Local heroes

We went to the last day of the Harrogate Food Festival last week, feeling that as self-proclaimed foodies it was the kind of thing we should be doing on a bank holiday weekend. We failed to take into account that we neither of us like crowds, or uncomfortable plastic chairs, or paying over the odds for things - this could have proved unfortunate. As it was, one overpriced chicken gyro aside, we had quite a pleasant time, aided by a couple of excellent gins. 

The festival was taking place in the grounds of Ripley Castle so we decided to treat ourselves to a night in Ripley at the Boar's Head Hotel, which I remember visiting a few times when we first moved to North Yorkshire and always enjoyed. Gentle reader, while I would not hesitate to recommend the hotel to you (reasonably priced, a beautiful room and some of the most comfortable pillows ever) the hotel restaurant was a bitter disappointment. Can't fault the staff but the food was...not good. I really hope that this is a temporary blip due to the current problems in the hospitality industry, and that the bone dry chickpea fritters with a side of pallid boiled potatoes and crunchy mange tout is not typical.

A relief, then, to find that another old favourite in that part of the world, The General Tarleton in Ferrensby, appears to be going from strength to strength. We went on Saturday night for the tasting menu and thoroughly enjoyed it; not least, at £55 per head (and £55 for the matching wine flight which was poured with an extremely generous hand by the charming waiter) it was remarkably good value for money.

Not necessarily pushing at culinary boundaries, nevertheless, the kitchen was turning out well executed plates of delicious, crowd pleasing food. From the dinky little lobster bonbons, pleasingly crisp and sweet, via a plate-lickingly good beef tartare, and a divine chocolate and raspberry torte, this was all excellent stuff and I would whole heartedly recommend it should you ever find yourself sort of Harrogate way and want to be soothed by good, honest cooking and friendly service.

Bonbon!

Beef!

Chocolate!

Next week, fingers, toes and eyes crossed, we are off to Scotland for a couple of weeks and I will do my best to keep you updated with any particular food highlights, although given that the first night away will be spent in Carlisle (don't ask...) I can't necessarily promise too much!

Made in Oldstead

We can't eat out at the moment but fortunately some restaurants are making it possible to eat out at home.  That sentence makes NO SENSE.  But you know what I mean - some restaurants have moved into the takeaway business.  Or perhaps, more accurately, the posh ready meal business.  I, for one, am glad and wish that I was rich enough to buy from all of them all of the time.  I want these places to survive and be around when we emerge, blinking, into the sunshine of non-lockdown.  Although knowing Britain, the end of lockdown will coincide with a period of monsoons.  Our weather systems tend to have a finely tuned sense of irony.

Anyway, back to the point.  This weekend we donated £70 of your English pounds to the "Save the Local Restaurant" fund that is The Black Swan at Oldstead's food box scheme.  Another cracker of a sentence there. 

We love The Black Swan.  Well, I say that.  We've been twice.  We loved it on the second occasion and liked it very much on the first.  The food that they are making for the food boxes is not the equivalent of the food that you would get in the restaurant.  Of course it's not.  It needs to be packed and transported and reheated.  It needs to be plated up at home.  This all calls for dishes that are robust and simple with minimal garnishes.  Not necessarily adjectives that you associate with Michelin starred chefs. 

Having said that, if your expectations are set at the correct level, this is a very enjoyable experience indeed, and it was nice to have a weekend "off" from cooking.  I've been cooking a lot during this period; the kitchen has become even more a place of solace and escape than usual, but it is still nice to be cooked for.  And when it is Tommy Banks and team who are doing the cooking, it is especially nice.

As I said, the cost of the box was £70 but for that you get two lots of two three-course meals.  We decided to have the starters for lunch and then the main event and puddings in the evening which meant we effectively got four meals out of it.  That is pretty decent value to my way of thinking.

On Saturday, there was a tartiflette made with Ogleshield - a fabulous British cheese that rose to the occasion admirably.  There was bacon and caramelised onions and creaminess.  The dish required a smidge more time in the oven than specified in the instructions (the potatoes were sliced quite thickly and weren't quite as yielding after 20 minutes as we might have wished).  And we roasted the accompanying asparagus rather than boiling and dressing in butter as were directed to do.  Yeah, rebels.

This was followed by a beetroot treacle tart served with a schnapps-laced marscapone.  The tart looked beautiful (I am quite the fan of pink food) although the beetroot didn't seem to add much to the flavour profile that I could discern.  The marscapone was excellent.

As for Sunday's meal: I would say it was pretty much the definition of British comfort food.  There was ox cheek pie with the most gorgeous beef dripping crust.  On the side, a portion of pickled manglewurzel which is apparently, is a type of beet commonly eaten by livestock.  Lucky livestock, say I - this was lovely.  Reminiscent of sauerkraut.  We may, may have snuck some mashed potato onto the plate as well because I am from the East End of London and it is practically treason to not serve pie with mash. Also, we are greedy.  But I've upped the exposure on the picture so that you can barely see it.

The theme of comfort food continued with the dessert of elderflower cake with duck egg custard.  Cake and custard is pure school dinners as far as I am concerned.  Actually, (and here is a sad tale) I never had school dinners when I was at primary school.  My cruel mother insisted on making me a packed lunch every day.  So while I know of the concept of school dinner cake-and-custard I have never experienced it firsthand.  I suspect TBS's version was considerably superior to St Mary's RC Primary School.

An indulgent weekend then but worth it.  For anyone reading who lives in the Oldstead, York, Harrogate or North Leeds area and wants a treat then I would recommend this most highly.  For everyone else, I hope that the restaurants round you are similarly rising to the challenges faced by the industry.  I don't think it is possible to quantify how much joy these pubs and restaurants bring to our lives and we will miss them if they go. 

Recent Eats - the Out and About Edition

My brother told me earlier that he was upset not to have been mentioned on the blog recently. So - hello D2. If I had got round to talking about the rather splendid meal we had at The General Tarleton for my parent’s anniversary then his name might have come up (given that he was there. As were my lovely sister in law and nephew and niece. I was slightly worried that little D and little S would be bored silly going out to eat but they, as befits the next generation of foodies, were fab. Better table manners than their uncle 😉).

Anyway, not only have I neglected to write about the GT but quite a few recent foodie adventures have gone unchronicled, so I thought that I would do a couple of quick round up posts, one for eating out and one for cooking at home. Let’s start with the eating out, shall we? And maybe throw in a few characteristically appalling photos?

Firstly, Whitby. I mentioned, at length, how much I loved Rusty Shears but we also took the opportunity to check out the latest venture by chef Andrew Pern, The Star Inn the Harbour. Our verdict - nice. It is not, nor is it attempting to be, The Star Inn, and is unlikely to earn Whitby its first Michelin star. But Whitby was crying out for a slightly more upmarket establishment and this fits the bill. Emphasis on fish and seafood, just as it should be given the location. Slightly twee decor, but I like twee. My mackerel escabeche with caviar creme fraiche and salted hazelnuts was a particular highlight.

We also went to The Moon and Sixpence for lunch, a rare beast for Whitby, in that it is unashamedly modern in design. There was sriracha on the menu, for goodness sake, mixed with mayo and drizzled over some very yummy crispy squid. Happiness is.

D’s main course was underwhelming to say the least (it takes a certain level of incompetence to make a gumbo bland) but all was forgiven when dessert arrived - the most amazing warm cookie pot. I think that I probably made some inappropriate noises.

Talking of cookies - they appear to be having something of a moment. We went along to one of the first Eat Norths of the year, and forced ourselves to share a pot of raw cookie dough because we got given a sample while we queued for beer and...well. More inappropriate noises. It was sold by The Baking Biker and oh, sweet Cheezus, I’ve just seen that you can buy it online.

Finally, and bringing us bang up to date, I got around to visiting Mommy Thai last night. It’s a tiny little venue in Leeds city centre serving, unsurprisingly, Thai food, and very nice it was too, not to mention exceedingly good value - under £30 for one starter, two mains and two bottles of beer. I have a rather annoying tendency to always order Pad Thai when confronted with a new menu and this was a fine example of the genre.

But I think D’s main course of five spice pork pipped it to the post flavour wise.

They offer a special lunchtime deal and I am very tempted to head back soon and avail myself of it given that it is walking distance from the office. Although I doubt that I would achieve much by way of work in the afternoon with a tummy full of noodles.

MPM: 12th March 2018

Happy Monday campers!  Actually, I'm writing this on Friday afternoon so the weekend is still to come.  I hope that it was a good one.  We have plans for a trip into town for brunch and books, the very nicest sort of day.  Although, really, I need to stop buying books.  I've got a tottering TBR (to be read) pile that I really should tackle before adding still more to it.  But I just can't resist - nothing makes me giddier than the prospect of a browse around a bookshop.  Except, possibly, a browse around a lipstick counter.

We digress.  For today, it is Monday, and that means meal planning (although, actually, we did that on Thursday so the meal plan was contrived on Thursday, written on Friday and only published on Monday.  Mind blowing.)

This week, we fast Monday and Thursday - and after a couple of poor weeks we are determined to get two good days under our belts.  On Friday, we are going for dinner at that behemoth of the Harrogate food scene, Norse.  Looking forward to that one.  Elsewhere:

Tuesday: a four cheese risotto.  Yep, that's right - risotto made with FOUR different cheeses.  The recipe is from The Silver Spoon.  I am looking forward to sinking into a cheesy coma afterwards.

Wednesday:  D has selected bangers and mash - there's very much a comfort food theme emerging here, isn't there?

Saturday: a recipe from "Simple" by the wonderful Diana Henry. Devilled mackerel with cucumber and watercress yoghurt.

Sunday:  roast pork.  Tomorrow, we embark upon a vegetarian week so I have promised D a good chunk of meat to see him off and he has challenged me to make better crackling than my mother, who cooked roast pork for us a couple of weeks ago.  It's not something I cook very often, but I will do my best.

Joro, Sheffield

D says that I would never make a professional restaurant critic because I am very bad at criticising places.  And I get his point - I would rather not write anything at all if I have nothing nice to say.  However.

There is loads and loads to like about Joro.  But if I book a table for a tasting menu - which I have been told by the restaurant themselves takes around two and a half hours - then I rather object to having to vacate the table after two.  Fair play to the server, he told us as soon as we arrived that they would need the table back at eight.  And, owing to bad traffic across Sheffield we were about five minutes late arriving for our booking.  And, I totally understand why restaurants turn tables - especially relatively new, popular restaurants who need to get bums on seats to generate revenue.  But two hours was stingy, by their own reckoning; as a result, the pace of the meal was slightly quicker than I would have liked and we were not offered coffee (which, as it happened, we would both have appreciated).  Clearly, the solution is not to book a table at six, but why should early punters be treated any differently to those who prefer to dine later? 

Ooooh, deep breath.  That was tough.  Back to the fan-girl stylings to which my readers are much more accustomed.  Because, as I said, there was loads to like here.  The style is difficult to describe except to say it is very distinctly, typically, a certain type of modern British.  Helpful, huh? They themselves describe it as "An urban restaurant influenced by nature" - which is fair enough.  I would add that they are not constrained by any particular cuisine type, seeing as how the flavour profiles seemed to range across Europe and out to the Far East in scope.

The ten course tasting menu was considered, balanced and well executed with some dishes touching upon the sublime.  Of the savoury courses, a full four were entirely vegetarian and it was great to see these plates holding their own against their meaty counterparts.  A tangle of roasted brassicas served on a black garlic sauce, for example, really demonstrated how vegetables can stand up to hefty, smoky flavours and deliver something that is more than the sum of its parts.

For all that, our favourite courses all happened to involve meat - so no chance of us converting yet.  Among the initial snacks, the cubes of homemade black pudding with apple cider gel were utterly divine.  The pudding had a dense, almost fudgy texture which I appreciated very much.

I was in raptures over 130 day aged beef tartare with smoked butter and truffle.  Just look at the amount of truffle on that plate!  That shows a real generosity of spirit in the kitchen.  Surprisingly, or perhaps not given that this was a brigade of chefs who clearly knew what they were doing, the beef more than held its own.  This was an autumnal dish, musty and earthy - again, huge flavours but all in harmony.

D was particularly taken with mallard - cooked sous vide in a brine and served with a punchy coriander pesto, soy ketchup and puffed rice.  I say particularly taken, he spent the rest of the evening talking about it.  And much of the next day.  He says that he wants to recreate it himself and consulted with one of the chefs as how best to do this.  I am quite happy with this development.

One of the desserts - a brown butter and muscovado parfait on a Parkin base with sherry syrup and sour apple - was a thing of beauty and a joy forever.  The other was good, although paled slightly in comparison with this inspired combination of sweet and sour and spice.

So much to like and a minor annoyance.  I would go back to Joro, and considering Sheffield is about an hour away by train that's quite the compliment.  But I wouldn't book an early table and I'd probably point blank refuse to leave until they brought me an espresso.  Just to learn them.

Home and Away

Hurrah for the weekend!  Especially hurrah for this coming weekend which will see D and I head for the beautiful Lake District to celebrate our sixth wedding anniversary.

Six years!  Yes, I know, I'm surprised too.  Of course, a year of that we spent apart so perhaps it doesn't really count (although given that we were the least separated separated couple ever I think there's probably an argument to be had either way).  But still, it's a good run and very deserving of a bit of a bash.

We're actually going to be having dinner on the day at the Lake Road Kitchen and I can't wait to report back to you on that.  The reviews have been glowing, everything I've read or seen about the food there has got me salivating - I think that we are in for a real treat.

Not only that, but we are staying at The Drunken Duck which I'm sure that I have written about before.  It's a fabulous place and also happens to serve fabulous food so I'm going to be ensuring that I save room for an excellent breakfast.  We might need to get out and do some brisk walking to work up a bit of an appetite, but given the part of the world in which we will find ourselves, that will be no particular hardship.

Closer to home, we went for a meal at one of our local gems the other week.  Zucco serves kind of Italian tapas stuff - very much in the vein of Russell Norman's Polpo chain, and we are so lucky to have it on our doorstep.  The pictures are of two of our favourite dishes - a salt cod ravioli which came strewn with sage and glistening with buttery, winey juices and a whole baby Dover sole, cooked to perfection and drenched in a gorgeous caper butter.  It's not pushing any culinary boundaries but it is the kind of food that makes you grin broadly and use your finger to wipe the plate.

Have a gorgeous weekend, folks, and I look forward to providing a full account of our adventures next week.