Lazy Days

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The Galvin Cup Cocktail Extravaganza

On Monday 15th June I had the honour of helping to judge The Galvin Cup, the cocktail mixology competition organised by Galvin at Windows and hosted at The Dorchester Hotel. The competition saw competitors in two categories, professional and student, mixing up their own creations in order to win first place and some fantastic prizes, with the top one being £1,000 and the silver Galvin cup.



It was a hard afternoon’s work for me, which started after a rather fabulous lunch with my fellow judges, who included Salvatore Calabrese, Silvano Giraldin, Peter Dorelli and Chris Galvin himself, and then moved onto the taxing task of tasting lots of delicious cocktails. OK, it wasn’t that much like hard work.



It was, however, an extremely difficult task to judge the cocktails. The talent and hard work that had gone into each was clearly evident. Each contestant had to create a vodka martini and then a cocktail of their own choice and I was really blown away by the creativity and excellence on display. I could quite happily have sipped cocktails all afternoon and into the evening but to avoid a messy exit and monster hangovers we used straws to taste the cocktails and had just a few drops of each. We also rotated so that we only tasted 3 cocktails in a row, to avoid killing our taste buds and finding the judging even harder than it already was.

















All of the contenders, both professional and student, were incredible but at the end of the day there could only be two winners and they were:

In the professional category, Riccardo Semeria of The Connaught



In the student category, Jeoffrey Anthony Warmerdam-NHTV



Many congratulations to them both, and thank you again to Chris and Fred for inviting me to help judge the competition.

Morning

In the Bag: Cooking the Month of June

Here we are in the heart of June in what is promising to be a hot summer. To help us all cool down this month's bag contains refreshing watermelon and cooling mint. What exciting recipes can you come up with using them?

In the bag:

Watermelon
Mint

Entry Details
Make a dish using the ingredients and blog about it then send an email with ‘In the Bag in the subject line to asliceofcherrypie AT yahoo DOT co DOT uk by Sunday 5th July with the following information:

• your name
• a link to your post
• a picture of your dish

Rules

Here are the loose rules - but ultimately remember the objective is to have fun whilst highlighting seasonal food:

1. Participants should attempt to use all the ingredients 'in the bag' for that particular month, but may leave one out if they prefer.

2. Participants can include any extra ingredients that they see fit.

3. Entries should include a link back to the host for that month, and the post should be tagged "In the Bag".

4. Entries can be written any time during the month, as long as the URL is emailed to that month's host before the closing date.

5. Particpants from outside of the UK are most welcome to join in and substitute an item from their own local seasonal produce if necessary.

How to make an Omelette

Shaken, Not Stirred

(Photograph courtesy of Galvin at Windows)

A while ago I posted about The Galvin Cup, the mixology competition to be held at The Dorchester in London tomorrow, which I have the honour of helping to judge.

I'm very excited to be a part of what promises to be a spectacular event and in preparation I've bought one of the cocktail bibles, recommended to me by a colleague: 'The Craft of the Cocktail' which I shall be reading intently this evening.

For news and a few words from the Galvin Cup committee, including myself, take a look at the Galvin Cup blog and if you can, come along to watch the action. But if you can't make it don't worry, as I'll be Twittering from the event to bring you the very latest as it unfolds and I'll be sure to blog all about it for you afterwards.

In the meantime, let me know: what's your favourite cocktail?

The Simplest of Meals can be the Greatest of All

First Day at the First Ever British Food Bloggers Stall

Thanks to MsMarmiteLover for the photo.

After weeks of preparation the first UKFBA stall was unveiled last Thursday and it was a huge success. Chris Drefus, from the blog 'More Tea, Vicar?' bravely volunteered to take the first slot, offering to bake his own breads and cakes. As he discovered, baking on a commercial basis in a domestic kitchen with one small oven and just a few loaf tins and baking trays is quite a challenge, but he rose to it tremendously, staying up until 3am baking. It was all rather manic for him in the days leading up to the stall, rushing around buying ingredients, getting the health and safety people to visit his kitchen, deciding what to bake. Like most of the people who will be at the stall, Chris is not a professional baker and has never sold his goods commercially before and so it was a brand new experience for him. Watch the video, filmed at the stall, to see what he has to say about it.



Although the stall is in London the UKFBA is a national association and we have members organising meet-ups and events across the country, which is wonderful to see happening. So, if you live outside of London and would like to get involved with the UKFBA community visit www.ukfba.co.uk to see what’s going on in your area, or to get something organised! And if you’re in London do stop by the stall, which will be at Covent Garden every Thursday through the summer, to say hello. This week the stall will be hosted by one of our selected producers, Boutique Bakehouse.

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June's newsletter will be going out in the next few days.

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Scotch Eggs

These were the scotch eggs I made for the picnic and bike ride I went on the other weekend. When I talked about them on Twitter there was some demand for a blog post so here it is!

Scotch eggs are one of those things that give high reward for little effort. Despite being very easy to make they are impressive and incredibly good to eat – so much better than anything you can buy in the shops, with the added advantage of containing fresh ingredients and nothing else. What’s more, you can eat them freshly cooked while they’re still warm and lovely and crispy on the outside; much my preferred way of eating them, as lovely as they are cold.

All you need to do is hard boil some eggs but, and here’s the trick for the perfect scotch egg, make sure they aren’t completely hard in the middle but at that almost-hard stage; about 7 minutes should do it for large eggs. Then you just wrap them in good quality, seasoned sausage meat - herbs mixed in if you like - dip them in a beaten egg and then breadcrumbs and fry them until they're crisp and golden and the sausage meat cooked through.

I’m right in the middle of testing recipes for my cookbook at the moment and shall be perfecting this recipe for inclusion, so you’ll be able to read the full recipe when it’s published next spring. In the meantime, here are some photographs of the steps to make scotch eggs.

Visit the UKFBA Stall at the Covent Garden Real Food Market

As many of you already know, back in 2007 I started the UK Food Bloggers Association (UKFBA) in order to help bring together British bloggers. It's been a huge success and a few months ago, with the help of TrustedPlaces, I moved its online home to a brand new social networking site. The new site is very similar to Facebook in that members have their own profile, can befriend each other and leave each other comments. It has a discussion forum, the facility to set up groups, such as the 'Borough Market' group and even a blogging feature, so you can start blogging straight away on the site. You don't have to be a blogger to join the association, you just need an interest in food and want to interact with the British bloggers; everyone is welcome to join in the fun. And what fun we're having! Members are chatting away and arranging meet-ups all over the country.

This Thursday sees the launch of the first ever UKFBA market stall, to be held at none other than the Covent Garden Real Food Market. The stall will feature various bloggers and selected producers and this Thursday, for the very first appearance of the stall, Chris Dreyfus, the man behind the brilliant blog 'More Tea, Vicar?' will be selling a variety of breads and cakes, along with some some products from his father's shop, 'Tray Gourmet' in Chelsea. I'll also be going down there and would love to meet you so please do come by and say hello.