Philly Heroes Cookalong with Ed Baines

Last month I was invited to an exclusive cook along hosted by Philadelphia, hosted by celebrity chef Ed Baines and one of the Philly Heroes Natalie Kelly  Heroes  who we would be cooking with and whose winning Philly Leek Risotto we would be cooking Ed was showing us how to prepare the tasty sounding Philly Herb Chicken and then we would all be making the Philly Meringues.

I arrived to a location in London and happy to find other bloggers whose blogs I knew of or I was already tweeting.

Sharon Ed and Tina

I met the lovely Sharon from I ♥ Motherhood  blog  check out how her bump diary is going  and she has just become a finalist in the Mad Blog Awards for Best Pregnancy blog, if you have time have a read and give her a vote here http://www.the-mads.com/vote.htm   I also met  the lovely Tina from the fabbiest parenting website Loved By Parents both of them gorgeously pregnant, here they are pictured here with Ed.

Natalie adding the final seasoning to her winning dish.

We aproned up began by learning how to make the risotto, Ed and Natalie were really friendly and chatted away giving cooking tips on how to make the perfect risotto.

I learnt how to cut an onion finely and I will be eternally grateful to Ed for the method.

Ed entertained us for hours this is his method for opening a pickle jar, just kidding!!

As we chopped and cooked Ed regaled us with stories from his career and the famous people he has cooked for politicians, sports personalities, royalty such as Princess Diana when he was head chef at Daphne's and he told us of his time in Italy and throughout his passion for good food shone through as well as many a joke and story of his own children.

Look at mine, I could be a professional you know!!

( Pre wine, scroll down for post wine)

He was very enthusiastic about Philadelphia and throughout gave tips for cooking using it. While the risotto which was to be our starter slowly simmered we began to make our main course the Philly Herb Chicken.

Finally the risotto was ready (key to a  good one is sweating the onions and leeks slowly so Natalie said) and we went to take our seats.

 

The risotto looked so good, cooked perfectly well seasoned and creamily good, I can see why Natalie won

I wanted to know a little about Philadelphia, my most burning question was the name. I presumed it was after the city it came from, but it was actually invented in New York. Back then Philadelphia was the home of top quality foods so more appropriate for a fine cream cheese!

After our main course Ed showed us how to make the Philly Meringues these are so easy to make including the meringues, the Philly instead of cream makes for a not so sickly topping.

Ed's Meringue was a masterpiece.

Now for the laugh!!! Can you tell I had had a large glass of wine at lunch before doing mine?

Oh dear !

Then if we were not already totally satisfied out came the cupcakes, with a pot of tea, I refused , but Ed said "Go on you can manage one!"

I really did not need any further encouragement look at them!

Finally it was time to say goodbye, I swapped emails and twitter names with new friends, stood for photos, Ed was a terror! He said we should say prunes instead of cheese, it would make us look more sexy...hmmmm!
Just made us keep laughing.

Prunes!!!

So finally we left, with great big goody bags crammed with goods to make more Philly Heroes recipes, look out for the Philly Mango Cheesecake recipe here

 Thank you Philadelphia, Ed, Natalie, Mel, Jo and all the team for a fab day out!