Quadrelli's Gelateria, Sandbach

During our last week in Manchester, we made an effort to visit everything we either hadn't visited for a while or that we'd yet to visit. We went to museums, galleries, markets and stately homes.
We also managed to get to the much-hyped-amongst-our-circle-of-friends gelateria: Quadrelli's in Sandbach. Tales of molten chocolate or syrup in the bottom of cones were enough to secure a visit. We made our way to Sandbach - a small but busy town about 45 minutes outside Manchester - on a Tuesday morning to sample their wares. It's a sweet little shop open completely at the front, as they do on the continent, and with a view of some old houses and municipal flowerbeds. It offers all sorts of Italian fare, but we were just in it for the gelato.

I've never much liked icecream (partly to do with my sensitive teeth, partly because I prefer to indulge in savoury) but it's accurate to say that icecream is TLM's one true culinary love. What can I say? This was delicious. TLM had a hefty two-scooped waffle cone, with raspberry and strawberry gelato. I had a lick, and it was vividly fruity and sweet.

I had a brownie sundae with caramel and chocolate/hazelnut icecream ("we don't usually do that, but because it's quiet..."). It was divine with at least three hunks of brownie. I actually had to concede defeat and leave some at the bottom. Unheard of.

So if you're ever in the neighbourhood and need a fix of delicious gelato with embellishments I would highly recommend it. Remember, chocolate filled waffle cones ...

Bring On Summer

This summer, it's all change again and this weekend, we're finally moving 200 miles South. As with all moves it's ending up being complicated due to accommodation, job and storage issues. We have to move in a very convoluted way, which will mean TLM living at hospital for a few weeks (in staff accommodation, not bedding down on the wards) and me living a futher 100 miles South at my parents' house, coincidentally when my brother and his children are descending - which will mean 9 people in a very small house! This is all because the beautiful flat with the BIG kitchen (I am SO excited) is only available two weeks after we need it. So we have to store our stuff, and ourselves, until that point.

Today is the last day of the school term and tomorrow some of my friends are going to Brazil, so it's a final sleepover for them and those not going tonight. I will be very very very sad to not be so close to them, BUT it means every time I see them from now on will have to involve a sleepover. (I feel that has shades of Pollyanna's glad game).

To follow on from all the lovely fruit we've been getting in the shops (cherries, strawberries and grapes in huge punnets for a quid seem standard at the grocers and markets here at the moment) TLM and I went to a Pick Your Own farm today, which was a new experience for me. It was great fun and we got far too many raspberries!


I don't think this swan was very happy about us being around, as he stretched his neck in an intimidating gesture.
On the way back we drove past the place where we stopped by the car accident three months ago - we are fairly sure everyone was OK, but due to patient confidentiality we will never know for sure - and it felt like another chapter closed.

I took my last trip to Wing Yip at the weekend to stock up on ingredients before we're thrust into a place that only sells soy sauce in 200ml bottles! I also impulsively got the BBC's book to accompany the Chinese Food Made Easy series (even though I find the presenter almost unbearbly cutesy) as it was reduced to a reasonable £6 on Amazon. I have a few posts stored up to keep the blog going over the next few weeks, and I'm sure there will be more nieces and nephew enduced cookery.

Warming Lamb and Cous cous

Yesterday we went to the World Famous Bury Market (of which, more in a later post) and picked up some meat and veg to use before we move next week as I've almost completely depleted the freezer now. The next stage is pulling out the last ingredients from the cupboard to use up (tins of beans, jelly in abundance, dregs of dried things etc). I'm trying to get to the Mother Hubbard stage. Those of you who read 'delicious' magazine might be ahead of me on this one, as I was making use of the Ainsley Harriot spicy cous cous that came as a free gift with the latest issue.

Lamb was suggested (ahem - demanded) by TLM. He is definitely of the he-likes-what-he-likes variety and so this often means "I really liked what we had last time, I want that again." Which wouldn't be such an issue if I didn't have an ulterior motive (and none of the right ingredients). So this recipe ended up being a bit of a conflation of my sweet lamb casserole and flavours to try and compliment the spicy cous cous. With negotiation and some stealthily applied herbs, this was a hit. So next time I can go the whole hog for how I want the flavours to be.

Ingredients

• 400 g lamb (this was rather a lot...)
• 1 onion
• 1 tin tomatoes
• 1 carrot (there's no escaping)
• 1 lamb stock cube, made up with half a pint of water
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried mint
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ras el hanout
• salt and pepper
• 2 tablespoons ground almond

For the next time, I will either add some rose harissa or some dried chilli. Perhaps also some cinnamon? I might also season the lamb in some flour, salt, pepper and ras el hanout rather than just browning it as is. The almond helped to thicken up the sauce. I'm not quite sure why I put it in... but more experiments in future will need to be held.

How to Make it

I fried down the onions a little, then put them aside on a plate before browning the lamb in batches. Chucked it back in the pan, adding the carrots, and poured the tomatoes and stock on top. I added the herbs/seasoning/honey and then left it to simmer on the lowest setting on the stove for about an hour and a half. Towards the end of cooking time, check the seasoning and that it's suitably thickened.

We had this with the spicy cous cous and a long sweet pepper that had been halved and then grilled for about 10 minutes. I generally approve of cous cous because, and I'll level with you here, I never really cook rice properly. Despite trying to learn during the two months we ate nothing but rice, I was always terrible at it! The cous cous here was definitely warming and TLM liked it. It had an overall flavour but it just seemed so processed. I like to see my chunks of onion and garlic - not have the flavour come in powdered form. The inclusion of sunflower seeds was clever though. So next time I will bump up the spices in the lamb, and use spices, onion, garlic and toasted sunflower/pumpkin seeds in my own version of the cous cous.

Stuffed Peppers with Potato, Leek and Mushroom Gratin

Tonight's dinner was improvised from various leftovers, which might make it harder to follow this post than usual as it's a little stream-of-consciousness.

Stage One: dinner started this morning when I was sorting out the leftover rogan josh from last night. As usual, there was sauce aplenty for another dinner but most of the meat had been eaten. To bulk it up, I peeled and cubed some sweet potato, zapped it in the microwave (so it can be easily heated at a later date) and stirred it into the curry before bunging it in the freezer. This, however, left me with half a sweet potato as it was a big'un!

Stage Two: later in the afternoon with half a sweet potato, some small salad-type potatoes and a leek I layered up a gratin (sweet potato, white potato, leek). Realising I had no idea what to do next, I googled for a gratin recipe. It called for cream.... hmmm... no cream. Then I remembered I had some homemade mushroom soup in the freezer, which was mainly a cream mushroom puree really, so I defrosted that, added it, and topped up the gratin with milk.

Stage Three: realising that a gratin alone isn't very balanced, I used two big red peppers I'd bought with the intention of roasting at some point, and filled them with vine cherry tomatoes. Hmmm, not great. Emptied out the cherry tomatoes. Hmmm... what could I stuff it with? I remembered some leftover frozen bolognese sauce we had in the freezer which I stabbed, slotted frozen into the peppers and then put three cherry tomatoes on top and gave a grating of parmiggiano reggiano.

Gratin and peppers went in at the same time, for about 45-60 minutes.

Dinner turned out to be much better than anticipated. The sweet potatoes, of course, cooked faster than the white potatoes which gave a lovely variation in texture. The leek was crisp, and the mushroom soup made the whole thing sing. Unfortunately, the mushroom soup isn't the easiest thing to whizz up just for a gratin BUT I have decided that blending some mushrooms, cream and garlic together will give much the same effect. So that I shall do next time. Somewhat unconvinced about sweet and normal potatoes together in a gratin, but I think a sweet potato and red onion gratin-esque concoction (maybe with yoghurt?) would be the next to try.

Rhubarb and Orange Sponge

I promised to make TLM a cake for graduation. He grew up in Yorkshire and munched rhubarb straight from the garden, sometimes dipped in sugar. When he saw the rhubarb in the greengrocer's he knew he wanted some sort of rhubarb cake...

I've been wedded to my Marguerite Pattern sponge recipe for many years, as it provides a very light but modest Victoria sponge. I was tempted to switch to Nigella Lawson's skyscraping Victoria Sponge as it claimed to work well with sugary, orangey rhubarb. I needed no more convincing. I cooked down 400g of rhubarb, chopped into pieces roughly an inch long, with 100g of sugar (I baulked at the amount, but apparently it was necessary) and the juice of a very big orange. The rhubarb was strained, the syrup cooked down further and then all set aside to cool.

Ingredients - makes two 21cm sandwich tins

• 225 g unsalted butter, very soft
• 200 g self raising flour
• 25 g corn flour
• 225 g caster sugar
• 4 large eggs

I added a tablespoon of Cointreau so the orangey zing would go through the sponge too.

How to Make it

Cream the butter and sugar (this is why it helps for the butter to be very soft) and then add the eggs one at a time, adding a spoonful of the flour and corn flour mixture between each. Divide the mix into the two tins and bake for 25 minutes at 185 Celsius, or until the cakes begin to come away from the edges. and a cake tester comes out clean. (I found this to be slightly too long, and would change it back to 200 degrees for 20 minutes myself)

Assemble the sponge and rhubarb when everything is suitably cooled. The recipe called from cream in the middle, but we dolloped it (with some of the reduced rhubarb syrup) on the side.


TLM was given a bran spanking new Canon 400D digital SLR camera (phwoar!) as a graduation gift, so I have purloined it already and am trying to get to grips with it. These are my first pictures, taken on the first day with it. Hmmmm, still lots to learn (especially keeping it straight, as the other camera projects little lines on the LCD screen)

Thai Fish Soup (Tom Yum Gai)

My hilarious attempts to speak Thai should not be left in Thailand, so I present to you: tom yum gai nam kohn - what I believe could mean fish soup with coconut milk. I can't find exactly what 'tom yum' means, it could describe the sauce or could be the word for soup, but it is a very popular dish in Thailand. Tom yum goong (tom yum with prawns) was one of my favourite meals during out trip and so when I saw tom yum paste in Wing Yip, our local Asian supermarket, I had to get some.

I know mixing a sauce in with some vegetables and protein isn't much of an achievement, but I was pleasantly surprised by how this came together. Guided by the servings per jar, I used a tablespoon and a half of tom yum sauce (which made the soup -ahem- very very very spicy), fried it with onions and green peppers, then I added reconstituted creamed coconut, juice of half a lemon (lime is the best, but we didn't have any), some carrot, some cabbage and at the last minute some cubed fish. I used monkfish because we happened to have some in the freezer from the last time I fell foul of the fishmonger, and its firm and meaty texture really stood up to the spices.

I added some rice noodles, which sucked up some of the soup but it was worth it! Next time I will use less tom yum sauce (oh the joys of a new ingredient!) but overall I was very pleased, and it proved to be a less fearsome version of a hot and sour prawn soups I've made in the past.