Dinner at the Manor goes Al-Fresco

This weekend the Manor went al-fresco for our River Cafe themed event. This book really appealed to us as we both love Italian flavours and we thought it would be fitting for a summer event. However, the days leading up were fraught with worry due to the unpredictable weather we’ve been having. Would it be a wash out, or would British summertime actually make an appearance? As luck would have it, it did!

Whilst there was a lot of advance prep involved for this one, many of the elements required fast cooking there and then on the night – added pressure, that we were quite worried about! In addition to this Nick, who normally takes the helm behind the camera unfortunately had to work, so I had to double up on this role too! (He did help post edit though!)

Rachel Khoo Inspired Afternoon Tea

She’s sweet, she’s twee and we’re hosting an afternoon tea in honour of Rachel Khoo. Like us, she runs a restaurant from home and has learnt to make things work in a domestic kitchen.

We’ve trawled her Little Paris Kitchen cookbook for some French treats to cook up in September  Whilst this is a private event, we wanted to share the menu with you!

The Manor is available for private parties for a minimum of 8 guests – get in touch to discuss your requirements!

Oooh Betty!

This week I treated myself to a days cookery lesson at Betty’s Cookery School in Harrogate. Attending cookery schools is one of my favourite things to do. You have a fantastic excuse to spend the whole day in a top of the range kitchen plus you get to challenge yourself with new ingredients and equipment and most importantly learn new skills.

I turned 30 last year and so created a ’30 things to do…’ list. This included making a croquembouche, which was my main draw to Betty’s Patisserie Perfection course. I’m a competent cook and a keen baker but not always the most delicate of chefs so I was hoping this course would help me up my game. Upon booking a message of doom informed me that this was one of Betty’s most advanced courses and that I was expected to be of an appropriate skill level – eek!

Betty’s Cookery School

Vote for what we cook!

In October Dinner at the Manor will celebrate our one year in supperclubbing and what a year it’s been. We have cooked some fabulous stuff over the past 12 months to 174 guests and we’d thought we’d give you the chance vote for what we cook at our birthday supperclub on Saturday 6 October 2012, which will be a special celebration dinner for us! We will, of course, we will be keeping some surprises for the night…

Pick one choice from each of the courses below to control the menu for the night, which will become part of our traditional 6 course extravaganza!!

Spice up your life!

We had an olympic weekend in more ways than one these past few days. Starting with an amazing trip to the Olympic stadium to witness Yorkshire’s Jessica Ennis start her heptathlon campaign we then had to rush back up north to Manchester to get our fill of Kashmir cuisine at the Spice Club. Completely overtaken with olympic fever we had not anticipated that we would actually be dining on the eve of Team GB’s biggest athletics win – oops! Fear not, the food provided more than made up for our withdrawal symptoms from the games!

The Spice Club is one of Manchester’s first ever supperclubs and is about to celebrate its second birthday. It’s something of an enigma having been featured on shows such as the Hairy Bikers.

A trip to Liverpool

Whilst Dan was banged up in the Clink last weekend, I took a trip to Liverpool to take in the sights and flavours of a former capital of culture! I’ve visited the city a number of times, never had the chance to really take in what it has to offer – here are a few highlights about the city on the Mersey…