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!

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!