Month: January 2015

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Homemade Quiche

Quiche

I haven’t made quiche for a while now, but over the weekend decided to throw one together.

I made some shortcrust pastry and baked it blind in the oven in a flan tin. Everytime I do that I always think I should be using some baking beans, but I don’t have any, so I lined the top of the pastry with baking parchment and used another pan on top to keep the pastry flat. One tip I picked up from the television was to fold the pastry over the edge of the flan tin and once cooked this is carved off, and creates a level pie base.

I filled the base first with some fresh spinach and the cooked onions, peppers, mushrooms and pancetta. I then added some grated mature cheddar cheese. There are lots of choices when it comes to quiche fillings,

I placed the flan in the oven and then filled it, covering the rest of the filling with an egg and milk mixture.

The quiche is then baked in the oven until the egg has set and the top of the quiche has started to brown.

Delicious warm, it can also be served cold with salad.

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In the Birdcage

In the Birdcage

Walking up Corn Street in Bristol over the festive break and wanting a coffee, we decided to pop into the Birdcage. There are quite a few cafés and restaurants in this area of Bristol, so you have quite a bit of choice.

It looks like the building use to be a bank or similar, however once inside, the interior decor is very quirky, retro and quite refreshing if you are use to the decor you find in the main coffee chains such as Costa or Starbucks.

In the Birdcage

The lighting for example comprised a series of non-matching lampshades hanging together form the ceiling.

Shades

The furniture was mis-matched wooden chairs and tables, combined with leather sofas. Across the walls and in the windows were signs, old bicycles, even mannequins wearing old fashion.

In the Birdcage

This is very much a coffee shop, and though there were cakes available, the main attraction is the coffee. The coffee was certainly made well and quite nice.

In the Birdcage

I liked how after asking for coffee at the counter, we could sit down and they bought the coffee over. That is a much more relaxed experience than the busy somewhat hectic experience you can find, and I have certainly found in the chain coffee shops.

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Christmas Four Bird Roast

I usually write a blog post about our Christmas lunch, in the main when it comes to the following year I can remember what worked well and what was less of a success.

A few years ago I spent over a hundred pounds on a four bird roast from Marks and Spencers. It was nice, but was very much a turkey with a little bit of goose, duck and chicken.

The Sainsbury’s version of the four bird roast is a goose stuffed with turkey, duck and guinea fowl. I will say that this is basically a stuffed goose; it’s 62% goose, 9% turkey and there is 8% duck and 8% guinea fowl. Like the Marks and Spencers’ roast it wasn’t cheap, but was half the price of the Marks and Spencers’ version.

This year I would have been tempted to get it again, however Sainsburys weren’t doing it this year. In the end I went with the Aldi Christmas Four Bird Roast again, which we had enjoyed last year.

Christmas Four Bird Roast

The Aldi four bird roast was a little skimpy on the goose and duck, but I did expect that for a ten pound roast. It was simple to cook, but I did let it rest for thirty minutes which seemed to help with carving and the meat was very tender and moist.

It was quite tasty, stuffing wasn’t anything to write home about, but I did supplement it with some homemade stuffing, as well as bacon wrapped sausages.

Overall a success and good value for a tenner.