Recipe ideas for budget meals, everyday cooking and a little indulgence. Travel inspiration and restaurant reviews too.
I made this stew on New Year’s Day. I can’t think of many things as warming and comforting as a big bowl of slow cooked food. My beef stew with horseradish dumplings was made up of almost everything I had leftover in my fridge and cupboards; happily simmered away with some beef shin. A delicious, make-the-most-of-everything, homely stew for four people. Trust me on the ingredients; one or two may sound a little out of place but they really add to the dish.
You will need (for four):
It’s always interesting to try something different with a classic. Not content with, although always very welcome, standard macaroni cheese I wanted to add a few bits here and there to make it extra special. I dreamt up my beer, mustard and onion macaroni cheese and set about making it. I wasn’t sure how best to incorporate the beer so I settled on trying out a beer béchamel.
You will need (for 2):
Cook the macaroni according to packet instructions. Preheat and oven to 180C.
To make the beer béchamel melt the butter over a medium heat then add the flour. Cook the flour for at least one minute. Mix together the milk and beer then slowly add this to the butter and flour, stirring all the time so you don’t get any lumps. Cook the béchamel for a few minutes until thickened then remove from the heat.
I have just come back from a week in Wales. We went to a place where there is no phone signal and not even a hope of connecting to the internet so you have no choice but to properly relax and get away. Holidaying with the family is always good fun; lots of meals in, walks and catching up on silly things. This is what I got up to over the week and, if you’re heading off to mighty Wales, I hope it gives you some ideas for what to do.
We started up in Snowdonia National Park staying in possibly the strangest hotel I’ve ever been to. It was one of those hotels that time forgot; apparently the cleaner forgot some of it too but when has dust ever hurt anyone? The room was nice but it was like a gadget bomb had exploded in there and each individual piece of technology had adhered itself to a socket or wall. No idea what any of it was for. The shower deserves a special mention for being (literally) out of this world weird. There were lights on the outside, inside and all over the place; nozzles, knobs and buttons everywhere and doors that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a spaceship air locker. On the plus there was a radio in there but it would only tune to white noise. Never mind. Despite its many, many options for water temperature, angle and point of exit it was a surprising disappointment; not much more aggressive than a thick fog.
As I rent a house I am in the unfortunate position of being lumbered with the oven and hob that I’m given. Don’t get me wrong; having a hob and an oven is certainly one up from having no heating implements at all but they definitely leave a lot to be desired.
After we had seen the whole process we were able to try some of the bottled beers; 11 in total we tried on our visit. It was similar to wine tasting with the water swishing out in between each one. The photo shows the beers we tried from our favourite (on the left) to the ones less for us (on the right). The range of colour and flavour between them was remarkable; from light and citrusy to deep and honeyed. For someone who used to think all beer tasted the same this was eye opening.
The best bit was when they brought out the chocolate. The two bars of chocolate have been created specially to pair with the Honey Spice beer (white chocolate with lemon meringue) and the Quadrupel (70% dark chocolate). Beer and chocolate I tried in Bruges but it was beer that had the chocolate (or flavour) in it. This was different, not least because the chocolate had other flavours, but because you could make it as strong or faint in chocolate flavour as you liked by nibbling.
One of the more intriguing beers was one called Land Shrimp. I kid you not when I tell you that it was made with woodlice, hence the name. It was quite a bitter beer I thought but I couldn’t tell you if that was down to the woodlice or not. Apparently you can add almost anything to beer!
We had a great little guide book to the city and based our trip around that. Our hotel was a five minute walk from the station and about ten minutes from the city centre; to get to the centre was either through a park or cobbled back streets, each equally as picturesque.
One of the places I really wanted to visit was Cambrinus; a wooden and stained glass window bar which serves 400 different beers. I didn’t think I liked beer, after my trip to Bruges it turns out I do. We managed to sample 20 different beers between us in three days; good for the taste buds, bad for the belly.
The picture above shows the massive beer menu (left), the Delerium tasting beer selection (middle) and a passion fruit beer (right) with cheese and meat that you can order to nibble on.