Stellar Tate - A new concept in draining your food

We all love to get new things for the kitchen, I know I sure do. Do I need another cooking pan? Of course when it has a unique feature or two!

Stellar, known for their impressive range of cookware have brought out a high performance range of cooking pans and casseroles.

For starters the glass lid is flat! This makes it really easy to stack in the pan cup board.

Secondly the flat lid is useful for straining straight from the pot enabling you to get every last drop of water out without dumping half the potatoes or pasta down the drain!

The lid has a handy lock-on system on the handles which enables you to hold it securely, without transferring the heat to your hands and drain your food effectively.

The range comes in 3 sizes of Draining Saucepan; 1.2L, 1.7L and 2.5L as well as three Draining Casseroles; 2.5L, 3.5L and 4.5L, the full range offering you a range of draining cookware for everything from frozen peas to family pasta meals!

Click here to see where you can currently get hold of some of these super saucepans and casseroles.

I was sent a Stellar Tate Draining Casserole to try. All opinions and photos are my own.

Gilgamesh Launch New Champagne Bar

Gilgamesh, the well known pan-Asian restaurant in Stables Market, Camden has recently launched its new Perrier Jouet Belle Epoque Champagne Bar.  I was invited to the launch evening and really can’t stress enough how lovely it is.

The setting looks out over Stables Market and as the evening darkened the lights began to twinkle outside offering a very different perspective from the busy and bustling market during the day.

The Belle Epoque Champagne Bar is designed to give an allure of Paris with a most impressive champagne list, bottle of Perrier Jouet ranging from £65 to very rare £850 per bottle!  The bar is just inside Gilgamesh with its impressive menu and stunning wooden panel carvings.

You can pop into the Bell Epoque Champagne Bar to relax and catch up on emails, have a glass of champagne or a cocktail,

meet with a colleague, relax after shopping or have a celebration – any excuse to sip champagne in such a lovely surrounding is a good reason for me!

Rhubarb, ginger and lemongrass cake

I have a gorgeous rhubarb cluster growing at the allotment. This is now the very start of the short but fantastic English rhubarb season and anxious to sample I picked my first load last weekend.

I have made a cake on this blog before called 'American 1-2-3-4 Cake' which I made with apple puree. For this cake I wanted to use my rhubarb however decided to leave the pieces a bit chunky instead of a puree.

Also wanting to add a bit of extra flavour I added 1 tablespoon of ginger and lemongrass cordial to both the cake mix and the drizzle.

I like to get all my ingredients weighed out and dry ingredients mixed and ready to go.

Ingredients:

Cake:
1 cup softened butter
2 cups caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste (the original recipe used vanilla extract but I like the little flecks from the vanilla bean paste)
1 teaspoon ginger & lemongrass cordial

4 large eggs
3 cups Self Raising Flour
1 tsp salt
2-3 cups cooked rhubarb

Glaze:
1 cup icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste
1 tsp ginger & lemongrass cordial
2 Tbsp milk

Preheat oven to 180oC/350oC. Grease a 9" x 13" pan

Method:
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (the more you cream the lighter and more voluminous your cake will be).

Add the eggs one at a time and beating each one really well. If you want you can add 1 Tbsp of the flour after each one to stop them splitting. Then add the vanilla bean paste and ginger & lemongrass cordial.

Gradually add the flour and salt and beat until really well combined. If you want you can add a tablespoon of milk at this point.

Put about half of the cake mixture into the prepared pan. Spread the fruit mixture over the top and then dollop the rest of the cake mixture onto the fruit.

You don't need to spread this top.

Bake for approximately 35 minutes although mine took another 10 minutes (ovens do vary).

Allow the cake to cool to just warm and then make the glaze by mixing the four ingredients together

and drizzling over the top.

Then all that is left to do is ...... ENJOY!

I shall be linking this post to The Great British Rhubarb Recipe Round-Up.

An InLinkz Link-up

Giveaway - Kids Cook French - cookbook

Kids Cook French (Les Enfants Cuisinent A La Francaise) by Claudine Pepin with illustrations by Jacques Pepin.

My granddaughter is learning some basic French at school. She really enjoyed looking through this book.

This is an interactive book which teaches children to cook in a fun and unusual way and at the same time introduces them to another culture in language and cuisine.

There are recipes for French classics such as Croque Monsieur, Boeuf Bourguignon and Crepes both in English and in French.

Kids Cook French is published by Quarry Books (part of the Quarto Publishing Group UK)

If you would like to win a copy of this book for your budding chef just follow the instructions below. A winner will be chosen at random and the prize will be sent by the publishers directly to the winner. This giveaway is open to UK residents only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I was sent a copy of this book but was not paid to write a positive review. As usual all opinions and photos are my own.

What a Corker - Natural British Crisps

I have been sent a box of assorted packets of crisps from Corkers. Natural British Crunch.

Their flavours are made without artificial or MSG products and they know the origin of the potatoes because they grow them themselves.  The potatoes are grown in East Anglia and hand cooked to perfection.

Some of the flavours you can expect are Pork Sausage and English Mustard, Red Leicester and Caramelised Onion, Sea Salt, Sea Salt and Cider Vinegar as well as Sweet Thai Chilli and a flavour I am really keen on trying - Gressingham Duck & Hoisin Sauce.

The family have been growing potatoes (Naturalo potatoes) on the fens of Cambridgeshire since the 1800s so are pretty good at it!  The crisps are all hand cooked in sunflower oil to minimize the grease and keep the crunch.

Mr R loves crunchy crisps - I am sure these will be a great hit in his lunchbox this week.

Thanks to Corkers Crisps for my box of crisps. I was not paid to try these and as usual all opinions and photos are my own.

Can't Cook, Won't Cook or Just Don't have Time!! Midweek Meals with Food at 52 Can Help

I have attended a few courses at Food at 52, a central London cookery school and always come away with fresh new ideas.

Food at 52 have a new seasonal course - Midweek Meals - which I was invited to be one of the first to experience their new repertoire.  In Midweek Meals you spend most of a Sunday at the cookery school and learn to make five simple and seasonal recipes that are perfect for making after work on busy weekday evenings.  You eat two of the dishes that you make and take home the other three so lunch for the next couple of days at work is taken care of!

The recipes are straight forward and in most cases you will have the majority of ingredients in your store cupboard.

We worked in small groups each group making what they would be eating or taking home.

The perfect start to any dish!

Turning into a Tuscan Bean soup with a simple, griddled garlic bread.

There are so many really great things inside Food at 52.  This wall size mirror doubles as the board for writing the menu on.

Starting stages of a Butternut Squash Risotto with pumpkin seeds.  So easy and delicious.  Butternut squash is really good for you and now easily available in the major supermarkets as well as foreign shop.

You add the stock little by little until the rice can absorb no more then the cheeses and white wine. Top with roasted butternut squash slices.

The chicken curry was simple and a definite crowd pleaser. You can control the level of heat if someone in your family don't like it too hot.

Store bought puff pastry, cut into rectangles and scored around the edges.  Bake and when cool take off the lid of the pastry.

Fill with a creamy mixture of steamed salmon and top with watercress or rocket, bake then add a side salad and you will have a really quick, easy and refreshing mid-week supper.

Our final creation was a Baked Cod and Chorizo with Cherry Tomato parcels.

Baked in the oven in a foil parcel then served on a bed of chickpeas.

We all shared a couple of bottles of wine while we ate two of our creations and packed up the other three to take home.

I attended a selection of winter recipes but the Midweek Meals courses will be seasonal and will now be working on fresh, springtime recipes.

I was a guest of Food at 52 and was not paid to write this review.  As usual all opinions and photos are my own.

Busaba Eathai - Thai cooking masterclass

Traverse Events put on conferences aimed mainly at travel bloggers.  The recent Traverse15 was held over the weekend of 27-29 March and the venue was Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey.  The only impression I had of Kingston was a huge one way system and a department called Bentalls.

Our informal group of food bloggers attended this conference hoping to get an insight into the travel blogger world and to find a way to cross the bridge and take our food blogs further afield.  I write a food blog and want to write it from somewhere else!

One of the Sunday experiences we could book into was a cooking master class at Busaba Eathai restaurant on the riverside and on a cold, wet and blustery morning myself and fellow food blogger Nayna were the first to arrive. Slowly other participants arrived and we were off to a good start with a briefing from Hesh, one of Busaba’s executive chefs and our personal tutor for the morning.

Hesh’s lighthearted approach hid a wealth of knowledge of Thai cuisine as he took us through the first recipe which we prepared alongside.  We put our creation into a serving dish and realised that we had prepared a Som Tam in an easy and straightforward way. 

We left our Som Tam and proceeded to group around Hesh in the kitchen and prepare the Thai fish cakes the restaurant is so well known for, a literally all hands on deck moment!

( I wondered what people passing by the restaurant would think if they were to peer inside and see a group of individuals holding their cameras high and taking photos of someone with their hands in a bowl of coral coloured mixture.)

Following the prep of the fish cakes we proceeded into the main part of the kitchen, got acquainted with gas cookers that were more like jet engines, roaring with the flames and taking it in two groups of three we prepared our Pad Thai dish that would be our main course.

All of our ingredients were pre-measured out to save time and allowed us to get straight to the cooking. 

Watching the first group prepare their Pad Thai looked more like something out of MasterChef than a group of food and travel bloggers!

A group lunch followed with so much food in front of us (and Hesh decided we also had to try Busaba signature fried squid).

There was so much food that the only solution was to take some home to eat for lunch the following day!

I picked up loads of information and tips on Thai cooking, a cuisine I have already learned to love and with the recipes we were sent home with I plan on making a Pad Thai very soon.

I was a guest of Busaba Eathai and this session was arranged for us by Kingston First.  Thank you both for a fun and educational morning.  I was not required to write a positive review and as always all photos and opinions are my own.