Chilli and Chocolate : Recipes, restaurant reviews, local food heroes, and wine reviews - A Belfast Food Blog (Northern Ireland, UK)

The winners of Theo Randall’s “Pasta” cookbook are..

As you may know by now, “Pasta” by Theo Randall is one of our favourite Italian cookbooks. Our competition to win one of three copies has just ended, and we’re happy to announce that the three lucky winners are: Grace M Stuart H David Q Thanks to everyone who took the time to enter, and [...]

Happy paella-ing to..

Our competition to win a paella kit from Orce Serrano Hams was a hotly contested affair – over 150 of you wanted to get your hands on the fantastic prize. The name drawn out of the hat is: Siobhan McK – congratulations Siobhan! The paella kit is a wonderful prize – and a great reason [...]

Creu Celta is one of the best Spanish wines in the UK!

We’re sure that everyone at Belfast’s Direct Wine Shipments are over the moon. Their ‘Creu Celta 2006′ wine has been awarded a “Best New Discovery” prize at this years New Wave Spanish Wine Awards 2010. The ‘Creu Celta’ label produces rich, concentrated reds with pine, chocolate, cherry, plum and currant notes from the DWS vineyard [...]

Italian Fennel and Orange Salad

As the temperature in Northern Ireland soared to a stifling 23° last week, we were in the mood for a lighter meal when we got home from work. What better than a zesty Meditteranean salad! Kelly is a big fan of citrus flavours so this Italian Fennel and Orange salad was a sure-fire winner. I [...]

Spanish Stuffed Tomatoes

In our recent post about La Tomatina we mentioned that we’d be celebrating the humble tomato in our own way – by making Spanish stuffed tomatoes. It’s a pretty straightforward recipe, but the flavours are superb – fruity, both sweet and savoury, and with a delicate hint of thyme and parsley in the background. Kelly [...]

Win a paella kit from Orce Serrano Hams!

Just like us, our good friends Iain and Gayle at Orce Serrano Hams are getting into the Tomatina Festival spirit – although they have a far better chance of making it to the food fight from their home in Andalucia! They’ve selected a little piece of Valencia from their fantastic range of Spanish delicacies to [...]

On my command, unleash.. tomatoes!

The world’s biggest food fight starts tomorrow at 11am! The population of Buñol more than triples each year as thousands descend on the small Valencian town to join in the massive tomato fight, with over 100 tons of over-ripe tomatoes being thrown in an hour of fun and mayhem. No-one really knows why the event [...]

Our Harnett Oils winner is..

We recently ran a competition to win a basket of Harnett Oils products, asking you the name of the process for squeezing the oils from the grains. While a lot of you got the answer right (it was cold-pressing, by the way) we could only select one lucky winner. Congratulations to Jill H.! A basket [...]

Win your copy of Pasta by Theo Randall

Our friends at Ebury Publishing have very kindly given us 3 copies of Theo Randall’s “Pasta” cookbook to give-away. Hopefully you’ve read what we think of the book -we’re pretty confident that “Pasta” will become an immediate favourite for the three lucky members that win the competition! Thanks again to everyone at Ebury that gave [...]

Pasta by Theo Randall

Just looking back through our recipe-list it’s pretty obvious that Italian cuisine is a big favourite of ours. I think I’ve bought most of what Antonio Carluccio, Giorgio Locatelli, and Elizabeth David have written on the subject. So it says a lot about Theo Randall’s abilities that we became such huge fans of his so [...]