Well - for a start, we've had a great Easter. The weather for everyone in the UK has been fabulous, and we have seen a real increase in trade over the holiday. I know that we had a great idea about take away picnics for the summer holidays - however - after a rethink we've decided that we will not be going down the flags on the beach route. We WILL be able to provide take aways for the beach and you will be able to pre order if you wish; and come and collect your lunch at the time you have selected. The only real change is that we won't be delivering to you- it was all getting too complicated, and would tie up a member of staff for 5 hours, and we reckoned it wasn't really neccessary. To be honest, we've done quite a few take aways this holiday and there's been no problem at all; however, the really interesting thing for us is that most people want to come and eat lunch in the garden, either in the shade under an umbrella - or on the grassy terrace looking out to sea - I'm guessing that a brief respite from the tropical heat is required?
On the food front - we've developed some really exciting new dishes which seem to be very popular - particularly our sharing mezze platter. You'll see from the photos that it's certainly big enough for two as a light lunch and is often a starter for three or four people. The mezze varies from day to day, depending on the ingredients which are looking particularly delicious that morning, but there are always 4 items to share along with a house salad and some crunchy home made crostini. Currently we are including beetroot and orange hummus, butternut and za'atar hummus, tzatziki, white bean hummus, lamb kofte with minted labneh, fennel and feta bhajis, greek salad with black olives and feta, beetroot and chick pea kofte to name but a few. We garnish most of our dishes now with fresh flowers - partly because they are growing in the garden and are edible, but maily becasue they look WONDERFUL! See what you think when you look at the 'photos.
Otherwise puddings are really popular now, something we've not been used to. When we were at the Cabin - the majority of our customers ate and left fairly promptly but now we have customers dwelling and eating at leisure. It's lovely because we get to chat to our lovely customers and they get to eat - LOADS!
As always - a lot of our dishes are created as a direct result of having some food left that we don't want to waste. For instance - we saw some irresistible strawberries on offer, but having bought them we wanted to do something more imaginative than just strawberries and cream; so we created Summer Strawberry Delight - layers of fresh strawberries and softly whipped chantilly cream, topped with a crumble of crushed buttery flapjack. Today we've made a new pudding on a similar theme. We had some pineapple and some orange curd (a new by-product from the loads of egg yolks left over from our giant meringues again!) - so we've made layers of softly whipped chantilly cream (a little caster sugar and vanilla transforms whipped cream into chantilly cream) chopped fresh pineapple, orange and cardamom curd and again topped with a crunchy crumbly flapjack lid - YUM!!
The Royal Wedding provided us with a bit of a dilemma - do we open or do we not? We decided to open in the full knowledge that it may be a very quiet day - and it was! We made a lot of giant meringues (orange and hazelnut is a new development ) a couple of dozen scones (a daily routine now!) and mackerel pate for the freezer and we generally kept busy ( - we even started the weekly deep clean early, at 3pm!). The village combined to create a wonderful street party (see the photos on the village website - http://www.perranuthnoe.com/ ) - we made miniature meringues to add to the feast (we tried to make red white and blue ones, despite our usual reluctance to use artificial food colourings, but they turned out a very strange colour indeed!).
At the end of the day - Lisa (who has Fridays off ) informed me that she had been making scones at home whilst watching the wedding, weeping copiouly into a teatowel, with Lilla (now 5 months old, and no lightweight!) strapped to her front! I left work and plopped onto the sofa for a few hours of heaven - I opened a bottle of rioja, and watched the replay of the wedding followed immediately by the Masterchef final - heaven! I seem to remember that somewhere along the line - Graham and I toasted the Royal Couple with some extremely delicious whisky from Skye - but I remember very little after that - oh dear!
So - life at Peppercorn is continuing to flow along beautifully and we are having such a great time - come and see us soon. We promise to try and feed you with exactly what you need and want - food from your dreams!
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| The lovely Faye |
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| Greek salad |
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| End of the day perk! |
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| Mezze Platter |
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| Sweet labneh with pineapple coulis |
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