Welcome to Issue #21.

This week we have a quick review of a popular UK TV show, two restaurant visits and a couple of new recipes.

Film

If you haven't heard of Taskmaster, I'm not sure this blog is for you. However just in case any readers are unfamiliar, it's a British comedy game show that started life on TV channel Dave in 2015 before moving to Channel 4 in 2020. The show is presented by its creator Alex Horne alongside Greg Davies, who acts as the show's "Taskmaster". The premise is that five comedians or celebrities are given a series of bizarre and unusual tasks to complete, with the winner of each series being crowned with a trophy of Greg's head.

I first started watching Taskmaster during the 2020 lockdowns when there were already nine series available to binge and it became habitual to watch an episode during our working-from-home lunch break. I've been a fan ever since and always enjoy when a new series comes out, which thankfully seems to be twice a year.

Series 14 finished airing in December and the New Year's special was also released on January 1st. I'm always a little slow to warm up to five new faces as a big factor in its success is the energy the contestants bring to the tasks. This series featured a couple of familiar comedy veterans (Dara O Briain and Sarah Millican) alongside three comedians I was less familiar with (Fern Brady, John Kearns and Munya Chawawa).

It was a great mix of people though with Dara's logic, Sarah's irritated mum vibes, Fern's awkwardness, John being terrible at and apathetic towards everything and Munya's chaos making for some hilarious variety in the ways in which they approached the tasks. The one-minute one-person plays they wrote and subsequently performed in Episode 9 was the series highlight for me. Bring on Series 15!

Food

Spice Lounge is our favourite local Indian restaurant. We've taken family, friends and have never had a bad meal there. We went last week on a whim when nothing we had in for dinner appealed, and it didn't disappoint.

We had papads to start (for context, listen to Sindhu Vee in the Off Menu Christmas Dinner Party) and I followed up with a chicken balti and honey naan whilst my partner had a chicken shashlik and garlic naan. I'm not sure what I was expecting from honey naan, but it was literally a plain naan bread swimming in honey. It wasn't terrible by any means, but made eating by hand a sticky situation and I wouldn't order it again. I've had the balti before and it's lovely.

The mango lassi was delicious, although I can't stand a paper straw and awkwardly had to try to sip from the cup while either balancing a dripping straw in the other hand, or accept getting hit in the face.

Unfortunately as I'm getting older I seem to be less and less able to process spicy food and even though this was barely registering on the heat scale, I suffered that night and into the next day (as did my partner who insisted on sleeping with the window open).

Rating: 8.5/10 for the meal. 2/10 for the aftermath.

Over the weekend we visited friends who live on the south coast in Fareham. For lunch they suggested a local Italian, 'Villa Romana' that's well reviewed but they hadn't yet tried. The four of us, along with their 5 month old, went to give it a whirl.

I forgot to take a picture of the starter, but we shared antipasto misto, garlic bread and bruschetta. All three were good with a particular shout out to the tasty tomatoes in the bruschetta.

For my main course I tried the tagliatelle Villa Romana, consisting of diced fillet steak and wild mushrooms in a creamy sauce, finished with truffle oil and parsley. It was delicious. Not quite on the level of Padella's pasta that I tried back in November, but not far off.

My friend let me try some of his rigatoni amatriciana (bacon, mushrooms, red onion, red peppers and garlic in a tomato sauce) which was also very good.

Dessert was by far the most disappointing of the courses. The apple and cinnamon tart didn't taste fresh and the pastry was quite dry. The accompanying ice cream which was on three of our dessert plates was very crystallised suggesting it had melted and subsequently refrozen. I did mention the ice cream to the waiter who didn't seem too interested.

Dessert aside, it was a lovely meal. The restaurant has a warm, cosy feel to it, although I can imagine it feeling very busy if it were full, with tables packed closely together. Service was very good and I wouldn't hesitate going back to try more of their menu.

Rating: 7/10. 8.5/10 if you don't have dessert.

Back to home-cooked food and I tried two new recipes this week. The first was a real mishmash of ingredients to try to make use of some unappealing Facon (this isn't a typo) that we had hanging around since Christmas. Facon is vegan bacon and the pack we had didn't work well as a substitute in bacon sandwiches. It has a nice smokey smell straight out the package but this was completely lost after it had been fried. The texture barely resembles bacon and so when this is the star of the meal, it doesn't work for me.

My idea was to get the Facon into a pasta sauce but use other ingredients to maintain a pleasant flavour profile and essentially use it for an interesting texture. It wasn't revolutionary and I won't be rushing out to buy Facon again, but it made good use of ingredients we had in the house and the recipe below makes three portions of sauce.

Ingredients:

• 1 red onion

• 4 rashers of Facon

• 100g mushroom

• 50g green beans

• 1 red pepper

• Garlic powder

• Smoked paprika

• Basil

• 400g chopped tomatoes

• Tomato purée

• Double cream

Finely chop the red onion, fry in vegetable oil in a pan on medium heat for 4-5 minutes, until starting to soften. Slice the Facon and veg into bite sized pieces and add to the pan along with a teaspoon of each of the herbs, salt and pepper. Allow to cook for a further 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally, before adding the chopped tomatoes. Allow the sauce to come to a simmer, turn down the heat and pop the pan lid on.

Cook your pasta of choice to the package's instructions and when ready add a tablespoon of double cream to the sauce and stir in. Serve with grated Parmesan.

I forgot to take any photos of this one, but it looked like a poor man's version of my friend's rigatoni amatriciana, so use your imaginations.

One vegetable I've never cooked is red cabbage. I always enjoy when it's served as part of a roast and I had it recently when my uncle made a delicious roast ham on Boxing day and served this as one of the side dishes. On our next supermarket visit I picked up a red cabbage knowing it would force me to look up some recipes and last week I finally got round to giving it a try.

The recipe I followed is Delia Smith's braised red cabbage with apples. It's very easy and takes maybe 20 minutes to chop everything and layer it all up and then just needs time in the oven (2 hours seemed to be about right). I'm really pleased with how it came out and have been enjoying it all week as a side to anything else I have at home! I didn't quite realise just how much you get out of a fully shredded cabbage, but this filled two large casserole dishes and makes for probably 8 large servings.

I'm not sure if I've ever shared my Nandos chicken recipe, (I'll have a look and feature in a future issue if not) but I decided to make use of the oven being on for a long time to eat the initial cabbage meal alongside a large roasted chicken leg and rice. Delicious!

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Thanks for reading and have a great week.

Adam