Rocky Road to Caramel Extra Thick Easter Egg

To commemorate the chocolate-y spirit of the Easter holidays, Hotel Chocolat have brought out a deluxe range of hugely fun Easter eggs, including a selection of extra thick chocolate Easter eggs. Fantastic to look at, these eggs have an extra thick chocolate shell which is filled with more chocolate delights inside.

Double the egg-citement

As an added bonus, the Rocky Road to Caramel Extra Thick Easter Egg has been created for double the pleasure. Both extra thick half-shells are made from Hotel Chocolat’s trademark 40% milk chocolate, with one half studded with crispy puffed rice, cookies and chocolate chunks; and the other layered with a delicious caramel chocolate.

The goodness inside

Inside the delightful journey of discovery continues. There are scrumptious pralines with cookies, liquid caramels, solid bunnies and chicks cast in milk, and much, much more. What an egg-stra fantastic way to eat your chocolate-y way through Easter!

This is a paid-for product write-up.

A month ago, I attended a very successful lamb butchery masterclass at The Chop House. Its neighbouring restaurant Cantina de Ponte is also running a number of pasta masterclasses on select Saturdays throughout the year with each class covering different types of pastas. I attended the class last week which touched on tagliatelle, taglioni, orecchiette and ravioli.

Pasta Masterclass

The class included a basic pasta demo on how to make pasta dough and how to roll the different types of pasta (and in the case of the orecchiette, how to cut and shape it). We all got a chance to try our hand at making pasta dough and some members of the class got to participate in rolling the pasta. All this was great fun, but I would have liked the class to have covered some sauces as well, after all, a good sauce is what makes a pasta dish great.

Tagliatelle & ravioli

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When I visited Terroirs in 2009 shortly after it opened, I thought it to be one of the most exciting wine bar and restaurants to grace the London stage. Well priced, heartfelt, rustic French cooking in an atmospheric central London location – what could be better? The offerings of ‘natural’ wines at decent prices worked a charm too. The wine bar and restaurant was obviously so successful that it spawned a second, Brawn in East London, and a third, Soif in South London.

Like Terroirs, Soif offers a reasonable range of tasting portions for sharing and main sized meals, as well as a selection of ‘natural’ wines. We started with the charcuterie platter (£12.50) of pork terrine, rillette and Toscana salami. I loved, loved, loved the rillette at Terroirs and so this was the part of the platter that I was looking forward to the most. Instead I found the version at Soif to be overly fatty and not particularly enjoyable with a disproportionately high ratio of fat to meat. The terrine on the other hand was meaty and flavoursome. The salami was also good.

Charcuterie selection

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L’Autre Pied is the little sister restaurant to Pied à Terre on Charlotte Street. Opening in 2007 under Marcus Eaves, it went on to win critical acclaim as well as a Michelin star in 2009. When Shane Osborne left Pied à Terre last year, Marcus took over the head chef spot at Pied à Terre. I adored the food at L’Autre Pied when Eaves was there, having eaten there on several occasions. His cooking was top notch, and the pricing was very reasonable for the standard of his cooking. His one-Michelin star was well deserved.

But his departure has paved the way for some new blood. Enter Andy McFadden who previously worked at three-Michelin-starred Oud Sluis in the Netherlands and under Osborne at Pied à Terre for four years. A new head chef may mean a new approach, but the restaurant has managed to hold onto the contemporary and relaxed style that has always made L’Autre Pied one of the most accessible fine-dining establishments in London.

We kicked off with an amuse bouche of pumpkin and ginger mousse which was wonderfully light and tasty. But the topping of black olive, sesame seeds and chives was probably a little heavy against the delicacy of the mousse.

Pumpkin and ginger mouse

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Chop House head chef Martin Kroon

Chef Martin Kroon is running a series of butchery masterclasses at his restaurant, The Chop House at Butlers Wharf. On the day of my visit, we covered the butchery of a Blackface lamb from Ben Weatherall’s 6,000 acre estate in Dumfriesshire in South West Scotland.

The lamb

I covered lamb butchery when I attended Westminster Kingsway Cookery College, but I still found it interesting to watch the process again. Most of us tend to stick to best end, leg and shoulder cuts, but Martin proved very informative as he provided commentary during the session on how each cut of lamb should be cooked to achieve optimal results. Martin does all his own animal butchery. Purchasing an animal whole is more economical than purchasing cuts of meat. In this way, Martin is able to buy better quality meat for the restaurant whilst keeping his costs down.

Chef Martin showing off his butchery skills

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