Amo-Ink Thank You Notes

Ah the day has finally come when I have completed all of our wedding thank you notes!  I'm so excited.  Sorry if these have been a bit delayed but I have a few good excuses.  Our move to England, the fact that so many of you are still in college and your addresses keep changing being the top two.  Anyways thanks everyone for getting us so many nice gifts.

I have to say that I absolutely loved the stationary designed for us by Amy Owens.  She is really great and helped us with all the wedding day stuff.  The invites were fantastic and she also did the programs, menus, table numbers, and our luggage tags / escort cards.

Unfortunately I don't have all the work she did with us here in London but here are the thank yous.  So pretty.  Thanks Amy!

Check out more of her beautiful stuff at Amo-Ink!

Also, I must say that when I asked a lot of people for their new address they would say I didn't need to send them a Thank You.  But come on people!  You know you like getting snail mail.  It's way more fun than emailing or facebooking for sure.  So in honor of snail mail and in a shameless attempt to see who is reading my little blog I will send the first 5 people who comment a postcard!  woo hoo!

Watermelon, Arugula and Feta Salad

Watermelon is hands down the best food of summer.  Unfortunately, as we near the end of summer my consumption of watermelon will have to stop.  I have tried a bunch of watermelon salad recipes this season but this one has been my favorite.  It's quick, easy, and healthy.

Just throw some Arugula in a bowl, mix with big hunks of watermelon.  Then add some crumbled feta, pinenuts, and some Balsamic syrup.  Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Delicious!  And you thought I only made heart attack food.

I got this recipe from epicurious.  Their version with lots more details.... Watermelon, Arugula, and Pine Nut Salad

Stinking Bishop Quiche

After a few days of having that Stinking Bishop cheese in the fridge Nick and I were keen to get rid of it. It seriously stank the whole house up!  I have eaten my share of smelly cheeses but nothing compares to stinking bishop.  We are actually kind of embarrassed because we have had builders in and the smell is just slightly offensive.

Anyways I decided to make a quiche based on yet another recipe from Valentine Warner.  Which can be found here : Valentine Warner's Pear and Stinking Bishop Cheese Tarts

I started by combining 250 g plain flour, 25 g of sugar, and 150 g of butter in a food processor.  After this is well combined add one lightly beaten egg.  Pulse until a dough forms.  Easy as pie.. ha.

Roll the dough out and place it in your tin. Put this in the fridge for 30 min.  Preheat your oven to 200 C or 400 F.  Then take your dough out of the fridge, line it with baking parchment and baking beans, and blind bake it for 20 minutes.

While this is baking you can peel and slice 3 pears and brown them in 25 g butter and a teaspoon of sugar.  Set aside.  In a bowl, mix together 10 oz single cream (I actually used about 7 oz cream and 3 oz milk), with one whole egg and one egg yolk and some salt and pepper.

After 20 minutes take the crust out of the oven, remove the beans, and bake for another 1 or two minutes.  Then add the pears and the stinking bishop, cut into chunks.

Cover this with your cream and egg mixture.

It's now ready for baking.  Put it into a 180 C or 360 F oven for 25 - 30 minutes.

Voila!

This is a sweet, extremely pungent and rich quiche.  It should definitely be served with a simple salad and I think if I were to make it again I would increase the amount of pears and perhaps add leeks.  Overall it was good, but it sure did stink!  Consider yourself warned.

Salt Yard - Chacuterie Bar and Restaraunt

On Friday night Nick and I went out to dinner after he finished work.  

We were wandering about looking for a place to eat and we saw Salt Yard - which we've tried to get into before but there was a 45 minute wait.
Luckily we got in this time.  

We went inside and had the option of waiting fifteen minutes or sitting outside.  

It was a bit cold outside but Nick chose instant gratification.  

Salt Yard is a Spanish and Italian tapas bar.  

And everyone knows I LOVE tapas.  

They are so much fun because instead of being stuck with the one thing you ordered you can order 3 things, and you can share the things your other dining partners ordered (unless they ordered meat - I try to discourage this).  

First to come were "Courgette aka Zucchini flowers stuffed with Monte Enebro Cheese and drizzled with honey" (7.25)  

These were absolutely fantastic.  

The zucchini was battered and fried and the flower was full of a delightful soft melt in your mouth cheese.  

SO good.   

Next to come was the "Fried baby violet artichokes with pine nut puree and black olive oil" (5.50).  

These were good, but they were a little too dry and crunchy.  

Not my favorite.

We ordered a selection of four goats cheeses which were obviously great - what can go wrong with goat's cheese?  But they accidently delivered a selection of hard italian cheeses with truffle honey.  

Which we returned but not before having a few bites - truffle honey = heaven on earth.  

But I prefer soft cheeses to hard so I must say the goat cheese platter wins.

Then I got "Patatas Fritas with Romesco and Alioli" (3.50).  
Definitely not the most elegant dish we ordered, but still very good.  

The fries were big and thick.  

I have never had romesco before but seeing as it is made up of nuts, roasted garlic olive, oil, and peppers - all things I love - then I think I'll be eating it again.

Nick also ordered two meat dishes which he said were good - but I don't care about meat so we'll skip that.

Dinner was so good we couldn't skip dessert.  

Nick ordered "Lemon and Cinnamon Doughnuts with Coco Nib icecream" (4.75) and I ordered "Twice Baked Bitter Chocolate Cake with Marcona almonds and fresh mint icecream" (5.25).  

My highschool job at Busken Bakery means I have an expertly developed doughnut palate - and  these doughnuts did not disappoint.  

They were light, airy, fresh, and covered in cinnamon and sugar.  

My chocolate cake was thick and fudgey, very dark and bitter, not for the faint of heart but perfect for real chocolate lovers like myself.  

The fresh mint icecream was the most impressive though - made on site - the mint flavor was so fresh you could taste the mint leaves.  
It was as if someone had just picked some mint and mixed it up with the best vanilla icecream ever.  

It was, dare I say it.....?  

Better than Graeter's.     

And for 63 pounds that was our meal at Salt Yard.  

An exceptional restaurant in a sea of overwhelming mediocre British establishments.  

Next time I'll try to remember my camera


Salt Yard is located near Goodge Street station.  
www.saltyard.co.uk

St. Pancras and Benito's Hat

So tonight Nick and I went to "The Foodie Fortnight at St. Pancras".

St. Pancras is an international train station and we knew they were doing something food related, so we went along.

We saw Chef Atul Kochhar, who according to their brochure is the chef at Benares, "one of the best indian restaurants in the world".

He was on this tiny stage with tons of people around him and we couldn't see anything really.

Plus he was making some seafood dish - which I wasn't really interested in.

So we didn't stay long.

However, St. Pancras is one of the nicest train stations I have ever seen.

It was filled with little french looking cafes which I love.

Nick says it's because if the people coming in from france were forced straight into British food they would die of shock.

I tend to agree.

One of the shops in the station was called Sourced Market.

They had great veggies and I was dying to take a pumpkin home but thought it might be a pain to carry.

So we opted to buy cheese.

We got some Stinking Bishop and Stilton.

Hopefully I'll come up with a dish worthy of all the dirty looks I got on the tube this evening.

Stinking Bishop REALLY does stink!

Now as an American in London there are certain struggles I face daily.

These include never making a satisfactory cup of tea, often not being able to understand British accents and nevermind the accents of our neighbors in this predominantly indian neighborhood, oh and trying to figure out how British women wear nice shoes all the time and walk in them without wanting to kill themselves.

But one real struggle has been the lack of Chipotles.

I love Chipotle.  Nick loves Chipotle.  We need Chipotle.

But tonight Nick took me to Benito's Hat, a decent Chipotle substitute.

I must admit the fact that there were no mexicans was a little off putting.

But they made a decent burrito.

Wild Mushroom Lasagne... with a side of disappointment

Ah my first ever blog post.  How exciting.... except not. See I was planning on having a fabulous first entry about wild mushroom lasagne - which Nick and I saw while watching What to Eat Now, my newest favorite cooking show ever, mostly because the host, Valentine Warner makes these really funny faces whenever he eats his food.  Its like everything he eats is slightly orgasmic.  So deciding we must experience this food ecstasy were convinced to make his lasagne recipe which can be found here..

Valentine Warner's Wild Mushroom Lasagne

Ok so we here goes our version...

We started with about a pound and a half of mushrooms, we used baby portabella, chestnut, and oyster.

We then sauteed them in olive oil until the water boiled off, then added some thyme from our garden and two cloves of garlic.

It was definitely smelling promising at this point. Set the mushrooms aside and sautee the spinach with some olive oil and nutmeg. Make sure you drain the spinach. Now we were ready to layer up our lasagne. Mushrooms, then goat cheese, then spinach, a drizzle of olive oil, and some black pepper. We did three layers then topped it off with some pecorino romano cheese and some more olive oil. The we drizzled some cream over the whole thing. Yeah.... heart attack in the making.  I know.

Stick it in the oven at 200 C, which is about 390 F, for 30-40 min.

And you will end up with this....

Does it look less than fabulous to you?  Yeah it was. See we accidently bought "no precooking required" lasagne sheets. I thought I'd had them before and they were pretty bad, but that was awhile ago and I thought maybe they'd be better this time.I was SO wrong. So the moral of the story is when making lasagne you have two options....

A.) Make your own lasagne sheets

B.) Buy lasagne sheets that you must cook first

But under no circumstances get no precooking required lasagne sheets.... unless you want a crunchy lasagne.

Yuck!