Part 2. That Don't Impress Me Much.

P2. Opening a restaurant is what other people do! Plus, a lemony lemon curd recipe like no other.

So, hearing people tell you that you should open a restaurant because your food is good is great for the ego. But it ain’t gonna happen is it. Donna and I are just two regular people, restaurants are opened by special, talented people with bucket loads of money, and that wasn’t us. So for now it was a nice thought, but it was just a thought.

Anyway, the little business, Collander, rolled on, and more water was pushed up the hill. New dishes were added to gather interest, Wenslydale, Carrot Chutney and Orange Oil Pastry, plus Mushroom, Melted Onion and Cream Cheese Torte are a couple of examples. But as usual, most chefs weren't interested in buying the dishes. Remember, it’s only for the vegetarians.

Coming up with new dish ideas for Collander was an obsession, I would constantly run things past Donna and save the best combinations on scraps of paper. Whilst always steering clear of the easy route, world foods, pasta dishes and meat substitutes, made it more difficult, this also increased the challenge was actually enjoyable, in a weird way. To help with inspiration, we started taking long weekends away, you can do that when you don’t have a restaurant. So we’d finish our day jobs on a Friday afternoon and jet off (in our little VW Golf, it was black, our favourite colour, which becomes relevant later) to a B&B somewhere in another UK town or city. Holidays became centred around vegetarian restaurants up and down the country, well we say restaurants, but the majority were actually cafes. But you know what? There was no inspiration to be found. OK, there might be someone reading this and muttering “Beanbag Cafe in Bradford was a great little place” but we didn’t get to it, sorry. All this was happening around 2003, which in our minds is very recent, but obviously it was over twenty years ago, and things were quite different then.

Let’s look at some of the ‘inspiration’ we found which was definitely not helping us to come up with new ideas for Collander. One particular ‘restaurant’ which wasn’t too far away from where we lived seemed promising. But then we arrived! Don’t forget, we were new to dining in vegetarian establishments, we were used to mainstream meat restaurants, so entering a yoga den seemed strange to us. This particular place, we’ll call it SPROUTS, had a Brie and tomato, bread and butter pudding on the menu. I quite liked this idea so I chose it, Donna can’t remember what she ordered. Anyway, mine was OK ish, but it turned up with a side dish of boiled new potatoes……….heavily sprinkled with Bombay Mix. No idea why, I mean, how did the thought process go, “brie, tomato, potatoes and bloody Bombay Mix”?

Wanna hear another one? Yes you do! We went to a little place in Northumberland, we’ll call it ROOTY TOOTY, the food was alright, basic salads and sandwiches, nothing unusual. But it was the decor, I mean, if someone just dropped you in the place and didn’t give you a menu, you would know it was a vegetarian gaff. Green, blue, purple and orange walls. Postcards on a pin board offering head massages, chakra alignments and mind purification, (I’m making these up because I don’t actually know much about it all). However, the oddest thing was a poster on the wall with a picture of a Spaniel on a plate and the words underneath, ‘would you eat your dog?. Now, what we didn't understand is why the poster was there, the customers were sat eating vegetarian food, we were eating vegetarian food, so why the poster telling everyone not eating meat, to stop eating meat? Am I being harsh? Maybe, and yes all that stuff is fine, but if you’re out for a meal, why be preached at? You wouldn’t go to a meat restaurant and see posters on the wall telling you to eat more meat. Plus, the lady, probably the owner of ROOTY TOOTY, walked around the tables asking people if they were vegetarian. Why should it matter? I used to get so annoyed, just ask Donna, she had to listen to me ranting on for the entire drive home.

Right, last one for now, I’m on a roll. We decided on a two night stay in the beautiful city of York, it was about an hours drive from where we lived so nice and easy. The B&B was a bit of a dump, but it didn’t have a website back then so you took your chances, hey ho. We had a wander around the narrow cobbly streets of York, had a beer or two in some of the many olde worlde pubs and stumbled upon a little vegetarian cafe. Let’s call this quaint little vegetarian cafe, WORLD PEAS, actually that’s quite good isn’t it? Anyway, we did the thing you do when you haven’t been to a place before and kinda crept in, almost on tiptoes, and waited to see what happened. A jolly lady welcomed us and showed us to a little table which was placed next to a luminous orange wall. Fortunately the glow coming from the wall made us look pretty healthy, or a Teesside tan as it’s known in our hometown. The jolly lady brought some drinks but no menus, instead she had a recommendation. She suggested a set menu, three courses for a tenner, ha, imagine what you would get for that price now. So we agreed and waited for the starter, which didn’t take long to land. It was a small bowl of pitted black olives each. That’s it, a bowl of olives as a starter. Right, we like olives, there’s nothing wrong with olives, but where’s the cooking, the imagination, the skill or the creativity? Was it just a little snack? Nope, that was the starter, and we knew that because the main course arrived very soon after. And the main course was this, a plate of mashed sweet potato which was sprinkled with pine nuts. That’s it, nothing else on the plate, nothing else nearby, nothing else joined it, and we weren’t looking for extra food to stuff ourselves, just a reason why someone thought that a large spoonful of mashed sweet potato was a main course. We ate it and continued to be confused. Neither of us can remember the dessert, it was probably an apple. But, the crazy thing was, other customers around us were blown away by mashed sweet potatoes. Barry and Barbara from Barnsley were making positive mumbles on the next table, “oh it’s delicious Barry”, “oh yes, delicious dear”. What was wrong with people, this was food you could do at home, not that you actually would, but it was random and very basic. The starter involved opening a jar, anyone with a little upper body strength can do that.

Then it happened, Donna came out with, “we can do way better than this, we should open a vegetarian restaurant”. She said, “maybe it’s time we listened to those people who said we should open our own place”. I reminded her that we had never done it before, it’s hard work and we didn’t have any money. But she insisted, “if these people can do it, we can”. So instead of looking at dish inspiration for Collander, we decided we should be looking for a way of getting some cash to open a restaurant.

And when Monday came along, the search started.

Oh I nearly forgot, you need a little recipe. Remember, soon we’ll be sharing some technical recipes from Vanilla Black, so stick with it. But for now, as we live in Spain and we have a lemon tree we are making lemon curd for some of the neighbours at the same time as tapping this Post up. Anyway, I have a different method for making it, I have managed to add some extra lemony punch, so here we go.

Point 1- A standard lemon curd recipe either discards the zest or adds it to the mix. When it’s in the mix it doesn’t get hot enough to cook so you end up with bits in your teeth. Plus, the juice is the acidic part and the zest has the essential lemon oil which gives flavour., so we’re keeping it.

Point 2- To add more lemon punch you add more lemons, however, this makes the curd too runny. The solution is below.

This makes a fair amount so maybe you too could give some to your neighbours.

Tip, you need sterilised jars, the usual method is to clean them then pop in the oven. I do it a different way, I add a couple of centimetres of water to a jar and microwave without the lid until hot. Remove from the microwave, tip out the water, then immediately add the curd and screw the lid on tightly. This will create a vacuum and therefore a seal. It’s always worked for me.

Double Lemony, Lemon Curd

Ingredients

-8 unwaxed lemons

-300g sugar, granulated will do

-150g unsalted butter

-9 egg yolks, beaten

Method

-Zest all of the lemons on that rough side of the grater, or if you’re posh, use your microplane. To save washing up, grate straight into a saucepan.

-Next, juice five of the lemons straight into the saucepan.

-Juice the other three lemons into a heat proof bowl. You will use this bowl to cook the curd.

-Now, put the saucepan on a medium heat and simmer the juice and zest until it becomes half of it’s original amount. This helps to remove some of the liquid, therefore a thicker curd. Plus it cooks the zest.

-Now, pass this liquid through the finest sieve you have, into the heat proof bowl. Then, using the back of a spoon press as much of the zest as you can through the sieve so it joins the rest of the juice.

-Add the sugar and butter to the bowl with the lemon juice.

-Use the lemon pan for the next bit, see, saving washing up. Add 5cm water to the pan, pop onto a heat and get to a medium simmer.

-Pop the heatproof bowl on top of the pan, make sure it doesn’t touch the water, we need the steam, not the water.

-Heat until the the butter melts. Then add the yolks and whisk in.

-Leave to cook for 20-25 minutes, whisk occasionally, and keep an eye on the water underneath, you don’t want it boiling dry. You’ll know when it’s cooked as it will be thick like custard.

-Add to the jars mentioned above and screw the lid on straight away. When cool add to the fridge.

-Whap it on buttered croissants, beautiful.

If you like this recipe let us know because we’re working on some whacky variations.

Catch up next week to read how we started the ball rolling, and it rolled fast.