Stock Demonstration

Last Saturday we held another successful tasting day, with Gary cooking up quick dishes using the More Than Gourmet stocks. His simple scallop dish was very popular but fortunately there were a few scallops left over which I had for my dinner! Doing exactly what I saw Gary do in the demo I fried some onions and mushrooms, then some baby scallops, added a few blobs of double cream and a tiny (1/4 tsp) amount of Glace de Fruits de Mer (a reduced classic seafood stock) and a bit of brandy. The Glace de Fruits de Mer adds a delicious fishy richness to the sauce. I had the scallops on toast!

Coconut Fish Curry

A new range of spice blends arrived this week. Fabulous little foil pouches from Seasoned Pioneers with minimal packaging and wonderful high quality spice blends. We have about 15 different blends in the shop at the moment and after much deliberation I chose the Caribbean Poudre de Colombo Spice Blend as the one I would try first. The recipe suggested on the back of the pack was for a very quick and easy Coconut Fish Curry. It was so good that I’ve made twice in one week: once with Tilapia fillets and once with Tuna steaks. Both curries were wonderful but the different fish made them quite different in taste and texture.

The simple (3 step, 9 ingredient) recipe is on the seasoned pioneers web site:
http://www.seasonedpioneers.co.uk/recipedetail.aspx?rid=23&cuisine=caribbean

Spring?

For the first time in months we have had the door to the shop open! It was brilliantly sunny this morning (though I still had to scrape ice off of the car windscreen) and was still sunny at noon. So I pinned back the door and left it open for five hours. I can't feel my fingers now, but it has been nice to have the breeze and remove that barrier with the street.

Pancakes!

This pancake day we experimented with toppings from the deli. After dinner we made a batch of pancakes and added a different sweet topping to each. Traditional lemon and sugar. An American version with Maple Syrup. Not so traditional (but quite yummy) chocolate spread. Quite unusual Vanilla Balsamic Glaze, which was surprisingly moreish and would have been even better with a blob of ice cream. And my surprise favourite honey rum and raisins!