Cambridge Beer Festival, Jesus Green

Last week we visited the Cambridge Beer Festival, the 3rd biggest beer festival in the UK where over 35000 people drank over 90000 pints of real ale, cider and mead. It's altogether an incredible collection of local brewers with a myriad of unique brews, and a testament to how much the British love their drink.

Coming from Australia where the beers are generally quite light, I'm still getting used to the whole obsession with heavy, low-fizz, strongly-flavoured British ales. However, the beers at the festival were definitely tastier and more interesting than the regular sometimes muddy-water stuff you get off the tap in the pubs around Cambridge.

Some of the more interestingly-named beers we tried included Golden Pippin, Beijing Black, and my favourite: "Comrade Bill Bartram's Egalitarian Anti-Imperialist Soviet Stout". Trust the Russians... well, they produce bird-eating pelicans and all, so nothing surprises me now...

Except this:

I have only one acronym for this. It begins with a W and ends with "TF".

Yes, it's an egg, wrapped in "meat", coated in batter and fried. Oh my damn... apparently they call it a scotch egg, and it is a common picnic food in the UK.
Mind you, I did eat it all. Well I guess you should always be open minded when trying new foods! And at the beer festival, the glass is always more than half full. Cheers everyone!

Beer festival tip: Buy half pints. 1) You get more. 2) You try more types. 3) You win.

The Red Lion, Grantchester

There are a million things we've meant to blog but just haven't had the time! Super-epic sushi, a trip to Alimentum, my Hong Kong trip, homemade smbc pizza... just to name a few. But I realised we hadn't done a restaurant review in a while (since this one), so...

-----

Nothing says an English summer quite like sitting out in a beer garden with a cold refreshing jug of Pimm's.

Gosh that sounded like an ad... but Pimm's tastes incredibly good after two hours of serious punting all the way from the Trinity punt shed to Grantchester.

Swans outside the Trinity punt shed.

Is it the Amazon? No, just a shady segment of the River Cam...

It is a beautiful Saturday in Cambridge when Uncle Tobys, Peen and I decide to make the trek to Grantchester (apparently home to the highest concentration of Nobel prize winners) by possibly the most inefficient form of transport known to man.
A tip: If you ever find yourself trying to escape from water-based ninjas, a punt is not a wise choice. This is purely hypothetical of course, as you'll never see them coming.

After soaking in the sun and pushing a large stick against a riverbed for two hours, we moor alongside the Grantchester Meadows and head to the nearest pub we find: The Red Lion.

Pimm's is a gin-based liqueur which is typically mixed with lemonade and topped with fresh ingredients such as strawberries, oranges, lime, cucumber and mint. Tastes and looks a bit like lemon, lime and bitters. So refreshing!

Artsy shot. Glass of Pimm's, top view.

The three of us just about manage to polish off the whole pitcher before our food arrives, which is testament to how thirsty we are, or perhaps the speed of the service... always good to know the food is being cooked fresh though!

About the food, I'm always a little sceptical about pub food in the UK. I think I was scarred the first time I sat down in a pub, looked at the menu and realised that it was exactly the same as the last pub I'd been to. The only thing different was the pub's name! This was before I realised that most UK pubs are franchises owned by large companies like Greene King. Sad but true.

Avocado and crayfish with a marie-rose dressing, salad, brown bread and butter (£5.75)

I am so ravaged that I decided to go for a starter and main. The avocado and crayfish is pretty much as described I guess? Marie-rose dressing is a fancy way of saying ketchup + mayo! You learn something new everyday...

Steak strip, mushroom and onion baguette (£5.75)

The steak baguette is actually really well toasted, nice and crisp on the outside but soft and warm on the inside. Contents were an old favourite, steak and mushroom - perhaps a touch greasy on the whole but I have to say I did enjoy this one.

Farm assured 'smothered' chicken breast with grilled bacon, goat's cheese and a tomato Provencal sauce (£9.29)

What on earth is farm-assured chicken? Uncle Tobys asks the waitress, who tells us something that sounds like free-range chickens to me, although she is also unsure why they can't just call it "Chicken, chips and salad". Agreed.

Hand-battered cod and chips with mushy peas and tartare sauce (£8.39)

 Peen's fish and chips look decent, at least from across the table, although he reports that it is a little disappointing. I've also yet to find a place for fish and chips in the UK where I've been really satisfied afterwards...

Whilst the food was average, The Red Lion does have a great beer garden and quite a nice pub feel overall, perfect for a summer's day.

The Red Lion
33 High Street
Grantchester CB3 9NF
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 840121


View Larger Map

Ice-cream updates...

The green tea ice cream I made a couple of weeks back was such a success, I had to try making more... but this time chocolate! Yum.

Basically just substituting the matcha powder with cocoa seemed to do the trick, although the ice-cream texture turned out a little more dense, rich and icy than the green tea version. Not sure if it's because you need to add more powder-flavoury-stuff (cocoa/matcha), or if it's because I didn't stir it enough whilst it was freezing because I fell asleep...

Cocoa and Walnut Ice Cream (with a splash of brandy)

Ingredients:
1/3 cup cocoa 1/2 cup sugar 300 mL milk 300 mL cream	capful of brandy 4 egg yolks handful of walnut pieces pinch of salt

Pretty much the same as the previous green tea recipe. Warm milk (don't boil) and dissolve the cocoa. Mix egg yolks and sugar and then add to the warm cocoa milk until dissolved, followed by salt and brandy.  Strain through a sieve and let cool to room temp.

Someone told me once that salt draws out the full flavour of chocolate. Surprising but true!

Lightly whip cream and add to the chocolate mixture. Cool in fridge for a couple of hours then put in freezer. Stir the mix vigorously every hour, scraping down the frozen sides as you go. When it gets to a slushie stage, add the walnuts.

I googled salt and chocolate, and what did I find? This. OMGBACONYUM.

Around the World in 7 Posts: Part I - Africa (SMBC #5)

Welcome back to another post in the SMBC series. This time we thought we'd try something a little different, so we've started an SMBC subseries: Around the World in 7 Posts! Each post will feature a dish from one of the seven continents. And starting from our evolutionary beginnings, our first post features Africa.

The dish chosen was Chicken Yassa. Here's what Wikipedia had to say about it:

Yassa is a spicy marinated dish prepared with poultry or fish. Originally Senegambian , yassa has become popular throughout West Africa.

And if that explanation was too vague, here is a photo of the dish:

We started with these ingredients:

Ingredients:
7 Chicken Thighs/Drumsticks
3 lemons
6 cloves of garlic
4 onions
black pepper
white pepper
dried chilli flakes
2 tablespoons of mustard
groundnut/peanut oil
nutmeg
vegetable stock
couscous


To prepare the chicken:

• We marinated the chicken for 1.5 hours first before frying. Pretty much all the ingredients went into the marinade: onions (coarsely chopped), garlic (crushed), lemon juice, black pepper, white pepper, dried chilli flakes, 2 tablespoons of dijon mustard, and a generous drizzle of groundnut oil.
• Oh, we also added some nutmeg and a cube of vegetable stock.
• Mix everything thoroughly with the chicken.
• Fry the chicken until golden brown. Also fry/cook the onion-marinade-mixture in a separate pan until the sauce has been sufficiently reduced. Finally, combine both the chicken and the onion mixture into one pan and heat for a while. Here's the story in photos:
• We served the chicken yassa with couscous, which was incredibly easy to prepare:
• And there you have it! Stay tuned for the next post in this subseries where we sample the cuisine from another (as of yet, undecided) continent!