Category: England

The Great Cornish Pasty Adventure Part 1.

The Great Cornish Pasty Adventure Part 1.

Ah. The Great Cornish Pasty Adventure.

‘What?’ I hear you ask. ‘Is this an actual thing?’

You betcha it is! In Arizona they have an awesome, mildly hipster Cornish pasty restaurant. Mildly hilarious given that pasties are kind of considered equal to hot dogs – cheap, filling, and generally a takeaway food eaten from a paper bag. But they are good. And they can be amazing.

So, I decided way back in March when I got to the UK I would hire a car and drive to Cornwall.
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Wilderness Festival.

Wilderness Festival.

I’ve never been to a camping music festival before. They are a huge thing here in the UK (think Glastonbury, Reading/Leeds), and while they certainly can be found at home, they seem less prominent. I know many other people at home who have never been to one, while here, when I mentioned to my friends that this was my first, they all expressed incredulity: “What?! You haven’t been to a camping festival before?”

So at the beginning of summer, I started researching. I’m not hugely interested in the Glasto experience with its 1 1/2 hour walk through tent city to return to your tent. I’m not interested in the ones packed with dubstep and bad food vendors. So I chose Wilderness.

The Wilderness festival is held in the woodlands near the Cotswolds in Oxfordshire. It is set in a stunning location, and is designed so that the woodlands are a huge feature. And the best thing about Wilderness? Food is on an equal footing with the music. A number of top London chefs come out and set up tents or long table banquets under the trees. St John, Russell Norman of Polpo, Moro, Hix – the menu for the festival reads like a London gastronome’s bucket list.
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A Welsh Cake Tea Party.

A Welsh Cake Tea Party.

I am staying with some very good friends and their daughter while I wait to move into my new house in Victoria Park Village – the house is just such a lovely buzzing hive of activity. It’s beautiful in summer, as the house just opens up to the back garden. Somehow, it was decided after we had all been pottering around all day, that we would make welsh cakes for afternoon tea.
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A Shoreditch Sunday.

A Shoreditch Sunday.

It’s been a big weekend. I’ve been running myself ragged trying to finish this book, so just needed a few days of fun to reset my jumbled brain. We started on friday with some beers in the park with Banjo. Well, I started 30 minutes earlier when the village kids had come to hang out and decided that I was a human canvas for their masterpieces.
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A Scone Adventure in Marylebone + barista training at Climpson & Sons.

A Scone Adventure in Marylebone + barista training at Climpson & Sons.

The past few months in London have been lovely, because it has been like a revolving door of friends from Melbourne popping in and out. It’s been ridiculous actually – a lot of my spare time has been spent with friends from back home, whether they have moved here or are just passing through. My friend Namita has been on an epic Europe adventure on her own, and has been in and out of London over the past few months. She is heading back to Australia next week so we decided to go on a scone adventure as our last hurrah.

It was her first English scone, so I of course took her to my go-to when downtown, Gails Artisan Bakery. They toaster-press their scones, and they are moist and buttery, just like home. I have an issue with many British scones, in that they are too dry! But not these.
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Moments in Hackney.

Moments in Hackney.

So it has been the week leading up to my first deliverable for my book. I don’t know if I have written it specifically on the blog, but I’ve been commissioned to write a book on coffee. It’s been killer fun – I’ve visited coffee labs in Amsterdam, Roasters in London – I love culinary research and learning and I am getting paid to become an expert on coffee.

But it is hard work. I’m never switched off, always thinking about the book and whatever I am doing I am thinking I should be writing. I’m writing from when I wake in the morning until when I go to bed. Every so often I try and have a switch off day, but I still feel a little guilty.

Anyway, as such, I haven’t really had any full days of fun activities to blog about for a while. I’ve done little things here and there, breaking up my work. Sarah + Theo, the owners of the Deli I work at had me over for dinner, and we somehow started talking about iPhoto’s new ‘Moments’ feature. Theo went a small rampage about how it was the most ridiculous thing ever. ‘I’ve had a moment, let me just take a photograph.’ It is ridiculous. But it stuck in my head – that’s how I am organising my life right now. Work, work, work and then a moment of fun. So to perpetuate the ridiculousness, here is a collection of my ‘moments’.

Korean BBQ + haircuts from Korean Hipsters in the Cambridge Heath converted railway arches at Hurwendecki.
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Dinner by Heston Blumenthal.

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal.

So, I was meant to be heading back to America tomorrow. But the past three months in London have heralded so many amazing opportunities for my career. A few days before I was scheduled to leave, another opportunity popped up which just seemed to serendipitous to pass up….. more on this in a month or two, as it becomes more concrete.

Husni and I went out to celebrate everything. Before coming to the UK, I’d been planning on visiting the Fat Duck, Heston Blumenthal’s famous restaurant out in Bray. But recently, the World’s 50 Best restaurant list was released for 2014. Fat Duck came in at No. 47, and just revealed that they are packing up and moving to Melbourne, only a few months after I made that exact journey in reverse.

But Dinner By Heston, the Mandarin Oriental-housed restaurant in Knightsbridge, ranked in at No. 5. Surprisingly, I’ve never been to a Top Ten restaurant. Even Blue Hill at Stone Barns (which I personally would have placed in the top ten) was much further down the list. Dinner By Heston is perhaps his most interesting restaurant, as the recipes are all adapted from historic British cookbooks or manuscripts, making your dining experience a trip through 16th-19th Century British cooking. The menu lists the decade each recipe comes from, and the back of the menu provides a list of cookbook sources for the recipes. So move aside Fat Duck, Dinner by Heston is calling.
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