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The building now contains several artist studios and hosts exhibitions and art projects

The Cattle Depot: When art meets real bread

In this sentimental post our new blog contributor, Gregoire Michaud shares with us his reflections and experience of bread making to bring art and cultural change.

The Cattle Depot: When art meets real bread

Built in 1908, the Ma Tau Kok Cattle Depot was originally designed as a slaughterhouse and it was used as one until 1999. The slaughtering activities were moved out of town and the superb red bricked house was renovated. In 2001 the site re-opened as an artist village where people from anywhere and everywhere would meet to share a common passion for art. The building now contains several artist studios and hosts exhibitions and art projects – a place displaying colourful painting, sculpture, painted glass art, writing, musicians, concert, movies, theatre and everything in between is represented and found here.

The art of baking
Everything except maybe baking; to me, baking and especially baking real bread is an art form unlike any other. Of course, I am not talking about pouring a bag of pre-mixed flour and water into one of these Gotham-City-like bread makers, but more about having bread with fully developed features, using noble flours, natural fermentation techniques and the proper know-how of good bread making skills.

Wing recycles aluminum cans and other materials to transform them into beautiful sculptures

I was invited by our good friend Wing, who happens to be the artist behind the art produced at House Nº1 in the village. Wing diligently recycles aluminum cans, glass bottles and other materials to transform them with a genius trait into beautiful pieces of art (see photo 3). For instance, he grounds different coloured glass and organises classes with children where he encourages them to create their own designs. He will then bake the ground glass in an incredibly hot oven where the powder melts and combines together as a beautiful glass tile (see photos 1 above). The children also learn about recycling; how it benefits them and society, as well as being creative in producing useful art. On this particular night, we didn’t do much of Wing’s traditional art. Instead we had a couple of friends playing the guitar, we sung songs and the young children created plaster moulds that would be later filled with melted recycled materials.

The children getting ready to bake wonderful Schiacciata breads

Secretly without them knowing, in my backpack I brought along with me a few kilos of bread flour, some eggs from my friend Garry who raises chickens in the New Hong Kong Territories, a few additional ingredients which included black olives, fresh garlic, roasted pine nuts and herbs to bake wonderful Schiacciata breads. We mixed and kneaded the dough by hand and after the intensive labour (those of you who know about bread making will understand how much kneading is required); we had to wait several hours before baking it (to allow for proving). The children had a blast kneading the dough and shaping their breads – of course it couldn’t have ended-up in any other way than covered with flour! Shaped as simple flat round breads, proofed and brushed lightly with rosemary olive oil. Our breads baking in the oven started to disperse their heavenly fumes all over the workshop…our eyes started rolling and stomach craved for slices of the freshly baked loaves. We were hungry. When it finally reached the golden brown crust it deserved, we sliced the long-awaited loaves and shared it with everyone; the bread literally disappeared within minutes!

Feelings of positivity and inspiration
Sharing and eating freshly baked bread, sharing music, sharing the passion for simple and beautiful art goes hand-in-hand together in my mind. I see something common when baking bread, when we were kneading the dough with the flour swirling, mixing with the ambience of the old rustic building around us along with the old wooden carpentry and seeing the children playfully smiling; I experienced something I seldom have done before in Hong Kong. Perhaps it’s a feeling more people should get to experience nowadays, especially when we live in a city where these sort of feelings seem to have been forgotten; beautiful art and real-life experiences has been too often replaced by an omnipresent and hypnotising digital world.

Let’s get the scales out and get baking!

Ma Tau Kok Cattle Depot
63 Ma Tau Kok Road
Kowloon
Hong Kong

Written and photos by Missie and Friends contributor Gregoire Michaud in Our Local Eats. {Thank you Gregoire for sharing your most recent baking experiences with us! A very touching and a lovely read.}

Our local blog contributor, Anne Greaves talks about breakfasts…

I’m a big fan of cooked breakfasts. I like nothing better than fueling up with a full English on a Saturday morning to keep me going for the rest of the day. But it’s surprisingly hard to find a decent breakfast in Sheffield city centre at the weekend – often they’re only served for a few hours in the morning or they’re not on the menu at all. After a leisurely morning at home I don’t think it’s unreasonable to sit down for breakfast (brunch?) around midday, but on many occasions I’ve found myself wandering around town looking for somewhere to eat and ending up settling for a cheese sandwich.

After extensive research, I’ve compiled a mental list of options, each with its own pros and cons. Over the coming months I’d like to share some of my top breakfast tips with you and where better to start than with my number one all time favourite breakfast spot… the Cherry Tree Café in Nether Edge in Shefffield. A 30 minute walk through Sharrow from Sheffield city centre will take you to Nether Edge (The number 22 bus runs through the heart of Nether Edge).

It’s hard to define exactly why the breakfast is so tasty but I think it’s a combination of good quality, flavoursome ingredients and the fact that it isn’t at all greasy. A typical breakfast includes baked beans, sausage, fried egg, bacon, plum tomatoes, mushrooms and toast and sometimes a black pudding if you want one (which I always do). It’s very reasonable too with a full breakfast, tea and toast coming in just under £6.

The tiny cafe only seats around 16 and the kitchen is in the corner of the room so you can watch (and smell!) your breakfast being cooked. I’ve often had a fairly lengthy wait for my food in the Cherry Tree Café but it’s totally worth it and you can sip your tea, read the papers and listen to jazz while you wait. What more could you want on a lazy weekend morning?

Written and photos by Missie and Friends contributor Anne Greaves in Our Local Eats.

{Thanks Anne for sharing your most recent eat with us!}

Snig Hill Gallery provides a commercial platform for artists who work in all media.

Snig Hill Gallery also encompasses the Café Galeria Arts Café where you can enjoy a tasty selection of freshly made food on the premises every day.

Our local blog contributor, Anne Greaves visits Cafe Galeria, Sheffield…

Thanks to yet another brilliant Twitter tip, I nipped up the road the other day to check out Café Galeria in the new Snig Hill Gallery (twitter: @SnigHillGallery), one of a growing number of independent art spaces in and around Sheffield city centre for well known and up and coming artists. Café Galeria is fairly central to the whole Snig Hill Gallery experience, a beautiful combination of art and food that I can see is going to be a favourite Saturday afternoon activity for many months.

Walking into the gallery you’re immediately in the café which comprises sturdy wooden tables, mismatched chairs and church pews. The room is flooded with light and the plain white walls are hung with a variety of colourful artworks which gives you plenty to look at as you enjoy your food.

This is moist and delicious with loads of banana flavour!

Now on to the food!…
Well I was tempted by the tabletop chalkboards advertising banana bread at £1.40 a slice and as it was lunch time I also ordered coffee and a mozzarella, sun dried tomato and rocket ciabatta. The tweet I mentioned earlier said that Café Galeria was their new favourite lunch time haunt, and after eating there myself, I can totally see why! The sandwich was delicious – light, airy bread with soft mozzarella and tangy sun dried tomatoes – while the banana bread was every bit as moist and banana-y as a really good banana bread should be. The price was a selling point too with orange juice, coffee, sandwich and cake costing a very reasonable £7.

Along with a few sandwiches and plenty of cake options, the café also has daily specials including risotto, pasta, fish and salad. When I visited the spaghetti carbonara had sold out so the café must be proving a hit with local workers.

Café Galeria is open Monday to Friday 9am – 5pm and Saturdays 9am-4pm.

Snig Hill Gallery
24-26 Snig Hill
Sheffield
S3 8NB

Visit www.snighillgallery.co.uk to find out more.

Written and photos by Missie and Friends contributor Anne Greaves in Our Local Eats.

{Thanks Anne for sharing your most recent eat with us!}

Little Mesters Cafe & Bistro is situated within Kelham Island Museum.

Inside Little Mesters you'll find high ceilings and exposed brickwork

Our new blog contributor, Anne Greaves visits Little Mesters Cafe…

The cafe at Kelham Island Museum re-opened on Sunday 10 June as Little Mesters (twitter: @Littlemesters1), so I decided to call in for breakfast to check out the interior and sample the food.

My first impression upon entering the cafe was that it was empty. Not surprising I suppose given that it’s a little out of the way and this was its first day of business, but I expected to see a banner of some kind on Alma Street pointing people towards it. The interior has been spruced up and the walls suitably adorned with knives and bolts arranged into neat patterns. As you’d expect from an old industrial building it has pillars, high ceilings and exposed brickwork, but the room was fairly dark and could have done with some brighter lighting. Another little gripe was the noise from the kitchen which was separated from the dining area by an open doorway. I don’t mind a bit of atmospheric background noise but loud discussions about our order, crinkling foil and a crackly radio echoed through the room – I’m not convinced that this would make for a very relaxing experience on one of the planned bistro evenings.

Specialising in British food using ingredients sourced locally within Sheffield

Food for Thought
Moving on to the food, I was pleased to see that breakfast is served all day on Saturdays and Sundays – far too many places stop serving around 11am, much too early for a leisurely weekend brunch. The breakfast options included various hot sandwiches, a full English and a weekend special of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. Ordinarily I’d have chosen a full English, but given that I had Sunday lunch planned for a few hours later I thought I’d better not! I opted instead for scrambled eggs on brown toast and a latte.

The coffee arrived promptly with a little wrapped biscotti on the side and was hot, smooth and milky, a really tasty latte just how I like it. The scrambled eggs came shortly afterwards and consisted of two slices of simple brown toast, buttered and cut into triangles, with a large portion of scrambled eggs in the middle. The eggs were perfect, soft and creamy and just the right amount – if there had been any more I’d have struggled to finish the plate given how rich they were.

My flatmate had a sausage and egg butty with a cup of tea – although she was unimpressed by the tea, she really enjoyed the sandwich which consisted of two sliced sausages and a runny fried egg on a white bap.

The whole meal cost a total of £10.40, not a bad price, although some of the items on the menu seemed a little steep – for instance some breakfast sandwiches cost around £3.75 and a full English is £6.50 without toast or a drink. If the food continues to be as delicious as it was on Sunday though I’ll be happy to pay for it.

Little Mesters also serves a variety of sandwiches, hot paninis, soup and cakes, plus a few hot specials and kids meals. Look out for bistro nights starting at the end of July serving British cuisine – I for one can’t wait to try it!

There are a few little teething problems, but nothing that a closed door and a few light bulbs can’t fix. Most importantly the food was good and I’m delighted by the addition of this new café/bistro to the Kelham Island scene.

Cafe Opening Hours:
Monday to Friday 8am – 4pm. Saturday and Sunday 9am – 5pm.
Bistro Opening Hours:
Friday and Saturday 7pm til midnight.

Written and photos by Missie and Friends contributor Anne Greaves in Our Local Eats.
{Thanks Anne for sharing your most recent eat with us!}

Our new blog contributor, Cat Neligan visits MEAT Liquor and Meat Market, London…

I’d like to class myself as someone who has quite a refined palette when it comes to meat. I know my rump from my brisket. Bleu entrecôte’s aside, my favourite item on a carnivorous menu has to be the humble burger. When it’s done well (but not well-done), the simplest indulgence is often the best pick. Now I’m months behind all the other drool-worthy reviews of Meat Liquor but still fairly fresh out of the pan for it’s baby brother, Meat Market. Yep, the Meateasy duo, Yianni Papoutsis and Scott Collins, are back at it again – and this time it’s in my neck of the woods concrete jungle – Covent Garden Market. We know from countless beaming reviews that these two guys produce a mighty fine patty, but the question I wanted to answer is…which is better? Liquor or Market.

Rather than pretending my photos from these venues were the most hardcore in food porn, or that my review of the food was the most descriptive of funny or eloquent, I thought I’d illustrate to you all my experience of London’s twin burger joints. Hope you enjoy…

The Dead Hippy burger – the glorious, double-stacked, glistening BEAST

First off, Meat Liquor…

After a full hour in the waiting queue (give or take arguing whether any burger could be worth that horror), this was pretty awful considering it had been open four months when I visited. My one recommendation is you BYOB (Build Your Own Blocks) to make it a little more of a party while you wait. Or just bask in the intoxicating smells emanating from their kitchen.

The interior decor of Meat Liquor is a massive part of their appeal – with low, red lights; domed ceiling; artwork from ilovedust… magic meets sleazy bar. I can’t compare it to anywhere I’ve ever eaten before, I felt as if I was on the set of a 70′s B movie. Well worth the wait!

Now, this place wasn’t just about the meat of course; the liquor makes it that lethal duo of indulgence. I can’t remember what cocktail I ordered, but it was met with an approving ‘good choice, that one’s really strong’. Delicious and original too, and the price was right too. If you know of Soulshakers, these guys were responsible for the bar, then you won’t be surprised by the quality mixes on offer.

The Food Menu
I love a small menu – it cuts that painful indecisive time down, and never leaves you feeling ‘Oooh I wish I’d ordered what they got’. So the chili cheese fries, deep fried pickles and Dead Hippie burger were a no-brainers. However, I can’t remember needing a knife and fork to eat a burger? – yes, I know, an ultimate burger rookie error here. Dessert was (as it always should be) a must too.

Chili Cheese Fries – unhealthily delicious ratio of meat to potato

Yes, you can believe the hype. In short, if you like a burger dripping with artery-clogging naughtiness, meat in your chips and deep fried veg, then you’ll love every bite. I think it helped that the environment was decadent as well – it’s not a place you go if you want a crisp white wine and a lightly seared scallop salad, with a piano tinkling away in the background. This is for a Friday night after some heady times in Soho.

Meat Market

Meat Market (MM) had been opened one week before my visit, and was there a queue I hear you ask? – There wasn’t time to let a queue form. This is a FAST food kinda joint – you order at a till (served by lovely staff, who again approved of my beverage choice… ) and your name is called out almost before you get a chance to settle onto a stool.

Now describing to you their decor…from dive bar to… a dive. I have a lot of respect for Covent Garden’s Jubillee Market – there’s something authentically West End about it that makes me glad to work near by and live in London. It also makes me glad I’m not a tourist expecting it to be one of London’s more impressive markets you might find anywhere north/south/east or west of there. Yes, it’s kind of run down and vaguely depressing and that may be part of the lack of queues Meat Market is experiencing, but when you take yourself away to MM’s mezzanine… you could be in Pulp Fiction, so who cares about the grubby stalls below? Unlike the Jubilee Market, you know everything about MM is inauthentic – the carefully misplaced letters that make up the menu board, the stocks of mustard and ketchup displayed openly in locked cages…Oh but it’s so FUN!

Food and Drinks
With an even smaller food menu than Meat Liquor – I’ve crossed the Dead Hippie burger off my list, so on to their Black Tower burger, where the only difference here in the burgers were the minced onions becoming grilled onions, and the ‘special’ sauce is swapped for mustard. I enjoyed the burger but I wasn’t knocked out. The ‘poppaz’ – which are delicious lethal little balls of fried cheese and jalapeños were the stars of my meal and I’d ‘pop in’ again just for these fellas! Hell, the fact I could do this on my lunch hour TERRIFIES me.

Not a menu to rival the Liquor’s, but they do hard shakes – I got the vanilla version, which I think was spiked with whisky and maple syrup. Unfortunately as taste went, it could have been a bit of ice cream swirled with milk, which is far less exciting. I still think The Diner wins on the hard shake front.

Poppaz - melted cheese, kicking jalapeños in a breadcrumb package

The Verdict
It’s odd; I couldn’t be happier to know I can get the same burgers (which I, and many others, have tentatively dubbed the ‘best ever’) without the queues and in a much more convenient location. But I feel it was too easy. I love novelty, and rare ‘special’ experiences, and this is how a favourite restaurant should feel. Meat Liquor had this. It was a challenge, and I got lost in it’s dark and heady world. It was my first visit and I really enjoyed the place. But when I saw it in it’s new format (Meat Market), under the harsh market lights, to be honest, I was unprepared for it’s speed and a little put off with its oozing juices. Maybe I just was too sober. or maybe it was the lack of their ‘special’ sauce – or maybe I’m burger-jaded? But still, I’ve got a feeling I’ll be coming back for more.

MEAT Liquor
74 Welbeck Street,
London, UK

MEAT Market
Covent Garden
The Mezzanine, Jubilee Market Hall, Tavistock Street
London, UK

Written and all illustrations by Missie and Friends contributor Cat Neligan in Our Local Eats.

{Thanks Cat for sharing your most recent eat with us. Fantastic food illustrations too – we’re craving for burgers!! }

We have some foodie friends and blogging contributors to introduce soon...

Happy Friday all. So, guess what? In the next coming weeks I’ll be introducing to you exciting new Missie Cindz blog contributors who will be helping to add new tasty columns and great foodie reads – making you all very hungry so make sure you’ve eaten before reading! :)

A big thank you to all of you who tweeted and emailed me about getting involved in blogging, there were so many of you and it’s clear that there’s a real passion for good food and a sense of community ‘togetherness’ all around me. I have quite a few interesting people in-store ready to share their food adventures with you this month – ranging from real chefs and bakers; food happenings in and around the UK and around the world, (we have enthusiastic food bloggers from the US of A and Hong Kong sharing to us their local food fayre!); interesting foraging advice and gardeners sharing their gardening tips and tricks with us – you’ll be able to soon grow that giant beanstalk you’ve always dreamed about in no time now!

Keep an eye out for all these exciting new reads which will be filed under the ‘Contributors‘ category located at the top of this page and on the right hand side of this blog page, or you can find out more about our contributors here. If you are interested in becoming a Missie Cindz contributor, someone with a passion for all things food-related then drop me an email here – and tell me why food is important to you. I’d love to hear about your tasty discoveries.

Blogging Our Way to a Wholesome Appetite
I have planned six new food columns and will have a contributor to one or two of the following:

• Bake-In Stories – sharing with you our (at home) baking experiences
• Chef Skills – learn from real professional chefs and be a master in your kitchen!
• Our Local Eats – I always share with you my local tasty finds, I have contributors sharing with you their area’s hidden food gems and eateries (making us very hungry – teasers!)
• A Day in the Life of a… – case studies of real local makers, chefs and bakers
• Know how to ‘Grow Your Own’ – all you need to know about growing your own fresh food – from the experts!
• Hungry Tourist – sharing with you holiday food experience(s) – a flavour of our holiday destinations on our computer screen

For those who are new to my food blog, Missie Cindz – Food Enthusiast, was set up and run in my (Cindy’s) spare time in early 2011 after being inspired by a visit to my local farmer’s market up in Nether Edge, Sheffield. Our blog covers food inspiration with a focus on my favourite things: food, design, packaging and supporting independent businesses. Educating how supporting, buying, making, learning about, sharing food, and eating from hard working independent retailers can all help to create stronger links between food and the consumer. I try to show my food support and passion in my own Missie Cindz whimsical manner – such as, organising seasonal pudding clubs – Missie’s Pud Inn, eating my way to a size Sheffield and collaborating with local food businesses.

Pudding makes me happy! – look out for Missie Cindz Pud Inn no.4 in June.

Our Missie Cindz Sheffield Food Album - please help to make this grow bigger!

For the past 16 months I have tried my best to update this blog with interesting food discoveries as often as I can and the blog receives a steady flow of traffic and has a lot of potential to grow. Unfortunately in the past few months my commitment in design projects and organising events that helps to promote the Missie Cindz food love means I haven’t had time to blog as much as I would like.

For the next couple of months, as I spend some extra time planning a few exciting projects (all will be revealed in due course guys :), I’ve got some guest posts lined up from some awesome fellow blog contributors and special guests to fill in for me. I will pop in from time-to-time to say hello with posts and will still be managing all blog updates myself.

Food is the metaphor for building relationships/new friendships so I really hope you enjoy our new reads. Go out and enjoy a food adventure of your own this weekend. Discover your own food story and share them with me – I’d love to see your food pics and to read about it.

Have a great weekend all… – Cindy/Missie Cindz

{All graphics and photos by Cindy Cheung}