VOTE FOR DOTTY DISHES IN THE COSMOPOLITAN BLOG AWARDS

I started Dotty Dishes over a year ago now, back in January 2012. It was largely a result of friends telling me I should have a food blog after cooking them meals and baking treats for the office, and after some thought I decided it was a good idea. I loved cooking, regularly ate and drank in restaurants and bars and loved collecting cool retro kitchenware. I knew straight away these were the elements I wanted my blog to feature.

Dotty Dishes has now been extended to include Travel, Foodie News, Cocktail Recipes and my Favourite Foodie Things and i would be lying if I said it didn’t keep me busy! I love every minute of it though and enjoy writing about food so much.

Since I began my blog, I have eaten some amazing meals, drank in some great bars, visited some lovely hotels, sampled some delicious food products and collected more retro kitchenware. Dotty Dishes has been an adventure and can’t wait for all the experiences yet to come!

The Cosmopolitan Blog Awards have a Best Food Blog category and I would love you to vote for Dotty Dishes if you have the time and enjoy my blog as much as I do. You can vote here -

FOODIE NEWS: BONNIE GULL OPENS COCKTAIL DECK

Since opening as a seafood shack in East London, Bonnie Gull has fast become a trusted source for the finest fresh seafood in the capital since opening in Fitzrovia in October 2012. Now it is getting ready for their first summer trading, with the opening of the cocktail deck.

The daily changing menu at Bonnie Gull features seafood from every coast around the British Isles including Isle of Man Queenies, Inverawe Smoked Salmon and Cornish Hake. It also houses a raw bar, offering a fine selection of fresh shellfish which you can track the origins of on Bonnie Gull’s daily catch map.

All of this of course is best served with a fresh cocktail and Bonnie Gull mixologists have mastered the perfect drinks to match executive chef Luke Robinson’s menus. Cocktails include ‘First Thyme for Everything’ which fuses Portobello Road Gin, Dry Vermouth, Thyme Liqueur and fresh Thyme and the ‘Bonnie Mary’, a twist on a classic, which is made with house-made clamato Juice, Element 29 Vodka and topped with a fresh oyster. Wine connoisseurs who like to bring their own bottle are also welcomed to stop by on Shellfish Sundays; when Bonnie Gull operates a BYO (no corkage) policy.

Sounds wonderful - now where is that sunshine, London?!

For more information visit www.bonniegull.com.

BOTTLEGREEN & GREY GOOSE EVENT - 2ND MAY 2013

A couple of weeks ago I was invited along to The Belgraves Hotel for an event with Bottlegreen and Grey Goose. The event was organised to celebrate Bottlegreen elderflower cordial and show the versatility of elderflower in both food and drink.

Chef Sophie Michell, who is taking over as Head Chef at The Belgraves Hotel from Mark Hix, created canapés for the evening using elderflower including elderflower and lemon marinated salmon with homemade soda bread, artichoke and asparagus tart with elderflower hollandaise and elderflower jellies.

We drank two different cocktails - an Elderflower gin and tonic and a Le Fizz which included vodka, lime, soda and elderflower. They were both absolutely delicious.

It was a lovely evening spent on the roof terrace of The Belgraves Hotel and it has inspired us to make our own elderflower and gin cocktails so look out for a recipe soon!

For more information on Bottlegreen visit http://www.bottlegreendrinks.com/.

FOODIE NEWS: QUEEN OF HOXTON SUMMER ROOFTOP OPENS THIS WEEKEND

Since Spring is upon us, the Queen of Hoxton Rooftop will transform from its winter WigWamBam creation into a summer solace from this weekend.

It will be hosting events this summer including a series of rooftop headphone disco parties with well-known guest DJs such as Norman Jay and Jazzie B and the debut of the morning to late afternoon Hot Tub Tropicana which is set to be kitted out with loungers, a paddling pool and a hot tub.

The hugely successful Rooftop Film Club is also back this month with a packed programme of cult classics. This ultimate outdoor film experience is enjoyed under the stars with supplied blankets and headphones and you need to be quick as some films are already sold out. For film info check here - http://www.rooftopfilmclub.com/. Top Gun would have been my favourite to go to!

Food and drink menus have been revamped to feature the best BBQ food and cocktails. Food offerings include pulled pork buns slathered in whisky BBQ sauce and roasted red pepper, feta and pesto burgers and featured cocktails include a refreshing selection of alcoholic Iced Tea’s and a pink grapefruit Paloma frozen cocktail. There will also be a bespoke rum coke float stall with specially sourced delicious traditional ice cream (available at lunchtimes and weekends only) and keep an eye out for the announcement of their National Picnic Week celebration in June, which will feature gourmet hampers and vintage stalls with a typically British theme.

As our British weather is particularly unpredictable, they have also decided to introduce a semi-permanent cover this year which can be popped up if it rains!

For more information visit http://www.queenofhoxton.com/rooftop/.

THE FORAGERS AT DEAD DOLLS CLUB - REVIEW - 26TH APRIL 2013

A few weeks back I was asked to review The Foragers menu which is currently at Dead Dolls Club every Wednesday to Sunday (it was previously at London Field’s Brewery) and I was really excited to try it out as I’d heard great things.

The Foragers are a team of hunters and gatherers who use ingredients that they forage themselves from the countryside of Hertfordshire. Their food venture started at their wild food pub at The Verulam Arms in St. Albans and is now featuring at The Dead Dolls Club, where we went to review. The Foragers also run Mobile Kitchens around the country and organise regular foraging walks, wild food banquets, demonstrations, expeditions and tastings.

When we arrived at The Dead DollsbClub on a Friday night it was peaceful and quiet but soon filled up with people ready to celebrate the weekend. I loved the decor inside which featured old wooden tables with vintage wooden benches and chairs and hand painted parisien country style walls.

We were given a jug of water with jam jar glasses while we perused the cocktail menu and I decided to try The Gardener (£9) and my friend opted for a Lady of the Manor (also £9). The Gardener was wonderfully refreshing with the gin, lime and cucumber and the ginger ale gave it a nice spicy kick. The Lady of the Manor was sweet and fruity with the peach purée and apple juice and had a nice amount of fizz from the prosecco.

While we were drinking our cocktails we were greeted by Debbie from The Foragers who was absolutely lovely and talked us through the menu and recommended her favourite dishes to try. The idea at The Foragers is to try a selection of small dishes and the menu is based around sharing, which I always enjoy doing on a night out with friends.

We took a while deciding what to pick as everything sounded so nice but eventually decided on Mutton Ham with brown buttered leeks, hazelnuts, hedge garlic and wholegrain mustard dressing (£7), Salmon Ceviche marinated in sloe gin & herbs served with crunchy fennel with a coriander, lemon, orange & stonecrop dressing (£6.50), Spinach, Goat’s Cheese & Beetroot Quiche served with watercress (£6.50), Sea Purslane fish cake served with cauliflower purée & baby spinach leaves (£7) and lastly, wild herb seasoned broccoli (£3).

It all came presented really well and we got stuck in straight away. I had never tried mutton lamb before, and had to ask Debbie what it actually was, but it came sliced really thinly and tasted a bit like Spanish charcuterie with a smoky taste, almost like chorizo, and the leeks and mustard dressing worked really well with it. The salmon ceviche was wonderfully fresh and the fennel added a nice crunch to the dish with the citrus fruits enhancing the flavour of the fish.

Whilst I am normally not the biggest fan of quiche (I often find them far to eggy and tasteless), the spinach, goat’s cheese and Beetroot quiche was my favourite dish that we tried and it was just delicious. The pastry was wonderfully buttery and the cheese, spinach and beetroot worked amazingly well together, with the extra beetroot on top adding further sweetness. It was so moorish that I could have eaten another one!

The sea purslane fish cake had a very different texture to a normal fish cake and was almost omelette like but was really tasty. The cauliflower purée was the hit of the dish however and it had a really amazing depth of flavour and I couldn’t get enough of it! I am a huge fan of broccoli and it is definitely my favourite vegetable so it was great to try wild broccoli. It was quite different to normal everyday supermarket broccoli and had more of a stringy and crunchy texture and a lot more flavour.

For dessert we decided to try The Foragers cheese board (£10) and this is quite a bold statement for Dotty Dishes to make, but it was one of the best cheeseboards I have had in a restaurant for a very long time. It came on a wooden board with a great selection of cheeses - a vintage Gouda, Brie, Goat’s Cheese, Cornish Yarg, Smoked Cheddar and a cheese I can’t remember the name of but will be known as the ‘stinky feet cheese’ - along with picked wild vegetables, crusty bread and chutney.

The Gouda was my favourite and tasted absolutely delicious and I could have easily munched my way through a whole block! All of the cheeses were incredibly moorish apart from the one I have named ‘stinky feet cheese’, which was extremely pungent and literally made me gag when I tried it! We had to push that poor cheese off the cheese board as it was cramping the style of the other amazing cheeses! The cheeses worked well with the crunchy fresh bread and the sweetness of the chutney and vinegary tanginess of the pickled vegetables.

We had a lovely evening at the Dead Dolls Club and I really enjoyed trying lots of different food, knowing that the majority of it had been foraged from the countryside. I would definitely recommend a visit and The Foragers have lots of other events coming up this summer including:

The Skyroom - The Foragers this month teamed up with Platterform and The Gin Shed to run a monthly residency every Saturday throughout May at The Skyroom rooftop venue in London Bridge. Platterform have developed a wonderful cocktail menu to match The Foragers 3 course foraged menu. There is only one Saturday left next weekend so get in quick! http://the-foragers.com/theskyroom/

Midnight Apothecary at the Brunel Museum - every Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon The Foragers will be serving street food along side the Midnight Apothecary’s cocktail garden on the rooftop of the Brunel Museum. http://the-foragers.com/midnightapothecary/

The Foragers expeditions - every last Wednesday of the month The Foragers organise foraging walks in Hertfordshire near their wild food pub in St. Albans with a sublime feast after the walk incorporating the foraged goods found into the meal. http://the-foragers.com/hunt-with-us/

Dotty Dishes was a guest of The Foragers and Dead Dolls Club.

Dead Dolls Club, 428 Kingsland Road, London, E8 4AA.

http://the-foragers.com/