On Brick Lane, of course it's complete madness, but only because you didn't think of it first - and they have jobs!
Phoebe Rivers Cripps was at the Suffolk Show this year - and will bring her food truck to your event. I tried a very nice longhorn beef chilli.
We have been going to this for years, but have never tried cold pressed coffee although it was last years hot new thing, until we met a nice young man from Hey Bermondsey Coffee Co who gave us a taste at this years event. We also found the meat mince pies for our Christmas cafe and as usual, enough pens to last the year at sf hq.
Oh yes they can! This was one of the nicest things at Meatopia with larger portions and a beautiful hot-sauce pineapple relish and so we had more than one. But of course we are biased - we are half Caribbean!
The Mr Cutlets competition was Meatopia's chance for anyone to cook alongside some of the finest chefs from the UK and around the world to showcase a dish this year. The competition ran from 2nd July 2015 to 2nd August 2015 when the team selected a shortlist of six finalists to be invited to London to cook their dish. Two winners were selected from the finalists to cook at Meatopia 2015. Entry to the competition was open to everyone, from members of the public to aspiring young chefs and contestants who needed to supply details of their dish in advance. Inspector X entered and cooked a dish she created for the occassion - we often cook over a camp fire - Red Poll Shin and Tail, and made dumplings on the day. She wasn't selected - but she was the only girl!
Founded in the USA and brought to the UK by Richard Turner of London butchers Turner and George, Meatopia is a festival of high quality, ethically sourced meat cooked over wood and charcoal in a weekend-long event of meat, drink, fire and music that we covered for SuffolkFoodie last year when we first went to Tobacco Dock for a day out and accidentally found ourselves surrounded by huge hunks of men, throwing huge hunks of meat on huge and hot blazing fires. But this year it was very different! A woman entered the competition to win a chance to cook at the event. And she made a stew. And it was our very own lovely, brave and intrepid Inspector X!! See Mr (or Mrs) Cutlets for the result!
We met Henry at the Urban food Fest where his business partner Rob made delicious ice cream and froyo rolls right in front of us. This fast and furious ice cream involves a process which originated in Thailand; cream or yoghurt with various favourings and additional ingredients (meringue...fruit...) is put on a -30 degree plate and everything is mixed together very fast. After approximately two minutes the initial milk or yogurt freezes and is ready to be scraped off the cold plate into rolls. Quick Bite food magazine have already interviewed Henry and Rob and this is what they said. 'When we were back-packing around Thailand at the tender age of 20, we discovered a new way of making ice cream. ‘Stir fried Ice cream’ is the official terminology for it, and because we hadn’t ever seen it in the UK before, we decided to create Pan-n-Ice and bring it back.' Thanks guys!
We were invited to attend this lovely town's annual event this year as the official bloggers and spent the morning queueing to sample some of the best bangers this part of Suffolk has to offer. The only problem with inviting bloggers and tweeters is that you need a strong fast signal - and as we know Suffolk seems to have some of the worst in the country.
The London Tea Exchange is just a wet tea bags throw away from Liverpool Street if you are in London for the day or need an excuse to go there. Close to Spitalfields Market entrance where you could spend the whole day just wandering around, we were attracted by the tea samples being offered on the street to entice us into this beautiful shop. Faysal Ahmed described his tea tasting workshops and we bought some China White Monkey and a Hibiscus tea for later. In some parts of the world they do use specially trained monkeys to pick the tea but I think ours was picked by a human.
We have been sooooo busy over the last few weeks but had no time to tell you about it. We have moved the website to a new template with a much better looking Cook Book recipe page and a newsletter... sign up to receive news about our events as we write it. The Inspector entered the Mr Cutlets competition at Meatopia and got through to the the finals of six chefs with her Red Poll Shin and Tail stew and dumplings; the meat was from Elmswell butchers and had to be cooked on an open fire at the competition to select who would have the winners space at Meatopia. We went to the Cereal Killer Cafe (before it was attacked by anarchists !!!) Framlingham Sausage Fest, the Urban Food Fest in Shoreditch where we met Henry whose mum makes the sauces for Pan n Ice, and now we are at Blackthorpe Barn where our Little House of Cooking has been doing a pop-up cafe seven days a week for the Christmas shop, Christmas trees and Craft Fair and will be there until Tuesday 22nd of December. See you there!