Restaurant Review: Bourgee, Southend-on-Sea

Having played mini golf, eaten ice cream and decorated the bride-to-be with a sash, veil, fairy wand and balloons, the hen night was ready to go out for dinner. The bridesmaids had chosen Bourgee, an upmarket steak and lobster restaurant. I did wonder what they or the other customers would think as we entered with our helium balloons but we were very well behaved and the staff were very pleasant (though I didn’t really notice the reaction of the other guests!).

 

The head chef has worked at a Michelin starred restaurant before and you could tell from the menu – which did make us giggle. Side orders were called “accessories” and an amuse-bouche to be had between courses was called “intercourse”.

 

I was very intrigued by a starter described as “crispy duck, teriyaki toothpaste, pickled turnip, sweet stem ginger” and wondered aloud whether the toothpaste would actually come in a tube; it did indeed! I’m not sure whether this is innovative, pretentious or somewhere in between.

 

I had the baked Cambozola with champagne quenched sultanas and toasted baguette which was delicious – I’ve never had cambozola before but it’s a lot like camembert and the dish was really good. I decided it was pretentious rather than innovative though, at least in terms of the language used – I don’t quite know how sultanas can be quenched as they aren’t thirsty… shouldn’t they be ‘drenched’?

 
 

For my main course I had the lobster, which was prepared so all I had to do was pull out the flesh with a fork. It came with garlic butter and a choice of sides so I had garlic mash which was lovely, though there really wasn’t enough of it. Lobster is one of those things that you should never eat if you are really hungry!

 

 

Everyone else was having dessert so I gave in and did the same, and ordered the mini chocolate doughnuts, which came in a little paper bag with a smear of caramel to dip them in and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. The doughnuts themselves didn’t have a strong chocolate flavour and I think they needed more sauce to dip them in, but other than that they were pretty good.

 

 

The bill came to £60 a head which seemed a lot but for three courses and wine it wasn’t bad. The food was good and the staff very helpful – not as pretentious as the language on the menu! Everyone seemed very happy with their meal in particular the bride to be, which was the most important thing!

 

 

Meal Planning Monday Week 42

The protein shakes seem to be having a good effect until I had two day off last week to make a wedding cake then went to the wedding on Saturday! Still I will get back on it on Monday. I will have to work late one night this week and probably not be home in time for dinner but I don't know which night it will be yet. I'm guessing Monday but could be wrong, which would then throw my meal plan out of whack slightly!

Monday – working late
 

Tues – Old El Paso chicken tacos (on the meal plan from last week but didn't have them)

Weds- stir fry (from freezer bag) for me, sausage and chips for him
 

Thurs – NB out to lunch. Dinner: inviting my future mother in law over. Will cook: baked cod with tomato sauce for us, chicken as the alternative for my other half who doesn't eat fish (my mother in law doesn't eat meat so I was always going to have to cook two different things!).
 

Fri- day off to meet with our wedding venue and suppliers
 

Sat – Lunch: don't know whether we will still be away in Wiltshire seeing suppliers or not as I'm still trying to make arrangments. Either way we should be home in time for dinner
Dinner: Lamb steaks and roast potatoes for me, steak for him
 

Sun- Lunch: bacon sandwich for him, Quorn or Slimming World sausage sandwich for me
Dinner: homemade fish pie for me, chicken pie for him

Russian Honey Cake

I almost didn't make anything for this round of Formula 1 Foods as I have made Russian recipes before partly as I went through a period of really liking Russian dolls. I spent two days this week making a wedding cake and was at the wedding on Saturday and today have been a bit tired (and possibly hung over...) but mid-afternoon decided I couldn't miss my own challenge and that I would make something after all.

I found this recipe for Russian honey cake online. It involves several thin layers of cake, which is made from a dough rather than a traditional cake batter, and layered with icing in between. I didn't have any sour cream so used Greek yogurt that was flavoured with honey so it's a twist on a Russian honey cake rather than the real thing. Also, mine looks a lot less neat than the one in the picture! At least, from the outside -when it's sliced I think it looks quite good.

I followed this recipe on Beets and Bones.com so I won't reproduce it in full here. It tasted more like a dough or even pastry than cake and was slightly chewy but in a good way and the honey flavour definitely comes through.

The ingredients for the honey dough:

Bringing the dough together
 

Baking each piece in a roughly circular shape

Stacking the trimmed layer

With the frosting in between and around the sides, it looks quite messy at this stage!

Sprinkling the crumbs over the top

A layer showing the much neater inside!

I'm sharing this with Formula 1 Foods in honour of today's Grand Prix which took place in Russia. Who actually won? I've been too busy catching up on things I needed to do around the house as I was away last weekend and for half of this weekend so haven't been near a TV!

I'm also sharing this with Love Cake, where the bake must be made in less than an hour. Each layer of this only takes a few minutes in the oven and it's a cinch to decorate.

 

Homemade Wedding: Save the Date Cards

Regular readers of my blog know that I enjoy papercrafts and card making – and that I’m getting married next year.

 

 

 

One well meaning (future) family member took me aside soon after I got engaged and asked whether I was thinking of making all the invitations by hand, and kindly recommended that for my own sanity that I didn’t…. I have a few friends who have done this, and the resulting invitations look beautiful with an extra meaning knowing the effort that was taken in making them. But I’ve also heard stories of sitting up through the night cutting and gluing, and a production line mentality taking over as the wedding date nears…

 

With a full time job, long commute (about an hour and a half each way), blog to write, cat and future husband to take care of, oh and having a social life occasionally, I really didn’t think I would have time to do that. Much as I love the idea of making my own invitations, I think I would make half a dozen, then the novelty would wear off, I would get frustrated at the repetition and start to take less care over each one…. And I didn’t want to risk that.

 

On the other hand, I really did want to make some parts of my wedding myself. I’d love to make my own wedding cake but don’t think it’s a good idea (apparently it’s bad luck too) – there would be so much to do at the last minute, and I expect I will have other things to do the day before my wedding rather than be up to my elbows in icing. Also, as I will plan every inch of the day, it would be nice to have a surprise – where I don’t know exactly what something will look like until I see it. I have decided what I want to do about the cake, but haven’t started putting the wheels in motion yet as there have been more pressing things to do.

 

We decided not to spend money on printing and posting save the date cards –by the time we were ready to do this, we’d told all our family and several of our friends when and where we were getting married, so it seemed like a waste of cash. Instead, we designed a card on the computer which we sent by email as a PDF.

 

I knew I would get at least one raised eyebrow at not doing it ‘properly’  so to circumvent that, and to indulge myself a little bit with doing some crafts, I made a few save the date cards by hand.

 

I’m proud to say that my last name when I’m married will be Cowe – I think with my first name it sounds quite fun. There was never any doubt that we would have a subtle cow theme for the wedding – I did say subtle! – as the day will be mainly outdoors, with a relaxed, almost summer fete vibe. The venue is somewhere that is known for two annual music festivals (though I’ve never been) so we took to calling our wedding “cowefest” and it kind of stuck!

 

 

While I do want proper, more formal invitations printed on thick card, I thought I could have a bit of fun with the save the dates and make them more informal. So I started with a card blank which I cut in half to make a postcard rather than a greetings card you can open, and covered one side with cow print paper – which I’d bought a small pack of a long time ago!

 

I bought a ‘save the date’ stamp on ebay for a few pounds (which I plan to sell again now I’m done with it) and stamped that onto a piece of yellow card. I think pale yellow is about the only colour that really works with cow print!
 

 

I also bought a date stamp that looks like the ones from my school library, but as well as the date it has an option to choose a sentiment from the wheel. There wasn’t a ‘save the date’ so I went with ‘best day ever’, as I hope it will be! I also selected the date we are getting married and stamped that onto another piece of yellow card.

 

The only information we wanted to include at this stage was the date and location of our wedding (as a lot of our friends and my in-laws are based around London, we wanted to give them a heads up that it would be a Wiltshire wedding, and if people wanted to book accommodation this far in advance, they could). I did the wording on the computer and cut out the text to stick on the card along with a section saying ‘invitation to follow’ so people would know this wasn’t the proper invite.

 

Finally I wanted to add something else cow related. I had a bag of little resin cow heads I’d bought on Ebay some time ago; they were designed to be card toppers I guess. I stuck two onto a square of yellow card with a pink satin heart above their heads to represent me and my future husband, the Cowes.

It looks a bit silly and very homemade but that was the idea!
 

 

I'm sharing this with the craft blog challenge hosted by Suzy Bee as here theme is "something beginning with S".

 

 And to the Aloha Challenge and Chocolate Coffee Cards as the theme for both is animals, and in the Marvellous Magnolia Challenge as they want people to "use some black".

Tear and Share Cheesy Bread

It's always nice to have some fresh bread at a barbecue and good to take something homemade. When I was invited to a barbecue at a friend's in August I wanted to take something I'd made (as well as something to throw on the BBQ) and thought she would pretty much have dessert covered, so I would make bread.

I found a recipe on a website called Chef Jae, though it was for cheese and onion bread and my boyfriend doesn't like onion so I decided to leave it out. Tasting the bread at the barbecue I realised it wasn't cheesy enough so instead of putting a lump of cheese in each section I might grate cheese and scatter it throughout - and use a more mature cheese.

I forgot to sprinkle the extra cheese over the top as well which was a shame as that would have increased the cheese factor. The bread was good but next time I would probably try adding some sundried tomato or some rosemary.

 

 

F1 Foods: Japan Roundup and the Next Challenge: Russia

 

 

Once again I didn’t actually watch the Grand Prix as I was away on a friend’s hen night but I’ve said before I’m not the biggest fan: I started this challenge to cook something from each host country as a way to get more involved with my fiance’s hobby! Still when I do get a chance to watch a race I find them pretty absorbing.

 

This time was Japan and I took the opportunity to share a few recipes I’ve made before. If you’ve ever been in a Yo Sushi you might have seen chocolate mochi on the dessert menu; they are balls of rice flour filled with chocolate and taste really good, though the texture took me a bit of getting used to.

  

I also posted this bas-relief design recently, which I produced on a cake decorating evening class a few months ago. We could choose from various designs and I picked Sonic the hedgehog as I liked the way it looked and thought it would be a good challenge. I remember Sonic from computer games of my childhood but didn’t know that Sonic is actually a Japanese character – so that gives me a good excuse to enter it in this blog challenge.

 

  

I did also cook something on the weekend of the Grand Prix – I have the Wagamama cookery book at home but have hardly ever used it. Not every recipe in the book is Japanese but this one seemed to fit the bill, and tasted really good – honey pork ramen.

  

 

Finally Suelle from Mainly Baking sent in this Yuzu and green tea madeira cake where she has brought Japanese flavours to a traditional British bake. She said it has a delicate flavour where the slight bitterness of the tea contrasts with the sweetness of the cake.

 

 

 

And now to announce the next challenge: the next Grand Prix is taking place in Russia on the weekend of October 10/11, i.e. this coming weekend. You have until Weds 14th October to add your link to the linkup below.

 

 

Meal Planning Monday 2015 Week 41

I'm experimenting with something new at lunchtime: protein shakes. I've given up trying to follow Slimming World as I was failing miserably (it just didn't seem to be for me). My personal trainer has always been less than keen on SW and instead thinks I should focus on eating simple food, with lots of protein and little carbs. She recommended some protein powder you mix with milk to make shakes, which you can have as well as or instead of meals. She said it's a lot better for you than SlimFast (which I did years ago and think it helped a bit, though I wasn't actually very overweight at all at the time, despite what my ex led me to believe). So I decided to give it a shot and last Friday had a protein shake as my lunch - it did actually keep me full all afternoon and the chocolate flavour was lovely. Also, I'm so busy at work it was nice and convenient! I will have to see whether that combined with eating right does actually help me lose weight. I will probably continue having the shakes for lunch and maybe breakfast as well for this week.

 

Monday

Thai style sea bass based on this recipe for me; chicken fajitas for him

 

Tuesday

The other piece of fish I had to defrost yesterday as two were stuck together!

 

Wednesday

Probably working late so will grab something when I get home

 

Thursday – day off to start Ros’s wedding cake!

Lunch: will depend where I am as I have an appointment to try on wedding dresses at 11.30

Dinner: slow cooker venison and apple based on this recipe with mashed potato and chicken for him

 

Friday- another day off to do the cake and some of my own wedding planning

Dinner: mini rack of lamb with fig and couscous for me, chicken kiev and chips for him

 

Saturday:

Breakfast: sausage sandwich as I need something filling

Lunch/dinner: At a wedding

 

Sunday:

Breakfast: French toast with maple syrup I brought back from our holiday

Lunch: Possibly the above if we don't get up in time for breakfast, otherwise I will find something else

Dinner: Old El Paso tacos

Restaurant Review: The Mermaid Cafe, Westcliff-on-Sea

Southend-on-Sea - just up the road from Westcliff

Hen nights are a funny thing – you are bringing together several people or groups who don’t know each other, live in different parts of the country, some might have children, or be pregnant, some like to drink and others are teetotal and some are on tighter budgets than others. As a bride-to-be, what on earth are you to do? Outsource the planning to your bridesmaid, that’s what!

  

I don’t think I could relinquish full control and hand over planning of the day/weekend to someone with no idea even of where I was going, but that’s what one friend did recently. She was only told what time she would be picked up, nothing more.

 

We actually went to Southend-on-Sea, somewhere she and a few of her friends used to live, and met at a beach-front café on an unseasonably hot day in late September. We were at the Mermaid Café (which doesn’t have a website) and the waitress was more than happy to rearrange the tables and chairs for our large group and to make room for a baby’s buggy. She was also very patient when we twice said we weren’t ready to order as we were still waiting for more people and overall made us feel really welcome, which isn’t always the case when you are on a hen night!

 

There had been talk of having fish and chips for lunch and the menu had a lot more on it, including some salads, but the idea had been firmly planted in my head so that’s what I wanted. I had a feeling fish and chips might be a pretty large portion though so I had scampi instead; the pieces were much more manageable than the foot or more-long fish in batter than turned up on everyone else’s plates – and that was the medium rather than the large fish!

 

Feeling fit to burst we went off to the pier to play mini golf and enjoy the rest of the afternoon. Southend has a huge amusement park area at the beginning of the pier; it reminded me of Brighton at first but I decided it was much better – even if I didn’t win the mini golf.

The Ultimate Cheese Toastie Wrapped in Bacon

 

 

I saw this on Facebook ages ago and kept wanting to make it so one day decided we would have it for lunch at the weekend. This was before I got engaged and decided I needed to start a pre-wedding diet of course!

 

It’s very easy to make but very effective as my fiancé thought I was making him a bacon sandwich. Slice some cheese very thinly and place between two slices of bread.

 

 

Take some bacon – the streaky kind works best as you get long thin pieces. Wrap these around the sandwich so it is completely encased in bacon.

 

 

 

You don’t need much oil at all in the frying pan as the bacon releases plenty of grease itself but I sprayed the pan with a little Fry Light just to get it started (I definitely wouldn’t add liquid oil!). Heat the pan and place the sandwich in; cook on both sides until the bacon is done.

 

 

When you cut into the sandwich you will see the cheese has melted – it was awesome! I recommend having half a sandwich with some salad….

 

 

Rose Petal Wedding Cake with Sugar Flower and Brush Embroidery

 

 

Finally I can share with you this rose petal wedding cake I made earlier this year on a cake decorating course at South Thames College in Tooting. The cake itself isn’t real – we used polystyrene dummies, so we could practice the decorating. It uses a few different techniques; I’ve already explained how to make the sugar flower that goes on top and how to use an icing bead maker.

 

The base of the cake looks very intricate but it’s a pretty easy technique once you know how. First cover your cake board and the bottom cake.

 

Colour some flower paste in a relatively dark shade – that is, I think pastel colours work best, but as you can see the colour gradually becomes paler higher up the cake, so the lower petals need to be darkest. I can’t remember exactly how much we used and it does depend on the size of your cake so I’d start with about a matchbox sized amount as you will add to it as you go with white flower paste, and you can easily make more if you need to.

 

Use a rose petal cutter to cut out about half a dozen petals at once. Use a balling tool to curl them gently at the bottom. Use edible glue to stick a row of petals around the bottom of the cake, attaching each one by the top of the petal so the lower part of the petal stands out a little from the cake.

 

Add a little white flower paste into your coloured lump and work it in, so the colour becomes a little paler. Repeat with another row of petals. Stick them on so they overlap the joins of the petals in the layer below.

 

Repeat again and again, adding white flower paste each time so the colour becomes paler, until the top layer is almost white with a faint blush of colour. When you get to the top, bend the petals over the top of the cake and stick down – they need to be flat as you will sit your second layer of cake on top.

 

For the second tier, cover your cake or dummy in white fondant. Place on top of the tier that you have finished.

 

This layer is decorated with something called brush embroidery which again is quite easy but looks beautiful.

 

Before the fondant on the cake has set hard, gently press in a patchwork cutter, or any other kind of cutter which makes a pretty pattern, so you have an indent you can emboss.

 

Make up some royal icing according to pack instructions and with a very small piping bag with the end snipped off (so smaller than a plastic or metal nozzle) go over the outlines of your pattern. Leave to dry.

 

Mix 2-3 spoonfuls of royal icing with a quarter to half teaspoon of piping gel (or piping jelly as it is sometimes known – you can buy this in cake decorating shops or on Amazon). Use a brush to apply this to the inside parts of your pattern, starting from the edges and gently brushing in to the middle.

 

I applied little balls of pale green fondant to match the flower petals at a few intervals around this layer.

 

Add the string of beads around the bottom of the top tier. Take the flower you made earlier and push a flower pick into the cake. This is a plastic holder for the flower, as you can’t put the wire directly into the cake if you are eating it (if you are using a polystyrene cake dummy that’s fine). You may need to use a little royal icing inside the flower pick to keep your flower at the angle you want.

 

And that’s all! The techniques are not particularly hard (other than the wired flower, that is) but it does take quite a bit of time – we spend three sessions of my evening class on this cake and that was without baking it!

 I'm sharing this with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker as the letter I have chosen this month is W.

 

Alphabakes Challenge: October 2015

 

 

It's my turn to host Alphabakes again this month as Ros has slightly better things to do like get married.... congratulations Ros! Though my baking experiments have been somewhat curtailed of late as I'm on a pre-wedding diet - not for her big day but for my own, which is next June! Which is a good opportunity for me to remind you all that you don't have to make a cake to enter Alphabakes -the recipe can be sweet or savoury.

 

 

The letter I've chosen this month isn't too difficult I hope.... W is the one this time and as we head into winter there should be plenty of good recipes and ingredients coming to mind.

 

 

Please add your entries to the Linky by the 25^th of the month and if you tweet @Caroline_Makes and @bakingaddict we will retweet all the ones that we see.

Here's a reminder of the rules:
1. Post your recipe on your blog and link it to The More than Occasional Baker and Caroline Makes, stating the relevant month's host. If you do not have a blog, email us a picture and a brief description of your entry which we will  include in the round-up at the end of the month.

2. You can use your own recipe or someone else's recipe. The recipe can be sweet, savoury or a mixture!  Anything goes as long as the random letter is predominantly featured in the recipe as one of the main ingredients or flavours or in the name of the bake itself (i .e . not as a garnish , or using 'flour' for the letter F!)  You can also republish old posts/recipes but you must include the information for this challenge as stated in these rules. 

 

3. Add the logo to your post and add 'alphabakes' as a label to your post. 

 

4. Please add your entries to the linkup on this page. If you want to email your entries please use alphabakes@gmail.com by midnight (GMT) 25th of each month. Please include: 

• Your name (that you want included in the round up or we will use the name of your blog)
• Your blog post URL
• Recipe title
• Photo of recipe (to be included in the round up).

 

5. You can submit as many entries as you like.

 

6.You do not have to participate every month to join in.

 

7. You may submit your entry to other challenges as long as it complies with their rules.

 

8. If you use twitter, please use the tag #alphabakes and mention @bakingaddict and @Caroline_Makes. We will retweet all those that we see.

Yellow Butterfly Birthday Card

Butterflies appear in my card making time and again. I’m not sure why – they are pretty and colourful and seem quite feminine, but younger somehow that flowers. I think a lot of people these days only send floral cards to their grandmothers!

This card was a bit of a cheat as it uses elements from a shop-bought birthday card (one I received)- but I do like to recycle! I used a tall thin card blank and covered it with a pretty yellow paper patterned with little flowers. I cut the butterflies and the flower off the other card – they are made of foam backed onto cardboard so were easy to cut out and look really nice as they are raised off the card. The ‘happy birthday’ banner is also recycled from another card!

I think to papercrafting purists this would be unacceptable but using pieces from shop-bought cards doesn’t mean you haven’t made an effort; the design is still your own idea, you can still be creative and you can still say you spent the time and effort making something yourself.

Restaurant Review: Vittoria on the Bridge, Edinburgh

 

Vittoria on the Bridge is in Edinburgh’s Old Town, on the George IV bridge not far from the university and many of the tourist attractions. I was in Edinburgh on business however, part of the team that was organising a conference. The night before the conference I went out to dinner with the team; it was a cold and rainy evening and we hopped straight out of a taxi into the restaurant, which had been booked by someone who had been there before.

 

The restaurant has an extensive menu of Italian dishes with a huge number of starters, various cuts of steak, some not particularly Italian main courses like liver and bacon and brie wellington but plenty of Italian specialities like vitello alla parmigiana and vitello alla Milanese (veral medallions in a parmesan sauce, or with spaghetti). There are separate sections for pasta, risotto and pizza – the pizza section is helpfully divided into meat, seafood, vegetarian, deluxe and calzone. There are 22 pizzas on the menu which is probably enough to rival the likes of Pizza Express – but so many other dishes besides.

 

I found it hard to choose so decided to try the lasagne; it’s such a traditional dish that I think you can almost judge the quality of an Italian restaurant by their lasagne. And it was delicious! Packed full of meat with the right amount of sauce (I hate lasagnes that are too dry) and really tasty.

 

We only had one course so weren’t in the restaurant long, but service was friendly and relatively fast given we were a large group; if you’re sightseeing in Edinburgh or indeed on business there, this would be a great place to stop and eat.