It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the kitchen at Waterhead as Head Chef Nick makes the final preparations for festive banqueting. With rich pickings of produce from a range of local suppliers, Nick invited Barry Carr from The Cheese Larder in Kendal to help select a fabulous Cumbrian Christmas Cheeseboard. We think you will love their final choice … (more…)

With this recipe Head Chef at The Midland, Michael Wilson, proves that you can take a relatively ordinary cut of meat such as the blade, and transform it into a glorious melt-in-the mouth triumph. Just perfect for wholesome meal accompanied by your favourite glass of red wine!
This method requires the meat to be placed in a deep pan with enough liquid to cover the piece of meat. The pan must be covered with a secure-fitting lid to prevent the liquid from evaporating during the long cooking process (if you don’t have a deep pan, we have also tried this in a slow cooker).
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Lancaster House general manager and Food & Wine lover Tim Bell, tells us why this Autumn should taste extra special this year.
Horticulturaly speaking, it’s been a pretty good year so far. The spring was mild and relatively frost-free, the summer heralded some great periods of warm, unbroken sunshine, and here now, as the leaves slowly turn into their annual shade of gold, we’ve enjoyed a sublime autumn. The net result of this continual run of fine weather is an autumnal harvest of un-paralleled quality for the Great British Crop.
So, what should we be looking out for on our home-grown Supermarket shelves this month, and what are some of the best dishes to celebrate the depth of flavours in this year’s offerings? (more…)

Often when one is planning what to make for a dinner party, or even just a large family meal, the two main considerations are not being stuck in the kitchen all evening whilst your guests are enjoying themselves and not breaking the bank when it comes to ingredients.

Andrew Caulfield, head chef at Waterhead has come up with the following recipe which would make a perfect starter for any occasion, especially when you are catering for a large number of people.  Not only can the whole dish be prepared well in advance, leaving you time to socialise with your guests, but also the main ingredients, ox cheek and onions, are relatively inexpensive, and make for an incredibly tasty dish.  This recipe makes twelve portions. (more…)

As most of our followers have a keen interest in food and many are accomplished cooks, I hope the Chefs of English Lakes can help inspire you to be even more creative and try new recipe ideas.
When we run our smoking courses in conjunction with Jo and Georgina from Smoky Jo’s, the hot Smoked Salmon is always one of the first things our ‘students’ get to taste. A great introduction to smoking food for the first time which can be done without having to buy expensive equipment; just use an old biscuit tin or a deep metal tray with a cooling rack covered with tin foil. We use a Cameron stove top smoker which can easily be purchased from good garden centres or online. It is  very important that the sawdust you use for smoking food does not contain any oil that may have come from a chainsaw. Oak is one of the most popular sawdust’s used for smoking. (more…)