GastroGeekiness

As it is summer, though not always apparent,  I have decided to create a delicious, satisfying summer friendly meal of salmon fishcakes. The best thing about these fish cakes is that they are really affordable, quick and ridiculously simple to make. They're perfect for eating with a nice fresh salad and a tall glass of your favourite chilled beverage sat outside enjoying the sunshine. Right sales patter over, now down to the yummy nitty gritty... This recipe will create 6 large fishcakes  The photo above shows two on a plate but one, accompanied with a salad, was more than enough to fill a hungry person. So this recipe could easily fill 5-6 people (depending on how greedy they get) but don't worry they're just as delicious the next day cold as part of lunch. The amounts listed are a rough estimate, I'll give as close as I can but it's up to you what ratio your fishcakes will have. Ingredients:  Large tin of pink salmon...

I just have to tell you about the gorgeous place I discovered on Monday. I was meeting a friend in the centre of Manchester for a good catch up and she suggested we visit a place called Home Sweet Home . Sadly I will admit I had never heard of this little gem and I was intrigued to see what they had to offer. When I walked in I was greeted by a member of staff at the bar as if I were an old friend (major brownie points from me) and was immediately made to feel welcome. As a person who worked in retail for almost 9 years customer service is a big thing for me and to be greeted in such a way I already knew this was going to be a winner. I scouted around the Labyrinthine bar looking for my friend, for every turn you made another little private nook and spacious cranny was discovered. At first glance it may look like a single shop front space but I urge you to go and explore, it's more spacious than I imagined.  I refer to Home Sweet Home ...

Procrastination is, for me, a well honed skill. Though not meaning to a few weeks have now passed and I have not completed a post. I have indeed been writing them but have not got round to actually completing one. I've even started a recipe and ideas journal and talking photos of everything food related for future blogs! Sadly though my well exercised procrastination muscle has had a thorough workout. Life got in the way and every spare minute I've had has been taken up by doing everything but blogging and for that I am sorry. So I am here throwing myself upon you mercy and begging of your forgiveness. Am I forgiven? Yes? Good, phew! I've got so many things I want to share with you that I'm resisting posting the lot right here and now, but no, I will have to show a little restraint (for once). But not too much. I intend to post a quick blog as soon as I've finished this one. Also as a way to spur myself on, and deny my procrastination gene satisfaction, I...

I have a love/hate relationship with my kitchen. I love nothing more than spending the day pretending I'm a domestic goddess the likes of which would put Nigella to shame but I have a confession to make... I am a terribly messy cook. Far from having a gleaming kitchen at the end of an intense cooking session it more resembles the aftermath of world war three. I have been able to tame my Delia like tendencies of using every single bowl I own, but tidiness seems to have eluded me. I know, I am ashamed. I feel like a fraud! Try as I might I have yet to crack the ability to be a tidy cook and if I were ever to win the lottery I would employ a tidier to follow me around as I cooked so as to achieve a gleaming kitchen come the end of my cooking. Until then I will have to  be content with being messy and untidy. Though, I have noticed taking pictures of my food as I'm cooking for upcoming blogs forces me to be a little tidier... Ha! Maybe this is the key? If you have any...

In my garden I am lucky enough to have an abundance of rhubarb. So after picking some stalks, rather than make your bog standard rhubarb crumble (not that there is anything wrong with that), I thought I'd change it up and add some delicious loquats. A few years ago I'd never heard of loquats until my local green grocers suddenly produced them. My cousin who had grown up in Zimbabwe became very excited when she saw them and bought a bag full. When handed one to eat I was presented with a small fruit that slightly resembled an apricot. It has soft flesh and a very slight fur on the skin. When you bite into it you find 5 or so glistening dark brown stones reminiscent of a lychee stone. with each surrounded in a papery membrane. I cannot accurately describe its flavour as it is totally unique. It is soft like a ripe peach or nectarine but can range from syrup sweet to teeth achingly sour. If anyone has ever tasted a sharron fruit/perssimon  you will know how unique its...

In writing all my ideas down in a list for future blogs and recipe ideas I have discovered a problem that I had not occurred to me before; How do I wright down the weights and measurements for my recipes? My Mother and my Grandma taught my how to cook from a very young age. One of my earliest memories with my Grandma is standing on the wooden step in her kitchen watching her make her incredible rhubarb and ginger jam whilst I also stuck the labels onto the awaiting jars. With my mother it has to be using her old brass scales and iron weights to weigh out the butter, sugar and flour for the sponge butterfly cakes we were going to make. In both these instances they and I would ALWAYS weigh in pounds and ounces (or old money as we call it) and to me it made perfect sense. However, when I started to take an interest in cookery books and learnt about weights and measures at school I was learning the metric system (new money) and using grams which, as that was how scho...

I may have only written one blog but I've already got so many ideas for blogs buzzing around in my mind so I thought I'd start now.  I'd like to tell you about a really important part of my life. It's not the typical thing you're probably thinking but to me it is very significant. This thing is Gastroclub .  I stumbled across Gastroclub about 18 months ago via a person I follow on twitter. I observed a ream of spectacular pictures he posted of magnificent food; including squirrel parcels, a gargantuan 13 bird spit roast and a trifle served in a martini glass (I've never had trifle that fancy) and decide I just had to find out what event he was at. After pestering (with a fair amount of badgering too) he gave up his secret and revealed that he was at the new even called gastroclub. It turned out that it was the first event of its kind and more were to be planned, this lit a spark of excitement that has not yet diminished ...

Well this is first blog post for GastoGeekiness and I suppose the first post is always the one where we get all the introducing bit done so you get to know me a little and what exactly this blog is going to be about. So, here we go; First, I don't profess to be any sort of great wordsmith and I will be the first to say my spelling is something to be desired (so please excuse any errors you see) but this blog, I hope, will show a sense of passion... of that I have in droves. For this blog will be dedicated to my love of food, cooking, baking, ingredients, Gastroclub and occasionally my internal ramblings that can wander into strange, random but hopefully fun places. So, the excuses for typos have been written and a brief explanation of the blogs purpose has too. Now about me... My name is Stephanie, you can call me Steph or anything else you wish, as long as it isn't too vicious. When people used to ask me 'what I did' I usually replied that my occupation...