Terre a Terre - Part III

My fellow blogging friend Kip & I decided to make the most of a midweek day off together and headed to Terre a Terre to sample their Great Growers Menu.

I get quite excited when Terre a Terre have one of these seasonal menu's as it's usually a cheaper way to eat at the restaurant (3 courses for £15) and you get to eat delicious, beautifully presented seasonal food.

To start we ordered Pulborough's Asparagus Army...

...described as a broad bean and thyme espresso with samphire, linseed flowery leaf relish and fried asparagus soldiers I wasn't entirely sure what we were going to be getting. I was very overexcited when I saw the beautifully presented plate, the little cup of soup, battered asparagus and little pile of samphire looked delicious. I'd never tried samphire before but I'd always wanted to after seeing it on almost every episode of Masterchef. It was delicious and I'll definitely be looking out for it when it's in season next year. The soup was seriously amazing, it was creamy and delicious and made me love broad beans even more, I loved having the little deep fried soldiers to dip in it and the lemon went with them perfectly.

Our main of choice (well, not exactly choice as it was the only vegan option!) was Lettuce and Lovage.

Now I'm not an enormous lettuce fan but this was pretty good, I enjoyed the little pea and parsley cakes and the baby potatoes were delicious, I'm a big fan of pea shoots so that was an exciting unexpected addition to the meal.

As usual I was excited about the dessert. Raspberry Rumble - Raspberry frangipane tartine served with raspberry sorbet.

This wasn't the biggest dessert I've ever eaten but it was SO SO good. The little almond tart was crispy on the outside & soft and perfect on the inside, the sorbet was perfectly tart and they went together beautifully.

Obviously it's taken me so long to blog about this that they're no longer serving this menu but don't let that stop you going there, their a la carte menu is amazing and the Terre a Tapas menu looks great - I'll hopefully be trying that asap!

Next time I'll finally be starting to blog about our Honeymoon trip, starting in Gent.

InSpiral Lounge

Yet again I feel like I should be apologising for being a terrible blogger, I can't believe I haven't posted since June. I'm sorry! As always I'm going to use the I've been busy excuse, I had friends to stay, our computer broke, my husband & I went on our honeymoon and then when I got back I quit my job to focus on setting up my business Operation Icing. I'll write about that properly when I get the website up & running but the general idea is that I'll be making money baking cake! Currently you can buy my cupcakes at the Add The Colour Cafe on North Road.

Anyway this blog isn't all about me, it's about food I've eaten, so...

At the end of June some fellow PPK friends and I met up at InSpiral Lounge in Camden to talk shit and eat food, this is something we do a lot.

I'd been there before but only for Ice Cream and I'd wanted to try their lasagna for ages...

... I definitely wasn't disappointed. For one it was huge, I could hardly even make a dent in my side dishes, and two, it was delicious. The topping was a really creamy bechamel sauce and it was filled with corn pasta, loads of sauce and Mediterranean vegetables.

I love lasagna but I'm always too overwhelmed by the many different parts of a lasagna recipe to ever attempt to make my own. Until today that is, this picture made me crave lasagna so much that I'm making the Veganomicon spinach lasagna for dinner. I've already made the tofu ricotta & the pine nut cream, all I need to do now is make the marinara sauce, steam the spinach and throw the whole thing together...I can't believe I've been scared of making lasagna for so long, it really isn't as complicated as it may seem!

InSpiral Lounge make amazing desserts, I bake a lot of cake which means I'm a bit fussy but I genuinely think this chocolate mousse cake is one of the best thing's I've ever eaten. I'll definitely be trying to recreate it at home as soon as I have the time.

The cake was perfectly soft & moist and the mousse was light and fluffy - yum! I also couldn't resist having a scoop of 'the best ice cream ever' as I refer to it, on the side. This mint choc chip ice cream is the creamiest most delicious thing ever, it's raw, soy free, cashew based, agave sweetened and amazing.

If you get the chance to head to Camden definitely make time for InSpiral Lounge, it's well worth the visit.

My last few post's have been very London based so next time I'll be back in Brighton posting about Terre a Terre's great grower's menu.