Acorn @ Demuths

In May this year I won a competition with Demuths and Meat Free Monday for a meal for 2 in Demuths restaurant and a day at the vegetarian cookery school. I was absolutely over the moon as I'd been to Demuths before and loved it and have always, always wanted to go to the cookery school! So Mr Hef and I booked a super cute B&B just outside of Bath (It was called Fern Cottage and run by the nicest couple I have ever met in my life!) and enjoyed a weekend of relaxation and amazing food! Since I won the competition the restaurant has been taken over by it's head chef Richard Buckley and is now called Acorns, but the amazing food and wonderful atmosphere is exactly the same as I remember it and if I didn't live over 100 miles away I would visit this restaurant as much as physically possible! 

Going to a vegetarian meal with Mr Hef is always a joy because he doesn't know which vegetable is which (really!) which keeps me laughing for the whole meal! He also never really knows what to pick, so I usually get to choose for him and (selfishly) pick things that I want so that I can eat them too. So for his starter he had carrot and cashew pate with spelt toast, seasonal leaves and herbs, ginger gastrique and tamari cashews.

I had truffled broccoli with cauliflower pannacotta, pickled Kohl Rabi and a thyme dressing. I definitely preferred my starter, but both of them were absolutely delicious! The cauliflower pannacotta was particularly yummy, with a caramelised top and a soft creamy base it went perfectly with the truffled broccoli.

For the main meal I went for the stuffed courgette flower with smoked Dorset red and ricotta, cannellini beans and chard, in a romesco sauce. I've always wanted to try a stuffed courgette flower, and it definitely didn't disappoint. It was full of flavour, and the courgette flower was litterally oozing with smoked Dorset red and ricotta goodness. So much so that Mr Hef got a bit jealous and wished he'd ordered it.

I also really liked the look of his white onion tatin with heritage carrots, runner beans and greens, rosary goat's cheese mousse and curried emulsion, so we swapped halfway through (which makes me seriously happy, I never get to do that in restaurants!) The tatin was also extremely yummy, half an onion in a delicious pastry case, what's not to like!

By this point I was feeling pretty full, but not too full to miss desert. There's always room for desert, especially if it's chocolate ganache with salted caramel, candied pistachios, raspberries and what can only be described as a chunk of chocolate on the side. I pretty much want to eat anything that has salted carmel involved, so this was the obvious choice. It was as rich and delicious as it looks, the perfect end to the incredible meal and enough to make me need a little lie down afterwards.

Mr Hef went for the vanilla pannacotta with plum gazpacho, seared plums and shortbread, which was equally delicious. Mr Hef particularly liked the short bread on the side, I can also confirm that it was amazing.

The restaurant it's self is so cute and comfortable, it literally looks like someone's front room. If you're ever in the area, I highly recommend giving it a try! 

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Vegan Apple and Blackberry Crumble Muffins

Last week wasn't the best week in Hef history. I lost my domain name to a horrible man who is trying to sell it back to me for a ridiculous price (which is why it's back to its old blogspot name). My car broke down after I told a story about my old car, and how it never broke down and it was only finally defeated by a tree in the road (even then it kept on going, it was just time for me to get a new car). After the car breakage I got home at 3.30am and tried to console myself with a pug cuddle, only to be wee'd on (but I can't really be too upset about that because I still got to cuddle a pug). Then after talking about how I'd never had any problems with my wisdom teeth, I got a wisdom tooth infection, which is pretty much the most painful thing ever (probably). So I was feeling a bit miserable and the only thing that could cheer me up is some good old baking. So that's exactly what I did. It's the time of year where apples and blackberries are literally falling off of the trees. And after picking some blackberries with my mum, I popped to my local community orchard and got some beautiful apples as well. I combined them with vegan muffin mixture and topped with crumble and ended up with these. Pretty, autumnal, fruity muffins.  

What you need for 12 muffins:

For the crumble:

15g vegan margarine

25g plain white flour

20g light brown sugar 

For the muffin

250g apples
100g blackberries

225g plain white flour

200g Billingtons golden caster sugar
2 tsp baking powder
100ml soya milk
100ml vegetable oil
1 large ripe banana squished

1. Start by pre-heating the oven to 200 degrees and lining your muffin tins (I used lakelands parchment lined foil, it's amazing)
2. Then make the crumble topping by sticking all of the ingredients in a bowl and rubbing the butter and flour together to make a light crumb mixture. Pop to one side until needed. 
3. Then peel, core and chop your apples in to little chunks, mix with the black berries in a bowl and pop to one side. 
4. Put all of the other ingredients in to a separate bowl and mix until well combined, then fold the fruit in. 
5. Spoon the mixture in to the cases, filling it all the way to the top. Then sprinkle the crumble mixture over the top. 
6. Pop in to the oven for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown. 
7. Leave to cool (if you can wait) then enjoy! 

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France

Did I ever write about my holiday last year? If I did, I can't find it. Well it started terribly. I moaned and moaned at Mr Hef until he finally said yes to going to France and pretty much booked a little gite to stay in at random, just because I had a good feeling about it. It was the first time Mr Hef had ever driven on the other side of the road and after about an hour, he accidently slipped on to the wrong side of the road and nearly crashed in to a car. Now that is bad enough as it is, but then the lady we nearly crashed in to proceeded to turn her car around and chase us. We were absolutely terrified and decided that the best course of action was to try and loose her by driving down tiny streets. Of course, this crazy French lady was not even a tiny bit put off by that and after about 10 minutes she overtook us, slammed on her breaks and started screaming at us. So after that little drama, we got back on the road and were nearly there, but I couldn't get through to the guy who was supposed to give us the keys. We thought we might not even have a place to stay and started to panic. After sort of finding the place, but still not getting through we went to the shops and started to think of a back up plan. Then, luckily we finally got through (we had the wrong number) and proceeded back to the gite. Only we managed to get totally lost. Luckily the man who was giving us the keys came and found us and we finally got there. And when we did, we seriously could not believe our eyes. It was absolutely beautiful, comfortable and we had a whole pool all to ourselves, the holiday was quite simply perfect. So perfect we booked to go back again this year.  This year was just as amazing as the last and with all of my adventures, it contained some lovely food as well. 

I really enjoy self catering, because I love cooking and when you're on holiday you can take as much time as possible. We ate in most days, but on the days we did go out we went all out. On the third day of our holiday we went to Aubeterre, which is dubbed the prettiest village in France. As as soon as you walk the paths there you can see why. We went to a restaurant called Creperie de la Source and had galettes, which are sort of a crepe meets a pizza. I had one filled with 4 types of cheeses and tomato, it was so delcious and the view from our table on the balcony (pictuted below) was incredible.

We also ate in a beautiful town called Brantome, it's surrounded a large river which you can canoe around (Mr Hef made me last year, we got stuck on a weir, we decided to give it a miss this year).

Once again the views from the resturant are incredible, I can't remember what it's called, but it's right on the river so you can relax and soak up the sights. Both times we've been away, Mr Hef has eaten a lot of vegetarian food (or so he thinks, he sometimes forgets that ham in sandwiches, or peperoni on pizza counts as meat) and then he seems to get an overbearing craving for steak. So he had a steak and chips and I had a warm goats cheese on toast salad.

We were both super-satisfied with our meals and went to a patisserie in the town to buy some tarts. But after a whole week of blue skies and 30 degree heat, the skies opened and I was left running to the car, protecting my box of tarts like it was my only child. Luckily they remained (mostly) intact and tasted amazing.

Since the gite has been refurbished and now has a beautiful new BBQ, we decided to take advantage and cook up a storm one night. I made some yummy garlic butter corn on the cobs, baked sweet potatoes and potato salad for mine and Mr Hef had burgers. This is what self catering is made for!

As we ate in most nights we let ourselves have one really fancy meal out at a restaurant called Le Citronnier. We ate there last year as well and even though we arrived really late, they were really accommodating and had a separate vegetarian menu. To start with I had a whole baked camembert, because when you're in France that is totally acceptable.

There was only one option for the main, which the manager apologised for profusely, but I didn't mind at all because to be honest, that's more option than in some restaurants in France! The main option was a kind of mushroom omlette made with local mushrooms that had some fancy names. If you have read this blog before you will know that I HATE mushrooms, but this was actually really nice. Beautifully presented and it wasn't really affected by my hatred of those brown slimey things.

Next there was cheese, there's not much to say about cheese, but it looked pretty so I added the picture in anyway.

Then there was pudding, delicious, decadent profiterole pudding. It was stunning. We also had some fancy local wine, I don't normally drink, so the one glass I had lead to me falling in the pool when we got home.

The holiday was incredible, I didn't want to go home and I definitely want to go back. If you fancy going you can find the gite here. 

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Vegan Tales from Gwendoline, Part 4

The last full day of our adventure was a great one. One of the things that attracted us to the cabin was that it had a tin bath, which you could fill with water heated by your very own campfire and enjoy a bath by the stream. Pretty idyllic right? Well I woke up at 7am that day and went to collect some sticks, harvested 60 litres of water from the tap which was connected to a spring up in the mountains, (lovely) filled up the kelly kettle (crazy massive green kettle, used to heat loads of water) and started a fire. That doesn't sound that difficult, but believe me, if there's anything to make you appreciate hot water, it was that. I had to carry the water 10 litres at a time from the tap to the kettle, keep the fire going for around 2 hours (which required a lot of sitting in awkward positions and blowing on the flames until I felt dizzy). But it was totally worth it, the bath by the stream was just amazing! I took all of my Lush goodies and just relaxed. It was also a great day because vegan Emma cooked for me all day long. She made me some kind of delightful vegan yoghurt, granola, yummy fruit thing for breakfast. After the bath, I was pretty tired, so I went back to bed and Emma made me Facon and avocado on toast (we always use Redwoods cheatin rashers, they're the best)

After lunch it was time for a stick collecting ramble for some more firewood. The surroundings literally looked like an enchanted forest. 

Then it was back to the cabin and it was vegan Emma's turn to make dinner. She went for one pot cooking too and made an incredible lentil dhal, which she made by chopping up tomatoes, chili, garlic, onion and carrot and cooking them slowly with red lentils, yellow split peas and water, adding more water when needed.

We sat around the campfire and enjoyed our last meal in the cabin. There really is nothing better than toasting yourself by a fire with the sounds of the stream behind you (until it gets dark and then it's really scary).

It really is the perfect getaway. We had no phones, no internet, no nothing. Just ourselves, the outdoors and around 100 magazines. I can't recommend it enough, it's our second time booking with Canopy and Stars and I love it so much, I've already booked my third for in a months time! If you want to book Gwendoline you can find her here. I'll leave you with a picture of the bath... seriously, does it get better that that!

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