KONOBA TAURIS, SIPAN (MATTYB RECOMMENDS)

One day on holiday we decided to take a short ferry ride over to the adjacent island of Sipan to go and have a little wander and check out the sites. After hitting the island and exploring the south side we took the bus over to the westerly port of Luka to hit the beach and enjoy a couple of beers. After a hard days swimming in the crystal clear ocean and sunbathing we headed back round to the port and sat down at Konoba Tauris, looking for a bite to eat.

SUPER SWEET SPICED RED CABBAGE

When we bought a red cabbage last week I spent ages trying to find a fancy recipe to jazz it up but all I could find were Christmassy type recipes. Right now it's August but I thought you know what, let make it anyway because great flavour isn't concerned with what time of the year it is. This recipe braises the cabbage and an apple in a stock that is flavored with star anise and cloves for a bit of spice and golden syrup and sherry vinegar for a bit of sweetness. It's a marriage of flavors that really is super!

REFUGE MANCHESTER (MATTYB RECOMMENDS)

It's funny how you can walk past somewhere fairly regularly and not even notice it's there. When we travel up to Manchester for concerts and theatre visits we often get off at Oxford Road and we'd never noticed Refuge before. We spied this offshoot of "Volta", a successful Manchester restaurant by chefs Justin Crawford and Luke Cowdrey (also know as the Unabombers - according to their website anyway!) online when planning a birthday meal in the city and we loved the sound of the menu so we decided to give them a try. Off we popped on the train to Manchester once more ready for a delicious celebration meal.

BISTRO PIERRE LIVERPOOL (MATTYB RECOMMENDS)

So having enjoyed the £12.95 pre theatre menu at Bistro Franc in my previous post and being lucky enough to have tickets to go and see Sheridan Smith star in Funny Girl at the Liverpool Empire last week, we decided to give their sister restaurant, Bistro Pierre a whirl. Their pre theatre menu offered a different selection of starters and mains so it's practically like visiting a completely different venue isn't it? Could Bistro Pierre offer a tasty trio of courses similar to that of Bistro Franc? We headed off to go find out.

MATTY'S HOMEMADE MINCE PIES

So you have made your homemade mincemeat  and it's been brewing away for a while so now, in the last few days before Christmas it's time to make those mince pies. Obviously if you haven't made your own mince meat you can use a ready made variety but for me, making your own pastry, filling it with your own mince meat and baking them so that your kitchen is filled with those incredible festive smells is what Christmas is all about! My recipe below will make 8 mince pies but you can scale the recipe up if you want to make a bigger batch.

THE NEW CLUB BRIGHTON (MATTYB RECOMMENDS)

Sometimes when you're visiting a new city you might spend ages researching places to eat, getting

recommendations from friends and family or trawling the internet looking at reviews and pictures on Instagram. Sometimes though you should just wait until you get there and you never know what you might stumble across. That is what happened with The New Club, which we walked past on our way to our hotel in Brighton. It looked nice inside and the menu sounded delicious so we decided to walk back in the evening and give it a shot.

GRAFENE MANCHESTER (MATTYB RECOMMENDS)

Why we booked a table at Grafene earlier this month is still a mystery to us? Not in a bad way you understand but its just we can't remember where or how we discovered it! Having booked said table weeks in advance for a pre-theatre dinner we ventured up to King Street in the Deansgate area of Manchester city centre on quite a wet and windy Friday evening to see if there was method to our apparent madness.

MATTY'S MINCEMEAT IN A MINUTE

Mincemeat can be very dividing. A lot of people love it but I know a lot who can't stand the stuff. If there is anything that will ever convert people to the joys of mincemeat it will be this recipe! More fresh and fruity than the jarred varieties that are rushed out onto supermarket shelves at this time of year, it's another treat you can add to your Christmas repertoire. It takes literally minutes to whip up a batch which you can use on the same day or store in sterilized jars to really intensify the flavor before baking.

ALBERT'S SCHLOSS MANCHESTER (MATTY B RECOMMENDS)

A Friday night visiting Manchester for a little boogie at it's famous arena meant that it was time to give another of the city's new food and drink offerings a whirl and this time it was the turn of Albert's Schloss in the trendy Deansgate area of the city centre that caught our eye. Inspired by the Bavarian and Bohemian areas of Europe; it boasts on its website of being the first Tankovna in Manchester as well as having its very own bakery and "cook haus". I didn't know what what a Tankovna was but it sounded intriguing so off we went to go check it out.

MATTY'S TRAYBAKE TALES PART 6: APPLE, ALMOND AND CINNAMON MASH UP

My next tray bake tale takes inspiration from the bakewell tart by using flaked almonds and almond extract to create a delicious moist sponge that has a little surprise hidden inside. A layer of cinnamon coated apples is baked inside the cake that adds an extra dimension to the more traditional plain tray bake sponge. This hybrid of an apple pie and the bakewell tart is another baked treat that you can add to your repertoire of tray bakes that you will keep coming back to time and time again. Served warm with a dollop of ice cream, well that's perfection!

MATTY'S WALDORF SLAW

I do love a good homemade slaw. Comes from the love of my Nan's homemade version we used to have back in the day. I love experimenting with my slaw's, trying to come up with different variations depending on what it's going to be served alongside. Today we were having some BBQ pork belly and jacket potatoes so an all American slaw sounded like it would do the trick so what I did was take some of the flavors of a Waldorf salad, apple and walnuts as well as some sultanas and let me tell you this; it was Da Bomb!

"APPLE PIE" CAKE

I love apple pie but I don't always want to make apple pie. As much as I love making pasty

sometimes I just want to make a bake that I can just whack together with a minimal amount of fuss and effort. With that in mind, this apple pie cake was born. Taking the flavors of apple pie and mashing it up into a cake will satisfy those pie cravings without you having to worry about making a pastry, ideal if you don't have enough ingredients for a pastry or aren't confident enough with pastry making. Even if you are a pastry whiz, you should still give this a go! It's too darn delicious not too!

"NOT LIKE SCHOOL" APPLE AND RHUBARB CRUMBLE

I used to think that rhubarb was vile. This assumption was based purely on memories of vile crumble we used to be served as dessert smothered in lumpy custard at primary school. Now that I'm more older and wiser (just!) I can see that these crumbles were never going to be amazing having been mass produced and baked to death however if you the plunge and make your own delicious version from scratch with the best homemade ingredients you might've pleasantly surprised to find yourself falling in love with this old foe! 

URBAN COOKHOUSE MANCHESTER (MATTY B RECOMMENDS)

Manchester's food scene continues to grow and grow with numerous new places to eat popping up on what almost seems to be a weekly basis. One such venue is the Urban Cookhouse which was handily close to the hotel we were staying in during our latest visit to Manchester and with an appetizing looking menu on offer we thought we would go check it out!

SUMMER SMOOTHIES: MIXED BERRY

My next installment of summer smoothie madness is this delicious mixed fruit version. What's great about this recipe is that it shows how you can boost the goodness of your smoothies using a mixture of both fresh and frozen mixed berries. The joint pleasure of this is that you get the fresh fruity burst of the fresh berries as well as the cold hit of frozen berries which gives an instant chill to the smoothie without the need for having ice cubes around which you may not always have in your freezer. From ingredients to glass in less than 5 minutes! Perfect!

SUMMER SMOOTHIES: STRAWBERRY, LIME AND BANANA

You might find this bizarre what with me being a total foodie but I have a proper aversion to eating

raw fruit. It's a texture thing more than a flavor thing. I just can't handle it! Blend it into a smoothie though and I'm sorted. With summer here and a beach body needed to be achieved before October and the super warm days now upon us here in the UK, here is my first summer smoothie recipe. a simple strawberry, lime and banana connection that's great to get down you at breakfast time or as a refreshing afternoon treat!

QUICKIDY QUICK APPLE SAUCE

Sometimes you buy in your fruit for the fruit bowl with all the best intentions of tucking in and getting your five a day but when that doesn't happen and you end up some poor little apples sadly about to go on the turn then do not take the easy root and lash them in your compost bin. Take them to the kitchen and with a bit of lemon juice,  sugar and nutmeg you can have a bowl of homemade apple sauce made in no time all ready to go next time you serve up pork for your Sunday roast.

APPLE STRUDEL SNAKE

My apple turnovers went down a treat last weekend. Well with me anyway I must of eaten about 6. Proper little pig me! What is a boy to do when he doesn't have any puff pastry to hand. I ain't making any (ain't nobody got time for that!). Lucky for me I had some filo pastry sheets to hand so I thought it would be perfect to use the same filling but create a stunning strudel instead. So this time you get that warm cinnamon spiced apple, apricot and raisin filling but this time wrapped in a beautiful crispy filo snake. Another wonderful winter treat!