Tart with two goat’s cheeses

I decided to reverse engineer one of those succulent goat’s cheese tarts which I sometimes choose at restaurants. The base was puff pastry rolled very thin into a circle. Leaving about half an inch at the edges, I lined the rest with thin strips of a hard goat’s cheese....

O felix culpa!

Religion aside…  Having done nothing all day except watch TV, feel unemployed and check my Internet I went to the pub.      The Idea was just to have one or two but fate was against us and we won £20, YES £20, on the Quiz machine so we stayed for...

English champagne? Surely not, what what?

Last evening, I tried a very interesting new champagne from England (believe it or not). Called Nyetimber and from 1998, it recently won the prize of the best champagne in the entire world produced outside the Champagne region of France. It’s described as Classic Cuvee, is 12% (about normal)...

Fruit trees

Ripening plums Originally uploaded by dynamist. These ripening plums belong to a tree in Hampshire, just inside the drive of some friends of mine. I think of plums as rather ho-hum fruit, but I still like the idea of having a plum tree in front of the house. In...

Smollensky’s Metro, Hammersmith

Filthy mustard cap at Smollensky’s Originally uploaded by dynamist. It is a testament to the quality of the hamburgers at Smollensky’s that I managed to choke mine down after the sight of this disgusting mustard cap had entered my vision. Urgh. I was travelling back from a couple of...

Cheshire Cheese

Not actually cheese but the name of a pub just round the corner from Tower Hill. Went there yesterday, and I think it’s great. Pool tables upstairs, a variety of food and exceedingly reasonable prices. we had a few pints and then a few bottles of wine at £6...

Sushi at Teri-aki

Not very hungry, so opted for the shared sushi mori awase (15 piece combo) at the Teri—aki in the Quayside plaza off Bridge Street in Cambridge. The sushi itself featured prawn, salmon, tuna, squid and red snapper. There were 6 sashimi (vegetable in rice, rolled in seaweed and cut...

Not Champagne, but really tasty

A wine you can pick up in most superstores in France (such as Hyper-U) is Cremant de Loire. It’s dry (brut) and 12 percent, like most champagnes. It has a light and amazingly fizzy texture due to its traditional method (look for “methode traditionelle” on the bottles) and made...

White Zinfandel?! But there’s a difference…

Whilst with a few friends the other night, we found to our horror that the pub was going to close before we wanted to stop drinking. Two hastily bought bottles later (over the pub’s bar, amazingly), and a brief stagger in the direction of home, I was beginning to...

Red beans, rice, and salsa

Red beans, rice, and salsa Originally uploaded by dynamist. I think there is much to be said for keeping a bowl of homemade salsa in the fridge at all times. It goes well with so many things – rice, scrambled eggs, jacket potatoes, chicken, fish…And it’s very cheering to...