HOT MEALS: The Burrito has landed

Tomorrow (August 25) the burrito will land in Bath.

Mission Burrito is opening the doors of Bath's first burrito-dedicated restaurant in Kingsmead Square.

And that's not all. To celebrate its launch Mission Burrito will be handing out free burritos between 12pm and 3pm. I think it's fairly safe to assume there will be a bit of a queue! But not to worry, the clever people at Burrito HQ have planned ahead and there will be a Mariachi Mexteca to entertain the waiting crowds and transform Kingsmead Square into a Mexican fiesta.

For those who don't know burritos are handheld food found mostly in Mexico and America – a kind of exotic take on a sandwich.

A tightly wrapped Mission Burrito - wait until tomorrow to see what's inside!

They are made from grilled flour tortillas wrapped around a combination of ingredients including rice, beans, lettuce, salsa, meat, guacamole, cheese and sour cream – and at Mission Burrito you can be sure that every single thing that goes into your burrito is really, really fresh. In fact, many of the ingredients are made from scratch to ensure that they deliver the level of flavour and quality that makes a Mission Burrito so special.

There is an art to a properly crafted burrito – an art that everyone at Mission Burrito has now perfected.

The tortilla must be grilled to soften it, and it should be tightly rolled around ingredients that meld together to create a unified taste.

Getting messy is all part of the enjoyment of munching on a burrito, but an expertly made burrito should not explode or leak all over you. Which is good because you don't want to ruin your clothes, or waste a single morsel of the delicious fillings.

And a Mission Burrito is no measly mouthful, oh no. A Mission Burrito will be at least 1lb of mouth-watering yumminess.

Jan Rasmussen

Husband and wife team, Jan and Sharon Rasmussen launched Mission Burrito in 2008 when they imported the burrito fromMexico, via San Francisco and opened a small 20 seat restaurant in Oxford.

They thought there was a gap in the market, which turned out to be correct as Bath will be their fifth store, hot on the heels of a recent opening in Park Street in Bristol.

Mission Burrito in Bath can seat 24 people indoors, with a bit of outdoor seating for the odd occasion when it's actually sunny.

For customers in a hurry there is the facility to pre-order online to avoid queues during peak times and there is also

the option to takeaway. Mission Burrito also offers outside catering for private functions and festivals and will be at Bath's Love Food Bath Event on Sunday October 9 at Green Park Station.

For more information about Mission Burrito visit www.missionburrito.co.uk.

For more on Bath's Love Food events see my previous posts:

http://hotbathuk.blogspot.com/2011/08/hot-meals-love-food-festival-comes-to.html

http://hotbathuk.blogspot.com/2011/06/hot-bath-why-i-loved-baths-love-food.html

HOT MEALS: Love Food Festival comes to Dyrham Park

It's great news that the Love Food Festival is coming back to the Bath area.

After the success of the event in Green Park Station back in June, this time Lorna Knapman's foodie event is coming to the beautiful surroundings of Dyrham Park.

Dyrham House

Lorna founded Love Food in 2008 with the aim of making top quality local food and drink available to the community as well as bringing children (and adults) out into the countryside learning about how and where our food should come from, how to grow and cook their own food and generally try to spark an interest in the topic through various mediums including hands on experience, tasting, art, movement and storytelling.

The venture began in Bristol, but now Lorna is keen to spread the word further and the Bath area is her next target.

Which is why, on September 11, between 10am and 4.30pm, the grounds of the National Trust's Dyrham Park will be filled with more than 30 producers selling a wide range of delicious goods including venison from the Dyrham estate, fresh bread, local fruit and vegetables, artisan cheese, charcuterie, jam, cakes, honey, cream and much more.

Cookery demonstrations from some superb chefs will show how to make the best of all the fantastic produce available in the market.

There will also be seasonal children’s activites, music, nature walks, story telling and a picnic area with street food, barbecue and a cafe and entry to the market will be free.

Lorna said: “I’m delighted to be working with the National Trust on this exciting project. I’m a huge fan of the work they do and Dyrham is absolutely stunning.”

I very much hope that people will make the effort to make the trip out to Dyrham Park.

I really feel that it's important to support local food producers. Not only is the food they sell almost certainly infinitely more tasty than that which you buy from the supermarket, but you can also find exactly what is in it and how it is made - you can find out for sure if the the vegetables really are organic or if the animals have been well looked after before being butchered and it's genuinely interesting to talk to producers about the goods because they have a real passion for them and their enthusiasm invariably shines through.

And, in a world where global warming and environmental affairs are becoming increasingly important, I think that it's important to buy local whenever possible to keep the food miles down.

Cath Pye, Operations Manager at Dyrham states “We are really excited to be working with Love Food at Dyrham Park. The National Trust shares the vision of the festival to get people out into the countryside to learn where our food comes from. It is great to be able to support an initiative which we hope will grow to be an important local event.”

The festival is the perfect excuse for a day out enjoying not only some delicious food, but also all the delights that the National Trust Property has to offer.

It sounds like a foodie paradise and I can't wait!

For more information visit www.lovefoodfestival.com.

Love Food will also be returning to it’s Paintworks home in Bristol on September 25 for a harvest celebration and to Bath on October 9 at Green Park Station.

HOT BATH: Getting inspired by the Taste of the West

Watching anyone at the top of their game, doing the thing that they love is always inspiring. Whether it's a sportsman, singer, dancer, craftsman......or chef.

Hywel Jones with one of the dishes he prepared

And that was one of the really great things about the weekend's Taste of the West festival in Milsom Place in Bath – the theatre kitchen in the Octagon which gave people the chance to watch some of the area's top chefs in action.

Now I feel about chefs the way that other people feel about pop stars or premiership footballers – I am more or less completely starstruck, and totally in awe of what they do.

So for me, the opportunity to see them preparing remarkable dishes up close was very exciting.

In this area we are very lucky with the great range of local produce available, and the amazing talent that exists to turn it into delicious meals.

Having watched the Great British Menu I was familiar with Hywel Jones, Executive Chef, at Lucknam Park in Colerne. I found myself transfixed watching the quiet ease with which he handled the ingredients, expertly assembling the dishes while still maintaining a rapport with the audience and bantering with his assistant. 

Rachel Demuth, owner of Demuths vegetarian restaurant in the heart of Bath, and head chef at the restaurant, Richard Buckley, created some stunning and vibrant dishes which proved that vegetarian food does not have to be boring. I am lucky enough to have worked with Rachel before at her vegetarian cookery school, and I know how passionate she is about vegetarian cookery and about sharing her skills and this shone through.

But it was Sam Moody from The Bath Priory that really blew me away.

At just 26 years old he already heads up a kitchen, working in a team of 17, and is regarded as one of the top chefs under 30 in the country.

Over the past few years I have been cooking more and more, and I now consider myself a pretty decent cook. But still not even close to this young talent.

It was genuinely inspiring to see someone so young, who had clearly found his calling in life, working and talking about the thing that he is most passionate about.

The Bath Priory is now top of the list on my places to go to eat – as soon as I've saved enough pennies!

Outside the Octagon, throughout Milsom Place were dozens of stalls selling everything from brownies to duck sausages, to wine – but all had one thing in common. They were locally produced.

The more I eat, the more discerning I have become about where my food is sourced from and I genuinely believe that local food, produced with love, with always taste better than anything plucked from the shelf of a supermarket.

It's great to see so many people locally producing such a wide range of products, and it made me realise that you can get almost anything you want from the area, as long as you look hard enough.

One of the things I love about these types of events is just being around people who obviously love and care about food as much as I do.

It's genuinely inspirational.

HOT MEALS: Grazing at Gascoyne Place

Gascoyne Place is now serving up a grazing menu.

This pleases me for two reasons.

Firstly, I just love that style of eating. Tapas, mezze, anything like that with little plates of deliciousness to share which give my taste buds a work out is alright by me. For me it's the perfect way of eating because I never have to narrow my choices down to one, and then don't have to spend a meal trying to steal food from my partner's plate without him noticing.

And secondly, on the menu are sliders. I discovered sliders on a relatively recent visit to the states and instantly fell in love.

But sadly there is a distinct lack of them here back across the pond.

For those who don't know, sliders are basically mini burgers. Usually served as a trio they come with a selection of toppings, thus removing the need to choose what style of burger you're after, and they work equally well as a main for one, or as part of a sharing experience.

So anyway, they are on the new grazing menu at Gascoyne's which had me very excited.

Sliders

And frankly, there wasn't any option when we visited. They were definitely going to feature on our menu selection.

And very good they were too. The patties were well made, not overcooked and very tasty, and topped with a nice selection of ingredients – beetroot, blue cheese and classic American. It was a real taste of New York. More places in Bath should serve sliders. I would eat there for sure.



Charcuterie



Along with the sliders we chose the charcuterie plate which came with bread and pickles. It was a reasonable selection - nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but a good, safe, tasty choice.

We also decided to try the butternut squash risotto balls with red pepper oil. Little bite-sized balls – crispy on the outside, soft on the inside with the delicious nutty sweetness of the squash sitting perfectly with the creamy rice. I could happily have eaten more of them!

Our selection from the Grazing menu

I've always thought that the menu at Gascoyne Place was a bit serious, so it's great that there is now this lighter, slightly more fun option. Divided into small plates, large plates and something sweet it's easy to choose something to suit your appetite. It's perfect if you just want a snack with drinks, and it works equally well for lunch and dinner.

I think it is a very welcome addition to the full menu – especially those sliders!
 www.gascoyneplace.co.uk

HOT BATH: Why I loved Bath's Love Food Festival

It was great to see so many people turning out for Bath's Love Food Festival.

It would have been easy to just stay in and stay dry, but clearly there are plenty of people with a passion for good food because despite the downpours Green Park Station was buzzing.

I had been looking forward to the festival for some time, and I wasn't disappointed.

The range of stalls on offer was very good, selling everything from boxes pre-packed by Chilli Elephant with hard-to-come-by exotic herbs and spices and recipe cards to help recreate tasty South East Asian recipes at home, to tasty British made chorizo by The Bath Pig used by Raymond Blanc in his dishes at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, to cakes and pastries, fresh fruit and veg, cheese, tasty sauces and marinades, a dazzling array of herbs and wine in interesting and refreshing flavours such as lemon and ginger.

Yes, there was plenty to suit every palette, and at the end of the day I walked home with a bag bulging with goodies, and more due to be delivered, and I'm certain there were plenty more people like me.

Not only was the food on offer really great, but the thing that I really loved about the festival was the chance to speak to stallholders who had a genuine passion and belief in their products.

I firmly believe that food cooked with love tastes better, and now I also believe that food produced with love also tastes better.