The Splat Cooking Blog

..and if you missed the Times article it can be found at Times online

Alison, Christine, Indra, Pauline and I have spent the past weekend running cooking workshops for children at Henley Food Festival Kids Kitchen Chaos and it’s been fantastic. We’ve had 6 x 30 minute sessions per day, are thoroughly exhausted and have met and cooked with some wonderful children.

One of the highlights was the Gazpacho. When we asked the children (aged 6-11) if they knew what Gazpacho was they all shook their heads, when I told them it was cold, tomato and vegetable soup they looked completely horrified. At the end just about all of the children tasted it and the majority said they liked it. One of their Fathers tried it too and said that they were making Gazpacho in the food hall using basil oil but it wasn’t as good as the one we’d all just made here – complement indeed.

Saturday evening Indra and I were on at the Cookery Theatre, following such great chefs as Raymond Blanc, Mary Berry and Anthony Worrall Thompson. We were the last demo of the festival, so on a Saturday evening what else can you possibly cook but a curry. So Thai Green Chicken Curry followed by Coconut Ice Cream with a Lime Syrup and Fresh Mango, Indra and I even got a glass of wine on stage – perfect finishing touch to an ideal Saturday evening. We had to compete with Eurovision but I think everyone who came to see us instead of Scooch had a good laugh and tasted some great food, we had a great time anyway.

Had to find a farmer’s market for yesterday as part of a piece for The Times Body and Soul section to launch my new column – very exciting. There were some great stalls and we spent most of the time around a lovely Veg stall with two great chaps who put up with us taking lots of photos around the front of their stand, blocking out most of their paying customers (I did buy lots later!). Terry, the photographer explained what we were doing and asked their permission first, of course.

So we had five children aged 5-10 years around the stall talking about the different veg, what we could make with it, what it tasted like. Ellie found a pet snail in the cabbages (truly organic!) which she was a bit put out about as she thought it was totally unreasonable that the grown ups wouldn’t let her bring it into the restaurant for lunch, she got the right hump about the jokes about garlic butter too, can’t think why? Sorry, sarcasm always was my strong point.

The veg stand was from The Old Farm Shop in Milton Hill, Abingdon and everything is grown locally so no air miles involved, no sprays or chemicals are used, they use reusable boxes and offer free delivery, although this is local areas only. If you aren’t within their area then they are usually at Windsor Farmer’s Market and at Prestwood Farmer’s market at Hildreths in Prestwood every Friday. You can contact them on 01235 831247, the produce looked great, spinach, cabbage, beetroot, carrots, rhubarb, onions and of course, asparagus – Max found their eggs so we’re making dippy eggs and asparagus soldiers for tea tonight.

Fabulous bread stall too, we bought a sourdough. I’m usually really mean about buying bread as I know I’m perfectly capable of making it myself, however, when you’re freezing cold from standing around a photo shoot for 2 hours there’s nothing better to warm you up and hold off the hunger pangs than tearing off handfuls of crusty bread and eating it there and then – kept the children going anyway. Also found some lovely goat’s cheese and some great homemade butter and cheese but the guy on that stand was so rude and miserable he’s not getting a mention.

The children loved it, no wingeing about hanging around, so many things to look at and explore that they all wanted to come back next week, bet you wouldn’t get the same reaction with a trip to the supermarket?

All in all I spent £8 and came away with two hug bags of veg and rhubarb so it’s rhubarb crumble, rhubarb compot, rhubarb crumble muffins, we ate the spinach with a salad at lunchtime today, The beetroot and carrots are being grated with some apples and sprinkled with lemons for lunch tomorrow and bread didn’t make it home, it was all eaten. Goat’s cheese on digestive biscuits tonight to get us through ‘24′ with Indra’s spicy coconut and lime sambal which we’re trying to make last for ages but isn’t going to.

if you’d like to find a farmer’s market near you here are a couple of links to help

www.farmersmarket.net
www.bigbarn.co.uk

After a hard morning of tramping around we treated ourselves to lunch at Carluccios. We were all impressed at their ability to cope with four adults and five children. I’ve written a review in the forum.

Oooooh, I’ve been playing with recipes trying to come up with a pudding to go with the Thai Green Curry I’m demonstrating at the Cookery Theatre at Henley Food Festival and have come up with something which goes really well and is totally yummy.

Coconut Ice Cream with Lime Syrup and Fresh Mango, just need to make the coconut flavour deeper so I’m playing with dried coconut milk and coconut essence. The thing is that I can’t stop playing, once I’d sorted the lime syrup and mango I then tried adding some chocolate ganache left over from a workshop to the plain coconut ice cream and swirled this in – hey presto! Bounty Bar ice cream, then taking small balls of this I dunked them into melted dark chocolate – heavenly, quick, easy after supper choccie.

Emma and I were trying to go through the end of year accounts and became a little distracted going through ideas of other things to do with the ice cream – adding in pureed mango to ripple through it, or pineapple, or pineapple and rum to make Pina Colada Ice Cream, then we got onto Malibu and making lime sorbet to swirl through – Oooh I l ike this job, problem was then coming back from our tropical beach and getting down to doing the accounts!