Home-grown and another trip to the fantastic Roger Hickman's!

Today we were suppose to be heading to London to go to Jason Atherton's new restaurant Pollen Street Social and catch up with friends, but unfortunately due to the recent riots we decided to stay away. A quick look around my garden before heading to Roger Hickman's in Norwich proved fruitful spotting my first sweet pepper and a bumper crop of tomatoes!

We then went out to Roger Hickman's, Norwich's finest restaurant (in my opinion). I've reviewed it before and you can read that here. It was a shame we couldn't make it to London, but lunch at Roger Hickman's definitely cheered us up! We've been twice before and it just keeps getting better. Lunch today was simply sensational and incredible value at only £20 a head for the set menu. You can clearly see why this restaurant won the Good Food Guide restaurant of the year for the East of England.

We started with an amouse bouche - pea and mint soup, which was silky smooth and full of flavour. The starter was one of the best starters I've ever had a warm salad of fillet of beef with truffle and pickled mushrooms. The fillet of beef almost melted in your mouth, and combined with truffle was simply divine.

A main course of Pork Belly, Pork Loin, with cabbage and bacon and mushrooms in a creamy but light mustard sauce was superb. All the pork was cooked to perfection and the dish was beautifully balanced.

Dessert was also a show-stopper! Poached cherries with cherry jelly and chocolate mousse, with an added spark of popping candy. A really great dessert to round off a superb lunch. Service each time has been impeccable and they can always cater for gluten free, this restaurant really deserves all the plaudits it gets.

A Mexican Classic: Fajitas!

I've not eaten fajitas in a long time as the tortillas they sell in the shops may read 'corn tortillas' but are bulked out with wheat flour. But my girlfriend managed to source these fantastic gluten free tortillas at www.mexgrocer.co.uk. And what a find they were! As they are pure corn tortillas and not bulked out they taste really authentic. Having been to Mexico, they really brought back memories of the tacos we used to get from street vendors in Puerto Escondido! They do come in batches of 30 but are great value and freezable.

We used a BBC Good Food recipe for steak fajitas which was very tasty. The recipe uses rump steak, which was full of flavour and great value. If you like it spicy just up the pinch of cayenne pepper. We served them with a tomato salsa, guacamole and sour cream. An awesome dinner which took no time at all to make!