THE GOOD, THE LUSH AND THE HAIRY

Those of you who know me will know that I have a little dinner group on Facebook called " What's for dinner tonight Mum?" Most of you will be rolling your eyes at this stage thinking " Yeah we don't half know!  and who gives a crap about what the eating Irons' are having for their tea tonight." but I will make no apologies for this group it's a lot of fun. We aren't going to take over the world there's only a couple of hundred of us in the group, we aren't professional chefs or cooks ( well maybe we think we are when we are let lose in our own kitchens) but we all share a passion for cooking, for ingredients , for cookery programs and for the celebrity chef and it is this last point that I want to blog about.

The celebrity chef has come along way since the days of Fanny Craddock and even Anthony Worral Thompson these days the celebrity chef isn't just a tv personality but someone who is genuinely talented and hard working or has a real passion for local produce or styles of cooking. In our dinner group we all have our favourites , we all have certain chefs who really get on our goat and annoy the hell out of us and we have others who we adore and who can do no wrong whatsoever in our eyes. And so it was with great enthusiasm that we decided to embark on a monthly cookathon challenge whereby we would vote for the celebrity chef who we most admired or who we would feel most challenged by , and on the last Saturday of each month we would cook recipes by that particular chef. It's a great challenge loads of fun you can cook anything at all a starter, a main, a dessert, a cake a snack just so long as it by the particular chef. 

Our first cookathon was in October and it was " The Nigel Slater" cookathon. Now not everyone in the group was a huge fan of Nigel but we all embraced him and got to work planning our recipes, looking through his books, watching his cookery shows and looking up recipes online. On the Saturday I was delighted with the response, everyone who posted their Nigel food pics had made such an effort. So I decided to tweet the man himself with our creations. How delighted we all were that the lovely lovely Mr Slater took the time to respond to each pic and found something delightful and encouraging to say about each one ( not an easy task as some of the dishes looked like a right dog's dinner my own included) but Nigel was charming and kind and we were all thrilled and excited that our efforts had been acknowledged and appreciated. Nigel gained a lot more fans that evening, his cookery books went onto Christmas and birthday lists and we all made a pact never to miss one of his shows I even thought about renaming the group " we bloody love Nigel Slater we do" but I thought maybe a bit stalkerish.

So buoyed up with the success of October's cookathon and also the unexpected but welcome twitter response we decided to chose our chef for November and to chose someone personable who was on twitter who we felt would encourage us and appreciate our efforts. We cast our votes and the most popular choice ( but not unanimous) was The Hairy Bikers. We felt sure these cheeky chappies  would be wowed by our dedication to them and we got to work studying the recipes we would cook. On the night of the cookathon yet again everyone who entered pulled out all the stops they had carefully sourced their ingredients , spent the day prepping and delivered gorgeous plates of food which they lovingly photographed. I tweeted all photos to the Hairy ones and waited, and waited and waited.......... They might be in the toilet I told myself, they might be visiting friends, they might be washing their hair or trimming their beards. Nothing on the Saturday night that's ok I told myself am sure they will get back to us in the next few days but no , they didn't. Not so much as a hashtag, nada, zilch, silence. Surely this couldn't be right Dave and Si are so bouncy so bubbly they love their fans so I quickly assumed there must have been a dreadful accident involving them falling off their motorbikes or getting their long straggly hair caught in some revolving doors but no this was just not the case. The hairy bikers had just decided to snub us I have since decided to defend them a bit telling our members " look guys they are on a diet now so if they looked at our dishes they might fall off the diet wagon and run straight to the nearest pie shop" but the truth is on that Saturday in November our collective love for The Hairy Bikers died a little, their books sharply came off our wish lists, the ones we already owned were relegated to the bottom shelf of the bookcase , were defaced or in my case defaced and then given to the charity shop. We had in short collectively gone off them a bit. We still watched their programs but only to slag them off a bit and compare their cooking unfavourably to lovely lovely Nigel ( did I mention how great we all think he is?) 

In December we decided not to have a cookathon citing Christmas and New year as the reason but deep down we all knew our confidence had been knocked a bit by the Follicley blessed chefs we needed a break , but now we are into January and we are renewed and refreshed and ready , and this coming Saturday 25th we are having the Tom Kerridge cookathon. Big Tom is a very popular choice we all love him we loved his proper pub food program we have all taken to referring to recipes as " proper" and " lush" and if it's really really good " proper proper lush" We have bought blow torches ( just cos Tom said we should) , Chinese steamer baskets ( cos Tom says it's the only way to steam your buns) and cream whipper guns ( because Tom says they are lots of fun and we believe him ,why else does he have such a jolly big grin on his face all the time?)

This Saturday is Tom Kerridge day and we are ready to impress him we are all excited and yes a wee bit apprehensive as in the words of one of our dinner club members " Oh my God I hope he's not an arse I'm not sure I could take it!" 

Sunday Salty Sunday

Sunday in the Eating Irons house is a very turbulent affair with 2 small children who both have a passion for annoying each other as much as possible and fighting over the most inane of objects usually by 10 am myself and the author husband have usually eaten a packet of anadin extra between us and have taken to wearing ear plugs. So when the author mentioned dropping the small annoying people at their grandparents whilst we went out for a spot of lunch I was already sitting in the car honking the horn before he finished his sentence. Getting out alone without our children who we do dearly love of course is a very rare treat so I wanted to chose somewhere on my 2014 restaurant list to eat ( these are all restaurants in Belfast in which I have not yet eaten but are regarded highly) I chose Coppi which is in St Anne's Square nestled between The Mac and another restaurant called Salt.
I have wanted to go for sometime having eaten in both The Barking Dog and Il Pirata which are owned by the same team and enjoyed my experience in both restaurants enormously I felt confident we were in for a treat.

Coppi is what I would describe as an urban rustic Italian restaurant. Confused by that? Well it's décor is urban all tiles, industrial visible pipes, woody floors but the food is rustic Italian with Cichetti which are little tasting plates similar to tapas , Pizzette (small Italian pizzas) and a strong array of main dishes with an Italian theme of slow cooked meats and pasta.

We arrived at 1pm and were the only diners in the restaurant a couple of others arrived shortly afterwards but sadly the restaurant was empty and St Anne's Square had the atmosphere of a ghost town where even the ghosts had given up and gone off in search of a bit of life elsewhere.
Service was quick and friendly we were seated in a cosy booth the hubby was glad he didn't have to sit on one of the less appealing hard wooden chairs to be fair I'm sure the chair was also a bit relieved. Drinks order was quickly taken and whilst a cocktail would have went down very nicely we still had to go collect the boisterous offspring and you need all your wits about you minding those two believe me. So soft drinks it was but wait no Fanta or club orange here oh no It's blood orange san Pellegrino and very nice it was too.

And now to the food to start we ordered the meat board but sadly they did not have it so had to go for the bruschetta board which was utterly delicious. Little crisp breads with a selection of ricotta, tomato and caper , chickpea tapenade and a wonderful refreshing salad it really did hit the spot we also had some squid and some meat croquettes which were utterly divine. Now onto the mains and sadly this is where it all went a bit wrong for me I had ordered the tagliatelle carbonara and on arrival it looked gorgeous who doesn't love fresh pasta and beautiful roasted pancetta the dish however was so very very salty. Yes I am aware before you point it out that that could well be the pancetta but sadly no the pancetta was salty enough for the whole dish but it felt that the chef felt the tagliatelle needed to be cooked in salt and then salted and salted again for luck and that the sauce needed a whole tub of salt added to it. Either his taste buds were on holiday or he had prepared this dish in a salt chamber are you getting this ? This dish was Salty McSalt they could have called it Salt Surprise if I loved Salt this much I would have went to the restaurant opposite!! The hubby faired much better with a goats cheese ravioli dish he ate the lot unsurprisingly quite a bit of mine was left.

And it was going so well up to then we left sharply after that well I was a bit thirsty wasn't I?