8th Birthday Menu, inspired by Dishoom

No doubt the cookbook of the moment is the wonderful Dishoom “From Bombay with Love” and given Leeds hasn’t managed to bag a Dishoom as yet, we decided to celebrate our 8th year of supperclubbing in style and bring a little bit of Bombay to Leeds.

Who’d have thought our little idea to create a supper club in west Leeds would see us still cooking away! We reckon we’re probably served up almost 10,000 plates of food in that time which is just bonkers!

So here’s our celebratory menu, we hope you like it!

A Taste of India

Back at the beginning of the month we hosted our first Afternoon Tea in a very long while and we were very much looking forward to rolling our sleeves up and baking. As usual we had a Manor theme to the afternoon’s proceedings, and this time we used Chetna Makan’s Cardamon Trail as inspiration, giving everything an Indian twist.

Our guests arrived to our usual welcome cocktail, this time a spicy, sour, ginger punch – whilst they settled down, got to know each other and awaited their savouries.

The savouries were a delightful mix of fragrant, spiced and hot dishes. There were chilli chicken flatbreads – homemade mini chappatis topped with marinated chicken, spinach, pink picked onions and cooling mint yoghurt. alongside these were aubergine and onion tarts – puff pastry tarts of tomato, caramelised onion, roasted aubergine and fiery coriander chutney. 

This fiery chutney also accompanied Dan’s magnificent paneer pie, which was a ton of paneer bound in a yummy masala sauce and wrapped in crispy puff pastry. The final savouries were little potato cups filled with a mung daal. This was a tiny morsel that packed a punch!

After a bit of respite we moved onto an array of delicious sweets, starting off with our classic buttermilk scones accompanied with cardamom clotted cream and homemade jumbleberry jam.

Next up were some zesty black sesame and lime cakes, little sponges packed with lime and black sesame and then topped with a lime icing for an extra hit! In contrast to this there were also some little choux buns filled with mango and praline and topped with a chocolate glaze –  a different yet delicious combination.

That wasn’t the end of the sweets – there were three more delectable delights!

Dan made small versions of Chetna’s almond, rose and honey cakes. These are a bit like a friand but Dan spiced his with fennel, cinnamon and cardamom. Chetna fills hers with cream but Dan doused his in a light buttercream, for extra naughtiness. Also on offer was a saffron sponge full of crunchy almonds and fresh cream. Saffron can be a challenging flavour for some people but it really worked in this very sweet and luxurious cake slice. Finally little mango lassi possets were a great palate cleanser as well as a pretty addition to the table.

This was a brilliant, fun afternoon with a lovely mix of old and new faces round the table. What with all of the lunches and evening events we’ve had recently it was great to get baking again.

Next month comes our 5th birthday event! Gosh, where does time go? We’re looking forward to celebrating with great guests, Korean food and Mikkeller beer!

 

September 2016 Menu – Indian Afternoon Tea

In just under a week we’ll once again be welcoming a lovely bunch of guests to the Manor. This month’s event is an Indian afternoon tea and we will be using the wonderful book The Cardamom Trail by Chetna Makan (GBBO contestant, apt given we’re in the middle of this year’s show).

We’ll be serving up an array of baked delights, all with a spiced twist. Do let us know what you think.

Bundobust!

What do you get when two of your favourite drinky / foodie establishments get together? A frikkin amazing lovechild that’s what! Yes, it’s finally here, Bundobust, the much anticipated mash up of Bradford born establishment the Sparrow and Prashad.

Craft beer? Tick. Indian street food? Tick. One of our new favourite Leeds drinking holes? Tick! We were invited to a sneaky peek of Bundobust prior to it’s official opening and it didn’t disappoint!

With a quirky, eclectic interior – reclaimed doors decorate the walls, stuffed rice bags for cushions and oh so hot right now low slung, exposed cable lighting, we wandered over to the bar to check out the very impressive ale choices. Twelve on tap no less, from brewers such as Northern Monk, Kirkstall, and Magic Rock. Plus, yes, get this, a dedicated Mikkeller tap!! The brewery I fell in love with whilst in Copenhagen can now find it’s place regularly in my belly.

Obviously Dan and I chose the Mikkeller Green Gold to start off with and it didn’t disappoint. An American IPA, this smacks you with hops and isn’t sorry about it. My kind of beer!

We settled down in anticipation to try the tasty morsels on the menu. First up was the Spice and Rice. A beautifully spiced mung bean daal, warm and comforting served atop steamed rice. Gobbled up in seconds, we turned our attentions to the Behl Puri, a street food snack consisting of puffed rice, and tomatoes spiked with a spicy sour tamarind sauce. Delicious!

Our second poison of the evening was Magic Rock’s Cannonball, one my my favourite beers and 7.4% to boot! Always a good thing. We had a quick chat with Mark, co-owner of Bundosbust, about the food, which will range from about £3 -£6 (I think!), ordering a few dishes per person tapas style. Anyone who has eaten at Prashad before will know that their offerings are delicious (Pethis!? YES PLEASE!) so I cannot wait to go and sample everything!!

All in all, this is a great bar. A brilliant selection of beers and beautiful, tasty food. Tasty vegetarian food, which in this zeitgeist of the burger is a wonderful breath of fresh air. Upon publishing this post, Bundobust will have been open now for about a week. If you haven’t already made it down there already, then you really should, You won’t forget it. Now pass me another Mikkeller!!

Chai Pannacotta Recipe

As promised here is the recipe for the chai pannacotta that went down so well at our Indian Odyssey supperclub a few weeks back. Rick’s book is not that great for puds, but we’ll let him off as it’s fab for savoury! Anyway with a little bit of an experiment and using masala chai as inspiration I soon came up with this little beauty.  I had to have a play around with the gelatine to get the right set. I served them in little terracotta pots and I wanted the right level of luscious wobble and not something that was set hard like rubber! I do love a creamy decadent pannacotta and wouldn’t normally mess around with additional flavours. However I think the ginger and the spices really gave it a comforting, earthy depth. The natural yoghurt seems a minor ingredient but do include it as it creates a subtle sharpness to cut through the naughty sweet cream. Hope you enjoy!

Ingredients for 4 pannacottas:

• 300ml double cream
• thumb sixed piece of fresh root ginger (bruised)
• Half a stick of cinnamon
• 6 cardamom pods
• 1 chai teabag
• 100g caster sugar
• 125ml whole fat milk
• 1 x tablespoon natural yoghurt
• 1.5 – 2 leaves of gelatine (I used ones that were about 2g each)

In a pan heat your cream to a simmer and then take off the heat. Now add the cinnamon, ginger, cardamom and chai tea bag and leave to infuse for 30 minutes. Now strain the spices out of the cream. Put the cream back into a pan with the sugar and heat through to dissolve the sugar. Now whisk in the milk and yoghurt. Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for about 5 minutes (I found 1.5 leaves gave a lovely soft and creamy set). Whisk the softened gelatine into the creamy mix. At this stage I strained the whole mixture again to remove any stubborn bits of spice, or lumps of yoghurt and gelatine not fully combined, it means your mix will be lovely, light and creamy. Pour it into your desired dishes/ moulds and chill for a minimum of two hours. Serve with fresh fruit and shortbread!

The last supper?!…

After much practice and grinding of spices our Indian Odyssey supperclub, inspired by Rich Stein’s beautiful book from last year, was finally upon us this weekend. We’re always nervous doing Indian themed events. I’ve no idea why, given that we were doing Peruvian and Lebanese only the other month. I think it’s because there are so many people out there doing Indian food well and because I’ve never been to India, I feel a bit paranoid that we’ll not be authentic. Having said that there are a lot of people out there doing bad Indian food, full of ghee and poor spicing. Anyway we loved having a play around with Rick’s recipes and getting to know true regional Indian food that goes beyond the British take away classics. His recipes have proved to be fresh and exciting, not heavy and greasy.

April Menu – Dinner at the Manor’s Indian Odyssey

Coming up next weekend is our final event before we take our hiatus from events at the Manor! We’ve been engrossed in Rick Stein’s India for the past month and recipe testing non stop to create a menu which we hope will introduce some of our guests to the delights of regional Indian cuisine.

We have spice grinders at the ready and can’t wait to serve up this tasty grub! We’d love to know what you think.

New Date – Rick Stein Indian Inspired Feast

This event is now fully booked.

We’ve been inundated with requests about new dates, so we’ve decided to add on another date to our final event at the Manor before we close over the summer. (Although we’ll be making some exciting announcements about Dinner Not at the Manor soon!)

We’re now hosting another Rick Stein’s India event on Friday 11th April.

Expect bold flavours and regional delights taken from one of our favourite books of 2013. £30pp gets you 6 courses and complimentary welcome drink.

For our booking terms and conditions please click here.

This event is now fully booked

Rick Stein’s India

12th April 2014 – This event is now sold out

We loved watching Rick Stein’s travels around India in his quest to find the perfect curry and his discovery of regional dishes – so much so we had to hold an event around this wonderful book.

April seems a long way off but we want to bring some springtime spice and alchemy to the Manor! Expect big flavours and some surprises!

Tickets for this event are £30pp for 6 courses and a welcome drink on arrival. For our booking terms and conditions please click here.

This event is now sold out

A Right Curry On!

Our Indian summer event came to the Manor the other weekend, or should I say ‘Monsoon summer’ as the day was filled with torrential rain one minute and then glorious sunshine the next! We used our favourite Indian cookery books for this supperclub. Prashad was the inspiration for the veggie street food elements and Madhar Jaffrey’s Curry Bible the instructor for the British curry classics.

This event was one of our family style servings and so once guests had arrived and were seated we started to bring out the onslaught of food. The welcome drink was a ‘Bollywood’ spice, an unusual concoction of orange juice and vodka shaken over ice with the seeds and pith of many green chillis. The chillis are then sieved out and the drink topped up with soda water and given a few drops of grenadine for sweetness and colour. It had a definite spicy tingle to it, which was warming and pleasant, rather than being overpowering.