meemalee

Meat Fruit. Shoe Cake. It's Saturday and the husband and I set off for Knightsbridge, incredulous that we've managed to get a booking at Heston Blumenthal's "hot" new restaurant Dinner . I've deliberately not read any reviews (apart from one ), so as not to have any preconceptions. I do know this is not meant to be the Fat Duck Mk II, but a place of its own. Thus pyrotechnics are not expected - although, as I've heard many people raving about it already, I look forward to a memorable meal. At Dinner, the schtick is historical food - dishes have been drawn from every period and reinterpreted for a modern audience by Blumenthal and the head chef Ashley Palmer-Watts . Some of the dishes have come from Blumenthal's TV series " Feasts ". If any of you saw Heston's Medieval Feast , you'll remember that he created an entire fruit bowl which turned out to be made of meat. Yes, Meat Fruit - and this is the dish I'm most looking forward to,...

You'll have seen from previous posts that I like a bit of kitchen whimsy. As well as bento bits and bobs, my house is rammed with culinary nonsense from Alessi (including that Phillipe Starck Juicy Salif lemon squeezer), Koziol , Guzzini and, last but not least, Fred and Friends , purely because the design tickled my fancy - functionality not necessarily a priority (see again Juicy Salif). It's an easy and not too expensive way of getting a little designer fun into your surroundings. Smallest M-Cup used for my Butterbean Dip My latest loves are the M-Cups and M-Spoons from Fred & Friends - a ridiculously adorable range of Russian doll kitchenware, which (obviously) stacks away for your convenience. The Matryoshka Measuring Cups aka M-Cups come in 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4 and 1 full cup sizes, making them perfect for American recipes. The Matryoshka Measuring Spoons aka M-Spoons come in 1 tbsp, 1/2 tbsp, 1 tsp, 1/2 tsp, 1/4 tsp sizes. They're both available in P...

There are only TWO things you need to know about #MEATEASY. Number One: New Cross is not a shithole. The #MEATEASY is situated at the top of Goldsmiths Tavern in New Cross, South East London. If I hear one more comment about New Cross being a dangerous dump, I will scream. Those lovely, middle-class boys from Blur studied in New Cross and held a comeback gig here. Damien Hirst and Jools Holland started their careers here. Goldsmiths Tavern itself saw the very first gigs by Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer . Local school Aske's is the most popular state school in the UK, with top GCSE results in London and 10th best in the country ( Rafe Spall was there at the same time as my OH and used to claim it was a "ghetto school" to look hard. Tool). Look, even Princess Beatrice went to college in New Cross . I know it sounds like the lady doth protest too much, but frankly this lady has had enough of people taking liberties and resorting to lazy stereotypes about South London. ...

So this morning, Foodepedia published their review of Heston Blumenthal's new restaurant Dinner. Like every other review under the sun, it focused on Blumenthal's signature starter Meat Fruit, but not in a way you might expect. I've screen-grabbed the piece as it was first published above, but the writer Nick Harman seemed to think it would be amusing to suggest that "Meat Fruit" was in fact the name of a gay man with a sidekick called "Bull Dyke". A few of us on Twitter and in the comments on Foodepedia objected to this cheap and childish homophobia, and its derision of the efforts by local authorities to teach and inform. Rather than apologise, Foodepedia's response was to align itself with Jeremy Clarkson (a figure notorious for his unreconstructed views ) and to insinuate that we just didn't get the joke. See screen-grabs below - the equivalent of a big f*ck you. And when we expressed disbelief at this Twitter response and their amended revi...

My husband just got back from another long work trip in Chicagoland . It was windy (appropriately), but it was also freezing cold, as winter had set in with a menace bringing snowstorms with it, so I'd packed him off with thermal undershirts and even a few pairs of long-johns. We Skyped on a daily basis, and one day he said to me, "Hey, you know Andy's is open? How weird is that?" Andy's is a purveyor of frozen custard , which is far as I can tell is pretty much like home-made ice cream - rich and eggy with a custard base. With branches all over the Mid-west, the outlet my husband was referring to is on Church Street in Evanston. Founded in 1986 in Osage Beach, Missouri by John and Carol Kuntz (heh), Andy's particular speciality is seasonal frozen custard-based desserts. So in the Autumn, they offer pumpkin pie concretes and apple pie concretes (where whole slices of pie are blended into the frozen custard), and in the Spring and summer they offer peach cobbl...