Displaying items by tag: Aldeburgh

Good luck to cheese and provisions specialist Slate in Aldeburgh who have been shortlisted for Best Specialist Cheese Shop in the Guild of Fine Food's annual Shop of the Year awards. Two more rounds of judging to go including the dreaded mystery shopper. Results will be announced on 20th September.

A spectacular new area at Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival, bringing together all the elements from the sky, sea and land - things that all go to make up our wonderful 'Wild Suffolk'. Find me in the Food Writers Corner, telling you exactly what I think about the modern forager.

Took dad for a drive to see his favourite east coast fisherman - Dean Fryer - one of Rick Steins food heroes. All fishermen are heroes in our minds - up at 2am seven days a week in good weather, with no guarantee of any income. We bought sea bass, rock eel, a lobster and some small dover sole. Within twelve hours of being caught the sea bass were on the barbecue.

• welcome cocktails - pisco sours
• the preparation
• ingredients and equipment
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• Martin with his new book
• the mixture is ready
• tasting the results
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And what fun it was! On Aldeburgh beach, in a fishermans hut complete with Page Three wallpaper out the back, we had a Pisco Sour - a Peruvian cocktail with enough of a kick to make me give Johny Cakes half of mine because I was driving. Then the masterclass where we made sea bass ceviche under the expert guidance of Martin Morales, whose book we are giving away in our competition and who is our latest Dish of the Day. Then a four course dinner, with another cocktail and shared at two big tables with all the other pop-up diners, including two Peruvian ladies who live in Ipswich and Stowmarket and gave me an even better insight into the food and culture, and who might even be persuaded to do their own food thing in the future.

Things like this don't happen every day in Suffolk - we were very lucky foodies.

Yes, she took a group of children to the brasserie in the White Lion in Aldeburgh, where Jason cooks, which I thought just proves my theory about East Suffolk and London, and then I found out that she was born in Ipswich!

Visited Thorpeness Golf Club and hotel for the magazine and surprised to find that anyone can go there to eat. All day bar snacks sound nice (Omelette Arnold Bennett among other things...) but I had celeriac as a vegetable with my pork - first time ever served this in a year of writing about Suffolk restaurants.  Chocolate tart with hazelnut pastry was fab - buttery and dark.

drove to Aldeburgh and spent £25 I haven't got at one of the fish sheds. Bought two large dressed crabs, one for me - one for dad; a skate wing, a piece of cod, prawns and mussels for a fish soup that I cooked when I got home. Not very much money really for one of the most dangerous jobs there is - out at sea.

Also bought two types of pears and some apples from the side of the road in Coddenham.

After lunch we walk along the seafront and buy one of these fat beauties straight out of the sea.  The whole cod was £14, cut into eight huge steaks by the fisherman and with another fish head thrown in for soup.