The Best of British Gin

The Best of British Gin

Like most of us I love a tipple….. or maybe two. My tipple is gin and tonic. Not any old gin but one that comes from near to where I live. I was joking a few weeks ago to some friends about how my gin consumption was ethical as my “gin miles” (well, we all know of food miles!) are low. My favourite gin is distilled 4 tube stops from my flat in London. A distillery on the door step! I’m proud of this fact which something that people like Betty Ford may cringe about, but when you have a London Dry Gin that has won more awards than any other gin and is the only premium London Dry Gin still distilled in London, one can be proud of of what they are enjoying as they sup.

Tie a Donkey to the Ceiling – Happy Cinco de Mayo

Regular readers will wonder why Mexico is featured in my blog about all things British. Well there is a reason and it is all to do with Great British Cookers. Have I lost my marbles? Perhaps. Let’s start at the very beginning – it’s a very good place to start. One night a few years [...]

Great Cookers, Great Food, GREAT Britain.

I never saw myself as a van driver. This is now year two!

It’s not any old van you know. It’s a rather special one. It’s the ‘AGA Total Control Van’. As regular readers may know, last summer I drove all over the UK to food festivals with an AGA Total Control in the back of my van. And what a great summer it was, I even ended up buying an AGA Total Control. The AGA Rangemaster Cookery Theatre appears at many events across the UK every year. It is a superb theatre highlighting British manufacturing at its best. AGA is made in Shropshire and Rangemaster in Leamington Spa. Those of us with an AGA know of its many benefits and the quality of the food it cooks. It is true to say that life revolves around a Rangemaster as it is Britain’s number 1 range cooker. In fact the company which is now AGA Rangemaster invented the world’s first range cooker in 1830 on the very same site that Rangemaster cookers are manufactured today. There are more Rangemaster Cookers in British homes than any other range cooker. This is British manufacturing at it’s best! And it is combined with the best TV Chefs, Cookery Writers and Michelin Chefs in the UK taking part in AGA Rangemaster cookery theatres across the UK. Oh, I’m in for a summer of fun! For those that know me, fun is what I do best.

Tractors, Cheltenham Ladies and Nutty Krust!

It’s not every day that I attend a horse race however last night’s was special. It was the final of the AGA Total Control Ladies Point to Point Race at Cheltenham Racecourse. I was there in attendance and what a great night of Hospitality AGA provided. Congratulations to the winners and how lucky Claire Hart is to have won an AGA Total Control cooker. After 10 years of working for AGA I now know the dilemma she faces. What colour? Well there are 13 of them!

The Great British Cooking Pot

After my Best of British food blog yesterday I want to tell you a bit about Great British Manufacturing which is part of my job role as AGA Brand Ambassador. AGA cookers, style icons of the UK, are made in Shropshire in the Coalbrookdale Foundry – the same one that Abraham Darby started the Industrial Revolution from by manufacturing cast iron with coke rather than charcoal. It was in this foundry that the famous Iron Bridge over the River Severn was cast in 1777. Before that Darby was granted a patent from Queen Anne in 1707 on the basis that he made the manufacture of cast iron cooking pots the most efficient in the world. And that he did by making them thinner and lighter. Last week the original patent was found in the National Archives in Kew. Darby went on to cast many more items such as the Halfpenny Bridge over the River Liffy in Dublin and the gates for The Crystal Palace, which now have been re-located and stand proud as the gates to Kensington Gardens in London.