Review: Town Mill Bakery

The Virtues of Fresh Ingredients

On top: an egg and bacon sandwich, served with ketchup
Below: my egg-in-a-basket served with roast tomato and onion relish

I expected seafood to be the culinary highlight of my time in Dorset, but here I am writing about a bakery. The food here was so good that we came back for breakfast twice while in Lyme Regis, and my partner bought a loaf of bread to take home as well. That's definitely unusual, especially for me, as I'm always gunning to try new places no matter how much I may have enjoyed a meal somewhere. 

Review: Kalm Kitchen Café

The Café That Does Everything

Waffles with fresh fruit, berry coulis, maple syrup and sour cream

Kalm Kitchen is the café that does everything I need a café to do. The coffee is good, the selection of teas acceptable, and cold teas are stocked throughout the year. They do breakfast, lunch and Sunday brunch, and maintain a well-stocked counter of muffins, brownies and other tray bakes for the times in-between. Most items are reasonably priced (you can have a decent lunch here for £6) and the staff are always friendly and helpful (except the boss, who is friendly and helpful and scary). The place started life as Glutton and Glee, before changing ownership and rebranding to Kalm Kitchen. A brief dark period followed – the cakes on the counter disappeared and extras on sandwiches became miserly – but that period has passed now. I don’t know the story behind the takeover, but I have come to like the changes. The new owners added some counter style seats, which may not be all that comfy but it means the café (which is tiny!) can now serve more people. The elaborate cream cakes are no longer regular fixtures, but tray bakes, cupcakes and brownies have taken their place. Early on during the switch these would run out too quickly, but nowadays they seem to stock enough to keep them going till closing time. My favourites are the richer options (of course), such as the peanut butter brownie or orange cannoli. 

Job Changes

Sticky Toffee Pudding

Sticky toffee pudding, served with clotted cream ice cream.
Would have drenched it in custard too,
but I was too lazy to make/buy any. 

An odd post for a so-called Bangladeshi blog, I know. But I've developed a strong affection for sticky toffee pudding over the last year, at a work canteen no less. Served as part of Sunday lunch, I looked forward to it every week. In theory, I would have eschewed overeating in the previous six days to reward myself on the Sunday, but reality was a little different. Although I did reward myself with the sticky toffee pudding anyway. Unfortunately, I am in the process of changing jobs, and will no longer have access to this particular canteen soon. But I can't imagine a life without sticky toffee pudding anymore, so I've decided I need learn how to make this particular dessert. 

The results are what you see in the recipe below. It's based on a Guardian Word of Mouth post, which in itself is a discussion of various recipes. I've both drawn from and altered them to make something similar to what was served to us at work. The ginger and spicing is as faithful a reproduction as I could manage, whereas the doubled toffee sauce (it'll become obvious from the recipe!) is a luxury we obviously didn't have at the canteen. Beware of this stick toffee pudding's rich and heavy sweetness. I know it's traditionally served warm with custard or ice cream, but why go for half measures - in my opinion it works best when served with both.

Ingredients (for the toffee sauce):

• 100.00 g unsalted butter
• 50.00 g muscovado sugar
• 70.00 g golden caster sugar
• 150.00 ml double cream
• Pinch of salt

Ingredients (for the pudding): 

• 175.00 g medjool dates
• 1.00 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1.00 teaspoon of shredded ginger 
• 300.00 ml boiling water
• 50.00 g unsalted butter, softened
• 70.00 g golden caster sugar
• 90.00 g dark muscovado sugar
• 2.00 eggs
• 170.00 g flour
• 1.00 tsp baking powder
• Pinch of ground cloves
• Pinch of ground cinnamon 

Method (for the toffee sauce)

• Combine the ingredients for the sauce in a milk pan, and place on a low heat
• Allow the ingredients to melt, stirring to ensure they do so evenly
• Once the ingredients are melted and mixed, turn the heat up to medium
• Bring to a boil, and thicken the sauce for 3 or 4 minutes, or to the consistency desired
• Butter a deep, square baking dish and pour in half the sauce. Place the dish in a freezer while preparing the pudding
• Retain the remaining sauce to pour over the pudding

Method (for the pudding):

• Preheat the oven to 180C
• Stone the dates and chop into small pieces
• Add to the boiling water, along with the bicarbonate of soda and shredded ginger
• Leave to soak while preparing the pudding
• Chop the butter into small pieces and place in a large mixing bowl
• Add the sugar, and cream the ingredients together. It may help to add the sugar a little at a time, and bear in mind that the end mixture will be grainy
• Beat the eggs gently, and mix them into the butter and sugar mixture a little at a time 
• Follow up by adding the spices and baking powder into the mixture, and fold in the flour in two batches
• Return to the soaking dates. Mash up their flesh slightly if the pieces of fruit seem overly large after soaking
• Pour the dates and ginger, along with their soaking water, into the batter 

The finished batter

• Pour the finished batter into the baking dish over pre-frozen toffee sauce
• Place in the oven for 30 to 45 minutes, until the pudding is just cooked. When placing a knife through the pudding, the blade should come out moist

The finished pudding before toffee sauce,
scored with a knife

• Take out of the oven, score the surface with a knife, and pour over the remaining toffee sauce
• Serve warm with custard and ice cream

The 1-3-5 Rule

Toad-in-the-Hole

Toad in the hole with honey & mustard turkey sausage

This is me stealing yet another recipe from my partner's childhood. Toad-in-the-hole may be a very common British dish, bu it's usually made with pork sausage so I'd never tried it until yesterday. Wandering through Godalming last weekend we came across a farmer's market in town, and a stall by Harvey's Poultry Farm selling chicken and turkey sausages. At the end of the day they were going 2 packs for £5, so we decided to pick up a couple. It's not often I get to eat sausage - my local supermarkets only do pork or at best rubber chicken.

Harvey's Poultry Farm turkey sausages. As I couldn't
find them online I thought I'd at least upload this

I am going to digress slightly and talk about Harvey's sausages because they were quite special. They came in various guises: honey and mustard, curry, garlic and chilli, British herbs and so on. Even without a sale on I would recommend buying from them - they have samples for customers to try, so you can be sure of picking out something you like. It's a pity they don't seem to have an online presence I can link to. I assume the recipe I'm sharing below is to a well-known local standard, but for me it's the honey and mustard sausages we used that really made the dish stand out. The 1:3:5 egg, flour and milk ratio was originally given to me in ounces, and I've left the figures in for easy recall. Conversions to SI units are alongside the ounce measurements, of course, for civilised people. The amounts below should make enough for a light two person dinner. 

Ingredients:

• 1.00 egg
• 3.00 oz plain flour (approximately 85.00 g)
• 5.00 oz milk (approximately 140.00 ml)
• 5.00 honey and mustard turkey sausages (approximately 300.00 g)
• Butter, for lining an oven proof dish

Method:

• Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius
• Line an oven proof dish with butter before placing the sausages inside, spaced out evenly
• Roast for 10 minutes
• While the sausages are roasting, beat the egg gently and mix in with the milk
• Slowly incorporate the flour in batches, whisking to avoid clumps

Ready for the oven

• Take the sausages out of the oven and pour the liquid batter around them, before returning to the oven for a further 35 minutes
• Serve hot with vegetables and gravy (frozen and instant respectively if feeling lazy!)

Yup, that's frozen veg and instant gravy 

Additional Info:

The ingredients for the batter allegedly make a Yorkshire pudding, but don't quote me on this as British cuisine isn't my field. In case you want to experiment, pour the batter into special trays (similar to cupcake trays) with a bit of oil to weight the middle down. Apparently this will result in the fluffy puddings served as part of Sunday lunches here in the UK. 

Review: Benares Restaurant

An Indian Michelin

Bite-size poppadoms with gooseberry, tomato
and pineapple dips.

I like to keep an eye out for Indian fine dining recommendations. The cuisine is often similar to Bangladesh's, and I like the idea of being able have a special occasion meal that isn't European. I was in London last month, and decided to drop by for lunch at Benares for a mini-celebration. I admit my choice of restaurant was mostly based on its proximity to a prior appointment, but I should also say that the Benares lunch menu was more interesting than the nearby Gymkhana's. £35 for three courses and some extras seemed perfectly reasonable for gourmet cuisine around central London, and there were Bengali style fish cakes on the menu that I felt I really should judge for authenticity! 

Review: Britten's

Guildford Familiarisation

Inside Britten's

Guildford is a strange place. Overrun by Thai restaurants, I've found many a place where I quite like to eat in the town (village?), but none yet that I love. However, since I'm going to be spending a considerable amount of my time here over the coming year, I've decided I need to fix this particular problem. I visited Britten's as part of this mission - a restaurant I've often walked or driven past. Some quick research revealed the chef and owner to be a past Masterchef contestant, so earlier this week we dropped by for an early evening dinner with the expectation of some fancy food. 

Roasted root vegetable press, basil, truffle emulsion

And I can say fancy food is indeed what we were served. We normally dine early on weekdays, so we arrived for a pre-7pm table with the intention of ordering from the pre-theatre menu. The restaurant was unsurprisingly all but empty when we entered, though it filled up somewhat over the course of the evening. A waiter took us to our table, from where we had a good view of the ground floor as seen from the first photo in this post. The décor is minimal and clean, and I imagine this is the kind of space that works well both during the day and at night. We were handed menus before orders for drinks were taken, followed by orders for food. Decisions weren't difficult to make given pre-theatre menus are usually short, though I should mention Britten's offers a relatively generous selection of 4 starters and 4 mains despite this trend.

Heritage From Elsewhere

Apple & Blackberry Crumble

Apple and blackberry crumble served with frozen yoghurt

I first encountered crumble at a pub in Selly Oak during my university days in Birmingham. Served warm with a side of vanilla ice cream, it appealed to my fondness of hot-and-cold contrasting desserts. However, poor iterations over the years have made me wary - sometimes the apples have been a tasteless mush, or a side of custard has been bland and flavourless. I'm sure I've been sampling it in the wrong places (the work canteen is hardly the place to seek out good food), and so I'm glad to finally have a recipe of my own to use.

The instructions below come from my partner, who I called up one evening after having bought blackberries for the first time without knowing what to do with them. I am happy to report I have since found out that blackberries can be eaten raw as is, but more importantly the conversation precipitated a request for homemade crumble from me. Surprisingly my partner obliged - apparently crumble was one of the desserts he grew up on - and the results are what you see in the photo above. The actual recipe is adapted from an original by Merrilees Parker, and is available on the BBC website.

Review: Purnell's

Wish Fulfilment

Bread from French wheat, whipped butter & salt

I consider Birmingham to be one of my homes, and so I've always been annoyed at not having visited any of its Michelin starred restaurants. I've complained about this before, but as luck would have it I was in town at a good time and got my brother and myself a table at Purnell's for lunch. First impressions during the booking process weren't great, as the website threatened me with a £45 cover charge per person for no-shows and demanded my card details. For lunch. I find these policies faintly ridiculous for reasons I won't get into here, but I wasn't worried that I'd miss lunch so I proceeded to book anyway. 

The Slightest Hint Of Fusion

Mom's Fish Fingers

Fish fingers, but a little more exciting than usual

Fish is an integral part of the Bangladeshi diet - probably something to do with the many rivers, lakes and ponds in the country. It's very common at our table too, but sometimes in surprising forms. I have no idea how actual fish fingers are made, but this is how mom makes them at home. She adds some spices to make the fish a little more exciting than your usual frozen supermarket fare, before . I have no amounts written down for this recipe unfortunately, as everything is to taste depending on how strong you want your marinade.