Food & Drink Round-Up August 2019

In this post I share some of my food and drink highlights from last month, bringing together the best of the blog and my social media during August 2019.

Includes quality but affordable dining in Lichfield, Thai lunchtime bargains, tapas at my local village pub, eating with friends in the New Forest, homemade preserves and more.

The Olive Tree is Dead. Long Live Eden

It’s not often that I post two reviews of a restaurant, and certainly not within a few months of each other. But I was prepared to make an exception in the case of Eden in Lichfield.

I made my first visit back in April, while the restaurant was still in its guise as The Olive Tree. I was mightily impressed and planned to return.

Just recently, the restaurant completed its transformation with the new name of Eden. I thought that sounded like an excellent excuse to go back.

It turned out that I enjoyed my second visit even more: read my latest post about Eden here.

So Tasty, So Cheap, So Thai

When we first moved to the Staffordshire Moorlands, So Thai in Leek was the first place we ate at. The weekend of the move coincided with other half’s birthday so we broke off unpacking and, absolutely knackered, went into our local town for Thai food.

We’ve gone back regularly ever since and it was even one of the very first reviews I wrote on this blog. It isn’t a particularly well written piece, but it’s heartfelt and mercifully short.

Despite all those visits, we’d never tried the lunchtime takeaway boxes until last month. There’s a choice of three at a the bargain price of just £3.50 each.

Out and about at the monthly Totally Locally Leek Sunday Supplement artisan and food market, we decided to try them.

As the takeaway boxes were so cheap (and we’re very greedy), we decided to have all three. I had the chicken noodles with loads of fresh, crunchy vegetables, other half had chicken pad thai. We shared the crispy coated chicken.

Tasty, filling and an absolute bargain at £10.50 the whole lot.

Roast Beef Salad

From the cheap to not so cheap: quality British sirloin of beef.

Particularly during the recent record-breaking hot weather, I’d been thinking about creating a lighter, cooler version of the traditional roast beef lunch or dinner. I got around to it last month and thought the result was sensational.

Besides medium-rare roasted beef, there were cumin-roasted carrots and garlicky runner beans. The dreaded soggy greens were nowhere in sight, but instead lots of moreish, crispy kale.

To bring everything together, I made a quick and easy creamy horseradish dressing. Get the recipe for Roast Beef Salad here.

Oatcake Day

Oh, I did get into trouble back in January when, having some leftover chilli, I had the temerity to shove it in a Staffordshire oatcake. Delicious as it was, I did come in for some ribbing from what I’ll call the more ‘traditional’ Stokies.

For this year’s Oatcake Day (held every 8th August) I toyed with the idea of getting Stoke to explode by posting a picture of avocado in an oatcake. But, in the end, I thought I’d play it safe with the classic bacon and cheese.

Tapas at The Black Lion, Cheddleton

Oatcakes came up in the conversation later that same night, at The Black Lion in Cheddleton.

The Black Lion, just a ten minute walk from our home, started Thursday tapas nights earlier this year. It’s become extremely popular with locals as well as holiday makers.

We’d got chatting to a family from Kent on a narrowboat holiday who were moored up nearby. They’d heard about Oatcake Day but were utterly baffled. Of course we had the usual discussion that no, Staffordshire oatcakes aren’t those little biscuits from Scotland you eat with cheese. Eager to try some before they moved on the next day, we urged them to have breakfast at The Old School Tearooms, just down the lane.

Anway, the pub was packed for tapas night. As there’s no booking, you have to turn up early to make sure you get a table.

Mind you, at £10 for 3 dishes or £15 for 5, it’s not surprising it’s so popular. We’d gone with friends and, between us, must have tried ten or more of the fifteen dishes on offer.

Among them were albondigas (homemade beef meatballs with spicy tomato sauce), gambas pil pil (king prawns in garlic, white wine & chilli) and guiso de pollo y chorizo (slow cooked chicken and chorizo stew).

We enjoyed all the dishes which were excellent value for money, so we’ll definitely be going again. See more of the dishes over on my Facebook page.

Breakfast at The Amberley Inn

In August, we went down to Hampshire to stay with friends for a long weekend. We broke the journey with an overnight stay at The Amberley Inn near Stroud.

We were there during the big power outage that affected much of Britain, including back home, but in our temporary bit of the Cotswolds everything was fine.

In other respects it was exactly like home: green, hilly and with propensity for cattle or other animals to come wandering along the road. This was the view from our room:

I enjoyed a dinner of goat’s cheese salad folllowed by duck breast at the historic inn. But it was the excellent full English breakfast the next day that was the highlight for me.

Besides the usual ingredients, sourced locally, there was also very good bubble and squeak with loads of fresh green veg in it. Extremely dog friendly, staff even brought out a cooked, sliced sausage for our cocker spaniel Larkin.

Eating with friends & a blustery BBQ

Travelling from the Amberley Inn down to our friends on the edge of the New Forest in Lepe, we arrived just in time for lunch. Both Emma and Mark are excellent cooks so we knew we were going to be fed well.

Both are also gardeners (Emma professionally and Mark in their plot at home) and we were treated to a beautiful salad with homegrown beetroots.

The platter of sweet, multicoloured root veg had been very thinly sliced on a mandoline and flavoured with a contrasting tangy caper, lemon and dill dressing.

There was also a homemade smoked mackerel pate, topped with loads of butter, with thick crunchy toast to spread it on.

In the evening we were treated to a barbecue. It’d been touch and go whether we’d have to eat inside instead as it was incredibly windy. We’d even seen some blown down branches on our drive there but we braved it anyway, complete with campfire in the garden.

There were curry-spiced chicken wings, pork cubes and peppers in the style of smoky Spanish pinchos morunos, corn cobs and wonderfully tender steaks, full of spice.

There was more homegrown produce too: earthy potatoes and at least four types tomato in various colours. The kohlrabi in the creamy coleslaw came from the garden too.

To finish, there was an outstanding, and huge, fudgy chocolate and coconut cream cake. I’m afraid I wasn’t quick enough to take a photo before the sparkler stuck in the middle went out, but it was fabulous anyway. We were given a big hunk to take home too.

The sparkler had been in honour of other half’s birthday, which was the next day. To my shame, I’d forgotten to pack his presents. Oops.

Lunch in the New Forest

But other half’s birthday lunch more than made up for the lack of presents, I think.

After a coastal walk, Emma and Mark took us to the Fleur de Lys pub in Pilley near Lymington. Dating back to 1096, it’s said to be the oldest pub in the New Forest.

My starter was crispy coated, smoked haddock arancini. Inside, the creamy rice was studded with good-sized pieces of fish. The golden ball sat on a generous bed of crab meat and came with chilli mayo and curry sauce.

Unusually, I opted for a traditional Sunday roast as my main course: beef and Yorkshire pudding. Often disappointed with roast potatoes not made at home, these were excellent. Also good were the roasted carrot and parsnip. There were lots of greens hidden beneath it all plus a big dish of perfect cauliflower cheese on the side.

I’m not one to rave about desserts that often, but I think this may have been my favourite dish of the meal.

Looking stunning, there were cubes of rich peanut butter iced parfait, salted caramel ice cream, hunks of honeycomb, a tempered chocolate shard and white chocolate covered strawberries.

An absolutely perfect pudding.

Food History: The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery

Back home, noting that this month was the sixth anniversary of us moving to Staffordshire, I thought it about time I went to The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent.

Besides viewing the Staffordshire Hoard, the Archaeology, Ceramics, Fine Art and Natural Science galleries, I was especially interested in the food related exhibits in the Local History gallery.

These included a mock up of a pub, a chip shop complete with potato chipper, and a colourful cart for selling roast potatoes.

Labneh

If you’ve seen my social media posts and my blog piece about Homemade Yogurt, you’ll know that one of the things I’d planned to do with it was make labneh.

Labneh is a Middle Eastern yogurt ‘cheese’, said to originate in Lebanon. It’s made by straining yogurt through muslin cloth, usually up to twenty-fours, until it’s very thick and cream cheese-like. Despite its simplicity, it’s surprisingly good.

I ate my first homemade labneh on toasted, home baked bread with a sprinkle of homemade zaatar (a spice, herb & sesame mix), a drizzle of olive oil plus cucumber, homegrown tomatoes and mint. I think what made this lunch so special was the number of elements created by my own hands.

Although the labneh and the zaatar take next-to-zero work, I think I’ll show you how to make both in a future blog post.

Retro Cookbooks

I love old cookery books and my current favourite is The Dairy Book of Home Cookery. This is one of those books published by the Milk Marketing Board (mine is from 1978) which were sold on the doorstep by milkmen and women.

Not being the most experienced baker, it’s become the first book I pick up to find the right proportions of flour, sugar, butter and eggs for all sorts of sweet recipes. In August I decided to have a go at its dinky little Tea Scones, specifically the date and walnut version.

I thought it was a really good recipe, resulting in light, soft-centred scones. The went really well with some of last year’s homemade Rhubarb, Apple & Ginger Jam.

I’ll certainly be using this recipe again, maybe as a base to make other flavours of scone too.

If you fancy baking some Date & Walnut Scones, the recipe’s on my Facebook page here.

Independent, local: Spout Brew House

One of the reasons I started Moorlands Eater was to promote local, independent food and drink businesses. That’s also my role at Great Food Club where I’m Staffordshire editor.

This, coupled with last month’s new allegations about Costa Coffee’s ‘inhuman’ treatment of staff (including tips being taken by managers and staff not receiving pay for sickness or annual leave) meant I was even more glad that my nearest town of Leek has plenty of great independent cafes to choose from.

One of those is Spout Brew House. We’ve had many a brunch or lunch in this quirky place, usually while shopping in the town on Saturdays.

Last month I tried their sensational Mumbai Breakfast: sourdough toast with cheese and chilli, topped with perfectly cooked fried eggs.

There’s always lots of vegetarian and vegan choices, as well as gluten free and homemade cakes. Spout is also a bar with a great range of beers with extended opening until 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays.

Cheddleton Old School Tearooms

Even closer to home than the independent places in Leek is the Old School Tearooms in Cheddleton.

Great not just for breakfasts (including cheesy Staffordshire oatcakes which we recommended to the visitors we met on tapas night, as above), the Tearooms serves up good value, filling lunches too.

After walking the dog the other Sunday morning, we popped in and were lucky enough to get a table. Their traditional Sunday roasts are very popular but, as we were early, those who’d reserved a place hadn’t come flocking in yet.

I had steak and ale pie, full of tender chunks of meat in rich gravy, plus top-notch skin-on proper chips. Rather than veg, I opted for some fresh salad and coleslaw.

Before coming here, I lived in a city for twenty-five years. But I’ve just realised I’ve actually now got more options to eat and drink within walking distance of my house.

Preserving Season Starts

I know Summer is coming to an end when my thoughts turn to making jams and other preserves.

My first one this year used up some courgettes from the garden which we’d lazily let grow to a ludicrously large size.

I think oversized courgettes are just too tasteless to enjoy as a vegetable. But they make surprisingly good jam. Not that you can taste the courgette (or marrow which you can also use) as I combine it with apple, lemon and ginger to make a zingy preserve. Get the recipe for Courgette Jam with Lemon & Ginger here.

That’s all my highlights for August.  Follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to hear about my September in food & drink.

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