We’re both pretty busy people, so we’re huge fans of the various supermarkets’ two dine for a tenner offers which, if you hunt around, you can probably find for every day of the week. These are great because they offer something a little different in the way of side dishes, so we usually end up choosing something like Potato Dauphinoise as a change from our customary olive oil roasted new potatoes.

After inspecting the packet of the last lot we bought, I realised it was actually pretty easy to make, so set about finding a recipe to try it out for myself. After trawling through recipes that used so much double cream I could feel my arteries clogging up just thinking about it, or so much Gruyère cheese it would break my bank balance (seriously, that stuff is expensive), I stumbled upon this BBC Good Food recipe by Orlando Murrin, Masterchef veteran and ex-editor of Good Food.

Just a few things I did differently to the recipe – I used semi-skimmed milk as we never have full-fat in the house (I can’t stand the stuff) and I didn’t have any nutmeg, so I left that out too. Also, I blinkin’ love cheese so I used way more Parmigiano-Reggiano than 25g.

I used Rooster potatoes, because they’re fantastic to cook with and they were on offer in Sainsbury’s (result). Now, I don’t have such a thing as an 8cm brownie tin, so I just used a ceramic oven dish that was quite a bit bigger – but it worked out fine. Because I felt that there wasn’t quite enough liquid, I covered the dish with foil for the first 30 minutes of cooking, then uncovered it for the final half hour. As you can see, it turned out looking luscious and tasted so damn good that between two of us we polished off the lot.

Verdict: foolproof and delicious!

What?

When? Sunday 12th June 2011, 7pm

Where? The Grand Hotel, Kings Road, Brighton

Come along to the stunning candlelit Regency Room at The Grand Hotel for an evening of ghost stories with Rob Marks – actor, entertainer, storyteller and author of The Ghosts of Brighton’s Lanes.

For many years, Rob divided his time between teaching theatre studies and entertaining. For seven years he ran the popular ‘Ghost Cruise’ in York, which is reputed to be England’s most haunted city.

Always a big fan of Brighton, Rob moved to the city in 2008 after researching and scripting ‘The Ghost Walk of the Lanes’. A familiar face around the City, Rob performs the walk around Brighton’s most haunted quarter for eleven months of the year in the guise of the mysterious, yet endearing Victorian character, Silas the Ghost Walker.

Rob also writes regular features and reviews for the Brighton Visitor magazine and is an active member of the Brighton Tourism Alliance. Last year Rob’s book, The Ghosts of Brighton’s Lanes, was published. This modest tome elaborates on many of the haunted places, buildings and taverns in the Lanes and has proved a popular seller with locals and tourists alike.

Rob is now moving into performing in-house candlelit ghost nights, a Jack the Ripper night, Victorian days for primary school pupils and is currently working on a book of ghost stories from England’s most haunted cities…

Rob’s book, The Ghosts of Brighton’s Lanes will be available to buy on the evening.

All profits from this event will go to The Variety Club children’s charity.

(c) Sian Beeton

Along with a fantastic group of other Brighton-based book lovers, I’m very excited to be working on bringing to fruition the first ever Brighton Book Festival – ’Bookstock’.

From Thursday 9^th to Sunday 12^th June 2011, we’ll be delivering a ton of book-themed events in venues throughout Brighton & Hove.

So why have we named it ‘Bookstock‘? Well, because we want to deliver a friendly, fun festival with a 60s Woodstock vibe, celebrating our love of the written word and bringing book lovers together to talk, listen and laugh. Our aim is to combine everything that’s wonderful about Brighton with all that people love about books.

The events already planned for Bookstock include quizzes, discussion groups and talks by authors covering children’s stories, arts and crafts, non-fiction, 21^st century reading, poetry, ghost stories and much more.

We’ve got local authors including Claire Carpenter, Rob Marks and Isabel Losada coming along to entertain and impart their passion, enthusiasm and wisdom. As we confirm more events, we’ll add them to our events listing.

Want to get involved with Bookstock? Here’s how you can help out…

• Volunteer – we need lots of help, from running individual events to general promotion
• Sponsor Bookstock – we’ve got various sponsorship packages available at different levels
• Come along to a Bookstock event… and tell your friends all about it!
• Buy merchandise – mugs and badges coming soon…

Here’s what Ian Jones, our Overlord/Festival Director says:

The team behind Bookstock all have an amazing passion for reading, book discussions and for Brighton. At Bookstock, we want to see happy book people engaging with other happy book people and raising some money for worthwhile causes as well. You know that feeling that you get when you’ve had a really great conversation about a book? Your mind is just alive. If we can give more people the chance to have those experiences, and also meet others and find new books and authors… well that would be superb.

Visit our website at brightonbookfestival.com

Follow us on Twitter @btonbookfest

Fish Friday, a new business supper club, offers a different networking experience…

At this exclusive new event, we don’t want you to stand around sipping fizz and daintily picking at canapés.

We want you to have a good glass of wine (or three) and a proper old natter while you tuck in to a hearty fish and chip supper.

Held at one of Brighton’s most prestigious venues The Grand Hotel the traditional Friday night seaside meal is being brought bang up to date with friendly networking and a  chance to have a real conversation with some of your contemporaries.

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So, what can you expect from Fish Friday?

Where? In the stunning Victoria Terrace at The Grand Hotel.

When? Join us for drinks and mingling at 6:30pm. Dinner will be served at 7pm.

Who? Anyone and everyone is welcome to attend, but we limit it to a total of 30 guests. This way you get more chance of meeting everyone, and building some meaningful relationships.

Cost: £20.00

What’s for dinner? Locally caught crispy mini battered fillets (3 types) hand cut chip shop chips, mushy peas, lemon and tartare sauce all beautifully presented with a glass of wine or beer.

Then what happens? When we’ve all got full bellies and have got to know each other a bit better, we’ll give a few of you the chance to stand up and introduce yourself to the room (don’t be scared, we’re all lovely).

Don’t want to stand up and talk in a room full of people? No problem. Drop the team an email and you could feature on our ‘Who’s Coming to Dinner?’ Blog, giving the other attendees the chance to get to know a bit more about who you are and what you do before you meet them.

*You will be sent a list of attendees before you arrive so that you have a chance to find out about everyone, and put faces to names on the night.

After dinner… Anyone who still wants to party will head off to a bar and carry on nattering into the night. After all, it is Friday night…

**Book now for the first event on Friday 15th April**

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The Venue

The Grand is an iconic Victorian hotel on Brighton seafront with 201 en-suite bedrooms with free Internet and Satellite TV. The Grand boasts cosy Victorian-style classic rooms and beautiful suites with sea views, balconies and luxurious décor.

You can dine like royalty under the chandeliers in the King’s Restaurant or treat yourself to a Sussex Cream Tea in the Victoria Terrace. For a prime people-watching position, grab an armchair and a cocktail at the bar.

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The Organisers

My Girl Friday

Almat Business Services

The Grand Hotel

The Giggling Squid in Hove is located approximately 45 seconds from the door of my office, which makes it the perfect place to go and grab a lunchtime bite.

Their lunchtime menu offers excellent value for money, with their “Two Dish Meal Combi’s” – a choice of vegetarian, chicken or prawn at £5-£5.95. For this price you get a choice of either vegetable tempura, spring roll, dumpling or prawn on toast accompanied by a small meal.

My personal favourite (and exceptional value for money) is the “One Big Dish” – a choice of either Pad Thai, Green Curry, Red Curry (my favourite), Cashew Stir Fry, Grilled Beef & Sticky Rice or Beef & Oyster Sauce which cost between £5.50 and £6.30. An absolute bargain as for that money you feel completely stuffed… then go back to the office and fall asleep.

I’ve always found the service here, along with their other restaurant in The Lanes, to be warm, friendly and welcoming. For this I’m more than willing to overlook the fact that when it’s busy, it can be a little slow.

Plus, you get jelly beans with your bill. What more could you want?

Check out my review of Giggling Squid – I am Alice_Reeves – on Qype

Inside The Old Bank

After wanting to visit The Old Bank for a while, I was delighted to be invited to another Brighton Qype event to sample the wine list and menu. Being a BIG fan of a good steak (and good wine, of course) I’ve been to a lot of steak houses – mainly chain-style ones which try hard to be faux-American and never quite beat a steak from a good butcher which I’ve cooked myself. This place is (thankfully) something completely different and in a class of it’s own.

I was the first one to arrive at the event (I have an awful habit of turning up to things stupidly early) and was greeted by Helen, the owner, and Jonathan, the general manager. It was lovely to chat to them a bit about the place first, which despite only being open for a couple of months already has the fantastic homely atmosphere of a well-established restaurant.

So, onto the food and wine. We started with a Prosecco which was wonderfully light, easy to drink and an absolute bargain at £19.75 for a great bottle of bubbles. The next wine we had was a Muscat – a gorgeous, sweet dessert wine priced at £16.50 for 50cl – accompanied by a chicken liver pate (on the menu at £4.50) which complemented it perfectly.

Next came a Chardonnay blend accompanied by warm goats cheese (£3.95 on the menu) – even though I’m not normally a lover of Chardonnay, this wine was actually really nice and very decently priced at £13.95.

Then it was onto the reds and the meat dishes. The next wine we sampled was a Riesling supplied by local wine merchant Henry Butler – priced at £24.95, this was at the top end of the wine list and it was easy to see why. It went fantastically with the chicken wings (from £3.95 a portion) which come in either ‘hot’ or ‘not’. Because I’m a bit of a wuss when it comes to spice, I went for ‘not’.

I’ve heard great things about The Old Bank’s ribs and I wasn’t disappointed – they are blimmin’ fantastic, especially when accompanied by another of Butler’s fantastic wines – a beautiful Malbec priced at £22.50.

The minute steak and chips, £6.95

But they saved the best until last – the steak. Jonathon bought out a medium-rare 28oz rib eye steak on a platter (which is ALL yours for £29.95) and I’m not ashamed to say I could probably have eaten the entire thing. With the steak we had a gorgeous rich, full-bodied Shiraz priced at £20.25. Perfect.

After such enticing tasters of the menu I had to order something – I went for the minute steak which is served with chips, jacket or a salad for £6.95. Keen to sample more wine, a few of us sampled their house Malbec which (although not as good as the one from Butler’s Wine Cellar) is fantastic value for £11.95.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the evening – great food, great wine and a great atmosphere. I’m very much looking forward to going back there and tackling one of those 28oz steaks. You never know, I might even share it. Yeah, right.

Check out my review of The Old Bank Steak & Ribs Restaurant – I am Alice_Reeves – on Qype

Karl runs these tastings monthly, so if you fancy going along to one click here for upcoming dates. Or you can sign up to the Elwood Wines newsletter, Tales from the Vineyard, here.

The seven wines from Bordeaux on the tasting menu

Attempting to be a bit 'arty' with my camera

Flight 1: Quail's Eggs and Crayfish Tails with Rocket

Flight 3: Cheese, Biscuits and Olives

My copious notes, which began to tail off towards the 7th wine

I liked the chandelier in The Chimney House function room

Karl tells us about the wines

Great turnout, lovely atmosphere

Karl chatting about the wines

If you love eating out and haven’t got a Taste Card yet, you absolutely must. Salvador and Amanda is one of the places where you get 50% off food Monday-Thursday so that’s how we discovered this place, which is a stone’s throw from Covent Garden and Leicester Square stations.

This is one of the few tapas bars I’ve been to in the UK that has a genuinely Spanish feel to it. It’s underground, it’s candlelit, it’s warm, it’s ambient and throughout our entire meal we were accompanied by a guy playing Spanish guitar on a little bandstand in the middle of the restaurant. All of which made for an incredibly pleasant dining environment.

Inside Salvador and Amanda, London

I’m not ashamed to say that between four of us we TOTALLY pigged out, ordering the Tortilla Española, Patatas Bravas, stuffed peppers, mini tuna pies, grilled queen half shell scallops with crispy Iberico ham, pan-fried baby chorizo, meatballs in tomato sauce, chicken wings roasted in lemon and chilli, chicken breast wrapped in Serrano ham… oh, and a lovely bottle of wine: the Terrassa Tempranillo Spain 2009.

The best bit? With our Taste Card discount, all of that cost us £19.50 a head. Not half bad for dinner in central London, eh?

The only downside of the place was that the service was a little slow, despite it not being that busy. We had to walk up to the bar every time we wanted to get the attention of a member of staff and our dishes were all served randomly and at different times. However, seeing as we got such a great bargain on the Taste Card, we didn’t make a fuss. I wouldn’t have been so happy to overlook it had we been paying the full price of about £40 per head though.

Web: www.salvadorandamanda.com

Menu: www.salvadorandamanda.com/menus/food.html

Check out my review of Salvador and Amanda – I am Alice_Reeves – on Qype

I make no secret of the fact that I absolutely love shopping, although I prefer to go at times that are a little quieter so that I’m not waiting in endless queues or being elbowed out of the way whilst browsing the sale racks. This is why I absolutely HATE shopping on Oxford Street as soon as we begin to even vaguely approach Christmas time. So, for a change, my boyfriend and I decided to head to Shepherd’s Bush and explore the enormous shopping mall that is Westfield.

I must admit, I was rather dubious about this place – I expected it to be crammed, busy and generic – but it wasn’t. There are several different parts to the mall – first, there’s ‘The Village’ where you’ll find the places that I can only dream of being able to afford to shop in: Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co, Burberry etc. I had a little nose around in these places, but everything costs about a squillion pounds and the ludicrously well turned-out shop assistants and their burly security guard chums don’t make you feel very welcome. After a very short while I felt it was time to seek out the more familiar environs of H&M, New Look, Topshop and Accessorize.

My enormous salad - yum!

In this place you’ll find every generic high street store you can think of, and as they’re all flagship stores they’re all huge and incredibly well-laid out. It’s an absolutely pleasure to shop here. The sheer enormity of the place is quite dizzying though – you could easily lose an entire day wandering around (which we pretty much did).

My favourite part of Westfield though, was the food court. There’s a Pho (Vietnamese street food), a Mexican canteen, a mini Indian restaurant, Italian food, salad bars, a fish and chip place… it smells absolutely divine. I went to a little place called Ooze Risotteria where I had the most enormous salad for the bargain price of £7.95. Utterly delicious.

Check out my review of Westfield Shopping Centre – I am Alice_Reeves – on Qype

My first attempt - easy peasy and delicious!

This recipe is one of the easiest things I have ever cooked in my life. If you’re often pushed for time but like eating great food or if you’re entertaining guests but aren’t the best chef in the world then this recipe will become a lifesaver. It tastes far more impressive than you’d think given how quick and effortless it is to make.

The only thing that might catch you out is that you may need to experiment a few times with the amount of curry paste you put in. The first time I made this I didn’t put enough in, but the next time I doubled the amount and it was perfect. Red curry pastes vary hugely in how spicy they are so I’d recommend finding a brand you like and getting used to how much to add. I bought Gang Ped Red Curry Paste from Taj in Brighton which isn’t particularly hot – I found about 4-5 teaspoons was enough, without being blow-your-head off spicy.

Another tip is to steam the green beans for a couple of minutes before adding them to the sauce as I’ve found that the salmon ends up overcooking before the beans are tender enough.

Now, I’m no expert, but if you’re looking to pair this dish with a wine, I thought it went very well with one of my personal favourites – the Kiwi Cuvée Sauvignon Blanc which is available at ASDA and Sainsbury’s for about £5.99.