Hello Autumn

October is here! I definitely felt a autumnal buzz in the air this morning when I woke up. I always quite like the start of a new month, like they’re time for a mini fresh start and I’d been willing on the 1st October.

I’ve always been more of a winter lover anyway but more than ever this year I’m pleased to see the back of summer. It’s harboured a lot of negative feelings for me and some less than positive life events, namely significant unhappiness at work leading to my anxiety exacerbating; a bout of suspected pneumonia which left me bed bound and terrifyingly debilitated for a week and eventually taking a break from work altogether. September was a very mixed bag – initially a sense of relief, rest and relaxation whilst I looked after myself and then a couple of wobbly weeks more recently as I’m feeling rather lost and listless being out of the routine of work.

So I’m using the start of a new month and a new season to try and re-focus and be kinder to myself. Coincidentally, today was my first 1:1 support session with a mental health charity in Manchester called Moodswings (admittedly cringing at the name a bit but I can look past that!) Moodswings aren’t counsellors but they provide mentoring and support to help people with mental health issues develop practical plans to aid their recovery. I’m a very practical person and am really hopeful I’ll be feeling more motivated to get back on track with someone independent providing some constructive challenge and holding me to account.

As someone who is pretty in tune with my mental health and my triggers, I’ve also got some low-level niggling worries knowing we’re entering a time of year when I often feel a bit low and my energy levels hit rock bottom. This feels especially hard this year as I struggle with these symptoms even when I’m feeling very resilient, let alone having them pile on with everything else at the moment. I’m making three commitments to try and nip this in the bud and shore up my energy levels:

Cut down my screen time, especially social media and mindless scrolling – I know too much screen time gives me headaches and makes me restless, not to mention all that blue light messing with my circadian rhythm

Eat joyfully and well – I’m very prone to comfort eating to excess when my energy levels are low, to a point where I’m not always nourishing myself properly. I’m trying to be more mindful of this and boost my favourite comfort foods with lots of veg, as well as making time to indulge in enjoying cooking at home. Last night I had a very restful evening making this shepherd’s pie (one of my favourite winter warmers!), taking ages to properly slow cook the pie mix and filling it out with lots of peas, carrots and sweet potato

Move every day – one of my favourite things about taking some time out has been being able to hit the gym and the pool every day. I’m also trying to walk more as it’s a good motivator to get out the house. Facing the gym when it’s pouring with rain outside can be really hard so I’m trying to really relish the high I’m on after a very sweaty, strong workout

I am hoping these are three quite tangible things I can focus on in the next few weeks to build on my progress already and cement some good habits to ward off the winter blues – I’ll keep you posted on my progress!

M

An Ending…and a New Chapter

So I’m back (again), after a year or so’s hiatus. Turns out blogging alongside working full-time, actually baking and cooking everything for the blog, maintaining a social life and binge watching The Wire is pretty difficult…

Since we last met I’ve managed to remove a pretty significant barrier to the work-life-blogging balance: I quit my job (oh #&$*?!)

A bit of context to that…

After 7 years building my career as an NHS manager, I recently made the decision to take a bit of a break from work to prioritise my mental health after my longstanding anxiety and depression reared its’ ugly head again and completely blindsided me. For many, many reasons doing the type of job I did before in the places I worked before isn’t currently comparable with me being mentally and physically healthy and well – so depending on how you look at it I’m on a career break (the official party line) / unemployed (the reality) / having a pre-30 existential crisis (what it really feels like).

Food has always been inexplicably linked with my mental health – from eating it (hey there stress eaters 👋🏻) to confiding in friends over it to finding solace in cooking and baking. I’m fortunate at the moment to be able to put more hours into my domestic goddess in training moonlighting and am using it as a positive and productive distraction from being job-less (for now).

So…in an attempt to clear some space in that jam-packed brain of mine and prevent me spiralling further when left alone with my own thoughts for 10 hours a day, I’m resurrecting Kitchen Bee 🐝 After my first couple of weeks off work, I decided to “go public” about the circumstances around me leaving not only with my colleagues but also on my social media, including LinkedIn and Twitter where a lot of my professional network are. Despite having depression and anxiety for 12 years and it pre-dating my working life, I’ve always been very private about it and managed it on my own terms without needing to involve anyone at work. But I figured I’m not ashamed and it’s ok to feel like this – so I put it out there. It was terrifying at the time, as there’s no going back but the overwhelming kindness I received lifted me up at a dark time and helped me realise I wasn’t alone. I don’t want to become a martyr for the cause, but I also don’t see the need to keep my anxiety and depression a secret any more, especially when there’s an awful lot of us in the club.

There will still be lots of the recipes and foodie outings like before, but interspersed with a few of my rambling thoughts on this new chapter in my life and living with anxiety and depression.

Let’s see how this goes…

M

Cheese Tasting #2: Homage 2 Fromage

Yes, I did go to two cheese tastings in 4 days. And I have absolutely zero regrets!

Following our evening with Cheese Club Mcr and Runaway Brewery (read about that beery event here), I booked tickets for myself and my cheese-mad brother to join Homage 2 Fromage‘s tasting night at Arcane in Manchester as a post-exams treat. I’d seen Homage 2 Fromage pop up on a couple of my Yorkshire based friends’ social media so bought the tickets and didn’t give much more thought as to what to expect.

Firstly, I have to mention what a fantastic venue Arcane is. It’s one of my favourite cocktail bars in Manchester and I’ve been going for “fancy drinks” for the last 18 months or so after finding it on a birthday outing. It’s tucked away underground round the back of upmarket King Street and has the feel of some of the coolest New York bars. The cocktails are superb and really high quality so it seemed rude not to indulge in a couple to wash down the cheese. Most importantly, the staff at Arcane really go the extra mile and know their stuff which makes them stand out from the crowded Manchester bar scene.

Back to the cheese! Nick from Homage 2 Fromage welcomed us a first timers and explained how the night would work. The theme for this event was Great British hard cheese, as a bittersweet nod to Brexit. Most people instantly think of Cheddar (or at a push Red Leicester) when asked to name a British cheese so I was looking forward to expanding my horizons. To our excitement, it was UNLIMITED cheese. Nick did warn us to cut thumb sized chunks of cheese but my argument is that my thumbs are disproportionately small for someone of my size. I do sort of wish I’d heeded his advice in hindsight…

Now for the biggest twist: this is blind cheese tasting! That’s right, you gorge yourself on an anonymous cheesy buffet (the cheeses are numbered 1-8) and accompanying breads, crackers and chutneys (I was a bit obsessed with the carb table to be fair) and only find out what you’ve been eating at the very end. This is aided by the smartly designed Homage 2 Fromage plates which separate out and number your samples.

After a good hour of unlimited cheese and carbs, it was time for the big reveal. Nick talked us through the 8 cheeses we’d tasted, varying from blue cheese to goats cheese and of course, a Cheddar. It was also really interesting to hear about the history of each cheese and a bit about those who make it. For me a personal highlight was Mrs Kirkham’s, which was a dietary staple from Preston Market when we lived there a few years ago. I was also surprised by the Old Winchester, which was intended to be a Gouda but became a hybrid of Gouda, Parmesan and Cheddar. As it’s vegetarian, Nick recommended it as a good alternative to Parmesan.

Our bellies stuffed with cheese, we rolled ourselves up the steps of Arcane and back home, already thinking about the next event.

Check out Homage 2 Fromage here and you can now book for their next event on Spanish and Portuguese cheeses on 25th June.

Cheese Club Mcr x Runaway Brewery

My usual weekend diet consists of the three main food groups: carbs, beer and cheese. I tend to while away most of my Saturday afternoons in one of Manchester’s many brewery taprooms under the railway arches of Victoria or Piccadilly, so the opportunity to introduce cheese into the equation seemed right up my street. Enter Cheese Club Mcr, a fan club and tasting society for connoisseurs of the curd. I was straight on booking our tickets when I saw they would be collaborating with Runaway Brewery to offer a beer and cheese pairing evening in the brewery. Runaway are one of my favourite breweries, producing a really fantastic combination of high quality classics (such as IPAs, stouts and brown ales) and more interesting twists (kaffir lime and Thai chilli wheat beer anyone?). Regular readers of the blog may already be familiar with the Runaway team after we brewed a Women’s Institute Lady Grey IPA to celebrate 100 years of the first British women getting the vote earlier this year.

Bringing the cheese was Pauline, the founder of Cheese Club Mcr and fellow cheese fiend. For this event, the focus was “Best of Brits”. I do tend to default to thinking of cheddar when I think of British cheese (not that there’s anything wrong with a good block of extra mature cheddar!) so I was excited to expand my horizons under Pauline’s tutelage. Each of the five cheeses we tasted was accompanied by delicious crackers and a recommended wine or Runaway beer:

• Cornish Yarg (cow’s cheese wrapped in nettle) with Shandy Panache (a Runaway / Steep Soda Co collaboration)
• Ticklemore (Devonshire goats cheese) with Summer Saison
• Quicke’s Vintage Cheddar with Extra Special Bitter
• St Jude (soft, creamy cow’s cheese) with Black Grape Ale (a Runaway / The Brink collaboration for The Brink’s birthday)
• Burt’s Blue (a Cheshire blue cheese) with Imperial Brown Ale

So a really diverse range of cheeses from across the country, with different sweet and savoury flavours and textures. Pauline shared her wealth of knowledge on each cheese, accompanied by Mark giving an overview of each of the beers. For me, the Quicke’s Vintage Cheddar really stood out, followed by Ticklemore which was a really subtle goats cheese. I was already familiar with a couple of the Runaway beers but a couple were particularly memorable. The Shandy Panache, which is brewed with local Steep Soda Co lemonade, was a really refreshing and light beer – to the point that I was drinking it as a hangover cure the following Saturday lunchtime after a heavy night out…! I was also converted to the ESB (Extra Special Bitter). My other half is a fan of the ESB and often has it when we’re at the brewery, but I always just assumed I wouldn’t like bitters (not going to lie, kind of makes me think of old man pubs…!) However ESB has completely changed my opinion on that so the beer tasting flight was an opportunity to try something I usually wouldn’t look at.

Thanks to Pauline and Mark for hosting a brilliant evening at Runaway and sharing your knowledge and love of cheese and beer. My only regret is I didn’t take the following morning off work!

Keep an eye on Cheese Club Mcr on social media for future events, and definitely check out Runaway Brewery (you can visit their taproom and tour the brewery on Saturdays).

M

Patisserie Masterclass with Chou Choux

One of the best things about being able to bake is that you can whip up most things you love to eat – pies, cakes, cookies, brownies…

Unfortunately, one of my favourite baked goods is eclairs and I have a (slightly irrational) fear of making patisserie. I’ve always thought it was super complicated, mostly because it involves piping and a delicate hand. Thankfully I have a few trusted outlets to get my patisserie fix and one of my favourites locally is Chou Choux, which is ran by the lovely Vanessa. I first met Vanessa at my usual weekend haunt Grub, and her salted caramel eclairs have been my birthday party treat of choice for the past two years. When I saw Vanessa was running a patisserie masterclass at Northern Quarter cafe Porter + Cole, this seemed the perfect opportunity to try and get over my patisserie fears and eat some of my favourite treats in the process.

I hadn’t realised until now that – quite incredibly – Vanessa runs Chou Choux out of her own home kitchen. Because of this we unfortunately weren’t able to make the pastry ourselves and were supplied with the empty eclair and tart shells, but beyond this everything else was down us: making chocolate ganache and Italian meringue, filling eclairs with cream, colouring and shaping the almond paste decorations, and decorating fruit tarts. I was pleasantly surprised by how much we were going to attempt during the class:

• Strawberry eclairs
• Lemon eclairs topped with Italian meringue
• Rum fruit tarts
• Chocolate tarts

This did seem a bit daunting but we were in Vanessa’s very capable hands. She learnt her craft in the world’s patisserie capital, Paris – including studying at the prestigious Cordon Bleu – and her friendly and enthusiastic teaching style coupled with her obvious passion for sharing her skills was really encouraging and made the session very enjoyable.

First up was the strawberry eclairs. We rolled out pink almond paste and used templates to shape to fit the empty eclair shells. Even with the templates, I found this really fiddly – especially as I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I haven’t worked with almond paste before and it’s super sticky! We then had some time to design and make our own decorations with almond paste and cutters. Having prepared our decorations, we moved onto the filling for the eclairs which would be whipped cream, strawberry purée and fresh chopped strawberries. Then came the part I was dreading – piping the filling into the eclair shell through two small holes. Vanessa was on hand to offer tips on controlling the piping bag and striking the fine balance between filling the eclair and not bursting it!

The eclairs were topped with our pink almond paste and decorations. For the second eclair, Vanessa showed us how to make indentations in the almond paste and fill with sesame seeds to replicate a strawberry, which had a very cute end effect.

Next we had to crack on with a bit of actual cooking by preparing the chocolate ganache for our chocolate tarts. This was an absolute dream for me as we were let loose with a good few kilos of Valrhona chocolate which was completely intoxicating! We got some tips on how to create a Bake Off-worthy glossy ganache, including adding the milk and cream mixture to the chocolate in thirds and only ever stirring from the middle in tiny circles. More piping (eeek!) followed to fill our tart cases with the ganache, aiming for a neat, shiny finish.

Back to eclairs next; this time lemon meringue. We filled the eclairs two different ways: one piped from underneath (like the strawberry eclairs) and the second by removing the top of the eclair and packing with the lemon cream. I had the opportunity to help Vanessa prepare the Italian meringue which we would top the eclairs with. I had to measure and heat the sugar and water for the sugar syrup, keeping a close eye on it so it was heated to the optimum 121 degrees. After beating in a stand mixer with egg whites, we topped both eclairs with meringue and, most excitingly, finished off with a blow torch. Thankfully I still have all my hair and both eyebrows!

We finished the session by decorating rum and blueberry tarts with peach purée (more piping practice – well and truly over my fear now!) and fresh fruit. Vanessa explained some secrets to making our tarts Insta-worthy, including the ‘rule of threes’ (the eye is more drawn to things in groups of three, so we’d get a more attractive finish arranging the fruit in threes). The pièce de résistance was some gold foil to give our finished tarts a touch of luxe.

The cost of the class (a bargain £25) covered taking all our delicious bakes home (currently demolishing the lemon meringue eclairs whilst writing this) and a welcome cocktail from our hosts Porter + Cole, who Chou Choux supplies. An added bonus was making this my first trip to Porter + Cole, which I absolutely loved – the staff were so incredibly friendly and I may have stalked their two cute dogs (also named Porter and Cole) for cuddles…

I would recommend Vanessa’s masterclasses to any patisserie lovers, regardless of baking ability – you can get as much or as little help and advice as needed. This was the first class, but keep your eyes peeled on Chou Choux’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for details of the next session. To try some of Chou Choux’s delicious treats, they are regulars at Grub and other markets around Manchester – again, check out social media for where to get your fix!

Hope you have enjoyed reading about this week’s foodie adventure. Have any of you got some great patisserie hints and tips?

M

Cheese and Marmite Sausage Rolls

I’ve had a lot of requests for the recipe for the cheese and Marmite sausage rolls I made over the bank holiday weekend. I spotted these in April’s BBC Good Food magazine as part of a feature on great British classics and couldn’t resist having a go. I haven’t actually attempted sausage rolls before, although my fellow baking pal Heather is known as the Queen of Sausage Rolls at our regular buffet get together so I have someone good to look up to. I’ve adapted the recipe slightly to use flavoured sausages and also added considerably more cheese (of course…!). In hindsight I also could have added more Marmite as the flavour is quite subtle in the final baked product.

Cheese and Marmite Sausage Rolls

Makes about 8 (or 16 snack sized ones)

Ingredients

• 375g ready-made puff pastry
• 2-3 tbsp Marmite (I would use 5 if you want more a Marmite-y hit!)
• 120g extra mature cheddar
• 400g good quality sausages (this is about the same as a pack of 6 premium sausages; I used Asda’s Extra Special cheese and bacon sausages)
• 1 egg, beaten
• Pinch of salt and pepper

Method

1. Roll the pastry out onto a floured worktop into a rectangle approximately A4 sized. Position with the long side facing you (so as if the paper was landscape)
2. Spread the Marmite and 75g of the cheese across the rolled out pastry. Fold the pastry in half like a book, and then in half again. Wrap in cling film and leave to chill in the fridge for 10 minutes
3. Whilst the pastry is chilling, remove the skins from the sausages and separate into a loose mixture in a bowl with a fork. Add the remaining cheese, salt and pepper and a couple of tablespoons of cold water and mix together – the mixture will feel quite sticky
4. Roll out the pastry into a rectangle about 35cm x 30cm and position with the longest side towards you again. Slice horizontally into two long strips
5. Divide the sausage and cheese mix into two and shape into cylinders along the bottom of each strip, leaving a small border at the bottom
6. Roll the top half of the pastry strip over the sausage and cheese mix and press down and seal along the small border you’ve left. Use a fork to crimp and firmly seal the sausage roll
7. You should now have two long sausage rolls. Slice into as many as you wish – I sliced each one into 4 (thus giving me 8 in total) but you may want them smaller or bigger depending on the occasion
8. Place the cut sausage rolls in a lined baking tray and place in the fridge to choose for at least 20 minutes
9. Pre-heat the oven to 180c and beat the egg to prepare the egg wash
10. Once chilled, brush the sausage rolls with the egg wash and bake for 35 minutes until a dark brown
11. Enjoy warm or leave to cool. If you want to heat them up again, heat through at 160c for 7-8 minutes

Hope you enjoy making and eating these as much as I have. A great picnic snack in this (probably limited) warm weather we’re having in the UK!

M

Cookies Two Ways

Cookies are one of my favourite bakes, partly because they are so quick and easy and partly because they don’t require much washing up afterwards!

I recently needed to get my bake on for a couple of gatherings which were mid-week so whipping up cookies seemed a perfect solution to a bake that’s easy, risk-free to transport and keep well.

My all time fail-safe cookie recipe is from Nigella Lawson. These triple chocolate cookies are supposed to have a mint glaze but I tend to leave that off as I can’t stand mint and frankly, you can’t improve on the perfection of these cookies by themselves.

Triple Chocolate Cookies

Makes approximately 16 medium sized cookies (but you can make fewer, bigger ones or more bite size ones if you prefer)

Ingredients

• 100g butter, softened
• 150g light brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 150g plain flour
• 35g cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 100g white chocolate chips
• 100g dark chocolate chips

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180c and line two baking trays with grease proof paper
2. Cream together the softened butter and sugar
3. Add the vanilla extract and beat an egg into the creamed butter and sugar
4. Fold in the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder
5. Mix in both the flavours of chocolate chips
6. Using a tablespoon, dollop tablespoon-sized balls of the cookie dough onto the baking trays, leaving enough space for them to expand as they cook. Don’t worry about being too neat!
7. Bake the cookies for 12 minutes. Don’t make the mistake I did the first time and leave them in for any longer! They will feel very gooey when you take them out but will firm up when left to cool on the baking tray
8. When slightly warm to the touch and firmed up, move to a wire rack to cool
9. These are best eaten slightly warm but keep perfectly well for up to a week in a tin

From my fail safe classic cookie recipe to trying something new! A fantastic friend of mine bought me the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook “Life is Sweet” for Christmas but it’s been on the shelf for a while as I mistakenly thought it was all cakes. I was pleasantly surprised to find it had some indulgent cookie recipes and tried my hand at the peanut butter and marshmallow cookies for an evening with fellow foodie friends. Much like the first time making the Nigella chocolate cookies, I made an error in overbaking them as I was really worried they hadn’t firmed up properly so they came out more like biscuits. Lesson learnt for next time!

I had some spare chocolate chips from the previous recipe so threw them into the recipe.

Peanut Butter and Marshmallow Cookies

Makes about 14 large cookies

Ingredients

• 115g softened butter
• 110g caster sugar
• 100g light brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 125g peanut butter (up to you if you want smooth or crunchy)
• 165g plain flour
• 3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 50g mini marshmallows
• 100g chocolate chips (a flavour of your choosing – I used milk chocolate)

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180c and line two baking trays with greaseproof paper
2. Cream together the softened butter and sugar
3. Mix the egg and peanut butter into the creamed butter and sugar mixture
4. Fold in the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda
5. Finally mix in the marshmallows and chocolate chips – if using an electric mixer do this by hand or the marshmallows end up a bit squashed!
6. Spoon about a tablespoon and a half of the mixture at a time onto the baking trays. These cookies spread a lot more than other recipes because of the marshmallows so leave plenty of space
7. Bake for 11 minutes – they will be VERY loose and look underdone when you take them out the oven but they will firm up on the warm baking sheet
8. Leave to cool completely on the baking sheet

Hope you enjoy both of these easy bakes!

M

Manchester Women’s Institute x Runaway Brewery Lady Grey IPA Collaboration

Craft beer is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you hear Women’s Institute. I certainly wouldn’t have put the two together until little over a year ago when I finally took the leap and joined the Manchester group. My introduction to the WI came through a couple of friends who were already members and I tagged along to the annual dinner and beauty evening at Harvey Nichols of all places. I was genuinely really surprised to see dozens of women who were about my age with similar interests, and not a rendition of Jerusalem in earshot (to be fair we are traditional in that we eat a lot of cake). Since joining, the committee and wider membership continues to challenge stereotypes of what us WI types are like: in the last year we’ve practiced burlesque, marched in Manchester Pride, learnt about women prisoners and toured a brewery (and that’s just a starting point…)

It was the last activity which got us working with the brilliant Runaway Brewery based in Manchester City Centre. I’d really enjoyed their beers out and about so having the opportunity to tour the brewery and have a tasting session was a great evening with my fellow WI-ers. We must have been on our best behaviour because Mark from Runaway and our committee came up with a perhaps unusual (but fun) way to celebrate a very special occasion in 2018. Here in the UK, this year represents the centenary of the first women getting the vote under the Representation of the People Act. Whilst this right only applied to property owning women over 30 (criteria I wouldn’t currently meet!), it was hard fought for and represented a turning point for female involvement in democracy, eventually leading to all women gaining the vote 10 years later. And what better way to toast smashing the patriarchy a vote at the time than with our very own beer?! In true democratic fashion, us members got to vote on our final beer selection. It was a closely fought contest between a rhubarb wheat beer and a Lady Grey tea infused IPA, but good old Lady Grey just edged it.

I was fortunate enough to be able to go along to the brewery for the day with a fabulous team of fellow women from our WI to kick off the brewing process. Personally I really enjoyed learning more about all the work that goes into those hard earned weekend pints and we got stuck in with mashing in, digging out the mash and selecting and measuring the hops. After the hard work was done we undertook the important task of – ahem – “quality assuring” some of Runaway’s other beers in their taproom. You’re welcome guys (and as an aside, their dry Irish stout is absolutely top notch).

Behind the scenes, Shelly and the committee team worked their socks off to plan a huge launch party at Runaway to coincide with the week of International Women’s Day and promote the beer. Ultimately we were going to look pretty daft if we couldn’t shift the stuff! Thankfully we’re pretty decent at organising a piss up in a brewery and Runaway was absolutely heaving all afternoon with WI-ers, friends, family and members of the public queuing up to try pints of Lady Grey on tap and going home with boxes of bottles (which are emblazoned with our pretty awesome tattooed Emmeline Pankhurst inspired logo). The party vibe was really complemented by incredible South American street food from Yakumama and a pop up gin and soda bar from Steep Soda. Perhaps the biggest sign of success was that we’d drunk Runaway dry of Lady Grey IPA before the party was even over…

Now there’s been some erm…interesting…press coverage over the last few weeks about gender-based marketing and companies jumping on the International Women’s Day bandwagon for profit. What made our beer project so exciting is that the concept, design and product itself was developed with and by local women and we mucked in with the brewing itself. Not to mention that 20% of the profits come back into the WI to support our learning and development bursaries for members. I also really strongly feel it’s not necessary a beer “for women” – it’s a beer for all and the amount of men folk downing pints of it at our launch party is testament to that. Most importantly, it wasn’t a gimmick and the final product itself was simply a very good beer (even if I say so myself). I would encourage you to make your own mind up, but you’ll be hard pressed to find any at this rate as the kegs are running dry in bars across Manchester – and even the brewery itself at our launch party!

If you move quick, you can get your mitts on some of the remaining Lady Grey IPA bottles online here. Or keep your eyes peeled around Manchester and beyond for it on tap.

Has this whetted your appetite for joining the WI? Find out more here about our meeting programme, sub-groups and other activities.

M

Cha-ology – Japanese Tea in the Heart of Manchester

I was thrilled last weekend to finally get to one of the most long-awaited food and drink establishments on my local to-do list. I’ve been obsessively perusing Cha-ology’s social media for the last year, pouring over their minimalist layout and bright green matcha. The other half has just returned from a fleeting trip to Japan (unfortunately without the chance to experience a traditional Japanese tea ceremony) and I have been drinking Japanese green teas for a few years now, more recently expanding my tea collection to include matcha. For the uninitiated, matcha is a very finely ground green tea powder which is mixed into a paste with water and topped up with whisked milk or water. Spending an afternoon at Cha-ology, a traditional Japanese teahouse in Ancoats (at the edge of Manchester’s Northern Quarter) seemed a perfect way to while away a lazy afternoon.

First things first, Cha-ology is not your typical coffee shop or tearoom. Please do not visit expecting this. The teahouse is intended to be as authentic as possible and the whole experience (lasting around two hours) is focused on creating a peaceful and respectful environment where you are fully immersed in the art of preparing tea in a traditional Japanese fashion. I would recommend reading the detailed information on their website regarding the rules of the teahouse which I found very clearly set out what we should expect and how we should behave. Go with an open mind and willing to respect and learn from the staff and you will have an enjoyable and memorable experience.

Upon arrival at the teahouse, the staff talked at length about the teas on offer and imparted their wisdom to help us pick tea which would suit our tastes. The other half went for a sencha green tea and I took considerably longer as I deliberated the various matcha options. I had never realised how many there were, but the staff helpfully gave me an overview of each and I eventually opted for the tsuki matcha, as it was recommended as a well balanced beginners tea with sweetness to off-set the unami bitterness associated with matcha. We couldn’t resist selecting from the range of traditional sweets on offer to complement our tea, in the end settling for matcha chocolate gateau.

Teas and sweets chosen, we were shown to our area on the seating platform, which consisted of cushions around a low table. As is traditional, we removed our shoes before taking our seats (so make sure you wear good socks!). Our host then served each of our teas in turn, explaining in detail how they should be prepared and what equipment was being used. I was shown the traditional way to hold a matcha bowl, which surprisingly involved supporting the bottom of the bowl with my hand so I couldn’t drop it (which absolutely makes sense!). The other half’s sencha was intended to be infused three times, and we were left with instructions on how to carry out the second and third infusions ourselves. We were then left to enjoy our tea and sweets. I cannot rate the matcha chocolate gateau highly enough; in fact it rates as one of my top desserts of all time (and I eat a lot of desserts…)

Simply enjoying the taste and texture of our tea and sweets in relative silence without rushing felt like a very alien (but welcome) experience. The serenity of the teahouse was in stark contrast to the busy main road in the middle of Manchester city centre and felt like a welcome sanctuary. I meditate and practice mindfulness a lot at home and the focus on the experience of eating and drinking provoked the relaxation I find from these practices. We hardly wanted to leave and stepping outside into the hustle and bustle of a rainy Manchester Saturday brought us back to earth with a bump.

We will definitely be putting aside time in the future to visit Cha-ology as a weekend treat together. The combination of the concept, accommodating staff and high quality food and drink was simply perfection.

Top Tips for Visiting

• Research the teahouse and the rules on their website and social media before visiting to be clear on your expectations (and theirs!)
• Seek advice from the knowledgeable staff on tea and sweets options to suit you
• Engage with the experience – try to put your phone away (hence the shortage of photos on this post) and don’t feel the need to fill the silence (a hard task if you’re a chatterbox like me!)
• The teahouse is very small and is now reservation only – you can book online, and it is not suitable for large groups

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! I will be on a bit of a break next week for a friends’ fabulous wedding celebrations in London so see you in a couple of weeks.

M

Lemon, Blueberry and Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies

So this is another fantastic recipe from Lorraine Pascale’s Lighter Way to Bake book. I spotted this whilst looking for the healthy chocolate chip muffins recipe and cookies were an ideal easy sharing option for our recent Manchester WI bring-and-share buffet night. This was a hassle-free and quick bake which I need on a weeknight. Word of caution, the fresh fruit means they go off and soften very quickly so scoff them in under 2 days to enjoy them at their best!

Lemon, Blueberry and Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies

Makes 10-12 Cookies

Ingredients

• 50g butter
• 50g caster sugar
• 2 eggs (beaten)
• 200g plain flour
• 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
• Zest of 2 lemons
• 12 raspberries
• 24 blueberries

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200c (180c fan) and cover a baking tray with greaseproof paper
2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl
3. Beat the eggs and lemon juice into the creamed butter and sugar mixture
4. Add the flour and lemon zest and mix until combined into a sticky cookie dough
5. Roll the dough into 10-12 balls and gently flatten each one onto the grease proof paper
6. Press a raspberry and two blueberries onto each cookie
7. Bake for approximately 10 minutes until golden

Happy baking!

M