Christmas countdown

After another prolonged absence I blame on correcting my back, adapting to the dark and trying not to stare at a screen for more than 12 hours a day, Christmas has completely snuck up on me. In that spirit, it seems appropriate to give a bit of a couple of my foodie highlights.

Warm, spicy red cabbage
Partly memorised and adapted from a Delia recipe, I really miss this if it’s not included with the Turkey at Christmas. If nothing else, it provides some amazing Christmassy smells which swirl through the house as the dinner is cooking. This amount will serve around 6-8 people.

Ingredients
Half a medium sized red cabbage head, sliced
One large bramley apple, peeled, cored and diced
One medium-suzed red onion, finely chopped
Two cloves of garlic, crushed or finely chopped
Ground cloves
Ground nutmeg
Ground cinnamon
Light soft brown sugar
A large knob of butter, cut into diced pieces
Balsamic/red wine vinegar
Salt and Pepper

Simple layering recipe
Using a large saucepan with a lid create a layer with about ¼ of the red cabbage. Sprinkle a relative portion of the bramley apple, garlic, butter and red onion on the top followed by about a dessertspoon of sugar and some salt and pepper. Now for the gorgeous spices… I go a bit nuts with these and use tons, but you should be using about a teaspoon of each spice (cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon) per layer. Finally, glug some balsamic (or red wine) vinegar over the whole thing  - just a slosh, or maybe a couple of tablespoons. Then, just repeat the process so you end up with about 4 layers of lovely spiced cabbage goodness. Put the lid on the saucepan and cook on a low heat for at least an hour and a half, stirring occasionally. It will eventually reduce and melt together with an amazingly comforting consistency. Even better, if you don’t use it all up with the Turkey, you can have it cold in your sandwiches – yum!

Easy, customised stuffing for Paxo lovers (other instant stuffing brands are available)
This came from me liking to play with leftovers and experiment with flavours. I love my mum’s homemade stuffing which she makes at Christmas. The recipe is torn from a black and white good housekeeping many moons ago. When I was young, I was incredibly fussy about food and, at Christmas, I’d only eat Paxo. Nowadays, it bores me rigid but is a really good staple to have in the cupboard to liven up any weekend warmer.

Ipso Paxo…
Make up about half a pack of standard sage and onion Paxo (will serve about 6-8 people) according to instructions and set aside. Dice a white onion, a couple of sticks of celery, a peeled, cored bramley apple and, for meat eaters, a few rashers of bacon. Gently fry the whole lot in a good knob of butter in a saucepan until it softens and starts sticking together. Then stir this mixture into the Paxo and blend together. Bake as usual for about half an hour for a much tastier, more textured version of this old faithful.

Please sir, can I have some more…
A few more of my Christmas cooking habits

• Smother your turkey in a mixture of butter and lime zest. It’ll make the leftover meat taste amazing when cold.
•  Knives blunt? Carving a nightmare? I like Jamie’s foolproof dissection technique best which lets everyone get to the best bits of the bird
•  Avoid pastry overload on mince pies. Go for a base only with a Christmas shape on top, or alternatively replace shortcrust pastry with filo layers. 
•  I’ve customised shop-bought stuffing, remember to customise your shop-bought mincemeat. Spoon the contents of the jar into a bowl and add extra cranberries, grated apple, chopped nuts, spices, even brandy – whatever you like most. It’ll make it go further too – more pies!

So, in the immortal words of Shakin Stevens, Merry Christmas everyone!

Food Hell #1

Without getting too Giles Coren on this (despite in fact finding him incredibly delicious), i thought it was time I turned this on its head with some interspersed posts on disgraces to the food world.

Food hell - offender #1: Scotch Eggs (aka EGG HELL!).

Long may meat, eggs and breadcrumbs remain hot, and on separate plates. (Just look at those sad egg eyes)

Nx

Aside: this one's for you Mark.

Bristol bypass breakfast

The Lounge, consider yourself bumped into second place. Today I discovered Lockside, a restaurant hidden beneath an underpass in south Bristol, bursting with atmosphere and serving fan-tastic breakfasts. We chose pancakes with streaky bacon and maple syrup; and a breakfast bagel with bacon, mushrooms and grilled tomatoes. Generous portions, family friendly, coffee on tap - it's a little bit of the big apple in little old Bristol.

Look where I've been...

 

Mrs P and I at Park Farm this September for the River Cottage Autumn Fair.

Greece is the word

It’s been a long break from the blog. Since my last post I’ve been to Lefkas, a small island just off mainland Greece which gives me a great excuse to talk about one of my all-time favourite cuisines.

I’m lucky enough to say that I’ve been going to Greece, or Greek islands, for years. Before I was fifteen I’d visited Zakynthos and Crete twice. Last year I spent a week in a small coastal village in Corfu with my boyfriend, and this year I was introduced to beautiful Lefkas on the other side of the Ionian sea. 

Greece for me is about the people – friendly, warm, interested; the climate – dry sunny heat; the landscape – unspoilt turquoise seas, tiny islands, caves, olive and cypress trees, dusty mountain roads… But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the thing that excites me most about visiting Greece is the food.

I thank Greece for opening me up to foods which many people are scared of – squid, cod roe (in taramosalata), dolmades (stuffed vine leaves) and love it or hate it foods such as olives and feta cheese. I’m grateful to my parents for introducing those foods to my diet from such a young age.

On returning from Greece, I almost always fall into a phase and find myself habitually buying Greek yoghurt and sprinkling oregano over everything. Unfortunately making Greek food at home in the UK is almost impossible to emulate. The small, tougher tomatoes we are accustomed to would never be allowed to deform and ripen to the standard which makes Greek tomatoes so sweet, juicy and delicious.

Tzatsiki is so easy to make and using UK produce shouldn't hinder the flavour. A good tip for getting the consistency right is to grate the cucumber and don't forget the olive oil. It's an amazing accompaniment to barbeques. We'd dip our souvlaki (skewered chargrilled meat) in it, and it works just as well with any blackened meat from the back garden barbie. Greek salad ingredients are all freely available here too. Extra Virgin olive oil is essential, as is a generous portion of red onion and oregano. As we can't be expected to mail order Greek tomatoes, beef tomatoes are the closest relative for making this gorgeous dish at home.  

I think it's safe to say Kalamari, battered fried squid, is my family's all time favourite Greek dish. So simple, we thought, that we (or my dad) visited a fishmonger and attempted to emulate this taverna classic in our accommodation (pictured). A worthy effort and gorgeous with plenty of fresh lemon juice and dipped in tzatsiki. We went only one day of the holiday without a portion of this in our bellies - beautiful. Most people I share my love of squid with don't understand how I can eat the rubbery fish. Again, i thank my parents - those who question it are missing out. 

Finally, Greece is full of fish. Natural harbours and fishing boats pop up everywhere, at least on the islands and Lefkas was no exception. On a particularly providential day in Sivota, a natural harbour on the east side of the island, we spotted three men on a boat (not Griff, Rory and Dara) holding up a huge tuna freshly caught that day. After some sweet talking with the owner, we secured ourselves two steaks providing we returned to the taverna that night as customers. Needless to say we went back, the waiters winked at each other, and we were presented with THE best tuna and probably the best fish I have ever eaten. Salty-fresh from the sea, meaty and mouthwatering. The tuna was served simply with lashings of lemon juice and a sprinkling of parsley. Oh, and chips. 

This is just a taste of Greece and its food. I can't recommend it enough.

The smallest gin and tonic in the world...

...or am I just a giant?

This was taken earlier today at the Organic Food Festival in Bristol. My highlights for the day, other than my miniature organic G&T: a cooking demonstration with some sound advice on eating seasonal produce from the team at the Duke of Cambridge organic pub; the bountiful amounts of free cheese; and the best of all? - the sheep show! A New Zealander making 7 sheep dance to disco? Yep, it happened. 
N x

Cooking doesn't get tougher than this

Congratulations to Lisa Faulkner on winning the Celebrity Masterchef title; but Neil Stuke, you was robbed!

Nx

She Woolfed it down...

"one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, unless one has dined well"

Virginia Woolf

Thanks to Bristol Foodie for this rather lovely tweet.

Canteen dream

It was birthday time last week. Lucky us - we got a mini-break in misty Cornwall, a session at the spa, a rumble in the jungle, an american reunion and a very overwhelmed birthday boy. But this is a food blog - so where does this fit in? Well, we did discover a cute little organic cafe in St Just, THAT caramel shortbread, a damn fine pasty and a fabulous bed and, of course, breakfast... 

But the treat came on Thursday where the tradition of taking each other out for birthdays was a little bit special. I took Richard out to the top of his wishlist - the River Cottage canteen in Bath. 

On arrival, my excitement was mainly directed at the huge canvases of lovely farm animals (alive not dead) gracing the walls. What's more, the music wasn't bad either...

Currently, Thursdays are sharer evenings. Advertised as larger than tapas and an easier way to choose your meal - perfect!

Neither of us are wine connoiseurs. I'm starting to know my Chardonnay (bleurgh) from my Shiraz (yum), but you can't help but worry that going for the cheapest bottle on the menu is going to make you a bit of a plonker. Then came the 'number 1' - the cherry loveliness of RN13 - Vin de pique-nique from sunny France. Cherries? Rich's favourite. Result!

 

Then came our food, set in large terracotta tapas pots came our food. The top four on the menu, this was the easiest menu choice ever. We went for salt pollock croquettes with aioli; slow roast shoulder of pork with local veg ratatouille; spicy mutton flatbread with yoghurt; River Cottage greek salad with bath cucumber and, in hindsight-greedily, a potato and mustard salad (on the side).

The star were the croquettes. If pollock is the poor man's cod then I'll eat my laptop. These were undoubtedly salty but this only added to the luxuriousness of the taste, and we saved one each for our final mouthful of the meal. 

Coming a close second were the spicy mutton flatbreads. A first for me, i'm still fairly new to lamb having had sheep as pets as a child and thought of eating one much like eating the family dog. Don't worry - i got over it. The flatbreads were phenomenal. The spice was without heat, just full flavour. The only problem with this dish was that there weren't enough on the plate to keep up with my salivating mouth.

It felt very sweet to eat a greek salad with the knowledge that the ingredients had come from a garden with so much love. 

Surprisingly, the slow roast pork with ratatouille was the lightest dish, but provided a perfect contrast to the powerful pollock.

With a location in Bath we were inevitably surrounded by  folk for whom this presumably wasn't quite such a special treat, but Rich and I were completely elated from the first taste; and the platform on which our table sat was appropriate for our state of mind, and we're pretty sure the staff noticed our enthusiasm (we gave 5/5 across the board). For the record, the staff also were welcoming, attentive and knowledgable.

What was it I was saying earlier?... Lucky us. 

Heaven in a paper bag

Thank you St Ives Bakery. 

This makes my top five (#2-sorry westie, this means you're #6. fancy baking another batch?)

Nx

late night cake bake

Feeling gloomy? Want a big hunk of cake? I was lucky enough to discover the most amazing Zucchini and Walnut cake with my friend Emma in her lovely cake cookery book. And the best part? It's one of your five a day! We cooked deep into the night but just about managed to capture the process on our phones...

 I've got my hands full here. Emma's garden deep in the Peak District is full of lovely green courgettes-who needs the supermarket when you've got a potted garden?

Frantically grating the courgettes... So this is not only a healthy veg cake but this vigorous grating is great (grate) exercise!

Emma does a fab job in the kitchen-she's a natural. Check out that sieving technique!

After binding the gratings in with the cake mix, we blended in the walnuts. It's looking a bit like a bad night out at the moment.

Oh sweet moses this is a beautiful thing-and worth the two hour slow cook. Moist, rich and with a gorgeous nutty crunch.

Everyone I know seems to have an abundance of courgettes at the moment. Now all I need is a friend with a walnut tree! 

Nx

oily fish

Before I forget, the aforementioned Nicky (of leftovers fame) is a bit of a dab hand with a paintbrush (as well as being a senior lecturer in art and design). This fabulous foodie canvas now graces my kitchen wall and very lovely it is too. I'll let you know if/when she starts taking commissions.

That's a whole lot of blogging for one day - a record 4! Goodnight!

Nx

I love hugh darling

My other half loves food. He'd have to. As mentioned previously, our wooing period involved heated Masterchef discussion and lots of River Cottage viewing. But Richard isn't very confident with his cooking and believes taking on anything risky is destined to fail. He has some gorgeous recipe books which are collecting plenty of sticky fingerprints but none of the excitement over the lovely pictures is being channelled into food. 

Then, the other day, Richard took a challenge; cooking with a fish (bream) and vegetable (fennel-now, as a result of this dish, my new favourite vegetable) he (and i) was unfamiliar with. Trust Mr F-W to save the day with a trustworthy recipe which packed a real asian flavour punch and truly gorgeous end result.

Unfortunately, by the time we'd thought about photographing the dish on the plates it was, well...gone! (sorry)

Nx

Crumbs! The cupboards are bare...

We're notoriously a country of wasters. That came out wrong. Not that I'm insinuating that we're all monged out on the green stuff most of the time. No. It's that we throw away so much food which is perfectly edible or, had our heads been sensible and not too big for our bellies, we wouldn't have made such an excess in the first place.
 

But what happens when you need to be thrifty? When the wallet is full of sand and tumbleweed and the cupboard is bare but you can't bear to face the 20p noodle reality. I was faced with this situation yesterday by my good friend Nicky. Sucked dry by her recent home move and a landlord being shifty with his deposit she had only a few pennies and stock cubes to her name.

The e-mail exchange was as follows....
 
  
Nicky: ....i need to call upon your culinary invention skills!
I know you're good at this and i can't think of anything, what dinner can i cook with-

1 potato
1 sweet potato
onion & garlic
a bit of lettuce
a courgette
tin of chopped tomatoes
basil (no cheese argghhhhh)
quorn pieces
frozen peas and sweetcorn
pasta
lentils
rice
and some other ready steady cook stylee store cupboard ingredients like flour etc

No cheese that's the real killer! We're too skint to buy anything. Hope you're having a good day xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To which my culinary cogs whirred for about 15 minutes and I came back with the following:
 
Nathalie: Oh poor you…umm….right will get my ainsley head on.

· pizza (our thrifty version) but without cheese – so make like more of a pesto topping with the basil and courgettes and onion and garlic, you can whack some sweetcorn on too.
· soup – although I appreciate its rather hot for that – lots of chunky veg
· sweet potato crisps
· some kind of stuffed courgette – cook and scoop out innards, mash in with onion, garlic, potato?
· spag bol with the quorn, tomatoes, pasta, onion and garlic etc
· French onion soup
· You could have veggie risotto stuffed into courgettes (another version) or use the lentils for a stuffing too
· Potato and sweetcorn fritters?
· Grated courgette and potato cakes?
· Ratatouille
· If you have curry powder in your cupboard you could make a lentil and veg curry
· Same with chilli – do you have any kind of beans to bulk out with?
· You could make some flatbreads to go with any of the above

Any of those even remotely good?  xxx

My solutions came to fruition and I received the following e-mail from Nicky this very morning:
 
Nicky: My dinner last night was super tasty!
I made potato, courgette, sweet potato and onion rostis, had them on a bed of lettuce with some toasted pine nuts! Christopher was very impressed and has taken the last one for his packed lunch at work today, he shall be the envy of his fellow statisticians!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

So the moral here? Well, i'm not entirely sure. But I think there's money to be saved in places you least expect it. www.lovefoodhatewaste.com

Nx

Doc-doc-doc-doc-doctor Tim

I've never hidden my love for food telly - and Masterchef this year in particular stole my heart. So I was very excited to discover what 'Children's doctor' Tim was doing now he's left the paediatrics behind him. His dream of a cake empire? Success!
http://www.timkinnaird.com/  


Nx

food frock

Chloe and Natto's jam journey

Chloe's allotment is bursting with fruit. So tonight, as they were on the turn from ripe to mush, we made two simple jams. 

 

Chloe doesn't like maggots. I think we got rid of most of them but these jams might not be veggie friendly...

We used about 800g of gorgeous homegrown, organic fruit

then, after blitzing, poured the fruit into a deep pan and gradually added a generous amount of sugar with extra pectin and a knob of butter.

We brought the mixture to the boil and timed its bubbling for four minutes. It smelled lovely.

After warming the jam jars in the oven to sterilise them, we used a ladle to spoon the jam mixture into jars.

It's so simple, even I - with my quasimodo neck - had a go.

Spooning glory...

Chloe checks out her jammy goodness.

Each batch made about four medium sized jars.

We covered each with rounds of greaseproof paper while they cooled to stop any funny business getting in.

And that, believe it or not, was it! Goodnight.

N x

"I'll have the lamb - rare and bloody"

I can't hold it in any longer. And the more I notice it the more frequently it haunts me. It - is the new Marco Pierre-White Knorr stock cubes advert. 

This series of ads have bothered me as all chefs in adverts do - they take away the believability in their passion for food. Jamie, Heston, Gordon - they're all guilty of selling out. But Marco? This one goes just a little further than the pure, simple selling-your-soul rabbit hole.

Marco's recent 'Steak Season' episode in the Knorr series, really disturbs my shudderbone. Think Buffalo Bill. Think Silence of the Lambs. Think "it rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again."

Marco's version of this spine-chilling quote? "I'd mash them into a paste with olive oil" (deathly pause) "and rub it in".

Maybe it's the odd past tense he uses but I get proper shudders when its on. See for yourself - now is it just me, or is that proper freaky stuff?

Now, I'm off for a niiiice Chiaaaanti....ff ff ff ff fff ff ff ff fff!

Nx

one of my five a day

Another quick one. I've been waiting to share this bad boy for a couple of weeks now. Beautiful, moist, sweet, nutty carrot cake from the Bocabar at the Paintworks, Bristol. This may spawn yet another top of the pops. Humana humana....

Nx

Baking for bacon

A bit of cross-blogging today. Find out what our double act have been up to at work at UWE Bristol to raise money for Cancer Research UK. 

Here's a little clue...

N x

The movies for foodies

Tonight I did a bad. It's not the first time it's happened in recent weeks. Congratulations to Cadbury who, despite the doom and gloom of the Kraft takeover, have managed to reinvent the wheel (so to speak) with a new edition to their snack bag family - the Caramel Nibbles. The fusion of giant chocolate buttons with the original caramel chunks is ingenious and yet dangerous for bloaters such as myself. The 'bad' i spoke of earlier, is my ability to fight through the dress size barrier and chow down on a whole bag of these things. So, if I were Carrie SATC (or Gok Wan for that fact) I might say - and I kinda got to thinking - this whole bag of Nibbles thing made me think about cinema sweets. Which is king? It's tricky. Tricky tricky tricky.

On Friday I'm off to a Wayne's World night at the Lanes in Bristol. Part of the lure lies with their promise of strawberry licquorice to complement the film. If I ever let myself loose with a scoop in the cinema,  I load up on them. I don't think Wayne and Garth's were as tampered with as the ones I favour: the red outer skin is purely a casing for white sugary chewiness - almost like some kind of strange bone marrow. Oh god, it's the pick n mix equivalent of a dog chew. This may hamper its chances of winning uber movie snack now... Time to move on.

Clear contenders are the pre-Nibbles chocolate bag options. The three M's primarily: Maltesers, Minstrels and M&Ms. And for those brave enough to take on the "noooooo, not the coffee one" chocolate roulette, Revels can add some sad strange excitement to movie night. The fear here is that despite the change in packaging over the years; the seal, the matt effect, the foil inside - nothing can prevent the inevitable sweaty hand/melty chocolate fusion. Before you know it, the heat of the cinema has transformed your perfectly crafted chocolate snacks into sticky brown blobs all over your fingers - not pretty. The likliehood is, whether through guilt for the amount you spent on them by buying them at the cinema, or through sheer determination, you'll battle on through and almost certainly end up with a feeling of bloated dehydration and slight sickness. It's not pleasant and it's certainly not one for date night. 

Savoury is out. Sorry. Rubber hotdogs and stale nachos only serve to stink out the cinema and leave you with more enemies than friends/successful dates at the end of all your chomping/ketchup spilling/cheese repeating burps under your breath. 

So, we're left with popcorn. Humble though it is, let's examine whether its merits can cause it to be a true movie snack contender.  Sweet or savoury? Either way, not being loaded with tomato sauce, mustard or jalapenos wins points here. The smell here will only serve to improve the experience for your neighbour, intensifying the cinema experience. Imagine going to your local Odeon and not being able to smell any popcorn - denied! Popcorn is made for cinema fights, sharing, flirting/feeding/wooing your date and a perfect prop for a horror flick JUMP. But the best thing of all is that a bucket of Popcorn feels endless. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have ourselves a winner.

Master-share

Just discovered this Radio Times blog via facebook with ideas for Masterchef spin-offs. Wonderful stuff. Any more ideas?

Nx

Nice Thai

This year I want to go on holiday again and last month I found a bargain 10-day holiday to a country I've always wanted to visit: Thailand. 

Currently, the political violence in Bangkok is so bad that holiday insurers won't cover anyone who willingly enters the country. So, as the combination of violence and volcano prevent me from experiencing the real thing, I must at least continue to enjoy its cuisine in the UK. 

So far I've managed to perfect just two humble dishes (three if you count the fragrant rice). Having sampled one particular dish in Bristol's Teohs and in Tampopo, I know its sticky, shrimpy, nuttiness is like gold dust for my tastebuds. So I'm grateful that on a sickly day at the beginning of this year I watched former Masterchef finalist (Digger) Dean Edwards (from here in Bristol nonetheless) cook a simple, healthy pad thai on This Morning. 

It's a recipe I've now mastered, and holds the crown as my fella's favourite. I've found tamarind paste hard to track down, so instead I use some block tamarind which I soak before use - the longer the better (around 6-8 hours) - then sieve into the recipe. This ingredient gives a definite unique sweetness to the recipe which it misses if the fruit is omitted. The key to pad thai however, I feel, is in the garnishes: plenty of dried red chilli flakes, finely chopped peanuts and luscious green coriander.

The second is a Thai green curry - but skinny. Collecting dust on my recipe book shelf is Cook Yourself Thin - with recipes taken from the Channel 4 series by a bunch of posh, albeit slim, girls with lots of neat ideas on how to eat well without feeling cheated. 

The secret of their recipe was to poach the prawns in (light) coconut milk and load it with green veg. This way, there's no oil in the recipe and the fat from the coconut milk is counterbalanced with about 3 of your 5-a-day. The real revelation from this recipe though, is that it taught me how to cook perfect fragrant rice. Who knew the trick would be to cook it so little? The magic is in the steam created from the initial boil, which then slowly cooks the rice to perfection as your curry bubbles away on the stove. The fluffy sticky (but not stodgy) rice is almost as satisfying as the incredible smell of lemongrass which wafts out of the pan as you lift the lid. It's been foolproof so far - I've never looked back.

Nx

Update: since writing this post, the recipe has been removed from the This Morning website. Here's my weathered, well used and well loved copy (click to enlarge).  

Buffet barf

First Great Western baffled me and westie on Saturday with their buffet cart menu tasters. What could possibly come after the dot dot dots...? 

- IBS?

- gaviscon?

- tena lady maxi?

...answers on a postcard.

Nx

A taste of Bristol

Wednesday night was date night. I love living in Bristol because when I say "shall we go out?" it takes so long to decide that, by the time we've shortlisted, the gravitational pull of Bedminster ASDA threatens to rear its ugly head. I think we can do better than that.

For the daytimes us Bristol folk are blessed with Pieminster pies - the ultimate comfort food but with the added bonus of feeding the river cottage generation: free range meat, local produce and founded in the fine city of Bristol. The best way to enjoy it? St Nick's Market: Chicken of Aragon on mash, minty mushy peas and red wine gravy. So beautiful a meal it'd make a mute of Bernard Matthews.

But, and not that I'd complain, Bristol's not all about the pies.

Last night I made yet another new discovery. A middleweight clifton-posh but perfectly tasty three course meal: replenished water, cosy atmosphere, attentive, friendly and relaxed staff - all for £13 a head. This winning venue was The Picture House on Whiteladies Road. The result was an unpretentious meal so satisfying, it made a Tuesday feel like a Friday. Try next door for a slightly more decadent find, The Cowshed, where a £10 set lunch of slightly smaller portions serves up one of the best rump steaks I've ever eaten.

Back into the centre of Bristol, the Raj has well and truly pushed aside my penchant for Chinese takeaway and replaced it with sit-down Indian fare - the gorgeously-garlicky Chicken Palak Sag and warm doughy Peshwari Naan to be precise. On film night with friends it fell to me to place "the biggest takeaway order they'd ever received" - the result was every bit as tasty and included service with a smile even on our massive 'going for an English' scale. 

Fresh in my mind these are the new finds but lest I forget some firm favourites: The Olive Shed - perfect for a bowl of green by the river in the sunshine, even better for a slap-up night out with sharer plates and a big fish platter; El Puerto - with as much Spanish spice in the service as the tapas; Obento - perfect sushi in or out and, if that's not enough, they've only got bloody karaoke upstairs!; and finally, for a bit of luxury...Hotel Du Vin - two words, lemon posset.

I feel 'a taste of Bristol: part two' coming on already. Bootiful. 
N x