Hands up if you have ever heard of paysan bread... No-one? Then let me educate you a little; according to the source of all truth in the universe that is Wikipedia:
Burebrot, Bauernbrot, Pain paysan or Pane del nonno (English: Farmers' bread) is a bread made in Switzerland. "Bauernbrot" is also made in Germany. Unlike most other breads, which are mainly composed of flour, yeast and water, theBurebrot also contains milk.
Proof that I didn't make this up (and quite frankly, why would I want to?):
Now that we are all up to speed with the concept of paysan bread, I can start talking about Euphorium and my lunch.
The Euphorium Bakery was an artisan bakery chain in London specialising in bread and cake products. Everything seemed to be going fine, with a central bakery supplying seemingly unheard of and possibly even made-up types of breads to a small number of shops around the capital. That all changed when Tesco 'invested' in them, which apparently included installing a Tesco employee as CEO and then rolling out the Euphorium brand in their stores under the impression of an independent brand. There seems to be some confusion on the interwebs over whether Emphorium will totally replace the standard bakery section in all Tesco stores but this only started to become clearer to me the more I investigated after I walked into Tesco in Watford for some lunch. I even asked the staff behind the counter if Euphorium was part of Tesco but they seemed very uncomfortable to confirm or deny the question at hand.
So, on first impressions Euphorium seem to be going for the Pret vibe with the colour scheme and text based signs. However, on closer inspection things start to unravel:
Have you got any idea what that actually means? According to the Human Rights Act 1998, I have the right to life, the right to liberty and the right to a free trial but I'm afraid that I am yet to be convinced that the right to be confused by obscure and pointless marketing is one for which I will launch an angry assault on Downing Street to protect.
Instead, I'll stick with my crayfish sandwich thanks very much, and I'm sure you are all chomping at the bit to know what this tasted like. Well, I can tell you that it was... OK. The paysan bread was dense and a bit like a wholemeal sourdough and without anything else to compare it to, I can only really tell you that it wasn't as nice as a non-wholemeal sourdough. However, I think that was probably due to the fact that it has been sat in a chiller cabinet for however long and was way too cold. The crayfish and rocket were pretty good but the Rose Marie sauce was strong and seriously sweet, too sweet for the rocket to withstand which was a real shame.
I accompanied this with a bottle of Breckland Orchard's Dandelion and Burdock, which I have to say was bloody lovely.
Was it too sweet considering the sugary sauce drenching the crayfish and rocket? Yes, of course but it's a unique taste hits all my buttons and this version is tippy top. It aint cheap at £2.20 per bottle but if you see it, buy it and re-live the processed sugar rush of your youth.
So remember, the next time you go into Tesco, grab a bottle of Breckland, demand your loaf of paysan and refuse to to leave until you get them.
www.brecklandorchard.co.uk
www.euphoriumbakery.com
It is a statement of fact that The Child likes eating sushi, she likes sushi in the same way that she likes olives, and she loves olives. And yoghurt. Sushi, olives and yoghurt probably at the same time if she got half the chance. Following an outstanding week and an absolutely smashed dance exam, I asked her where she wants to eat out for a treat and after I received the initial answer of 'America', we negotiated and agreed somewhere within a 10 mile radius. Kokoru has recently opened in 'intu Milton Keynes' and so it seemed a perfect excuse to sate The Child's immediate desire for sushi. It's a kiosk type affair designed for shoppers wanting to scratch their healthy lunch itch, and it seems to serve up that requirement well enough with swift service for those who need to return to work quickly (the Council offices only being across the road).
A brief word on the 'ombi-awnce', the colour scheme is minimal with white being the apparent go-to colour of choice for their interior designer. Considering that that was clearly the extent of the ambience, we chose our rolls and sat outside in the sunshine and decided that perhaps we'll leave the hot choices for another time. It's not that the place is clearly intended to be a soulless cave waiting to devour any glimmer of happiness from your life, it's just that because it's so devoid of any personality or in fact any kind of individuality at all, that seems to be what happens by default.
Anyway, on to the food, they serve bento boxes as well as hot food served from the canteen style stainless steel buckets but we decided to go with the following for our lunch time sushi bender:
As you will know, due to the fact that my knowledge/understanding of sushi types is, as previously stated, lacking in any resemblance of sophistication or finesse, I will refer to what we ate in the following way: the salmon ones, the tuna ones, the mysterious fishy one, the prawn one, the crab stick ones and the cucumber ones.
Firstly, box one and the salmon ones. These were... OK. A bit fishy with a slice of salmon which stood up well. The tuna on the other hand was totally lost against the rice, the texture was nice and soft, if only I could actually taste the damn thing. Next up was the mysteriously fishy one - I say mysterious because while I could perhaps have made an educated guess as to the source of the mottled white rectangle, the truth is that the only reason why I knew it was a fish was because I was in a sushi restaurant*. The prawn one simply cemented the problem - was it prawn, or was it cardboard? Your answers on a postcard please! Perhaps it was the rice, or perhaps not. Either way, I suspect the problems run deeper.
Onwards to box two and the crab stick ones, these had the additional element of having been rolled in poppy seeds. It didn't save it. The Child, while she tucked into her rolls of generic fish-and-rice happily enough, she turned her nose up at this point. She had one, leaving me with the rest of the bloody box which was a struggle I don't mind telling you. They just weren't nice - the crab sticks had some kind of seafood sauce which seemed, quite contrary to expectations, make them taste even worse.
Box three then was cracked open with limited hope. but the cucumber ones were only a relative salvation. The three elements of cucumber, rice and seaweed were in proportion and individually defined - this is all good news. Well done Kokoro. However, they still didn't have any kind of memorable characteristic that would give me any reason to say; 'mmm, that is some good cucumber, seaweed and rice'.
So suffice to say, our main impression wasn't great - perhaps we'll give the hot food a try but I have to say that the chances are slim and until I manage to get round to seeing what Akasaka in Wolverton is like, if you want sushi, go to Yo!, at least you can amuse yourself with a mini conveyer belt while they strip your wallet of cash as you walk through the door.
kokorouk.com
*And believe me, I use the term very loosely.
Last night the edible great and the good converged at the Woburn Sculpture Gallery to celebrate another year in the Milton Keynes food calendar. The Milton Keynes Food awards looked to celebrate and reward the Best in Class of all aspects of the food and service industry present in, or nearby Milton Keynes. They also gave everyone a lovely little cuddly cow presumably courtesy of sponsor; The Great Branding Company.
The event was fantastically well attended with the room full of lively conversation, debate and tuxedos/cocktail dresses. I was seated with the attendees from Whittlebury Hall, whom it turned out, had come en masse (ten of them) to support their entry into the chef of the year category (Nige - who didn't even know he had entered until after the fact). I immediately felt the sense of camaraderie with a team who turns out in such force to support one of their number, even if it is for the free booze. Talking to the guys, they put a good case forward for Mrs P and I to visit and I hope to do so in the near future, it's great to start building up some decent fine dining destinations.
Looking around though, Whittlebury Hall wasn't the only contingent to empty it's kitchens to spend their Sunday evening pretending that they didn't care if they won or not; local pubs, independent restaurant as well as the highstreet chains rubbed shoulders with micro producers and growing suppliers who all put in a sterling performance with spare chairs being the real premium of the evening.
Before we get to the food, I must give a quick shout out to The Shures. Well, more precisely to the young mans amazing shoes, which could, quite legitimately, have been used to impress Bear Grylls by spearing fish in a Indonesian survival situation. As remarkable as their dress sense was though, they performed admirably and kept the room going through the evening, well done boys.
Interspersed between the awards, entertainment and gawping at the paintings/sculptures we also had food. I think it's fair to say that through the course of the evening, the kitchen struggled. In fairness, catering for an audience comprised solely of chefs and associated professional foodies is going to be really, really tough. But then trying to do it for 200 of them all at the same time is a Herculean task reserved only for the terminally foolish of the industry. Because the evening should be all about the celebration of the winners, it would be unfair to concentrate on those areas which didn't quite meet perfection. So I'll only briefly run through the dishes just to give you a sense of what kept us all going through the evening.
Firstly, a vegetable terrine with parmesan crisp and leafy greens at the back. Nicely seasoned, it held together well and the crisp had some serious cheesiness to it.
Venison with roast potatoes, cabbage and puree. This was... underdone, but the gravy was good.
Finally, the desert looked pretty and tasted great too. The biscuit was my favourite part of the dish but the strawberry mousse held up well and there wasn't a single plate on the table which wasn't cleaned off.
For those of us who were driving back home, the Virtual Orchard had put on bottles of their apple juice for the tables, and I have to say that it was quite delicious. I'll have to seek out a few more of those at home.
So for a full list of the winners, keep your eye on the MKFA website and you'll be able to catch up with all the movers and shakers in the area. There were certainly a few surprises in the mix and a few results that I wouldn't have predicted!
Here are a few highlights from what I can remember:
Best Restaurant: Woburn Brasserie
Best use of local ingredients: The Bell and Bear
Best Cafe: MK Coffee Shop
Best Family Restaurant: Red Hot World Buffet
Best Branded Restaurant: Chiquito
Best local product (food): Moo Kow Jam
I'll link back to the full list once it's revealed. But for now, I'll sign off with the overriding memories of a night filled with fun, laughter and a whole lot of people who were not thinking about going into work the following morning.
And here is a statue of a bloke with his knob out - he proved popular with the room all night long, usually in scenarios involving the stuffed cows. I'll leave you to work out the details.
Look what came through my post-box today!
I don't think I've ever been considered a VIP so I can assure you that this is, quite possibly, the most exciting thing that's happened to me since I discovered you can use butter for more than just cooking!
Here we are on the eve of the prestigious occasion and I have to say that I am very excited, not just for the evening itself, although having never dined at the Woburn Sculpture Gallery I am looking forward to that a lot, but also to mix and mingle with the culinary creme of Milton Keynes; from restauranteur to blogger and back again, a room full of the passion behind the service is something not to be missed.
So, People of the world*, here is my promise to you: Not only will I don my tuxedo and red braces with pride, chat with those seated not only to the left of me but also the right, I will finally document as many interesting/ludicrous goings-on as I possibly can. I will attempt to bring you the blow by blow, or plate by plate happenings as we progress through the evening. There will be starters and I dare say, there might even be a few puddings going on but when things get really tough, I will think of you all and push through that cheese-board wall.
Stomach prepare yourself, for tomorrow we go into battle!!
*In addition to my amusingly against-the-odds growing audience, I've been noticing some dodgy Russian/Chinese spammers tracking my pages recently, I'm still not sure what possible benefit they may gain from it though, so why not take advantage?
Driving down the motorway, back past Verona and on to Lake Garda we knew that we were experiencing Italy in several different ways. We drove past the tourist buses, ignored the constant lakeside hotels and dived onwards, deep into the mountains. The twisty, turny roads asked more than our hired Suzuki Swift could really manage and the frustrated Italian drivers swerved past us in a deadly game of chicken with the steady stream of on-coming traffic.
But then we got there. Gargnano is a tiny port village hiding in plain sight on the shores of Lake Garda and operates as, well very little if truth be told, and that is precisely the way I liked it. We arrived at the house (a two bedroom flat sandwiched between two family homes with the grandparents upstairs and the daughter/granddaughter downstairs. Lovely people.) unpacked and were immediately ordered (by the aforementioned grandmother) to leave and go into the village. This was apparently because we had almost missed the most important event of the year: the lemon festival. Not wanting to cause offence, we dutifully trooped off down the mountain to the village to see what the fuss was about.
Lemons, it seems, come in more shapes and sizes than I had ever imagined or actually wanted to imagine. Some (the ones with fingers more precisely) will probably haunt my dreams for years to come. But if you look closely at the picture, you'll see The Child pointing at one lemon in particular.
This mutant beast was the size of a melon. A lemon melon if you will. Yeah, I know.
Anyway, by this time we were all settling into the Italian way of things and so stopped for an aperitif by the wharf, at the same bar that proudly proclaimed that DH Lawrence was also a guest, no less. I can believe it because once you start drinking with a view like this, you will believe just about anything:
For the next couple of evenings we sat and drank more aperitifs, ate more gelato and basically remembered we were on holiday. There were a few restaurants open but we were directed to an alleyway in between a bike shop and a drain, Restorante Al Vicolo was deserted but we knew the secret of Italian dining by now and plonked ourselves down anyway.
We started with fondue - perhaps not quite an Italian staple, but this close to the Swiss border, we figured it would be OK and as such it proved to be. The Children eagerly dipped bread and pretty much anything else they could fit on their forks into a cauldron of melty cheese, while Mrs P and I enjoyed some octopus salad. This was followed by pasta piled on top of a massive block of some kind of cheese rind, spaghetti with sausage and frozen gnocchi. A quick note on frozen gnocchi: it was cooked, then served with some kind of cheesy ice-cream with a chocolate stripe. Super weird, but I'm glad I tried it and looking back, I can see this was quite a cheese-heavy meal.
I have to say that the sausage spaghetti was right up there with one of the best dishes of the trip. Beautifully made pasta coupled with local, rough sausage with a dash of butter. Lovely.
The next day we made it up Monte Baldo and saw this:
Then we ate this:
At Baita Dei Forti. Homemade pasta with cheese (more cheese), beef ragu and a garlic and oil variant. All were, (considering the fact that everyone knows that food at any geographic tourist attraction is universally rubbish), actually really nice and not over priced. The spaghetti was all home-made, we were proudly informed, and the sauces were not bad at all. Well done them.
Then, for our last night we decided to go back for some pizza at Restorante Pizzeria.
Ham and rocket, prawns and courgette, salami, all proved both thin, crispy and enormous. So much so that we took the leftovers home and enjoyed them a second time around. Not quite up to our first nights standard but still a wonderfully tasty example of amazing pizza with excellent sourdough bases.
So that, ladies and gentlemen is a round up of our Italian adventure. We ate loads, drank more and generally had a fantastic time. There were ups and downs as well as a few other directions but all in all we came home feeling more tired than when we left. Mrs P and I will certainly be going back to Venice again, maybe some of the others too, just perhaps without the kids.
