The other evening some friends and I were invited to a really special dinner party by Neeta, who I had met through Transition Town Totnes. She and her partner have recently moved to the area and are interested in setting up a pop up restaurant which I thought was a fantastic idea. We were her dry-run before she launches the Totnes Thali club in June. What a feast!!!

The Menu for Neeta and Trevor’s Taste of India Dinner:
1) – Thandai, with almond milk, rose water, spices and alphonso mango iced cubes
2) – Bhel Puri Chaat, Indian street food
3) – Green Bell Pepper and Besan Sabji with Ragi (Millet) Roti
4) – Sai Bhaji, spinach, dill and fenugreek curry with laccha paratha
5) – Potatoes and black chickpea curry with Puris
6) – Aromatice Rice with Kerala Egg Curry
7) – Rava Dosa with Sambhar and Cauliflower Poriyal
8) – Pomegranate Raita
9) – Gajar Halwa, spiced carrot pudding
10) – Banana and Mango cardamom Ice Cream

As each element came out we tasted and swooned over the variety of subtle, familiar and new flavours. Neeta told us about street food and the origins of the different dishes. She made everything dairy-free to accomodate myself and Laura’s dairy intolerance and Trevor and Neeta were both wonderful and attentive, generous and gracious hosts. We all left feeling very spoilt!

Neeta is also keen to explore ways to make authentic and delicious Indian food with local ingredients and an emphasis on seasonality which I always think is a wonderful exploration and challenge.

The plan is for Neeta and Trevor to host bi-monthly pop ups with different Indian food themes – if you live in Totnes or South Devon I highly recommend you go!

We had a spectacularly busy and fun time at the School Farm Open Day on Sunday 12th May. From the minute we opened until gone 3pm we were non stop and sold out of absolutely everything we were selling!

On the menu – a selection of wheat flour wraps filled with – roast Sladesdown Farm free-range chicken, organic Riverford chorizo and citrus mayo with School Farm salad leaves, or a trio of dips; carrot humous, British fava bean bissara and roast beetroot humous with the delicious organic salad grown just meters from our stall or Sharpham Rustic cheese and homemade chutney. We were also selling hot wild garlic soup with poppy seeded rolls from Seeds2Bakery, salad boxes with homemade slaw, salad leaves and cous cous, wild nettle and garlic fritatta, chocolate beetroot brownies, soaked Tunisian orange cake and homemade scones with homemade rhubarb jam and Riverford clotted cream. From 11.30am til two, food flew out of our festival gazebo so fast we couldn’t believe it!

The day started sunny then became drizzly but still people came, ate, enjoyed Rebecca Maze playing beautiful music and all the events, tours and activities on offer across School Farm. It really seemed to be a buzzing day of fun, food and laughter! It was an opportunity for people to learn about The Green Funeral Company, Fungi Futures, School Farm Cut Flowers, the CSA and the tannery. Well done everyone who made it happen. Don’t worry if you didn’t make it – I hear rumours of a harvest festival which we’re really keen to do – so watch this space!

I just had the most wonderful week and weekend! After a glorious few days in Cornwall with my parents, I came back to Totnes for a couple of days of cooking for a wedding and birthday on Saturday.

After Hannah had collected the food to take to the clients, I went with friends to East Prawle for a little dance in The Pigs Nose and my first camp of 2013! The next day we woke gratefully to a clear day and beautiful views of the sea and a top notch camp breakfast of local spinach, mushrooms and Devon free-range pork sausages with Cuckoo Farm free-range eggs broken into the mix. Delicious with a hot cuppa and some brisk sea air.

Next on the agenda was the eagerly awaited International Worm Charming Festival. We arrived with plenty of time to wonder around, eat some hog roast and get an idea of what was happening!

We entered (?!) and moved with the procession down the high street, following a morris dance side to the field and located our plot. When instructed to start, we sang, danced and coached the worms out of the ground. All around us people whooped with glee as another worm surfaced. I lost interest after about 20 minutes of cajoling and no worm! My friends were a little more enthusiastic and committed than me though and we ended the competition with one worm!

I returned home to work and after another stint of cooking and delivery of food to a Hen Party, we went to Bantham beach for a BBQ with friends to watch the sun set.

What a great way to start the summer! May it be long, sunny and sociable!

Twice a year The Kitchen Table likes to go out for staff dinner – for inspiration, downtime catch up, and for the glory of being cooked for. We choose a local restaurant that’s doing something interesting and spend a lovely evening not talking about work and tasting great flavours created by inspiring chefs.

Our most recent jaunt was to the Treby Arms. Some friends of ours had been and highly recommended it – the chef had won Masterchef: The Professionals 2012 and the bistro pub with a difference has quite a name for itself in the area.

Nestled in the village of Sparkwell, between Totnes and Plymouth, The Treby Arms is a lovely old pub with a tasteful and comfortable interior. We were placed within sight of the kitchen so watched as each dish came out, matching it with the menu and finding the decision harder with each passing plate.

I had for my starter a local crab salad with delicately poached eel and an incredibly flavoursome crab mayo. Hannah had pork scratching flavoured popcorn! in her black pudding starter. We were  both pleasantly astounded at the combination of flavours, textures and ideas and they all worked really well together – not to mention how colourful and beautiful the plate looked!!

For my main I had Devon squab pigeon with red cabbage puree (divine!!) game fritter, roast baby parsnips and wild mushrooms which was also absolutely delicious. Again, the flavours and textures were wonderful. Hannah had local fish with a locally foraged nettle homemade pesto crumb and we shared blanched and flash-fried greens which included nettles, green beans and purple sprouting broccoli!

To finish, as I am dairy intolerant, I could only have a trio of sorbet’s but it had tropical fruit salsa, berry puree and violet flavour popping candy – so what could have been a very simple dessert was pretty, tasty and refreshing after the richness of my main,. Hannah had cardamom panacotta.

The service was really great – the staff were aware of our interest in the food and gave us a thorough run down of what we were eating. They were sensitive to my dairy allergy and helped me choose my dinner and were friendly and efficient and made the evening really easy and comfortable!

I feel like I just wrote a restaurant review – but I’m still reeling at how great all the food was and I’m also now a little obsessed with nettles!

Can’t wait for our next outing! We love eating other people’s cooking – seeing how different styles can be used to make local food interesting and delicious.

The other evening I helped the wonderfully creative Toni of Feral Kitchen to host a pop up in her lovely home in Dartington. Hannah and a few of our friends were guests and I helped prepare and serve the unique, tasteful and feral menu.

Under Toni’s instruction, myself and the other two helpers seperated various unfamilar leaves – some to go in the salad, some to be deep fried in local beer batter (!) and others to go into the slow cooked casseroles.

I sampled all the dishes and they were all interesting and flavoursome – I loved trying the new, unfamiliar flavours and combinations – the slow cooked Devon venison and spelt was especially lovely and I really enjoyed the deep fried locally foraged Alexanders.

Recently we made a delicious array of interesting, Asian-inspired finger buffet bites. Hannah made some spectacular looking Bristish seaweed filled egg rolls, marinated locally made tofu and British cucumber rounds and Devon free-range chicken kebabs with a satay sauce which I made with Dartmoor Chilli Farm chilli jam.

I made Sushi rolls filled with crunchy British and local veg and fresh spring rolls also filled with crunchy local and Britsh veg with a soy and Dartmoor Chilli Farm chilli dipping sauce.

John, from PuppetCraft was very happy! “Thank you SO MUCH for the lovely looking and WONDERFUL tasting spread that you gave us … you rose to the challenge of researching and putting together an East-Asian style meal that was a real WOW!…and catered perfectly for the do and do-not eat needs of 8 hungry artists who were spending the day getting a taste of China.”

We had a great time at the Transition Town Totnes‘ REconomy group’s Local Entrepreneur forum March 2013 as participants and caterers.

For the lunch, we made over a hundred sandwiches, a variety of delicious cakes (the recipe’s for which have been requested from us by a few participants!) and two seasonal dips with crudite’s.

After lunch, Pete Yeo introduced and facilitated a ‘Community of Dragons’ where the audience was encouraged to pledge help to four presenting entrepreneurs. Our friends at School Farm CSA and Mosaic, the business with whom we are collaboratively putting on a Pop Up shop and cafe this week, were among the particpants. We watched with admiration and pride as they pitched their business idea to the audience and asked for financial assistance, voluntary time and donations. We were all totally astounded at the generosity with which people gave – a painting was donated to the Pop Up by a local artist, money was invested in the CSA, people offered their time to both organisations and they raised a great deal of awareness as well as funds for their projects!

All in all, I left the Civic Hall that day feeling proud and positive! Our friends had achieved great things and the community had united to support them! How wonderful.

Today, Mosaic’s Tim and Laura, myself and a few friends spent several hours making origami cranes, stuck stickers on bags, inputted stock into the computer software, drank copious amounts of tea and did some planning for the layout of the shop this week! We had great fun and achieved lots! We can’t wait – Fri 12th and Sat 13th April will see the Totnes Methodist Church hall transformed from a community multi-use space to a wonderful, colourful, creative and interesting shop and cafe. See you there!!

I just wanted to post some pictures from my afternoon’s dig today at the beautiful School Farm Community Supported Agriculture land in Dartington in the snow and sunshine (it’s April, right??). The Kitchen Table will be buying delicious veg from this wonderful local enterprise as soon as harvest begins!

These are the ‘before’ pictures.

I’m looking forward to visiting again, hopefully helping out where I can. But of course, I can’t wait for all that delicious and interesting, heritage and tasty veg this summer!