THOUGHTS Foodie
WHAT BETTER TIME FOR A FOODIE TO GET CREATIVE THAN THE FESTIVE SEASON. GET AN INSIGHT INTO WHAT OUR BLOGGERS WILL BE DOING THIS CHRISTMAS
Claire Bowman, Dorset-based former Times Food Editor
talks, tastes and writes about food most days for Positive PR.
The Perfect Trifle
I don’t know what has happened to me. For decades trifle has been so low down my list of favourite food that I’d rather have nothing at all than a bowl of the sickly sweet gloop. Now I realise it was because I was eating the wrong stuff. Turns out, when it’s done properly (for me that means no tinned mandarins, Day-Glo orange jelly, and don’t even go there with the packet trifle mix) it is really quite delicious. Now, ironically whenever an extra pudding is needed for a family occasion, I’m called upon for a trifle, and I expect this Christmas will be no exception. I have even gone out and bought a new glass trifle dish for this time-honoured pud and have a bottle of cream sherry on stand-by, which shows I mean business. I’ve tried a few recipes since becoming a trifle convert and always return to Nigella’s reworking of the classic trifle, aptly named the Boozy British Trifle from her Nigella Christmas cook book – the sherry-sodden raspberry jam-slathered sponges pack a nice boozy punch (although you might want to think first before serving a bowl of this up for the kids, unless you want some very giggly and unruly children on your hands come Christmas Day). As only to be expected,
58 | THE WESTCOUNTRY FOODLOVER
the Domestic Goddess favours proper homemade vanilla custard over the tinned variety and green pistachios and crystallised rose petals or violets to the multi-coloured hundreds and thousands of my youth. For me, it’s just about as far as you can get from the kind of sweetened, over-jellied trifles that we used to have as kids at parties that turned into a gloopy, indiscriminate mess as soon as it hit the bowl.
And contrary to popular belief (or at least the belief of one of my colleagues in the office), you don’t have to be 8 or 80 to eat it. Merry Christmas!
Clare Hall is editor of
www.country
calling.co.uk covering culture, food, property, people and places in the West Country
A Good Bit of Home Cooking
The craze for supper clubs is all well and good but I happen to be married to a man who would rather crawl over broken glass than sit at a table making small talk with strangers.
Good news, then, that Matt’s Kitchen in
Bruton is more of a miniature restaurant. Yes it’s in the ground floor of his lovely terraced Victorian home but you have your own table and can be as exclusive and stand-offish as you like. There’s an informality here, though, which is hugely appealing and Matt happens to be a brilliant cook. He throws
open the doors to his house on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights – and be warned, it’s crazily popular.
Matt serves a no choice main course for £10 a head as well as a choice of starters and puddings for around £4. It’s BYO with a £3 corkage charge so what you’ve got here is restaurant food at a fraction of the normal price. Matt’s Kitchen, on the ground floor of his house, is white washed with mix-matched wooden tables, slate floors and lots of coloured glass – yes there’s a gastro pub feel but somehow more unique.
Starters on the night we visited were mackerel pate – the fish brought in from Beer that afternoon by Matt’s mate – home-made lamb merguez sausages with chilli sauce and yoghurt raita and pan-fried mushrooms. The mackerel pate was very good but the merguez sausages were blinding. Next time (if the sausages are on) I won’t even check the other starters.
Our main course was haddock cooked with spices, vermouth and cream on a bed of mustard mash. It was utterly delicious, a huge, great plate that we had to finish, even my husband who doesn’t ‘do fish’.
Matt himself is something of a miracle – popping out in between courses to chat to every table, a man who is totally passionate about cooking and food provenance. I’m still not sure how he managed to cook twenty covers and hang around shooting the breeze so seamlessly. It’s such a find, this place, that you want to talk to the other diners about it. Next time, I’d be up for a bit of mingling… F
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