotta: place some cashew nuts in a blend and cover with soy milk. blend until smooth, adding more milk if necessary. transfer to a food processor and add a block of firm tofu and season with plenty of lemon juice, salt and pepper. now add some nutmeg and more spinach and wild garlic and blend to create the filling, checking the seasoning. take the pancakes and place some filling in the centre. roll the pancake over and place in the oven. cook until crispy. serve with a salad and tomato sauce (also in the last newsletter but i quite like the arrabiata one of lloyd grossman) cheers wayne

the roller coaster ratings

i never did get to ethos vegan restaurant because time seems to speed up in the second week and any opportunity slipped passed. i did however get to go on many of florida's top rollercoasters; this is the list by park and in the order that we did them.

rockin' roller coaster at hollywood studios

space mountain at magic kingdom

experience everest at animal kingdom

manta and cracken at seaworld

hulk, dragon challenge, rockit, the mummy at universal parks

kumba, cheetah hunt, montu, kwazi, scorpion, sheikra at busch gardens


scariest ride: manta. this coaster has you sitting with legs hanging and then pivots you up so that you are parallel with the ground and all your weight is pressed down against the restraint. this is disconcerting enough when you are stationary but then you are transported in this position up the first incline. the first time that i did this ride i pretty much prayed that i would not fall out and die a horrific, splashy, death. the park had put some netting underneath but this was to catch the shoes and mobile phones that fell out, not bodies. once you ascended the first peak, you were spun and sent around the rest of the ride, never completely at ease with your precarious situation. unfortunately my children loved it and we went straight back on. second time, a little better but still, by a long, long way, the scariest ride we went on.

fastest ride: you would think that this was cheetah hunt but it was sheikra that was the fastest. this was certainly not the best because it was a bit of a one trick pony; taking you up a long climb to a vertical drop, stopping just long enough to encourage a few screams and then dropping you so that you left your seat as you fell. fantastic for that part but catrin, 9 years old and just the required 54", found it boring because that was all that it did.

most anticipated ride; montu. this looked amazing because of all the inversions, 7, but did not live up to its promise, just too damn smooth.

ricketiest ride: has to go to kwazi, simply an old looking wooden structure and boy you got banged around.

ride with a name that made some sense: joint hulk and cheetah hunt. hulk was breathtaking, very fast and very powerful. the start was amazing, catapulting you into the ride with amazing acceleration and never letting up, very hulkish. cheetah humt was based on the movement of a cheetah and like the hulk the first trick was acceleration usinf repelling magnets to eliminate friction but cheetah hunt was power and style. it was very long and graceful with amazing changes of direction and speed.

Best rides:

these were the rides that i enjoyed the most

1. kraken: very fast and lots of inversions. we went on time after time at the end of the day,
2. Kumba: closed when we first went to check but then we did a front and a back ride. excellent.
2. Hulk: power
4. Manta, dragon chalenge and montu

other rides worth a mention

the new rides are hybrids between coasters and simulators and in this genre we went on the simpsons ride, spiderman and harry potter. of the three i would have spiderman first, 3d glasses rather that simulated 3d gave a better overall experience (i flinched both times when the bricks came at me, that dr octopus!) and then it was potter and the simpsons.

best tip: don't go to disney.

second best tip: if you do go to the big parks use the single rider queue. the queues for the harry potter ride were enormous; in the single rider queue we waited for 5 minutes. you sometimes get to ride with a family member but not often but that is usually much better than spending an hour in a queue with them.

third: if you like coasters, do busch gardens. it's also a pretty decent wildlife park.

fourth: use a satnav.

off to the airport and working tomorrow so see you in the restaurant.

cheers

wayne

still in the us of a

it's sunday morning and we're watching family guy on demand. i found myself thinking about the next menu at about 5 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. currently i'm probably living in a mid-atlantic time zone; about 2 hours before the US and 3 hours after the UK. done the disney stuff and everyone is now pretty bored with the parks; we only have 5 more to do. will be eating at a vegan restaurant this week, so hope that that will be good. the food thus far has been pizza, and more pizza and pretty much more pizza. i've cooked some mexican and some thai curry and had some nice salad. the best thing is the quality and variety of ingredients, very fresh and varied. the vegan sausages take some beating and the avocados are incredible.

now the dish that kept me up today is beetroot and umeboshi sushi balls with fried, marinated tofu and cashew and wasabe cream. it sounded lovely in my head so let's hope for the best.

will write about the restaurant soon.

cheers
wayne

the travails of miss burgess

the most important member of the canteen community is leanne. she does the bookings, often correcting mistakes made by yours truly, orders wine, beers, cleans, cooks and keeps us all in check. every now and again, life throws up something that test even her. last week we had to get the electrics upgraded to satisfy new regulations. this meant the pulling up of floorboards in the derelict flat above to do some re-wiring and earthing and sometimes things get knocked that should not. leanne is usually first in on thursday and puts on the heating and the lights, cooks some cakes and does a little cleaning; i'm usually not that far behind. last thursday my daughters were ill off school with a cold that i have now, so i was looking after them. at 11.30 the telephone rang. leanne had turned on the lights, gone to the kitchen and turned on the heating. she came back to find water streaming through the ceiling above the bar and over table one; she turned off the lights and the heating and water stream turned into a trickle. she telephoned me, panicked by imminent electrocution. we agreed that she should go to the kitchen and do all of my work and wait for tony to come in. an houir or so later the problem had been identified but not solved. the electrician had knocked two pipes which had come apart and these were part of the heating system. as this was off, only a little water came out and he assumed that they were redundant. when leanne turned the heating on, the system started up and water was pumped straight out of the open pipe. a pain but one which was sorted by 4 and the place could be mopped and cleaned. well done to leanne, above and beyond as usual.

a recipe

as you know i don't do measuring exactly but i have to for you and for the recipe book. i took the time to measure the ingredients for the roulade, so this is it.

70g butter
90g cornflour (you can use plain flour if not making coeliac and i'd use 65g)
1 pint of milk
5 eggs, separated
salt, pepper and mixed fresh herbs (i use a mix of basil, tarragon, chives and mint)

melt the butter and add the cornflour to make a roux. cook out for a couple of minutes and then throw in the milk. cook on a medium heat, whisking all the while, until the cornflour thickens the milk and it becomes quite stiff. turn off the heat and whisk for two minutes to reduce the temperature.

separate the eggs and place the whites in a clean bowl. take the yolks and whisk them in to the cornflour mixture while it is still warm. this will give a glossy look and will stop the mix from breaking up. season and add the mixed herbs. (4 small packs from the supermarket is probably about 2 times the amount that you want, so add half and then make another to chop and freeze)

whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks and then fold into the other mix, being careful to keep as much air in as possible.

you will need a baking tray, about 16" by 11". cover this with reusable baking parchment or good baking paper. pour the mix on this and move so that it is a uniform depth. cook in a 180C oven for 20 minutes until well risen and browned. if you don't cook it enough, you'll have trouble rolling, as it will stick to the parchment.

take off the tray and allow to cool.

we spread ours with Moroccan onion jam (ras el hanout, onions, vinegar and sugar) but you can put goat cheese, sundried tomatoes, mexican stuff, or anything you fancy.

the hard part is rolling. once you have filled the roulade, starting at one end, release the roulade and roll to form a swiss roll. keep it tightly rolled and place in the fridge for 2 hours minimum.

once cold, unwrap and cut in to portions. you will have enough for 6-8 main course or 10-12 starters. place these in a pre-heated oven for 10-12 minutes until lightly browned but souffled. this is a twice baked souffle essentially. serve with anything you fancy.

cheers

wayne

in case i forget it completely

i've been meaning to post the recipe for the thai tofu cakes that we had on the menu a few months ago and this is it.

to make this coeliac, you'll need to get some coelaic bread. we buy ours from the great bakers at the hungry planet because it is both coelaic and vegan; many varieties that you can buy in supermarkets have egg in them.

some tofu, crumbled. the cheapest stuff you can buy in chinese supermarkets but beware, it can be too gloopy. we ordered a catering pack from hungry planet, made by clearspot i think. this has a better texture and leaves some nice lumps.

coriander and chilli finely chopped and to your taste.

some breadcrumbs, the exact amount will depend upon the water content in the tofu.

some thai basil (you can buy in jars from man fung chinese supermarket on penarth road)

some green curry paste, homemade is best.

a couple of tablespoons of tahini.

a good slosh of tamari.

some rice flour.

i think that that is it. you need to crumble the tofu and then add the aromatics to taste. once you are happy with the taste, then you need to add the breadcrumbs and the rice flour to give you a mixture that you can handle and mould. i would not go too dry, the mixture should still have some moisture. mould in to patties and put in the fridge for a couple of hours. shallow fry and serve with salad and sweet chilli sauce.

cheers

wayne