Time for something completely different. Ish. Different-ish. Different dish?

Bobotie and Burgers

It has been a while since I’ve covered food but I’m back with a few recent gems. We had a trip down to Falmouth only to be faced with Pendennis castle overrun by pirates.

Summer traffic made traversing Cornwall a bit of a nightmare, but it did give us an opportunity to stop off in Truro for dinner. A quick search brought up a few potential options, but one sounded particularly enticing. Chorley’s specialises in South African-inspired dishes, including wors (spicy sausage), bobotie (spiced mince), burgers, and barbecue in general. It’s meat heavy, but I enjoyed my wors topped with bobotie and curry mayonnaise. The onion rings were also excellent.

Drinks and Fireworks

It’s not the only food-based shenanigans that were had during the last couple of weeks. During our outing at the British Fireworks Championships (held in our very own Plymouth), we managed a drink at Seco Lounge in Royal William Yard before heading over to the view point just below Devil’s Point. The firework display was stunning as usual and Royal William Yard tends not to get as overwhelmed as the Hoe.

I fitted in a trip to Prime Café Bar on Ebrington Street inbetween projects, and had a flat white and pistachio cannoli which was excellent. The vibe is very barista-y but really nice. There are a few places we will be returning to on Ebrington soon, including the home of excellent sliders, Tilt.

Gyoza?

In a desperate attempt to avoid a trip to Tesco, I searched the cupboards and found a gyoza kit from School of Wok. Kit is a strong word as it consisted of a bag of flour and sachets of marinade and dipping sauce. The most important ingredient? Empowerment! It sounds like a joke, but it’s only half of one. Kits are a great way of showing you that you can do it yourself. You don’t need pre-made wrappers or filling. A few extra minutes gets you something really nice that you did yourself.

I added boiling water to the flour and brought the dough together into a ball which was covered and left to rest for a while. The recipe suggested five minutes, but I found one toddler bedtime was also an acceptable timeframe. Then I rolled the dough out as thin as I could on a lightly floured surface and cut rounds from it using an 8cm scone cutter. The scraps were re-rolled and cut out again. Repeat until almost all of the dough is used.

The filling can be any combination of meat and veg you like. In this case I pressured cooked some chicken thigh fillets from frozen then finely chopped them, and added them to shredded chard and beetroot leaves. It was all I had but it worked really nicely. Each wrapper needs about a teaspoon of filling (it’s easy to overfill though so under egg it a bit) then they can be folded and crimped. Then comes the dunk in boiling water for four minutes, for which I got to use my impossibly huge spider strainer. The optional step is to crisp them up in the frying pan for a minute or two which gives them a little more bite. It’s well worth making them yourself and it’s less work than I had anticipated.

Hot Press – Hot = Press (Airing Cupboard – Airing = ?)

I was determined that this weekend would be the end of the hot press project. Or at the very least I would break the back of it. The last you may have seen it was down to bare floorboards with several missing shelving battens. I spent some time and instead of re-instating the old fixed shelves, I made some modular ones which can be reconfigured and moved as necessary. They’re a little rough and ready but will be more than adequate for our purposes. Losing the hot water cylinder has provided us with significantly more space and we weren’t using the cupboard to dry clothes any way, so a heat source isn’t a necessity.

I took some of the spare flooring from other projects and did my best to fit it into the space, with liberal application of a jigsaw along the way. All that is left is to fit some skirting to neaten up the edges then the project is complete. I am quite happy with the finished result given how far it has come.