Couple of photos...

Orange and almond cake

Scallops with pasta 

Dim sum!

Deli/orange and almond cake

I’ll be honest with you – I love nothing more than a really great deli. There, I said it. I know this makes me sound old, a bit fussy, perhaps cardigan-obsessed (one out of three?) but I just think they’re great. I want nothing more than to be able to buy over-priced, non-essential food products like organic pesto, gluten-free shortbread and spiced dried chickpeas, just because I can.

So I was really happy when I recently visited my friend in Birmingham recently (S), and she kindly took me to the Kitchen Garden café. It was just really great – set in what seems to be a cross between an alleyway and a garden centre lies a small shack-come-conservatory covered in plants, with little old ladies shuffling around and muttering about fertiliser. S and I unanimously decided that the best policy was to share some lunch, agreeing on good old mac’n’cheese, with a balsamic salad, and the intriguing potato hash with pancetta and a poached egg.

Both dishes were excellent. The hash was quite odd but delicious – a sort of deconstructed rosti, loosely bound with onions and herbs. There was pancetta running through the whole thing, and a perfectly poached egg on the top which brought it all together. The mac’n’cheese was equally as good, and although you can’t go wrong with that kind of dish, you can go very right, and it was pretty indulgent. We left that deli a very full pair, but not without a couple of the purchases mentioned above – organic pesto, gluten-free lemon shortbread, organic tea and spiced dried chickpeas. And I feel totally unashamed…

As an end note to the post, I’ve been getting back into baking recently, as I seem to do in some sort of annual tradition when the Great British Bake Off is on, and I turned my hand this week to an orange and almond cake. I’m normally a very hit and miss baker – I have little patience for weighing things out correctly, and generally favour the ‘chuck it all in and hope for the best method’ – so outcomes can be varied. On this occasion I don’t want to blow my own trumpet but it was a definite hit – moist with the orange, grainy texture with the almonds and a sharp/sweet marmalade glaze; photos to follow.

M