Apple, Walnut and Celery Salad with Camembert Dressing

The opening of a grand dinner without meat......

Apple, Walnut and Celery Salad with Camembert Dressing
Serves 6 for starter or 2 for lunch

Ingredients
Dressing:
250g round, ripe camembert
2 tbsp crème fraîche

Salad:
110g Cox’s apple, sliced
2 Hearts of Romaine
2 celery sticks

Garlic croutons:
50g bread, cut into small cube
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cloves of garlic, crushed

Methods
1.Preheat an gas mark 4, 180oC oven.

2.Place the bread into a mix bowl, together with olive oil and garlic. Stir them around so that they get an even coating.

3.Arrange them onto a baking tray, bake them for 10 minutes or until they are crispy and golden. You may need to turn them around to get all sides crispy. Don’t go away from them, it is only 10 minutes, stay near the oven, otherwise you will forget.

4.Allow them to cool and leave them on one side until they are needed.

5.Then prepare the dressing. You can either peel the camembert skin carefully so you won’t waste too much, but I have found another method to do the trick. Put the whole cheese, with skin and everything (not the plastic wrap and the wooden case of course) into the microwave oven. Heat it at high heat for 2 minutes. The inside of the cheese will be melted, but still holding shape by the skin. Now, cut a circle at the top, then scrap the melted cheese into a sauce pan, and try to resist the smelly temptation.

6.Put the crème fraîche into the cheese, if you have dry cider at home, dash 1 tablespoon into it, so that the sauce would be less thick.

7.Now the salad, prepare them just before serving, tear the hearts of Romaine leaves into manageable pieces. Arrange them onto the serving plates, then the apple slice, and celery and then the walnut.

8.Scatter the croutons onto the salad and dress it with melted camembert. The dressing might start solidify at this point, re-warm the dressing under low heat until it is thin enough to serve.

Vegetarian Night

After the last successful ‘Nancy Boy’ dinner on my birthday, me and Emma decided to make another one, but with total vegetarian food, and yes, we do like challenge sometimes.

Shamefully, I actually don’t have much experience on veggie cooking. My culinary skill on this particular category is limited to veggie stir-fry and using meat substitute to make most of meat dishes into vegetarian. It has been some difficulties for two devoted carnivores to set up a quality vegetarian menu, but we got our starter and desserts sorted quite easily. I guess most of starter and desserts are vegetarian, it was not too hard to pick a good one. The hard bit was the main course, it has to be something more substantial, more powerful on visual impact and it should fill you up, so you feel satisfied. However, for an exquisite dinner, veggie lasagne, veggie cannelloni, veggie chill con carne, curry or stir-fry is not going to be good enough. Finally, we decided to make a pudding like steak and kidney pudding, but instead of those ‘bloody’ fillings, heart warming Portobello mushroom and chestnut are the ones to give you a winter hug.

So, what exactly is the menu? Brace yourselves, here we come.

Cold Starter
Heart of Romaine with apple, walnut and celery with camembert dressing

Warm Starter
Broccoli Cheese Souffle

Sorbet
Pear Sorbet

Main
Chestnut and mushroom pudding with seasonal vegetable and red wine gravy

Desserts
Passion fruit tart with cardamom white chocolate mascarpone ice-cream

Some of the recipe will be posted on here soon. Keep checking!!

Family Do: Lunch at Mr. Thomas's

English Chop House, the first thing came into my head was Aberdeen Angus Steak House which is Scottish in fact. I apologise for my lack of chop house experience. In my mind, I couldn’t get around the idea of steak pie and grilled steak, such simple, no gimmick, somehow uninteresting dishes, could be famous nationally and internationally, and plus, I don’t need to travel tens or hundreds of miles into those remote villages and their local gastro pubs, a gastro pub in town, can’t be that authentic. Fortunately for me, I proved myself wrong on the day.

The day wasn’t as good as we wanted it to be, so my Adventure in Clitheroe has to postpone. I was so looking forward to the outing with my surrogate family. My interests never get far away from food and drink, going to Clitheroe is not only for landscape, castle, or herons. I expected visiting local restaurants and bars, having some traditional pub food would be my high-light of the day. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t on our side, we have to think of something else for this family do

After some serious discussion, Mr Thomas’s Chop House is the place, Za decided, I have no idea what is this restaurant like. I only have this mental image of a posh Wetherspoons, scally free, playing cosy music in the background, not long before I had this Victorian building in front of me. Entering it I found myself in a smallish English pub as I went blind at the same time because of condensation. It was peak lunch hour on Saturday, the queue was surprisingly not bad. We have waited for 10 minutes to get a table which I considered lucky. At the point stepping in the restaurant part, the mystery of famous English Chop house finally unfolded. My inner tourist-self came out with my brick-like camera, started observing for potential snap materials. Floral lights hanging down from the ceiling, the incandescent lighting on beige tiles tainted the whole room into a canteen like dinning hall, without the shouting from the dinner lady and the chance of beaten up by a bully over a pudding. The tiling of the restaurant, from floor to ceiling are original, you can feel the bareness but also layers of characteristics. Most of diners were family and couples, they all seemed having a great time.

I was amused by the choice in the menu, traditional fish and chips, steak and kidney pudding to hash and flame grilled steak. I stuck with my favourite, steak and kidney pudding, even the smell of hash that the lady sat next to us was enjoying, made me have a second thought. The pudding came with peas, chips and gravy. I wouldn’t expect less on the chips from a famous chop house, and they didn’t disappoint me. The gravy was a real meaty one instead of those brown glue with bits of disintegrated onion. They were very good but not enough to blow me away though. The peas were something I want to know more. Crunchy, and somehow have this meaty and smoky flavour. I guess it would be fresh peas roasted with bacon or lardoons, it was divine. Last but not least, is the huge pudding, perfectly cooked. Breaking into the just dried outside, steamy, fluffy, doughy goodness were flowing out, not only the juice, but chucks and chunks of steak and lamb kidney. The pudding soaked up all the juice, leaves enough for lingering between the meats, not too much to transform itself into a doughy mess. While I was having my orgasm with my gastroporn, Em wasn’t impressed by her fish and chips. She insisted me to give a second opinion, and it wasn’t bad. However, for 13 quid, I do expect more than it was. The fish wasn’t seasoned well, batter was ok, but on the thick side and then it dripped out oil in my mouth. It might be because of Em sent the first one back to kitchen, because the fish was overcooked, they rushed out a new one without enough time to drain the grease. Other than that, everyone was happy about their main course.

With all the girls around me, pudding was a compulsory. Banoffee Sundae did catch my eyes, but Za and Bec had put their mark on it, as I kindly chose lemon posset instead. Em ordered a sticky toffee pudding, so we can share a bit of everything. I rest my case for lemon posset, it was something to die for. The texture and flavour just perfect, it melted at the second you put it in your mouth and burst out citrus tang, gorgeous! Sticky toffee pudding was great too, very spongy, strong treacle flavour with a runny buttery toffee sauce, it was just the thing for a cold rainy day. I was glad I haven’t ordered the Banoffee Sundae, dry stale toffee sponge cubes at the bottom, seemed like trimming from the toffee pudding but dried. Chucks of banana, with condensed milk like fresh out from the tin without caramelised, just enough to coat them, leave the sponge cubes dry and crumbly. Strongly not recommended.

Price: Lunch £30 per head (including main course and desserts, 3 bottle of house wine shared between 5 people and 10% service charge)

Mr. Thomas’s Chop House
Victorian Bar, Restaurant and Coffee Shop
52 Cross Street
Tel: 0161 832 2245
http://www.tomschophouse.com/