Quick bites... Where to eat out in 15 minutes
Nortons 71 Barkers Butts Lane, Coventry Tel: 02476 601055
Coventry comes alive? Gastronomically speaking, naturally. Just up the road from the city's venerable rugby ground, Nortons is another oasis lighting up this former gourmet desert. In 1999, Marie Hughes set up a deli with a small restaurant at the rear, and put her son Martin, 29, to work in the kitchen. He produces tasty tucker at very reasonable prices. Nothing fancy pants or bafflingly original, just quality produce cooked with painstaking care. First courses include chargrilled smoked salmon on spinach puree with lemon dressing (£4.75) and mozzarella and cherry tomato salad with pesto dressing (£3.95). Main courses are around a tenner - for example, herb-crusted loin of lamb or baked loin of pork with smoked cheese and sundried tomato sauce. Tip-top steaks. Puddings are £2.95. Fill up. Cheapskate... Where to eat out for under £15
Le Petit Blanc 9 Brindley Place, Birmingham Tel: 0121-633 7333
You see him here, you see him there, you see that Raymond Blanc everywhere, and that is possibly not such a bad thing as far as Le Petit Blanc is concerned. This is another of his stylishly modern outposts. It stands within striking distance of the Symphony Hall and the Birmingham Rep. A reasonable early-evening fixed-price menu makes it a good bet for a pre-theatre or pre-concert meal. Sample menu: Feta, chive and potato cake with a yogurt green salad, followed by braised pig cheeks with parmesan polenta and shallot jus, and rounded off with sherry and butterscotch trifle. Yours for £15. Decent wines, too.
On the menu: Chiboust
Plays full back for Marseille, right? Don't be tiresome.
All right, what is it when it's at home? Traditionally it's at home inside the profiteroles making up a gateau St Honoré, one of the Everests of French pudding culture.
So it's yummy? Very, very yummy.
And what is chiboust after all this?Crème patissière, lightened with Italian meringue and whipped cream.
Er, what's crème patissière?Is there no end to your ignorance?
Apparently not.Crème patissière is one of the building blocks of la cuisine Française, made of butter, flour, eggs and milk, warmed together to form a thick custard.
Clear? As custard.
On the net: Smoked fish
Kippers for breakfast are a glorious thing. Second only to kedgeree. Brown and Forrest smoke fish in an old cider barn in Somerset, where they use apple and beech wood for smoking eel, and oak for the salmon. From their website (www.smokedeel.co.uk) they sell a variety of smoked fish, including their Craster kippers, smoked by the Robson family of Craster, for a fiver a pair. Do not be deceived by www.simplysalmon.co.uk - they also sell Craster kippers. Two pairs for £5.95 and four pairs for £9.99. www.cornishsmokedfish.co.uk have oak-smoked kippers for £3.50 a pair. The family have been smoking fish in Charlestown, Cornwall, for nigh-on 30 years. There is a delivery charge for any order under 15kg.
Just out: Seeds of Change Breakfast Crunch
Form: A handful of gravel. Sorry, clusters of fabulous fibre.
Flavour: Like a mouthful of malted gravel; sweet; with odd shards of dentally challenging dried something that might be fruit.
Verdict: Toughish roughage; mouthful of nuggets of compressed rolled oats and wheat flakes; undeniably crunchy and not unmunchable. A bit heavy on the sugar but the feelings of virtue that must attend the appearance of breakfast crunch on the table may overcome all.
Price: £1.69per 375g box. It is available in most supermarkets or from www.seedsofchange.co.uk or call the customer careline on 0800 952000.
