Music and rain

I love the Goo Goo Dolls - check them out sometime. The Goo Goo Dolls, Vertical Horizon and Train are all some of my favourite bands at the moment and I love to sing my little heart out! It's especially important on grey miserable bank holidays when you're driving the length of the country and this is what you've got to look out on...

Miss E x

I'm mobile!

I'm now officially a techno geek! I have got an app so now I can blog from my mobile! I'm currently in the car with Mr Ellie somewhere in Oxfordshire. It's probably quite sad how excited I am about my mobile bloggability and how behind the times I am!

Miss E xxx

Afternoon Tea

Today Mr Ellie and I went for a lovely long drive through the moors and ended up in Richmond, one of the loveliest little market towns in North Yorkshire if you ask me. Not least worth a visit for Hutchinsons butchers who roast their own gammon, complete with crackling - £7 gets you a large chunk of meat and Mr Ellie and I will be enjoying gammon and beetroot sandwiches at work this week! Also there is The Emporium - a rabbit warren of a shop, crammed with goodies from antiques to contemporary gifts, many of which have a vintage feel.  We ummed and erred over a rather delightful plant pot holder for the garden but in th end decided it was a bit too pricey for us.  However, I did get a couple of bits for my sister's birthday (but I won't say what, just in case she reads this!!!)

We also decided to stop for a bite to eat and we chose Lily's tearooms as we liked the look of the place - vintage, pastels and quite Cath Kidston-esque inspirations.  They are open for sit-in or takeaway options and even have a little shop in the back where you can buy napkins etc. along the same style as the cafe.

Lily's does a fairly typical menu of jacket potatoes, paninis cakes and some hot meals so we knew we would both get something that we liked.  However, as soon as the menu arrived, our eyes lit up at the promise of an Afternoon Tea - now Mr Ellie and I can't resist an afternoon tea so we ordered two (possibly a little ambitious) and sat back to relax.

The tea came in a large teapot accompanied by lovely pink cups and saucers.  I think it was a Twinings tea and it was beautiful - really nice and strong but not bitter.  My only criticism was that the sugar was in those little stick packets and I think that a bowl of sugar cubes would have been more in keeping with the ambience.  Mr Ellie pointed out that as I don't take sugar in my tea, this was a little bit of unnecessary criticism (as he poured his third sugar into his cup - I swear he drinks sugar flavoured with tea rather than tea with sugar!!).  The teapot was very generous - each of us getting at least 3 cups of tea.

Then came the afternoon tea itself...

I had chosen Yorkshire ham sandwiches and asked for them to come with cucumber instead of tomato and Mr Ellie had tuna mayonnaise (without the cucumber).  My ham was lovely, really good quality and tasty to boot.  I felt that the bread was a little dry but it didn't detract from the taste.  We then scoffed down our lovely cupcakes.  They were vanilla cupcakes, again a little dry but that's often the way with cupcakes, but a good taste and light texture.  Mine had a good quantity of tasty chocolate buttercream and a slice of Terry's chocolate orange for decoration and Mr Ellie's cupcake had lemon buttercream and a white chocolate coin.  The icing was light and fluffy and generously flavoured.  By this time, both of us were feeling a little full but (bravely!) carried on regardless with the scones.  The photo doesn't really do justice to the size of the scones - they were enormous! I had a cherry scone and Mr Ellie a fruit scone.  Both were packed with fruit, were crunchy around the outside and soft in the middle - a real delight.  With them we got strawberry jam and whipped cream (in case we hadn't already had enough calories!) and they were absolutely delicious.  By the time we'd finished, we were stuffed!

The Afternoon Teas were £7.50 each and I think well worth the money - they were very generous, the quality of the food was high and they were served on nice china and in a lovely setting. Overall I'd give Lily's a 4.8 out of 5 - they lost the 0.2 marks for the sugar being in packets and because the teapot was a bit leaky.  However, I'd highly recommend anyone in or visiting Richmond to give Lily's a go, you won't be disappointed!

As an aside, I will be doing some more baking and crafting in the near future and will blog about my adventures.  I've just had my second operation on my wrists so now I should be fixed and ready to go! Between my problematic wrists and being hectic with ferret-related activities recently, I've not had much time for any crafting but hopefully now things will change in that respect.

Miss Ellie xxx

Restaurant critic...moi?

Here it is, finally my first post in...well I don't remember how long...It's not through want of trying mind, I've just been crazy busy with so many things recently that it feels like a lot of other things have taken somewhat of a back seat.  However, I'm finally back and here it comes - hope you enjoy.

For a long while now Mr Ellie and I have been discussing the possibility of me using this blog to review restaurants.  The thing is that I cannot help myself when I'm out, and especially when there is cake involved, but to provide an almost running commentary of the restaurant and the standard of the food.  So Mr Ellie (who I have to add generally joins in with said critique) suggested that we make it a regular feature of the blog.  With that in mind we started to discuss how we would rate various places and in order to make it fair, we decided that we would split restaurants up into different categories and then give them a star rating out of 5.

So, to start off this little culinary mini-adventure, here is my review of the Ahad Tandoori in Gosforth...

We were inspired to go to this quiet and unassuming little Indian restaurant after Mr Ellie saw a review in the Chronicle (http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/entertainment-in-newcastle/restaurants/2012/02/17/review-ahad-tandoori-restaurant-gosforth-72703-30352467/).  I had been to this restaurant a number of years ago with my dad (who is rather partial to the old Indian cuisine) and, whilst I remember the food being really good, I had forgotten about it over the years.  So it was decided, that for our (somewhat belated) Valentine's meal and our (slightly early) '2 and a half year anniversary' (yes I'm still celebrating the half years as well, I'm soft like that!) meal, we would go to the Ahad.

Firstly, a little background on me and Mr Ellie - I have always eaten Indian food.  As I said, my dad is rather partial, so we have been to a number of Indian restaurants over the years and had home-made curry.  I also have a friend who's parents are from Goa and her mam makes the most delicious curries you will ever taste.  Her mam used to love me going round for tea because I'd want to try all the different curries (even the extra specially amazingly burn-your-mouth hot curries that she made for my friend's dad).  Mr Ellie however, told me when we got together that he didn't like Indian food and he didn't like spice....now what a dilemma to put me in!  Anyway, we went to visit my parents for my dad's birthday one year and he wanted (as usual!) to go to an Indian restaurant for his birthday meal.  So Mr Ellie was faced with the prospect of having Indian food, like it or not.....

And he loved it!

I think that the problem is (as with many people), that his first exposure to Indian food was a jar of curry sauce from the supermarket - not exactly what you would call authentic! So to now have far better quality food in a good restaurant, he realised the true delights of Indian cuisine and since then, he and I have had a number of meals at various Indian restaurants. 

I am a creature of habit...to the point where, until very recently, I would have the same meal in the same restaurant every time I went.  However, now, with Mr Ellie wanting to try different things and learn more about Indian cuisine, I found that I too wanted to explore different dishes and I have managed to finally veer away from my 'regular' of biryani and have been trying a range of delightful and different dishes.

So, back to the review...

The Ahad Tandoori is set back from the High Street in Gosforth and is nothing to shout about from the outside, or from the inside if I'm honest. It is decorated in a fairly traditional Anglo-Indian style with fanned white napkins and the obligatory carnation in a vase on each table.  The decor is simple and minimal and there is Indian music playing overhead (although I noted that this later morphed into some sort of strange synthesiser music later on in the evening which was a little strange but hey, you're not there for the music are you eh!?!).  The restaurant is small and was pretty full when we arrived at 7:30, making us glad that we had reserved a table.  We were sat in a fairly quiet corner just next to the kitchen - not usually my favourite place in a restaurant as it can often be noisy and hot - but this was anything but - it was peaceful, a comfortable temperature and we felt like we could really sit back and relax.

Our popadoms arrived fairly quickly after ordering and we dived in with gusto - I had been to boxercise beforehand and was pretty famished having just burnt off about a billion calories!!! - we were not disappointed.  The condiments tray was delicious and housed the standard onion relish, mango chutney, lime pickle and raita.  The raita was clearly home-made and was delicately spiced, creamy and indulgent.  The mango chutney was smooth, sweet and sticky and instantly a firm favourite for me and the onion relish was well balanced with a few herbs mixed through.  Needless to say, the popadoms disappeared pretty quickly.

We waited quite some time for our main course (we had decided against having a starter) but we weren't in any hurry so we didn't mind.  There was a steady stream of food coming out of the kitchen, both for restaurant diners and also the takeaway customers - it is clearly a favourite amongst the at-home diners as well. The waiters were good - there were plenty of them and they seemed well organised and attentive.

When the main course arrived, we both took a minute to stare at the delicious feast before us...truly a lovely array of colour, smell, texture and (we were sure) taste.  I had order the lamb shank nentalia and Mr Ellie the butter chicken.  Alongside that, we had a peshwari and a keema naan, channa massalla, bombay aloo, bhindi bhaji and pilau rice.  It was truly an enormous feast! We tucked in to everything, both wanting to try all the dishes and taste the different flavours in front of us.  And where to start - it was beautiful!

The lamb shank was tender and succulent, falling off the bone in delightful chunks and doused in the most beautifully spiced sauce.  The butter chicken was sweet and creamy and decorated with ground pistachio nuts which provided a lovely colour contrast against the red sauce.  The pilau rice was fragrant with the perfect balance of cardamon and cloves.  Our vegetable dishes were all well balanced with spices and seasoning, full of flavour and, as with the meat dishes, there was more of the main ingredient than sauce (I have a personal hatred of restaurants where you get a bowl full of sauce with a solitary piece of chicken floating around!).  And then there were the naans...smoky from the Tandoor, sweet almond in the peshwari and delicate mince in the keema, soft fluffy bread perfect for mopping up the remaining sauce from the lamb and the chicken!

It was one of the best Indian meals I have had for a very long time - it was really really good.  If I was being ultra-picky and critical (or it could be argued, giving a balanced opinion!) I'd say that the chunks of onion with the lamb were rather big and hard - not a problem for some but Mr Ellie and I are a bit funny when it comes to onion - so a lot of that got left (albeit we mopped up all the sauce around the onion!).  I'd say that the butter chicken was also a little too creamy for me - I am mildly lactose intolerant and so rather sensitive to the amount of cream in dishes.  Mr Ellie thought it was delicious so I think that most people would be fine with the butter chicken.  Essentially, the few criticisms that I can lay at the door of the Ahad, very much come down to personal taste, and that's something that no restaurant can truly cater towards.

The meal cost us just a few pence under £60 which we felt was quite reasonable for the amount of food that we had ordered.  Both of us were drinking diet coke rather than alcohol which would probably have increased the bill slightly. 

The Ahad has been in business for many years now and clearly has a loyal following of devotee customers, both in-house diners and takeaway orders.  As they don't have a website or appear to do much in the way of advertising, clearly their business is based on repeat customers and word-of-mouth - something which I am happy to continue.  I would happily endorse the Ahad as being one of the finest Indian restaurants around.  As a comparison, I'd say that Sachins in Newcastle is nice but everything is a little too spicy for my palate, and Akbars (also in Newcastle) is very different and modern but doesn't necessarily live up to it's hype, relying more on the novelty factor of large naans on hangers rather than being the best.

I'd give the Ahad Tandoori a more than respectable 4.8 stars out of 5 and I'd recommend anyone to go for a meal there.

Enjoy!
Miss Ellie xxx