Restaurant review: The Wild Garlic, Beaminster, Dorset
on Oct 4, 2009 in OTHER MASTERCHEF THE RESTAURANT Restaurant review: The Wild Garlic, Beaminster, DorsetMat Follas, 2009 MasterChef winner, has opened a restaurant. Has he bitten off more than he can chew? Far from it...

Rowan berry Jelly
on Sep 20, 2009 in OTHER THE RESTAURANT STOCKS AND PASTES Rowan berry jelly is not something I'd tried before and the feedback on making it was mixed ... bitter, too tart, unpleasant was just some of the feedback I received from my twitter foodie crowd. I also had a number of people advise me that with game...

Venison two ways
on Aug 16, 2009 in MAIN THE RESTAURANT Here's a dish I made for the restaurant as a starter last night, a ramiken of the chilli with the wild salad and smoked venison ... its really good ! The chilli was made from a leg of venison I'd left to slow roast in the oven for the afternoon in an...

New Plates for the restaurant ...
on Aug 13, 2009 in OTHER THE RESTAURANT We had asked Marnie (who made our lovely tables) to try her hand at plates and after a couple of samples we now have the most amazing wooden plates for the restaurant. They'll be used for crab and starters ... how cool are they !?

Simple fruit puff pastry tart
on Aug 12, 2009 in PUDDINGS OTHER This is a very simple tart to make and tastes great.Stage one is get some good quality puff pastry, preferably butter pastry which also means the dish can be vegetarian. Roll it out onto a tray which is floured, or covered in silicon sheet.Bake for 5...

Festivals, recipes and update
on Aug 5, 2009 in MASTERCHEF THE RESTAURANT The restaurant continues to absorb most of my time, we are having a great time and rapidly improving in most areas, front of house, food and decor. Sorry for lack of posts but will write some soon, hopefully this weekend when I'm away at a lovely foo...

Savoury bread and butter pudding using tomato and chilli
on Jul 26, 2009 in MAIN This dish surprised me it worked so well ... was perusing veggie books for inspiration (no great secret that veg cookery is not my strongest suit) and saw a dish which used bread and eggs .... which got me thinking ...Will try and take a pic next tim...

Whortleberries
on Jul 7, 2009We have a new member of the team ... Jo (who is a Phd in woodland ecology) looked us up and showed up today with a big tray of whortleberries ... what yummy fruit. They are like blueberries but with flavour and more colour !Looking forward to what el...

The first week
on Jul 5, 2009 in OTHER THE RESTAURANT Thanks all of you who followed and commented on my guardian blogsJust finished watching the semi of the celeb version of Masterchef ... I have the cameras coming down next Saturday for next years show ... not sure I feel ready yet for their scrutiny...

Bogging restaurant opening
on Jun 7, 2009I'm currently taking a recipe break and posting about opening the restaurant opening over on the Guardian/Observer Word of Mouth Blog ... some great feedback so far, please feel free to add to comments or comment here ... Mat ps Bagged loads of Elde...