Matt Aranha » Food

10 Best Lunches in Bristol

matt — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:17:38 +0000

When it comes to lunchtime, an apple, crisps and jam sandwich just doesn’t do it for me. In the past I’ve been slightly spoilt by working from home or having facilities to re-heat homemade lunches. Having ventured into the ‘real’ world and without time to prepare stuff at home, I’ve been forced to reassess my lunchtime eating. Working in Bristol is pretty good though, with it’s decent selection of restaurants, cafes, markets and other food places. Over the past few months I’ve tried my best to explore and taste my way through the various eating establishments open at lunchtime. I ended up putting together the my selection of the best lunch places in Bristol into an article on our food blog, What I Ate Today to inspire people into trying something new.

Food Adventures in Normandy part 1

matt — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:40:42 +0000

Jenny and I recently went on a trip to Normandy, in the north of France. Like most of our holidays, one of the main things we love to explore is the local cuisine. Despite being so close to home, there was still a huge amount to try which was previous undiscovered. In this first episode we cover the French attitude to bread with their wonderful boulangeries / pâtisseries, the difference between galettes and crepes, and of course some unusual meatage – French black pudding, tripe, andouille and several varieties of French sausage. Stay tuned for part 2!

Lamb + Spinach Karahi

matt — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:57:15 +0000

Like most Brits, I’m a huge fan of curry. I’ll confess when I first headed off to University I didn’t have much of a clue about how to make a decent one. Since then though I’ve experimented and learnt lots and it’s become one of my favourite meals to cook. I had found that most curries tend to follow the same sort of procedure, however I recently came across quite a different technique when Rick Stein visited the Karachi Restaurant and made their delicious Lamb and Spinach Karahi.

Llangennith, Wales

matt — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:44:41 +0000

Recently I went on a surfing holiday with friends to The Gower Peninsula. None of us had been surfing before, but we thought we’d give it a go. We went at a lovely time of year, the weather was good enough but it was also early enough to not have many tourists around. We pretty much had the whole of Rhossili Bay to ourselves. We managed to forage a complete meal as posts on our food blog. We also tried some local delicacies including Cockles and Laverbred.

Intro to Brewing Beer

matt — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:09:08 +0000

Jenny and I are both pretty big fans of our real ales. For my birthday a couple of my friends got me a Brubox beer brewing kit. This was our first attempt at making our own beer. The results were pretty pleasing. We ended up taking most of the brew on our surfing trip, with some of it being using to make a lovely foraged meal. You can read the full review of the Brubox kit on What I Ate Today.

Asparagus, Broccoli and Blue Cheese Pie

matt — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:22:48 +0000

I recently got into a ‘Ready-Steady-Cook’ style cookery challenge called In-The Bag. This months challenge was to produce something made from Broccoli and Blue Cheese. After lots of reading through recipes I finally settled on making a delicious Asparagus, Broccoli and Blue Cheese Pie.

What I Ate Today

matt — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:12:42 +0000

Since I began seriously writing up I’ve spent a lot more time getting into food. Once I started working full time on freelance web work, I realised how tricky it was to get tasty lunch if you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere. Since then I’ve taken it on as a bit of an adventure, trying out new styles, techniques and ideas. I started documenting it all with my camera for some reason. Slowly, I started swapping stories of what we’ve been cooking with our friends and family. Eventually, it was becoming such a big deal, we ended up setting up a blog to document our cooking and eating – what i ate today.