Same same, but different.

I'm writing this after a cookery course on a farm in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It's a course I've done already, some years ago, back when I hadn't done my chef course yet, before I had worked in restaurants, before I ran a cafe, before I supported, worked for and left a food charity. It's left me thinking about the journey I've been on since the last course and wondering what that means I call "now" - do I call it After? Different? New?

When I get back to the UK there will be lots of change. There's been a fair bit already - I've got a new kitchen with more space, which necessitated a cupboard clear out to prioritise the kind of food I want to make in it. I've boxed up a hefty weight of cookery books I don't love enough to keep. I'm soon starting a new job in a field I am passionate about, but it's definitely not in the food industry. I don't yet know much about the people I'll be working with but they'd really have to go some to beat the levels of food obsession of the team I have left behind. Frankly, I'm a bit worried about where my passion for cooking will fit in to my life if it isn't part of what my work involves, and therefore a labeller of who I am, and I wonder how I will keep learning about it. The last thing I want is for it to fall back.

Something I have learned recently is how important it is to keep learning from each other. That for me was the best bit about working in hospitality - learning from chefs passionate about their craft, and sharing my knowledge with young people who were timid about cookery and watching them bloom. Recently a colleague challenged himself by exploring how diverse and exciting veganism can be, and this reminded me to break from routine. Dinner at a friend's lead to my buying a slow cooker, which helped see me through the kitchen refurbishment but also reminded me about the beauty of cheap cuts of meat and the gift of time in the evenings. Learning how to work the timer and pre-set options on my new oven did the same. Shopping with a friend in a Lebanese supermarket taught me new ingredients and flavours, which made me get up early on a Sunday to spend time making breakfast. Another friend is going to help me demystify my pressure cooker. There are themes here of sharing the love of food and also of gifting oneself time, to spend exploring new foods and flavours.

There is every chance that not working in, or talking about, food all day every day will mean that I have more space and time to explore it on my own terms and more drive to get creative. I did however think this would be the case when I moved from working in hospitality to working office based for a food charity, and it simply didn't. Basically, you have to make your own opportunities to create wonderful food, around all the other stuff that takes up life space like work, housemin, relationships, family and exercise. The best breadmaker I know is my wonderful friend the academic who can turn her dough in between marking papers at home, which is not a possibility for everyone. For me it feels like there is just so much food I want to learn and make, and so little time, it seems, to make it all! And if I am not making chatter-worthy food regularly, then frankly, who am I?

But maybe this is where I am worrying too much, and being too hard on myself. Last Christmas, at an annual dinner bonanza with friends, where we usually try to outcook each other, we all had circumstances that nearly lead to us cancelling. So I ended up making roast turkey - we'd never actually celebrated this way and it was suitably undemanding of my time the week before. And it was a glorious dish, perfect to remind us that the important thing was coming together as friends to share a meal.

Today's cookery course was much the same in content as it was for me almost five years ago, but this time round it wasn't about frantically making notes about it all. It was about taking it in, enjoying it and noticing its simplicity. Thai cookery isn't actually that complicated - the same combinations of ingredients pop up regularly and there is an economy in things like curry pastes, which are often adapted from each other into totally different things from the same core. I've come away just as excited about recreating it at home, but in a more relaxed way.

So maybe that's the answer. Maybe all I need to remember is what I think food is all about anyway - enjoyment, exploration and sharing, and that this can be found in wonderfully simple foods done really well just as much as in complex techniques and flavours. It's just important that it's bringing a smile. And that doesn't sound nearly as challenging as constantly pushing my food exploration limits.

It might mean I have to find more excuses to cook for people however. But how bad is that?

Location:Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Hangry

I'm now on day 4 out of my 5 on FoodCycle's #BreadlineChallenge. It's been an interesting journey.
I say interesting, but actually I mean frustrating.

Frustrating because of the constant temptation to break budget - whether this be by being told it would be ok to have a sip of my boyfriend's pint at the pub rather than stick to water, or by the way my stomach rumbles at 3pm when I know that, really, my lunch was sufficient.
Frustrating because I didn't realise how easily I would succumb to the need to maintain my working routine - not to mention my relationship with my colleagues - with tea I don't really need. Or a couple of biscuits from a shared pack.

Frustrating because when Tuesday's apple suffered a dent on the way in to work, I couldn't buy another one. And when my over-enthusiastic fridge froze my celery and carrot solid, my mid-afternoon snacks were no longer something to look forward to but something I had to put up with.
Frustrating because I have had to work my life around my food. This is usually a concept that would fill me with joy, but this week, food has just got in the way. I have forgotten a doctor's appointment because my mind was more concerned with what I was supposed to be cooking when I got home. I have felt like a rubbish hostess in my own home when I don't quite have enough milk to make tea for my parents when they pop over and make my porridge in the morning, so I've had to use water for my porridge instead.
Frustrating because by only doing 5 days of the challenge, I am restricting my budget further. I have enough base ingredients to get me through 7 days, and yet not quite enough money for some greens, or fish, or eggs. Or chocolate. Nutritionally, this week doesn't look great.

I have had a background headache since Sunday evening, which could of course be nothing at all to do with the challenge. But it has made me wonder if I'm a bit dependent on sugar or caffeine, and it's made things that little bit less 'fun'.

But more than anything, this experience is making me frustrated at just how much living on this food budget takes over your life. Everything is having to be made from scratch - and this is time consuming. I know how to make bread because I'm a trained chef, and while a trip to the library to use the internet would show you how, this kind of knowledge isn't something you can then perfect through through trial and error when money for raw ingredients is tight. I'm finding myself irritated at having beige food every day because all I bought in the way of herbs and spices is garam masala. Again, this is a result of my having fairly broad food horizons and being used to colourful plates. I feel cheated when I hear that someone else managed to find tinned tomatoes cheaper. We've all become a bit territorial over our food in the office - haggling with each other for teabags and the like. It's brought up debates like "if this were my usual budget, at what stage would I have decided that a stick blender is a vital part of my life?", "if I had to cook from scratch like this every day, how would it affect my gas and electricity bill?" and "how can I maintain my principles and care about the planet when my money won't allow it?"

It angers me that I have a choice to be on this challenge, and I have a passion for food which is backed up with skills and knowledge to make basic food bearable, whilst there are single parents up and down the country frantically trying to nourish their kids and maintain a stable home life whilst having to hunt down the cheapest food. If £2.86/day for food is a reality of your life, then so is stress over where to find it, how to prepare it and when to find the time.

So, to those of you now halfway through the challenge - keep going. If, like me, you feel a fire in your belly from it (and one that isn't just a result of eating lentils every day), then I hope you are getting angry too. Having to feed yourself on this budget isn't fair. I'm biased and I know that one solution is to volunteer for FoodCycle, so that more people can access a free nutritious meal, giving them a bit of a breather from their budget (and their kitchen) for the week. But there are other solutions out there. Let's get the conversations going.

You can support me, my colleagues and our wonderful volunteers through their #BreadlineChallenge week by donating here.

#BreadlineChallenge - The Shop

For most people taking part, FoodCycle's #BreadlineChallenge starts today. Up and down the country, volunteers will be living off £2.86 per day to highlight the harsh realities of food poverty and the reasons why organisations such as FoodCycle exist.

I started my challenge yesterday, and did most of my food shopping on Saturday, having started researching prices in the week.

This meant:

• 5 different shops
• 2.5 hours traipsing up and down my local high street in the rain
• 3 additional aborted shop visits as I deliberated over bacon, fish and the reduced section

So, what did I buy with my £14.30?

Ambient
Chopped tomatoes - 4 tins for £1 (Sainsburys)
Basics vegetable stock cubes - 30p (Sainsburys)
Basics pasta - 35p (Sainsburys)
500g brown rice - 90p (Sainsburys)
Tin basics kidney beans - 30p (Sainsburys)
1.5kg Plain flour - 45p (Lidl)
500g porridge oats - 65p (Tesco)
500g red lentils, and 150g Garam masala - on offer together for £1.50 (Tesco)

Fruit and Veg
1 lemon - 35p (Sainsburys)
5 small bananas - 37p (Sainsburys)
2 carrots - 20p (Sainsburys)
Bag of small basics apples (contained 7!) - 80p (Sainsburys)
Small butternut squash - 49p (Lidl)
Celery - 59p (Lidl)
2 parsnips - 65p (Sainsburys)
1 red chilli, 4 onions, 1 red pepper, a small piece of ginger and a bulb of garlic - £1.03 (local greengrocer)
3 avocados - 50p (skilful haggling with the £1-a-bowl man!)

Dairy
500g Basics natural yogurt - 50p (Sainsburys)
Basics mozzarella - 50p
4 pints semi skimmed milk - £1 (Iceland)

Fresh
50g Fresh yeast from the bakery counter - 20p (Sainsburys)

Cheats
I'm being pretty strict about the challenge. I went to pub quiz this evening and took a bottle of water with me. I've given away the food in my fridge that won't make it to the end of the week. I'm even using a counter-top fridge from my uni days as my Breadline supply store so I don't use anything that's not from the budget. But there have been lines I've crossed that others might not cross.
Salt, pepper and sugar - I haven't bought this, as it is freely available in fast food outlets for anyone to help themselves to. I needed 1tbsp salt for the bread and 2tbsp sugar.
Oil - I'm really debating this one. The cheapest option, it seems, is to buy lard, and I'm not quite prepared to do that. The most economical and acceptable option for me personally would be to buy a block of vegetable fat for 79p. But I won't use it after this week, which I feel is wasteful. As things stand I have £1.72 left in my budget, so I can afford this. However, I already know that I will have some food left over from the week, so I reason that if this were true on occasion, I would probably have some cooking oil in my cupboard already. So I'm using what I already have, very sparingly.

Nutrition
My shopping is fairly balanced, but if I had the extra two days of the challenge there are definitely some gaps that need filling.
I will be getting a good hit of protein from the lentils, milk, yoghurt and cheese, which will also provide calcium.
I think I'll be getting about 4 of my 5-a-day of fruit and veg, so that could definitely be better. There's no leafy veg, so my iron intake this week is poor and I will be missing a number of vitamins and minerals.
There's no fish. I'm planning on using some of my remaining budget for either a small piece of coley or on some oily fish such as tinned mackerel for essential fatty acids.

I made white bread, but porridge and brown pasta will provide fibre, and are slow burning carbohydrates.
As I've not bought any, it's definitely going to be a diet low in salt and sugar!

Challenges and Things I'd Change
I feel fairly confident I can make it without tea and coffee, and I'm thinking about cutting up my apple for lunch so I can use the core to flavour my water to liven things up a bit. I'll definitely be using the lemon rind for this. But by the end of day one I have a headache, which I think is due to not drinking enough water, so I need to watch out if water is all that's on offer!

I'm already finding myself thinking about snacks more than I anticipated. I have some celery sticks for tomorrow at work but at this rate my leftover budget might end up on chocolate rather than oily fish... Again, if I had more time and money on the challenge, some sultanas would provide snacks, iron, fibre and make breakfast more fun.

I made bread using plain flour rather than strong flour as it is cheaper and careful foodie forum research told me that this is possible, with extra time for kneading and proving as the flour contains less gluten. It has definitely made an odd few loaves - it looks ok but feels a bit too spongy and tastes a bit trashy. Maybe I actually over proved it. It is definitely better toasted!

I have 500g of flour left after my bread-making bonanza, and I will have milk leftover too. If I were to have 6, rather than five days of the challenge, I would totally buy eggs and treat myself to pancakes.

The time this is all taking is really quite significant. I changed my plans this weekend to factor in breadmaking, and an unexpected trip to visit someone in hospital meant I had to throw together an unsatisfying dinner. Trying to carry on with my week as usual is definitely going to be tricky...

You can support me, my colleagues and our wonderful volunteers through their #BreadlineChallenge week by donating here.

FoodCycle's #BreadlineChallenge

These days, my day job is working for FoodCycle, a national food charity that serves free communiy meals cooked by volunteers from food that would otherwise be thrown away by supermarkets. I got here by volunteering at my local hub, enjoyed it so much that I wanted to do it full time, and ended up in the team running their wonderful café for a year. Now I’m working at HQ, managing a number of projects similar to the one I started volunteering at.

A major part of what we do is trying our best to raise awareness of, and tackle, food poverty in England. We are not a soup kitchen or a food bank (although our projects around the country often collaborate with both), but instead somewhere that anybody can come and eat a nutritious meal, cooked from scratch with care, and make friends in their community. Our guests sit down and have a three-course meal brought to them at laid tables, often dressed with flowers. We only serve vegetarian and vegan meals both to minimise risks of food safety and to make the meals inclusive to all cultures and beliefs. People come to eat with us for many reasons – some are motivated by wanting to do their bit to reduce food waste. Some come because it gets them out of the house, provides some respite from caring responsibilities or gives them an opportunity to socialise somewhere warm and friendly. But some come because they have little choice; they can’t afford food and they need to eat.

My daily budget during #BreadlineChallenge

Next week, our volunteers around the country and the team at HQ are taking part in the Breadline Challenge. Research has shown that those people on such limited income that they are living on the breadline have an average budget of £2.86 per day for food and drink. So that is what our budget will be too. If we want to go out for a pint, it needs to come out of the budget. If we drizzle our budget pasta with olive oil, that does too. If we travel an extra mile or so to get to that budget food store, we should probably consider how the journey was paid for, and if we grow our own herbs, we need to factor in how much they cost.

It will be the first time I’m taking part in the annual challenge – the café team decided last year that this would simply be too difficult alongside catering orders and communal eating with our volunteers – and my colleagues warn me it will be very hard. I’m already having to wimp out of taking part for a whole week as both of my parents celebrate landmark birthdays next week, which also means a party. I'll still be doing five days though - with a total budget of £14.30*. We’ve already decided as a team that we can’t eat the cookies that will inevitably be put out at a training day next week, nor can we make use of the tea and coffee supplies already in the office – these are luxuries that simply wouldn’t be available to people on the budget we are calling into attention.

I will be blogging my way through the week and sharing my menus, as well as highlighting all those pitfalls I’m sure even my careful planning won’t have seen coming – like needing chocolate at 3pm on a Wednesday…

Further information about FoodCycle's Breadline challenge, where the figure of £2.86 came from and why we are doing this can be found here.

You can sponsor me to take part in thie challenge here. All money raised goes to helping us to open more much-needed hubs around the country and support our volunteers in the fantastic work they do.

*I will be donating the £5.72 from the extra two days of the challenge week to FoodCycle

Award Winning!

Well, hello there!

We have met before, it's just that I don't come here often. So it's not surprising that I'm vaguely familiar - but after our little rendezvous, you'll want us to stay in touch.

To those of you who have occasionally wondered where on earth I've been, apologies.
To those of you new here, welcome! Please take a look around. I'm doing the place up and it's on its way to being fabulous. Make yourself at home.

I couldn't possibly fit all the stories behind my radio silence into one blog post, but all in good time. Let's take this post as a relaunch of sorts, and allow me to reintroduce myself as

AN AWARD-WINNING COOK!

Right now, my bill-paying work does not include cooking. This could be a Sorry State Of Affairs, but it does allow me to cook more in my spare time, i.e in a leisurely fashion, and this is a Good Thing. It is a particularly Good Thing when it means I win prizes.

Over the past two years, my lovely home town has introduced me to new friends, new skills, new cuisines and new cooking opportunities. It is a Transition Town, designed to nurture ventures that seek to build, promote, or improve a sense of community. Aside from volunteering locally, I am barely more involved in helping this movement than any average Joe, but I do at least like to think that by doing a little bit where I can, even if that's just explaining the concept to somebody, I am doing something positive.

Every year, Transition Town Tooting runs Foodival, a celebration of growing, eating and cooking locally produced and sustainable food. And with that comes the Top Tooting Cook competition.

So on Saturday, I went along to see the frankly enormous mountain of vegetables that had been grown in local community gardens, allotments, backyards and window boxes, and as an entrant, I was allowed to take my pick of the beautiful produce on offer.

I selected:

• Tomatoes - big, small, green, yellow, red and orange. Some squishy and some firm
• A piece of horseradish root
• Some home-grown and dried garlic
• A small beetroot
• Thyme
• Some beautiful nasturtium flowers and leaves

Back home, I put the tomatoes (about 2kg in all) along with the washed and peeled horseradish, half a clove of garlic, a good bunch of basil and a small slice of beetroot into a blender in batches, before using a stick blender to make the mixture really smooth. I added a healthy dose of freshly ground pepper, about 2.5tbsp of red wine vinegar and a good couple of pinches of salt. I was being halal-friendly on this occasion, but if I wasn't, I'd have added a couple of shots of vodka.

After tasting the mixture (and adding more horseradish, seasoning and vinegar to make it really punchy), I poured it into clean muslin cloth in a bowl, before tying the cloth into a bag, knotting it really well and hanging it over a bowl to drip through overnight. This needs to be done somewhere cool where pests won't be a problem - the best place for me happened to be the living room and my housemate reported quite enjoying the aromatic water feature during her film night.

In the meantime, just because I could, I halved a good handful of leftover baby tomatoes, tossed them with some salt, pepper, thyme leaves, olive oil and a little sugar, laid them in a roasting tin and put them into a really hot oven, along with a foil pouch of whole garlic cloves and olive oil. I turned the oven off immediately and left them in there overnight. By the morning, they were tender and delicious and barely made it past the poached eggs brunch I made to thank my sous chef.

This 'moonblush' method is such a simple thing to do with tomatoes that I often pick up a bowl of them from the greengrocers at the end of my road, or pounce on a reduced punnet in my local supermarket - because it's so much better than the sunblush tomatoes you can get from the deli counter, and so little effort. Give it a try!

Anyway, by Sunday morning, the muslin bag was considerably lighter, and below it shimmered a bowl of gloriously pink and clear liquid, which I tasted for seasoning (only salt can be added at this stage!) and then chilled.

Just after lunch, off I went to Foodival, where I presented my consomme decorated with some baby basil leaves, some drops of beautiful olive oil and the nasturtiums:

Easy peasy. And a few hours later, I became one of Tooting's Top Cooks! You will shortly see me at my local pub, celebrating with money off my food bill. But first, I have to cook my way through the box of lovely locally grown fruit and veg I was given.

There's going to be runner bean chutney, squash and sage risotto, courgette curry, carrot cake.....

#onepoundpantry - the fourth

So, a string of family meals (thanks mum!) and dinners at friends houses (thanks chums!) has meant that, whilst I may have saved pennies, I've had to put my #onepoundpantry challenge on a temporary hold. 

Until today!!

After a loonnnng day at work, tonight I basically couldn't be bothered. So I had a look in my fridge and decided to make an  odds-and-sod it salad.

Languishing in my fridge and salad draw I found:

• 2 carrots
• A kohlrabi - leftover from a FoodCycle session at the weekend
• Leftover cabbage from my #onepoundpantry turkey and bacon pie
• Some slightly squishy tomatoes
• Broad beans donated from a green-fingered neighbour
• A red pepper and some frisée lettuce left behind by my housemate before he went away for the week (Mwahahaha! You snooze, you lose!)
• Coriander bought for an abortive #onepoundpantey meal last week before Mum called with an invite - 49p
• Eggs leftover from last week's beetroot ravioli.
• Half a lemon

Being a kitchen gadget-aholic, I have a mandolin and decided that using it would make dinner quicker. I cut matchsticks of carrot, kohlrabi and an apple from the fruit bowl to create a makeshift slaw. To this I added lemon juice, a little white wine vinegar, olive oil and seasoning. There's even enough left for tomorrow! I finely sliced some of the cabbage to add to this, along with the frisée and some coriander. While I blanched and refreshed the podded broad beans and soft-boiled an egg, I cut fine dice of tomato and pepper. 

The whole lot got tossed together and served. Not only were there lots of different flavours going in here, it had loads of colour, and hence vitamins, a good filling hit of protein, and an added benefit of everything being chopped small means that it was quick to eat as well as make! 

Score!

TOTAL #onepoundpantry SPEND: 49p

AMOUNT BANKED: 51p

TOTAL BANKED TO DATE: £1.02

#onepoundpantry - Wednesday

Tonight I cooked beetroot ravioli for my housemate and I, and given that I was not at work today I had a little extra time to spend. Saying that, dinner probably only took an hour from start to finish once the ingredients were in place.

Yesterday, aforementioned housemate bought a bunch of beetroot for £1 from the '£1 a bowl' man on the corner. I gave them a good wash before drying them and putting them in a roasting pan on a bed of sea salt and thyme stalks I had dried in a cupboard. This was fully enclosed with a foil lid and popped into the oven at 180C for about 45 minutes. The beetroot need to be cooked until they are tender so check them from 30 minutes onwards as their size will affect cooking times.

Once they were cooked I left them to cool with the foil still on the tray, allowing them to steam as this makes the skins much easier to remove - when they're cool enough to handle, that is, and wearing rubber gloves! Once they were cool I blitzed them in my food processor with seasoning and a little cream cheese I needed to use up to make a purée. I should mention at this point that some of my beetroot a turned out to be golden, and others pink, so I decided to make not one purée but two, in different colours. I kept a couple of little beetroots back for later.

Then I got onto making pasta. I bought a box of mixed weight free range eggs for £1 and beat two larger ones together. Once clean and dry, I used the food processor to blitz 200g of type 00 flour I need to use up on the cupboard with a good couple of pinches of salt. Then, with the motor running, I drizzled in the beaten egg just until the mixture looked like couscous. You will probably need to use all of the egg. If it clumps together, add a little more flour. You can mix it together by hand as well. Once you have the mix, knead it for 10minutes before leaving it to rest wrapped in cling film for half an hour; if it feels too dry, leave it to rest with a damp tea towel covering it instead. 

After half an hour, you're ready to roll! I have a pasta machine at home I bought for less than €20 on holiday in France that has served my needs fine, but if not you can roll it out by hand with a rolling pin. Dust surfaces with flour before you start and keep extra pasta covered with a damp cloth. Extra pasta sheets need to be dusted with semolina while you work on filling the others.

I worked out the sizing of my ravioli and used piping bags to pipe beetroot filling onto a sheet of pasta before carefully laying another sheet on top so that the edges matched together.

Then I used the blunt edges of a small cookie cutter to 'seal' the filling in the middle of the ravioli and cut them out with a larger one - but you could equally use a knife.

I put a large pan of salted water on to boil while I made a mint butter by melting a large knob of butter in a pan until it sizzled before adding wedges of the cooked beetroot I'd kept back. Once these had browned I added finely shredded mint leaves from the garden.

The ravioli take about 2 minutes to cook and can then be tossed in or drizzled with the butter - which would also work well with toasted pine nuts. Tonserve, I alternated the ravioli with the different colour fillings and piped on top some of the beetroot purées. Beautiful to eye and to palate!

TOTAL #onepoundpantry SPEND: £2

AMOUNT BANKED: £0

TOTAL BANKED TO DATE: 51p

#onepoundpantry - Tuesday

Today's dinner made use of some turkey breast fillets from the freezer, a nice lean form of protein, and some frozen bacon, which is less so! Whilst not entirely the weather for it, the crushed potato-topped turkey and bacon pie with tarragon gravy was delicious.

I chopped an onion and softened this with defrosted and trimmed bacon rashers before adding the defrosted turkey, cut into bite-sized pieces. This was seasoned well and once the turkey was cooked I added some tarragon I found lurking in the fridge. I let the mixture simmer a little before adding some finely shredded green cabbage I bought for 69p. This all released a fair bit of liquid, so I added some flour to thicken the sauce. Meanwhile I boiled some new potatoes donated from a relative's weekly veg box - a bag every week seems to overwhelm them in summer and they were about to sprout! Once the potatoes were cooked, I crushed a few and used them as a topping for some of the turkey and bacon mixture in a mini casserole. I dotted a little butter on too, seasoned with salt and pepper and put it in the oven at 180C for about 15 minutes. 

And lovely it was too!

TOTAL #onepoundpantry COST: 69p

AMOUNT BANKED: 31p

TOTAL BANKED TO DATE: 51p

#onepoundpantry Monday

Todays's #onepoundpantry dinner was pork tenderloin with fennel and apple.

I bought and froze a couple of pork tenderloins that had been reduced in the supermarket a while ago, for a bargainous £1.99 for 400g, each one enough to feed two comfortably with this recipe or three with some added carbs such as mash or roast potato. This cut of pork can be cut into 150-200g pieces and cooked on a bed of fennel, apple and onion slices in a greaseproof parcel for each diner.

For my dinner, I thinly sliced the fennel bulb, bought for 80p at my local market, as well as an onion and two eating apples from a value bag. I sliced a couple of cloves of garlic as thinly as I could and tossed the vegetables together with olive oil, a little dried thyme from the cupboard and seasoning before laying in the bottom of a roasting pan. I trimmed fat and sinew from the defrosted tenderloin before seasoning it, drizzling it with oil and placing this on top of the vegetables into the oven at 180C. It took about 40-45 minutes to cook; check the juices run clear and if you have a meat probe use this on the thickest part of the meat.

Slice the tenderloin, place on top of some of the veg and dinner is served!

TOTAL #onepoundpantry COST: 80p

AMOUNT BANKED: 20p

TOTAL IN BANK: 20p

#onepoundpantry posts - the introduction!

Having thoroughly enjoyed cooking my way through a #FoodieWorldCup, stretching my culinary knowledge and techniques with dishes like Ghanaian Fotor, Brazilian Coxinhas and tea-smoked salmon for Russian blinis, I need a new challenge.

Times are a bit tough at the moment. Earlier in the year, my time managing a training cafe came to an end. Whilst I've had a fantastic culinary journey since then, learning abundantly through my time at Ashburton Chefs Academy, having lots of trial shifts in various kitchens and now working part-time at a fantastic restaurant, I am yet to establish what Sarah Serves does next for a stable income. This is all really exciting but it does mean the purse strings are fraying.

How to discover your personal OCD: Step 1.

However, one of the side benefits to this is that I've also got a bit more time at home than usual, and something this has been good for is reorganising my kitchen and having a good clear out! Not only are my cupboards slowly becoming more organised and tidy, but I've also found long-forgotten exciting and exotic ingredients at the back of cupboards that I'm looking forward to using. It's also time I emptied out my freezer to make way for BBQ meats, homemade icecreams and all those lovely summer berries growing out there ready for pies, sorbets and smoothies.


So it made perfect sense to put this together with my need for a new cooking at home challenge, and it starts today.

The principles of #onepoundpantry are simple:

• For my main meal each day, I have to use what is available in my cupboards or freezer, given to me by friends growing vegetables or genuinely leftover from my sessions volunteering for FoodCycle Wandsworth. 
• If I have to supplement the ingredients, I am only allowed to spend £1 per meal. If I need to spend more than that, I have to have the money 'in the bank' - it needs to be leftover from the day before. 
• I'm starting the week with a few pantry staples, such as onions and garlic, milk and butter, and a reasonably occupied fruit bowl. 
• If I'm cooking for more than one, I am allowed to accept ingredients from other diners up to a value of £1 per head, but need to try not to.

I appreciate that these rules are nowhere near as admirably stringent as challenges such as the breadline challenge or the belowtheline challenge. I'm using things in the freezer that I spent money on already, I'm not taking into account the cost of running my hob or oven, I'm ignoring how much it costs to grow the vegetables I'm given to use. The point of this personal undertaking is to do my little bit to help eliminate my food waste, save money and to make you, my readers, think about what's lurking in your cupboards and freezers unloved and unused. And to prove that you can have delicious dinners for not much dosh! I'm going to start by doing this for a week and see how I get on. You can see from the picture that there are a few exciting packets in my cupboards and there is no way I'm getting through the lot in one week. Why not have a try at this with me and let me know how you are getting on? You can follow my facebook page for updates, or tweet with the hashtag #onepoundpantry.

Good Luck!

Easy Cheesy!

Once upon a time, Christmas and birthday presents for me meant hair gadgetry, nail varnish or makeup. In the past few years, there has been a discernible shift as family and friends realise that this cookery malarky has gone way beyond being a hobby, and to reflect this, presents too have shifted towards food gadgetry and plate-up. A good thing too, hot kitchens, where hair is firmly scraped away from my face, melt most warpaint and pretty nails are now my stuff of legend.

Two of the most favourite of my foodie friends bought me 'The Big Cheese Making Kit' for my birthday this year and, spurred on by the fun I was having with my #FoodieWorldCup challenge, I decided to give it a go. As it turns out, whilst the kit makes a great present, with the process neatly packaged and cute, it is by no means obligatory as the ingredients are readily available on a high street near you. It is also almost disappointingly easy, and takes no more than an hour from start to finish. In fact you could, as I did, start your pizza dough, get your passata on the hob reducing away happily and make mozzarella so that the whole thing comes together in time to pop a delicious <insertfavouritepizzahere> into the oven for dinner! I started with mozzarella and plan to give ricotta a go soon, and may commence a quest for world cheese domination shortly afterwards. All I need is ready access to vast lakes of milk. And probably someone else to do the icky cow-rearing stuff for me.

What you will need (makes approx 900g):

• 8 pints milk - fresh, full fat stuff! Don't use UHT. I resisted the urge to bulk-buy buffalo milk in Waitrose as this would be a) very expensive and b) a bit mental for my first go.
• 1.5tsp citric acid - this is available from Asian supermarkets and will keep long enough for you to use for next year's elderflower cordial (click link for my blog on how!). It coagulates the milk and causes it to separate.
• 1/4 of a rennet tablet - traditionally, rennet is enzymes derived from animal stomach linings, but vegetarian rennet is readily available in supermarkets and chemists and is what was provided in the kit. It helps the curds to set and keeps very well in your freezer
• A large, heavy-bottomed pan (capable of holding aforementioned 8 pints of milk) with a lid
• A long knife - a bread knife will do
• A large slotted spoon
• Rubber gloves - fairly thick preferably to protect your hands from heat
• A thermometer - food temperature probes are, in my opinion, an incredibly useful bit of kit. Try to get one that will withstand temperatures for deep frying, making caramel and warming to 'blood heat', preferably digital for accuracy.

How to do it:

• Dissolve the rennet in one ramekin of 50ml room temperature boiled water and the citric acid in another.
• Pour the milk into the pan and add the citric acid solution. Stir thoroughly up and down - I used a potato masher to "mash" the mixture.
• Heat the milk to 32.2°C, stirring frequently to ensure it heats evenly.
• Once the temperature has been reached, remove the pan from the heat and gently "mash" in the rennet solution for 30 seconds. Then put the pan on the lid and leave it to have a think for 20 minutes.
• After this time there the mixture will have separated into solid curds on the surface and yellowy-green whey liquid underneath.  Use the knife to cut the curds into 3cm cubes.

Whey-hey! (Apologies, it had to be done)

• Put the pan back on the heat and warm to 40.5°C whilst gently moving the curds with the slotted spoon. They will break up at this point, and that's ok.
• Use the slotted spoon to remove the curds into a microwavable bowl, or gently drain the curds in a colander and tip into the bowl. 
• Microwave the curds on high power for one minute, before draining off excess whey, putting on those rubber gloves and kneading and folding the hot cheese (congratulations, you now have cheese!) for 30 seconds, removing as much whey as possible. 
• Microwave for another 30 seconds, add 1 tsp salt (preferably flakey sea salt) and knead and fold the cheese for another 30 seconds. The more you knead the cheese, the firmer it will be. 

• Microwave for another 30 seconds then continue to fold and stretch the hot cheese. At this stage, feel free to add herbs like basil or oregano, chilli flakes or chopped sundried tomatoes to jazz up the mozzarella. If the cheese doesn't stretch easily, microwave it for another 30 seconds as it needs to be too hot to handle with bare hands.
• When the cheese is smooth, elastic and shiny, shape it into balls however you like. It can be eaten immediately but if possible, pop it into a bowl of iced water to cool it down and help it keep its shape. 

The cheese will last for up to a week in an airtight container in the fridge but should not be stored in water. Leftover whey can be used in bread making (such as that pizza base!) or for soups, smoothies, soaking pulses or even in a bath! There will be quite a bit so it can be frozen and safely stored for up to three months. 

If you don't have a microwave, once the curds have been drained, heat the reserved whey to 82.2°C, shape the curd into two or three lumps and put them into a sieve. Dip them into the hot whey for a minute, remove from the liquid, knead and add the salt. repeat this until the cheese is smooth and elastic before shaping and storing as above. 

It was great fun to make and tasted just like it should. I like my mozzarella to be so soft that it's falling apart, which mine wasn't, leaning more towards the firmness of large blocks available in the supermarket, and this meant its melting capabilities were a little under-par. But I'm definitely giving it another go soon. 

Pizza night, anyone?

Bom Apetite!

Love it or hate it, football is likely to cross your path for the next few weeks as the 2014 World Cup tournament gets underway this evening in Brazil. Whilst not strictly speaking a fan, my family is pretty male-dominated and my partner works his calendar around matches, so I have needed to find a way to make the tournament work for me. Which is why I have used it as the perfect excuse to explore the food of Brazil!

Ready for the opening ceremony tonight, I have made a Brazilian feast fit for the greatest fan – be they foodie or footie or both, and I have a sneaky feeling at least one of them might be working its way into my regular repertoire.

To start, we will be nibbling on Coxinha, a popular street food in Brazil. These are bite-sized “little chicken drumsticks” and great fun to make. I have to admit to accidentally polishing off the leftover filling while making them yesterday because it was so delicious, and as we all know that deep-frying multiplies food by a factor of delicious, this should mean the finished article will be delicious squared.

Coxinha are made by poaching a large chicken breast in stock and a mirepoix of vegetables before allowing it to cool and shredding it. In a deviation from how they are traditionally made, the chicken is then mixed with cream cheese rather than Mexican crema and a little tomato paste, as well as fresh corn kernels, grated garlic, sliced spring onions and seasoning. Some of the poaching liquid and a little oil are then brought to a boil and used to make a roux-based dough with plain flour, which is kneaded, rolled to 3mm thickness and cut into 10cm discs. Each disc is used to enclose a little of the filling as a teardrop-shaped pouch, which is then dipped in an egg wash and coated in breadcrumbs (I used Panko). The pouches are then deep-fried in batches, drained on paper and served hot with a sprinkling of salt. Whilst time consuming and a little fiddly these were great fun to make.

I really enjoy making streetfood like this, which in my mind, due to the necessity of portability, largely falls into a number of categories:

• Things In Wraps – such as burritos, spring rolls, peking duck, nori rolls, masala dosa and gyros
• Mouth-Pops – such as arancini, bhel puri, churros and Pão de Queijo (see below)
• Hidden-Content Foodstuffs – where a filling is enclosed in some sort of pastry, such as Cornish Pasties*, baozi, brik and samosas

Slightly more tricky to make were the Pão de Quieijo, soft chewy cheese bread rolls. For these, I was supposed to use two different types of manioc starch. Manioc is another word for cassava, and the starch and the flour are not one and the same. The recipe called for both a sightly fermented version and a non-fermented version, but neither supermarket nor organic health food store could land me what I needed, even if it is gluten free! I did find ground manioc in Sainsbury's but this would make more of a porridge consistency, so I opted instead for Arrowroot, which also derives from rhizomes of a number of root vegetables native to South America, including manioc, and which research assured me would give a close likeness to the required consistency. Cornflour would prove too sticky, I was told, and potato flour would become slimy after cooking.

To make the bread rolls, I blended eggs and egg yolks with packed grated parmesan well in a food processor to make a loose paste. I brought milk, water and olive oil to a boil and added this to the arrowroot along with pinches of cayenne, nutmeg and pepper. If you have a mixer with a dough hook, use it!! I don’t, and my arms are now paying for the 15 minutes of hard work mixing and kneading this to a smooth and incredibly sticky dough. After resting overnight in the fridge, the dough is rolled into gold-ball sized balls and baked until lightly golden before serving while warm and chewy.

Next I made steak marinaded in Chimichurri Rojo. The marinade is like an Argentine Worcestershire, with sherry vinegar, oil, paprika, cayenne, minced garlic, ground cumin and pepper with bay and salt. I used thin sirloins but skirt steak is recommended. The steaks marinated overnight in half of the marinade ready to be quickly grilled the next day (the acidity in the marinade serves to cure the steak, greatly reducing its cooking time whilst increasing its tenderness). To serve with the steaks I made Cebollas Fritas – thinly sliced Spanish onion battered and fried before liberally covering with manchego cheese and baking.

To round off proceedings and provide occasional cheering fuel during the first match, I made chocolate Brigadeiros – chocolate fudge balls. Though a little time consuming, these were simple to make – I boiled condensed milk, cream, butter and golden syrup (a substitution for corn syrup) before stirring through chopped chocolate (I used 70% cocoa to counter the sweetness a little) and cocoa powder. This is then cooked, stirring constantly, ‘until the mixture moves as one piece’ and there is a burnt layer on the bottom. As an insurance policy, I used a probe and cooked it to 110C. This mixture was cooled in a bowl to room temperature and then covered in the fridge for a few hours before being rolled into truffle-sized balls and coating in grated chocolate. They are very sticky indeed and I’m not too sure how many of the ice-cream tub full even two hungry boys are going to manage, but I will do my best to help. 

Hopefully, one of those hungry boys will mix me a traditional Brazilian Caipirinha to go with it after my hard work. Gotta keep things authentic, after all!

So, if food, but not football is your thing, why not use the World Cup as an excuse to explore a few new world cuisines? You might find some new favourite dishes…

*Funny story, I once had an email jokingly refer to ‘nipple pasties’ and it took me a long time to re-adjust my thinking away from either the amazing (although possibly somewhat painful) concept of nipples adorned with miniature steak and swede-filled delights, or of canapé pastries in the shape of, well, nipples. Which miniature versions of the coxinha’s described above do in fact resemble.

Cordial Greetings!

Summer, I think we can tentatively suggest, is on its way. And this means a whole host of wonderful vegetables, edible flowers, abundant herbs, and opportunities for even newbies to have an outdoor forage. Now, this needs to be done with some careful research - I'm not suggesting anyone heads out into the wild gleefully munching on whatever they can pick - but one thing growing particularly rampantly right now, and fairly easy to identify, is elderflower.

From cordial, to sparkling wine, syllabub or sorbet, elderflower is a flavour that encapsulates Summer (almost as nicely as Pimms!). It is lightly floral and refreshingly citrus in flavour and elderflower bushes pop up everywhere. Right this minute they are out there at their best, so once you've finished reading this, pop on your sunnies and get out there with a pair of scissors and a sturdy plastic shopper to collect some.

Choosing where to forage is up to you, but I prefer to head for places that are low in traffic so that my pickings are as unpolluted as possible. I also do my best to forage responsibly, choosing a few blooms from a number of bushes rather than decimating a few. This has added benefits when it comes to elderflower, as the untouched flowers now will turn into delicious elderberries in Autumn. 

Elderflower is fairly easy to identify if you head out foraging in the morning. The creamy white flowers grow on bushes, often attached to trees, with the flowers growing in clustered blooms that should smell of - you guessed it - elderflower. By the afternoon, or when they are past their best - they begin to smell musty and should not be picked. They can be confused with other plants such as cow parsley and pyracantha but there are easy ways to rule these out. This is an excellent blog on how to identify the right target. 

To make about three litres of elderflower cordial, you will need to pick about 20 elderflower blooms. I picked mine from three different woods and commons and found that those in the sunlight and higher up in the bushes smelled freshest. One of the first rules of foraging is not to pick close to the ground if you can avoid it - basically wherever dogs can make their mark. Smell the blooms before you pick them to ensure you are getting the ones that smell as they should and beware - a few hours smelling these can wreak havoc on even mild hayfever sufferers like me!

Once you've picked your blooms, here is the best recipe I could find - BBC Good Food's recipes contains a lot more sugar and I wanted to keep a little more zingy freshness.

Elderflower cordial (makes approx three litres)

20 Elderflower blooms (no leaves)

4 unwaxed lemons

1.8kg caster sugar

1.2 litres water

50g citric acid (this can be bought from asian grocers or chemists but is not a vital ingredient)

• Gently shake the elderflower heads to knock the blackflies and other bugs from their delicious harem. Do not wash them as this washes away more of the precious pollen than knocking them will. You won't be able to get rid of all the bugs, sadly, but do your best and think of the extra protein!
• Put them in the roomiest saucepan you have, along with the peeled zest of the lemons, which then need to be sliced and added to the pot.

• Add the water, boiling, to the sugar, and heat until the sugar has completely dissolved before pouring this on top of the elderflower and lemon. Pop a lid on the pot and allow it to talk to itself for 24 hours.
• After this time, strain the mixture into a clean pot first through a large sieve or chinois and then through muslin to remove unwanted particles. 
• Heat the strained mixture to boiling (do not allow to catch or burn before bottling in sterilised bottles. Bottles can be sterilised either by fully immersing in sterilising solution and allowing to airdry, or by running the clean bottles through a hot cycle in the dishwasher.

The cordial will keep for six weeks in the fridge, or can be stored in the freezer in ice cube trays or frozen flat in freezer bags on a tray for easier storage. It can be used as a cordial (mix one part to 8 or 9 parts water, added to champagne or prosecco, or used in cheesecakes, custards, syllabubs.. the list goes on.

And let me tell you, it tastes delicious. So what are you waiting for? Get your shoes on and get out there before it disappears!

Quantifying and Qualifying

It had finally arrived. The three days we all knew were coming. The three days they said we would fly through. The three days to decide it all.

The three days of Assessment Week.

Rationally speaking, we didn't have anything to work ourselves into a blind panic about - assessment required us to produce a three or four course menu from recipes we had all made successfully before and even replicated since we had been taught them. We had four hours to complete and present the dishes and then were assessed on how we tidied and cleaned down the kitchen, and on what we did with our leftover ingredients. We'd get the afternoon to recover and prepare for the next day before we started again in the morning, each day becoming progressively more difficult. The chef tutors had all been keen to point out all the way through the course that they were there to help us ahead of assessment, to answer any questions we had, to enable us to achieve the best results we were capable of. We had been put through a mock assessment a week ahead of the real deal, to help us to iron out any areas of weakness such as speed, seasoning, and prioritising tasks, and that had taught me the valuable lesson of treating my cooking process with a little more mindfulness and care.

Circumstances around my own assessment week were wonderful, but hardly optimal in an academic sense - I spent the weekend before away with friends, and the night before our final assessment day out to dinner with classmates at Rob Dawe's pop-up. But in fact, this all helped me to focus, to plan ahead and to reflect on the skills I had picked up. The weekend before gave me the opportunity to replicate some of the dishes as practise for a crowd who could give me supportive customer-style feedback and boost my confidence in the process. The pop-up reminded me what I'm doing this for - so that I, too, can continue to bring smiles to people's faces with my cooking, to share my skills and to enthuse others about food so that it can bring as much happiness to them as it does to me. And despite my original fears, the last, and hardest, of my assessment days, following my night off, was also my strongest and most enjoyable. Back in February, I would never have thought I could successfully produce minestrone, filleted and panfried fish, bread rolls, a French trimmed rack of lamb and dauphinoise potatoes with jus and a tarte tatin in four hours, looking beautiful and tasting great. And to enjoy myself in the process? Give over.

I struggle to believe all of this was a mere week ago, as it already feels like the days when I cooked and learned (and ate!) all day long are far more distant than that. Over the next few weeks, I will be taking time to go through all of my course notes, to digest the wealth of information I have absorbed and to plan on how to put it to use. I want to make sure my blog readers can benefit from my newfound knowledge too; I am so proud of the work I have put into recording my journey through the course and sharing my experiences with you and I hope you look forward to carrying on learning as much as I do. In the meantime, there are a few key nuggets of wisdom that I took away from the course that I will keep with me and that I hope will help you in your own kitchen endeavours.

Plan Ahead. For each day of our assessment, we had to prepare a Prep List. We didn't get much guidance on how to do this, and I went off and did what worked for me - a detailed breakdown of what tasks I needed to do, in what order. For any menu, be it making a sandwich for lunch through to a dinner party for twelve, there will be jobs that take varying lengths of time, different processes to be used, different operating temperatures, and these need to be planned together in a way that allows them to slot into each other like jigsaw pieces. It's kitchen choreography. This aspect may extend to days, weeks in advance as you take into account seasonality and availability of ingredients, dietary requirements, even unforeseen mishaps. Don't just make things one at a time; the most skilful chefs can dance between dishes, spinning multiple plates at once. I was told that my Prep List was the most organised and methodical they had seen and while I don't plan on replicating that style every time I cook by any means, I have definitely learned the value of thinking dishes through carefully!

Taste it, and taste it again. It takes practise to get seasoning right. I still have more to learn here, and lots of my dishes could have gone from 'great' to 'excellent' if I'd been a bit more brave with the salt. It takes time to develop a palate and the only way to speed up that process is to taste everything. Your food will be transformed when the seasoning hits the mark and it is important to respect salt, not to make it your enemy. Don't use table salt - the flavour is too harsh, and experiment with the different salts out there. You may be a Maldon lover or you may develop a Cornish Sea passion but the only way to know is to try. If you find yourself scared at how big a proper chef pinch of sea salt flakes is, try weighing it and you will be surprised at how little you are adding. If you get it right, you shouldn't need it at the table any more, which is an excellent move for better health.

Eat with your eyes. A beautiful tasting dish needs to be treated with respect, and this means making it look as good as it tastes. Think not only about portion size, but the shape of the items and hence the best corresponding plate shape. Consider the colours and how best to showcase them. Remember that human brains are wired to find odd numbers more attractive. Get rid of any unwanted drips, smears or fingermarks. And make sure the temperature of the plate supports the food as well.

Ask Questions. Learn as much as you can about ingredients - where they are from, how to treat them, and what they pair with. If you make a mistake, find out why, learn from it, and try again. Never, Ever Stop Learning. And practise as much as you can. One of the tutors told us that when he started out, he would come home with a 2.5kg sack of potatoes and sit in front of the TV practising how to carve each one. Every mouthful you make should be treated with dedication and respect, and if you fail partway through a recipe, don't blame the ingredients, but reflect on how you will do better next time. Having a failure does not make you a failure.

Be responsible. For every plate of food, there is a long chain reaching back to where the ingredients came from. Always strive to shorten that chain where you can, and to learn about it so that you can say with confidence that you have respected the way that ingredient was born, nurtured and eventually came to be on your plate. 'Catch it, kill it, eat it' may not be your style but it is still important to have an awareness of what is involved in that process.


As we sat together on our final day, our first day as a team of qualified chefs, happy tums full of the curries we had made together, the Academy Manager told us that this was just the start of our journeys. He told us that not a day goes by when food doesn't enthuse him in some way, when he learns something new about it. "The Perfect Dish," he said, "does not exist. Because you'll never know when you serve it, whether or not it was perfection. You can have tasted it and checked it all the way through but you won't know how it tastes to that person at that time and whether all the elements came together perfectly. And so you continue to strive for perfection every day."

I made a gamble when I started down the food path three years ago. I'm still making gambles now as I work out what to do next, how I will generate an income and the best way to balance my passion and my happiness. But I do know that I am on the right journey and I am proud of what I have achieved so far. My course has shaped me (in more ways than one!); I am grateful to the chef tutors for their time, their energy, their knowledge and their passion and consider myself very lucky to have had the opportunity to learn from them.

And do you know what, I can cook!

I completed a six-week Professional Culinary Certificate at Ashburton Chefs Academy. This comprised of a CTH Level 2 in Culinary Skills an a CIEH Level 3 Award in Food Safety. You can find out more about the course here.

A series of experiences

I have been lucky enough to get to know a couple of talented supperclub and pop-up restaurant geniuses in the past couple of years, one of whom I have worked with a few times and learned a lot from, and the other I have had the great fortune of being taught by. Rob Dawe is one of the most inspirational people I have met - and I don't use terms like that lightly. Chefs are often incredibly good at what they do, meticulous in their precision, fiercely proud of their work and renowned for their art. What sometimes slips away is their passion, worn down by years of seasons repeating themselves, trends coming and going, diner desires becoming ever more fastidious. So it is not every day that a chef comes along who not only has a wealth of experience, but also an abundance of passion about cooking, about ingredients and sourcing, and to top it all, a desire to help others to learn as much as they can and gain the most benefit possible from time in a kitchen.

Rob's years of experience cheffing in London eventually led to a post teaching in Exeter college and after while, he moved on to Ashburton Cookery School as a chef tutor. Fast forward a few years and he is now working there part-time while he also carries out consultancy work for restaurants and hotels, runs his own pop-up events and, probably my favourite part, forages for mussels. As you do.

As soon as I heard Rob mention his pop-ups, I asked him when his next one was. It turned out that it would be the night before the most scary of my assessments, and this put off almost half of my classmates. My philosophy on life, however, is that it is built from a series of experiences and opportunities, and I knew that I would be going regardless of how ready I felt for the next day.

The event was hosted at the Heart of Oak pub in Pinhoe, Exeter and was a sell-out within a few days of tickets going on sale for what turned out to be an even more reasonable £30 than I had originally thought. There were to be seven courses of wonderfully treated, locally sourced and seasonal ingredients and my fears that perhaps devouring the steak and chips we had produced for our assessments earlier that day was a bit of an error, were quickly blown away when I saw the menu.

To start, we had a trio of pea, ham and beetroot. This was served as a warm pea soup mini cappuccino with a delicately salty foam, a tender and sticky nugget of glazed ham hock topped with pea shoots, and a pea and ham croquette with beetroot puree. It was great, as students, to recognise the various techniques in use on the plate and to discuss how they could be recreated. Pea shoots are one of my favourite salad gems, with a wonderful sweetness to offset the honeyed saltiness of the ham beneath.

Rob had taken us through how to prepare and serve mussels - hence his casual anecdote about foraging for them (we never found out if that was how he had sourced them this evening!) and so I was glad to see them on the menu, served 'à la Devon' with cider, bacon and cream. I could have done with a few more lardons in my portion, and we all agreed that some fresh, warm and homemade bread would have gone down a treat, although, as we grudgingly conceded, might have been a bit much with five courses to go... Still, I ignored all principles of restraint and finished most of my sauce because it was delicious. Cider gives a much more delicate finish to a mussel dish that wine can, and complements the sweetness of the mussel flesh well. Bacon rounds off what sounds like a heavy dish but ends up being light and flavoursome.

Next up was a palate cleanser ahead of the main event - delicate mojito sorbet with edible flowers. The balance of mint, lime and alcohol was just right and - a small but important detail - this was one of the occasions where we appreciated the attention of the front of house team. We had been given finger bowls for our mussels but also a teaspoon for our sorbet, and so could spend all our energy on enjoying the food and company.

The main dish was locally-sourced Crediton rump of lamb, with parsnip purée, spring vegetables and a port and rosemary jus. Spring is probably my favourite season, and vegetables like asparagus, firm and dazzling green like they were here, are a big part of the reason why. The parsnip purée had been infused with saffron - something I hadn't tried together before, let alone saffron in a lamb dish. But then saffron is largely produced in Iran, and lamb kebabs with saffron rice is a national dish, so it makes perfect sense. The purée had just enough liquid gold in it to complement the flavours without being an overbearing presence. The lamb rump was served in big, no messin' cuts, wonderfully pink and delectably tender. Parsnip crisps were a welcome addition to the dish, bringing an extra texture and fun presentation.

Next up was what Rob thinks may become his signature, mysteriously titled 'Mango, coconut, lime' and looking much more like 'Egg, chip'.

To reveal how this is done, how to eat it or what happens when you try would be too much of a spoiler. Suffice to say I had been told about this in advance, and it delivered just as described - in terms of flavours, textures, and, of course, theatre.

Hearing the room bubble with excitement, laughter and various 'ooohs' and 'aaahs' made me smile and I hope it had the same effect on chef.

This was served with mini fresh strawberry 'milkshakes' - another fun surprise, and packed with lots of vibrant flavour. The tiny bottles being carried to the tables in mini milk crates showed a great attention to detail and sense of humour.

Dessert was chocolate fondant with salted caramel and peanut butter ice cream, which I am fairly sure Rob must have designed especially for me.

The fondant had a pre-requisite gooey centre and its warm chocolate headiness was well complemented with the icecream, which nestled on a bed of honeycomb to give added texture. I'm normally a lover of raspberry but here felt that although the coulis looked perfect on the plate, it distracted a little from the stars of the show. That said, whoever came up with the pairing of chocolate and peanut was a genius. A little digging tells me that Alexandre Dumas, of Musketeers fame, may well have beaten Reece's cups to it, when he suggested that the Spanish called peanuts cacohuette because their flavour resembles that of cocoa, and used to mix cocoa into a peanut mixture to make a kind of cheap chocolate. Although I love my desserts, I've often struggled with this part of my 'last supper' scenario, but I feel more sure now that chocolate and peanuts would be involved.

Our after-dinner coffee was served with a handmade marshmallow, topped with popping candy, renewing my wish to give making marshmallow a go myself soon. Despite the number of courses we all felt comfortably full and disappeared off to the moors with happy faces and entertained tums.

Rob's next pop-up will be on Monday 19th May at the Rodean Restaurant in Kenton, starting at 7.15pm. This will be a six course Summer tasting menu for £35/head and is BYOB. If you would like to book a place, or to be added to Rob's email list and receive notifications of future events, please drop him an email here.