The Tricks Of The Restaurant Trade.

               Enjoying a glass of pre dinner wine in Nautilus restaurant, La Zenia Spain.

As a restaurant reviewer, I try to look for the good, rather than actively seek out the bad, but I have to tell you that the saying: 'The British know the cost of everything and the value of nothing' is rather pertinent regarding the majority of our eating establishments.

In the press this week, much has been made of the fact that high street restaurant chains are serving up ready meals. Many restaurants buy in from catering companies where the dishes are mass produced in Central kitchens, be it ready made omelettes, pies, curries, lasagne and desserts, these are then shipped out to a range of restaurants who appear to be 'cooking' the food on the premises, whilst in fact, much of it is simply microwaved. Even Gordon Ramsay was purported to be serving precooked, prepacked lamb shanks in mint gravy in one of his top restaurants.

Last weekend, we went to our local Beefeater pub/restaurant for a meal simply because we had accrued lots of points on our reward card and they were offering a main meal free for every main meal purchased. Things got off to a bad start when Glenn's pulled beef with Yorkshire pudding starter (clearly the beef was of the processed variety) came out stone cold, apparently the 'chef' had forgotten to microwave it. My prawn cocktail came without lemon, the devil is in the detail! And the flaccid slice of bread was obviously frozen and pre sliced (whatever happened to the baskets of warm bread rolls we used to be offered in restaurants?)

My sirloin was fatty, the chips were frozen oven chips, (which I don't even eat at home unless I'm really pushed,) and the salad was bagged. The meal for two of us with wine cost eighty pounds........EIGHTY POUNDS! (Fortunately we had our reward coupons and only had to pay twenty pounds, which I still begruged.)

But hey, the restaurant was jam-packed with happy punters having a gay old time, plates were cleared with gusto and lips smacked in well fed delight! I guess this is indicative of how we're eating in our own homes, if we are prepared to pay through the nose for shoddy ingredients when eating out, what are we cooking in our own kitchens?

No one likes eating out more than myself, I love the whole ritual, however, I want the food I'm paying for to at least be up to my own cooking standards, I want real ingredients, prepared and cooked by a chef on the premises. I don't want food that was made in a factory and has been reheated in a microwave.

Therefore, this weekend, much as I would love to sit in a restaurant and be waited on, I'm buying some delicious ingredients, battening down the hatches, lighting my Jo Malone pomegranate candles and leisurely preparing a lovely dinner to the strains of George Michael's symphonica album. I shall uncork a nice bottle of châteauneuf-du-pape, which I shall sip as I'm preparing my meal, and relish in the fact that I shan't be paying eighty quid for factory food.

Given that one of the things I abhor most in restaurants is oven chips, I do make the effort at home to cook 'proper' chips, however, it is a time consuming process. Quite often I make much simpler sweet potato chips.

Sweet potato chips

Recipe
2 large sweet potatoes, washed and peeled
1/4 cup of olive oil or melted coconut oil
A sprinkling of sea salt
1-2 teaspoons of sugar, this helps them to caramelise but is entirely optional
1-2 teaspoons of spice ie smoked paprika or cayenne pepper, again, entirely optional

Preheat oven 200c/gas 6
Cut potatoes into wedges or thin chips
Place in a large bowl and add oil
Mix the potatoes with your hands to ensure they are evenly coated
Sprinkle with salt (and sugar and spice if using)
Place chips on a preheated non stick baking sheet in a single layer
Bake for 25 minutes, turning after 15 minutes
Once browned serve immediately

'I had a missed call. It's probably the all-you-can-eat buffet calling to say, 'come back! We know you can eat just a little bit more!'
- Jarod Kintz.

Love Donna xxxxxxx

Give Us This Our Daily Bread.

                                  A proper loaf of homemade bread made by my friend Jane.

When I was a little girl my mother made daily trips to our bakers for our daily loaf. Before high volume bread production, bread meant something that took time to make, it was a slow, crusty fermented product, extremely delicious and fresh, however, it would always be rock hard by the following day. Commercially made bread can stay 'fresh' for anything up to a couple of weeks, I know this because I have previously left a loaf in my cupboard, gone to Spain for a fortnight and come home to find the loaf unnaturally still springy.

For thousands of years, bread was made in the same way. Flour, water and salt combined with yeast as a raising agent. In 1961 a new method was developed, known as the Chorleywood process which reduced the time to make bread and the labour input.

This industrialised system meant bread could be mass produced from flour - to a sliced and packaged loaf in around 3 1/2 hours. Ingredients such as ascorbic acid, fat, emulsifiers, anti-fungal compound and 2-3 times the usual amount of yeast (compared to traditionally made bread) were added.

The extra yeast creates a large volume of gas and the process of mechanically mixing the ingredients has such a violent input of energy (thus releasing the gluten in the wheat very quickly) that the finished product is a spongy loaf. The true test is, if you push your fingers into the bread and it doesn't bounce back, you can be sure it's not traditionally made bread and is full of unnatural ingredients.

                Soft, springy, mass produced bread which leaves indentations when pressed

              And don't be fooled by the variations of wholemeal, granary, seeded etc

The Chorleywood process is now used to make 80% of the UK's bread and is a culinary and digestive disaster. We're abandoning bread due to it's cause of bloating and irritable bowel syndrome, not to mention many of us now deem we're gluten intolerant (although very few people have actually been diagnosed with coeliac disease.) Basically, industrial bakers and millers - who foisted the health related problems with bread on us - are using it to make money in a different sphere. The gluten free industry is worth £238 million in Britain, yet, real bread, made using the traditional proving method (which can take hours - or often overnight) is still far better for us than highly processed 'gluten free' bread.

Back in biblical times there was a saying: 'bread is life', and certainly when I was a child it was a staple and a good source of nutrition. Baking your own bread is really the best way to ensure you are eating the real thing, failing that it is worth trying to source a local artisan baker or visit a country market.

Homemade bread

Recipe

1 1/2kg wholemeal flour

Handful of self raising flour

Dessert spoon of salt

Dessert spoon of sugar

5 dessert spoons of vegetable oil

4 teaspoons easy blend yeast

Mix all dry ingredients, add 2 pints of tepid water

Work together until you have a dough mixture

On a floured surface, knead dough for 15 minutes

Split dough into 3 portions and place in greased loaf tins

Leave in a warm place to prove for at least 2 hours

Preheat oven 170c/gas mark 3

Place tins in oven and cook for 45 minutes -1 hour

Leave to cool before removing from tins

'How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex.'

- Julia Child

Love Donna xxxxxx

Let Food Be Thy Medicine

Although Hippocrates, the father of modern day medicine famously stated: 'Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food' many of us eat unhealthily. Our modern Western diet consists of many sugar, salt and preservative laden ingredients and quite often we rely on pharmaceutical drugs to undo the damage. Progressive doctors, such as my own, are now increasingly prescribing a healthy diet and lifestyle rather than medication as long term tools for helping patients become vibrantly well.

Many years ago when my father was prescribed a particular medication, I remember his surgeon saying, whilst it would help his immediate condition there would probably be side effects, he then went on to say (and it chilled me to the bone) 'Nothing in medicine comes free!' Many pharmaceutical drugs are counterproductive, treating one ailment whilst incurring another, and most of us are aware that we are now facing the significant threat of antibiotic resistance.

Of all the foods mother nature provides, garlic has been scientifically proven to be a natural antibiotic, used for its health potential for anything from clogged arteries to ear infections - it cleanses the body of heavy metals and has been used effectively in fighting more than 150 diseases.

I was recently introduced to black garlic which has been proven to be more effective than fresh white garlic. Studies have shown that black garlic can reduce the size of tumours and has twice the antioxidant levels. Mandarin oil painter Choo Keng Kwang experienced a complete reversal of his debilitating psoriasis after just 4 days of eating half a bulb of black garlic a day, this, after trying countless prescribed alternatives that were all complete failures.

Black garlic is fermented in humidity controlled environments, there are no additives, no preservatives.....just pure garlic. Unlike the pungency of fresh garlic, black garlic (which is best eaten raw) is soft and chewy in texture, with flavours reminiscent of soy sauce and sweet prune. It has grown in popularity amongst even the most avid garlic-haters who are amazed by both its taste and health potential.

When I recently returned from Spain, I immediately started to feel run down and felt the onset of a cold. I went and bought several bulbs of black garlic and have been eating a few cloves each day, thus far I seem to have staved off my cold, added to which, the few nasty insect bites I sustained whilst in Spain (which normally take a couple of weeks to heal) have vanished, leaving no scarring.

Like many people, I don't live on a diet of health foods per se, I try to avoid processed food but it's all around us, every dollop of mayonnaise, every slice of shop bought bread, every oven chip or bagged salad contains sugar, salt and chemicals. If a few cloves of garlic can counteract some of the nastiness of our everyday foods, it's surely worth it!

'You think I can't get it up anymore, maybe? Let me tell you, you eat enough garlic and it stands up every time!'
- Alberto Vitale

Love Donna xxxxx

Sore Loser Come Dine With Me.

       Interviewing renowned chef James Durrant at his restaurant The Plough Inn

Naturally, as a food blogger and restaurant reviewer, I take the subject of food quite seriously. Food means different things to different people, for some it's just fuel, for others a passion and for many it's a source of entertainment, (as a nation we now watch an estimated 18 days' worth of TV cookery programmes per week.)

One such programme is Come Dine With Me, a TV show in which strangers take turns to throw dinner parties for each other, rating the hosts out of ten. When this programme first aired, participants were mostly food oriented and quite competitive, however, the long running show has started to run out of steam and is now mostly made up of people who just want their five minutes of fame.

A recent episode of Come Dine With Me has caused a bit of an online furore, four contestants, Charlotte, a twenty something, slightly dippy girl who served pork skewers (the kind of food you might have for tea on a Wednesday night.) Jane, a female detective who was quick to tell us she was very confident but not arrogant, umm. Adam, a geeky 24 year old American chappie and lastly Peter, a portly middle aged bloke who immediately came across as pompous, although obviously the only contestant with any real culinary nous. 

Having had three mediocre meals, Peter was confident that his was the winning meal. He took great pains to prepare a pecorino salad, about which Charlotte said she only liked cheese triangles or dairylea dunkers, not grown up cheese. Next was an expensive slow-roasted rib of beef, followed by a beautifully presented trio of desserts, Pete was visibly chuffed with himself. Unfortunately he'd overestimated his fellow contestants appreciation of fine dining, totally aghast, he read out the results only to find he had received the fewest points. 

What happened next has, I suspect, become Come Dine With Me gold. He flew into a rage saying he'd served the best food with the best presentation and best dressed table and how dare he be graded under Adam, who produced a plate of vomit (a breakfast burrito) or Charlotte, who served up chewy rancid pork and an under-cooked brownie!

The winner, Jane, felt the full force of Peter's wrath, he told her: 'I hope Jane that you spend your winnings on some lessons in grace and decorum because you have all the grace of a reversing dump truck without any tyres on!' Charlotte cheese triangles timidly muttered: 'I don't get it' to which Peter responded: 'Well, you wouldn't would you? Let's be honest, there's nobody in there love.'

As Jane took her thousand pound winnings, Peter told her to take her money and 'Get off my property' thus she and the other contestants were unceremoniously shoved into the street to drink their celebratory champagne. 

Needless to say, people were horrified by Peter's reaction (although many, like myself, found it hilarious and somewhat justified.) Fortunately I have reviewed many excellent eateries, however, I've had my fair share of mass produced ballast masquerading as decent food with a hefty bill to boot and it offends me.

We've sort of subscribed to inferior food here in the UK and we pay through the nose for it.

Prime example, we had these two pre-packed sandwiches and two lukewarm coffees for best part of £12!

I hate to wax lyrical about Spain, but I have to tell you that for the past fortnight I've eaten home cooked meals, always served with a decent bottle of wine per couple, ranging from a basic meal of 6€ to a la carte for around 20€. 

One of my favourite starters (after a large fresh salad) is sautéed mushrooms in garlic

                                            Alternatively I love a fresh prawn cocktail

                               Freshly cooked paella is one of my favourite main courses

 Postres of Spain are quite different to our desserts, invariably homemade they aren't the extravagant desserts we are used to but delicious nonetheless

And what can I say about coffee? They're strong, aromatic and always have a dash of alcohol, the perfect end to a meal, and all this for around £10!

So, I kind of sympathise with Peter, if you're taking part in a cookery programme, the least you would expect is people to aspire beyond cheese triangles. Likewise, eating out should be a treat, restaurants should be serving decent, honest food, not frozen/microwaved fodder.

Lamb chops are very popular in Spain and you usually get a rather large plateful. Lamb has never been my favourite meat as it tends to be fatty, I decided to try drizzling some chops with some fruity balsamic vinegar, the sharp contrast was delicious. 

Drizzle chops with balsamic vinegar, place in a roasting tray lined with greaseproof paper, add a whole bulb of garlic and some par boiled potatoes and parsnips

Remove the chops after 20 minutes and cover with foil continue cooking vegetables, basting them in all the lovely juices

Remove vegetables and squeeze garlic into the juices in the pan, add some stock or red wine and heat over a hob, thicken with cornflour if necessary

                             Season to taste, I like to sprinkle some chilli flakes on top

'We all eat, and it would be a sad waste of opportunity to eat badly.'

- Anna Thomas

Love Donna xxxxxxxx

The Barrenness Of Busy Life.

Well, the new year has certainly not brought about any changes in my silly behaviour, start as you mean to go on I say!

Belated happy new year to all my readers, I hope this finds you well. As you know, I have spent the past couple of weeks at my home in Spain where I enjoyed glorious weather and complete relaxation. As I've written so many times before, life in rural Spain is so different to that of suburban England. Customs and traditions which have been practiced in Spain for hundreds of years still prevail and whilst I'm there, I immerse myself in this very different environment and embrace the culture.

In England the suburbs and the relationships that sustained them have been subject to tremendous changes in the last fifty years, whilst villages such as Jacarilla have remained much the same. We have seen a massive shift in the structural relationships between our inner cities and their surrounding urban environment, DIY superstores and service stations blot our landscape, where once every neighbourhood had its local shops we now have shopping precincts. Greenbelt land has been swallowed up with housing and our changing work patterns and fragmented family lives have all contributed to change the face of suburban living.

Here in Britain we have become a diverse population, of course no one expects the suburbs to be the preserve of maiden aunts carrying wicker baskets. We have all come to rely on our eclectic mix of shops and restaurants, which are noticeably absent in Spanish villages, if you want Indian food you have to travel to (ironically) a British urbanisation.

Funnily enough, I find it harder to adjust when I return to England than I do when I first arrive in Spain. We arrived in Jacarilla on the 27th of December and being a Sunday it was literally like a ghost town, even our local bar was closed (Spanairds tend to open and close their cafés and bars at random.) Monday was much the same, the village comprises of only a few tiny shops which, without knowing where they are, could be mistaken for someones home. There are no superstores, no McDonald's, no Chinese deliveries at the end of the phone. Suddenly your lifestyle is parred back, made simpler. Far from rushing around, I find myself strolling to the village to buy basic ingredients from the shops or market, I sit in a cafe where I will always meet a neighbour, or take a walk through the stunning countryside to the next village.

                                  Taking a stroll through countryside from one village to another.

             

Oddly, when I return to England I find I don't know what to do with myself. If I go for a walk I won't bump into anyone I know so it'll be a solitary experience. There are no local cafés where I might meet a neighbour, and sitting in a chain coffee shop has no appeal for me. I could trawl around my local shopping centre, buying things I don't need, or meet a friend for lunch which will be mediocre unless I'm prepared to spend more than twenty quid. It's ironic that here I have so much choice, there are so many people, yet, I've never felt more alone. It's true to say that once a culture becomes entirely consumer friendly, it seizes to be a culture at all.


During this last trip to Spain, as always, we tried out a couple of different restaurants, in one particular restaurant I ordered the seafood ravioli, I was quite surprised when it arrived as it was zucchini ravioli, which turned out to be rather fortunate as it was a huge portion and my main meal was big enough to feed an army! The genius of zucchini ravioli is that it's comfort food without the carbs, as with any ravioli, you can choose a variation of fillings, mine was filled with prawns and scallops in a creamy sauce which was absolutely delicious.

Zucchini ravioli

Cut zucchini length wise
Lie 2 strips vertically and the other 2 horizontally, basket weave with 1 strip over, 1 strip under

Take a 1/4 of a cup of filling ie cooked crabmeat, prawns and white fish which has been pulsed, place in the middle, bring the ends of the zucchini up to cover the filling and hold together with a toothpick

Place ravioli in a dish, drizzle with olive oil and place in oven 180c/gas 4
Cook for 20 minutes or until zucchini is tender

                             My ravioli was covered in melted cheese and cayenne pepper

                                                            And for the main course.........

'It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead I feel painfully visible and entirely ignored.'
- David Levithan

Love Donna xxxxxxxxxx

Seasons Greetings From Donna's Pink Kitchen.

                                   

Christmas is upon us once again and although it's pretty much universal it will mean different things to each of us. How should Christmas be celebrated? As a religious festival, a commercial opportunity or a time for social gatherings and a bit of Christmas excess.....?

In recent years here in the UK there has been a conscious attempt to get the Christianity out of Christmas, even the expression 'Merry Christmas' has been replaced with 'Happy Holidays.' But for many, the Christian connotations give hope to the thought that humankind has a better destiny than being an accident in an accidental universe that has no purpose or meaning.

A senior spokesperson from John Lewis has said Christmas has become savagery, well he should know, many large corporations start their Christmas campaigns in September, and by Black Friday, Christmas has become 'so last week.'

For many people Christmas has become about balancing the demands of working, socialising, shopping, expenditure and family obligations, whilst at the other end of the scale, for 800,000 people in England it is a time of chronic loneliness.

During the festive period we are bombarded with adverts tempting us to buy more than our bodyweight in food, Interspersed with these adverts are the crys for help from various worldwide charities, in the space of 2 minutes we see an advert for a five bird roast that weighs more than a starving child, yet, whilst this might momentarily prick our conscious, we'll still bin edible food come Boxing day.

Christmas is extremely emotive, and mine will certainly be different this year with Bert spending his first ever Christmas away from home. I've made very little in the way of 'picky bits' which we normally eat on Christmas eve and Boxing day, however, I had an ingenious idea about chilli jam (goes well with cheese, sausage rolls and other picky bits.) I also made some simpler than simple delicious chickens puffs (for want of a better description) I literally made these with ready made pastry and some leftover chicken curry, if you have any leftover turkey you could chop it up, add a splodge your favourite sauce, some peas, spices and seasonings and hey presto a tasty snack!

Well readers, I'd like to wish you all a MERRY CHRISTMAS and thank you all for sticking with Donna's Pink Kitchen. I'd particularly like to thank those of you who contribute by way of recipes, photos, links to information and lovely feedback and comments, I can't tell you how appreciative I am. I'm off to Spain so shall be taking a short break but I'll see you all on the other side.

I had to post this photo, my lovely friend Susan made this cake which looks beautiful!

 Cut pastry into strips, place chicken at one end and fold over Into triangular shapes

                    Brush with egg wash and bake in the oven until golden and puffy

I made this off the top of my head because (never one to waste anything!) I had a few near empty jars of jam and cranberry sauce, and even a tiny bit of fig chutney, languishing in my fridge which wouldn't keep whilst I'm away. So, I scraped them all into a small pan and added dried chillies, I gently heated the jams then poured it into my nutri bullet and blitzed (to blend the chilli flakes) bloomin marvellous idea, if I do say so myself!

'Christmas is not a time or season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill and to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.'
- Calvin Coolidge.

Love Donna xxxxx

My Family Kitchen By Sophie Thompson, Best Recipe Book Of The Year!

                                                 My much awaited book has arrived

Yesterday a rather large parcel arrived for me from my dear friend Carron which contained all sorts of lovely pressies, one of them being the long awaited cookbook by Sophie Thompson: My Family Cookbook (Carron bought this after attending an evening with Sophie at The Sussex Produce Company, an event I regrettably missed and due to a couple of cancelled get-togethers, I hadn't been able to lay my hands on this book, until now.)

I've written previously about Sophie, an acclaimed actress who stole my heart when she took part in Celebrity MasterChef and went on to deservedly win it, needless to say, when I heard she had written a recipe book, I was beside myself with excitement.

I've chuntered on in the past about 'celebrity chefs' and their ostensibly foolproof cookbooks, which we're all drawn to having seen their latest series, only to find we can't quite as effortlessly produce stuffed sea bream or soufflés in our own kitchens and amidst the aftermath of dirty pots, burnt pans and chaos we find ourselves wondering where we went wrong?

Last night I hurried up to bed with My Family Kitchen and read it cover to cover.....I loved it! What comes across first and foremost is that Sophie is an everyday cook, her meals aren't the design of a specialist team, they weren't made in a gleaming studio but in real kitchens. Recipes that have (as the title suggests) been passed down (often on scraps of paper) by family and friends are recognisable and achievable, this is proper grub, the stuff we all eat but have probably forgotten how to cook (or sadly, succumbed to the processed ready-made versions.) Spare ribs, meatballs, stuffed mushrooms, lasagne, chocolate pots, flapjacks, cinnamon toast......What's not to like?

I still own my mother's one and only cookbook: The Good Housekeeping Cookery Compendium along with scraps of paper where she jotted down recipes. But it seems this passing down from mother to daughter (or son) has virtually disappeared, instead we now own lots of glossy cookbooks, containing recipes we're never going to cook.

It was due to the fact that whilst working in education, where many of my colleagues couldn't (or simply didn't want to) cook, that I started this blog, I thought I could share a few simple recipes for novice cooks to follow. Funnily enough Sophie heads one of her recipes with this: 'I think in a recipe book it's probably wise to avoid talking about religion, politics and education' (obviously said in a humorous way.) Of course my readers will know that what started out as a recipe blog has become more of an online diary where everything from religion, politics and education to the banalities of my daily life get thrown in.

Anyway, Sophie's book is the one cookbook you need to own (it'll get you off the hook from reading all my nonsense when all you really want to know is how to make an omelette!) Endearingly, Sophie introduces herself as: 'I'm just a turn who's been on a cookery show, so the idea of me piping up about food, let alone writing a cookbook, seems faintly absurd. That said, I'm chuffed as an extremely chuffed thing to have got this opportunity to share this bundle of some of my favourite recipes with you.'

That alone will give you a sense of Sophie's personality, her cookbook is fun and inspiring, it's not a book you get fed up with midway through because you can't identify with the recipes or lists of unrecognisable ingredients. What I love most are the inventive tips such as swilling out empty jars of jam into gravy (I do that Soph!) Or cheese on toast with marmalade over the top (I did a post on a childhood favourite of mine, cheese and jam on toast) and her 'Ma's devilled cheese' which uses up the 'curious' ends of cheese languishing in your fridge.

This book was written not by a 'celebrity' but by a wife and mother, an entertainer of family and friends and as Sophie says: 'Cooking has always been about sharing and spending time with pals and family, luring them in with tasty morsels so they'd want to stay all day.'

If you haven't yet chosen your Christmas presents (unlikely) I'd definitely recommend you put this top of your list, and maybe in years to come you'll pass it on to your son or daughter.

                                                                  Thank you Sophie xx

'Any food I can eat with my hands gets the thumbs up as far as I'm concerned. The chop is a classic. You simply HAVE to pick them up and have a good old gnaw. Not necessarily a first date choice, but definitely a third date.'
- Sophie Thompson.

Love Donna xxxxxxxx