HomeSense has partnered with renowned fashion and portrait photographer Rankin to create exclusive aprons for Red Nose Day 2017 and help people living incredibly tough lives across Africa and here in the UK. The campaign is being fronted by the Hairy Bikers, Si King and Dave Myers. The apron is part of a Red Nose Day 2017 range of products available in HomeSense stores nationwide. Why did you choose to support Comic Relief this year? It’s a real honour to be involved in such a tremendous cause and be a part of Red Nose Day. We hope the aprons will carry the Comic Relief message into tens of thousands of kitchens and help countless lives both here in the UK and in Africa. Being cooks, we’re delighted the range features aprons for adults and children, inspiring the whole family to bake a difference and raise life-changing cash to change countless lives. How can people get involved? Baking is one of the most popular fundraising activities to support Red Nose Day and this range enables you to not only look good, but raise money too.
So we’re encouraging everyone to throw on a HomeSense Red Nose Day apron and make your bake matter! [You can find their coffee and walnut sponge recipe here – Ed] If you were to bake a cake for Red Nose Day 2017, what kind of cake would it be? Dave: It would be a red velvet cake because it would feel appropriate with the colour. A red velvet cake with a butter cream filling is one of my favourites. What’s your favourite recipe? Si: Mine is the fruits de mer – it’s just the quality of the ingredients, but there’s a particular skill in putting it together which I love. Dave: One of my favourites is sushi. We actually experimented in cooking the rice to make sushi rice, but a fool proof method. We made our own rainbow rolls and it’s absolutely faultless – the rice is brilliant. I’m really proud of that recipe and when I’m cooking that rice from now on I’d definitely look at that recipe. What advice would you give to others looking to follow in your footsteps?
Dave: Just give stuff a go, we had several ideas that failed. Be honest to yourself as well – cooking, eating, riding motorbikes and talking rubbish is what we’ve always done so we haven’t had to invent anything. Si: Tenacity – you’ve got to keep going whatever. You will get some knocks and you will have to be walking up hill sometimes and you’ve just got to keep going. Dave: It’s a lot easier if you don’t have to pretend. Si: And the good thing about it for Dave and I is that we’re best mates. What can we expect from The Hairy Bikers in the future? Dave: The thing about us is everything’s just evolved really; we do things that we are interested in. We never lose the thrill of going abroad on our adventures. Let’s see what happens. How has bringing out diet books changed your approach to food and fitness? Si: Doing what we do for a living, food is our life, it’s been an interesting journey. We’re more body aware and we’re more food aware, I think actually it’s made us better cooks.
Dave: We tend to work hard at making flavours, it’s stocks and good cooking. Si: The food that we cook becomes cleaner and what we mean by that is that there isn’t the clawing kind of residue of oil or fat, not that there was particularly it was always balanced, now it’s just clean. It’s the difference between eating a fat, really heavy Indian curry, and eating Thai. Dave: We’ve just got that balance – our curries have got a lot better, we’re not relying so much on ghee, it’s more about the spices and the pressure cooker, because that way you’re getting all the flavour out of the spices. What advice do you have for someone who is looking to lose some weight? Si: Just start it, the hardest bit is starting, and then once you’ve got that momentum, just keep going. Dave: But you need to get a set of scales. Scales don’t lie and weigh yourself at the same time every day. It’s amazing if you do discipline yourself with the scales you’ll be surprised how quickly initially the weight will drop off, once you start thinking about what you do.
Keep a food diary, so you’re not kidding yourself, because it’s that doughnut on the way to the car from the supermarket, it doesn’t count but it does, you think I just snaffled it, it doesn’t mean anything. It is great that you can still love food and lose weight with your diet books, what would your top tips be to others who are real foodies? Si: The thing is the diet books that we’ve produced are a direct reflection of our love of food. From the beginning of making the books it had to be great tasting food first and foremost, not diet food, it had to be great tasting. Then the process was actually making it less calorific. The great thing about it is that food is our hobby, cooking is our hobby and our life’s love, so we didn’t want to lose that while we were losing weight. It was a great process to go through to go right, okay, how will we make this spaghetti bolognese or this tray bake or curry as tasty as possible, but bringing the calories right down, and we achieved that, and that’s been the legacy of the books.
Red Nose Day this year is on 24th March. Click here for details on how you can fundraise for the causes it supports.Amy Davies - June 19th, 2013 We love a great picnic here at W&N, and luckily we have the Hairy Bikers on hand to help us out. We have a downloadable recipe for their delicious Scotch Eggs, plus one for Nargis Kebabs – scotch eggs with an Indian twist, from their backlist title Mums Know Best. Click on the image below to get the recipe. Tags: Dave Myers, finger food, Hairy Bikers, Hairy Dieters, homemade scotch egg, Mums Know best, nargis kebabs, picnic food, picnic ideas, picnic recipe, scotch egg, scotch egg recipe, Si King This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 19th, 2013 at 10:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Sue Stinchcombe - Biography Chef Sue Stinchcombe and her husband Mark are the couple behind the Farm to Fork food philosophy at the heart of Eckington Manor.
Sue trained at Worcester College and Wood Norton Hall, before heading to the illustrious training ground of Gordon Ramsay’s Royal Hospital Road restaurant. From there she went on to Belle House in Pershore, continuing her journey to perfect fine dining cuisine. Sue met her husband to be at Le Champignon Sauvage, and they took a long over-due gap year to begin a culinary adventure which led them to explore the top kitchens and menus in Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. Their journey allowed them to better understand the food and sunshine flavours of this region. Sue’s talents have gained her many awards including Worcestershire Chef of the Year, M.A.R.C.H Young Chef of the Year and Overall Winner, Acorn Award, MAC Awards – Chef of the Year. She has also appeared on the Great British Menu, Britain’s Best Dish and Hairy Bikers television series. Sue became Head Chef at Eckington Manor, having known Judy, founder and owner of Eckington Manor, for many years.
Together they share a vision for food: to favour local ingredients, honour seasonality and create an experience of relaxed fine dining where natural flavour and the integrity of ingredients are paramount. The menus at Eckington Manor are developed using produce from Eckington Manor’s award winning farm, orchard, vegetable and herb gardens. ‘At Eckington Manor, everything is at its best.’ Mark Stinchcombe - Biography Chef Mark Stinchcombe is one half of the culinary couple behind the extraordinary Eckington Manor food offering. Mark’s love of food began while he was still at school and he entered the kitchens of the acclaimed Royal Crescent in Bath, on work experience at only 16 years of age. From there he moved on to Ston Easton Park in Somerset, where he served for two years and began to learn how to create menus by using local and seasonal produce. At Michelin starred Driftwood in Cornwall, and under the tutelage of Chef Chris Eden, Mark began to hone his fine dining chef skills before departing to ski slopes for a season of well-deserved youthful fun!