Month: February 2017

Pork with fragrant rose rub

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This is a great looking dish that can be made without much fuss, a lot of the items being well suited to pre-preparation. The combination fragrant elements of rose and red peppercorn to classic pairings for pork like sage and mustard works really well, adding another dimension to the already tried and tested. I favour a sous vide for this kind of cooking, especially as pork loin is a supremely challenging thing to cook right if you aren’t able to hold the temperature constant. It is however possible to cook this same dish just frying  the pork loin first or throwing in the oven for 20 mins before applying the rub. Enjoy! Ingredients: (Serves 2) 1 pork loin (around 4-500 g) Broccoli stem 2 medium floury potatoes Dijon mustard Sauce: Red wine, bay leaf, carrot, onion, Madeira, Pedro Jimenez Rub: Dried rose petals, red pepper corns, sage Method: 1. Season the pork loin liberally and place with a knob of butter into a food-safe ziplock bag. Place in the sous vide at 65c/149 f for 1.5 …

Izakaya

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(14/20) Overly extensive menu promises a lot and (expensively) delivers much less.

Seated in a boutique hotel towards the lower end of the once-painfully-hip-now-painfully-expensive Amsterdam neighbourhood of the Pijp, Izakaya serves up small plates of Japanese/South American fusion to tourists and (wealthy) locals, alongside cocktails and live DJs.

Noma

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Strandgade 93 DK-1401 Copenhagen K T: +45 3296 3297 E: noma@noma.dk 2 Michelin stars since 2008 5th – World’s 50 Best Restaurants 9th – Opinionated about Dining (Europe) 1st Visit: Lunch Saturday 4th February 2017 An extraordinary restaurant slightly overwhelmed by its own even more extraordinary reputation. (19/20 with at least 2 points just for being Noma). More of a pilgrimage at this point than a restaurant visit per se, we jumped at a rare opportunity to finally attend one of the most celebrated restaurants in modern history, just two weeks before it will close doors in its current format forever. Of course any visit to Copenhagen offers up an array of world-class eating experiences, and it’s super easy to get to from Amsterdam, so we had already half hedged ourselves against any disappointment. And I talk immediately about disappointment because avoiding it had largely been the reason we never tried to go before, despite numerous foodie trips to Denmark. Such was the almost religious fervour surrounding this particular restaurant and its chef patron Rene …

Azurmendi

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Legina Auzoa, S/N, 48195 Larrabetzu, Bizkaia, Spain +34 94 455 88 66 http://www.azurmendi.biz 3 Michelin stars since 2012 1 in Europe : Opinionated About Dining 16 : World’s 50 Best Restaurants 1st Visit: Lunch Saturday 11th November 2016 As close to perfect as I can ever expect a restaurant to get : 19.75/20 Travelling along the motorway some way between Bilbao and San Sebastiaan, Restaurant Azurmendi appears in the distance, a vision in glass and steel, high up on a hill and jutting out over the Autumnal Basque countryside, looking half greenhouse, half minimalist Hollywood Hills mansion. The restaurant itself hasn’t even been there that long to have soared to the giddy heights of 3 Michelin stars, best restaurant in Europe on the OAD list, 16th on the worlds 50 best list and winner of the 2014 Sustainable Restaurant Prize. Indeed such is the reputation that chef Eneko Atza, trained at Martin Berasategui and Murgaritz, and still early in his 30s, has built in such a short time, that taxi drivers, even if you aren’t on …