Buongiorno my little pear drops! I’m just about to embark on redrafting hell for the next three weeks so while my intros will be shorter than usual, I will still be endeavoring to eat as much as possible regardless of the less-than-optimal weather and pressing deadlines. Am I counting down the days until I can sit inside a restaurant? Perhaps, but in the meantime I will making the noble sacrifice of eating in a pub garden for the sake of journalism.
Me and Emma decided to go out for brunch for our Friday treat and just so happened to stumble on the newly reopened Vertigo restaurant by HOME, which not only was entirely vegan, but had lots of tables free and were offering two courses and a drink for £20. We shared a peanut butter and sweet potato dhaal as well as a pretzel veggie burger (imo all burgers should have pretzel buns) and had an apple and plum tart as well as a Biscoff pancake stack for dessert, served with mimosas. Frankly one of the best bargains I’ve come across and all the food was extremely excellent.
Pizza Co
Another instalment of Drunk Night Out Pizza Recommendations, but this time we got to Popolinos too late to let people in who weren’t delivery drivers (honestly haven’t seen that rule anywhere else but idk). Pizza Co is luckily very similar to Popolinos and makes pretty much the exact same kind of fluffy carb vehicle a drunk person needs.
Cereal Milk Ice Cream at GooeyCo
If you are hungover and grumpy, sometimes the only way to get things going is just going outside. Sometimes you need a motivation for said trip though and I couldn’t recommend any motivation more highly than soft serve Crunchy Nut cereal milk flavoured ice cream, courtesy of GooeyCo. It is the closest we have to Momofuku Milk Bar in New York and when you are walking in the sunshine, spoon in hand as the sun shines down on you, you could mistake the streets of Manchester for the piazzas of Rome.
Ed and Emma’s Mushroom Pasta
My boyfriend is a very good cook, but he is terrible at sharing recipes. The instructions are always vague, with no quantities or specifics. In this case he shared his mushroom pasta recipe with Emma, who then had to improvise her own way, using what little information she had, to make an equally delicious meal. She has promised to give me her more precise written instructions.
Mini Mushroom Tarts
A new recipe I’ve developed and as usual for me, it’s a creamy cheesy sauce. This I find though is pretty close to those nice mushroom and white wine pies you get in gastropubs and Pieminister. Also, having just complained about recipes, I decided I should probably share this:
Recipe (makes six):
- Preheat the oven. Our oven only has one discernible temperature which is ‘hot’, but 190/200 is probably fine for this.
- Chop a whole onion as finely as possible and fry in oil. Once the onions are translucent, add about two cloves of garlic (I use a garlic crusher, but you can also chop finely).
-Once everything has browned nicely, add a tub of mushrooms, chopped as small as possible (You can blitz in the food processor). Once they are cooked, add a mug’s worth of stock, along with a glug of white wine (any will do). Simmer until almost all the liquid is gone.
-Add about 150ml of double cream and a very generous handful of a cheese of your choice (I used Grana Padano, but you can use Parmesan or a mature cheddar, or even blue cheese if you’re fancy) Taste until sufficiently cheesy. (I also added a spoonful of truffle pesto for indulgence but not a requirement).
-Take the sauce off the heat and let it cool. While it cools, cut up sheets of ready made puff pastry and put each square into a muffin tray. (You can refer to this recipe which this is based off for a diagram on how to do this.) Spoon the mushroom filling into the pastry case, and fold over the corners of the pastry over the top. Glaze the pastry with beaten egg and add an extra sprinkle of cheese.
-Cook until the tops are golden brown (This will roughly be 15-20 mins depending on the oven temp, but if they are a bit anemic looking, you can leave them in for longer).
-Serve, ideally with a side of crispy roast potatoes, a crisp wine (or similarly crisp drink) and a salad of your choice (does not have to be crispy, that’s entirely up to you).
Midnight Muffins
Being a flat of two bakers, there is normally a homemade sweet treat that hangs around for maybe 2-3 days maximum. This week, it was Emma’s blueberry muffins made using leftover cream instead of yogurt and the final product was a light sponge with a nice top with a little crunch, which is exactly what you want with a muffin.
Zimsterne
This last week or so, I have been referred to by some of my course mates both as their ‘favourite food writer’ and ‘miss baking queen’, both titles are a great honor and I take them very seriously. Like a queen being bestowed with a tribute from her beloved subjects, I was recently offered these cute little star shaped cookies from Switzerland by my favourite resident Swiss, Zoe.
Technically they are a German Christmas biscuit, but what does time even mean in a pandemic? Anyway, an excellent little cinnamon-y treat, which is perfect with a hot tea; I had it with a vanilla redbush which accompanied it very well, but would work well with anything spiced too.
Jugs (of Pimms)
Of course the one day this week I had planned to drink outside, it was chucking it down. Luckily we had gotten a sheltered table at Kro Bar and to save money we shared a jug of Pimms between us (between three people you can get roughly two drinks out of it per person for £4.65 each). Yes, it is normally a picnic weather drink, but what is more British than refusing to acknowledge that the weather is completely unsuitable for your plans?
Aims:
Peach and Dulce de Leche Cake
I saw this recipe on @bakingandbowls’s Instagram and as a fan of Jack Monroe’s peach and white choc traybake (which has been a staple of mine for a good few years) I am very interested in exploring more peach related traybakes in time for summer.
Actually working on my writing
Just a heads up my newsletters may be less elaborate than usual as I have to work on other things. Equally they may be more elaborate as I ignore my workload due to stress. Only time will tell.
That’s all for this week, but as always do get in touch! Comments warm my heart, so I’d love to hear your recipes, ideas or just a nice meal you had.
If you enjoyed my writing or found it useful, just a reminder that you can donate to my Ko-Fi or Paypal here.