Category: Cuisine

Suckling Lamb at La Choza, Spain

The Spanish municipality of Manilva is renowned locally for its eateries and Venta La Choza just off the main road didn’t disappoint. Its a traditional restaurant that’s been under the same ownership for over 25 years and you can feel that when you arrive. We had the Suckling Lamb...

Christmas Dinner at the Bua Garden, Spain

In the small municipality of Casares the Bus Garden restaurant overlooks a short 9 hole golf course with views down over the ocean. Ordering a turkey roast dinner in Spain is a bit risky but the Bua Garden made a great job with a 5 course menu to accompany...

Fabulous French Cuisine, Casse Croute

Casse Croute on Bermondsey Street is a small French eatery, it can seat just 30 people and as such has a perfect cozy ambience. The L’escargots were cooked in a pastry and served with a creamy sauce – delicious but not identifiable as snails at first! The main course...

Sunday Roast at The Mitre, Holland Park

The Mitre is a Greene King restaurant but under its Metropolitan pub company and so is unidentifiable as a GK venue when you first arrive. It had favourable ratings for its roast dinners online so amongst my table we tried the Pork, Chicken & Beef roasts. They all came...

Pie at the Sanctuary pub

The Sanctuary pub in Tothill Street, Westminster, together with its adjacent hotel, is owned by Fuller’s. That means it specializes in pies. It does a bar special of 3 pies each accompanied by a recommended ale. This time, however, the choice was for a five-spice duck pie, which came...

Apple and cherry compote

It is a simple, but a very good dessert. Peeled and chopped apples simmered with stoned cherries in a mix of creme de cassis, lemon juice and orange squash (no sugar added). Cooked until the apples are soft, then cooled and chilled. Brilliant with cream. It does help to...

Caramel and sea-salt biscuits from Harrod’s

Christmas is a time when you indulge in nice stuff you might go easy on at other times. Among my best this year I was given a box of “all butter, caramel & sea-salt biscuits” (aka cookies) from Harrod’s. They were crumbly, sweet and firm without being too hard....

Conch fritters in the Keys

The conch is a large edible sea snail noted for its colourful shell, and the queen conch shell is a symbol of the Florida Keys, sometimes jocularly known as “the Conch Republic.”  Three ubiquitous dishes are taken as representative of Keys cuisine. One is Key Lime Pie, a dessert...

Uses for goose fat

The great thing about having goose for Christmas is that it tastes brilliant. Turkey can be bland and dry, but not goose. The second thing is that you get jars of lovely goose-fat. This year I had five. I use it throughout the year for roasting potatoes and sweet...

The Salt Pig – Cambridge

Madsen and I recently dined twice at The Salt Pig in Cambridge’s Green Street. Before our first visit i was extremely excited as there had been some hype about this restaurant opening. We arrived and were given a table in the window. We started off with a bottle of...