Ainsley Harriott – Coffee Event

At Londonerseye.com we have been slogging away at writing about interesting things to do in London for a while now, so far we have tried all sorts including rock climbing, scoffing American food, eating every variety of cupcake known to man and even going to see exhibitions made solely of toaster related artwork. Every now and again people get in touch and suggest cools things for us to try out.

Recently we were invited to a coffee making event hosted by Ainsley Harriott of Ready Steady Cook fame. We headed along to one Leicester Square for event and were wowed with those new instant coffee capsule machines as part of a little demo.

Then we chatted to a knowledgeable coffee barista that gets hired to make coffee at events and conferences (pretty weird job I know!) this was particularly interesting as he showed us what coffee actually looks like in its various stages of production and told us about bean variations dependent on the part of the world they were grown in.

At this point I couldn’t help thinking that coffee is kind of like my other love chocolate in a lot of ways and you are looking for some of the same tastes and sensations when eating both.

After a few more cups of Dolce Gusto produced coffee we settled down to watch a recipe demonstration from a couple of fancy pants mixaholics who made some loosely coffee based recipes which included some desserts and a cinnamon stick latte which was pretty nice and might be a good option for showing off at any upcoming dinner parties.

Then it was down to business and we got to watch Ainsley Harriott do his stuff which was pretty amusing to say the least he knocked up a number of dishes with the help of a belly dancing teacher volunteer who was plucked from the crowd.

Most of the recipes were pretty straight forward and prompted me to try and knock up some biscotti the following weekend for scoffing with some coffee in the park. Basically being pretty tight I figured this was a good way to eat fancy food in London Fields without splashing out on the market food. The biscotti came out alright but pretty much tasted like shortbread with almonds in them…