So, picture it.

Some 30 business from England over in Sydney on a trade mission to forge closer business links.

The ‘family’ of British agencies (Consulate General, Tourist Board, Chamber of Commerce, British Council, etc). Throw in a little wine, a few canapes, a little luck, and some sound business acumen, and it’s a mutually beneficial networking event for all involved.

But let’s be honest.

Nothing beats the chance to have a nosey round the consulate general’s stunning residence! He’s a lovely bloke, genuine, down to earth, and very talented.

Just one meeting, and he remembered my name, organisation, length of time in Sydney and my holiday plans. With people like him abroad selling Britain, I’m comfortable the taxpayers funds are being well spent. No trays of Rocher, but lovely canapes none the less.

Tonight, a change of tack.

A cheese and wine event to support Visit England’s ‘Inn England’ campaign in Sydney’s cheese and wine room at the GPO (the old general post office building), supporting our ‘out of office tourist information centres’ Yes, the good old English boozer. The Cotswolds Chef (Rob Rees MBE), popped over to launch the campaign in Sydney to a room full of Aussie media.

As if he wasn’t draw enough, the stunning English cheese and wine was a rather welcome distraction for my Tuesday evening on Sydney…

So tomorrow is the biggie. The Topshop launch in Sydney. Here’s hoping I’m posting a photo of either me and Kate, or me and Sir Phil tomorrow…

Iain is all cheesed out. Tis a rare event…

If there is a certain Cheese that you would like they are open to suggestions.  I plan to go in today for the soft opening to get some of Ken’s famous mushroom soup!

Duckworth Beach Gourmet Cheese Board, originally uploaded by captjoe06.

]]> http://paphotocall.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/happy-3rd-birthday-pa-photocall/ Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:00:23 +0000 PA Photocall http://paphotocall.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/happy-3rd-birthday-pa-photocall/

Although the history of the PA Photocall service goes back further under the guise of PA Hostpics and indeed PA Photos, this month sees the 3rd anniversary of the PA Photocall name.

So along with blowing out birthday candles and wearing a big ‘I am 3′ badge we thought it was as good a reason as any to have a look back over the last three years & what we’ve been doing.

Three years might not seem a long time, but since our relaunch as PA Photocall in Oct 2006, there’s been some big changes in press & PR.

We’ve seen the londonpaper come, and go, a complete redevelopment of the the concept and content of newspaper websites, an industry shaking recession and the explosion of social media – Facebook in it’s modern form is only about a week older than us, while twitter was still known as ‘twtrr’ and had about as many users as vowels..

But however the industry has changed, photos remain important. Video & moving image has become more accessible and that’s something we’ll be doing more of next year. But great photos retain the ability to cut through complex information and campaigns, and convey stories in a way people intuitively respond to.

Our first PA Photocall commission was to photograph a giant cheese board. However random that might seem, I look at that shot 3 years later & it still stands up; bright, simple, quirky, fun. Any new PR shot that does the same will always have a good chance of succeeding.

British cheese producer Peter Mitchell sits on top of a half tonne Mature Farmhouse Cheddar, which forms part of the World`s Largest Cheese Board record attempt in accordance with the Guiness Book of Records, Covent Garden Piazza, central London. Geoff Caddick/PA Photocall

Is it harder to get PR pictures into the newspapers now than it was 3 years ago? Yes and no. There’s more pictures around now than ever before & technology makes them easier and quicker to take & distribute. As a result the papers have become more demanding, a celebrity just standing there in a branded t-shirt isn’t going to do it anymore. But good launches, stunts, events and news, where the picture has been an integral part of the activity rather than just tacked on at the end are still in demand. In an age where papers are employing less & less staff photographers, PR photos are important again.

Looking through the files I also see later that first PA Photocall week in October 2006 we also photographed the Sugababes. Three years on the Sugababes have just announced another line up change, yet in a strange way remain exactly the same. There’s something similar with good PR photography. To a certain extent the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Sugababes smile backstage at the Girlguiding UK Big Gig, an exclusive concert for Girlguiding UK members at Wembley Arena, London. Rebecca Reid/PA Photocall

However they’re taken or however they’re distributed, or however they’re seen, at the end of the day the quality of the pictures & the ideas behind them are still the most important thing. Here’s to the next 3 years!

Post by Tim Kerr (Director & Picture Editor of PA Photocall)

Happy Monday!  I hope everyone had a great weekend outside, entertaining, tailgating at the football game, or watching a fall soccer game.  Whatever your weekend brought you, I hope it was wonderful!  With all the celebration and fun in mind, check out this new item by the Kayton Group.  They have created a beautiful product!  It is perfect for home entertaining, picnics, a trip to the lake, and just relaxing with the family.  It’s a Triv-board!  They are great as cutting boards, cheese plates, serving plates, and bread service, made in the heart of Texas!  I have enclosed some pictures below for you to enjoy.  Don’t miss out on this wonderful opporunity to pick up a triv-board for your family entertainment.  See them at:http://www.vetdex.com/pilot.asp?pg=default&grp=52

The heart pine base of this solid cheese tray is made from a reclaimed floor joist from a train depot demolished in Augusta, GA. The beautiful blue/gray tray top is  made out of Vermont roofing slate.

Width is 7 1/2″, Length is 14 1/2″, and Height is 2 1/4″

Used Earth believes that high-quality remnants from historic structures should not be discarded and that they can be transformed and repurposed into beautiful, functional art.

From wasteful to resourceful, Used Earth takes these quality raw materials and handcrafts them into useful, one-of-a-kind pieces to be enjoyed in your home

http://www.usedearthonline.com/Used_Earth/Purpose.html

Come and visit our stand at the Great Yorkshire Show on 14, 15 and 16 July 2009.  We will have our sculptural contemporary furniture on display in the Made in Yorkshire marquee.

You will also be able to purchase smaller items from us – we will have clocks, mirrors, chopping boards, cheese boards and a selection of jewellery boxes, which all make excellent gifts.

You will be able to discuss your furniture needs with David, who will be delighted to provide you with initial ideas for development.

We are opening our studio to visitors – come and see David demonstrating his traditional craftmanship skills at our workshop on 20 and 21 June, and on 26, 27, 28 June.  We will be open from 10.30 am till 5.30 pm on these days.  We will have examples of our individually designed furniture on display – please come and try them out – you can touch the wood, sit on the wood, buy the wood – we will have gift items available for you to purchase on the day; for example jewellery boxes, clocks with unique grain patterns, chopping boards, cheese boards and larger items of furniture.  We are taking part in the North Yorkshire Open Studios event, you can see other inspirational artists and craftsmen here

This is yet another recipe I have made for the swap I am in this month and is yet another recipe that I have rally enjoyed, It is a really simple and tasty chicken salad to put together. I cooked a seasoned chicken breast per person because I had to use them up, but using a BBQ chook would make this so quick to throw together and that perfect after work meal. I also served our salad greens on the side, as my hubby is not the biggest salad lover and ends up leaving most of the greens. I doubled the dressing too as I was making this for 3 people. I will look forward to making this one again this summer as it is really healthy, light and refreshing salad. To see more photos of this recipe or to read more reviews please click here.

If you have been keeping up with the progress of my beautiful handcrafted, Eco friendly camphor laurel chopping, cheese boards and Mezzaluna Boards. My official site is finally finished and live so to see my full collection please click here.

Ingredients

Leftover barbecued chicken (torn or cut into bite sized bits)
Sliced avocado or mango (I used both)
1-2 chopped shallots, finely sliced or 1/2 small red onion, finely sliced
Lettuce (I used a mixed bag of salad greens which I served in a bowl on the side.)

Dressing : enough for two chicken breasts
(I doubled this)

1/2 Large lemon, juice of
1 Teaspoon grainy mustard
1 Tablespoon warmed honey

Method

1. Put lettuce leaves in serving bowl, throw in everything else.

2. To make dressing: place all ingredients a in screw top jar, and shake till well mixed, pour over salad about 30 minutes before serving time.

All photos taken by me unless otherwise stated.

Wow! Master cheesemaker Rolf Beeler has swept this gruyere gal off her feet. I was already a passionate fan of gruyere – a greatly undersung cheese, I think, wasted in the vast melting pot of the typical less-than-exciting fondue. My fave cheese of late has been the L’Etivaz gruyere. So when I visited Berkeley’s eye-poppingly vast Cheese Board recently and asked the cheese expert what he had that was similar to L’Etivaz, he pulled out a great wheel of Rolf Beeler Gruyere.

Actually, he started me on an Emmi cave-aged gruyere, which was very good – tasty, redolent, interesting. But then he handed over the Rolf Beeler and, I repeat, Wow!

Everything about this cheese is right up front. Nothing holds back as an aftertaste. This bold cheese just hits you between the taste buds with its nutty, tangy, sweet, complex, cave-musty, buttery, slightly crystally, crunchy Wow. Bee-ler! Bee-ler! The man at the cheese counter elucidated how Beeler hand-crafted his cheese, visiting every cave and tapping on every wheel to choose the right ones for artisan aging. He’s definitely got a gift for gruyere.

Like L’Etivaz (also from the large Emmi producers), the Beeler is a raw-milk variety. It’s aged a full, old-school 16 months or more in carefully controlled, humid, cave-like conditions. Rolf Beeler is a relatively small-batch producer.

Unlike L’Etivaz, the Rolf Beeler Gruyere is not strictly an Alpage, or mountain pasture, cheese, a type made using only milk produced in warm seasons from high-altitude Alpine cows. Alpage cheeses have a reputation for tasting like the distinct Alpine flowers and grasses that make for summer grazing.

As the L’Etivaz is gone for the season, I’ll have to taste these Swiss gruyere giants against one another next year. In the meantime, I’m loading up on the outstanding Rolf Beeler.

This cheese pairs well with plenty of wines, especially a Syrah, but you may want to pop open a bottle of champagne to enjoy with the Beeler, toast the man, and celebrate the cheese’s specialness.

And, I know, you don’t have to tell me, it’s probably great in a fondue.

The big board at the Cheese Board

Top photo: Ready for our repast. We enjoyed our Rolf Beeler Gruyere with French oil-cured olives and a fresh ciabatta.

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

The Silver Lining has been known to indulge in an excessive amount of cheeses- spreadable and otherwise. However, we’ve got no proper cheese board! Someday. Available here. Seen here.

Wallingford has more pubs than a drunken pub crawl can cope with and more Italian restaurants (independent and chain) than Mamma could eat her way around. So, an upmarket eaterie is exactly what it needs. The Partridge, however, appears to have pitched itself a little too high – for both its capability and its realistic chances of attracting enough of the right clientele.

The menu is a lot more adventurous than when they first opened but the prices seem a bit steeper too. The bubbles flow to begin with – you get a free glass on arrival if you book online. The service was smiley, friendly and suitable reserved for the environment, the leather couches a little too squishy for the start of a dinner.

Finally seated, after probably a little too many pre-dinner bubbles. The scallops came cruising in and melted in my mouth easier than the rice paper on a space invader, but obviously far smoother. Absolutely divine and quite possibly one of the best scallop dishes I have ever had the pleasure of eating, mmm, mmm!

Then the whole experience came crashing down around our ears. This is one of those places where side dishes come at a price, especially if you want to go home without going via the kebab van. Steak cooked rare to perfection, but oh so small it could have gone down in one. Then there was the halibut – usually a beautiful translucent, quite meating yet delicate fish. Alas this was so awfully cooked I swore blind it wasn’t halibut – it certainly didn’t taste like it and even the texture was suspiciously unlike I know it to be. It went back and I survived on someone else’s chunky fries. They swore blind it was halibut, I would have liked to have seen it when it arrived in the box to believe that. Apparently unrecognisable because it had been poached in a salmon jus – well there you have it – why is anyone attempting to disguise one of the ocean’s greatest fish with salmon – jeepers people, not even Heston would try that!

I think I had something choclatey for dessert, it was yummy, but again rather petit. The cheese platter packed a punch and a half, but again size was an issue as was the insufficient amount of accompanying crackers.

A not so amazing experience, and a fairly hefty bill left us sadly deflated. This town needs something to challenge this place, that isn’t Italian, but is using fresh, well-sourced produce, just at more reasonable prices and with more realistic portions.

This place is worth a try, don’t get me wrong, just don’t pin any great hopes on it securing you a second date.

I don’t have a cheese board. But if I did, it would look something like this.

via fitzsu

Photo courtesy of Patchwork Pate.

Tired of turkey?  Fatigued by cooking for family?  Still inundated with social obligations but sadly out of savvy ideas for impressing?  No worries! Charcuterie platters are all the rage this holiday season and the good news is that you don’t have to be a great cook to get in on this hot entertaining trend.

Like a cheese board, the success of a charcuterie platter depends on making good choices at the grocery store. Sure you can be like my husband Martin and make your own lamb sausage, but you can just as easily buy fabulous cooked sausages, pates and cured meats from a store.

When creating a charcuterie platter, be sure to choose a range of flavours, textures and types of meat. Ideally you’ll want smoky, spicy and aromatic (i.e. herbs, truffles) flavoured options as well as a range of textures from chewy dry cured chorizo to velvety smooth pates.

Likewise, opt for artisan and natural products versus mass produced cured meats to avoid cloying artificial flavours, unnecessary fillers and other nasty stuff.

What’s your favourite charcuterie platter option? Do you pine for pate de foie gras, or go bonkers over balotta ham?

The center of my sense of home and community is The CheeseBoard Collective on Shattuck. Living near there formed some of the most important pieces of who I am, and visiting now brings back a flood of revelations, realizations, and nine-plus-senses pleasures that make me happy to my core.

So I took Peanut there.

He’s been before, but this time we went to the store/bakery and to the pizza joint. The latter is not at all the CheeseBoard where I lunched countless afternoons in the ’90s and ’00s. It’s bigger, since they took over the shop next door and expanded with more tables (shock), a bathroom (gasp), and a full area for the musicians.

The pizza of the day was roasted cauliflower, caramelized onion, mozzarella, cheddar, chive, and garlic olive oil on the trademark sourdough crust. It was gorgeous and drippy and wonderfully flavorful. But I’ve rarely had a bad slice there.

The band was the California Honeydrops. They sunk their teeth into a soulful performance and totally captivated my son.

So we ate, me a slice of heaven and him a cheese roll from the Collective. We listened to the blues. We watched the locals and newbies, alike. We basked in the glow of the new paint, the cheerful tile, and the clean bathrooms.

And he said to me, of my favorite place in the world, (except my aunt and uncle’s house at Thanksgiving), “this place make Peanut happy!”

I cried. “Me, too, bug. This place make mommy happy, too.”

I love you, CheeseBoard family.

Thursday night when I got home late in the evening, I just had to smile to myself and say “that was a mighty fine day.”

It started out with an informal interview for a job I’m actually pretty excited about.  The job hasn’t yet been posted, but the person I would be replacing is really excited that I want the job and wanted to introduce me personally to her boss so we can get a chance to chat before the whole formal process begins.  There was a lot of enthusiasm on all sides – me about the job, and potential-new-boss about me.  When I left she said she was going to call me the moment the job posted so we can get the ball rolling.

I’m excited, but I’m cautious.  I’m a strong candidate, but since I’ll be asking for the upper end of the pay scale and the person controlling the purse strings is known to be very tight, it’s not a done deal.  She may opt to make do with a Ford, which would certainly get the job done, rather than spend the money on a Mercedes that not only will get the job done, but will do so with style and class.   Still, it felt good to have somebody blown away by my skills and experience, and what I can bring to the job.  Even if this process goes no further than this, my confidence has increased and perhaps I can overcome my inertia and fear of looking for new job.

On the way home, I opted to go back home taking the Golden Gate Bridge, rather than the more utilitarian Bay Bridge.  Every time I go over the Golden Gate Bridge I’m like a kid.  I look up at the soaring towers, and then to my right to see the City and Alcatraz and up ahead to the always green Marin Headlands.   This is why I live in the Bay Area – there is such easy access to both natural and man-made splendor and beauty.

Later that afternoon I head over to my friend Elaine’s house for a reunion of some of my old NKT buddies.  Elaine has a beautiful house in the Berkeley Hills with such an amazing view.  It’s what I would call a three bridge view – the Bay, Golden and San Rafael bridges.   Some of these friends I see somewhat often, for others it’s been almost a year.  Only one of them is still involved with the NKT on a regular basis.  But, our friendships have moved beyond that now.

We had a light dinner of the famous Cheese Board pizza (who knew peach and arugula would make such tasty toppings?), some salad,  and finish with a fresh organic fruit salad.  Simple, but perfect for a hot August evening.  As soon we had finished eating, Obama’s speech was just about to start.  We gathered around the small TV in their study and tried to put aside our well-conditioned cynicism about politicians.   Mostly we watched in silence without much commentary.  And as the speech started to wind down, Elaine’s husband Ivan pulled up the blinds to reveal a stunning sunset.

“Do we dare hope?” one friend asked as Obama’s  inspirational speech ended.  Sure.  Maybe.  Well,  OK.  Maybe things can change.  Just maybe.  So,  like with my potential job, I’m excited, but cautious.

We then left and headed down to catch the dharma talk at the Thursday night Insight Meditation class.  It was a small crowd, compared to other nights.  Probably Obama’s speech and the heat kept people at home. Our timing was great though.  We walked in right at the break after the meditation, but before the dharma talk.   The topic was the fourth chapter of Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.  Sitting with these friends, my former NKT classmates, listening to commentary on the very book that we were studying together when our center fell apart, made it feel like we had come full circle.

Yup, it was a very good day, indeed.

Wine and Cheese pairings are really the trend these days. They go really well together and its fun and interactive to taste different artisinal cheeses with specific wines.

If you enjoy cheese and wine here’s a fun idea for your next event or wedding. Ask your caterer to set up an artisinal cheese display table. You could print up some recommended wine pairings to go with the cheese display and have people go at it. If your caterer doesn’t have enough knowledge about cheese, go to your local speciality cheese shop or whole foods market and ask for recommendations. I would also expect that your local cheese shop would be able to recommend wine pairings for their cheeses.

This display looks gorgeous and inviting. Even if your guests aren’t avid cheese eaters like yourself, you could still introduce them to some of your favorites.

I had some good sized chicken breasts to use up and it is so hot here at the moment you can’t think of making heavy meals. I decided to do something quick and easy and something that could be done on the BBQ so I did not heat up the house anymore than it already was. It was very tasty and enjoyed by all, from the photo I know the chicken looks burnt but that was just the pesto on the outside and it had a wonderful flavour while still retaining moisture to make it tender.

If you have been keeping up with the progress of my beautiful handcrafted camphor laurel chopping, cheese boards and Mezzaluna Boards. My official site is finally finished and live so to see my full collection please click here.

Ingredients

2 Chicken Breasts
3 Tablespoons basil pesto sauce (will need less if breasts are small)
200-250g Romaine lettuce leaves
1/2 Avocado, flesh removed and chopped
4 Bacon rashers, chopped
2 Eggs
4 Sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
100g Goats cheese, sliced
1 Small red onion, sliced thinly
6 Slices cucumber, halved

Method

1. Coat breasts in pesto, cook on the BBQ or under grill or pan fry until cooked through.

2. While chicken is cooking cook bacon, until crisp, drain on absorbent paper.

3. Hard boil eggs, peel, chop into pieces.

4. Divide lettuces leaves between 2 plates, arrange, tomato, goats cheese, cucumber, avocado, bacon, eggs and onion on top of lettuce.

5. Slice chicken thickly and lay on top of salad. Serve with either homemade dressing or store bought. I like to make a creamy balsamic dressing to go with this salad.

Serves 2

all photos taken by me unless otherwise stated.

Cooking in the heat is really difficult.  I want to eat lovely food, but when the thermometer is registering thirty degrees in the kitchen before you turn on the oven it’s quite hard to get excited about broiling to death before lunch is even done.

Actually, I was a good girl at lunch time and cooked spicy pasta with peas for all.  I had become a wilted flower by dinner time, with an afternoon of gardening under my belt.  We ate sandwiches on the deck.  Nobody was really that hungry and what we were drinking was infinitely more appealing than what we were eating.  I was very naughty.  I had a cheese and pickle sandwich.

I love cheese, but I can’t eat it much any more.  It makes me snotty and I get sinusitis to the point where I cry with pain.  As a result I try to avoid most dairy and bananas, both of which, in Chinese medicine at least, are said to promote phlegm.  Promoting phlegm is just not a good thing, whichever way up you slice it.  It is a great sadness to me that this has happened.  It never used to bother me, and for about three years when I was a child, I subsisted on cheese sandwiches, banana milkshake and as much icecream as I could hoof into my gaping maw.  Those days are now long gone.

I do not believe in total abstinence except with things like crack or arsenic.  I think my grandad’s phrase: ‘All things in moderation’ is a good maxim.  Apart from in the world of cake, shoes and books, I have managed to pretty much stick to it religiously.  I don’t want to stick to it with regard to cake, shoes and books and have never felt guilty buying any of them, so no harm done.

I will eat dairy when I really can’t resist the siren call any longer, in the knowledge that I will pay for it later.  Today I have had a smoothie lolly, which had quite a lot of banana in, and a cheese and pickle sandwich and am sitting here, typing away with a face full of snot.  It was worth it.  Particularly the sandwich.  It was bog standard cheddar, branston and two slices of boring, white sliced rubbish which passes for bread and is the only thing my children will eat in the bread line, apart from Matilda who is a bread adventurer.  I am scraping the bottom of the food barrel and if I don’t go shopping soon I will be grilling our shoes and smearing them with ketchup.  As it was, it seemed like an uninspiring sandwich, but after an afternoon of hard labour, it tasted divine.

I am not a cheese snob.  I don’t wax lyrical about the world of cheese, and hunt down pernicious smelling cheeses from the four corners of the earth.  Nor will I ever pick the cheese board over the dessert trolley in a restaurant, no matter how wondrous it claims to be.  I hate blue cheese in any way, shape or form and I am not really drawn to soft cheeses particularly.  My mother used to have a love affair with brie, and would buy it in the supermarket, then sit in the car park, unwrap the brie and eat it before she drove home.  I can eat it, I don’t mind it, but I wouldn’t choose it as my best cheese, or my only choice of cheese to eat on a desert island.

My favourites are hard cheeses, particularly cheddar.  I love strong, piquant cheddars.  They are just lovely.  I also like those creamy, crumbly cheeses like Wensleydale and Caerphilly.  They manage to be creamy and salty all at the same time and have a real tang to them.  I liked smoked cheeses too, particularly smoked applewood, which is tart and smokey and sweet all at the same time.  I adore buffalo mozzarella, but it has to be good.  None of that cheap, boingy crap they sell in most supermarkets.  I always spend good money on mozzarella.  It’s worth the effort.  In Italy I’ve tasted it as an almost hard cheese which comes in little strings like sausages.  That was really good too, although I’ve never seen it here to eat.

I like Feta cheese too.  Like mozzarella, I’m quite picky about it.  If it’s too cheap it can be quite waxy tasting.  I like mine to be very crumbly and a bit holey and really, really salty.  I like it with a green salad, fresh plum tomatoes and baby new potatoes.  Drizzle over some olive oil, maybe a hint of garlic and a big twist of black pepper and it’s divine.  Goats cheese can be good too, but a little goes a long way, and they are so varied I try to avoid ordering goats cheese in a restaurant unless I’m absolutely sure I’m going to like it.  Goats cheese salad with spinach and bacon is good.  Pine nuts can add a certain frisson to this, particularly if they’re toasted.  Mmmm!

I lived in Germany for a while and I really missed good, tart, English cheese.  I did acquire a fondness for the sweet, Dutch, German and Swiss hard cheeses that they all eat with such gusto over there.  It was a breakfast thing with boiled eggs.  My favourite is gruyere.  Nigel Slater does an excellent recipe for a kind of potato and melted cheese bake that you do on top of the oven.  It’s awesome, but very, very bad for you.  I make it about once a year and eat it all to myself (because I’m the only one who likes it).  I always use Gruyere in that.  He recommends pecorino, but when I first made it I was living in the sticks and couldn’t get pecorino for love nor money.  Gruyere works just as well and is really, really delicious.

I used to get my groceries from a fabulous organic place when I lived out in the sticks.  The man who ran it sourced a lot of his stuff locally and one of the things I fell in love with was a cream cheese he had found that was full of cracked, black peppercorns.  It was divine.  It was very, very creamy and the pepper just gave it that extra oomph that stopped it tasting like a dessert cheese, like mascarpone.  It was gorgeous.  I really miss that cheese, and look back on it with great fondness.

I never used to have sinus pain.  I really hope that this is a passing thing related to middle age, and that over the coming years I will regain control over my wayward sinuses and be able to hoof down as much cheeese as I like.  It would be lovely.  I am depending on it.

This is a lovely recipe it is easy to make and the sauce goes so well with the steaks. I have not cooked steaks a lot recently as they have put the price of fillet up so much at the grocery store. I found some the other day that was still the same price as usual so I thought I would have a treat. They were so good I did buy a big chunk of fillet, so I could cut it into really thick steaks as I love them. I served mine over spinach and cauliflower mash and it was just right, you can find a recipe for cauliflower puree under alternative mash recipes, that I served with trout.

If you have seen my recent post on my cheese and cutting boards you will know I am about to go live with my official website shortly. So I am going to be posting pictures of some of the range of boards I currently have in stock, just to give you an idea on the beauty of them until I can post my web address. If you want more information on them go to Chopping and Cheese board

Ingredients

4 Beef fillet steaks (I am guessing mine were about 250g a piece so whatever weight you prefer, just note that cooking times will vary according to thickness of steak.)
2 Teaspoons cracked black pepper
Olive oil
6 Shallots, sliced thinly
2 Cloves garlic, crushed
80ml Bourbon
60ml Water
1-11/2 Teaspoons beef stock granules (depending on brand you use)
3 Teaspoons french mustard (not quite as strong as a Dijon)
300ml Cream
1-2 Teaspoons cornflour (depending on how thick you like your sauce)

Method

1. Rub beef all over with pepper.

2. Heat some olive oil in a pan, sear beef a couple of minutes on each side, cook for a further 5 Min’s a side. If cooking an average size steak this will be a medium rare-medium. Cook less for thinner steaks. If your steaks are really thick like mine I cooked in the oven an additional 15 Min’s for medium rare. Just judge cooking time according to your personal taste and how you like your meat done.

Sauce

1. Heat a little more olive oil in a pan and cook shallots and garlic, stirring, until shallots soften.

2. Add bourbon, stir, add water, stock, mustard, cream, bring to the boil. Reduce heat, mix a little water with the cornflour and add to sauce, stir until mixture thickens, serve sauce over steak.

All photos taken by me unless otherwise stated.

Dear Santa,

I’ve been a very good girl this year. I’ve made rush deadlines, kept my customer’s costs low, and I think I’ve come up with some pretty good ideas.

So for Christmas, I would like:
Moso Bamboo Mincing Board and Knife It has a recessed bamboo mincing board, and the blade is Japanese stainless steel. It’ll make chopping herbs for Christmas dinner a breeze! And it would go great with the…
Moso Bamboo Travel Cheese Set to serve my guests a variety of wine and cheeses until dinner is ready. This would be great for my New Year’s Eve party too!
I would also like a Six-in-One Game Set to keep my guests entertained. There’s something for everyone in here, including checkers, chess, dominoes, backgammon, cribbage, dice, and a deck of playing cards. And it comes in an attractive UltraHyde case.
How about something to entertain myself? Like a Portable Media Player that plays MP3/MP4 audio/video files. It also plays video games and is a digital camera, and it’s compatible with Windows Vista. It even comes with a gift box to make wrapping easy on the elves.

I’m a do-it-yourself-er, but I must confess Santa, I do tend to lose my tools. So I would like a 52 In 1 Handyman Set. It’s got anything I might need, including a hammer, a ratchet, pliers, electrical tools, screwdrivers, allen wrenches, crescent wrenches and more. And I won’t misplace them any more because I’ll have a 13 1/2″ x 10 1/2″ case to keep it all in.
Santa, I have another confession to make. I always forget to take my pocket knife out of my purse when I go to the airport, and I can’t take it on the plane. So I would like the Wenger Air Traveler Genuine Swiss Army Knife. It has a micro screwdriver, 1.8” springless scissors, a nail file, a nail cleaner, a toothpick and tweezers, but no knife so I can carry it on board the plane when I travel. This also comes in a gift box to make your job and your elves’ jobs a little easier.

Finally Santa, I love chocolate. There are a variety of Food Gift Boxes available, from a small gift box to a tower of boxes that can be filled with any sort of candy or nuts, including: animal crackers, caramel popcorn, red hots, Goldfish, several types of peanuts, jelly beans, mini pretzels, mints, Tootsie Rolls, several gummy treats, Runts, pistachios, trail mix, gumballs, sunflower seeds, chocolate covered nuts, raisins, and pretzels, conversation hearts, candy corn, turtles, truffles, toffee, M&Ms, chocolate shapes, and more.

And all of these can have your logo on them. You do have a logo for the North Pole, don’t you? If not, I’d be happy to make one for you.

Thank you, Santa! Enjoy the milk and 1 Gallon Tin of Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Holiday Greetings,
Michelle