Results and Lunch at Theo Randall's Restaurant

Well first of all I am pleased to say that I am still a food student, after receiving my results for my first year the other week. I was chuffed to pieces, and still am, with my results. I was really pleased my best grade was in Food Science, which had ended up being one of my favourite lectures and interestingly enough the lecture which I hated was my worst grade. 

This break from uni has been great so far. It's been fairly relaxed just going to work and then filling my time with meeting up with people or chilling at home. Also the weather has been amazing so we have definitely been making the most of the beach, going down there as much as we could while the weather was still good! Pure bliss! 

This week my grandparents took me to Theo Randall's restaurant at the Intercontinental Hotel in London. While I was at uni they had told me about a TV programme, The Chef's Protege, that I might be interested in so I caught up with it on iPlayer. It was a really good programme to watch and Theo was one of the mentors on there and wow did his food look amazing, so when my grandparents asked me if I fancied going to his restaurant there was absolutely no hesitation in saying 'yes'! 

We travelled up by train and when we got to the Intercontinental we each had a delicious cocktail in the bar area, and also tried each others too. I had one called 'Back in Business' which had a really nice peach flavour to it and was very refreshing, which was just what was needed.

After our cocktail, we were taken through to the restaurant and were served some delicious bruschetta and focaccia while looking at the menu, which was amazing and definitely got my tastebuds going! There were easily about three starters on the menu which I could easily have chosen, but in the end I chose Bruschetta di granchio (Devon crab aioli, pagnotta bruschetta and mixed leaves) as it was something that I have never had so thought I would give it a whirl! 

I cannot tell you how delicious this was, probably one of the best things I have ever eaten. Needless to say my plate was spotless by the end of it, and the white wine which the waiter had recommended was lovely too! So so fruity, easily the nicest one I've had.

For main course I had the wood roasted guinea fowl dish, which was stuffed with prosciutto di parma, mascapone, thyme and served with Swiss chard and green beany/lentilly type things (nice and technical). It was lovely, and I was so surprised at how big the portion was, I did struggle to eat it all, but I definitely wasn't hungry by the end.

We had a little break between our main and dessert, while we finished the rest of our wine and let the rest of the meal go down and then we got vanilla ice cream with chilled espresso. It also had dried apricots and some sort of sugary biscuity stuff crushed over the top which was lovely! Perfect end to a lovely meal. We also had a delicious dessert wine which went perfectly!

It was such a good day out, finished off with a nice walk around Hyde Park. If you get the chance to go, I without a doubt recommend it, you will not be disappointed! Best. Meal. Ever. Well I've certainly been day dreaming about it at work that's for sure!

Farm Skills at University

I was revising milk production the other day in preparation for upcoming exams, and it got me back to thinking about last year when I went milking in the dairy parlour with my friend Steph. We had to do two farm skills for one of our modules, so we had chosen to do feeding lactating sows first and then we had chosen to do milking. 

For feeding the sows we just had to do a little bit of maths to work out how much the pig had been fed in the morning to then work out how much they were then due. This went really quickly, I think taking about 20 minutes. It all went fine and we actually enjoyed it chatting away to the pigs haha! You could tell they were hungry as they all dived their heads in straight away and were going crazy before hand... and dribbling! Lovely! We got to one pig just before the end and noticed she had loads of food left over and was very unactive so we decided not to feed her. We told the man, who had originally told us what to do, when we had finished and he told us that we did the right thing as she was basically very weak, and had about 4 of her piglets fostered onto other sows and she had also sat on one at birth and another had starved. She was only rearing 4 piglets in the end, and he told us that she would unfortunately be culled after weaning as she was not profitable for the farm. Sad, but understandable. 

This is not a picture from the shed where we fed them but through a window of the building where the pigs give birth. This was on the first day of my course induction, we were on a farm tour and were lucky enough to see the pigs giving birth. Not something you expect to see on your first proper day!

We had been looking forward to doing milking, until other people on our course told us how horrible it was, and how a cow had pooed all over their shoulder... nice! Luckily just before I went out the door to go to milking, one of my agriculture flatmates threw some overalls at me, telling me I might need them! Needless to say I was very grateful... and might have to invest in a pair myself if I am doing anymore farm skills. When we got there they gave us some aprons and sleeves and then we headed off to the cow sheds. We were walking through them trying to get them to go down the track to the milking parlour. I was a little scared as they are huge animals and I'd never been that close to them before... but it was fine and I was concentrating a lot on not slipping over in the shed and landing in a pile of crap. Although it would have been funny for everyone else I really did not fancy that. Luckily it did not happen! 

Once in the milking parlour the cows seemed to know exactly what to do really and were all really calm, apart from the occasional one that tried to kick us. 

 

This is the milking parlour, it basically rotates slowly all the way round. The cows come in from the door on the left, their udders are cleaned before they reach the black mat on the left hand side and then the clusters are applied. They then continue round on the roatary system and by the time they reach the other side they should be fully milked and the clusters will automatically release. Iodine is then applied and they leave through the door on the right and follow a track back to the sheds. 

This picture is taken from the viewing platform of the parlour, you get quite a good view of the milking from there.

Just imagine the guy in the picture has long blonde hair and the cows are maybe kicking a bit more and then you can just imagine it was me in the picture. Also at the end I had to apply some iodine and one of the cows really didn't like it and kicked, this caused the bottle of iodine to fly out of my hand and was going round on the rotary system with the cows... oops. One of the staff their managed to get it back though so it was fine.

 

Overall, Steph and I enjoyed the experience despite it being freezing cold, as it was in the evening late last year. We arrived at the parlour at 2.45pm and didn't finish until about 5pm I don't think so our arms ached by the end of it and we were quite hungry.

This is a picture of one of the cow shed the other day...  definitely going to rain by the looks of things!

This cow was quite intigued by my phone... and came very close to licking it! I did try to get her to do it again but on video but it didn't happen... never mind. Got this deligful video below though, which does make me laugh! 

I'm planning to try and do some more farm skills next year is I can as I did really enjoy them. One of the things on my list is lambing! I thought about doing it this year but didn't sign up and I so wish I had as it sounds absolutely brilliant! Hopefully next year... we will see!!

Sausage making

This week we had our meat practical, where we made sausages. We had a group of 8 of us, and split ourselves in to two groups of three and one of two. 

The first group worked on the premium sausage, the second on the standard sausage and the third (my group) on the budget sausage. The only difference really was the percentage of lean pork that was used. The premium sausage obviously had to most lean meat, where as the budget contained less.

We all prepared out meat and chose how were were going to flavour it. My group, which also had Steph and Saina in, chose to add rosemary and thyme to ours... mainly because of the TV show. We also added some salt and pepper. 

We each in turn minced our batch of ingredients and then it was time to pump the sausage meat into the skins. Now this was the funny bit. 

The premium sausage group went first, and this was hilarious as one of the girls was just making innuendos throughout the whole thing and had us all laughing, including our lecturer. They packed the meat into the machine and fed the skin onto the nozzle. They had some luck with this, but it didn't seem to work very well, at one point sausage meat was launched at speed across the room, splatting over another machine. This was hilarious, but luckily nobody was stood there, despite how funny that would be!

Our lecturer got someone in to help with the machine, and it was apparently because the intestines hadn't been washed properly so that was why it wasn't working properly. So they washed the intestines and it worked better after that. 

After the standard sausage group did theirs it was our turn to do ours. First of all Saina was in charge of feeding the sausage out the other side. This goes quicker than you'd think and is actually really difficult! I then switched with Saina and fed through the last of the mix. We ended up with quite a lot of sausages, as you can see by the photo. 

Our budget sausages

 Also, where the skin split in places with took the meat out the skin and kept the meat, and later that day I made some sausage rolls from them. They were so good!

Our sausage rolls

We were really pleased how ours turned out. You can taste the rosemary and thyme really well but because oh the meat percentage it lacks the meaty flavour until the end really. Also, when cooking the sausages the fat content is noticable as they ooze a lot of fat.

As Steph is in catered accommodation she gets food throughout the week, but not at weekends. So today she came over for dinner and we used out sausages to make good ol' bangers and mash! Yummy! 

Bangers and mash!

A Small Introduction

My name is Steph, I'm 19 and I'm a procrastinator... 

The height of procrastination has brought me back to the blogging community, but this time in the form of a new blog. After my IB exams, I lost interest in blogging and felt as though I was blogging for the sake of blogging, rather than blogging and enjoying and being proud of what I had written. 

I have more of an idea about what I want to blog about on this new blog. I have been considering it for a while now and thought, why not! 

I've had an interest in food for ages now and am currently studying food at university, and loving my course! For a start, who ever thought that on their first day of University they would witness piglets being born? Nope, me neither! But it was amazing. 

Not what you expect on your first day...

I've met some awesome people and had such great opportunities given to me, which I will tell you all about in future blogs, as I plan to blog about my time here at uni and other aspects of food... and maybe upload the occasional cat photo when I am back home in the holidays (everyone loves a good cat photo, and Lily is brilliant).

Oh ok, I will post one now... if I must :)

Soaking up the sun