Blog by Eniko Fejer RSS

When I was a child, in front of our house we had 3 sour cherry trees. The sour cherry was abundant in our household. We made them into jams, cordials, compotes, we ate them raw straight from the trees as an afternoon snack, made cold soup with them, and we baked them into sweets and cakes. One of the bakes were poppy seed and sour cherry strudel. I was a child in the 1990s, ready-made filo pastry was not available on the supermarket shelves yet. Making strudel dough from scratch is an art itself (and takes a village), so strudel was a luxurious summer treat that took a day to...

Gazpacho is a cold soup made of raw, blended vegetables. It originated in the southern regions of the Iberian Peninsula and spread into other areas. It's widely eaten in Spain and Portugal, particularly in summer, since it's refreshing and cool.

Currently, everything is in season in the gardens that is needed to make this delicious starter.

Ingredients; 4 portions

1/2 cucumber
1/2 red onion
6 tomatoes
1.5 red peppers
2 slices of white bread
Olive oil
Salt
1 drop of Tabasco + extra for seasoning
1 tsp sherry vinegar + extra for seasoning
1 drop of Worcester sauce + extra for seasoning

To garnish
1/2 mozzarella, diced
1/4 cucumber, diced
Basil oil (optional)

Wash the vegetables and dice them. Mix everything and let it sit in the fridge for...

Midsummer House is an elegant, modern, British restaurant in Cambridge, UK. Daniel Clifford opened it in 1998. The restaurant holds two Michelin stars since 2004, so for 21 years at our time of visiting. It’s East-Anglia’s only two Michelin star restaurant.

Dining in high-end restaurants is not new to us. I started eating out in Michelin star restaurants at the age of 23. Before our son was born in 2016, we have been in many one, two and even a few three star restaurants in the UK and across Europe. Lately our visits became less frequent, but we have been going as and when we could.

Me and...

In the UK service charge is a core part of how hospitality works, and it is built into how staff are paid.

They are paid through two systems:
-    the first is their base salary - taxed, NI’d, and pensioned like any other job.
-    The second is what’s called Tronc, which is the pooled service charge. This is distributed among staff, usually by an independent ‘tronc master’ (not the employer), and it’s often a significant portion of someone’s income.

Tronc income is taxed but isn’t subject to employer National Insurance contributions, and it’s not pensionable.

The business doesn’t have to pay VAT on service charge / tip income so if service charge would be incorporated to the final bill...

When I was a child, we had a huge garden full of vegetables and fruits. We had grapes, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, a pear tree, a walnut tree, a plum tree, onions, carrots, watermelons, potatoes, gherkins and the list could go on.

During the summer month gherkins were fermented. This is a very weird thing in Western Europe, but we grew up on it. My grandma picked the gherkins, washed them thoroughly, topped and tailed them and stuffed a 5l jar with them as tight as possible. She put salt, a huge bunch of dill (also picked from the garden), some garlic, horseradish and sourdough bread on the top, covered it loosely and essentially let it rot under the warm sun...