Author: Creative Steam

Eat Well For Less: Pangrattato
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Honestly it’s a game changer…

Also known as “poor man’s Parmesan”, pangrattato is a penny-pinching classic from southern Italy makes a great pasta “sauce” in its own right but can be used in or on pretty much anything.  It takes a few minutes to make, and costs next to nothing.

Ingredients

  • Stale Bread
  • Garlic
  • Herbs – rosemary, thyme, oregano or sage are great
  • Olive Oil

Method

  • Blitz stale bread in a food processor, the drier the better and tip it out.
  • Blitz a handful of garlic cloves… if you like garlic then throw more in!
  • Grab any herbs you like. Woody ones are best, such as rosemary, thyme, oregano or sage. Blitz again.
  • Add the breadcrumbs back in. Whizz a few times.
  • Heat a frying pan or if you have made lots then spread it onto a baking tray.  Dress with plenty of olive oil and then toast until crispy and golden.
  • Leave it to cool and then put into a container. It lasts ages!

Use pangrattato to add taste and texture to dishes.  Eat it with pasta as a Parmesan substitute, perhaps adding a grating of lemon zest and some chilli flakes. Use it as an additional topping for any other pasta dish, to add texture to salads, as a topping for any stews and sauces, or as a breadcrumb mix for coating meat or veg such as roast cauliflower.  It’s quick, easy, and delicious.  You’ll wonder how you ever existed without it.

Need For Feed Podcast
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Pro athletes have an interesting relationship with food. The Need For Feed podcast, hosted by professional rugby player and pizza business owner Ethan Waller of the Worcester Warriors, looks at current and ex-professional athletes who have decided to make food more than just a fuel. Sometimes a hobby, occasionally a business, every now and then a retirement plan, but ALWAYS a passion. I was really excited to speak with Ethan recently for episode six. You can listen to it below, or wherever you get your podcasts from.

*STRONG LANGUAGE WARNING. This is two rugby players talking to each other, after all! You have been warned…

As well as continuing to play rugby professionally and presenting Need For Feed podcast, Ethan’s also co-owner of Slice Slice Baby pizza co. You can keep up with Need For Feed via Twitter and Instagram to get more of this deep, delicious crossover of sport and food.

Beach (or Backyard) Feast Tips
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As summer hits and the evenings draw out, many of us are spending more time cooking and eating outside. Whether that means barbecuing in your backyard or (as lockdown measures ease) a day trip to a beach, here are a few of my top tips for eating well outside and making sure that cooking and clearing up after yourself is as easy as possible.

The One Essential Bit of BBQ Kit

A fish clamp or grill basket is the only piece of kit that you need to cook over fire at the beach, or over your bbq at home. Use it for grilling veg, sausages or meat as well as fish over a fire or bbq, and simply flip it over – no more chasing sausages around a grill with tongs, or dropping them on the coals!

Cracking Crab

Buy cooked crab from a fishmonger – lots of fisherman and fish merchants have been selling direct or online (for delivery) during lockdown. You can find a comprehensive list of Cornish fish and shellfish options for local collection and nationwide delivery here. Then either cook some chips or French fries at home and take them with you, or stop off to pick up some chips from a takeaway (many of them are now re-opening with physical distancing policies in place) on your way to the beach for an amazing, messy, seafood feast on the sand. Don’t forget some crab cracking and picking tools, though! I’d recommend a small pin hammer to crack the shell and then use the handle of a teaspoon to remove the white meat.

How To Barbecue at The Beach

If you want to barbecue at the beach, then get yourself a bucket bbq, wood and charcoal, rather than a disposable bbq. Light a fire in it, add charcoal, then cook over it, thus avoiding the flavour taint of firelighters. It’s also tidier and better value for money because you can reuse it. Just be sure to clear up after yourselves and leave only your footprints on the sand!

Other ways that we might be able to help…

Philleigh Way BBQ Packs

If you’re in Cornwall then let us help shoulder some of your BBQ burden with one of our BBQ packs – everything that you need for a classic, Middle Eastern inspired or luxury BBQ including meats, spice mixes, steak rubs, artisan breads and salads.

Outside Cookery Courses

If you’re interested in improving your outside cooking skills, then as soon as it’s safe, sensible and permitted for us to start teaching our courses again we’ll likely be starting with our outside cookery courses (with physical distancing and appropriate health and hygiene measures in place). Choose from Better Barbecuing or an Argentian Asado Masterclass. Dates have yet to be updated, and as yet we’re unsure when we will be phasing some of our courses back in, but e-mail to express an interest and we’ll get in touch to let you know.

Pick-Up Pizza Nights
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WEDNESDAY EVENINGS

2 PIZZAS & A BOTTLE OF WINE (OR 2 BEERS) TO TAKEAWAY

£28

On Wednesday evenings through June (and perhaps beyond if it proves popular) I’m going to fire up our wood-fired pizza oven in collaboration with our friends at The Old Garage Wine and Deli to bring a slice of socially distant pizza to anybody within driving distance of Philleigh Way. For £28 you can get a drive-by meal deal of two pizzas of your choice, plus a bottle of wine or two craft beers from The Old Garage’s incredible curated range. If you only want one pizza, or are on the wagon, then let us know and I’ll re-price accordingly.

Maintaining Social Distancing
We’ll be asking you to book a time slot to collect your pizzas (time slots are available every ten minutes from 5pm). As you drive in to Philleigh Way we’ll place your pizzas and bottles on a table that you can pull up alongside, so you don’t even need to get out of your car.

To order your pizza and book a time slot, e-mail philleighorders@gmail.com

taking a pizza out of a pizza oven

MENU
CHOOSE ANY TWO PIZZAS

Margherita
San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, fresh basil, salt and extra-virgin olive oil

Philleigh Farm
San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, ham & mushroom

Meaty
San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, Cornish sausage, home-smoked bacon, salami

Middle Eastern
San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, roasted aubergine, sumac & artichokes

Green
San Marzano tomatoes, asparagus, mint, courgette & feta bechamel sauce

*Vegan option available on request. Please let me know if you have any allergens or dietary requirements and need your order adapting.

old garage wines

WINE & BEER

Red
Mocavero Primitivo Salento – jammy fruits, hint of violet, balanced tannins

White
Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc – juicy fresh citrus fruits and tangy gooseberries

Craft Beer Mix
(Verdant Brewing Co) – Hoppy, fruity and fresh – between 4.5% and 5.5%

ORDER BY E-MAILING PHILLEIGHORDERS@GMAIL.COM AND REQUEST A TIME

Live Well in Lockdown Recipe: Focaccia
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If you’re going to bake bread during lockdown, then bake great bread. Flour continues to be in short supply, so if you can get hold of strong bread or 00 flour then please, put it to good use; you won’t have any problems buying a loaf of regular sliced sandwich bread from the shops anymore, so push the boat out and bake something special. Like, focaccia:

Ingredients

  • 250g strong bread flour
  • 125g polenta
  • 125g 00 flour
  • 310 ml water
  • 10g salt
  • 80g olive oil
  • 7g sachet yeast or 14g fresh yeast
  • 1 tsp sugar

Method

  • Place the flours, salt, yeast, olive oil into a large bowl and then add 310ml of the water bit by bit. Gently stir with your hand or a wooden spoon to form a dough, then leave to stand for 5-10mins. This just allows the water to be absorbed.
  • Then, knead the dough in the bowl for five minutes
  • Stretch the dough by hand in the bowl, tuck the sides into the centre, turn the bowl 90 degrees and repeat the process for about five minutes.
  • Tip the dough onto a well-oiled work surface and continue kneading for five more minutes. Return the dough to the bowl, cover and leave to rise until it’s doubled in size.
  • Line a large baking tray with baking paper. Tip the dough out of the bowl and flatten the dough onto the prepared tray, pushing to the corners. Cover with a large plastic bag, making sure it does not touch the top of the dough, then leave to prove for one hour.
  • Preheat the oven to 220C/200C Fan/Gas 7.
  • Drizzle the loaves with oil, sprinkle with fine sea salt. At this point, you can stud your loaf with rosemary and/or garlic, should you wish.
    Then use your fingers to poke some indentations in the top of the loaf, and pour a little bit of water over the loaf to create a bit more steam and give a nice crisp top. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. When cooked, drizzle your focaccia with a little more olive oil and serve hot or warm.

If you’re enjoying baking bread and wish to expand your repertoire, then when we’re out the other side of lockdown and it’s safe and sensible to run our cookery courses again, why not join us for one of our Bread and Baking courses?

Comfort Cookbook: Chefs Contributing for Hospitality Action
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We’re very excited to count ourselves amongst the incredible chefs, food and drink producers, and industry insiders from Devon and Cornwall who have come together in a show of solidarity in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis to create the Comfort Cookbook.

‘Comfort’ is a collaborative digital cookbook that it is hoped will “inspire comfort in adversity,” during the Covid-19 crisis, which has forced the mass closure of businesses and left the hospitality sector and its employees facing an uncertain future. Everyone involved is giving their time and expertise free of charge, with all funds going directly to Hospitality Action, a national charity which supports hospitality workers and has launched a Covid19 Emergency Appeal.

The production team describe the cookbook as: “A snapshot of the unique and diverse food and drink culture we have nurtured here in the West Country, and the rich network of chefs, producers and entrepreneurs who together make the region a world-class gourmet destination.”

The cookbook will feature recipes from chefs including Mitch Tonks, Nathan Outlaw, Jude Kereama, River Cottage, Michael Caines, Paul Ainsworth, Ben Tunnicliffe, Mark Dodson, Mick Smith, Ben Prior, Simon Stallard, Emily Scott, Elly Wentworth, Madeleine Olivia, Tia Tamblyn, Daaku, Chris Eden, and Philleigh Way’s own Rupert; each will be easy for families to prepare at home using local, seasonal produce – with links through to websites where the ingredients can be purchased.

Rupert has contributed two recipes to the cookbook, one for a quick and easy pan pizza, and another for a Cornish-style cassoulet.

The Comfort Cookbook project is a collaboration between Lucy Studley, a Cornish food and drink writer, marketer and PR specialist; Gabriella Dyson, who is Editor at publisher The Maverick Guide; and experienced food stylist, photographer and designer, Ali Green. Lucy came up with the idea after speaking to clients devastated at having to close their businesses and tell staff to stay at home.

A JustGiving page has been set up and everyone who donates any amount, large or small, will be sent a link to download the cookbook when it is ready.

CLICK HERE TO PLEDGE FOR YOUR COPY

Live Well in Lockdown Recipe: Gnocchi Al Forno
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If you don’t try this, you are missing out! An easy one-pan Italian classic using standard ingredients, if you’ve never made gnocchi al forno before then it is bound to become a regular on your menu, it is that good.

Ingredients

  • 250g beef mince
  • 1 red onion
  • 2 garlic
  • 1/2 carrot
  • 1 tbsp tom paste
  • 1 tomato
  • Glass red wine (good stuff)
  • Beef stock cube (optional)
  • Mixed herbs
  • Vac pac gnocchi, or freshly made if you have the time (check out our leftover root veg gnocchi recipe or Jamie Oliver’s potato gnocchi recipe.
  • Cheese to grate over – I used a mix of mozzarella, cheddar and parmesan, but you can use any of these on their own
  • 1 pan with an oven-proof handle

Method

  • Heat frying pan. Brown mince, colour is flavour. Finely dice veg.
  • Add veg, season. Sweat off 2 mins. Add wine. Then tom paste
  • Cook off, then add diced tomato. Cook for 2/3 mins. Add just enough stock/water to cover bottom of the pan.
  • Simmer 5 mins until reduced. You are looking for a “dry” bolognese.
  • Put sauce into a container, use a silicone spoon to get all the bits off.
  • Splash of oil in the pan. Put the gnocchi in and fry until you have mega colour.
  • Spoon the mixture over the gnocchi, cover with cheese (I mean cover) and grill until golden brown.
  • Consume your gnocchi al forno. Red wine to accompany is strongly suggested.

Remember calories don’t count in quarantine 🤫

Cooking With Children: Oat and Raisin Cookies Recipe
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If you are staying at home and have children, then you will no doubt be looking for ways to keep them entertained and occupied, even if they are school age and being set work by their teachers.  Cooking with children is a wonderful way to spend time with them and teaches valuable life skills, and simple baking using store cupboard staples is a great way to start.  And, if they’re young enough to make a game out of cleaning the kitchen afterwards, then all the better!

These oat and raisin cookies are easy to make and the method is quick enough that it should keep short attention spans engaged.  Including resting the dough in the fridge for half an hour and cooking time, you’ll have a batch of cookies within an hour.  You can swap out the raisins for other dried fruit such as cranberries, or a mix of dried fruit, or even chocolate chips if you like.

oat and raisin cookies

Ingredients

  • 125g  plain flour
  • ½ tsp ground cinnamon
  • ½ tsp baking soda
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 115g unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
  • 100g brown sugar
  • 50g granulated sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 150g rolled oats (porridge oats)
  • 150g raisins

Method

  • Preheat your oven to 180 (fan)
  • Combine the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl and whisk together, then set aside.
  • In another bowl (or in a food mixer with a paddle attachment), cream together the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar for 1-2 minutes with an electric mixer or with a wooden spoon and some elbow grease.  Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix until fully combined.
  • Add in the flour mix and combine, then mix in the oats and raisins.
  • Cover the dough and put it in the fridge for half an hour.  This will make sure they turn out nice and thick.
  • Line two large baking trays with greaseproof paper.
  • Take the dough out of the freezer and divide it in two, then divide those two pieces into two, and continue until you have 16 small lumps of cookie dough.  Roll them into balls and gently squash in your hand to make a nice thick cookie.
  • Place them on the baking trays, leaving a bit of space between each cookie as they’ll spread a little.
  • Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the cookie is set and the edges are starting to turn golden brown.
  • Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Coronavirus / COVID-19 Update
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LAST UPDATED 09/09/2020

With the rules on groups tightening again, we’ll continue to run our small (socially distanced) class sizes and utilise our covered outside areas as much as possible.  And we’ll continue to react to any future developments as required.

10/06/2020

We are aiming to open for socially distanced courses at some point in July, however this needs be done correctly, with safely of our students and tutors paramount. We have thought long and hard about the correct model. Although hygiene standards are already high we have decided on the following changes:

• The Maximum class number will halve to four students and will continue to conform to social distancing guidelines. This will allow for totally individual workstations, with 2 meters distance of other students.

• We will be adapting our covered outside dining area to include prep and cooking stations. In the first instance we will be running courses that can be delivered in this area.

• No sharing of equipment.

• If working inside the building, we will open the doors to let in lots of fresh air.

• Lunch will be taken outside. We have a large outdoor seating area, for warmer days the gentle breeze offers a pleasant relief from the heat of the kitchen, and for the colder days we can roll down the canvas sides and dish out blankets (and even hot water bottles).

• We will ask all students who use the toilet facilities to use the provided cleaning materials to clean all touched surfaces.

• As with all guidance we ask that you do not attend the course if you or a member of your household has been in contact with anyone with COVID-19 fourteen days prior to the course or is showing symptoms.

We welcome any suggestions from you about how to safely re open. We are all in this together and hopefully will see each other soon.

22/03/2020

I hope that this finds you and yours safe, healthy and well. These are unsettling times, and as such this post serves to update you on the current situation here at Philleigh Way.

Firstly, I need to let you know that we are suspending all cookery courses until further notice. If you are booked onto an upcoming course then if you haven’t heard from me already, I will be in touch very soon to make arrangements. This is not something that I would have ever expected to be doing, but the health and safety of our students and team is of the utmost importance to me and it’s the right thing to do for society as we all do what we can to reduce the spread of coronavirus. You can still book on to a course later in the year, and I aim to get courses back up and running and to be welcoming you back to Philleigh Way as soon as it is safe to do so.

Secondly, we want to help however we can. We are planning some free live online tutorials for skills such as basic bread baking on social media, and also looking into how we can offer pared-back versions of some courses using online conferencing tools. I also want to use my chef’s brain (and our larder and wholesale contacts) to help with menu planning for those of you who are at home for extended periods of time or to help you make the most of your store cupboard and cut back on food wastage – that’s the basis of our previous Foodie Blog article (click here).

At times like this cooking can be a wonderful way to spend some time at home, a welcome distraction and, above all else, a way to look after and show your love for your nearest and dearest, and your neighbours.

I hope that you and your families and friends stay safe and healthy.

Rupert & the team

One-Week Meal Plan
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If you have limited access to the shops at the moment then good meal planning and having a menu that makes the most of all of your ingredients is going to help enormously. As a chef, planning menus to create a variety of dishes using minimal ingredients is an ingrained skill, and it’s one that I can share easily. What follows is a suggested meal plan for a week of dinners. For our vegetarian, vegan, dairy and gluten-free followers or those with other dietary needs, I apologise that I haven’t had time to prepare a meal plan with options for specific diets. If that is you, then I hope that you can still perhaps adapt some of these meals to your requirements or take inspiration from the core concept of carrying over key ingredients or leftovers into subsequent meals.

Please click each link to be taken through to the web page to find ingredients and instructions.

Sunday – Roast chicken with thyme and onion gravy (Nigel Slater’s recipe), served with roast potatoes and vegetables.

Monday – Creamy chicken and thyme risotto, using leftover chicken and stock made from carcass.

Tuesday – Cauliflower cheese (Philleigh Way’s comfort food recipe)

Wednesday – Jamie Oliver’s chorizo hash, using leftover roast potatoes and with a handful of spinach added.

Thursday – Spinach and mushroom gnocchi frittata (BBC Good Food).

Friday – Hot smoked mackerel and potato salad (Waitrose Magazine)

Saturday – Mushroom Stroganoff with rice (Sainsbury’s Magazine)

Meet the Knife-Maker
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On the weekend of the 4th and 5th of April, we’re excited to be teaming up with chef and knife-maker Dan Maltwood of Pareusi knives, to offer a unique two day knife-making and cookery course in which you’ll spend a day making your own kitchen knife with Dan, followed by a day spent putting it through its paces with Rupert. This is the perfect course for any enthusiastic cook or chef, learning new skills in the workshop and the kitchen and walking away with an incredible tool that you’ll enjoy using for many years to come. Over the weekend both Dan and Rupert will cook for you, so you’ll get to enjoy great food in some amazing settings.  To learn more about Dan, his route to becoming a craftsman making knives for some of the biggest names in the business, and what you can expect from the knife-making day of this special course, we visited his workshop on the cliff top above St Agnes for a chat.

I originally trained as a chef.  I find it hard to sit still and I always want to be doing something, so would get bored on my days off.  We made this knife up, and I took it into college when I was doing my NVQ Level 3 and a load of chefs from the course came up to me and asked if they could buy it off me or if I could make them one. I said it was just a bit of fun, and kind of ignored it, but then came in again the week after and somehow I’d got this reputation as being a knife maker and making all these cool knives. That was an electrifying lightbulb moment for me, and I realised that I could do something with this. I committed and over the last three years I’ve been focused on knife making and building the business

I made my first knife after watching a clip on a TV programme.  I got the rough basics of heating metal up and putting it into water, which now I look back on I think “what on earth was I doing?!” because my process has refined and developed so much more! There was a lot of trial and error in the beginning, a few YouTube videos, I read some books, and eventually I managed to work it all out and get my process down.

I designed our courses to be really accessible, so that everybody walks away with a beautiful, functional kitchen knife.  We run a two day full course where you make the whole knife from start to finish, and I’ll always end up helping out at some point here or there, if somebody doesn’t feel confident or safe doing a particular process then I’ll do that for them, but we’ve had people who have never used a power tool before and they’ve smashed it and made a beautiful knife. You’ve just got to be careful and take your time with it. With the two day full course people can either choose a shape from our range and use one of our pre-cut knife blanks, or they can do some research into designs at home, bring in some ideas, and we’ll make that custom knife for them. For this course with Philleigh Way, because we’re making a knife in a day, we’ll be offering a choice of our standard shapes so that people can use one of our pre-cut blanks. Cutting out, grinding and profiling a custom shape will just take too much time. We’re going to streamline the process so that it can be done in a day, and everybody has a finished knife ready to use on the Sunday.

Making a knife involves a lot of different processes, which makes it really engaging and interesting.  I buy in sheet steel and then use a process called stock removal, so I draw out the template on the steel and then cut it out with an angle grinder.  Once I’ve made the outline shape, it’s a case of grinding, heat treating and tempering the blade before sharpening and polishing. For the handles we’ve got some lovely wood – black walnut, bocote which is a really pretty wood from Mexico, and I’ve just got in some African blackwood for a special project which is a really heavy, dense and beautiful wood used by ornamental wood turners.

We’re going to offer a choice of three different knife styles for the weekend course; a paring knife, an all-round chef’s knife, or a carving knife (a big long one). The knives we’ll make on the day will start out as pre-cut shapes that have been ground down, so all the long, laborious and less pleasant processes will have already been done by me. They’ll be grading and polishing the blade, putting the handle on and then sharpening it, and finishing the handle which is a really nice job – going through different grades of abrasive paper and using nice oils and a beeswax to make the grain pop out. I use one of the most expensive beeswax that you can get, but it’s just the most amazing natural product from Devon and makes the handles look and feel incredible. I had a father and son do a workshop weekend together a few weeks ago and one made a cleaver and the other a little Japanese style paring knife. They bought in their own burr maple for the handle and when we oiled the handles and the grain popped out, it just looked amazing.

We’ve had some big name chefs ordering steak knives for their restaurants, so I’m making a lot of cutlery at the moment.  We’re currently working on a set of steak knives for Paul Ainsworth’s No6 restaurant in Padstow, and Mahé, that’ll have antler handles and a really nice curved profile with the curve of the handle transitioning into the curve of the blade. Paul’s got two of our knives that he uses in the kitchen. We made a set of steak knives for Restaurant Gordon Ramsey and I’m about to start making a set for Simon Martin, a chef from Manchester who just got the first Michelin star in the city in over 40 years. Because the steak knives are all custom designs for those restaurants, it’s great to work with them and see the chef’s creative sides, and to collaborate on ideas.

When I started Pareusi I was still sous chef at 2 rosette hotel (The Rose in Vale at Mithian, near St Agnes) and I continue to do the odd service there to help out, so I’ve still got a real understanding of what chefs need from their knives and an opportunity to put new designs through their paces.

My favourite knife to use is the Pareusi Classic, which is a standard French style chef’s knife with a really nicely shaped handle. I’ve been a chef for over ten years, so all of our knives are designed to be used for hours and hours on end, and to be comfortable. A knife is a tool for a chef, and they will be using their knives all day long, all week long. A knife might look really nice, but a cool looking handle might not be comfortable nor an interesting shape very well weighted for long-term use. These knives are designed for chefs, which means that they’ll definitely be comfortable and up to the task for the everyday enthusiast cooking at home.

BOOK YOUR SPACE ON OUR KNIFE-MAKING WEEKEND

Frugal February Recipe: Dosa with Coconut Sambal
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After Christmas credit card bills and annual tax returns at the end of January, February can be a frugal month for some. But how to reduce your food bill whilst still eating well? There are plenty of great recipes and £1 meal ideas out there, utilising cheaper ingredients, store cupboard staples and making the most of leftovers. This dosa recipe from our Indian Cookery Course is a great option, and makes for a fantastic brunch dish too if you put a fried egg on top.

Dosa’s are basically Indian pancakes, so you could always make these on Shrove Tuesday?

Coconut Sambal (Sort Of)

Ingredients

  • 1 shallot or small red onion
  • 1 red chilli
  • 1 large tomato
  • 1 tsp red wine vinegar
  • 1 tsp lime juice plus zest
  • 1 tsp mint sauce
  • small handful coriander
  • small handful flaked or desiccated coconut

Method

  • Finely dice the shallot and chilli
  • Add the red wine vinegar, lime juice and zest, and a pinch of salt
  • Heat a dry frying pan and toast the coconut until golden brown
  • Dice the tomato (you can do this with or without the seeds)
  • Add the mint sauce to your onion mix
  • Roughly chop the coriander
  • Combine all of the ingredients in a small bowl, season, taste, and serve

Dosa

Batter Ingredients

● 1 cup of gram flour
● 1 cup of plain flour
● ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
● 2½ teaspoons mustard seeds

Filling Ingredients

● 2 baking potatoes, leftover baked potatoes or leftover mashed potato
● 2 sweet potatoes
● 1 dried red chilli
● 1 fresh red chilli
● 1 cm piece of ginger
● olive oil
● 1½ teaspoons mustard seeds
● 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
● 4 spring onions
● a few sprigs of fresh coriander
● 1 lime

Method

  • Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas 6.
  • For the dosa batter, add the flours to a large bowl with the bicarb, mustard seeds and a good pinch of salt. Gradually whisk in enough water, about 400ml, to make a loose batter.
  • Scrub and prick the potatoes and sweet potatoes, then bake until soft, Once cooked, cut the potatoes open, then scoop out the flesh and roughly mash. Alternatively, use up leftover baked potatoes, roasties or mashed potato.
  • Crumble the dried chilli and finely slice the fresh chilli, then peel and finely chop the ginger.
  • Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a pan over a medium heat, add the chillies, ginger, mustard seeds, turmeric and a good pinch of sea salt and black pepper. Fry until smelling fantastic and the mustard seeds start to pop, shaking the pan regularly.
Fry off your spring onions, chilli, shallot, ginger and salt.
  • Meanwhile, trim and finely slice the spring onions, and pick and roughly chop the coriander leaves.
  • Pour the spice mixture over the potatoes then gently mix together with a knife. Taste and season, if needed. Squeeze in the lime juice, add the spring onions and coriander, then mix together.
  • Heat 1 teaspoon of oil in a large non-stick frying pan over a medium-high heat, then wipe around and away with a ball of kitchen paper.
  • Add a spoonful of batter to the pan and immediately twist so the batter coats the base and slips up the edges. As soon as the moisture on top starts to cook away and there are lots of bubbles, add a few heaped teaspoons of potato filling and gently spread across the dosa.
Cook your batter mix in a hot pan, as you would a pancake.
  • Once the base is crispy, loosely roll up the dosa in the pan and you’re ready to go.
  • Delicious served with minted yoghurt, chutney and wedges of lime for squeezing over.
Flip the pancake, add a dollop of filling, and roll.
Serve with coconut sambal. You’re probably not going to only have one, though...

For more fantastic Indian cuisine and street-food recipes, techniques, tips and hacks, book on to our next full-day Indian cookery course (20th June or 23rd September 2020) or half day Street Food course on April 17th 2020.

Cooking With Fire: Meet Andi Tuck
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On March 7th we’ll be joined at Philleigh Way by guest tutor Andi Tuck, to lead a special Cooking With Fire course. Andi is widely regarded as a rising star on the Cornish foodie scene for both his incredible abilities with smoke and fire but also for his incredible flavour combinations. He’s head chef at the award winning St Kew Inn, a beautiful 15th Century establishment in North Cornwall, and also the founder of Tan & Mor (Cornish for “Fire and Sea”) his live fire cooking experience business. St Kew’s forward thinking “custodians” (they don’t refer to themselves as landlords, instead seeing their role as looking after the historic inn) allowed Andi to install a live fire set-up in the kitchen and also to build an incredible outside kitchen for the summer months when he arrived there a year ago, and he’s built an incredible reputation for the food and theatre of his live fire cooking.

Ahead of his upcoming course we took the excuse to head up the road to St Kew and sit down with Andi in the historic bar after a busy lunch service to find out a bit more about his food, what attendees can expect on March 7th, and how you can add a bit of cooking with fire to your culinary skill set.

Andi, what is it that you love about cooking with fire and smoke?
The flavour, first and foremost. And I think it’s quite nostalgic, as well; growing up with barbeques in the summer. I think there’s a flavour that cooking over fire gives that’s hard to replicate any other way.

St Kew’s outdoor kitchen. Photo by Sam Buckle.

What does it allow you to do that you couldn’t otherwise, in a normal kitchen?
It’s really the offset cooking. You can’t generate the same flavour smoking with smoke chips as you can smoking over an open fire. There’s not that depth of flavour. It creates a flavour profile that smoke chips try to replicate, but they produce a much harsher flavour. Smoking over an open fire is much more subtle and has more depth. With the smoking chips it’s like “BANG! SMOKE!” but when you’re smoking over wood that has been soaked in water so it’s generating its own steam as well, it creates a deeper flavour. Offset cooking also means you tend to be cooking low and slow, and drawing out more flavours.

How did you develop your skills cooking over fire?
Working with some of the best live fire chefs in the country. Lots of research, going to evens like Meatopia which is like my annual pilgrimage. Working with chefs like Ben Quinn and Simon Stallard here in Cornwall, and then at Meatopia working with some amazing international live fire chefs. I got to work with Lennox Hastie who’s an Australian chef and the stuff that you learn with him in a day is more than some people learn in a lifetime.

Before moving to St Kew Inn, you cooked in various notable kitchens around North Cornwall. What is it about cooking in Cornwall that you enjoy so much?
The produce. You’re getting ingredients from the sea to the kitchen in a matter of minutes, not hours. With the local connections that I’ve made now with people like George Cleave the fishmonger in Port Isaac, his fish is at the kitchen door within minutes of being landed, which is awesome.

Is the produce that you have access to here particularly suitable to this style of cooking?
Yes and no… it’s more all of the foraging and wild coastal ingredients. I could go out for a day’s foraging and get enough to run a menu for the night. I love cooking fish on open fire… I will never put a fish in the oven. The set-up that I’ve got in the kitchen here is basically an oven, it’s just an open oven. You’ve got it really hot near the flames but because the heat rises I can take it up to the next level, which is a foot above the flames, and then I turn it every so often and it’ll get through to about 48-50 degrees on the bone which is perfect.

Fresh mackerel and sea leeks on the grill

What are the ingredients that you like working with the most?
Fish is my number one. Fish and fire is my thing I suppose. Anything foraged. To know what you’ve gone through to get that is really special. There’re quite a lot of wild and foraged ingredients that people have forgotten about now, but historically, and as far back as the days of hunter-gatherers, they were what people lived off. There are quite a few companies that are starting to use more foraged ingredients and it’s getting bigger. Hopefully it doesn’t get so big through that there’s nothing left for me to find! 99% of what people eat today was wild at some point, like broccoli for instance – we could go out now and forage for sea broccoli, which is an ancestor of that.

Photo by Sam Buckle.

And you’ve recently won an award for the food that you’re cooking at St Kew Inn?
Yes, out of all of the 180 pubs that are part of St Austell Brewery we won the best food pub of the year. I’ve only been here a year – it was a year to the day since I started and it’s quite a big accolade to win within the St Austell Brewery family, when you’re up against pubs like The Cornish Arms in Tavistock who win it year after year. It’s been a good way to start 2020!

You’ve cooked over fire at food festivals such as Meatopia in London and on the beach at St Ives Food Festival. What do you cook when looking to show off what’s possible with live fire?
Anything that people can do at home. I’m not one of these chef’s who’s going to show you all of these secret or unobtainable things that you can’t replicate at home. If you’re demonstrating then people want to know how to do it, they want to learn how to do it. Things like octopus that people assume is going to be unobtainable, you just go through how to do it step by step and you can get it easily. I wouldn’t rock up with a load of dry ice!

Local Porthilly oysters. Photographed by Sam Buckle.

Which other chefs do you look up to and admire, and why?
For me it’s the chefs that don’t seek the limelight… they’re not TV chefs. People like Niklas Ekstedt who’s got the Ekstedt restaurant in Stockholm. And then chefs like Ben Quinn, he’s been a massive inspiration in my career; he was the one that got me to see my true potential in live fire cooking. Generally though, people that do something a bit different. Tom Brown is a great inspiration being a Cornish boy as well.

What’s the simplest dish that you’d suggest for people wanting a gentle introduction to cooking over fire?
Mackerel. But it’s learning how to do mackerel well, because nine times out of ten your dad or granddad will have done mackerel on the BBQ and cooked the hell out of it; it’ll be dry, and horrible. It’s knowing the cuisson and knowing when to take it off. You let the residual heat of the fish finish it off. You can eat fish raw (like sushi), so if it’s still pink on the bone when you take it off the heat then it’ll be absolutely fine.

Cook this dish on our Fire course with Andi!

Do readers who are aspiring to cook over fire need any special equipment?
No! As long as you’ve got a barbecue and a safe place to do it. That’s the best thing about cooking over fire. Anyone can barbecue. There’re certain things that I’d suggest, like I’d never suggest cooking with a disposable bbq just because of the flavour it gives off – they’re often soaked in paraffin which really isn’t good to cook over. It’s more about sustainable wood or charcoal, and I’ll cover things like soaking wood on the course… going in to depth on things like using different woods for different meats. Meats like beef and chicken can take a heavier smoke flavour like oak, whereas with fish you’d want to go for apple wood or something subtle like chestnut.

Lobster, on the coals. Photo by Sam Buckle.

What are you looking forward to sharing at your course at Philleigh Way?
My enthusiasm, really. I want to make people not just stick paraffin firelighters under their food and actually show them that they can cook gourmet style food over fire, which is what we do here at St Kew.
I’d like to challenge preconceptions about cooking over fire, and show them what they can achieve. It can and should be so much more than having a raging fire and chucking stuff straight on. Some things need a hot heat and some things need a smouldering heat…. We might “black and blue” a steak by just rolling it in the hot coals to clinch it and then knock all the coals off, rest it and cut it. It’d be nice to do my octopus dish but because of time we might not be able to do the full dish – I might start cooking one but bring a cooked one with me that I’ll prepare the day before so that I can show the finished result.

Whether you want to start introducing cooking over fire into your regular repertoire, or simply up your barbecue game in preparation for the summer, Andi’s course is going to cover all bases. We have just a few spaces remaining.

CLICK HERE TO BOOK YOUR SPACE ON ANDI’S COOKING WITH FIRE COURSE

And if you’re not able to make it to Cornwall in early March for Andi’s course but are planning on visiting later in the year, then you should definitely make a date to have a meal at St Kew Inn and enjoy his incredible cooking. You can also check out the other courses that we’ll be running during your visit here.

Caution Cupid at work…
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We all need a bit of cheer on the horizon to get through the storms and gloom of

February, not to mention the minefield that is Valentine’s Day (great fun for some, not so easy for others). So if you’re short of ideas of how to show you love someone but without the clichés, then we can get you all fired up and raring to go by suggesting the following courses:

Stoke the flames by giving a course voucher for ‘Fire!’ (£150, 7 March) with the titan of outdoor-cooking Andi Tuck who not only brings his considerable reputation as a culinary wizard with smoke and flames, but has a second-to-none know-how with flavour combinations, and ways of execution that will get you cooking in sun, rain and snow. Whether you want to cook your oysters in the embers, bring a whole contemporary twist to the ordinary bbq vegetable or smoke your freshly caught fish on the beach, then Andi’s your man.

Next create your own Arabian Nights with a day spent learning the key ingredients of food from North Africa to Iran with head chef Rupert Cooper, including the use of essential spices from the Middle East such as cinnamon, caraway seeds, saffron and pomegranate molasses to be used in starters, mains and puddings. Rupert’s love of the Middle East and his passion for this cuisine is obvious throughout the day, helping you to make dips, marinades & curries for that adventurous lovers’ feast and Arabian night of your own. (£140 – 1 March or 22 May).

Or you could make a day of it starting off with a romantic walk in the Roseland, followed by lunch at the Roseland Inn or Hidden Hut, if the fresh sea breeze strikes a cord Andy Carr will be running a fish masterclass on the 21st March. Spoil your better halves with crustacea, wonderful fish and glorious sauces. 
Naturally we welcome women on this course, but Just For Men is a great way to encourage the man you love – dad, partner, son or brother – to bring on the perfect

Sunday roast, the steak & chips, the sticky toffee puddings and salted caramel and even how to butcher and fillet. Encouraging him to cook is the old win-win because he feels great and triumphant, and you don’t have to cook. Ta daaaa! You’re Welcome.
If you’re dreaming of Paris and scrambling for ideas of what to cook on Valentine’s day – or even this month – then let me give you the perfect in-season recipe to transport you to that little bistro table for two on the Isle-St-Louis near Notre Dame. It’s a chicory, walnut, pear and Roquefort salad. For the uninitiated it could sound weird but nothing tastes more of Paris to me.

Ingredients

Roquefort (or a similar soft blue cheese) 50 g

20 ml water

1 tbsp white wine vinegar

2 tbps olive oil

pinch pepper freshly ground

4 chicory – preferably small, white & purple, washed and quartered in lengths.

1 medium sized firm Conference or Comice pear. Cored, halved and finely sliced.

1 stick celery

80 g cold Roquefort, crumbled

100g walnuts roughly chopped

10 g chives if you have, finely chopped

Method

Toss the chicory, walnuts, celery, pear slices and two thirds of the cold Roquefort into the salad bowl.

In a separate large bowl beat the Roquefort to a smooth paste, then add the lightly warmed water, white wine vinegar and whisk til smooth. Using a balloon whisk slowly add in the olive oil, beating all the time. Season to taste with the pepper but NO SALT as the cheese is already salty. Toss the salad in the dressing and then sprinkle with left over Roquefort crumbs and the chopped chives. Et voila!  Paris in a mouthful. 

Wash it down with a glass of White Cote du Rhone… trust me! (Sainsbury’s on offer at the moment!)

The other seasonal ingredient you might get excited about this month is the halibut. Sweet-tasting with a firm and yet tender texture, it’s the largest of the flat fish and the most versatile too. You can bake it, poach it, cook it in a seafood stew or even try

it cured in ceviche – any method will impress your loved one because this fish always delivers. Why not write in and let me know how you got on.

So – it’s a blowy February out there but the Philleigh Way send you love and warmth

for this Valentine’s Day.

Yours,

Rupert and the Team.

Chef Wellness: Promoting Industry Change
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The hospitality industry, and commercial kitchens in particular, have developed a reputation for poor staff welfare. Long, antisocial hours, and hot, high pressure conditions have combined with a toxic culture in many kitchens to create a serious and endemic problem in the industry. It shouldn’t and needn’t be this way. I’d like to see it change, and I’m not the only one.

Last week, I was invited by Hospitality Table Cornwall (an industry-led project that aims to raise aspirations for quality careers and develop industry-relevant learning pathways) to lead a day-long workshop for a group of chefs around the concept of chef lifestyle and wellness.

Chefs work long, abnormal hours. The busiest times are obviously meal times, which means that most chefs end up skipping meals, and although they work around food all day they, ironically, rarely eat well.
When I worked as a chef I’d often finish a dinner service at around 10.30 or 11pm, so was very late getting home and going to bed. I’d wake up later as a result of that and often end up going to work having just had a cup of coffee. If we were busy through lunch, I’d quite often only get a chance to eat a chip butty, standing up in the kitchen, before dinner service began. That’s not unusual, and for juniors in busy or prestigious kitchens, the pressure is even greater. I’ve had friends who slept in their cars in between shifts because they didn’t have time to go home and go to bed, and Tom Kerridge’s admissions when he was a guest on Desert Island Discs, about working 48 hour shifts to keep his pub going during the recession, were shocking to those outside of the industry, but not to those within it.

I have been lucky enough to present alongside Tom Kerridge, in the time since he made huge changes to his lifestyle and health.

If you add to those existing issues a macho culture of bullying that exists in lots of kitchens, with some head chefs shouting and being rude and abusive towards their team and that being considered “normal” in a “if you can’t stand the heat” kind of way, and you have a recipe for poor self care, physical and mental health issues, awful morale and a high turnover of staff within the industry.

It is down to head chefs and the owners of restaurants to address this problematic culture, whether or not it exists within their establishment, and be a force for change. You can’t change the fundamental fact that chefs are busiest at mealtimes, but it is possible to think about how you plan rotas and plan in staff meals with easy and nutritious options to keep everyone energized. We shouldn’t be seeing situations where junior chefs working in restaurants prepare incredible food and then end up eating microwave meals when they get home at midnight. Plan to feed your team. Talk to them about the importance of a good night’s sleep (even if they are 18 and head straight to the bar after a dinner service), and try to create a caring culture in the kitchen where everybody feels valued. Kitchens can be stressful working environments; insanely busy at times, having to answer to demanding customers and mangers, high pressured, fast paced, and hot. A simple “please” and “thank you” can go a long way towards avoiding confrontations or ill-feelings when the barometer is rising.

Some simple stretches and basic exercises to alleviate soreness in the joints and areas that are under pressure when you’re stood on your feet all day can also help. Your hips, lower back, wrists and ankles all take a hammering. It’s unusual but not difficult to start every shift with a warm up – it’s a physical job, after all.

It’s a physical job, so warm up accordingly and stretch during service!


Outside of work, regular exercise can be a great aid to mental health as well as physical health. Whether it’s running, swimming, cross fit or surfing, if you can make time for yourself the benefits at work will be noticeable.

So, to summarise:

  1. Try to plan rotas to allow you and your team opportunities to eat and rest.
  2. Consider offering staff meals.
  3. Keep yourself and your team hydrated – perhaps by giving everybody their own water canteen to drink from during service.
  4. Try to create a caring, polite and tolerant culture in the kitchen so that when the temperature rises, tempers don’t flare.
  5. Do some simple stretches before and during service.
  6. Try to make time for exercise outside of work, hard as it may be, even/especially during the peak of silly season.

The saying goes that “you can’t pour tea out of an empty pot”, so look after yourself and your team, and your best work will follow.

Dry January: Meet Pentire, Makers of Botanical Non-Alcoholic Spirits
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Are you having a “Dry January” following the usual over-indulgences of the festive period?  Or perhaps you’re considering making some longer-term changes for the benefit of your health in 2020 and looking to moderate your alcohol consumption? Whatever your reasons, you’ll be glad to know that these days there are plenty of options for non-drinkers who don’t want to sink to sipping sugary soft drinks all evening, so you can still drink but without “drinking”.

Alongside the huge range of “no and low” alcohol beers on offer, there is also a growing number of great non-alcoholic spirits particularly suited to those of you who enjoy (or enjoyed) a gin and tonic. 

2019 saw the launch of a Cornish botanical non-alcoholic spirit, Pentire, which is distilled using unique plants that are native to the Cornish coastline.  Their first infusion, Adrift, is a blend of rock samphire, sage, citrus, Cornish sea salt and a number of plants foraged from Pentire (the headland at Polzeath on the coast of North Cornwall), we’ve been enjoying its herbaceous flavours in plenty of “Free and T’s” this January.  To find out more about Pentire, we caught up with its founder and creator, Alistair Frost.

pentire founder alistair frost

For those that are unfamiliar with the term, what is a non-alcoholic distilled botanical spirit?

We call it a spirit because we’re still doing distillation just like you’d do with gin or vodka, so we’re distilling plants. The process is steam distillation and we get these lovely natural organic run-offs of delicious liquids. When we distill it, it’s much more technical than distilling a gin – we have to be really careful with the temperature and pressure inside the still because we’re distilling handfuls of fresh plants and we’ve got to be really careful that we don’t burn them. It’s a much more delicate process than gin; we’re not using any dried botanicals or spices so it’s quite technical.

grilling lemons on a camp fire

What’s the flavour profile, and how and why did you design it that way?

We use three words: coastal, herbaceous and fresh. The reason why we went with that flavour profile is that we wanted to have a bottle and a flavour profile that was shaped by its surroundings. When you’re standing on a Cornish headland you get all those amazing top-notes; it’s grassy, it’s clean, it’s earthy, and also slightly salty and slightly citrus. When you’re distilling plants like rock samphire that grows in that environment on a headland and cliff-tops, they distill really well. Rock samphire is in the carrot family, it’s got a really high water content and its flavour is perfect to give a customer that taste of the coast.

rock samphire

What makes the Pentire headland a unique environment for these plants?

The reason why we named it Pentire is it was originally just a holding name for the project; it had really good provenance, it had good origin, it’s two syllables, it’s fresh, it’s easy to say and easy to remember, but what we realised when we started foraging on and around Pentire with a few of Cornwall’s best botanists, is that it’s got some of the best range in plant life out of any are of the UK coast. That’s because it’s got a unique climate, it’s got a really unique soil pH and air moisture. And that’s why it’s got such a huge range of plants, and of wildlife to boot.

foraging for botanicals

Non-alcoholic spirits are becoming ever more popular. Why do you think this is?

This is probably for a number of reasons. Outside of drinks, people are being health conscious, aware of their calorific intake, and aware of the health benefits of not drinking. In Pentire there’s only two calories per serve, it’s got zero sugar, it’s got zero salt, so there’s those health benefits. There’s also the whole ride-off from the gin boom as well, so everyone can relate to a gin and tonic.

pentire adrift non alcoholic martini

What is the best way to enjoy Pentire?

When people ask, “how do you drink Pentire?”, we say that you drink it just like a gin and tonic, and everyone can relate to that. It’s a double shot, 50ml, served with tonic and garnished with a sprig of rosemary or a bit of lemon peel.

pentire and tonic non alcoholic free and t

And where can our readers and followers pick up a bottle?

We sell through our website pentiredrinks.com where we offer free next-day delivery, and in terms of where people can pick it up ort try it, in Cornwall you can order a Pentire at Restaurant Nathan Outlaw, at any of the Paul Ainsworth Group restaurants, Prawn on the Lawn, and in terms of retailers places like Dalesford and The Pig.

Pentire pop up shop at Padstow Food Festival

Click here to find out more about Pentire’s botanical non-alcoholic spirits.

Wedding Food: The Philleigh Way Way!
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Here at Philleigh Way we love a good wedding, and we love playing a part in delivering an amazing and memorable experience on a bride and groom’s biggest day.  You can find out more about what we offer (it starts with the food, but goes right through to consulting and delivering on anything from location and logistics to equipment hire and drinks) over on our dedicated Wedding Catering page, but we’d like now to briefly take you back to the summer of 2019 and one of our favourite weddings of the year, to give you a flavour of what a Philleigh Way wedding is like.  We’ll aim to post more of these articles, celebrating the celebrations that we’re involved with, through the 2020 season.

We’ve still got some availability for weddings in 2020, both midweek and even a couple of those “peak” weekends in high summer, for events large or small, in Cornwall or further afield. If you’re going to be tying the knot this year, we’d love to speak to you about how we can help.

Now, without further ado:

Rachel & Andrew Scott
10th August 2019
Budock Vean and Meudon, Cornwall

Rachel & Andrew‘s Menu

Canapés

Smoked mackerel pate with pickled shallots
Tomato & sardine toast
Goats cheese, honey & pink peppercorn
Duchy charcuterie speck & melon

~oOo~

Wedding Breakfast Sharing Boards

Bread & olive oil
Barbecued Cornish Strip loin
Slow roasted lamb shoulder with sumac
Whole grilled catch of the day
Sweet potato mash with roasted onion
Cucumber, yogurt & tahini salsa
Baba ganoush with mint & parsley
Heritage tomato salad with smoked mozzarella & basil
Coleslaw

~oOo~

Dessert

Affogato – Callestick ice cream with, ginger & tonka bean crumble, salted caramel & espresso

~oOo~

Evening

Paella

“Come hell or high water we will be there for you. When I heard that the Boardmasters Festival 2019 was cancelled because of the threat from 80mph winds, I phoned the bride whose wedding was scheduled for the next day on the cliffs at Maenporth, because we were due to be catering for her in a marquee! I asked what she thought about the expected gales and she said, ‘Let’s go for it.’ I replied, ‘If you’re in, I’m in!’ So the Philleigh Way team and I did it – cooking the entire wedding breakfast on top of a cliff. It was pretty blustery and the marquee was shifting a bit! But we did the married couple proud and it was a really happy day.”

Rupert Cooper, Philleigh Way

Calling Green Fingered Gardeners: Our Vegetable Patch Appeal
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We are looking for enthusiastic local gardener(s) to lend a helping hand with our vegetable patch here at Philleigh Way.  If you live on the Roseland Peninsula or nearby, and either enjoy growing or want to get started, or are on the waiting list for an allotment, then we’d love to hear from you.

Philleigh Way’s Vegetable Patch

Our vegetable patch, which sits just behind the cookery school, measures approximately six metres square.  It was somewhat neglected through 2019, due to the time pressures involved in taking on and developing the business, but we’d really like to see it green and growing in 2020.

What We’re Offering

It’d be ideal for an individual looking for a space to grow vegetables but who doesn’t want to take on a whole allotment, or perhaps even for a small group interested in sharing the workload and the produce as a community garden effort.  You can grow what you like and have first pick of the harvest, then we’ll make sure that the rest is put to good use here at the cookery school.  We’ll also provide some Philleigh Way style perks to the person or group who help us to turn our vegetable patch into a productive plot (something along the lines of a decent discount on our regular dining events, or a deal on courses).

If you’re interested in finding out more or coming to take a look at the plot then please call me (Rupert) on 01872 580893.

Christmas Leftovers: Swede, Sprout and Paneer Curry
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If you’ve got a freezer full of leftovers and cupboards full of produce that you enthusiastically ordered too much of in the run up to Christmas, then here’s another recipe to help you make the most of it. Think of it as a “When Cornwall meets Calcutta” curry….via Christmas. Just trust me:

Ingredients

  • 2 x brown onions
  • 2 x cloves of garlic
  • 1 x thumb sized piece of ginger
  • A handful of red lentils
  • 1/2 swede
  • A handful of spinach
  • 1 x block paneer Indian cheese
  • A handful of brussel sprouts
  • 1 tbsp Tomato puree
  • 2 tsp garam masala
  • 1 tsp all purpose seasoning
  • 1 tbsp cider vinegar
  • 1 veg stock cube
  • 1 tbsp cherry tree hot garlic chutney (optional)
  • Small handful of mint & parsley

Method

  • Peel the swede and dice into large cubes, then trim the sprouts. Put a pan of boiling water on and drop the swede in. After 5 minutes, put the sprouts in and boil for a further 3 minutes. Then drain and pick out the sprouts.
  • Place the swede on a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil and season. Put into an oven at 180c.
  • Then roughly chop onions, garlic and ginger and heat a large saucepan with some oil. Put the onion mix into the pan and season. Soften the veg gently for 3/4 minutes. (if getting to hot, splash a bit of water on them)
  • As the onions start to turn translucent, add the spice mix then cook for a further minute. Then add the chutney, puree and vinegar.
  • Pour in the lentils and crumble in the stock cube. Stir thoroughly then add water a bit at a time.
  • Once the lentils are cooked and you are happy with the viscosity, begin to heat a frying pan and cube the paneer. Once hot, place the paneer into the pan with a touch of oil until nicely coloured. Transfer into the curry along with the swede, sprouts and spinach. Stir in (add more water if necessary).
  • Sprinkle in the herbs and serve with rice and naan bread.

New year, New food..
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Happy New Year, Everyone.

Most of us tend to feel podgy after Christmas, but I say embrace that fat as a learning opportunity! Because in January you can look forward to cooking
something different but equally satisfying to help shed the weight.

My Cornish veg supplier said (despite the weather!) that celeriac and cauliflower are going well right now and are full of much needed vitamins. Celeriac is ideal if you’re having a potato-free month, and have brown instead of white rice if you’re conscious of your GI. But can I remind you that there’s nothing wrong with pasta! People get scared of it, but it’s down to portion control rather than the pasta itself. Pasta is good. Snacking is where the big pitfalls really come in. Making your own pasta is
great fun and tastes better too. Give it a go. You can always try our Italian cookery course to help things along.

If the January weather is not too crazy fishermen are bringing in huge hauls of mackerel and bass, so fishmongers will be doing a good price on fish at the moment. Mackerel in any way, shape or form is amazing, cost effective, delivers a lot and is so versatile. Nothing beats a January mackerel sandwich with horseradish and mayonnaise for lunch. And bass is good for ceviche, which will feature in our Street Food courses this February and April. Fresh herbs are brilliant.

Their presence on your plate instantly makes you feel cleaner, healthier and happier. Try basil, chives, rosemary, oregano, parsley, sage, thyme and dill. Whether you’ve got a garden or not, get planting in 2020! Once you’re used to chucking a handful of parsley over your omelettes, rosemary on your roasts and oregano into your pasta dishes, your meals will feel bare without them.

If you need a big wicked kick to look forward to try Nigella Lawson’s prune & chocolate cake recipe. It’s ridiculously delicious but I feel justifies the
indulgence because it’s got prunes in… However our Patisserie Masterclass on 25th January should satisfy those with a sweet tooth and give an excuse to be wicked for a day as the whole class revolves around world-class chocolate.

But if you are tightening your belt then having a good base of essentials in your larder will make food go a long way. Our ‘New Year New Food’ Course is about efficiency: mastering store cupboard essentials, planning how to use left overs, hereby eliminating waste. Plans for a week’s worth of meals often backfire because of leftovers from the initial meals. So we teach how to plan for the first 3 days and then how to create your variations from there. You can save a lot of money each month just by thinking ahead.

If going vegan is one of your new year’s resolutions then ‘Vegan Cooking With The Kitchen Table’ is for current and would-be vegans. The Vegan course teaches how to implement a plant-based diet into daily life without compromising taste or quality.

For those who like getting out and about on the Cornish food scene I’m thrilled to announce that KOBER is my new pop-up restaurant in Hayle. The first night on the 7th Feb 2020 is already sold out so watch here/SIGN UP for more dates.

More next time but for now let me just remind you not to avoid food this month. Cook! Eat! Get into a kitchen, make mistakes, have fun and learn. And maybe reward yourself with a course to get excited about at

More courses

Looking forward to seeing you soon, and wishing you all a happy 2020,

Cheers Rupert

Christmas Leftovers: Light-Lunch and Nibbles Recipes
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Festive entertaining doesn’t finish on Christmas Day; most of us have family and friends visiting through the Crimbo-limbo of “Betwixtmas” and through to New Years. If you’ve got leftovers from Christmas Day, you can easily use them to make light meal and “nibbles” options that your guests will love, without having to resort to cold meats and bubble and squeak. Here’s how, with our Christmas leftovers recipes for meat eaters, vegetarians and vegans:

boxing day turkey bhan mi

Boxing Day Bhan Mi (Meat)

Ingredients:

  • 2 small baguettes
  • 50g pâté
  • ¼ cucumber, thinly sliced on the diagonal
  • 140g cooked turkey sliced/shredded
  • 1 tbsp mayonnaise
  • 1 red chilli, ½ finely chopped, ½ finely sliced
  • Sriracha
  • For the pickled slaw
  • 2 small carrots coarsely grated or julienne
  • ¼ tsp grated ginger
  • ½ tbsp rice vinegar
  • ½ tsp golden caster sugar

Method:


To make the pickled slaw, tip the carrots and cabbage into a large bowl. In a small bowl, combine the ginger, rice vinegar, sugar and a few pinches of salt. Pour over the vegetables and toss together. Set aside for at least 15 mins.

Halve the baguettes lengthways and spread the pâté over the bottom half. Top with the pickled slaw, cucumber and turkey. Mix the mayonnaise with the chopped chilli and dollop over the top.

Scatter over the mint leaves and sliced chilli. Sandwich together and dig in.

festive bar nuts

Festive Bar Nuts (Vegan Nibbles)

Ingredients:

  • 500g nuts (cashews, pecans, peanuts, macadamia almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts and Brazil nuts)
  • 2 tbsp coarsely chopped rosemary
  • 1 tsps of sweet smoked paprika
  • 2 tsp dark muscavado sugar or 2 tbsp runny honey
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • 1 tbsp vegetable oil

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF.

Place a medium pan on a medium heat, add the butter and sugar/honey and heat for 3-4 minutes until the butter has melted and stir to combine.

If using Brazil nuts, roughly chop some of them up into halves and quarters to make them more bite size.

Place all the nuts onto two large roasting trays, then carefully divide the melted butter and honey mix between the two, then scatter over the paprika and rosemary. Toss to coat all the nuts, then cook for 20-30 minutes, or until golden all over, carefully shaking the tray every 10-15 minutes to make sure they cook evenly.

Season with a little salt and leave to cool.

Leftover Root Veg Gnocchi (Vegetarian)

Ingredients:

  • 400g parsnip peeled and cut into chunks or leftovers
  • 600g potatoes peeled and cut into chunks or leftovers
  • 60ml olive oil plus a drizzle to serve
  • 1 tsp ground nutmeg (around 1 clove)
  • 100g ‘00’ strong white flour
  • 1 egg
  • ½ small pack thyme leaves picked, to serve
  • 30g walnuts toasted and chopped, to serve

Method:

If you’ve not got leftover roast root veg, then heat your oven to 220C/200C fan/gas 7. Toss the parsnips and potatoes in 2 tbsp of the olive oil and tip into a roasting tin along with the garlic cloves. Roast for 40 mins or until the veg is completely soft. Remove from the oven and leave to cool a little. Or in a microwave heat up gently the leftovers and then mash, then add to a bowl along with the flour, egg & nutmeg. Begin to knead the dough mix until it becomes pliable.

Tip the dough onto a floured surface, cut into four chunks and roll each into a sausage about 35cm long and 2.5cm wide. Use the back of a table knife to cut each sausage into small pillow-shaped gnocchi, each around 2cm long.

Heat a frying pan with a tablespoon of rapeseed oil.

Add half the gnocchi and fry until lightly golden on each side, around 3-4 mins. Transfer them to a tray using a slotted spoon while you cook the second batch. When all the gnocchi are golden, return them all to the pan to warm through before dividing between four plates. Sprinkle over some black pepper, then top with the thyme leaves, toasted walnuts and a drizzle of olive oil, if you like.

Meet Gavin Roberts of The Kernow Sausage Co
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There are sausages, and then there are the sausages made by The Kernow Sausage Co. We can’t wait for founder Gavin Roberts to join us at Philleigh Way on the morning of Tuesday December 17th for a half-day Christmas sausage making course, because we all know that pigs in blankets are the best part of Christmas dinner.

We sat down with Gavin recently to find out a little bit more about his bangers and his business:

gavin roberts of the kernow sausage co

Gavin, where does your passion for butchery come from?

When I was a little boy my Granny taught me how to make sausages, and that really sparked my interest in food and provenance. I trained as a butcher and loved it, but became disillusioned with the industry because of the lack of care and respect that I saw on the commercial side of the industry. The Kernow Sausage Co was my way of reigniting that passion.

sausages on a barbeque

When did you make the leap and start your own business?
I started the business in 2007, originally borrowing space in a local butchers shop on evenings and weekends to develop my recipes and produce the first batches.

kernow sausage co sausages

What goes into your sausages?

The basis of our sausages is the highest quality local pork (a cut with a good fat content), seasoning, and some rusk. We have a few variations on that recipe, including my Granny’s secret recipe for our traditional Trelawney sausages, but with quality ingredients you can keep it simple.

scotch eggs by kernow sausage co

You’re based at a farm not too far from us on the Roseland, and have your own herd of Barwick pigs. Do you think that a connection to every stage of the process, from farm to fork, is something that many producers are lacking?

Sadly yes, for larger producers, but changes are occurring. Having a relationship with the land and the animals means that as a producer, there’s a lot of respect for the beast and a desire not to waste anything. If there’s a long supply chain and lots of stages or people involved then that can be lost, but the number of small and specialist producers out there in the food industry are changing that. Consumer support is the main thing, and lots of people are shopping at farm shops and supporting independent producers.

barwick pigs

What’s your favourite sausage dish?

At this time of year, I do love a plate of bangers and mash or toad-in-the-hole. But then again, a simple sausage sandwich never fails to hit the spot!

Is sausage-making something that anybody can do, and what’s the hardest part?

Of course! I’d say that linking the sausages is the hardest part – it’s fine once it clicks, but that’s probably the thing that most people struggle with in the beginning.

sausage making course at philleigh way

What can attendees expect from your course here at Philleigh Way?

A fun and educational morning that starts with learning how to butcher down a shoulder of pork, then dicing, mincing, and seasoning before learning how to stuff and link sausages. We’ll then wrap them in smoked streaky bacon so that everyone can take away pigs in blankets, theoretically ready for Christmas day – if they can wait that long!

pigs in blankets

We have a couple of spaces remaining on Gavin’s course, that takes place on the morning of Tuesday December 17th.

Find out more and book your space by clicking here.

Comfort Food:
The Ultimate Cauliflower Cheese Recipe
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ultimate cauliflower cheese

It’s comfort food season, and earlier this week I used a load of autumnal veg and kitchen leftovers to make the ultimate cauliflower cheese for dinner at home. I posted a picture of it to our Instagram and it got quite the response… so here’s the full recipe for you to recreate it yourself.

some ingredients for the ultimate cauliflower cheese

Ingredients:

  • Onion – 1
  • Garlic – 2 cloves
  • Celeriac – half
  • Cauliflower – half
  • Gammon (smoked) – 300g *optional
  • Turmeric – half teaspoon
  • Nutmeg – quarter teaspoon
  • Cloves – 2
  • Flour (plain) – 1 tablespoon
  • Cider Vinegar – glug
  • Chicken or vegetable  stock – 300ml
  • Milk
  • Cheese – as much as you want!

Method:

  • Pre-heat your oven to 180 Celcius (160 fan or gas mark 4).
  • Break half a cauliflower into florets and par boil until just tender. Drain and set aside.
  • Roughly chop garlic and onion.
  • Cut gammon into chunks.
  • Heat a pan or big casserole and add a glug of oil.
  • Sweat off the onions and garlic with the gammon (if you’re adding this – you can omit it if you’re vegetarian).
  • Whilst that’s happening peel half a celeriac.
  • Add one tablespoon of plain flour to the pan.
  • Continue to sweat for another 2-3 minutes.
  • Add a glug of cider vinegar
  • Continue to sweat.
  • Whilst it’s doing that, grate the celeriac and add it to the pan.
  • Add 200-300ml of stock and cook off.
  • Add half a teaspoon of turmeric, a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg and 2 cloves.
  • Add the cauliflower florets.
  • Top with milk to cover (you can make it as dry or saucy as you like).
  • Add a liberal amount of grated cheese and stir in.
  • Put in casserole dish or oven proof pan.
  • Grate more cheese on top.
  • Bake for 10-15 mins at 180 (160 fan or gas mark 4).

Seaweed Superfood: Meet The Cornish Seaweed Company
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the team from the cornish seaweed company harvesting seaweed from the coast of cornwall

Ahead of their Super Seaweed course here at Philleigh Way on November 23rd, we caught up with The Cornish Seaweed Company’s Tim and Caro to find out a little bit more about this sustainable superfood.

Why should we be eating more seaweed?

Because it is the most highly nutritious food on the planet! It is packed with more vitamins and minerals than any other food group – it’s classified as a superfood and is packed full of iron, magnesium, zinc and the 56 trace elements that our bodies need for successful physiological function, holding them in condensed form. And, it’s a local sustainable resource. It’s incredibly good for the environment to eat seaweed compared to land-grown plants. It uses no extra space, it’s already available in the wild, and if it is farmed then it uses a space out at sea so it’s not taking space away from any other activities on land. It doesn’t require any water input, fertiliser, pesticides or any electrical or mechanical input, and it’s a carbon sink so it’s basically just fantastic for the planet. We should all be eating more seaweed! Our product is British so it doesn’t need to be imported – we have an amazing resource on the coast of the UK, we just don’t have a longstanding history in England of eating it like they do in lots of other countries.

dried sea greens by the cornish seaweed company

What’s the history of seaweed as an ingredient and how is it most commonly used?

It’s been used for thousands and thousands of years all over the world as a medicinal tonic as well as for food. It was written about a really long time ago for skincare; there are writings about Cleopatra using it to maintain youthfulness. In England there isn’t a huge history of eating it, partly because there have historically been issues with ownership of the intertidal zone and the different areas of the beach that have stopped people from collecting it. But most countries that have experienced hardship have developed a relationship with seaweed – Ireland and Scotland’s coastal communities have a strong history of utilising seaweed, Wales does a little bit too. France does, particularly in Brittany. It’s well used, and in South East Asia too, just not so much in England.

tim and caro of the cornish seaweed company collecting seaweed from the rocks in cornwall

What’s the easiest way to incorporate seaweed into cooking?

Treat is as a vegetable! You can steam it, fry it or boil it. Different seaweeds have different properties but some (kelp) can be used instead of lasagna sheets for gluten free pasta for example, sea spaghetti can be used instead of noodles or spaghetti, but otherwise it can be used as a vegetable or a seasoning.

dried sea dulse produced by the cornish seaweed company

How do you harvest and process seaweed?

We free-dive off a small boat that we keep in Coverack, and we have a license from the Crown Estate to harvest all around there. We free-dive as well as just walking down and collecting it off the coastline. We test all of our seaweed and then bring it back to our units to be processed and dried, then flaked or packed whole. It then gets packed into bags and goes out.

cutting seaweed with scissors

What’s your favourite part of your job?

Definitely free-diving and being out of the office! Diving on a sunny day in crystal clear waters, and swimming up to a couple of metres down under the water is amazing. Sometimes we see really big, humongous barrel jellyfish (they’re harmless) as well as seals – we had two amazing days this year when we were playing with seals for about an hour and a half whilst we were harvesting – they were playing with us and nibbling our fins and that was pretty amazing.

the team from the cornish seaweed company harvesting seaweed from the coast of cornwall

What will you be teaching on the day?

A variety of different things; we’ll be tasting different dried and fresh seaweeds, and explaining how they can be used and incorporated into lots of different dishes. We’ll also share a number of recipes that give a broad view of how to use seaweed, so using a lot of different species. We do a panna cotta using carrageen which, when you simmer it becomes gelatinous – it’s an amazing seaweed to use to set or thicken any dessert or soup. We’ll use sea spaghetti as a pasta substitute; we’ll make a pesto, a soup… a whole range of things.

How can course attendees get hold of and go on to use seaweed after the course?

You can buy it off our website! We do a range of seaweed shakers as well as larger seaweed pouches. The seaweed shakers are like spice shakers that sit in your spice rack. We’ve got a seaweed cookbook that we’ve won some great awards for with 50 different recipes and a foraging guide as well as any information that you might need relating to seaweed. You also buy them in loads of health food stores and delis around the country!

The Cornish Seaweed Company will be sharing their love of this amazing local ingredient at Philleigh Way on 18th April.  This full-day course (including lunch) will include five demonstrations and four practical sessions so you’ll leave with the knowledge and skills to start foraging for this amazing ingredient (or you could buy some pre-prepared from The Cornish Seaweed Company…)  and incorporating it into your everyday cooking.

CLICK HERE TO BOOK YOUR SPACE

December 2019 Giveaway Terms and Conditions.
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  • This competition/sweepstake is promoted, run and officiated by Philleigh Way Ltd.
  • The competition is open to residents of the United Kingdom aged 16 years or over.
  • There is no entry fee and no purchase necessary to enter this competition.
  • By entering this competition, an entrant is indicating his/her agreement to be bound by these terms and conditions.
  • This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook, Instagram or any of their subsidiaries.
  • Closing date and time for entry will be 9pm on the evening of the day that the competition is announced. After this time no further entries to the competition will be permitted.
  • No responsibility can be accepted for entries not received for whatever reason.
  • To enter the competition you must like and comment on the Facebook post, like and tag a friend on the Instagram post, or reply to the newsletter.
  • The promoter reserves the right to cancel or amend the competition.
  • The prize is as follows: One space to attend the stated course at Philleigh Way Cookery School on the set date.  Travel and accommodation is not included.
  • The prize is as stated and no cash or other alternatives will be offered. The prizes are not transferable.
  • Prizes are subject to availability and we reserve the right to substitute any prize with another of equivalent value without giving notice.
  • The winner will be chosen at random from all entries received and verified by Promoter.The winner will be notified by comment on the competition post and DM on Facebook/Instagram, or by e-mail at time of closing.
  • If the winner cannot be contacted or does not acknowledge or claim the prize within 14 days of notification, we reserve the right to withdraw the prize from the winner and pick a replacement winner.
  • The promoter’s decision in respect of all matters to do with the competition will be final and no correspondence will be entered into.
  • By entering this competition, an entrant is indicating his/her agreement to be bound by these terms and conditions.
  • The competition and these terms and conditions will be governed by [English] law and any disputes will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of [England].
  • The winner agrees to the use of his/her name and image in any publicity material, as well as their entry.
  • Any personal data relating to the winner or any other entrants will be used solely in accordance with current [UK] data protection legislation and will not be disclosed to a third party without the entrant’s prior consent.
  • Entry into the competition will be deemed as acceptance of these terms and conditions.

There’s a new chef in town… errr well village
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We’ve exciting news, final arrangements are in place for a new head chef to take the helm at Philleigh Way! This is big news in more ways than one, Rupert Cooper is an ex-professional rugby player and certainly no shrinking violet when it comes to cooking. Having played most of his professional rugby for Nottingham, Rupert played his final season at the Cornish Pirates before injury forced him to retire.  Unlike many professional sportsmen this was the moment Rupert had been waiting for, an opportunity to fulfill a lifelong ambition to pursue a career in food.  Since retiring from rugby, Rupert has cooked at Sat Bains in Nottingham, Paul Ainsworth’s No.6 and Rick Stein’s in Padstow. You can hear more about Rupert and his plans for Philleigh Way on Radio Cornwall on 20th December at 4:10pm.

In the meantime, we’re also pleased to say that gift vouchers will be back on sale from 5pm on Monday 17th December, giving you enough time to receive them before Christmas Day. A selection of established and new courses for 2019 will also go live at the same time.  Don’t worry we’ll be sending you a reminder on the day just in case you forget, together with information about the exciting new courses Rupert will be running.

The Philleigh Way team  (soon to include Rupert)

Important Announcement – End of an era at Philleigh Way
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We realise that this may come as a shock to many of you and there is no easy way to sweeten the pill; Philleigh Way will be closing its doors for the last time at the end of the year. We opened in May 2013 and since then we have grown from a school which offered a handful of rustic farmhouse cookery courses to one which now hosts over 24 different courses run by 14 expert tutors.  The school teaches over a thousand students a year, students who love every minute, as illustrated by our 97% Excellent Trip Advisor rating.

In 2015, at The Great Cornish Food Awards, we were voted The Best Food Experience in Cornwall. We have over 7,000 individual subscribers to our newsletter, over 2,000 Twitter followers, and over 1,250 Facebook page followers.  The list of wonderful testimonials we’ve received over the last five years is as long as all our arms put together!  The business has always been, and continues to be, financially secure and run by a very professional team. So why then, we hear you ask, is the school closing?

In simple terms, our head tutor George Pascoe has made the very difficult decision to leave the business in pursuit of a new life.  George’s personal circumstances changed greatly early in 2017, and since then he has re-evaluated his goals and ambitions. Happily, George met a new lady and they have both decided that they want to move abroad to work, to make some memories before settling down together.

Philleigh Way is, and always has been, very much a family business and without George as lead tutor we feel that we’ll lose a major part of our identity.  We’ve given much consideration to the possibility of finding a replacement for him but we’re doubtful that the right person, with the right skillset and ambition is out there.  However, we have not given up in the search and should the right individual come along we may reconsider.  Behind the scenes there has been expressions of interest from other businesses and we are still open to enquiries. If any of those discussions come off, we would love to see the school continue in some form or another.

For all of our customers who have existing bookings or valid gift vouchers we assure you that we will honour our commitments and all the scheduled courses in 2018 will be going ahead.  Indeed, we continue to take bookings for those courses, so if you’ve not been before, or have a gift voucher to redeem, there is still an opportunity to attend a course.

Finally, a huge thank you to our loyal students, feasters, diners, wedding couples, overseas visitors, friends, tutors, suppliers, staff and supporters.  After five years it’s been more than just a flash in the pan, we’ve loved every minute, it’s been a blast – thank you all.

James, George and Lindsey

            

 

Britain’s Best Home Cook
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Are you a passionate and talented home cook who loves making delicious food for your friends and family?

Are you pasties perfect, your meringues mouthwatering and your bread brilliant!

Do you fancy yourself as the next Mary Berry or Paul Hollywood?

Well why not apply for series two of Britain’s Best Home Cook.

Apply now – www.britainsbesthomecook.co.uk

email cooking@keofilms.com or call 020 7490 3580 (ext. 1013) for more information.

Please tell everyone you know, it would be great to see someone from the South West win series two!

Fabulous Fish at Philleigh Way
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We’re always being told we should eat more fish. Packed full of protein, typically low in fat and full of vitamins and minerals, fish is definitely a wonder food. However, many people lack confidence when it comes to preparing fresh fish at home, and choosing which fish is best to buy and when. Well we’re here to help!

Our Simply Fish and Fish Dishes courses will take you from complete beginner to confident fish cook in two easy stages.

During our Simply Fish course, former fishmonger and fish champion, Annie Sibert will teach you the skills and techniques necessary to correctly identify, source and prepare a wide variety of Cornish fish. Covering fish selection, sustainability, seasonality, filleting (round and flat fish) and some very simple cooking techniques including frying and grilling, this beginner’s course will arm you with the confidence and skills to begin introducing more fresh fish to your table. Annie’s knowledge of Cornish fish is second to none and she is passionate about encouraging more people to support their local fishmonger and become regular fish eaters.

Meanwhile on our Fish Dishes course, head Philleigh Way chef George (whose favourite ingredient to cook with is fish), will show you how to prepare, create and present a range of delicious fish dishes that are easy to recreate at home. The course covers a variety of cooking techniques and focuses on showing you just how easy it is to prepare delicious fish dishes that will be a big hit with all the family.

So, don’t be a pollock, come join us and start making fish a regular feature in your home!

For full course details and dates, click here 

           

    

 

New Thai Curry Course Launched
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Building on the success of our first two Thai cookery courses with tutor Amy Nixon of Punk Thai, we’ve introduced a new Thai curry cookery course.

This new course will cover two classic Thai dishes; green chicken curry and pork Panang curry, as well as one of Amy’s amazing fruit carving demonstrations (these are serious works of art!).

Amy believes that the secret of Thai cookery lies in the preparation, and when it comes to Thai curries that means the preparation of the curry paste from scratch. Students will prepare two curry pastes using traditional methods which will then form the base of their delicious curries.

Amy moved to Cornwall in 2016 with her husband Pete and their family, and runs her own bespoke catering and dining business ‘Punk Thai’. The name is derived from Amy’s unique method of combining her experience of eastern and western cuisines with traditional Thai cookery.

The first Thai curry course is taking place on Saturday 11th August with a second course scheduled for Saturday 17th November.

Click here for full course details.

Kop Khun kha.

The Philleigh Way team.

         

Argentinian Asado Course at Philleigh Way
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Saturday saw the first of this years series of Asado courses take place in glorious sunshine. We welcomed students from far and wide (including overseas) who enjoyed a relaxed day learning all about the Asado style of cooking from Asador David Deadman. Unique equipment is used during the course including our huge Parrilla (wood grill), Horno de Barro (wood oven), Asador Criollo (adjustable spit) and the most primal method Asador de la Cruz in which a whole beast is butterflied, fastened to an iron cross and cooked over an open fire.

Students were also shown how to make their own charcoal, enjoyed a hands-on session preparing their own empanadas (mini spicy pasties) and a delicious range of sides and salads and of course, enjoyed plenty of eating!

Great feedback was received from all of the days students including this lovely email from Henri of Truro –

“Hi Lindsey, David & George. I just wanted to say a big thank you for today’s amazing asado course. I absolutely loved it and will be raving about Philleigh Way (even more than I already do) to all my foodie friends! I really enjoyed it and think that you’ve absolutely nailed it with your brilliant set-up there. David, you were a great and inspiring teacher &  I’ve definitely gleaned some very helpful tips from you…I will be in touch soon. Looking forward to learning some Indian BBQ techniques next…! See you soon. Henri.”

We have two more Asado courses coming up led by Asador David Deadman of Sizzle Grills which are taking place on Saturday 21st and Saturday 8th September. Spaces are limited so don’t miss out on this fantastic day.

To find out more about our Asado course, click here…

 

 

Bank Holiday Activity Ideas
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Looking for bank holiday activity ideas with a difference? Check out Champneys activity guide and get out and about this May! They’ve ideas for everything from boot camps to festivals to cookery courses and spa days. Something for all the family this May.

To read their full list of activity ideas for this May, click here…

Photo courtesy of Geronimo Festival

Photo courtesy of Sea Life Aquariam London

 Photo courtesy of Champneys Health Spa

Photo courtesy of London Science Museum

 

 

Russian Cream
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There is nothing better than celebrating Easter with family and friends over a traditional Sunday roast, and we’ve a simple dessert for you that’s guaranteed to bring a smile to everyone’s faces, Russian Cream (or wobbly rabbit as we like to call it!).

A Cornish dessert, it was traditionally prepared for special occasions such as Christmas, Flora Day, feasts and show days as well as Sunday teas.

Ingredients

1 pint full fat milk

2 large eggs

3 tbsp caster sugar

1 level tablespoon or 1 sachet of gelatine

1 tsp vanilla essence or some vanilla bean paste or extract. You can also use fresh vanilla from a pod

1 packet of green jelly

Method

Separate the eggs placing the egg yolks in one bowl and the whites in a separate bowl.

Place the sugar, milk and gelatine into a heavy based saucepan and warm over a low heat, whisking continuously until the gelatine has dissolved. Whisk in the egg yolks into this mixture using until well combined.

Bring the mixture slowly almost to the boil whisking continuously (until the mixture starts moving in the pan but not to boiling point), and then remove from the heat.

Add the vanilla and allow to cool slightly.

In a clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff and then gently fold into the milk mixture.

Pour the mixture into a rabbit (or similar) mould and leave undisturbed to set for at least 3 hours.

Meanwhile, make up the green jelly according to the instructions and leave to set.

To serve, run a knife gently around the rim of the rabbit mould to loosen and then set a large serving plate upside down on top of the mould.  Turn the mould upside down holding the plate underneath.

Chop up the green jelly and place around the rabbit to resemble grass.

 

Top tips for cooking for older people
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There is no doubt that a balanced diet of healthy, nutritious food is important for maintaining good health. This is especially the case when it comes to older people but many struggle when it comes to cooking for themselves.

A recent article by Handicare UK highlights many useful ways anyone looking after and cooking for an elderly friend or relative can ensure they are receiving a healthy, balanced diet.

“All people need to eat a balanced diet that is full of different nutrients and this is especially important as people get older. But if an older person is frail or is not coping with the demands of daily life it is important that a relative or friend supports them in their cooking.

Many older people with mobility problems who need new stairlifts struggle to cope with cooking warm meals every day and need a helping hand. Therefore family members or friends may need to take responsibility for preparing some or all of their meals.

Some people have concerns about this due to their elderly relative or friend’s health issues or their own lack of experience in preparing nutritious meals. This guide provides tips on best practice for preparation and ingredients.”

To continue reading the rest of the article, click here..

Photo courtesy of Age UK Mobility

New Thai Cookery Course with Amy Nixon of Punk Thai
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New Year, new courses! The latest flavours to hit our kitchen are fragrant and spicy, you’ve got it, Thai cuisine.  To get the ball rolling we’ve released an introductory half-day Thai cookery course run by Thailand native Amy Nixon.

Designed to provide students with an overview of the most popular Thai dishes, this hands-on course will teach you how to create Pad Thai and Tom Yam Soup from scratch using traditional ingredients and cooking methods.

We asked Amy about Punk Thai, the growth of the Cornish foodie scene and what she loves about living in Cornwall.

Amy, in your own words tell us who you are and what you do

My name is Amy Nixon and in 2017, I set up Punk Thai.

There are many western restaurants that mix non-western cuisine with western cuisine…………….fusion!

Punk Thai seeks to, in many cases, do the reverse of this and hence not conforming to phrases such as “traditional Thai food or “genuine Thai food”.  Punk Thai offers high end, inspirational and beautifully cooked and presented cuisine.

Who or what inspired you to take up cooking as a profession?

Born into a farming family in Nakon, Thailand, home cooking was as important as breathing! Growing up my mother had her designs on me being an accountant and promptly despatched me university in Bangkok. Moving to be with my mother in Singapore after university and to learn English, I started working in a Thai restaurant in between studies and re kindled my passion for cooking.

Your reputation for serving fantastic food has grown really quickly since you started up Punk Thai. Do you think you have brought something completely different to the Cornish food scene?

Yes I believe we have. If you ask westerners what Thai food they like it’s invariably “Red curry, Green curry, Phad Thai and Masaman”. But there is so much more to Thai food than that, plus the fact that at Punk Thai we like to twist it up a bit! Presentation is everything and we strive to achieve the very best.

Punk Thai is well known for its creative approach to cooking, do you enjoy being able to put your own spin on the dishes you create and working with clients to create bespoke menus?

Yes we sure do.

What is your favourite Thai dish to cook?

Som Tam or otherwise known as Papaya salad.

If there was one ingredient that you cannot source in the UK currently that you could make available in the shops here to be able use in your cooking, what would it be and why?

Thai mango, it is the essence of Mango and sticky rice and Green Papaya.

Presentation of food is very important in traditional Thai culture and you have taken training in the beautiful art of fruit and vegetable carving. Have you found since coming to the UK, that people are interested in both the presentation side of Thai food, as well as the dishes themselves?

Very much so and we will soon start running Thai, food carving courses.

*In 2017, seven of Thailand’s most popular dishes appeared on the list of the “World’s 50 Most Delicious Foods (Readers’ Pick)”a worldwide online poll of 35,000 people by CNN Travel. Thailand had more dishes on the list than any other country. They dishes were: tom yam goong (4th), pad Thai (5th), som tam (6th), massaman curry (10th), green curry (19th), Thai fried rice (24th) and moo nam tok (36th). There is obviously a growing interest in Thai food. Do you feel that this interest is present in Cornwall, and are you noticing an increase in people approaching you to give them their first introduction to Thai food?

Yes, all the feedback that we have received so far says “this is the best Thai food”, it’s a pity it isn’t readily available in Cornwall

Do you think people are becoming more adventurous when it comes to cooking at home, and do you think that cookery schools such as Philleigh Way are helping to provide home cooks with the confidence to become more inventive with their cooking?

Without a doubt! Just look at the foreign food stuffs aisle in every supermarket.

What do you love about living in Cornwall?

Beautiful country side, great connectivity to London and international destinations, oh yes and my husband insisted that this is where we would settle!!

What is your favourite Cornish food product?

Probably the great seafood.

Who is your favourite Cornish food supplier?

We have just signed up with West Country Fruit Sales near Falmouth and the new Fishmongers in Truro, so many suppliers of amazing food in Cornwall.

What is your favourite Cornish drink?

I do like a Cornish Gin & Tonic.

Favourite place to visit in Cornwall?

Trevone, natural sea pool on the rocky beach.

What plans do you have for Punk Thai this year?

To continue move forward with our business plans of twice monthly functions and start business lunches to the local Truro community, more cookery courses and carving courses.

What are you looking forward to about working with Philleigh Way?

Well the setup is excellent, all the marketing has been taken care of so I can concentrate on the event itself.

Two of the dishes you will be cooking on the new course were listed in the “World’s 50 Most Delicious Foods (Readers’ Pick)” list. Do you feel that the new course will give people a really good overview of the traditional flavours and dishes of Thailand?

Yes hopefully. It’s very well one getting a cookery book and religiously following a recipe but not achieving the correct taste. Thai cooking is very much “a bit of this and a bit of that”, in fact we were going to call the company CUCKIDIN as this is very often the case with our cooking. With my help I want the guests to leave with more confidence to cook Asian food.

What’s going to be the best bit about the new Thai cookery courses?

To give people the ability to take on a new cuisine with confidence.

*Information from Wikipedia

The first Thai cookery course is taking place on Wednesday 28th March. Click here for full details.

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