We’ve never participated in Blogtober before, but we figured now was a good time to start! Each day, we will be releasing a Blogtober post – which will be themed as Autumn or Halloween content. We will also have some posts going live on other topics that aren’t themed, but these won’t be marked as Blogtober content. As we normally post three times a week, posting every day and doubling up on some days seemed like the best way to make Blogtober work for our blog. As we love Halloween and fall, getting a bunch of lovely, themed posts seemd like a fun time. To start off our first Blogtober, we are doing out first ever Blogger Tag!
What’s your favourite fall scent?
Jupiter: My favorite fall scent is baking pumpkin pie. I love the smell out of the oven and how much it fills your home. Dann: My favourite autumn scent is burning firewood, as it reminds me of bonfire night.
Both Dann and Jupiter went to a Fondue Festival at the 28-50 Wine Bar & Kitchen, who do yearly Fondue Festivals in London. These take place each Tuesday through February, March and April. We’re not sure if Festival makes a lot of sense in this use, as it’s not really a Festival and more of a sit down dinner but only there for a limited amount of time. Dann really wanted to go, so we both grabbed up some tickets and figured we’d see what happens. Neither of us had been to 28-50 Wine Bar & Kitchen, nor had we had Fondue before, so it was an interesting time.
The first thing worth noting is that you are going to need to go to the Fondue Festival with a friend, as it’s a minimum of two people per fondue. The price is set at £34.95 per person, stacking as you add more people to it. The festival tickets include a set menu – we weren’t even shown a normal menu – which you get to eat from. The venue itself is very upscale, we were quite under dressed, and is a dark and moody place.
We started our meal with a glass of Kir each, but you could choose to have a glass of Chateau de Candie Viognier wine. Kir is a French cocktail made with creme de cassis and then topped up with white wine. This drink was good, not too dry. We also got water for the table of course. After a bit of time and conversation, we got our starter. This was a rocket and walnut salad with a balsamic dressing. The salad was good but small, even though it’s meant to be split between two people and we found it quite refreshing in taste and compared to the massive amount of cheese we were eating that evening.
The Fondue Savoyarde includes beaufort, comte and abondance cheese which is melted in apremont wine and kirsch. The fondue when it came to our table was pretty separated and never seemed to fully come together, having a sort of soupy-watery top that wouldn’t stick to anything dipped into it. This was kind of a disappointment, as it become a challenge to dip items into it and the cheese needed constant working to make sure you didn’t just get a soupy mess. When we did get cheese, though, it was fantastic.
To dip into our cheese, we had a charcuterie platter with loads of thinly sliced, cooked meats and some gherkins. We both agreed that having thicker cuts of meat would have made them a bit easier to dip and some of the meats were quite greasy, but it was a good variety. We also got a big basket of bread and a medium sized bowl of potatoes. These roasted potatoes were the real highlight of the fondue – they were buttery, coated in herbs and went so well with the fondue. Dann really enjoyed the bread, but it wasn’t Jupiter’s favourite. Our Fondue Festival time was quite long, as we stirred, talked and dipped. It’s a very fun experience to do with someone, especially as someone needs to keep an eye on the cheese pot.
For dessert, we shared a tarte tatin which they covered in alcohol and lit on fire. It came with a side of some sort of vanilla creme. This dessert was very delicious and felt good at the end of a very cheesy meal.
We both felt that, for the price, the fondue festival was lacking. The amount of food was very small considering the price and there wasn’t enough refreshing bits to break away from eating a literal pot of cheese. We both also wished that the herbs on the potatoes were also served on the side, allowing us to add them straight to the cheese, as they really improved the flavor. 28-50 Wine Bar & Kitchen is an upscale place, so you are definitely paying for the atmosphere. The service was very nice, with perfect checks on our table, though!
It’s no secret that I love Japanese food, I adore a good ramen, a well made broth, a bunch of different toppings. I like eating a variety of food, but after months of lockdown, I just wanted a bowl of ramen. I was absolutely delighted that Bone Daddies in London opened back up (with social distancing measures) to serve some food I hadn’t had in far too long. Dann and I went along to the first weekend they opened back up, hoping to be warmed on a rainy day by a nice bowl of soup.
Korean Fried Wings, Kimchee & Miso Aubergine Bao
A little excited for our first restaurant out in months, we over ordered on our snacks. We got some Korean fried wings – each wing including the wing and drum, covered in a BD Korean sauce. These wings were well coated, but still crunchy underneath. The heat stacked well, getting more spiced as we ate, which was super welcome and enjoyable. The Kimchee had a similar heat, though more in your face at first, and was lovely to eat throughout our full meal. Dann is a huge fan of bao and loves to try the vegetarian options, so we went for the Miso Aubergine Bao, which was simpily delicious. The boa was sweet, flavorful and the aubergine didn’t have a huge bite – so your teeth went straight through the soft bun and soft filling, with a crunch of carrot at the end. It’s was a lovely start to our meal.
Yuzu Tonkotsu
My main ramen was the Yuzu Tonkotsu, which had fried chashu pork belly, sping onion, bamboo, beansprouts and clarence court egg. I also added bok choy to my dish, which was raw but slowly wilted while I had my soup. The ramen was creamy, the broth super flavorful with a refreshing citrus note from the yuzu in it. Though I am not the biggest fan of eggs, this egg had great creaminess and a good flavor to it. I added a bit of chilli oil and seaseme seeds to my dish, which continued to elivate the flavor. I love that about ramen – being able to add whatever you want and customise the flavors! My pork, I should mention, was also lovely – super crispy despite being in liquid. There were tons of noodles and the bowl itself was plenty of food.
Tonkotsu
Dann got the original Tonkotsu at Bone Daddies, which was similar to my ramen but with a few twists. Instead of fried pork belly, his contained chashu pork belly, which was rolled and sliced. Dann found these to be really yummy! His dish also had burnt garlic instead of yuzu, which didn’t add much to the dish but was present in the bowl, as black garlic oil could be seen floating around. We both agreed the yuzu was more interested when it came to ramen, but his bowl had the same creaminess, the lovely egg, and he also got bok choy added. It’s a great classic ramen, full of a flavorful broth and everything you’d expect in your bowl.
Mochi Ice Cream
Going all out, we grabbed some mochi ice cream in the flavours of raspberry, sesame and yuzu. The raspberry tasted very flavourful, like a sorbet. The yuzu was fruity and light, with a great lemon hit half way and the sesame tasted nutty, with a great textural element. The restaurant did see that there was two of us and they cut all of the mochi in half, which was lovely and made for a easier to eat experience.
As I’ve mentioned, Bone Daddies is the first place we’ve gone since lock down to eat, so I feel we should touch on the changes they have made. The restaurant only allows a limited amount of customers, spaced widely apart. Before entering, we all needed to sign into a track and trace app, in case we need to be notified about anything. We were given hand sanitiser when we entered to wash our hands before coming in. All of the staff had masks on, gave us our food well far away from us and allowed us to move them over to us. The card machine, as they are not taking cash, was cleaned before and after I used it – the entire experience felt safe and I look forward to eating at more places that are this diligent.
*AD – these items in this review was gifted to our household for this post. All opinions, as always, are our own.
Since lock down began, the want for delicious cocktails sent directly to your door has increased. Jupiter is not much of a beer drinker and loves mixed drinks. Dann enjoys beer but spends a lot of time mixing his own drinks and enjoying the balance and showman ship that comes with creating your own. When Coco & Vanilla announced they’d be mailing out some of their cocktails, creating their own and allowing us to drink them in our own home, we were delighted! We both sampled three of their cocktails and want to talk about each one.
Cherry Vodka and Vanilla Cream Soda
Our first drink contained cherries soaked in vodka, then blended. Once the cherries have been blended, they are filtered through with vodka to help them fully combine. The cream soda aspect is made from a vanilla syrup, lightened with a bit of water and a small hint of lemon. These two combined resulted in a quite sweet, vanilla forward drink that hits you with cherry at the end, followed by a light taste of vodka. These was both of our favourites of the trio – with a great fruity and vanilla mix, which was light and feels like summer. There are small specks, of what we assume is vanilla bean, within the drink which looks slightly strange to us, but the drink wasn’t grainy and went down a treat.
Spiced Rum and Kola Nut Tonic
The spiced rum drink was one for Dann. It includes a 3 year aged baby rum infused with cloves, aniseed and then orange, cherry and plum peel. The tonic itself is made from African kola nut, red cinchona bark, vanilla pod, cloves, aniseed, cinnamon, lemon juice and sugar. The drink is very spiced – that’s the forward flavor – which to us tasted quite a bit of clove. If you like spiced rum, this is a rum that’s spiced to the max, providing a really intense drink for rum lovers. It’s also got a great aroma to the drink!
Gin and Juice
The Gin and Juice smelled lovely too, fruity being the main smell. The gin is peppercorn and chamomile gin, made with black, green and pink peppercorn, aniseed and grapefruit peel. The juice itself is made from pressed apples and raspberries, filtered with citrus acid, sugar and water. The drink tasted sort of like Love Hearts – a soft, chalky sweet – but made into a drink form. It’s not what either of us expected, but the drink came across quite summery and refreshing, which was very nice. I think the name Gin and Juice doesn’t give the drink justice as it’s much more than a normal gin and orange juice.
All of these cocktails contain an AVB of 17% and have two units of alcohol per bottle, making them perfect to split between the two. Despite them being 17%, all of these cocktails are quite smooth to drink as well, which is pretty impressive.
You can order your own cocktails and find out more about Coco & Vanilla on their website.
One Recipe a Week has been continuing strong in our household! This time, we took a look at the Munchies Guide to Dinner. This cookbook is for people who are just learning how to cook. The first few pages talk about properly storing your food and the book itself is mainly basics like roasting a chicken, making your own salad dressing and cooking lasagna. Lots of these recipes are stuff most people know how to do, but we decided to take a look at Pork Schnitzel. This recipe had a goal, like most recipes in the book – specifically to learn how to bread various things. At the start of each recipe in the book, it states what your main takeaway is.
We took our own twists on this recipe, primarily with the salad that is marked along with the pork schnitzel in Munchies Guide to Dinner. They suggest a fennel and olive salad, however, we couldn’t find any fennel, so we made a small toss salad of our own to go with our pork. We also made the recipe just a bit easier, by purchasing pre-cut meat instead of cutting our own from one joint.
Place a layer of plastic wrap onto a work surface.
Place pork lion onto the plastic wrap and cover with more plastic wrap.
Pound out pork lion with a rolling pin, meat hammer, or heavy pan until 1/4 inch thick. Set aside.
Put flower on to a large plate, season generously with salt and pepper, set aside.
Beat the eggs in a large bowl, set aside.
Mix bread crumbs and Italian seasoning, place on a large plate and set aside.
Place a piece of pork into the flour, fully coat it, then into the egg and finally the bread crumbs.
Place the coated pork onto a plate and continue until all of the pork is fully coated.
Heat oil in a large frying pan over medium heat.
Line a plate with paper towels for draining.
Fry the pork, trying not to crowd the pan, for 5 to 7 minutes – until golden brown, flipping once.
Remove from the pan when golden on both sides, setting on top of the paper towel plate to drain.
Season with salt and pepper. If you are making a lot of these, you can put the cooked pork in a low temp oven to keep warm.
Serve with salad!
Notes
*the original recipe called for pork butt that you could cut yourself, but we found this much easier. You can purchase one steak per person, as it’s plenty for one.
We also made a little sauce for the pork with some mustard, wholegrain mustard, mayo, honey and olive oil as a sort of honey mustard sauce. It went really well with the pork! You can mix together the above and just keep tasting to adjust to your own sweet and mustard-liking.
This recipe is one that we have actually used several times since reading the Munchies Guide to Dinner, as it was a big hit. Pork Schnitzel is very easy to make and it’s such a good midweek meal. Sometimes we round it out by making a potato-based side as well. This cookbook is really designed for those who aren’t yet comfortable in the kitchen – and I really like that. All of the different skills listed are so needed and are very good for beginners to learn! It’s a great gift for those who are just moving out on their own or people who are just starting to get into cooking.
