So in the spirit of giving, here’s Handtomouth’s Yearly Christmas wish list should you be struggling to find the food lover in your life something to buy, or if any readers out there are feeling generous.

1. I totally fell in love with Lodge cast iron cookwear whilst in the states, and this double sided griddle is on the top of my Christmas list. Heavy in both senses of the word.

2. Penguin’s ‘Great Food’ box set. A collection of 20 of so titles celebrating food writing from the past 400 years. From David to Roden, Dumas to Waters this would be a handsome collection for any food lovers book shelves.

3. Sigg Heritage water bottle. I love Sigg’s precision engineered aluminium water bottles, but have never actually owned one. This one could change all that.

4. Labour & Wait Bib Apron. Going into one of Labour & Wait’s shops is like going back in time. In a good way. They have a really nicely curated selection of stuff with a practical, utilitarian bent, of which this apron is a perfect example.

5. Dan Lepard’s ‘Short & Sweet’. What Dan the man doesn’t know about baking, isn’t worth knowing (probably). As I’m sure you know, this is his latest book, and by all accounts it’s a winner.

6. I found these Cheese Making Kits in a similar post on Mrs Marmite Lover’s blog and thought that they were a great gift idea. I love the idea of making m own cheese, now all I need is a cave to age it in.

7. I really want one of these Opinel Bread Knives. I’m a big fan of all their stuff, and if they’re good enough for Richard Bertinet, they’re good enough for me.

8. Hahn Fish Corkscrew. I came across one of these recently having not seen one since I was a nipper. They actually work really well, and I’m pretty sure could be described as a design classic.

9. Sipsmith’s Damson Vodka. Their sloe gin was on my Christmas list last year, and I got a bottle from my old dear. So maybe I’ll have the same luck this year. With tasting notes including plum, cherry and spicy cinnamon, this sounds like just the thing to be slugging back in front of the fire.

10. Subscription to Lucky Peach. It may be almost painfully hip, but David Chang’s food magazine is a great read, beautifully designed / illustrated, and it’s got cojones.

So…….back in time a few weeks we hit the last stop on our trip, New York. It’s been a couple of years since I was last there, and to paraphrase DOOM, it still is a hell of a finer town. Knowing we only had a few days of our adventure left, we rolled up our sleeves and ate our way right to the core. I’m probably going to do some longer posts on a couple of other discoveries, and I didn’t make it to The Dutch which I REALLY wanted to check out, but here are a few highlights.

Where to start…hmmmm. The first time I went to NY, probably back in ‘97, my mate Matt took me to The Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station. I vividly remember sitting in the back room saloon surrounded by brash New Yoikers shouting at each other and guzzling plates of oysters whilst I sat slurping a New England Clam Chowder in a happy jet-lagged daze. The wife and I decided to pay it a visit this time, and I’m happy to say nothing’s really changed. It’s certainly a tourist attraction, but it is still rammed with every shape and size of New Yorker having lunch, doing deals and chewing the fat (oysters). We sucked down a couple of zinc-ey Long Island Bluepoints, a bowl of that creamy, soothing chowder and a very tasty crab-cake sarnie all, washed down with a couple of glasses of super chilled Sauvignon Blanc. As far as classic New York lunches go, it’s hard to beat, and good to see an institution like this still chugging away.

For the past few visits, no trip to NY would be complete for us without a visit to Egg. I’ve said it all before here, and as pretentious as it sounds, it’s still one of my favourite places to get breakfast in the world. The Eggs Rothko are a winner, the place is mimal in a cosy kind of way, the staff are hot, and it’s consistently good. Nuff said.

That being said, we did find another brunch place that gave Egg a bit of a run for it’s money. Five Leaves in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I have to admit, the joint is styled to within an inch of it’s life, and it’s more hipster than a skinny dude with tattoos, a mustache and fisherman’s beanie perched precariously on the crown of his head. But you forget all that once you start munching. Between the three of us we had the home made beans and bacon, sage scrambled eggs, and the ricotta pancakes (see above), all of which were serious customers. The beans were sweet, smokey and spicy with a poached egg perched on top. The scrambled egg was seriously moist and soft, with a hint of sage, topped with strong cheddar and served in a tender white bap. And then the pancakes. F**k me. Light and fluffy, yet satisfyingly substantial. Slightly creamy from the ricotta, and served with a dollop of this amazing honeycomb butter. Crazy in all the right kinds of ways. They also serve Brooklyn’s own Stumptown Coffee, which is frikin’ delicious.

Whilst we’re talking about Stumptown and sweet thangs, we also popped in to the Momofuku Milk Bar in Williamsburgh. The sister of David Chang’s noodle empire, they also serve Stumptown coffee and a range of baked goods devised by Christina Tosi, who’s currently doing the rounds with the Milk Bar book. The reason I wanted to check it out was their Crack Pie, which I’d heard a lot of good things about it, including that it’s appropriately named. It is a bit hard to describe, but if you imagine a treacle tart and a cheesecake having a very dirty love child, you’re kind of close. The flapjack-esque base is insanely buttery, and the sticky, custard filling packs a super sweet vanilla punch. It’s dangerous stuff. So much so that it’s trademarked and comes in individually packaged doses. If you’ve got the willpower, you can make your own from the recipe here.

But despite all the above, I think my favourite food experience of this trip to NY was the evening we spent in Chinatown. Again it had been a while since we’d been there, but our ever reliable host, Matt, had a couple of places that he really wanted us to check out. The first was the Shanghai Cafe, which is famous for it’s Xiao Long Bao, or soup dumplings to you and me. I’ve got to say they were the best I’ve ever had, and judging by the team of guys at the front of the restaurant constantly filling and crimping them by hand, I’m not the only one to think so. They arrived at the table in a steamer basket wobbling like weebles, and although it’s generally a good idea to let them cool a bit so you don’t burn your mouth off, I couldn’t resist. The wrapper was giving yet chewy in all the right ways, the intensely savoury broth that burst out, delicious, and the porky filling spiked with spring onion a fitting end to the experience. I could have sat right there eaten a few baskets of them, but Matt had other ideas.

We left the Shanghai Cafe and marched about 10 minutes across town to a little Blade Runner-esque  joint under the Manhattan Bridge call Xi’an Famous Foods. Despite it’s size, over the past few years this tiny place has begun to live up to it’s name. They serve Western style Chinese food, which blends traditional Chinese flavours with those of the Middle East, and are famous for their hand pulled noodles. So that’s what we had. I went for their spicy cumin lamb noodles which were rolled, stretched, pulled and boiled before my very eyes and then combined with the lamb which was fried with cumin, some vegetables, chilli oil and lots of other good things. They packed our dishes up in containers, and we again took off on foot, but this time to a little park almost under the Williamsburgh bridge. Here we found a picnic table, and ate our noodles under the stars. And what noodles. They had great bite and chew to them, and the lamb had this awesome smoky cumin meets gamey flavour. The veg was crunchy and the sauce slighty sweet and spicy. All in all a truly memorable evening.

So that was it for our road trip. Gutted that it’s over because it was fucking awesome from start to finish. As I mentioned above, I’ve got a few other New York treats to share with you like Fette Sau and Four & Twenty Blackbirds, which I’ll get round to writing about soon.

So until then, stay hungry my friends.

Week 15. More cake. But as the title of this post ‘hilariously’ suggests, we moved away from the predominantly flour based sponges and in to mousse cake territory.

Most of these cakes followed a similar format. Some kind of sponge base, ‘inserts’ made either from more sponge or set crème anglaise based layers flavoured with anything from lemon and raspberry to mint, surrounded with some kind of mousse set with gelatin. These cakes get finished with different techniques. Glazes, cake walls, ‘pate decor’, we even got to get the chocolate spray-gun out.

Here are a few examples (for some reason I didn’t get as many pics as usual):

Fresh Fruit Charlotte: Lady finger base and walls, separate lemon and berry inserts, diplomat cream, all topped with fresh fruit. One of my favourites of the week.

Lemon & Blackberry Mousse Cake: Full on presentation on this one. Dacquase sponge base, blackberry insert, lemon mousse, a cake wall of biscuit jaonde decorated with pate decor, finished with a marbled neutral glaze. Pheeeww.

White Chocolate, Pistachio and Raspberry Mousse Cake: Pistachio and raspberry sponge base, raspberry insert, white chocolate mousse, finished with a half scollop motif, tinted white chocolate spray, and white macarons, which we started making this week, but will do more of next.

Vanilla Bavarian: Muscavado sugar sable Breton base, vanilla sponge insert, vanilla mousse all coated in white chocolate, again applied with the spray gun, and again tinted.

I’m going to be honest, the majority of the cakes left me a bit cold. Don’t get me wrong, the ingredients are all great (cream, sugar, fruit, booze, cake – whats not to like?), but I think I’m basically not that fond of the texture that the gelatin. Also, and this may not make much sense as all the individual elements have to be made, but for me these cakes felt like they were more assembly jobs than anything.

They are also not really my bag aesthetically. Making them was fun, and it was definitely good to learn some new techniques, but most of them look to me like they could be at home on the open seas on a cruise ship circa 1987, or in a slightly pretentious restaurant. I guess I just don’t find ‘modern’ presentation that appetising.

Next week, our penultimate week of study, covers macarons, chocolate, confectionery and petit fours followed by a two day practical and a bakery tour. It’s gonna be big.

This may not make me any friends in San Francisco, but we’ve found eating out here a bit hit and miss. I think it’s great that the food scene is so vibrant and entrepreneurial, but it feels like too often that food takes the back seat over gimmicks, word of mouth and social media buzz (liquid nitrogen cooled ice-cream, anyone?).

If I’m honest, a lot of the places people rave about, we’ve just found a bit ‘meh’, and thus far, there have been very few places that have really blown us away. But Mission Chinese Food is one that we could eat at every week.

The guys who set it up used to go under the name Mission Street Food and (from what the internet tells me) were like high end food truckers, blending classical and modern culinary training with street foods from all over the world. Around a year ago, they decided to set up something a bit more permanent, and like a hermit crab set up in a shell of a former run down Chinese restaurant in The Mission, and Mission Street Food became Mission Chinese Food.

They describe their style as ‘Americanized Oriental Food’, and there’s definitely a nod towards Szechuan style, but whatever you call it, it’s frikkin’ tasty. I think we’ve munched our way through around half of the menu to date, and we’re planning on completing the set as soon as we can. On our last vist we had the Char Siu Pork Belly (again), which is almost like a take on bacon and eggs. The mildly spiced belly comes in super tender, tasty chunks with a nicely crispy skin, and is served with soft boiled eggs, noodle rolls and hoi sin sauce. Amazing. Really good.

The last time we went, the dumplings were sold out, so we got stuck in to a portion of the fish dumplings that are made to order by one of the owners,  Danny Bowien, in the window of the restaurant. The casing was a bit tough for my taste, but the filling was delicious, and the broth the dumplings came bobbing in had a healthy ginger kick to it.

We followed this with the Xi’an Lamb soup and the Mongolian hangar steak. The soup combined braised lamb cheeks, merguez sausage and ramen style noodles, swimming in a spicy, full flavored soup. Another hit. The steak was cooked medium rare with lots of onion, some bell pepper, a really tasty salty soy style sauce and a whole heap of chillies that were as hot as Hades. I got on the wrong side of one of them after a couple of bites, and it almost blew my head off, but not at the expense of the taste of the dish. One thing that is impressive about the food at Mission Chinese Food is that with all the dishes, even the hot ones, the spicing is done with a deft hand. Nothing overpowers the key ingredients. You can really taste the meat, which is a pretty neat trick to pull off when you’re dealing with full on flavours.

I’m not going to deny it’s a bit of a hipster haven, and I guess the idea of a modern Chinese restaurant setting up in the guys of an old-school Chinese is a bit of a gimmick, but f**k it. It works for me.

(Apologies for the quality of the pics. It’s a bit dark and very orange in there).

So goodbye folding shed-load of butter into dough, and hello……folding a truck load of butter into dough.

We started our first week of pastry by making three different kinds of puff. The classic, which is sheeted and folded in a similar way to croissant dough, but gets a few extra folds to give it the lift that I’m sure you’re all familiar with. So called ‘blitz’, which is a quick puff that you make by hand, which gives you less predictable layers and is more suitable for more rustic products. And finally, the big dawg. Inverted puff.

Inverted puff is crazy. Not only do you add in 50% more butter than average puff, but your ‘beurrage’ (the butter you fold into the dough through various folds) is mixed with flour and wrapped around the OUTSIDE of the dough as opposed to locked in as with croissants and classic puff. Not sure who the first person to have done this would have been as it’s basically counter-intuitive, but he or she must have been an evil genius as the resulting pastry is pretty frikkin’ amazing. Melt-in-the-mouth-buttery-taste-sational. And before you ask, yes that is a word. Go look it up.

What we did with our puff was a kind of who’s who of French pastries, including palmiers, cheese straws, turnovers, tarte tatins, galettes, Napoleons (or mille-feuille as I knew them before), and a couple of more elaborate creations in the pithivier and the jalousie. The latter two were filled with pistachio frangipane and boozy cherries, sported hand finished ‘lids’ and were made using the inverted puff. Tasty stuff.

We then let the Yanks have their say by making a load of pie dough. Just like Special Agent Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks, the Americans love their pie, and whilst we didn’t get to make any cherry pie (which I was a bit gutted about) we did nail a few American Classics. But before we got to the filling, we had to get to the dough…ing (or something).

American pie dough is pretty similar to what we’d call ‘flaky pastry’ back home, but we made it three alternate ways to show how working the ingredients with different techniques yields different results. The hand mix, like with the blitz, gives you the most inconsistent, most flaky end product. Again ideal for the more rustic products. The classic flaky we made in a kitchen aid mixer and worked the cold butter chunks in the mix down to a pea size. Finally the ‘mealy’ variety made in the big mixers in which we broke the butter down so it forms a breadcrumb-like texture with the flour, which gives a firmer end product.

With these doughs we made three classic American sized pies. Pecan, berry and deep filled apple. They were all good in their own way, but fears for my ever increasing girth meant that the wife and I had to find an alternative home for them. So we’ve come to an arrangement with our local DVD shop (the awesome Lost Weekend Video) to trade sweet stuff for rentals. A fair trade methinks.

Later in the week, the French then got back in the game with tart doughs. These doughs are more enriched, smoother and more ‘consistent’ as they use warm butter (along with the other ingredients) that gets more fully incorporated with the flour. Again we made several variations. The French version of a standard pie dough, the Pâte à Foncer, the sweetened Pâte à Sucree, and the sablé Breton from Brittany, which uses salted butter and bakes a bit like shortbread.

I’m not going to go into mixing techniques as I’m tired and my bed is calling me, but with these we baked the pastry shells (aside from the Foncer which we’re saving for the next week) and then filled them once they’d cooled. With the sucreee we made a few little fresh fruit tarts, filled with pastry cream and topped with different kinds of berries. My kind of tart. The Breton got topped with a similar cream used for the Napoleons (pastry cream whipped with butter) flavoured with geranium oil and topped with fresh strawberries. If I’m honest, the geranium oil gave the otherwise tasty cream more than a whiff of grandma’s knicker drawer, which isn’t top of my list of flavour profiles when I’m picking out a tart.

So that was the week that was. We’ll be doing more tarts next week, and also moving on to choux pastry. Until then…

A couple of weeks ago it was East 17, and now blam! I’m hitting you with an Ultravox reference. High brow shizzle I think you’ll agree. And why did up this 80s relic? Because last week we started the Viennoiserie section of our course.

Viennoiserie is the name given to all kinds of yeasted, enriched doughs. From croissants, to Danish pastries, sticky buns to brioche, we’re talking about doughs enriched with sugar, eggs, milk and butter. Lots of butter. I’ve never seen so much of the stuff than in the past week.

We’re going to be getting in to lamination next week, the technique for making croissants amongst other things, but the breads we made last week were mixed in a similar way to what we’ve become familiar with, even if the formulas were in some cases a lot more complicated.

We started off the week slowly, making a range of products based around brioche and sweet roll doughs. With most of these we had to adjust our mixing to incorporate the sugar and butter after the dough had developed in strength in the mixer. The reason for this is that both inhibit the development of gluten, and if added at the beginning you end up mixing for bloody ages and your dough comes off the mixer too warm, which in turn effects fermentation. Best avoided in other words.

Day one we made a bunch of straight brioche rolls, and learned how to make the classic ‘Brioche à tête’ shape, some glazed with pearl sugar and others just washed with egg. The following day, we really stepped it up, particularly in terms of sweetness. Diabetes alert. We made cinnamon rolls, pain au lait braids and the stars of the show, so called sticky buns, and these great little sweet rolls called Gibassier.

The sticky buns are basically cinnamon buns, but cooked like upside down cakes with a glaze made with brown sugar, butter, honey, cinnamon, vanilla and pecan nuts. Sticky, insanely sweet, but very good. The kid of bun that only the Americans could make. The Gibassier were a bit more restrained. A French sweet roll made with olive oil, anise seed and candied orange peel and then dusted with sugar after baking. Not particularly obvious flavours, but awesome.

Day three we got festive with a range of ‘holiday breads’. We made the German favourite, stollen. A sweet dough further enriched with booze soaked dried fruits, shaped like Mick Jagger’s lips, and then coated in powdered sugar to resemble snow-fall. A savoury Austrian bread called Kugelhopf, which we made with lardons, Swiss cheese, sauteed onions and rosemary. It was pretty delicious. Lovely, soft, rich dough with a great combination of flavours. We also made an American interpretation of the hot cross bun, which I’ve got to say was pretty average. I prefer the version I make.

Then we made something called Bostock, which was a bit of a revelation. I guess it’s nearest explanation of it would be if French toast mated with a bakewell tart and had a tasty baby. You take inch thick slices of brioche (a great way to use stale loaves) and toast them on either side. Then dip both sides in flavoured simple syrup (in this case rum) before spreading one side with frangipan, and sprinkling with slivered almonds. Bake for a short time, dust with powdered sugar and then eat with a dirty great grin on your fizzog.

Things started to get a bit more technical, and oddly Christmasy, towards the end of the week when we made Italian festive favourites pannetone, pan d’oro, and columba di pasqua. These doughs are so enriched with butter, eggs and sugar that they have to be ‘built up’ in stages so that they are strong enough to take all the inclusions. Surprisingly, the resulting doughs are actually really light and delicate, so much so that the pannetone has to be hung upside down after it leaves the oven so it doesn’t collapse on itself. Not surprisingly, with all the sugar, butter and candied fruits, they also taste amazing. But you can also understand why most Italians only eat them once a year.

So, another killer week, but I’ve got to say I’m seriously worried about my already troubled waistline. I might make a pre-emptive application to Biggest Loser now.

TIRON & AYOMARI – GOOD FOOD from DJ EROK on Vimeo.

Thanks to Tom Hardcore for the tip-off.

Hand To Mouth will be back in early January with more food related shizzle, but until then I’ll leave you with probably my favourite Christmas tune, The Waitresses’ ‘Christmas Wrapping’.

You mean you forgot cranberries too??!!

Have a good one.

Ho Ho Ho.

I’ve got to say that I absolutely loved Marrakesh, and probably my favourite experience of our whole honeymoon was eating in Jemaa El Fna at night. During the day, Marrakesh’s main square is home to performing monkeys, snake charmers, magicians, medicine men, dentists and all kinds of other fantastic oddities. But come dusk, it transforms into what can only really be described as the World’s biggest restaurant.

The dozens of food stalls that fill the square at night start setting up at around 5 o’clock. From a distance you can see the smoke rising from the braziers, and before long you are hit by a combination of all sorts of delicious smells. There are a myriad of ways to fill your belly, with most stalls specialising in one or just a few dishes from grilled meats to eggs, snails to harira, and a few things that might offend the squeamish.

We ate at a number of places, but a couple we’d recommend were stalls 32 ‘Hassan’ and number 1 ‘Aicha’. I’ve been a big fan of merguez sausages since I tried them in France as a youngster. The strong flavours of paprika, garlic and fatty lamb are right up my strasse, and we’d read that stall 31 had the best in Northern Africa. So, we had to try them. And whilst they were good, we also tried the ones at stall 32 next door to compare, and we thought they were better. At both places you get a bunch of them on a plate with a big bread roll and some tomato salsa for under two pounds, but sausages at 32 had the edge because they had a stronger flavour and were served with a spicy tomato sauce. Seriously tasty.

Stall number 1 has a bit more on offer, and is reported to be the best for meat and cleanliness. We ate some great grilled aubergine, prawns, lamb and chicken skewers, and a cracking harira soup which came to about £16 with drinks. Again the meal was served with a big bread roll, and also came with one of the few chilli sauces we encountered. It was a bit like a harissa, but tasted like it was made with preserved lemons as well as garlic, oil and chilli, which went down a treat with the barbecued meat.

We also ate at a few really good restaurants whilst we were there, but for our Dirham the best was Al Fassia. Run by a women’s co-operative, the food is seriously good and both restaurants are rated amongst the best in Marrakesh. The menu is all traditional Moroccan, and I opted for a pigeon pastilla to start, and a lamb and aubergine tagine.

Whilst I probably wouldn’t repeat the pigeon pastilla in a hurry, it was definitely interesting. Filo pastry stuffed with minced pigeon and pine nuts flavoured with cumin and cinnamon, then covered with a pretty thick layer of icing sugar and cinnamon. It was way to sweet for my palette, I had to scrape the sugar off, but the filling was tasty and nicely spiced. The lamb tagine was probably the best I had whilst I was in Morocco. Really deep, meaty flavour, silky aubergine, and like the pastilla it was really nicely spiced with cumin, turmeric, and coriander. I could eat one right now.

I’m only really scratching the surface here, but in the interests of not boring you I’m going to say that’s it for Marrakesh. Next stop, Essaouira. Mind the doors!

Photo: Insite

A year ago today, I wrote the first post on this here blog, and now 12 months later I can’t believe Hand To Mouth is one. The past year has gone by unbelievably quickly, starting a new job, getting engaged and planning a wedding may have something to do with that, but I’ve also really enjoyed writing my shizzle here.

Anyway, thanks to all you readers for all the support over the year, and a special big up goes to all the commenters, linkers, likers and the missus who’s idea this was.

Please keep coming back for seconds.

See you soon.

Ferg x

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been looking at new features to add to Hand To Mouth. My friend Dazzler suggested I try re-creating recipes from weird and wonderful books, which I thought was a great idea. This first ‘Tried & Tested’ post fits more into the latter category, as it comes from a rather lovely new cookery book called ‘Great British Food‘.

Put together by the guys behind the brilliant Canteen mini chain of restaurants, this Lancashire Hot Pot stays true to their ethos of cooking gutsy, tasty, good quality, British grub. The recipe calls for leg mutton, which I couldn’t get hold of at the time of cooking, so instead I used shoulder of lamb.

The recipe takes a bit of prep, but once you get going it’s pretty easy, and it tastes reet good.

Ingredients (serves 6)

50g butter

250g onions, sliced

1kg boned leg of mutton, 3-4cm dice

150g carrots, sliced

10g fresh thyme, leaves picked

3 bay leaves

700g floury potatoes (Maris Piper), peeled ad thinly sliced

500ml meat stock

100ml meat stock

Salt and black pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 135 degrees, and then heat up half the butter in a saucepan. Add the onions and sweat over a low heat for around 15 minutes or until soft and translucent, but not browned.

Next place the meat in an oven proof dish and add the onions, carrots, thyme and bay leaves. Season well with salt and pepper, and then mix together.

Arrange the potato slices on top of the meat and vegetable mix, overlapping the slices slightly, and then pour the stock and ale into the dish.

Now melt the remaining butter and brush over the potatoes, season with salt, cover with a lid and then pop in the oven to cook for 2 hours.

After two hours, remove the lid from the dish, increase the oven temperature to 150 degrees and continue cooking for a further 30-45 minutes until the potatoes are nicely browned.

Serve in big bowls, making sure you get a good mix of the meat, vegetables and the tasty stock.

Things have been a bit quiet at Hand To Mouth towers over the past couple of weeks. The day job has been kind of getting in the way of my other life, but as should be clear by now I was born to eat, so normal service will be resumed soon.

In the down time I’ve been doing a bit of research finding out what people think of the blog, and what they’d like to see more or less of. I got some really good feedback, and there are a few things that I’m going to try and make happen over the next few months.

One is incorporating a bit of video into the site to give a bit more of an impression of techniques, textures and consistencies. A word of warning, I’m not in any way trained, so I  may well lead you astray.

Another was an idea my mate Darren had. He’s suggested I tackle a few recipes from some weird and wonderful cookery books. I’ve got quite a few oddities knocking about at home like Len Deighton’s ‘Action Cook Book‘, so expect to see some throwback grub here soon.

Finally, my friends Lou and Liam who run the lovely Reading Rooms B&B in Margate, have asked me to contribute an item to their already cracking breakfast menu. I’ve got something in mind, it just needs a bit of tweaking, so more on this soon.

Any other comments or suggestions are welcome, so if you’ve got an opinion, please drop me a line.

See you round like a rissole.

(I can’t remember where I found the above image, so I’m sorry to whoever created it. Let me know and I will amend with credit where credit’s due).

I was in Paris with the missus for a few days over the New Year period. The weather wasn’t great, but it’s still one of the greatest cities in the World (IMHO). As you might expect the food has a great deal to do with this, and I’m a huge fan of the traditional French bistro.

I love the simple, tasty food, the still tobacco stained walls, the atmosphere and the tradition of it all. Maybe it’s because we don’t have many good examples of this type of place in London, but I’d honestly prefer to sit down at a chequered tablecloth in a back street bistro to a plate of oeufs cocotte and an entrecote, than some foam drenched nonsense from an Alain Ducasse restaurant. No offense Al.

One such place, that we’ve now been to a few times, is Bistro De La Grille in St Germain des Pres. We stumbled across it a couple of years ago whilst in Paris and had an outstanding late lunch there, and it’s had a soft spot in our hearts ever since.

Outside you’re greeted by the site of the fresh shellfish man (no idea what the oficial term for these fellas is) shucking oysters and prepping his wares, before stepping foot inside where you’re greeted by the French Bistro checklist. Zinc topped bar, tick. Wood panneling, tick. Faded photographs, tick. Smartly dressed waiters bustling around, tick.

We ordered a carafe of red wine, 12 snails and garlic butter to share, then I chose the Morteau and lentil casserole as my main. The snails were delicious. If I’m honest, for me a big part of the draw is the garlic and parsley butter mopped up with a few slices of fresh baguette. None too healthy, but worth it. The casserole came in a satisfying iron pot with generous slices of the dense, smokey Morteau sausage. The lentils cooked with stock, onions, carotts and potato. It’s a hearty lunch, and was a joy to eat.

We finished the meal by sharing a tarte tatin which was sweet, sticky and tart in equal measure. Great pastry too.

Bistrot De la Grille isn’t going to win a Michelin star any time soon, but I don’t think thats what its setting out to achieve. It’s sticking to its guns and doing what its probably done since it opened, cooking and serving up traditional, good quality food, and if you’re in Paris I can’t recommend it enough.

Earlier in the year, the missus and I went to Ghent in Belgium. It’s a really cool little town about half an hour on the train from Brussells; the perfect place to visit for a long weekend.

One of the things we really loved about the trip was the discovery of a beer called Vedett. It’s a classic blonde Belgian lager, with a really crisp and clean taste, and comes in these really lovely curvy green bottles.

The way Vedett behaves as a brand is also pretty cool. From the little penguin logo, to the really quality merchandise which includes chairs, blankets and glasses, it’s obvious that it’s run by really creative people.

Whats also nice is that every bottle of Vedett features the face of someone who drinks their products. If you look at the back label, there will be a black and white photo of a happy punter. You can upload your picture on their website here, and as they put it, become instantly famous.

On the site you can also order a customised crate featuring an image of anything you want on it. When we got back we tried to order our own personal crate, but you can only do it if you live in Belgium. That is until now. One of the businesses that imports Vedett into the UK, Beer Here, have just started offering the service. It’s a bit pricey at around 40 quid for 24 bottles, and a tad cheesy, but what man wouldn’t want their own personalised crate of booze?

Welcome to Hand To Mouth, a blog about food. Eating it. Cooking it. Reviewing it. Reading about it. And everything in between.

Depending on how into this I get, I’ll be regularly posting recipes, restaurant reviews and opinion and conjecture about anything food related that grabs my eye. Hopefully there’ll also be a few laughs along the way, and I promise not to cut the cheese.

If you like what you see please let me know, and equally don’t be afraid of throwing a few rotten tomatoes my way if you don’t.