Potato Dauphinoise

Serves 2 people

Ingredients:

3 large potatoes (e.g. maris piper)
Double cream
3 Garlic cloves
salt & pepper
butter or margarine for greasing
Cheddar cheese (optional)

Equipment:

Small oven-proof dish
Small knife
kitchen roll
bowl of cold water
speed peeler

Method:

- Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Take your small dish, and using a piece of kitchen roll, grease the dish with butter/margarine, and put to one side.

- Peel your potatoes using a speed peeler, or your knife if you prefer, whatever's easiest for you. Slice the potatoes thinly, around the width of a £1 coin at most. Try to make the potato slices as even as possible, or they will all take different times to cook. After slicing them, put them into the bowl of water to stop them from turning brown due to being exposed to air. Chop the garlic as finely as you can.

- Now to assemble! Start by sprinkling a small pinch garlic at the bottom of the pre-greased dish, then season the dish with salt and pepper. Now, take the potato slices out of the bowl and pat dry with kitchen roll.

- Place one layer of potato slices into the dish. Sprinkle more garlic and salt and pepper. Add another layer of potato, then more garlic, salt and pepper. Repeat layering until the dish is full (depending on the depth of the dish, 4/5 layers). Don't fill to the brim of the dish, leave around a 1cm gap at the top.

- Take the cream, and pour until the top layer of potato is just covered. Put into the middle of the oven, for an hour and a half. If you wish, 10 minutes before the dish is ready to come out of the oven, take it out and grate a layer of cheddar cheese over the top. Put back in for the last 10 minutes for the cheese to melt and crisp up.

Sorry there's a chunk missing, I couldn't wait to get into it! Enjoy.

Et voila!

Yo! Sushi Review

Sorry I haven't posted in a while! I've been so busy running all over the country visiting friends and having good times. I arrived back from London today where I was visiting one of my friends while she's at uni. 

While we were there, we were walking along the South bank of the Thames and walked past about a million restaurants and decided on Yo! Sushi. We've been meaning to go for 'real' sushi (not that stuff from supermarkets) for so long and I'm happy we finally got the opportunity! 

We walked in and were seated straight away. All of the staff were really nice and friendly and easily approachable. We were given menus and basically left to it! It's pretty self explanatory, there are different coloured dishes, corresponding with different prices, and they all go round the room on a conveyor belt. We were a bit overwhelmed at first, thinking 'do... do we just take things?' but once we got into the spirit of it, it was incredibly fun! It was nice to see everything going past trying to see what it was and then grabbing it before it went past us. It's quite easy to spend a lot though, by just grabbing everything you want. The dishes on the conveyor were all cooked in a kitchen in the middle of the room, and they were all cold/warm, and there were also hot dishes you could order from the staff that were always wandering around.

Now I need to remember what I had... we both shared everything we got though. We had vegetable gyoza (dumplings) that had been steamed and fried, that came with a vinegar and soy dip. They were gorgeous, I wasn't sure I'd like the steamed texture, but they were soft and not slimy at all. We had some cucumber maki (rice rolls with a filling and seaweed/nori on the outside), and some tuna and salmon nigiri (rice with slices of fish/meat/omlette). I literally have everything with soy sauce, my friend smothered wasabi and pickled ginger on everything, the rice is so much nicer than the generic stuff you get from supermarkets. It was a bit disappointing how we didn't see any hand rolls, because they kind of made the dishes in batches and they never made any! We had about 3 dishes of katsu prawns which were amazing, they came with a sweet (ish) fruity, sticky sauce and panko breadcrumbs (japanese breadcrumbs) are brilliant. We both ordered a hot dish of vegetable yakisoba, which are just noodles fried with vegetables and a tangy sauce. The sauce was supposed to be slightly spiced but i didn't pick any of that up. When we were both stuffed to the brim (for only around £10 each) we were trying to hold out for the chocolate ganache dessert, but that never came round either, it was slightly disappointing. It was probably for the best though, considering how much we'd eaten! The drinks were quite expensive, we had 1 large glass of rosé wine each, which were £5.80 each, but so worth it. 

It was brilliant just to get into the spirit of picking dishes and finding out what everything is, and you could easily keep track of how much you were spending. The only problem i encountered was trying to grab the attention of staff to ask for a hot dish or for the bill, but there are 'help' buttons that you can press that will get the staff's attention and get them to come over, but we didn't realise until we'd been sat waiting for who knows how long. If you've only ever had supermarket sushi, GO HERE because it'll change how you look at it forever.

Simple Goats Cheese and Beetroot Salad

Serves 1

I just whipped up this salad for lunch. It's so much more satisfying than the beans on toast my boyfriend had! So quick and simple to do. 

Ingredients:

large handful of rocket
1 small  cooked beetroot
around the same amount of goats cheese as beetroot
little bit of olive oil
balsamic glaze (from a bottle, naughty)

Equipment:

ovenproof dish (I used a tin plate)
small knife
bowl

Method:

- Pre-heat the oven to around 180C. Using a small knife, chop up the beetroot into smallish chunks and put onto the ovenproof dish. drizzle with a small amount of olive oil and put into the middle of the oven.

- Meanwhile, take a large handful of rocket and place into the bowl. Cut up the goats cheese into small cubes, and sprinkle over the rocket. 

- After 5-7 minutes, take the beetroot out of the oven (n.b. roasting the beetroot is optional, I prefer it warm). Place the bits of beetroot over the rocket and goats cheese. Finally, drizzle the balsamic glaze (you could also use a balsamic reduction, but I don't have a recipe for it yet) over the top of it all, and enjoy.

Et voila!

Miller and Carter Steakhouse Cheshire Oaks

On Thursday (30th September), me and my family went to have an impromptu meal out. As Cheshire Oaks is very local to us, it doesn't take much to drive down there and have our pick of many delicious restaurants. I personally LOVE going out for meals and could go out every day, but I don't think my bank account could really handle it.

We decided on going to the Miller and Carter Steakhouse, primarily because my mother eats nothing but steak, and as it was my treat (more fool me...) there was no competition. We walked in the door and we all pleasantly surprised; it wasn't what I was expecting at least. Very spacious and filled with tables, but not too cramped. We were shown to a table (a booth, lucky us!) and offered drinks straight away. Obviously I ordered a large glass of the strongest rosé they had. 

The service was very good, our drinks arrived pretty much straight away and not soon after, a waitress came to take our order. Now, it being a steakhouse, I wasn't expecting much choice for me (a bit like at Hickory's) so I was pleasantly surprised when I was spoilt for choice! I ended up sharing calamari with my brother, along with an order of garlic bread for us all for a starter, and for the main I ordered the spring onion risotto. My mother ordered an 8oz sirlion steak with sides of chips and vegetables (which turned out to only be french beans), and my brother had a burger, as always! 

The calamari was very nice, it came with aioli, pretty standard. It wasn't chewy and there weren't tentacles (which I didn't mind because I don't like them). My main of spring onion risotto was quite loose, but I think there was a fair amount of cream in it. It was nice, a little too creamy for my taste, I don't usually like cream in risotto, so it was slightly too rich for me. It came with 2 small goats cheese fritters with complemented the onion in the risotto, the tang of the goats cheese was amazing! 

We finished the night off nicely with some cocktails, of course! Me and my brother both opted for long island iced teas. With it's 5 different alcohols, how can you possibly go wrong?

The price for the food was very reasonable, however drinks were little on the steep side. However, the night was worth it and you couldn't really ask much more!