morsels

So much to say, so little time, such a broken lap top!
So a lunch-break blog, squeezed in. This will do the past week no justice, unfortunately, but...

Felicity Cloake was talking about chocolate mousse recipes on the Guardian 'Word of Mouth' recently: a satisfyingly thorough exploration of different recipes, concluding in Elizabeth David's being crowned the winner. Must remember to pass on the vegan-friendly recipe for Liz - or even better, cook it for her.

I am trying to catch up on reading all the new blogs I find at the 'UK Food Bloggers Association' (UKfba to make life easier) - of which I am now a member. I have no home computer at the moment so am frustrated in this effort. I love blogs and the window onto other peoples lives they offer: so many industrious people out there, running pubs, raising families, selling ham - and all finding time to write about it. As soon as I am back online properly I will post links to some!

Excellent food in my 'summer house': I am being kindly put up by three men for the summer and my goodness they have a good time! Post-work Monday evening saw Prosecco, hummus and bread, fried chorizo... then chicken fajitas and, my offering, passion fruit pavlova. All this and it was only Monday - imagine what meals will be like come the weekend!

A wonderful meal at 'Fig' in north London with friends. Cosy, charming with lovely staff and great food. I recall, only sketchily: smoked scallop with gooseberry jelly, burnt butter sauce and some herb (the gent won out with heavenly sweetbreads) ; then we all had the stuffed quail (?) with girolles, a paste of roasted onions and divine bits and bobs. We should really have thought to order some sides of vegetables and potatoes; instead the gent and I were left with room for both dessert (meringue, strawberries, ice cream - all delicately put together) and a cheese courses. The cheese was really wonderful - two from Sussex, which warmed my heart - and the big debate was whether to have cheese before or after dessert. What would you do? The gent and I chose differently according to our own taste. The waitress allied herself with my view, but my sister, more kindly, suggested the gent preferred the 'French style'. The boys chose a really excellent wine, I would trust them with the wine menu any day.

A seminar on trends in the food industry, held at the ever-superb British Library (this time in the IP and Business centre). I wrote pages of notes and whipped myself up into a frenzy of enthusiasm for starting a business. Most encouraging was that if asked what I thought beforehand, I would have loosely been along the right lines in predicting trends, and I also knew of many of the businesses and Web 2.0 technologies that were talked about. A bit more clued up than I thought - phew. My only furrowed brow came about dropping trends: there was no mention about arriving late and getting in on something already oversubscribed. Many of the trends mentioned - locally sourced foods, novelty or pop up restaurants / bars / etc. have already gone mainstream making the small, unpolished late-start-up less likely to thrive. In my completely uninformed opinion -!


22nd July 2010