Dining with the Stars

#21 Go to a Michelin Star Restaurant

OK, so I haven't met my celebrity (yet), but I have ticked off #21 from my list!

On the 13th July 2013 it was my parents' 40th (yes, FORTIETH) wedding anniversary. If this isn't a good reason to get some fine dining on the go, I don't know what is!

The Happy Couple: Forty years of wedded bliss....

We (my parents, Michael, Gerard and I)  booked into Chez Bruce next to Wandsworth Common for an early dinner, on what turned out to be one of the hottest days of the year. Luckily the air con there was excellent!

The menu was lovely, a good variety of dishes, but not so much choice that it was difficult to choose. The wine menu is VAST, so we went for a carafe of house wine, of course!

At this point I should probably go into great detail about what we all ordered, how devine the food tasted, the flavours, the smells, the presentation...but I have to admit I am not a foodie and have a feeling that my comments on the above would be neither accurate, nor particularly insightful!

However, what I can say was that:

1. The food was really very tasty and filling. To begin I had fois gras with brioche, followed by sea bream served with pomme dauphine and..erm...other vegetables... and then for dessert I went for the rose marshmallow with mango sorbet. Yum, yum, yum....

2. The service was incredibly efficient. Not once was our water glass empty and any time one of us went to the loo, a member of staff would was over like a flash to neatly fold the napkin left strewn across the table/chair/wherever it's uncouth owner dropped it. We weren't entirely sure if this was a special service for us shabby lot, but I have since been comforted to hear that my friends also received this treatment when they visited recently!

3. The company really was very lovely and despite the fact that my brother Michael turned up half cut and decided that he was George Michael when wearing my dad's sunglasses, we all had really nice time.

"George" Michael at Chez Bruce

Upon asking our parents about that fateful day 40 years ago, it threw some light onto the wedding mindset back in the 70s. On the morning of the wedding my mum "prepared"  by scrubbing the kitchen floor in her parents' house (there would be guests round later - a dirty floor would be a disgrace!) whilst my Dad could be found underneath the car making sure it was ready to go for the honeymoon...one week camping in the highlands! Loved this practical way of approaching things - no Bridezilla moments here!!

After we finished dinner, it was still nice and light so we went for an evening stroll on the common, with many jokes about "George" being on the prowl. 

All in all, a lovely evening!

The family on Wandsworth Common (l-r: Dad, Mum, Gerard & Michael)

What did the cheese say when it looked in the mirror?

Halloumi!(*ba-dum-tsch!*)

#14 Make Cheese

"Why the hell would you want to make cheese?!", I hear you cry incredulously. Well....

• I visited a National Trust property a while back and it had a dairy. At this point I asked my friend Freddie if he knew how any of our dairy products are made. We quickly came to the conclusion that we had not a clue. I thought that this was wrong and that I should, at the grand old age of 30, at least have an idea of what I'm putting into my body.
• I like to know how stuff works and how things are made.
• I thought it could be a fun project.

So a couple of weekends ago Ben (my new beau) and I embarked on a cheese churning challenge; no churning was actually involved, but I like the alliteration.

Having done some speedy internet research i.e. Googling "homemade cheese"  (note: Googling "cheese recipe" only brings up lots of recipes with cheese as an ingredient!) it was soon decided that my cheeses of choice would be halloumi and ricotta, since soft cheeses looked far easier, and much quicker to produce.

Hanging Cheese - Draining the whey. Whey-hey!

A quick visit to Wimbledon's Lakeland and I had all the required accessories (rennet and cheesecloth) to begin.

I realise now, that I should have taken lots of photos to document the production, but...well... I didn't. Sorry.

The process went something like this...

Ricotta - heat milk to 37 degrees, add rennet, let the mixture separate, strain through cheese cloth, leave to hang for a few hours, break up and mix in flavourings (lemon and chilli in this case), put into cheese mould.

Halloumi - heat milk to around 37 degrees, add rennet, let mixture separate,"cut" curd into "squares", heat in whey at around 35 degrees for another 30 mins, scoop out cubes of cheese into cheese cloth, cover with other cheese cloth, put heavy object on top to compress cheese. When done, pat sides with salt.

Et voila! Here are the results!

Halloumi! Need to get a photo editor on my new computer...

Ricotta - looks impressive...tastes like cardboard!
Could not figure out how to turn this photo round. 

The ricotta looked really pretty, but frankly tasted awful. When looking at other recipes, it turns out that authentic ricotta should be made from the whey (not the curd as I had done) and I also think that I overheated it resulting in an...interesting...consistency.

The halloumi was OK. I overheated it at the second stage (the perils of not using a digital thermometer) and the consistency wasn't quite right - but there was actually a bit of a squeak when eating it! It also required more salt, but tasted good with Ben's homemade olive bread; It was a very industrious Saturday!

Ben's MASSIVE olive bread.

Heating up the halloumi!

So there you are - a quick guide on how to (kind of) make cheese. I think I will definitely try it again, but next time perhaps instead of plucking recipes at random from the net I will purchase a book with tried and tested recipes. Lesson learnt!