Review: Posh Chips, Brierley Hill

I've been a big fan of street food for a while now and I guess when I tried posh chips I probably had slightly inflated expectations, unfortunately, this has meant I ended up slightly disappointed.

I would like to clarify that It certainly wasn't the toppings that I found disappointing, they offer a really great selection, were good quality, had plenty of flavour and, although I found the beef on the British a little dry, were pretty damn impressive.

It was actually the chips that let them down, they seemed like run of the mill oven chips straight from the freezer. To their credit, they were soft, fluffy and clearly from the higher end of the quality spectrum, however, they suffered from the classic frozen chip issues of being quite dry and basically tasteless. For a place that clearly puts a lot of effort into other aspects of their food, and seeing as chips are literally their name, I expected them to be better.

With that said I really do recommend this place, it’s great to see a local fast food joint raising the bar and doing something a little bit different, but I obviously feel some improvements could be made.

Review: Tasty Plaice, Grand Central Birmingham

On Sunday afternoon I happened to be in Birmingham town centre, in Grand Central, waiting on a train home. Since I hadn't eaten anything all day, I decided to get some food and try out one of the many eateries in and around the local vicinity. Unfortunately the place I was really interested in hasn't opened yet so, as it had been several months since the last time I had takeaway fish and chips, I settled on Tasty Plaice.

Whilst I do have to compliment them on their service, it was fast, friendly and fairly efficient, the food itself was definitely disappointing. The first thing I noticed was that, despite being quite busy and assumingly having a high turnover, a lot of the food appeared to have been sat in the heated display for some time. This is never a good thing, it points to poor management, high food wastage and generally means that everything will be over cooked.

Ignoring my initial misgivings, and hoping the food in the display was only there for display purposes, I decided to go for haddock, chips and curry sauce. The chips themselves were black country style, meaning they're battered, and whilst this isn't inherently a bad thing, when done well black country chips are absolutely lovely, these were not good. They were cold, greasy and tasteless, they had clearly been being kept warm for quite some time as any crispness was long gone and it left them unpleasantly soggy. The curry was the only hot thing on the meal, unfortunately warmth was all it had going for it, it was watery and almost completely tasteless. The fish, the thing I had been looking forward to most, was by far the biggest disappointment. Happily the fish did not come out of display, however, when I cut into it, it was a very small, thin piece of fish coated in a lot of heavy batter, which was both soggy from standing and hard from being overcooked. The batter was so cold, hard and greasy that it was almost inedible, I ended up cutting a large proportion of the batter off and throwing it away. Inside the fish hadn't fared much better, it was almost cold and very dry. The fish had so little of the flavour that you would normally associate with fresh, fried haddock that I honestly couldn't have told what type of fish I was eating, it just tasted old.

Needless to say I won't be making a return visit and, as much as I liked the service, I won't be able to recommend this place to anyone. It definitely was not worth the nearly £7 it cost me for one of the worst portions of fish and chips I've had in a long time, I've had much better fish and chips at half this price.

Homemade Chicken Doner Style Kebab

So I’ve been playing around with homemade doner style kebabs recently, this is my take on the chicken doner.

You will need:
5 skinned and boned chicken thighs
1 large onion
1 large red pepper

For the marinade:
2tbsp natural yoghurt
1tbsp tomato puree
1tsp oregano
1tsp garlic powder
1tsp onion powder
1tsp smoked paprika
1tsp cumin
1tsp cayenne pepper
1/2tsp ground black pepper
1/2tsp salt
The juice of half a lemon

To serve:
Pita bread/flat bread/tortilla wraps
Mint yoghurt sauce
Salad

Method:
1. Put the chicken thighs in a bowl, add in all the marinade ingredients and give it a good mix with your hands, massaging it into the meat. Allow the meat to marinate for a couple of hours minimum, ideally over night.
2. Fold the thighs over and feed them onto 2 skewers, using 2 will make the kebab easier to turn and handle later on.
3. Place on a raised grill rack over a fairly deep baking tray and put into a 225 degree (Celsius) preheated oven for 30 minutes.
4. After 30 minutes take it out of the oven and turn the kebab over using the skewers, baste with the juices in the bottom of the baking tray before adding the roughly sliced onion and pepper to they tray.
5. Put it back in the oven for another 30 minutes until the meat, onions and peppers have started to caramelise around the edges.
6. Remove from the oven and allow the meat to rest for 5 minutes or so before carving, as seen in your local kebab shop.

Notes:
Serve on a tray with the pita bread/flat breads, mint yoghurt sauce and salad.