Alex takes a few hours away from The Hole in the Wall to appear on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire and talk food, cooking and Masterchef with Antonia Brickell
Listen Again (until Tuesday 1st November)
I cannot believe I am writing this blog post. To make the leap from aspiring food writer to Masterchef finalist was really quite something but this might just top it.
I’ve got a restaurant. Maybe it will help things sink in if that is repeated.
I have my very own restaurant. And what a restaurant it is.
The Hole in the Wall in the delightful village of Little Wilbraham, just outside Cambridge, is about as picture perfect as an old pub can be and I love it.
I am delighted to announce that in July I will be opening my first restaurant in Cambridge.
Full details will be released on June 30th but in the mean time for mailing list and priority bookings please send an email to bookings@alexrushmer.com
In the beginning was the word and the word was barbecue.
For many of us barbecue is a simple affair: an excuse to drink cold beer, grill meat, enjoy the outdoors and spend a few hours getting to know one’s inner Neanderthal. For others, though it is an obsession and vocation bordering on the religious.
So, it’s been a while.
Life took a turn for the busy and now it’s April. Already. There’s been a lot of cooking: a tasting menu for a shoal of pescetarians. A supper club for 40 cooked entirely on an Aga (and a barbecue once we realised the hot plate couldn’t get hot enough to sear the meat). Receipe writing for a new magazine. And plenty of menu development for Project X which is nearing completion.
Project X is currently top secret but involves a permanent home for my food after a year of searching. It would seem that finding a restaurant isn’t that easy but please do watch this space for a hugely, massively, wonderfully, brilliantly, tremendously exciting announcement in the very near future. You, dear readers, will be the first to know.
But for now, how about a recipe?
Oh, crunchy salty pork skin – you may well be the perfect snack. And if website hits are anything to go by then I have some empirical evidence to prove this fact. My recipe for pork scratchings has been viewed more than any other. By quite some distance, in fact. Turns out people really want to know how to make pork scratchings.
A fellow Masterchef finalist, Tim is now a professional patissier specialising in French macarons that are simply stunning. He’s about to launch an online store as well so there’s no excuse not to treat yourself. Go on, you know you want to…
If James Bond had taken a different career move and gone into cooking as opposed to international high-risk espionage, Cream Supplies would have been his ‘Q’. Everything from nitrous oxide powered espresso makers to ingredients you’ve only read about in The Fat Duck cookbook can be found on their well-stocked site – ideal for anyone interested in the whys, hows and wherefores of cooking and culinary science.
As well as being my rather wonderful SO, Charlotte Griffiths takes some really quite wonderful photographs specialising in documentary food work. Food in context. Just the way it should be. Click here for her flickr page or here to follow her on Twitter. She is available for photography commissions both large and small.
Situated just south of Cambridge, Gog, as it is affectionately known, has been my butcher of choice since moving back to Cambridge three years ago. They are always willing to fulfill my increasingly unusual requests for unusual cuts and entrails and also sell some of the best cheese, bread, fruit and veg around. They’ve got a cafe too. And a hill which is a rarity round these parts.
Dojo Noodle Bar in Cambridge is where we go if we’re in need of something fast and blindingly delicious. Lip smacking Pan-Asian food served in massive portions at lightening pace. What more could you ask for? Well, if you really want to know, a number 6, number 11, a 36 with extra chillies and a 39a please.
For the best coffee and hot chocolate in town, not to mention some sterling pastries, head to Savino’s on Emmanuel Street in Cambridge.
‘Hot chocolate’ is the most comforting duo of words. It’s cuddly and capable of initiating a wonderfully childlike regression. Sofas and blankets and fires. Marshmallows. Movies and slippers.
If you could eat anything, anything, right now, what would you choose?
Sometimes hunger is a general niggling feeling in the base of the belly that can be kept at bay by a bowl of cereal or slice of toast. At other times though it affects the psyche as well as the stomach. It claws its way into the deepest recesses of your frontal chow cortex or some other part of the brain.
I'm Alex Rushmer: writer, chef and Masterchef 2010 finalist. Welcome to my little corner of the Web. Why not get a cup of tea, snuggle down and make yourself at home?
