Favourites List July/August

Our first EatWith dinner with Clams, White Beans and Iberico ham

This is quite a whirl wind of a favourites list! For starters we have quite a few exciting plans bubbling away to share with you guys - as usual these things always seem to happen at once and so things are a little bit manic at the moment! Subsequently not much in the way of actual recipes to share in this month's favourites list....

The first exciting development is that we have signed up with EatWith as a host. EatWith is plugging into the sharing economy and allowing people all over the world to host dinners in their own homes and cook food with like minded people. Really it is opening up supper clubs to anyone who might want to have a go.

We hosted our first (test run) dinner on Saturday evening and it went down a storm! We served a tapas style dinner (sample menu here) (unfortunately I only managed to get one snap of the food!) and it seemed to go down pretty well! Hoping that our next one will be in September some time, so stay posted!

Check out my Twitter feed for the next exciting development - I hope some of you are going to be around in London this weekend!

Gin Marinated Olives - Photograph 101 Cookbooks

As part of our EatWith dinner we served these Gin Marinated Olives from 101 Cookbooks, they went down a storm, who knew that warm olives tasted so good?

Resturant Story - Almonds and Dill, and Scallops with Dill Ash

Aside from our dinner party not nearly enough home cooking has been going this month, which ergo means we have been eating out a lot! So, two great restaurant recommendations to share with you...

• Restaurant Story, London - the first of two amazing meals out to celebrate T's birthday. Story was really quite amazing, each plate was full of surprises, starting with the amazing beef dripping candle! The flavours certainly pushed us to the boundaries, in fact they have even managed to convert me to liking dill with the two plates above. A really great experience - go as soon as you can!
• The Hinds Head, Bray - the second birthday meal, this time with family. The Hinds Head is fairly unassuming, and super relaxed, so much so you wouldn't realise it was owned by Heston Blumenthal, that is until you sample the food and drink. The G&T I had at the bar may have ever had (Gin Mare gin and 1724 Tonic), and T said the roast pork was the best roast he'd ever tasted - high praise indeed!

And finally on the few occasions when we have been cooking at home we've been trying recipes out from Rick Stein's new India cookbook - it is so beautiful, and the recipes are equally as delicious. I'm loving it so much in fact I'm hoping to share a review of it for you guys very soon!