Posts by: Nora R - UKTV

Here is the reciope Kazken, enjoy!

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What are your top tips for picnic success? Do you fill endless tupperware containers with home-made goodies, or stock up at the supermarket?

My favourite picnic food... dolmades, really good quiche, crisps (lots of..) sliced beef, crusty bread, brie and grapes.

Picnic food I try and avoid, carrot batons and tepid hummous, chewy cocktail sausages, soggy ritz crackers and warm cheddar.

What are your favourite summer dishes? Those foods that encapsulate the season, perfect for lazy afternoons or late dinner with friends.

I love chargrilled squid, flecked with chilli and a squeezed with lemon. Served with an extremely cold glass of wine.

What are yours?

What's your most useful and useless kitchen gadget?

I love my stick blender (goodbye lumpy soups and sauces) and the most useless has to be, a quesadilla maker (bought for me) - how hard can it be to sandwich two tortillas together with cheese!

Has Delia written your recipe bible, does Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries dictate what you cook or do you have every Jamie Oliver recipe book going?

Let us know which books tickle your tastebuds, those well thumbed tomes splashed with sauces and flecked with flour.

For the record, if my chip pan caught fire, I would be running out the door with Nigel Slater's Appetite!

Hello Lisa,

Sorry I didn't see this earlier - have you seen our top 10 venison recipes?

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On Monday I wanted to make a curry from Anjum Anand's book when went to the cupboard I realised I didn't have the necessary cardamom, cumin, tomatoes chillies or fresh ginger. So I improvised guessing quantities of of garam masala, tomato juice and hot chilli powder. It turned out rather well in the end.

I'm not always so lucky with winging it with recipes though, a few years ago, halfway through a cake an realising I had no baking powder I improvised with some bicarbonate of soda. It tasted like sucking on a brillo pad.

So how religiously do you follow recipes? And what have been your best and worst improvisations?

Hello TV Foodie,

Would you mind posting this in What's on TV? Otherwise the thread is going in another direction. Thanks!

Before you go though - let us know your best use for leftovers!

Wish I had read your rissoles recipe last week Old Thatch - they would have made perfect use of the end of the pork roast that ended up sitting in my fridge for most of the week!

I found out recently that 8 billion pounds of food is thrown away every year the UK! My biggest shame is discarding fruit on the turn from my handbag at the end of the week.

I actually relish having to use up bits and bobs from the fridge: its like my own version of Ready Steady Cook, without the red tomatoes or green peppers (unless they are nearing their 'use-by date'!)

So what do you do with your leftovers and food needed to used up? Does it make you a more creative cook?

How heartening to hear marmalade is still being made, and enjoyed at breakfast!

Marmalade: once a staple of every breakfast table in Britain, apparently now isn't so popular. Sticky rivals honey and jam are overtaking traditional marmalade in terms of sales.

Do you think this reflects our changing tastes? Are we so used to sweeter foods, that tangy marmalade will eventually die out with the generation that once bought it?

Diana Henry is launching a campaign to bring back marmalade by entering her own recipe in the national marmalade competition. We want to know if you still buy it, if you make your own, and what we can do to put it back on the nations' menu?

Nora

Take a look at our big quiz and see if you can beat our brain-aching office best - 19 out of 20!

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What are your family traditions surrounding Christmas dinner or Christmas food?

My uncle and his family always have steak for breakfast on Christmas day, you know something substantial to set them up for a day of eating! I also have a friend who has a tradition has sausage rolls and port around midday and then the family sit down to the big dinner around four.

We never have a traditional pudding, well not since my Granny stopped posting them over from Ireland, my Mum's lovely trifle is now the end to a great gut-busting meal.

It's these little traditions that every family has that I love hearing about!

Check out our Christmas survey...

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Nora x

Did anyone see Gary Rhodes' Local Food Heroes last night?

We would love to know what you thought!

Nora

Yes peacans are pretty pricey, walnuts would make a fantastic alternative. Lots of health food shops have bulk packs of walnuts at a reasonable price. And they are so good for you, a great way to get your omega 3!

Really lovely to know how much you like Tana's muffin recipe Mrs T! (Are you married to B. A Baracus?) It's always fantastic to hear when our viewers have tried a dish at home.

Here is the recipe for anyone else who is intrested...

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I just got back from Sicily where I ate Arancini (deep fried risotto filled with ragu) the size of tennis balls! And more octupus and squid than I have in my whole lifetime. So where on earth did you eat your favourite ever meal? Your story could become part of a major travel series for UKTV Food.

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We are really interested in South and Central American stories at the moment, but anywhere on earth is good too!

Nora

Hello C Harmer,

Welcome to the UKTV Food board, I see you are a new user.

The thread I was discussing with Jerky concerned the Wild Card vote which is soley chosen by the public.

We have always been upfront about the fact there is a judging panel assesing finalists based on both judging criteria and with the public vote - This is separate from the Wild Card vote.

Here is an explantion I posted earlier
On 29 June the first round of free-entry public voting ended. Our judging panel (selected for their expertise) assessed the top 20 outlets (as voted by the public) against our published criteria in each region to determine the first five businesses to go through to the finals. Their assessment took into consideration both the public votes and their judgement of the outlets suitability based against our criteria.

For the first time we also decided that there would be a chance for the public to directly influence a finalist. With the introduction of the second-round wild card vote which continued until midnight 20 August to find the sixth finalist for each region purely on voting. So the outlet with the most votes in each region in the second-round wild card vote has earned the sixth finalist place. Both our terms and conditions and criteria are posted on our website.

Kind regards

Nora

Hi Jerkymiester,

I'm afraid that due to data protection regulations and our privacy policy; we are unable to give you any further information on other nominees vote scores.

Only one outlet from each region became a wild card winner from the public vote. See our voting terms and conditions here...

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So as you can see there were no places for those ranked in below the winner (as you say you came second).

Sorry for your disappointment. I can assure you the Local Food Hero awards 2007 have been subject to strict rules from our compliance department.

Thanks again

Nora

Hi Jerkymiester,

The wild card vote was based on public votes not reviews as Inge has mentioned your outlet had a large number of reviews, I suggested that you may have been nominated last year but obviously this is not the case as its your first year.

I just want to reiterate that the wild card is based on public votes not reviews, the public can vote without reviewing and vice versa.

This wild card winner was based solely on votes from the public until the 20th August. The rules are as follows...
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Sorry to hear you weren't successful, please let me assure you the competition was handled with the utmost fairness and constant involvement of our compliance team.

Kind regards

Nora

Hello Inge,

Here is a link to my previous reply to you, explaining the competition procedure. Sorry you didn't seem able to find it earlier, are you getting emails from our admin system when a user replies to your message?

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Regarding the issue of reviews, the wild card vote was solely based on votes from the public not reviews of the outlet - as you can vote without reviewing and vice-versa.

It may be the case that Martin's Jerked Meat in Cardiff was in the competition last year and received a great number of reviews at that time. All reviews from both competitions remain on the site as once the competition stage is over, the Local Food Directory becomes a fantastic resource for finding local food producers and reviews from the public.

I hope this explains your query?

Kind regards

Nora

Dear Inge1 and Porridge

Thanks very much for your query regarding our Local Food Hero. Just to explain how the competition worked. On 29 June the first round of free-entry public voting ended. Our judging panel (selected for their expertise) assessed the top 20 outlets (as voted by the public) against our published criteria in each region to determine the first five businesses to go through to the finals. Their assessment took into consideration both the public votes and their judgement of the outlets suitability based against our criteria.

For the first time we also decided that there would be a chance for the public to directly influence a finalist. With the introduction of the second-round wild card vote which continued until midnight 20 August to find the sixth finalist for each region purely on voting. So the outlet with the most votes in each region in the second-round wild card vote has earned the sixth finalist place. Both our terms and conditions and criteria are posted on our website and but I will post the links at the bottom of this message if you are intrested.

Thanks again for your query and I hope this provides a full explanation.

Kind regards


Terms and Conditions - [link]

Criteria - [link]

Hi Cheeseone,

Thanks for your comments, it's truly great to have feedback. As far as logging in to vote, we wanted to make sure that the process was as fair as possible; so only one vote per user per outlet. And users can vote for as many outlets as they like - this was intended to stop any vote rigging. That's why we ask people to register their details.

However I can see how this might be confusing - as most people may not be members and will have to go to the registration process first. We do need to rethink the way instructions are presented.

As for finding Cheese Shed in our general search - that won't work I'm afraid you need to go to the Local Food Hero page before you can search for an outlet.

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Thanks again, let me know any other problems.

Hello all,

Sorry to hear some of you are experiencing difficulties, I wonder if you would be able to let me know the specific problems your customers are having, and I will feed them back to the technical team.

It may be that your profiles need some tweaking so we can get the right search terms in there.

As for the leader board, after initially publishing the votes we decided showing the results at the wild card stage might give some outlets an unfair advantage - so we removed the page in the interests of fair play

If you want to check out how you’re doing so far then we would be happy to let you have a one-off idea of the votes you have received.
Contact us via your business e-mail on uktvfood@uktv.co.uk requesting your personal vote tally - available until 5pm, 30 July. Find more info here

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Kind regards

Nora