Introduction to Lebanese food

Lebanon is a tiny little country tucked away at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, yet its food is the haute cuisine of the Arabic world - a culinary tradition that combines Mediterranean ingredients with exotic spices such as cinnamon and cumin.

At the heart of Lebanese cuisine is the mezze, lots of little dishes of hot and cold food, traditionally eaten with lots of Lebanese khoubz - very thin round flat bread - and
washed down with arak. Everyone knows of humous, vine leaves, and tabbouleh,
but less familiar maybe are lamb kibbeh, smokey baba ganoush, and spicy red pepper mahammara. Mezze are for sharing, so gather round some friends and order as many as you can!

In Lebanese restaurants, main courses are often simply grilled meats or fried fish. But at home dishes will traditionally use lots of seasonal vegetables and less meat. Favourites include Lubya - a flavoursome tomato based stew of beans and lamb and Me’hershi - all kinds of vegetables, vine leaves, cabbage, courgettes, aubergines, stuffed with rice and a little minced meat flavoured with cinnamon and mint.

Lebanese bread makes excellent wraps, and the most popular are crispy fried falafel or tasty lamb or chicken shawarma. To end your meal you have baklawas, tiny filo pastries stuffed with nuts and syrup, washed down with a pot of fragrant cardamon spiced coffee served in little cups.

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Editorial by: Leda Tarabay, Three Ways Lebanese Restaurant

Intimate restaurant in Norwich city centre, serving the fresh tastes of authentic Lebanese cuisine.

Tel: 01603 622814 Email: TWLR@Tesco.net www.threewaysrestaurant.com

Going Local

With a growing trend towards local and seasonal produce, it’s great to see more and more restaurants gearing their menus towards Norfolk grown food.

Social enterprise We Love Local Food works with a broad range of Norfolk and Suffolk food ad drink producers to deliver locally sourced groceries to homes – and owner Paul Campbell is delighted to see a focus on local food spread among restaurants too.

“There are so many great reasons to buy local food,” he says. “As well as significantly reducing food miles, buying local supports the excellent producers we have here in Norfolk and keeps money in the local economy. Perhaps most importantly for diners and chefs alike, local also means fresh.”

“Some restaurants have been sourcing locally for years – but it’s clear to see that more and more are joining in,” says Mr Campbell. Luckily for us, Norfolk’s farmers and food producers are renowned for quality – so going local doesn’t involve any compromise of flavour.

With an increasing number of diners choosing locally sourced meals, a lot of chefs are getting more and more creative with seasonal vegetables and fruit. It’s worth keeping an eye out for the new dishes on the menu and specials boards will also often have the freshest local meals.

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Editorial by: Local Food Direct

Offering the very best produce from Norfolk and Suffolk.

Tel: 01508 535890 Email: customerservice@welovelocalfood.co.uk www.welovelocalfood.co.uk

The Great British Picnic

This summer the inevitable draw of the outdoors will entice most of us into the wild and woolly Norfolk countryside or our unspoilt, rugged beaches, and some of us will even be brave enough to attempt to eat there. If you’re tenacious enough to circumvent the farmers gates, wasps and curious cattle, then the reward needs to be a feast .We’ve all moved on from soggy cucumber sandwiches, warm tea in flasks and shop-bought sausage rolls, so utilise some local-heroes and produce a picnic to remember.

If you want a really good pork pie they’re a real faff to make-thankfully Brays Cottage up in Holt make a nationally recognised, award-winning pie. With a porcine-pedigree of using roaming happy pigs that are kept in their family groups, and no commercial fillers like that weird jelly stuff you often get, and you can get them online at www.perfectpie.co.uk. At Dunston Hall we sell these in our bar with home-made piccalilli and they’re a real hit, especially when combined with decent, local, real ale.

No alfresco bash is complete without the quiche, the more retro the better-You can’t beat quiche Lorraine, and the supermarket stuff is not even a distant relative, more a sorry imitation.

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Editorial by: Paul Murfitt, De Vere Dunston Hall Hotel

An imposing red brick country house hotel set in 150 acres of beautiful wooded Norfolk parkland.

Tel: 01508 473820 Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/dunston_hall

Glorious Summer Evenings

After a good six months of trading through our first Winter and Spring, Summer is now fast approaching and the kitchen team are producing an abundance of ideas for lighter bites to entice our guests. Does the thought of sitting outside with a glass of wine or maybe a refreshing, lightly sparkling presse and a meal which celebrates our local produce sound appealing? Then The Parson Woodforde is the place to be.

Brushcette are always popular, one of our favourites has a Broad Bean, Cherry Tomato and Feta topping – here is how to create your own!

Firstly, blanch broad beans & peas, blitz down to a puree with garlic and thyme oil to help reach a velvety smooth consistency. Then mix diced feta with cherry tomatoes, red onion and chilli, and add seasoning to taste.

Place this on a disc of potato and rosemary bread, glaze in the oven and serve with some baby leaf salad. To make this extra special drizzle with some local rapeseed oil, balsamic reduction and a few pea shoots. Perfect!

We hope you enjoy this dish and why not come to see what else we have to offer. We are proud of our roots ..... let us bring you a taste of Norfolk.

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Editorial by: The Parson Woodforde, Weston Longville

Join us for breakfast, lunch or dinner in our newly refurbished traditional country pub with rooms.

Tel: 01603 881675 Email: info@theparsonwoodforde.com www.theparsonwoodforde.com

Catering for all

I’ve been intolerant to lactose since I was born, extremely so when I was four, resulting in a stint in hospital on drips (as quite brilliantly I also became allergic to sucrose too). My brother too couldn’t ‘do’ dairy so my mother cooked all our food from scratch to ensure that we weren’t eating what disagreed with us.

Now over the years the intolerance has got better but also I suppose you get used to having a certain amount of IBS when you eat something you shouldn’t. I have in recent years started thinking more closely about what I’m putting in my body and have been looking into various diets, allergies and other information to do with food. What

I have found is that the amount of people in the UK alone that have intolerance to certain foods is far higher than we think, most people not even realising that they have a problem and putting their bloated bellies or dicky tummies down to ‘something they’ve eaten’ but not once presuming that they need to avoid that food.

We’re slowly switching on to this fact, the Coeliac Society and other groups bringing attention to it and also some food establishments now catering for various dietary issues. But so many eateries still fail to cater for an ever-expanding group of people that would like to see their diets catered for on the main menus.

Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that you could cater for every dietary issue but I do think that a great deal of eateries could do more. For example including one or more gluten free meals on the menu, perhaps a vegan one? You probably already have a meal choice that fits the bill but don’t tell your customers this. With a small amount of planning it’s not too difficult to produce gluten or dairy free meals and then take it step by step with other options.

Franks Bar is a great example; due to one of the owner’s relatives being diagnosed as a coeliac they have since created a separate gluten free menu as they have realised how difficult it is to find places to eat where this is on offer. I can testify that their gluten free chocolate cake is to die for! Once people with allergies find a place that caters for them they stick with it as they are few and far between. The Cockerel in North Walsham also lists a good range of gluten free items on it’s menu.

It wasn’t so long ago that vegetarian food used to be tricky to find yet now all menus have at least one option on there and on many occasions I have been out with carnivorous friends who have chosen to go veggy just because it sounds delicious.

The commonest offenders are dairy and gluten. It’s actually pretty easy to create dishes that cater for both, in fact you probably already have a handful on your menu that fits the bill or just needs a slight tweak. Add a little symbol on your menu to show that you’re on the ball and I can tell you that those of us with intolerances or allergies will thank you for it.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to issues that people have with their food and we plan to shed a little light on this over the coming months in the hope that more Norfolk eateries become passionate about catering for those with dietary issues.

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Editorial by: Sophie Jewry, EatoutNorfolk.co.uk

Tel: 01362 853424 Email: sophie@eatoutnorfolk.co.uk www. eatoutnorfolk.co.uk

Traditional Family Values

Our philosophy at Market Bistro in King’s Lynn is “simply good food” , we use the very best ingredients that Norfolk has to offer to make good British food. We strongly believe that families should make time to eat good food together and our children’s menu reflects this and includes such things as organic rare breed pork belly and mash, homemade roast squash ravioli and creamy rice pudding with homemade jam. Our main menu changes monthly to ensure that we make the very best out of seasonal and local produce and we have a daily changing specials board.

A new survey has revealed that one in ten families never sit down to an evening

meal together. The study of 3,000 adults also revealed two thirds of kids yearns for a return to the traditional family dinnertime. And four out of ten children have even asked their mum or

dad to have more evening meals as a family.

To encourage families to eat together more often children under 10 eat free off our children’s menu Monday to Friday before 7.30pm, booking is essential.

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Editorial by: Lucy Golding, Market Bistro

We cook and serve food that we love to eat, in a relaxed and informal environment.

Tel: 01553 771483 Email: info@marketbistro.co.uk www.marketbistro.co.uk

Summer time is BBQ time

I have a hunch that we are going to have a hot summer in Norfolk this summer so it’s time to scrub down your BBQ bars and head down to your local butcher for your spare ribs, burgers, sausages and rump steak.

We have got a cunning plan this year and are running a popup restaurant in the courtyard of our house in West Bilney. We are going to cook alfresco on our two BBQ’s, our authentic tandoori oven and maybe our hot smoker.

We did one in June in conjunction with Harry Cory- Wright of Smokesilver. He had got a posse of people together for “an evening with moths” in the woods at Holkham with kind permission from the estate. Harry supplied an old army surplus dining shelter and I cooked a curry in my supremely heavy tandoor, which we used to have when we owned fishes in Burnham Market. The only form of transport could put this machine in was my 1971 VW camper. It did the job perfectly and it was a pleasure to be able to cook for the locals of North Norfolk again.

We are very lucky in Norfolk to have such a wonder number of very good butchers who often have their own abattoir and local herd. I remember when we moved up to Norfolk over nine years ago from London and buying a chicken from Howells in Burnham Market. It tasted of chicken, not the bland nameless vac-packed stuff off the supermarket shelves.

Our butcher, Howards’ in Gayton displays what breed of beef he has slaughtered that week and from which farm it came from. We, as customers, are becoming far more concerned with good provenance and your butcher will be able to give you an honest answer that a supermarket just can’t.

Top tip though: Meat is expensive so why not try

an alternative cut. I have bought some skirt, which comes from right down below the sirloin near the belly. No need to slow cook this joint or mince it. Season your skirt steak well with salt and pepper and cook it very quickly on the hottest part of the BBQ for about 1-2 minutes each side and then let it rest for about 5 minutes before offering to your guests. It is spectacularly full-flavoured, juicy and sort of chewy almost without being at all tough. The best thing is it costs way less than sirloin.

I was having a chat with a BBQing dad a few weeks ago who has built himself the coolest BBQ out of and old oil drum and a disused pram. He was asking why the charcoal doesn’t seem to get quite hot enough and doesn’t last too long. The answer is use a really good quality charcoal. It is usually labeled restaurant charcoal and comes in big bag from your local coal merchant or if you have a cash and carry card, Bookers is a good place to get it. I use it in my tandoor, but on a BBQ it really kicks out the heat and will stay hot for about four hours.

Happy cooking!

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Editorial by: Owsley-Brown Food Co.

An events catering and catering school company based in West Bilney, near King’s Lynn.

Conkers, Common Road, West Bilney, King’s Lynn PE32 1JX
Tel: 01553 840190 Email: info@owsley-brown.com www.owsley-brown.com

I have filmed many parties and weddings, and the food can be done so differently!

As little as 10 years ago the typical wedding breakfast would be a starter, main course and dessert, usually involving prawns, chicken and chocolate cake. Not anymore! More couples are now opting for the slightly kooky! One wedding this year had sausage and mash as their main course with an ice cream van for the dessert. Fish and chips in newspaper is also becoming popular, with handmade personalised cupcakes for afters. Even parties are getting in with the theme of basic food turned posh. Back in the spring, the party I was filming was in full swing, when all of a sudden, waiting staff appeared from no where with mini hamburgers and hotdogs in buns, pots of baked beans, bowls of chips and pots of ketchup.

Last November I filmed a bonfire party, but instead of the tomato soup and burgers, the host’s served a 3 course meal, not sitting down either - cleverly they used lots of staff with huge banqueting platters to serve whilst everyone was standing outside, still able to enjoy the fireworks. Wherever you are holding your wedding or party, discuss the unusual food options with your caterers. Your guests will be talking about it for months after.


Editorial by: Kaandaro Video
Karen @ Kaandaro Video, able to film any event in East Anglia.
Tel: 07518 807515 www.kaandaroeventvideography.co.uk