Restaurant Review: Jamie's Bakery, Gatwick Airport

These days I always seem to end up taking flights that leave mid-morning so tend to arrive at airports in time for breakfast. I like to try out different places to eat so when I was flying to Edinburgh a couple of months ago I ate at Jamie’s bakery. It’s part of Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Italian chain, but this is designed to be more of a quick-serve café for people without as much time. There are tables where you can sit and eat but the food is generally the kind of thing you could take away if you are really in a rush.

 

The restaurant has a posh-café décor with kilner jars on shelves and a blackboard menu; a lot of the food is on counters so you can see what you are choosing and I spotted an unusual-looking sausage roll – rather than long and thin and closed at both ends, it was more of a fat chunky rectangle, with pastry over the top, bottom and sides but with the ends open. I decided to try it and found it very filling – just the thing before a flight and a late lunch. The pastry was quite flaky though and most of it fell off every time I took a bite, so I ended up eating mainly sausage and not much pastry!

It was nice to see something a bit different available at the airport which is cheap, quick and filling. Look out for some more airport restaurant reviews soon as I’ve been doing some travelling!

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Poutine - Posh chips with gravy

When I was at primary school I remember a friend who had hot dinners was served hamburger (possibly with chips, though I forget now) with gravy. We all thought that was very odd though it doesn’t appear to have been entirely unusual for school dinners of the 1980s. And perhaps the school was actually ahead of its time – have you come across poutine, which is essentially chips with gravy?

 

I was looking for a Canadian dish for the next round of Formula 1 Foods and remembered going to a Canada Day party last year (the host wasn’t Canadian, she just liked the excuse for a themed party!) where poutine was served. I wasn’t particularly taken with it as it seemed to just be Bisto on oven chips, but actually there is more to it than that. It’s more of a sauce that’s similar to gravy, and then has cheese curds on top; it’s typical diner food in Canada and is apparently popular at hockey games. I don’t know whether they eat poutine at the Formula 1 Grand Prix – I doubt it but you never know!

 

I found a great recipe online that also involved making the chips yourself but I didn’t have time to do this, and my boyfriend doesn’t like homemade chips, so I used oven chips. I also had to look up what cheese curds are, and found that they are the solid parts of soured milk that comes from when it’s being processed into cheese – and according to Wikipedia, they are often used in cooking or even eaten alone in Canada or the US. I have got a cheese making kit that I got for Christmas which would have been the perfect thing to use, as I could actually make cheese curds. But I hadn’t read the recipes and didn’t realise that to make the cheeses I needed either cream or full fat milk and I only had skimmed – and I’m so busy at the moment I knew that if I put off making my poutine for another week I probably wouldn’t get around to it. I did read online that grated cheese is an acceptable alternative so that’s what I used. I only realised much later that cottage cheese is actually a curd, though I didn’t have any of that in the house either!

 

The poutine recipe I used is from the Food Network:

 

 

As I mentioned I skipped the part of the recipe for making the chips and went straight in with the sauce. I used one pan to fry the onion and garlic, and added both chicken and beef stock, ketchup, vinegar and Worcestershire sauce. In another pan I melted butter and stirred in the flour to make a roux, then carefully whisked in the stock mixture.

 

It was thicker than I had expected – it thickened as I kept the pan over a low heat – so by the time the chips were ready, I could spoon rather than pour it on. I was highly dubious at the thought of chips with gravy but this sauce had a real depth of flavour and a hint of barbecue – it was really lovely. I couldn’t tell from the picture whether the cheese was supposed to be underneath or on top of the sauce so I did a bit of both – and ended up going back for seconds of sauce!
 

 

I’m entering this in Formula 1 Foods, the blog challenge I created to share dishes inspired by the location of each Formula 1 Grand Prix race. This weekend it’s taking place in Canada.

 

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Vegan Orange mini Rose Cakes

The fact that I love making birthday cakes for friends goes without saying - so when we arranged to go for afternoon tea for a joint celebration of my birthday and that of my friend Jane, I was a bit stuck. We would be eating plenty of cake so there was no point me making another one! But I did want to bake something so decided to make some small cakes that I could package in pretty boxes and give people to take home. This Nordicware 56748 Baking Mould Rose Muffinwas perfect for that.

It's a big piece of kit as it's a heavy metal pan that takes up a fair amount of cupboard space but the reaction when you serve tiny cakes shaped like roses is worth it!

One of my friends is vegan so I needed something she could enjoy, and found this recipe on Cook Like Priya for a vegan orange cake.

I used caster sugar rather than powdered (icing) sugar for the cake, but otherwise pretty much followed her recipe.

I sprayed each section of the cake mould with Cake Release and filled them no more than 2/3 full. The cakes came out perfectly and had a delicate orange flavour. I thought about glazing them but didn't have time and as the cakes are very small I think you can get away without any frosting, and this way you can see the design of the rose better! I was in such a hurry though - I made these the morning of the day I was going to meet my friends  - that I forgot to take a better photo!

I'm entering these in the Alphabakes challenge which I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker as the letter I have chosen this month is O.

  I'm also sending these to Treat Petite, hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat aka the Baking Explorer, as their theme this month is fruity.

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Restaurant Review: Garfunkels, Gatwick Airport

I’ve been travelling again… this time to Mexico, Guatamala and Belize, so look out for some international restaurant reviews soon! I’m starting somewhat closer to home and more prosaically however, with Gatwick airport. With a range of places to eat on offer – and the option of bringing your own sandwich – I’m hoping to give readers something of an insight into the choices available. Check out the other airport restaurant reviews I’ve written here.

 

We were at the airport at breakfast time which admittedly does limit the options – I’m always amazed at the people you see knocking back a couple of pints at 7am, but I suppose they are on holiday! Personally I don’t really want a burger at breakfast time (though I haven’t ruled it out!) which means there are not so many choices on offer.

 

My boyfriend wanted a full English which meant that a couple of places were out; we chose therefore Garfunkel’s as I’d eaten dinner at the chain before (though not for a long time) but never had breakfast. He had his full English, which came with bacon, sausage, fried egg, baked beans and toast; it would also have had mushroom and grilled tomato but he asked to leave these off and was offered extra bacon instead which was appreciated!

 

 

I don’t really do full English and don’t like omelette but wanted something more substantial than pancakes, so I chose a toasted ham and cheese sandwich. It came with an option of chips or hash browns and since this was breakfast time, I decided to have the hash browns. Unfortunately the hash browns were very oily and overcooked and while the sandwich was OK, I was quite disappointed. My boyfriend’s full English was fairly good but he had the same overdone hash browns. Little were we to know that this was still a lot better than the breakfasts we would end up having in our hotels in Mexico!

 

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Men's 40th Birthday Card

I made this card for my sister's boyfriend's 40th birthday. I wanted a big '40' but didn't want to cut them out of card freehand so I bought a packet of sparkly cardboard stickers on Ebay - I got the numbers, stars and 'happy birthday' and 'congratulations' labels in the same pack that you see above.

As they were blue I made the rest of the card match by covering a white square cardblank with blue checked paper, and then mounted a smaller square of blue card with a lacy edge on top.

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Meal Planning Monday 2015 - Week 23

 

Monday:

In Edinburgh for work

 

Tuesday:

In Edinburgh for work

 

Wednesday:

In Edinburgh for work

 

Thursday

Lunch: sandwich

Dinner: fish and vegetables for me, something easy for my boyfriend depending on what he's had over the last few days

 

Friday

Lunch: sandwich

Dinner: spaghetti bolognese

 

Saturday

with my family for my mum’s 60^th birthday

 

Sunday

with my family for my mum’s 60^th birthday

Should be home in time for dinner: something quick from the freezer

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Half way through the year already - where does the time go?! It's June 1st which means it's my turn to host the Alphabakes challenge and choose the letter again. I hope this one inspires lots of great recipes as it's not as difficult as last month..... the letter this time is O.

Last month we had Q, hosted by my challenge co-founder Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker so hop on over there to check out the roundup if you haven't already seen it.

Once again we are using an automated linkup this time so instead of emailing your entries, add them to the linkup at the bottom of this post. If anything seems to not be working, let me know at caroline@carolinemakes.net or on Twitter at @Caroline_makes. If you tweet your entries to me and @bakingaddict as well we will retweet the ones that we see.



 Here's a reminder of the rules:
1. Post your recipe on your blog and link it to The More than Occasional Baker and Caroline Makes, stating the relevant month's host. If you do not have a blog, email us a picture and a brief description of your entry which we will  include in the round-up at the end of the month.

2. You can use your own recipe or someone else's recipe. The recipe can be sweet, savoury or a mixture!  Anything goes as long as the random letter is predominantly featured in the recipe as one of the main ingredients or flavours or in the name of the bake itself (i .e . not as a garnish , or using 'flour' for the letter F!)  You can also republish old posts/recipes but you must include the information for this challenge as stated in these rules. 

3. Add the logo to your post and add 'alphabakes' as a label to your post. 

4. Please add your entries to the linkup on this page. If you want to email your entries please use alphabakes@gmail.com by midnight (GMT) 25th of each month. Please include: 

• Your name (that you want included in the round up or we will use the name of your blog)
• Your blog post URL
• Recipe title
• Photo of recipe (to be included in the round up).

5. You can submit as many entries as you like.

6. You do not have to participate every month to join in.

7. You may submit your entry to other challenges as long as it complies with their rules.

8. If you use twitter, please use the tag #alphabakes and mention @bakingaddict and @Caroline_Makes. We will retweet all those that we see.  

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