Excuse my hiatus

Yes, I know it has been nigh on a year and a half since Lezzie Lickin's taste buds were tapped and as the title says, you have to excuse my hiatus.

Busy times at work led to a need to put on my PJs as soon as I got in and throw myself on to our super duper comfy sofas along with a tumbler of whisky and episodes of Glee, anything with Mary Portas in or Coronation Street (especially now it has a gay girl storyline). Plus Beth was all blogged out with her work blog, MovieTalk.

Anyhoo, all that sofa surfing, plus some dramatic changes at work have resulted in me feeling somewhat creatively challenged, so hence Lezzie Lickin's is reborn!

Where do I start? Well we've been on annual leave this week and that has manifested itself in a series of culinary delights and disasters. On the delight side, being pampered by trainee chefs and waiting staff at the Vincent Rooms. Six courses for £24 cannot be sniffed at, and they are being trained in the Escoffier technique (Fanny's favourite apparently, Fanny Cradock that is). So, huge white plates dotted with tiny food with a bit of foam on top. But it was good and I would recommend it. On the mediocre site was Hix Oyster and Chop House. A gay girl never really knows what to do with a big meaty portion, and it left me feeling decidedly queer all evening....

Beth and I visited a rainy Oxford yesterday and she took me to one of her old student haunts, the Nosebag. Here, simplicity was key and she informed me that the menu and ambiance had not changed since the late 1980s. A trio of chopped cabbage salads in a Turkish style with fresh herbs and a chocolate brownie placated my temper seeing as it took two hours to drive into the city centre after a somewhat disappointing trip to the Roald Dahl museum in Great Missenden. Let's just say, why do adults have to pay more to enter when the whole museum was geared towards encouraging kids to run riot, as opposed to actually learning something about the great man and his books? Rant over.

Thursday involved some sloe picking in order to make sloe gin. We used to do this with my Nan when my parents lived in Essex. Beth and I took a trip down memory lane with my Mum by visiting Linders Field in Buckhurst Hill where the sloes used to be abundant. Imagine our horror to find that all our bushes had been trimmed! Sloe bushes I mean. Anyhoo, we found some and we now have some sloes gently marinading with sugar in a bottle of gin to be consumed during the festive season. We also made blackberry whiskey, which should be fun!

On a final note, we visited Gay's the Word on Monday where I stocked up on literature to help research the book I'm writing. Yes, I have finally got round to putting pen to paper to write that wartime lesbian love story that I've wanted to write for years. I have only written one passage so far, but if you want to see it to provide your critique, then message me. I also tried my hand at a sex scene, but keeping that under wraps right now...

A little bit of what you fancy does you good

I watched a dramatisation of the life of East End lass Marie Lloyd last night. Marie Lloyd, if you don't know, was one of the greatest English music hall singers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, whose songs were rife with double entendre, e.g. "she'd never had her ticket punched before" wink, wink!

As one of her most famous songs states "a little bit of fancy does you good", a view that I hold very true to my heart, certainly when it comes to food. And, if the recent Victorian episode of the excellent The Supersizers Go... (featuring our superb Sapphic sister Sue Perkins and honorary heterosexual hottie, Giles Coran) was anything to go by, then those Victorians certainly had a lot of what they fancied. To find out more about the era, read Tipping the Velvet, it's fabulous and
adds another dimension to eating oysters!

So I thought I would share my very fanciable recipe for roast potatoes with you, guaranteed to make you fancy more that just a little bit.

Heat up some goose or duck fat in a roasting tin in a pre-heated oven. Cut some King Edward or Heritage potatoes three ways (so each potato has three edges) and then par-boil for five minutes in hot salted water. Drain and then add a little cornmeal or dried polenta to the saucepan (1 teaspoon) along with salt and pepper and some rosemary and then shake the pan as so to loosen the edges of the potatoes. Place the potatoes one by one in the hot fat, making sure there is good space between each of them and cook for 30 - 35 minutes.

Your tatties should come out crisp and golden on the outside and delectably fluffy on the inside. Fancy that?

On another note and another era, check out the Supersizers Go Seventies. A time when we worshipped at the altar of Angel Delight and had an uncharacteristic, but definite fear of Fanny (Fanny Cradock that is)!