Fancy a cuppa?

Looking for a lovely cuppa tea that’s organic and with a fairtrade twist? Then look no further than the Cosy Tea range from Beyond the Bean. Each pack displays a hand knitted pattern that has been lovingly crafted to help the range stand out from the usual bland boxes that are seen on the shelves.

 

There are eight Cosy teas…

• Cosy Fairtrade Organic Breakfast Tea
A blend of Assam & Nilgiri teas from India – a classic tea for all day drinking.

 

• Cosy Fairtrade Organic Earl Grey Tea
Our Breakfast Tea with natural Bergamot.

 

• Cosy Organic Rooibos Tea with Vanilla
'Redbush' tea from South Africa with a hint of Vanilla – naturally caffeine-free.

 

• Cosy Organic Chamomile Infusion
Chamomile flowers with a hint of Liquorice for sweetness.

• Cosy Organic Sencha Green Tea with Lemon
The clean taste of Sencha Green Tea with a hint of Lemon.

 

• Cosy Organic Chunmee Green Tea with Jasmine
Steamed Jasmine flowers with delicate Chunmee Green Tea.

 

• Cosy Organic Peppermint Infusion
Egyptian Peppermint – crisp, fresh and clean.

 

• Cosy Organic Blueberry & Echinacea Infusion
Blueberry, Echinacea, Hibiscus & Rosehips – bursting with fruitiness.


“For us, Cosy evokes the comfort of the traditional English tea cosy and the relaxation and time out that drinking great tea brings,” says Jo Young of Beyond the Bean. “Inspired by the recent renaissance in knitting, we worked with local knitters to create patterns that fitted with our teas. You can even see who knitted the cosy design and which stitch was used, just by checking the side of the pack! While the look and feel of the tea was important, the taste was paramount. The organic leaves in each individually wrapped bag bring the full flavour into your cup.”

All eight teas have been made using organic ingredients which have been certified by the Organic Trust. The two black teas are also Fairtrade, certified by the Fairtrade Foundation. They have been approved by the Vegetarian Society and for vegan diets by Viva!

And if you fancy a cuppa then why not check these out these cups and mugs...

 

Bone China Lip Tease Cup and Saucer

£20

A beautiful teacup marked on the rim with traces of lipstick in 24 carat gold. As an added detail, a rim of gold tea stain is revealed on the saucer as the teacup is lifted. Individually presented in a white gift box and made from fine bone china in Britain.

Where to buy:

www.carolinemcgrath.co.uk

Graham Knuttle Fish Cappuccino Cups

£40 (set of two)

Irish artist and designer Graham Knuttel has teamed up with Tipperary Crystal to create a café collection. Describes his artwork ‘fish’ he says: “Fish and the sea are a recurring theme in my work. I paint them to relax and enjoy their world which is ever changing and colourful. It gives me an opportunity to use pattern and light in a restful and yet lively fashion.”

Where to buy:

Collingwood and Bachelor

Oldrids

www.tipperarycrystal.com

Avoca’s Get the Flock Mug

€9.95

‘Get the flock out of here’ - what better way to say it than with a fine bone-china mug featuring Avoca's famous scarved sheep. Guess you could call it the black sheep of the Irish design house’s ceramics range.

Where to buy

www.avoca.ie



A Chelsea Kitchen Challenge

Trying my hand at Malaysian cooking

GFG with chef Lee Chin Soon
 Picture by Malcolm McNally (c)

When you get the chance to cook with a top class chef at one of London’s only fine-dining Malaysian restaurants you don’t say no. Instead you readily done your chef whites and get stuck in. And that’s how I found myself early one morning in Lee Chin Soon’s kitchen at Awana restaurant in Chelsea.

A lesson in the difference between Malaysian and other Asian foods, such as Thai, was first on the menu. Attention to detail, presentation and subtle flavours are all part of what goes into making a great Malaysian dish, Chin Soon explains.

A head chef for five years he has adapted his home country’s cuisine to suit the European palate – and east meets west if you like. And has further developed his style to incorporate not only Malaysian spices, but British herbs, game and cheeses.

Today, we were to prepare a selection of dishes before the lunchtime rush started.



Picture by Malcolm McNally (c)



First up was Lobster Char Kuew Teow – a delicious seafood dish made with flat noodles. We marinated some lobster tail, prawn, scallops, and squid in sambal (chilli-based) sauce, before stir frying some noodles with egg, dark soya sauce, salt and pepper. Next we added the marinated the seafood and cooked for about 5minutes, flipping the food like a pancake in a frying pan to ensure it was cooking evenly. Already the temperature in the kitchen was beginning to rise and we hadn’t even gone close to the satay grill yet!

At the grill the best of Malaysian Street food, particularly that from the island of Penang, is cooked and served in front of customers eating in the restaurant. This is also where the chefs make their selection of roti - made from a traditional family recipe and including everything from plain to filled bread (murtabak) and flamboyant dessert breads.

Having mastered, to a degree, chef Chin Soon’s Lobster dish, he was happy for me to have a go at making some chicken Satay and roti. Using a dough that had been already prepared I set about moulding the roti into a large disk. It’s a process that resembles making a pizza base, only it requires much more skill as the dough needs to be worked into a very thin layer using a complicated air-borne turning technique. Our roti-making session was not my finest culinary moment and so we quickly moved on to the easier task of grilling satay.

All dishes prepared I joined Lee Chin Soon, who specialises in Nyonya cuisine (cooking based on a multicultural cuisine of Malay, Chinese, Indian, Dutch and Portuguese), in the restaurant to sample our creations.



Picture by Malcolm McNally (c)



And it was fair to say I was much more at home in the dining room - which is decorated with teakwood, traditional batik silk and dark red leather - than I had been in the heat of the kitchen.

We tucked into the dishes, chef Chin Soon praising my efforts. Although I’m sure he won’t be calling on me any time soon should he be a man down in the kitchen!

He did, however, reward my efforts with a sample of Awana’s amazing chilli and lemongrass sorbet – which served as the perfect antidote to the fiery heat of the satay grill.

AWANA

85 Sloane Avenue

London SW3 3DX 

Tel: 0207 584 8880

www.awana.co.uk

Foodscapes

Although a very keen landscape photographer Liverpool-born Carl Warner first established himself as a successful still life photographer. Over the past 10 years he has been developing a body of work making amazing landscapes out of food. These ‘Foodscapes’ are created in Carl’s London studio where they are built on top of a large purpose built triangular table top. Carl spends a lot of time planning each image before shooting and chooses the best ingredients to replicate larger scale shapes within nature. He spends a lot of time staring at vegetables in supermarkets, which makes him seem a little odd! However, he is careful to point out that finding the right shaped broccoli to use as a tree is an all important task. “Although there is a fair amount of waste, there is a lot of food left over which is always shared out with the team, though most of the food used in the sets have either been super glued or pinned and none of this makes for good eating,” he said.

Some of Carl Warner's amazing Foodscapes... 



Cabbage Sea



Crab Cave

Brocolli Forest

Cart and Balloons

Carl Warner’s Food Landscapes is out now.
£15.99

ISBN: 978-0-81098993-1

The Italian Job

Catherine Fulvio

Chef Catherine Fulvio sees Italian food through Irish eyes and has adapted traditional recipes to make them accessible to all. Catherine, who has appeared on BBC’s Good Food Channel and has her own RTÉ show Catherine’s Roman Holiday, has been cooking from a young age having helped her mother prepare meals for those staying at the family’s B&B Ballyknocken House in Co Wicklow. But it was only after she married Sicilian husband Claudio Fulvio that she became immersed in Italian food. She now runs Ballyknocken Cookery School and wrote her first cookbook, Catherine’s Italian Kitchen, so that people could get cooking at home rather than always having to go out to enjoy the pleasures of Italian pizza, bruschetta and flavoursome pasta sauce.

Raspberry Tiramisu

Tiramisu ai lamponi

Serves 8-10

Catherine says: “Invented in Venice, tiramisu means 'pick me up'. The original recipe is made with espresso and Marsala, but I have my own delicious twist by introducing raspberries and orange. It's equally tasty made with strawberries in the summer.”

Ingredients 

300g raspberry jam

75ml plus 4 tbsp Marsala or sherry

150ml orange juice

475g mascarpone, at room temperature

375ml chilled whipping cream

60 caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

52 savoiardi biscuits (approx)

600g raspberries, divided

Whisk the jam, 75m1 Marsala and the orange juice together. Set aside.

Place the mascarpone cheese and 2 tbsp Marsala in a large bowl. Fold just to blend and set aside.

Beat the cream, sugar, vanilla and the remaining 2 tbsp Marsala in another large bowl until soft peaks form.

Stir a quarter of the whipped cream mixture into the mascarpone mixture to loosen it, then gently fold in the remaining whipped cream.

Spread some of the jam mixture in the bottom of a 32cm x 22cm x 12cm serving dish (or you can use individual glasses). Arrange enough savoiardi over the jam mixture to cover the bottom of the dish. Spoon more of the jam mixture over the savoiardi, then spread some of‑the mascarpone mixture over. Arrange some raspberries over the mascarpone mixture.

Repeat the layering with the remaining savoiardi, jam mixture, mascarpone mixture and raspberries. Cover with cling film and chill for at least 8 hours or overnight. Arrange any leftover raspberries over the tiramisu and serve.

Catherine’s Italian Kitchen is published by Gill and Macmillan.

Dinner with Branson



Allen Leech as Branson in Downton Abbey



 

Any of you following this blog will know by now that ITV series Downton Abbey has been top of my list for Sunday night viewing. The final episode aired yesterday and the series is out today on DVD. I caught up with Dubliner Allen Leech, who plays the role of chauffeur and Irish socialist Tom Branson. We chatted food fancies and his perfect dinner guests!

Grazing with...Allen Leech

GFG: What’s your earliest food memory?

AL: My mum’s coffee mousse, she used to make it for dinner parties when I was a kid.

GFG: What’s the most unusual thing you’ve eaten?

AL: Kangaroo! I did an around-the-world trip in 1998 and ate kangaroo whilst I was staying in Australia.

GFG: Steak – well done, medium or rare?

AL: Rare, definitely rare.



Bacon wrapped scallops



GFG: Describe your perfect meal.

Frank Sinatra

AL: Starter would be scallops, followed by Lobster ravioli and Chocolate fudge cake for dessert. I’d have it in a farmhouse in the Tuscan hills, with Oliver Reed and Richard Harris for pure entertainment, JFK for political stimulation, Sinatra for some tunes and Natalie Portman for the view! 

GFG: What’s your favourite restaurant?

AL: The Fat Duck in Bray. I love Heston Blumenthal’s passion for food and the innovative and unique way he presents it. The atmosphere there is just intoxicating- the whole thing is a total sensory experience, and the surrounding area is absolutely enchanting.

The Top 100 Restuarants In Britain

Gidleigh Park, the west of England restaurant where chef Michael Caines holds two Michelin stars, is the UK’s finest - beating the Fat Duck - in a new ranking of the Top 100 establishments.

Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley, in third place, is the best place in London to eat, according to Food List: Britain’s Top 100 Restaurants, a supplement in the Sunday Times published in association with Harden's. Gordon Ramsay, Wareing’s former friend and mentor, places at No. 52.



Gordon Ramsay - No 52



The rankings are based on the votes of more than 8,000 participants, the Sunday Times said in an e-mailed press release. Fourth place goes to chef Brett Graham at the Ledbury, and the top five is completed by the Waterside Inn, in Bray.


For the full story published by Bloomberg, click here to read more.

At Elizabeth David's Table

Elizabeth David

Legendary cook, the late Elizabeth David introduced post-war Britain to the sun-drenched culinary delights of the Mediterranean and foods such as olive oil, pasta, artichokes and fresh herbs. Of English and Irish ancestry, Elizabeth has inspired many of today’s top chefs – Clodagh McKenna is a big fan having recently hosted an Ode to Elizabeth David Supper Night where she prepared some of her favourite ED dishes.

Now to celebrate 60 years since the publication of Elizabeth David’s first cookery book Mediterranean Food, a selection of simple recipes have been released.

Why not try Elizabeth David’s…

Sea Bass with Mushrooms and Potatoes
marseillaise

Serves 4

Bar or loop de mer is one of the most delicate fish of the Mediterranean, grilled on a bed of fennel stalks it makes the famous Provencal grillade au fenouil. The bass which come from Cornwall are the English equivalent and are well worth buying.

Ingredients

1 bass (1.25-1.5kg/21/2-3lb)

Coffee cup olive oil

A small glass dry white wine

Small bouquet of fennel leaves

2 cloves of garlic

250g/1/2lb onions

250g/1/1lb mushrooms

500g/1lb yellow waxy potatoes

Salt and pepper

Put the fish in a baking dish, pour over it the oil and wine, cover with chopped fennel and garlic.

Around it arrange the sliced onions, mushrooms and thinly sliced potatoes.

Season with salt and pepper.

Add 600ml/1pint of water and cook in a fairly hot over at 190C/gas 5 for about an hour.

Serve with aïoli (garlic mayonnaise) or rouille (spicy garlic sauce served with fish)

From At Elizabeth David’s Table, published by Michael Joseph. £25.