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.