www.caffezonzo.com

Newcastle has to be one of my favourite places to eat, so many cute cafes, gorgeous restaurants and beautiful places to eat! So I was pretty excited to get involved in Newcastle's hidden food gems in partnership with Millennium Hotels and Resorts. Me and my boyfriend love nothing more than going out to eat and if I'm honest it's one of our guilty pleasures and we definitely spend way too much money than we should on eating out. However one of our favourite places to go is Caffe Zonzo in Sandyford, it's a family-ran Italian restaurant and serves some incredible food! They have a menu called Peasant's Lunch which is available everyday until 6:30, with dishes starting from £3.95, a bargain! They also serve cocktails for £5, my favourite is their Expresso Martini. I would highly recommend a visit, and I can't wait to try some of the other places listed below. 

Newcastle's Hidden Food Gems

What are your hidden food gems?

 

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I thought I'd start a new series on my blog called Food Fridays. I'm a massive foodie and so I thought it was about time I started sharing my food interests with you guys. I'm not going to post a food post every friday but maybe one friday a month I'll either do a restaurant review or a recipe! This week I embarked on making my very first pie, a Steak & Guinness pie. This was purely because I found a Le Creuset pie dish at TK Maxx for a bargain price of £12.99 and I was desperate to use it.

I used a basic recipe from Jamie Oliver and altered it to suit my needs.

Steak & Guinness Pie

INGREDIENTS

olive oil

2 medium red onions, peeled and chopped

3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

2 sticks celery, trimmed and chopped

a handful of baby mushrooms, whole

750g quality diced beef

a few sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves picked and chopped

sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

440 ml Guinness

2 heaped tablespoons plain flour

600g ready-made Jus-Rol shortcrust pastry

1 large free-range egg, beaten

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 220ºC/gas 5. In a large pan with a lid, heat a lug of olive oil on a medium heat. Start by browning the meat then remove from the pan and set aside. Put the onions in the pan and fry gently for about 10 minutes – try not to colour them too much. Turn the heat up, add the garlic, carrots and celery and scatter in the mushrooms. Mix everything together before stirring in the browned beef, rosemary, a pinch of salt and a level teaspoon of pepper.

Fry for 3 or 4 minutes, then pour in the Guinness, stir in the flour and add just enough water to cover. Bring to a simmer, cover the pan with a lid and leave on a very low heat for 1 and a half hours, stirring every 20 minutes or so. A perfect pie filling needs to be robust, so if it’s still quite liquidy after 1 and a half hours then remove lid and turn up the heat, reduce until the sauce thickens. Remove from the heat and season carefully and leave to cool slightly (even better leave to cool completely and then put in the fridge for a day).

Grease and flour a 24cm pie dish, before laying a round of pastry big enough to fall over the edges, making sure to press into the sides gently.Tip the stew into your dish and even it out before brushing egg wash around the edge of the pastry in the pie dish and then placing the rest of the pastry over the top of the pie. Trim and then crimp the edges and maybe even make some decoration out of the leftover pastry for the top (I went Christmas themed). Brush the top with beaten egg, then bake the pie directly on the bottom of the oven for 40 minutes, until the pastry is cooked and golden. Delicious served simply with peas, gravy and some mash potato if you're feeling like a treat!

It really is a delicious pie and surprisingly easy once you have prepared everything, what do you think? Will you be trying this?

 

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Last Thursday after having a pretty rubbish day of job hunting, my boyfriend and me decided to take a spontaneous trip to the seaside with the idea of eating fish and chips on the beach. We drove to Tynemouth, parked the car and as we got out realised it was absolutely freezing, not even joking there were gale force winds! That sort of made fish and chips on the beach out of the question, so we had a little wander and ended up being enticed by a 50% off main courses sign outside a bar and restaurant called Barca Art. It sounded really nice and with 50% off you can't really complain, can you?

The restaurant part of the bar is upstairs and it has a very arty (hence the name) and romantic feel to it. I adored the beautiful tiled tables and each table had its own quirky salt and pepper pots, I failed to get a picture but our table had two loved up cows on it. The menu gives lots of choice and is very reasonably priced for the standard of the food available. We went for the Camembert sharing board to start and I have to say it was one of the best Camemberts I've ever had the pleasure of eating, it was "encased in short crust pastry with thyme, red onion marmalade served with chefs chutney & ciabatta toasts". For £8 it was an absolute bargain and so so delicious, would highly recommend that dish if you ever get the chance the visit. Next we both went for the Baked Chunky Cod for our main course which was served with "sundried tomato, olive, caper tapanade, saffron pomme puree, basil cream", it was again done to a very high standard, the cod melted in your mouth and the tomato crust and creamy sauce were the perfect accompaniment. It was priced at £13.95 which wasn't too bad however we arrived during their 50% off mains offer which meant it came in at just under £7 which is a bargain. Unfortunately we didn't have room for dessert however if we had the Sticky Toffee Pudding would have definitely tempted me.

This is a lovely restaurant and the high standard of food has definitely made us want to go back as soon as possible, definitely one to try if you're ever up in Newcastle!

www.barcaart.co.uk

 

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