Tales from the Tiny Kitchen

Berry muffins

2012-01-26T10:06:00.001Z

What spurred me on to make these here muffins? A near-disaster ending in almost-mutilation! Not to myself, I hasten to add. The other day my lovely friend N was blending ingredients for a butter chicken recipe using a stick blender, and accidentally whizzed her left thumb into the mix while trying to prise out a cashew nut from the blades. Aaaaaaarrrrgh. Thankfully, she has now been stitched back together again, and retains her thumb but sadly not her fingernail. I thought only one thing could bring a smile to her face. Muffins! Yes!!!!

For years I have searched high and low for a muffin recipe that would replicate those ones you get in upmarket cafes – basically, soft and juicy on the inside, crisp on the top with a bit of crunch, with a satisfying overhang over the muffin case. I never seemed to be able to make them that way, the muffins I made always had something slightly earnest about them…but then I found this recipe by Donna Hay. Donna Hay is a bit like an Australian Martha Stewart, but younger and trendier. She lives in a world of tasteful decor and food styling (she is, after all, a food stylist first and foremost, a cook second), and strikes me as the kind of woman who would take your head off if you DARED to be messy in her kitchen. In the series ‘Fast, Fresh, Simple’, currently airing on the Good Food channel, she serenely puts together recipes in the kitchen of her gorgeous magazine-spread of a lofty beach house that looks out onto the ocean, and her kitchen is white, white, white. Her gaze seems to X-Ray its way right through you, via the screen. Check out ‘Donna’s Diary’ – yikes...I would be terrified to be one of her kitchen interns, for sure…

Anyway, any muffin recipe from the Hay style factory was bound to be perfect, accurate and good-looking. And it was! Plus, very easy and quick to make.

I have tweaked it a little bit and added a mix of frozen berries, plus lemon zest.

Based on Donna Hay’s Blueberry Muffin recipe

Makes 12 large muffins

You will need:

375 g self-raising flour, sifted
1 tsp baking powder
200 g golden caster sugar
125 ml vegetable oil
1 egg
Zest of 1 lemon
125 ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
300g mixed berries (blueberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants etc – Sainsbury’s do a great ‘Forest Fruits’ in their freezer section)
Granulated sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Place the flour, baking powder and sugar in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the oil, egg, milk, vanilla extract and lemon zest. Pour this wet mixture into the dry ingredients and mix together with a wooden spoon until just combined – do not worry if the mixture seems fairly solid and almost dry. Add the blueberries and mix gently to combine.

Spoon the mixture into paper muffin cases placed into a 12-hole (125ml per hole) muffin tray (I use an ice cream scoop to measure it out which makes it really easy) and then sprinkle the top of each muffin with a dusting of granulated sugar. Bake for 30 – 35 mins until golden on top, and a skewer poked into the centre of each cake comes out clean. Remove each muffin from the tin and place on a wire rack to cool.

Anatomy of a wedding cake

2012-01-19T20:44:00.001Z

I have recently completed a terrifying task – making a wedding cake for my good friends C and M. There was no way I could not take the bait – after all, C made my wedding cake four years ago: a towering edifice in deepest darkest chocolate, decorated with chocolate leaves. It was dangerously delicious, and I wolfed down about 16 slices on the day (I was never the bride who lost weight for her wedding)! Poor C had a total nightmare making the chocolate ganache icing, dispatching her ex boyfriend in his car to drive the length and breadth of the Kentish countryside on a quest for dark chocolate to make a second batch when the first failed. I still feel mortified about that…

Anyway, when C recently got engaged to M, I was incredibly flattered to be asked to make their wedding cake. If not a bit flipping scared. I had never made one in my life – and all my cakes come out of the oven slightly uneven and looking rustic. I am strictly a home baker. But am quite stubborn and like a challenge…

C wanted a lemon cake, so in November I made three different types of lemon sponge, ranging from a ridiculously buttery french lemon ‘Quatre Quarts’ cake, to a BBC Good Food lemon wedding cake, and then, the winner, an Annie Bell ‘Rich Lemon Curd Sponge’, from her book ‘Gorgeous Cakes’. C borrowed a massive tin from a chef friend for the bottom tier, and I made a final test cake over Christmas, because my oven has a mind of its own and I was terrified that such a large cake would never cook properly.

The sponge was to be filled with lemon curd and iced with lemony cream cheese frosting, so I used Nigel Slater’s lemon curd recipe and used C’s frosting recipe pimped up with some lemon. So, four test cakes later, this is how the final process went last week…with a little help from some ‘how to’ videos!

The big, bad-ass bottom layer:

Putting lemon curd into the middle of a big, gorgeous lemony cakey sandwich:

The bottom layer with its undercoat of frosting (to enable the top layer of frosting to go on smoothly):

Ta-daaaa! Complete with marzipan ducks (made bleary eyed at 1am the morning before the wedding, their heads held onto their bodies with cotton bud sticks):

I pressed flaked almonds onto the edges of the cakes and stuck fresh roses into the gaps between the sponges:

The big moment when C and M cut the cake (I almost couldn’t watch, was terrified that the cake would disintegrate or that it would topple):

Cake dissected, ready to eat:

And now, the recipes:

Cake, based on Rich Lemon Curd Sponge recipe by Annie Bell: (this will make a 20cm cake – NOT a massive wedding cake!)

225g unsalted butter, diced
225g golden granulated sugar
225g self-raising flour
2 tsps baking powder
4 medium organic eggs
50ml double cream
Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsps dark rum (I used Havana Club)

Topping:
Juice of one lemon
50g golden granulated sugar

Preheat your oven to 170C fan/190C/gas mark 5 adn butter a 20cm cake tin 9cm deep with a removeable base. Place all the ingredients in a food processor and cream together. Transfer the mixture to the cake tin, smooth the surface and bake for 50-55 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Run a knife around the edge of the cake. Combine the lemon juice and sugar in a bowl, stirring evenly to distribute it, then spoon over the top of the cake. Leave it to cool, allowing the juice to sink into the sponge.

Lemon curd filling, based on recipe by Nigel Slater:

Zest and juice of 4 unwaxed lemons
150g sugar
100g unsalted butter cut into cubes
3 organic eggs and 1 egg yolk

Put the lemon zest, juice, butter and sugar into a heatproof bowl set over a simmering pan of water – make sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water. Stir from time to time until everything is melted. In a separate bowl, mix the eggs and egg yolk with a fork, then stir into the lemon mixture. Let the mixture cook over the simmering water, using a whisk to stir regularly, for between 10 and 15 minutes, until it thickens up like custard. Take off the heat and let cool down. As it cools, give it an occasional stir with the whisk. (If you can wait that long, it will keep for 2 weeks in the fridge)

Cream cheese frosting, recipe by C:

150g unsalted butter, softened
150g icing sugar
225g full fat cream cheese
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 tsps vanilla extract

Cream the butter and icing sugar together with an electric whisk. Then add the cream cheese and mix together. Finally, add the vanilla extract, lemon juice and zest.

To ice the cake, first do a thin layer of cream cheese frosting and chill the cake in the fridge. Then add another layer of frosting, spreading around with a palette knife. Decorate with flaked almonds.

YUM! Congrats to C and M who make the most amazing couple. I proper welled up at their wedding, it was just amazing…aaaaah you guys!

Salted caramel chocolate brownies

2011-11-22T21:37:00.001Z

Who doesn’t love a good brownie? Purists out there might not like a brownie to be anything else but flavoured with pure chocolate, and I know that ‘salted caramel’ seems to be featuring everywhere on menus these days in tarts, ice creams and other guises, but it is a seriously awesome combination, trust me. I’ve been making these deeply dangerous salted caramel chocolate brownies for about three years now, and wherever people eat them they tend to go a bit weird. I’ve had people chasing me across a field at a rock festival where I’ve been selling them, and deranged drunken folk accosting me at a wedding where I made a big batch for dessert, all wanting MORE! (I’m very flattered, I thank you) I featured this recipe on the blog a long while ago, but I think that it deserves a repeat mention – you could make a batch of these for a Christmas present and the recipient would love you forever because these brownies are insanely good.

They are gooey, dark and rich (no flour here, just ground almonds) and also with the added dimension of having the tang of the buttery caramel chunks inside. I always make a large batch of these, cut them into squares, and freeze them – that way I always have a steady supply of these bad boys to hand, and there’s nothing quite like biting into a half frozen sweet/salty brownie. Double-yum.

The process is fairly time consuming, because you have to make the salted caramel first and have the chunks ready before you make the brownie mixture. But it’s a delicious way to spend half a day or evening, trying not to face-plant your head into the chocolatey mixture…

Makes 24 medium sized, or 18 large brownies:

First, you’ll need to make the salted caramel, which you can make a day or two in advance and store in an airtight container until you make the brownies.

You will need:

100g flaked almonds
100g golden caster sugar
50g salted organic butter
1/2 tsp sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling

First lightly toast the almonds in a dry frying pan over a medium heat, taking care to stir them regularly so that they don't burn. This will take about 3 minutes, and when you can smell that lovely nutty almond smell and see the nuts turning a light brown they are ready. Spread them out on a layer of non-stick baking parchment, and lay on a heatproof surface. Then put the sugar, butter and salt in a non-stick frying pan and add 4 tablespoons of water. Bring everything to the boil, then turn the heat to medium and stir frequently. Watch like a hawk as it bubbles away, and keep stirring to ensure that some bits don't caramelise before others. When the mixture begins to look creamy, you're nearly there:

You want the mixture to turn a light brown colour - this will take anything between 5 and 9 minutes. Then QUICKLY pour the mixture over the almonds - don't dally because the caramel solidifies instantly. Sprinkle over an extra pinch of sea salt. Leave it to cool down, then shatter into pieces holding a knife with the blade pointing downwards. You might want to do this over a chopping board so you don't dent your surfaces!
The result:

And now for the brownie mixture…you will need:

375g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids, preferably Fairtrade and/or organic)
375g butter
400g unrefined caster sugar
6 medium free range eggs
4 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder - again, Fairtrade and/or organic
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
250g ground almonds
1 double espresso-worth of strong coffee

Preheat the oven to 180C. Put the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl, set over a pan of cold water and bring the water to the boil (bain marie). Turn the heat down to a low simmer and stir the mixture occasionally with a spoon until the chocolate and butter melt. Put the bowl to one side to let cool for a couple of minutes.

Whizz the sugar, eggs, cocoa and bicarb in a food mixer or with an electric whisk, until frothy. Add this to the chocolate mixture, then stir in the ground almonds, the melted chocolate and the coffee.

Try not to faceplant THIS:

Pour in your chunks of salted caramel to the mixture, reserving larger pieces for decorating the brownies:

Pour the mixture into a large baking tray lined with greaseproof baking parchment and bake for roughly 30 minutes, depending on how deep your baking tray is, how fierce your oven is and how squidgy you want the brownies to be.

When you take the tray out of the oven, place it on a wire rack to cool down completely. Do not attempt to cut the brownies up until they have cooled completely - otherwise they might fall apart! They keep well in a Tupperware container for 4 - 6 days, and also freeze really well.

Anyone out there got any other pimp brownie flavours and combos they’re keen to share?

Greek spinach and feta pie

2011-10-27T17:58:00.001+01:00

The rain is lashing down outside and I have the central heating turned on. I long for the scorching heat of a holiday in the Greek islands, with enough cheap pink wine to sink a ship, sandy beaches and Euro pop blaring out of cafes and rolled-down taxi windows. I want to go to a cheesy nightclub where they serve dreadful cocktails containing weird mixtures of blue curacao, Baileys and cream (urgh!) and dance the night away. One of my happiest memories is being on holiday in Naxos years ago and being brought glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice and little deep-fried cheese pies to where we wallowed on our sun loungers – total bliss. Right now, I want food to remind me of all of this, so I’ll settle for a slab of spinach and feta pie, spanakopita.

Cooking holiday food is a good way to lift a gloomy autumnal day, and to be honest, a piece of this feta and spinach pie is good all year round. It’s pretty easy to make, as you don’t need to make the pastry, you use shop-bought filo.

Serves 6

You will need:

1kg bag frozen chopped spinach, defrosted
2 medium white onions, chopped into small dice
2 bunches spring onions, chopped into small pieces
1 bunch each of fresh dill (approx 25g), mint and parsley, finely chopped
4 large organic eggs
400g feta cheese
250g ricotta
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Salt and pepper
1 packet frozen filo pastry, 270g – defrost before use

Put your defrosted spinach into a saucepan and cook almost all the water out of it over a medium flame – takes about 20 minutes. While you are doing this, shallow-fry your chopped white onion until translucent, then add the chopped spring onions and cook until wilted, about five minutes. Set aside, with the spinach.

Beat the eggs together, then add the ricotta and crumble the feta into the same bowl. Add the nutmeg and a few grinds of salt (go easy, as feta is salty anyway) and pepper, and roughly mix together.

Tip in the chopped fresh herbs. Add the spinach and fried onions as soon as they are cool, then mix everything together.

Grease a rectangular baking dish with olive oil. Line the dish with two layers of filo, making sure to brush in between each layer of pastry with olive oil, then add half the spinach/cheese filling, then add another two layers of filo on top of this, with olive oil brushed between them, then repeat, adding the rest of the filling, then finishing with 2 layers of filo pastry to make the top. Generously brush the top of the pie with more olive oil. You can roughly fold in the edges, and don’t have to be neat about it.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180C, for about 35 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown on top. Serve wedges of pie with a nice tomato salad and a carafe of wine. Darned good!

Mighty big bangers

2011-10-17T19:59:00.001+01:00

My husband N loves sausages almost more than life itself, and probably slightly more than me and our baby. If he’s not eating sausages, he’s thinking about when he can next eat them. He takes his sausage-worship to almost evangelical heights – not only does he have selected friends that he talks about sausages with in great detail (stop tittering at the back) but he’s now taken it upon himself to make his own bangers at home, using a meat grinder that his sister gave him for his birthday, that of course came with a special sausage attachment!

You have to be serious about sausages to want to make them, as it’s a loooong laborious process. For starters, you have to order hog casings from a specialist on the internet. (There are sites that actually sell these kinds of things!) The slippery looking casings are basically pig intestines stored in salt, which need soaking in water for 2 hours prior to sausage making. Then you have to peruse various sausage recipes and pick the type of bangers you want to make. Then it’s off to the butcher to buy a tonne of pork belly and pork shoulder meat, then you have to sort out your seasonings – for example, fresh herbs and spices and salt. After this, you come home and chop the meat into dice, before chilling it for two hours. Then you grind the meat into mince, prepare your seasonings, then mix everything together. Now you’re ready to push the hog casings onto the mincer’s sausage attachment, then squeeze the meat mixture into it (it’s hard not to think of condoms when you do this!) and then watch your sausages come out. It’s really fun to do, but quite a palaver – you totally need an entire day!

We made pork sausages with fennel, lemon and garlic, and another batch of pork sausages with lemon thyme, sage, nutmeg and coriander. They were impressively chunky, didn’t shrink disappointingly in the oven and tasted absolutely delicious. N thought the texture might be better next time using proper sausage rusk instead of fresh breadcrumbs to bind everything together, but I cared not, I was too busy devouring them. Not sure how cost-effective making your own sausages actually is, but it’s satisfying to do. And makes one feel rather smug. This was our Sunday lunch:

For what are bangers without mash?

If you want to make the sausages above, this is what you need:

Makes approx 10 big bangers

290g pork belly
630g pork shoulder
18g salt
110g fresh breadcrumbs or sausage rusk

- Flavouring for the fennel sausages:

Juice of 1 lemon, made up to 165ml with water
Zest of 3 lemons
10g crushed fennel seeds
6 cloves crushed garlic

- or, flavouring for the herby sausages:

165ml liquid – half water, half white wine
15 small fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
2 tbsps finely chopped lemon thyme
2 tsps ground coriander
1/4 nutmeg, grated
2 tsps ground white pepper

Pre-soak your sausage casings for 2 hours. Chop the meat into small chunks, then put in the freezer for 45 minutes, which makes mincing easier. Then feed it through the mincer. Mix in the liquid and flavourings by hand until you have a sausagemeat consistency. Then feed the mixture through your mincer and sausage stuffing attachment into your hog casings, making sure that once the mixture nearly reaches the end of the tube that you have tied a knot in the casing. Pinch the sausagemeat at each place where you want your sausages to begin and end, then twist four times to create the divisions. Voila, you have created sausages! Chill them in the fridge for 24 hours to develop the flavour and texture, before cooking in the oven at 180C for about 40 minutes, or until nicely browned.

We took inspiration from here and here.

The Dogfather

You might be amused to know that this same day revolved around sausages in its entirety – even before we’d gone to the butcher for the sausage ingredients, we lunched at a great street food stall in East Dulwich called ‘The Dogfather’ which served posh hotdogs, or ‘Haute Dogs’. I’d never eaten a gourmet hotdog before, and was seriously impressed by these bad boys – no nasty mechanically-recovered meat, but instead tasty kosher beef sausages that have a pleasing bouncy texture to them when you bite in:

The ‘Boss Hogg’: beef dog, chorizo, onions, red pepper sauce – mmm savoury goodness!

‘The Mexican’ – beef dog, guacamole, cheese, hot sauce, beans, peppers, onions – arriba!

Spot the dawg:

I’ll be back soon to try the ‘Snoop Dog’, ya dig…

The Dogfather
North Cross Road Market
East Dulwich
SE22 9EV

Brixton market: revitalised!

2011-10-02T19:01:00.001+01:00

I have a real fondness for Brixton and its outdoor and covered markets. When I was a penniless freelancer for a number of years, I used to traipse there on the bus and spend an hour or two rootling among the fruit and veg stalls for my weekly shop, grabbing great bargains and soaking up the sounds of booming reggae and dancehall from various shops, wandering the covered arcades and soaking up the diversity of the produce – tiny colourful booths selling anything from giant piles of soap and Brillo pads, to a shop selling nothing but wigs, and others selling yams and African land snails. There was – and still is – a shop that terrifies and fascinates me in equal measure – it sells religious items and accessories for what I can only guess to be black magic rituals – black wax heads, spells, pungent smelling unguents in bottles. I once bought a friend a Virgin Mary candle there as a present, and we fell out irreparably about a year later – but that’s another story…

As much as I loved my trips to Brixton in those days (we’re talking about five-ish years ago) there was something a little mournful about it. The arcades were often empty of people during the week, and many shops spaces were unoccupied. I would trudge around the corridors sometimes feeling a bit forlorn, feeling sad at the sight of so many unused shop spaces and closed down businesses.

But all that has changed…a few years ago, the legendary pizzaria Franco Manca set up in the Market Row arcade, and before long people were queuing round the block to get their teeth into their amazing pizzas. Rosie’s Deli Cafe was turning brisk trade in fantastic home cooked seasonal lunches, great deli produce and coffees. A few new shops and cafes opened nearby, continuing the trend, and soon there was a sense of regeneration in the markets. Then an organisation called ‘Space Makers’ saw the potential in the arcades’ empty shop spaces and decided to pave the way for small businesses setting up shop here for low rents, and the transformation has been really positive, especially for those that like eating! There has literally been a food revolution, with what seems like about 15 new restaurants and cafes opening here…and I have been to taste a little crumb of it. Now that the arcades are open on Thursday and Friday evenings until 10pm, it’s a great place to come and hang out – why not have a main course at one place, dessert at another, and coffee somewhere else?

Cornucopia restaurant – tasty British produce cooked seasonally and with skill. Daily changing menu, and you sit on hessian cushions at rustic trestle tables and eat off enamelware – rustically trendy, but not annoyingly so, and the staff are really friendly:

White onion soup with truffle oil:

Chicken liver pate with fruit jelly and toast:

John Dory with mussels and clams:

Pork belly:

Sticky date pudding with cream:

Saffron pear with pistachio cake:

Pizzas at Franco Manca – total perfection and very addictive:

Get your caffeine fix at Federation Coffee:

Ice creams from Italy and Argentina opposite Franco Manca pizzeria – the mango and passion fruit sorbets are to die for:

The arcades come to life in the evenings:

I’m hoping to go back soon to try Mexican, Thai and Columbian food – and I also spied this great looking burger place too:

There are also cake stalls, an old-fashioned sweet shop, a sourdough bread bakery, cool little boutiques selling vintage wares and jewellery, and more. No excuses not to get your booty down here!

- Space Makers and the Brixton Village project – read all about it.

- More info on Brixton Village

Koya

2011-09-09T15:08:00.002+01:00

I wish I had taken photos of my dinner here, but I just couldn’t stop eating for long enough to get the camera out. And some nights, I just don’t feel like taking pictures – it really is ALL about the food. Needless to say, the meal we had at this dinky Japanese noodle bar in Soho last week was beyond excellent.

If you’ve been a bit ‘blah-ed out’ by the bland bowls of Japanese-style noodle soup in chains such as Wagamamas (which I find about as exciting as dish water), you should really give Koya a go, as the soups here don’t resemble these at whatsoever. The restaurant makes its own fresh udon noodles from scratch. These are the fat, wormy ones that have a satisfying chew to them. You can get them in hot or cold broths with all sorts of seasonings, toppings and adornments. The broths are out of this world - they all taste different, according to which soup you choose. I blissed out with a bowl of clear, smoky bonfire-flavoured broth, chewy udon noodles on the side, and a plateful of crispy tempura prawns and veg to add in whatever amounts I chose. My husband had a bear-hug of a bowl of warm miso broth with pork, really salty and satisfying, with side dishes of fermented beans and a jewel-bright mound of seaweed.

Starter plates are not to be missed either – we wolfed down the crispiest tempura treats, such as sand eel with samphire, and prawns coated in jagged fragile light batter. House pickles were thin disks of beetroot marinated in spicy vinegar. I had a strange but not unpleasant cold Oolong tea that came in a can like a Coke.

We ate like lords, seated at the ‘bar-style’ counter at the back of the restaurant where we could observe the chefs making the noodles by hand. There was a great atmosphere – staff were attentive but not overbearing, the hubbub from the diners rose to the rafters, and the chefs focussed silently on their tasks, churning out plate after plate of beautiful tempura and steaming bowls of aromatic soups. This is food that makes you feel good on the inside, and it’s really good value too.

Koya
49 Frith Street
Soho
London
W1D 4SG

It’s all about the cake…

2011-09-01T20:24:00.001+01:00

My life revolves mainly in a tight orbit around cake. Even more so than usual these last few months, cause a girl has to keep her strength up. I have been lucky enough to consume a great deal of very wondrous cakes and puds of late, and I hope you enjoy these pictures of what I have been hoovering:

C’s death-defyingly-good pavlova which we devoured at a summer barbecue (I still have dreams about it):

Macaroons at Bar Boulud:

A Victoria Sponge filled with blackberries from my garden:

'Come hither, you are defenceless against my vanilla-soaked sponge and indecent fillings…’

Little apple and orange zest muffins, perfectly handbag or fist-sized:

C and K’s wedding cake – guys please tell me I wasn’t the only one stuffing a large section of this into my bag to take home? It was a delicious lemony sponge, just heavenly…

My godson A’s chocolate birthday cake complete with animals wading knee-deep in chocolate – that’s what I want to be doing…

Hope those have got you sprinting to the nearest establishment of baked goods…remember: a daily injection of cake brings spiritual happiness. Just ignore the increasing circumference of your thighs!

Kitchen coq-ups!

2011-08-30T21:08:00.001+01:00

Of late I have been clumsier than usual in the kitchen. Thank goodness I have a sense of humour, that is all I can say. Because the latest disasters have been on a fairly surreal scale.

Recently some good friends asked me to make salted caramel brownies for their wedding dessert – enough for 100 people. No problem, I said. I’ve made hundreds of these over the past few years. But for some reason the trusty hardwearing plastic bowl I had always used to melt the chocolate in, using the bain marie method, decided to melt itself over the edge of the saucepan, filling the kitchen with lovely chemical fumes. Then the melted chocolate inside it escaped into the seething heat below via a melted hole in the base of the bowl, burning and crusting into an angry black carbonised layer on the saucepan base. I had actually left the room for a few moments (duh) and on my return almost wept to see the mess, and the waste of good chocolate. Scarier, though, was the thought that I could have poisoned the wedding guests with melted plastic in their brownies. What a total plonker I was thinking that a plastic bowl would have ever done well for the job of melting the chocolate and butter mixture, but it served me well for several years despite this gap in my brain. Jesus!

Today I decided to make an industrial quantity of coq au vin, since a friend gave us a massive bladder of red wine and we’ve been making lots of wine-based food. Nice. It’s also a great thing to have something large to bung in the freezer and eat on nights when we are too tired to cook. I found a great recipe and got going. There were lots of components to the dish – infusing and reducing the wine, browning the chicken pieces in butter, peeling vast amounts of shallots, scraping leaves off a bush of thyme and so forth – it’s no wonder my brain was a bit addled by the time I got to strain the wine through a colander. I then dropped the pan of wine onto the colander because it was a bit heavy, which then smashed the ceramic bowl beneath it, causing the 1.5 litres of wine that I had been reducing for OVER AN HOUR to pour down the sink amid smashed pieces of porcelain. Poor hubby was dispatched to fetch another load of cheap red plonk, and I had to start that part all over again. I then burnt myself when a hot piece of butter fat spat itself out of the pan at my face, and hubby had to administer an ice cube wrapped in a cloth to a small burn…needless to say, the later part of the recipe where I had to set fire to some cognac poured over the chicken made him very nervous (actually he mainly did this bit for me)…

Chicken + cognac + fire = this:

Perhaps at the moment I can only be trusted to make toast – oh, wait, I burned that at the weekend too…spectacular plumes of smoke rose from the toaster, breakfast had to be started again…

I am taking my poor friends C and M some lunch tomorrow, and if they read this they might think twice!

Anyone else going gaga in the kitchen? I don’t want to feel too alone with my ineptitude…I must now go and singe something in the oven…

Blackberry and cassis compote

2011-08-14T17:03:00.001+01:00

Not known for my love of raiding a JD Sports for a pair of crap trainers, I prefer to do non-aggressive form of looting: foraging for free fruit. It’s not stealing as such, it’s just picking fruit off the bushes, but not having to pay for it. I probably sound like a smug middle class bore. Oh well – at least I haven’t set fire to someone’s house or mugged someone for no good reason. (Come on London, grow up!)

So having just come into possession of a terrifyingly overgrown garden, which has triffid-like brambles, I have had my paws on the blackberries for the last few weeks. They are ripe right now, and even though it feels a little early in the year to be picking them, the strange hot/wet weather we’ve had means that they have ripened early. Brambles grow literally everywhere, from urban spaces to country lanes, so get out there and loot some free fruit while it lasts – it feels really satisfying to see the berries glistening beadily in the sunshine, then popping them into a tub, knowing that less tasty versions are being flogged in supermarkets for silly money.

All I have done with the berries recently is make them into a sort of compote, laced with a little booze and sugar. Delicious served with thick Greek yoghurt (I use Total full fat), or draped onto scoops of vanilla ice cream.

You will need:

600g (ish) blackberries
About 2 tablespoons golden caster sugar
Creme de Cassis (blackcurrant) liqueur (I use the French Gabriel Boudoir of Dijon one)

Take your blackberries and rinse well, removing all bits of twig, grit and cobweb. Let them drain for a little while in a colander. Tip into a heavy based saucepan and sprinkle over the golden caster sugar and 2 capfuls of cassis (or more, depending on how boozy you like your berries, but don’t add too much more because it will overpower the flavour of the blackberry).

Simmer over a low heat for about 8 minutes, stirring occasionally, until you have a bit of bubbling up and a dark purple syrup. They are ready to go! Let them cool down.

You could use the compote mixed with apple for an awesome crumble or pie, or even strain it to make ice cream (which I intend to do soon, watch this space).

You could also make a refreshing drink with a spoonful of compote at the bottom of the glass, topped with fizzy water:

I have also foraged these elderberries – anyone got any idea what I can do with them? I hear that if you eat too many of them, they have a laxative effect!

All I want…

2011-08-04T18:09:00.002+01:00

…is one of these* installed in my house – probably at my bedside:

Can anyone help? Surely every home should have one…

* Failing having a champagne button at one’s bedside, go instead to Bob Bob Ricard in Soho, where every booth has one of these charming additions for your amusement.

While you're there, you could press the champagne button as much as you can get away with, and also put one of these cake assortments into your face:

I'm such a greedy mare!

Spuntino

2011-07-31T21:52:00.001+01:00

Some days I just cry out to do something that feels a little spontaneous. I’ve been going through a soul-sapping house move, and it seems as though every evening has been filled with endless boring domestic tasks, so much so that I sometimes can’t remember what it feels like to have a night off and do something fun just for the HELL of it… I decided that the perfect antidote to this was to have a meal out in Soho somewhere fun where you could feel responsibility slipping off your shoulders. (yeah I know it’s not exactly skydiving on acid, but we do what we can!) So I picked Spuntino – a rather groovy newish place that raises two fingers to sensible planning, because it doesn’t take reservations and doesn’t have a phone number. Hah – feeling daringly spontaneous already!

It’s situated on the rather seedy Rupert Street , and the only clue to its name is a small chalk scribble on the front of the building. Inside it’s very much like a New York bar – tiled walls, zinc counter, low wattage bulbs hanging down from the ceiling, trendy good looking bar staff with beards/flatcaps/Scandinavian cheekbones. There is the happy roar of chatter and loud music, the atmosphere is laid back. You have to queue up, but as long as you’re happy to have a chinwag and a drink to kill the time for 30 mins or so, you’ll be fine. Mind you, we did arrive at 7pm, and by the time we left a couple of hours later, the queue was snaking out of the door…

The food is basically what you could call American ‘tapas’-style comfort food – by which I mean it comes in small plated portions, which is great if there’s two of you because you can try lots of different things on the menu. I don’t recommend trying to come here in a larger group, because you will all be sitting in a row at the counter and it’s hard to chat.

It’s entirely possible to consume a week’s worth of calories in one sitting at Spuntino, because the food is not for the faint of heart – it’s cholesterol-laden goodness mainly of the deep-fried-molten-cheese variety, with the requisite burgers and cheesecakes, but all done with a novel twist. I’d imagine many a happy American ex-pat coming here for a taste of New York and not being disappointed.

Here is what we ate…

Clockwise, from top: pulled pork slider with pickled apple (tender meat, tart apples and a soft bun - yum), eggplant chips with fennel yoghurt dip (very interesting flavours, fresh tangy dip), deep fried olives (these were stuffed with meat and tasted wonderfully of pizza crackers!), soft shell crab with Tabasco mayo (slightly over-crunchy crab, but tasty nonetheless):

Truffled egg toast – ooh la la, this was SEXY. The poshest cheese on toast tasting of truffles, with a runny egg in the centre. Filth!

Mac ‘n cheese – lordy, this was AMAZING. It was like a rich, creamy hug in a bowl, with a lovely crispy topping. It nearly finished us off – I could feel my arteries hardening with every delicious scoop. I nearly couldn’t finish it, but gave myself a talking to:

To not save room for dessert would have been a sin, even though I could feel that the savoury items I had consumed contained enough fuel to keep the UK alight on the National Grid for a week. So soldiering on, we ordered this pair of beauties…

Peanut butter jelly sandwich: woah, this is a very clever dessert. The slices of ‘bread’ are actually two slabs of peanut butter-flavoured ice cream, sandwiched by a tangy raspberry filling and sprinkled with crunchy sugary peanut brittle. Sensational – and I’m not usually that fond of peanuts:

Brown sugar cheesecake with drunken cherries: simply a lovely cheesecake with the mellow flavour of brown sugar, complemented perfectly by the booze-soaked cherries:

After this gastronomic blow-out I fell into the heaviest sleep imaginable (a lard coma) and felt full for a whole 24 hours afterwards! If you are going to Spuntino for a heavy sesh, take a defibrilator…

Spuntino
61 Rupert Street
Soho
London W1D 7PW

Gazpacho soup, two ways

2011-07-06T22:35:00.002+01:00

Oof – this hot weather in London has been lovely. And I have craved cold soups like nobody’s business, because the thought of heating up the oven or stove has been too much in the muggy heat. I have always been a bit obsessed with the Spanish cold soup, gazpacho, and thought I’d include two recipes below – one using the traditional tomato as its base, and the other made with roasted beetroot.

Beetroot Gazpacho Soup

This is quite a different style of gazpacho which tastes earthy and sweet from the beetroot, and is delicious garnished with a dollop of minty yoghurt. A great use of beetroot, which I often struggle to use up…

Serves 6 as a generous starter

You will need:

10 medium beetroots
Half a medium red onion
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 green chilli
1 large handful flatleaf parsley
1 large cucumber, peeled
10 tablespoons red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Handful of fresh mint, finely chopped
5 tablespoons thick plain Greek yoghurt (such as Total)

Peel the beetroots, chop into small chunks and spread out into one thin layer in an oven dish. Toss them in oil and a bit of salt, then tightly cover the dish with aluminium foil and roast in an oven for 1 to 1.5 hours at 200C, or until tender and you can pierce easily with a knife. Set aside the beetroot to cool down completely.

Take a large mixing bowl, chop all the remaining vegetables up into chunks, roughly chop the flatleaf parsley and chuck everything into the bowl. Add the vinegar and oil, then pulverise to a puree with a hand/stick blender – add some water if you need to loosen up the texture. The resulting mixture should be quite thick. Season to taste and chill in the fridge overnight, then just before eating, remove from the fridge, season to taste again (add a bit more vinegar if you like) and put into bowls. Finely chop the mint, mix into the Greek yoghurt, and add a dollop of the herby mixture on top of the soup. Really nice served with some grilled halloumi cheese and toasted rustic bread slathered in olive oil – the sweetness of the beetroot and the saltiness of the cheese is amazing.

Tomato Gazpacho Soup

A great starter to kick off a barbecue or any meal eaten outdoors. Dedicated to Ali and Pippa – you can stop hassling me for the recipe now! ;o)

(Sorry, no photo for this – we ate it too quickly…)

Serves 6 as a generous starter

You will need:

6 large ripe red tomatoes
1 medium green pepper
1 medium red pepper
1 large cucumber, peeled
2 cloves of garlic, minced
Half a medium red onion
2 green chillies (I like the soup to have a bit of a kick)
A couple of slices from a stale white sourdough loaf
Extra virgin olive oil, about 10 tablespoons
600ml water
Red wine vinegar, about 6 tablespoons, or sherry vinegar if you’re feeling posh
Salt and pepper to taste

Take a large mixing bowl. Chop all the vegetables up into dice. Chuck them into the bowl, add the oil, and add 3 tablespoons of the vinegar, then add half the water. Take a hand blender (stick blender) and plunge it into the veg – whiz everything up into a thick soup, which you want to remain a little rough in texture – it’s nice as a rustic soup. Keep adding water as you go, depending on how watery some of the veg are, you might not need all 600ml. Taste – add the remaining 3 tablespoons of vinegar if you want it to be a bit zingier. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Chill overnight in the fridge – this allows all the flavours to develop. The next day, just before serving, remove it from the fridge and taste it – if it needs a bit more vinegar or seasoning, add it in now. Serve chilled and enjoy – just don’t breathe on anyone immediately afterwards unless they have been eating the same soup too, it’s pretty ‘phwoar’ garlicky!

Give me mezze!

2011-06-22T08:00:00.000+01:00

There’s something very reassuring and heartwarming about Greek Cypriot food, particularly the mezze - the tasty sharing plates usually eaten as starters. Eating these seems to transform me into a better dining companion – all my usual gripes about not enjoying sharing small plates of food seem to evaporate when I’m ensconced in a down-to-earth taverna, fluorescent striplights humming away over my head, the tv blaring out some cheesy variety show in the corner and stray kittens skidding about my feet begging for scraps. I just love it all, especially the action of everybody tearing off hunks of bread to dunk into a delicious taramasalata or tzatziki dip. I feel laid back, fat and happy – and really don’t mind sharing. Yes, really.

On a recent brief visit to the southern Greek coast of Cyprus for a friend’s wedding, I felt contentment drench into me during two particularly memorable (and enormous) mezze sessions – we found two restaurants that base their entire menus on mezze alone, so you can graze on starter dishes to your heart’s content. Sometimes, don't you think that starters are the best part of the meal?

Agios Georgios Alamanou, Limassol

The first was at a beachside ‘fish tavern’ called Agios Georgios Alamanou on the beach near Limassol where you ordered a selection of fish mezze from a set menu and let the waitress do the rest. We just sat back in amazement as she dunked down plate after plate in front of us – all for a very reasonable 20 euros per head, which included free salad, bread, dips and desserts!

Cheap and cheerful decor – the best food on holiday, in my opinion, comes from down-to-earth places such as this:

First up: tomato, cucumber and olive salad and amazing crisp toasts flavoured with garlic, oregano and salt, liberally seasoned with olive oil, so very delicious and impossible to put down:

Deliciously lemony taramasalata dip:

Gorgeous wodges of grilled creamy halloumi cheese – crisp and salty on the outside, creamy and satisfyingly chewy on the inside. I could eat this cheese every day and never get bored (note the addition of a healthy side chip!):

And now for the big daddy – the ‘Beachside’ fish platter – this amount served three people more than handsomely. We wolfed down lightly battered calamari rings and octopus, fresh bream, battered meaty white fish, grilled langoustines sprinkled in parsley, and a healthy double-carb offering of both chips AND rice – properly amazing. Everything was super-fresh. Note the hugeness of the platter compared to the size of my friend K’s hand:

As if that wasn’t enough, behold the free dessert mezze platter, containing ice cool fresh wedges of watermelon, crystallised citrus fruits and mini warm honey doughnuts (so addictive like little bombs of sweet floral crack cocaine):

We waddled out of there, listing like the Marie Celeste, delighted with our meal…

Agios Georgios Alamanou
Limassol
Cyprus

Seven St George’s Taverna, Paphos

My second incredible mezze meal occurred in Paphos, at Seven St George’s Taverna, whose mellow outdoor courtyard (see above) was dripping in grape vines and bright pink bougainvillea. All of the produce and wines served are organic, and you could really taste the quality in every dish. Tiny kittens skittered about the place, hoping you would let them have a scrap from your plate. I was far too greedy to let them have anything!

A sexy-voiced waiter with eyes of the clearest blue told us that we would pay a fixed fee and that he would bring plate after plate of mezze until we begged him to stop. Yeah right, I thought, good luck getting me to stop. But, four rounds of savoury platefuls later, encompassing a veritable odyssey through wonderful vegetable mezze right through to considerable variations of carnivorous ones, I actually found myself asking him to hold back bringing any more savoury dishes, as we wanted to save space for pudding. (I have an entirely separate stomach for desserts – a useful tool for any gourmand).

In this shot you can see pickled celery, carrots in yoghurt sauce, cauliflower dip, garlicky walnut dip, tzatziki, warm potato salad. Just out of the picture, we also had platefuls of miniature fried black olives, beetroot salad and slices of local cheese, plus a warm raisin wholemeal loaf fresh from the oven:

A beautifully fresh tomato and lettuce salad, spiked with fresh dill:

A happy plateful of the above:

Now to the warm mezze – scrambled eggs with courgette, lentil stew, meatballs and stewed lamb:

Roast lamb, braised taro root in tomato sauce, chicken and mushrooms in creamy tarragon sauce, stewed aubergines, more mushrooms…

By this point I was thinking ‘schtop, schtop, I can’t eat any more!’ But the dishes kept on coming – aromatic beef stew with rice, rosemary-infused carrots, green beans with tomato and cinnamon sauce, more rice…

And lo: my separate pudding stomach kicked into action for the pudding mezze (I have never experienced a mezze spread consisting of puddings, it is a BRILLIANT idea). Apple crumble, warm gooey chocolate pudding, hot lemon pudding, vanilla flan and sticky banana toffee pudding with fudge sauce. Heart be still!

Mezze restaurants of Cyprus, I salute you – ‘tis a wonderful and sociable way to eat. Obviously helped enormously by the fact that the portion sizes are massive and that there is always enough for everybody…or am I just mellowing?

Seven St George’s Tavern
George and Lara
Yeroskepos
Paphos

I only wanted some sauce…

2011-05-30T18:34:00.003+01:00

The Three Cornered Cross, a pub in Wimbourne, Dorset, has the boldness to serve lunch throughout the afternoon on a weekend, unlike the more ‘traditional’ pubs nearby which stop serving lunch at 2pm (I know! I have barely got my appetite by 2pm – it seems very old fashioned). Anyway, The Three Cornered Cross turns out fairly decent fare, but much to my consternation, my lunch there was marred by a total overbearing slavishness to ‘Health and Safety’. Every time I hear this phrase, my eyes start to roll into the back of my head, as it usually signifies some way in which to curtail enjoyment or spontaneity.

My friends and I sat outside in the garden to enjoy the good weather and all ordered fish and chips. Always, when I order this dish, part of my enjoyment ritual is to slather everything in masses of vinegar, over several intervals, plus a liberal serving of ketchup on the side, and tons of salt. The reapplication of vinegar throughout is crucial, as I believe that its power wears off after a few minutes. I know other people that enjoy the same ritual, as weird as it sounds. Anyway, the pub served up a very handsome looking plate of fish and chips, but I could see no sauces on the table, so I requested them. We waited a few minutes, during which time I tried to contemplate eating my food without cutlery or salt and pepper, as we were still waiting for these too.

Eventually, a young member of staff appeared at our table wearing a starched white apron and holding aloft a narrow, horizontal tray with 10 china pots. He asked what sauces everyone would like. We requested vinegar and ketchup, expecting to be given two pots for the table. But oh no. We were solemnly presented with the pots and tiny spoons, which we had to pass round the table dosing our food with little dabs, before having to give them back to our waiter. Oh no, this would never work, I thought.

I asked: “Could we keep the vinegar on the table please?”

He replied, “Sorry, I need it back I’m afraid.” He looked a little sheepish.

I said: “But what if I want more vinegar in a minute? I need lots of vinegar…and will possibly want more ketchup too…”

“Sorry, it’s for health and safety reasons, we can’t leave the sauces on the table.”

“I beg your pardon? Health and safety?”

By now, this young man looked tired, and possibly a little afraid of me. I wasn’t giving up – this was ludicrous.

“We need to keep the sauces refrigerated. Which is why I can’t leave them here.” By now, he was edging away. Don’t hurt me, crazy lady…

“But vinegar never goes off! And ketchup is also very vinegary, it would take ages to go off…” (Vinegar is a preservative, FFS…)

By now my husband was kicking me under the table. Leave the poor guy alone, his eyes were saying. I took a deep breath and smiled. “Never mind. We are finished with the sauces,” I said, even though I was ready to scream. Our friends looked down at their plates and their small dabs of ketchup.

I watched our waiter scurry off with his platter of sauces, whereby he retreated to a small wooden shed at the side of the pub garden. I saw him crouch down and open a fridge, no doubt refilling his little jugs with more fridge-cold condiments, ideal for making your food go chilly the moment you sprinkled them on. It looked like an immense palaver. I bet he questioned his job and got asked this question about the sauce situation over and over again.

I wasn’t finished with my ranting, especially as the acquisition of cutlery had also been a mission (but I’m not going to go into this now). As I shovelled rapidly cooling chips into my mouth (their heat loss hastened by the chilly vinegar), I exclaimed: “What a RIDICULOUS system! It’s totally mad not leaving the sauces here…” and so on for the remainder of our meal. In my mind a scenario of surreal and inescapable proportions was unfolding itself, a bit like Russian dolls, where you open one to find another lurking inside.

“What if a table of eight people sat down and all wanted different amounts of sauces and took ages serving themselves, and then another table of six sat down moments later, and also wanted sauces at the same time? There is only one sauce waiter…” I was in full flow. “…and then, one table wanted more ketchup because someone had forgotten to request it at the time, but the sauce waiter was occupied with the newly arrived table? And then, another table wanted mustard, but the sauce waiter was busy refilling his tiny pots in the shed?”

Dear God. This had really got my goat – it was ‘Health and Safety’ gone completely up its own arsehole!

Anyway, rather than calming down, I continued to scrutinise the poor sauce waiter as he made his dismal trajectory around the pub garden, his pots of sauce clinking ominously on his wobbling tray. It seemed like a laborious waste of time.

And this, dear readers, is where The Three Cornered Cross lost all my respect as a diner – humiliating their waiter into this bizarre ritual of sauce Nazi-ism, and frustrating their vinegar/mustard/ketchup hungry public. Just give us a selection of bottles of sauce that we can help ourselves to, or at least a basket of sauces per table like any normal pub, and don’t fob us off with silly rationing, as it makes you look incredibly tight-arsed.

And don’t get me started on our epic wait for cutlery, and the salt and pepper pots that were delivered in an ornamental tin watering can, I’ll bore you to death! Harrumph…

The Three Legged Cross
Wimbourne
Dorset BH21 6RE

The Pear Tree

2011-05-27T10:11:00.001+01:00

Tucked away down a quiet side-street in Fulham is a hidden gem of a pub called The Pear Tree serving wonderful food – but it wasn’t ever thus. The management (cheery bar staff wearing cute vintage attire, a fresh-faced chef) took over running things not so long ago. Before the change of guard, this was a gloomy rough boozer where (according to one local) you were likely to ‘get stabbed’. So dodgy was its reputation that my mother-in-law, a Fulham local, had never dared set foot in the place in all the 10 years she had lived here, and looked aghast when we said where we’d been! We will have to take her for a visit…

Don’t be put off by the eyesore temporary scaffolding that covers the front of the building – once inside you will be charmed by a magical space that has a little flavour of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ to it. Quirky lampshades, mis-matched furniture and yummy vintage crockery – all serve to create a lived-in and characterful atmosphere. It feels like an artistic aunt’s living room where you want to hang out for a few hours with a good book and some plonk. An interesting mix of people were in attendance on our Sunday afternoon visit – old geezers enjoying their pints, young families tucking into roasts, friends meeting up for a gossip.

The food is absolutely delicious. First of all, before you even make your menu choices, an enamel tub of rosemary-sprinkled foccaccia bread is placed before you, with dipping oil and vinegar. Light dough, fruity oil and herby rosemary - like crack cocaine for a bread-head like me:

Then to the main courses:

A tasty roast pork loin stuffed with leeks and apricots, served with perfectly cooked carrots, asparagus and green beans (well-cooked veg is so rare in a pub!):

A very tender duck breast, with similar exemplary veg:

Outstanding steak with pepper sauce and chips - holy moly:

Our puds were a bit less successful – a lemon ricotta tart didn’t actually taste of anything, and had stodgy pastry, but no matter – some good coffees cheered us up. My husband was wowed by the quality and immense generosity of the cheese plate – a great variety of British cheeses, and so plentiful that we had to take some home with us in a napkin…

We shall return! Perhaps for one of their knockout brunches...

The Pear Tree
17 Margravine Road
Fulham
London W6 8HJ

Going for bloat

2011-05-15T21:06:00.002+01:00

It’s no secret that I love to eat well. I don’t do midget-sized portions and I like things to be generous on the plate. But despite all of this, the US of A nearly brought me to my knees on my recent visit with its gargantuan serving sizes in restaurants.

Anyone with half a brain will, of course, know to expect big portions in the States. But for some reason, I was surprised almost every time with the surreal over-abundance of the food servings when eating out. Plates were piled high to the rafters. It was, at times, almost nauseating. I tried various tactics to surmount this – ordering the smallest sized burger or sharing a plate of food with my husband. But sometimes you want different things on the menu from each other, so sharing doesn’t always work. And if you’re staying in B&B’s, you can’t always take the leftovers with you. Nor would you want to take certain types of leftovers home – I mean, who wants the rubbery cold eggs from brunch, a soggy sandwich or the wilted salad from lunch?

A few examples:

A taco salad. I thought this was going to be lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, crispy bits of taco and maybe some sour cream. I fancied a light lunch. Instead, I got a dog-bowl sized dish with a few bits of lettuce drowning under a sea of chilli con carne, garnished with a family pack of nachos, cream and a half tonne of cheese. I struggled to even get half of the way through (and I was hungry):

Brunch pancakes with maple syrup and bacon – the food was delicious, but why a WHOLE plate of bacon for one person, and three of these hefty half-inch-thick pancakes? I could barely finish two of them, and the bacon was far too much:

This salt beef bagel – also delicious, but check out the inches of filling! You can barely get your jaw around it!

The result of all this eating made me totally lose the sensation of hunger at various moments on the holiday, despite my best efforts not to over-stuff myself. It was almost impossible not to overeat, though, because everything had lost its sense of proportion on the plate.

What all of this made me wonder is where this over-the-top portion generosity hails from? Why the need to go overboard with everything? My father-in-law said to me that it stemmed from a desire to show that the USA is the biggest and the best and that people would feel cheated with anything less on their plate. My step-mum-in-law is a New Yorker and she says that city residents generally have tiny apartments, often with limited kitchen facilities, and they take the leftovers to eat at home in lieu of cooking. But not everyone in the US has a small living space. Our friends from San Diego say they are regularly ‘shocked’ by the food waste they see.

I know that Americans are generally much better at asking for doggy bags and taking leftovers home that we are in the UK . But still – there is a mammoth amount of food waste. Time after time I saw half-full plates being cleared from tables and not reappearing as doggy bags. The stuff that gets thrown out must be shocking. It would probably be enough to feed several impoverished nations year-round. One evening we ate in a seafood restaurant in Cambria called The Sea Chest, where the waiter saw the hesitation on our faces, and asked us if we wanted to share one course together. I asked if the portions were huge and he said “Yes. Enormous. We have to throw so much away. And it’s totally our fault for offering it in the first place.” We took his advice and shared our fillet of mahi mahi and it was the perfect amount for two.

Anyone else been stuffed to the gills on a trip Stateside? What are your thoughts on the food waste in the USA ? Am I over-reacting?

Robin’s, Cambria

2011-05-09T21:49:00.000+01:00

I was a huge fan of Twin Peaks in the early 90’s. This being my first extended trip to the States outside of New York, I was fascinated to discover a gorgeous little town in California that had a real Twin Peaks flavour to it - obviously this train of thought was conducted entirely in my own head, much to the amusement of my husband when I told him about it. Cambria is a small beach town halfway down the coast between San Francisco and LA, which on my visit was semi drenched in fog, giving it a slightly eerie atmosphere. It had quaint little shops and restaurants built of dark timber. It was picturesque without being twee, and everything looked homely and peaceful as though it hadn’t changed since the 1950’s. The locals were delightfully cheerful, and I half expected Agent Cooper to exit a coffee shop carrying donuts with a spring in his step. I’m sure he would have loved this restaurant we discovered, called ‘Robin’s’.

We ate one of the best meals of our holiday here. The food is absolutely delicious – the owner Shanny Covey calls it ‘handcrafted local cuisine’, and the chefs pride themselves on using lots of local produce. The dishes are sophisticated, yet rustic and unpretentious. You can get a curry, a stir-fry, some local fish or Mexican food, all done to a super high standard. The ambiance feels like a cosy living room at a friend’s house, and the staff are so welcoming.

Light, crispy calamari served with an aioli dip and pea shoots:

A velvety salmon bisque – a Robin’s ‘classic’:

Outstanding lobster and cheese enchiladas. There were so many flavours going on here – the lobster was delicate and sweet, the black beans were spicy and flavoured with cinnamon, the salad had a dressing with a taste reminiscent of curry leaves and the guacamole hidden underneath was fresh and creamy. I would never have expected lobster baked in a cheese sauce to have worked, but everything on the plate tasted amazing.

Fillet of local bass served with giant pea shoots, Russian kale and black rice – super fresh fish, and a myriad of spicy herby flavours going on in the rice and salad. Delicious.

I had been fantasizing about eating a good carrot cake all holiday, and this was possibly the best ever carrot cake I have eaten in my life – the sponge was light and perfumed with spices and chunks of crystallised ginger, there were shreds of coconut and juicy raisins, and the cream cheese frosting wasn’t too sweet. We couldn’t finish it, but it was too good to leave behind, so the staff put it in a pretty little box:

Robin’s
4095 Burton Drive
Cambria, CA 93428

American coffee: so darned good

2011-05-06T10:22:00.001+01:00

It’s amazing how easy it is to get a really good coffee in the big American cities. I’m not talking about going and getting a latte the size of a pillarbox in a Starbucks or an over-stewed filter coffee in a diner, but instead getting a proper fresh brew in one of the indies – the small cafes that pepper the streets of the places that I visited on my recent trip. It quickly became apparent to me that the Yanks take their love of coffee to almost evangelical heights – sometimes it’s quite amusingly serious and beardy! And each coffee shop has its own personality and quirks, as you shall see below…

Here is Ninth Street Espresso in Alphabet City (East Village), New York:

Stern-looking baristas with beards and trilby hats served us; the clientele comprised of people tapping away silently on iMacs. Shhhhh!

The perfect shape atop a deliciously strong and milky flat white:

The hilarious house rules – woe betide you should come here with children, as the bottom bit of the sign says: ‘Unattended children will be given an espresso and a free dog’ (ha ha):

Cafe Pedlar on the Lower East Side is a beautiful ‘artisanal’ coffee shop where the beards and the brews are strong:

They use a local brand called Stumptown Coffee, produced in Brooklyn. I wish I had brought some beans back, it was delicious, as were their cakes – behold this slab of ginger cake and olive oil sponge:

In San Francisco, the coffee scene is fantastic. You can go to indie cafes run by trendy hippies, earnest anarchists, sexy arts students and grizzled old intellectuals.

Caffe Trieste, in the North Beach area, is where the beat poets (Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg) allegedly used to hang out, and is deservedly famous. It simply reeks (in a good way) of the atmosphere of a bygone era, and has been open for 50 years. People actually sit around reading proper novels by Jean Paul Sartre and John Steinbeck, and old and young mix with each other. The walls are covered in black and white photos of all the artists that have hung out here over the years, and the tables are decorated with funky colourful tiles. I drank the best mocha of my life here, drenched in whipped cream…while an old dude with a MASSIVE white beard sat next to me and hoovered down an enormous wedge of vanilla cheesecake in less than three minutes…happy days.

Mmmm mama!

Do not sit and read a trash mag in here – it’s strictly novels, poems and scripts please:

Groovy friendly ladies – Lory on the left came over to our table and hung out with us, sharing all sorts of tips on where to go in California. Lovely lady!

History is on the walls:

Cafe Divis in the Haight District served me the best decaff coffee I have ever drunk – it tasted way better than a lot of caffeinated coffee that I have had in the UK, and I am upset I won’t taste this fine brew again anytime soon:

So trendy innit! There were lots of cool young good looking people tapping away on laptops…but less beards than elsewhere.

And finally onto LA – where we went to Intelligentsia in Venice. The name should say it all, but it was SO UPTIGHT that I got the uncontrollable urge to giggle. Everything was very 1990’s – all brushed steel and glass, with everyone yapping into their BlackBerry’s and punching the keyboards of their laptops, talking about real estate and contracts (which in my imagination could only be about the movie business, of course)...

Achtung: do not spill anything, cough, sneeze or make a mess in here! And laughter shall not be tolerated:

See how beautiful my coffee is below? Well, it took two baristas to make it – a very amusing sight. Bearded earnest barista was in charge of grinding the beans and getting stressed with Blonde Barista, who just looked thin, bored and beautiful as she heated the water in slow motion, and then made the shape of the heart on the milk foam, sighing. They kept bumping into each other and exchanging cross whispers. Blonde Barista was clearly just slumming it here, as the job was clearly quite beneath her, and an agent was going to discover her that very afternoon and get her an audition for a pilot. Bearded Barista just looked incredibly stressed, and was dressed a bit like a farm hand. Bless. But the coffee was nice though!

And thus endeth my mini journey through the indie coffee shops in the States – if only I worked near a decent coffee shop in London (I don’t). All I can hope for is a cup of something not-too-bad from Pret or Eat…

Links:

Ninth Street Espresso

Cafe Pedlar

Caffe Trieste

Cafe DiVis

Intelligentsia Coffee

Tartine, San Francisco

2011-05-04T21:53:00.000+01:00

I fell completely in love with San Francisco. Walking along, I smelled great Mexican food mingling with marijuana, drank excellent coffee (it’s taken VERY seriously here) and blissed out looking at the psychedelic colours of the painted Victorian mansions in the Haight Ashbury district, once home to the Grateful Dead. I revisited my teenage years gazing at all the tie-dyed Led Zeppelin and Doors T-shirts in the shops – the very same ones that I used to wear – and went for pitstops in cafes run by earnest anarchists and hippies.

And then I found Tartine – a wonderful bakery in the Mission district that churns out not only the famous San Francisco sourdough bread, but fabulous cakes and possibly the best toasted sandwiches I have ever eaten. Here, they call them ‘hot pressed sandwiches’ – great craggy slabs of sourdough holding gooey molten fillings, with crusty char marks on the outside. The portions are enormous – we managed to finish them off for breakfast the next day, and they still tasted great under the grill.

Unsurprisingly, Tartine is extremely popular – queues stretch around the block, even early on a Sunday morning. If I lived anywhere near this bakery, I think the unrelenting queues would be the only thing stopping me from getting Type 1 diabetes from over-consumption of their wares…

Here are those hot pressed sandwiches - ham and gruyere, with a side of delicious pickled carrots: worth every penny of the $11 price tag:

Fontina cheese with broccoli pesto and dry cured ham - super pokey:

For dessert, we had a ‘Tres Leches’ cake (light, creamy and coconutty) and a darkly sinful Valhrona chocolate and walnut drop cookie:

The rest of their wares – I was gutted not to be able to try absolutely everything:

The only chocolate they use in the cakes is Valhrona (Lordy!) and the co-owners of Tartine, Chad Robertson and Elisabeth Pruett, are revered as some sort of demi-gods on the American food circuit. Makes sense to me!

Tartine Bakery
600 Guerrero Street @ 18th
San Francisco
www.tartinebakery.com

Katz’s Delicatessen, New York

2011-04-20T03:42:00.002+01:00

Stepping into Katz’s Deli is like going into a timewarp. You can sit at formica tables, soak up all the retro fixtures and fittings that look as though they haven’t changed since at least the 1950’s, gawp at all the photos of celebrities on the walls, and eat a salt beef bagel that is bigger than your head. Then, when paying for your food, fast forward right back to present-day New York and get stung for more dosh than it costs to buy one of the souvenir t-shirts at the exit!

But no matter. Despite this probably being one of the biggest tourist traps in New York, everyone visiting this city should pay at least one visit here. This place has been trading since 1888, and they cure all their own meat. The food is plain, big and hearty – and delicious. If you’re not in the mood for 6 inches of pastrami (beef cured in a special way) between your slices of rye, you can have just about any other kind of traditional American comfort food imaginable. We came here for the bagels – and of course the decor!

There are hundreds of salamis hanging up – the Katz famous phrase is ‘Senda Salami to your boy in the army!’

Hundreds of celebs have been photographed eating here – from Bill Clinton and Ben Stiller to Gorbachev and Barbra Streisand. I also spotted a non-labelled photo of Radio 1 DJ Sara Cox on the wall. I wonder if anyone in New York (apart from the Brit ex-pats) has the foggiest idea who she is?

Nothing looks as though it has been updated for decades:

Smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels – an eye watering $15 apiece, but totally delicious. You get about 10 slices of salmon and half a tub of cream cheese in each bagel:

Roast turkey and Swiss cheese on an onion bagel: a bit dry but tasty nonetheless:

The big daddy: pastrami bagel with mustard and pickles, totally delicious, but my God, this cost $20!

Serious meat – not for the fainthearted:

And I nearly forgot to mention: this is the deli where the infamous scene with Meg Ryan in ‘Where Harry Met Sally’ was filmed, where she fakes an orgasm at the table. You can sit at the very same table and do your own version, just like in that terrible TV ad:

Once you have recovered from the extortionate prices, you will feel melancholy knowing that the experience of eating a bagel in the UK has been totally ruined. Nothing will ever be the same again…

Katz’s Delicatessen
205 East Houston Street
New York NY 10002

http://www.katzdeli.com

Saltie, New York

2011-04-16T02:55:00.000+01:00

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is quite similar in many ways to London’s Hackney where the hipsters hang out. It’s urban, scruffy and full of media types working on ad campaigns and edgy photo shoots. Whereas in Hackney, lots of young women dress as ‘land girls’ (all smocks and 1940s makeup, or their grandmothers’ clothes) and the men dress like Victorian urchins or impecunious chimney sweeps with comedy glasses, it’s a little bit the same thing here – plenty of handlebar moustaches and beards on the blokes, wide framed NHS-style glasses and ramshackle fashions for the ladies. It can be hard work watching and laughing at the hipsters, so when your stomach starts to growl, and you want something that isn’t a bagel or a burger, Saltie is a snack-stop that offers the hungry diner a different sort of sandwich.

This tiny little shop is nothing more than a counter with a small prep area behind it. The menu is short and to the point, with nautical names for the sandwiches such as ‘The Captain’s Daughter’ and ‘Scuttlebutt’. There is nothing much else to buy apart from sandwiches, except for a few cakes, coffee and sometimes ice cream. It’s not a comfortable place – the point is that you get your sandwich and then you go somewhere else to eat it. And don’t ask for your sandwich to be divided in two for sharing – one of the stern counter ladies looked right at me with her laserbeam eyes and said ‘We don’t cut our sandwiches here – they are designed to be eaten as once piece.’ That showed me…

The counter area – beware, stern ladies dwell behind here:

Ahoy - the menu:

Don’t get me wrong when I say that, at first glance, the sandwich fillings sound a tad offputting. I mean, who would be drawn straight away to fillings such as pickled egg, sardine and beetroot? Urgh! My friend S actually went pale when he read the list of ingredients and said ‘I don’t think I can eat here, I don’t think I can do this’. But the clever thing here is that all the fillings are very well judged in terms of ingredient combinations and really work well together. Just like the name ‘Saltie’ suggests, the sandwich fillings are full of ‘umami’ combinations: fish, eggs and capers adorned with punchy garlicky aioli, or pickles and ham, or Spanish omelette and garlic mayo. Super yum. The bread is a lovely chewy, crusty foccaccia which tastes homemade, and all the ingredients squidge nicely into the bread to create a very satisfying mouthful. These are messy sandwiches – the aioli will run down your chin and you might want to eat it on your own in the privacy of your home. But my God, these are good – and pretty much worth the $10 price tag.

S gets counselling from C in order to get to grips with the menu:

The Captain’s Daughter: sardines, pickled egg, salsa verde, leaves:

Scuttlebutt: egg, cauliflower, pickles, beets, pickles, feta, black olives, capers, aioli: so good that my friend D bought two, so that he had one to scoff in private when he got home.

Other sandwich fillings include ‘Ship’s Biscuit’ – soft scrambled egg and ricotta – and ‘Little Chef’: mortadella, pecorino, green olives and parsley. Certainly not your usual run-of-the-mill tuna mayo or cheese and pickle.

We finished off with some Grown Up Chocolate Chip Cookies that were buttery and delicious, with chunks of bitter chocolate. We ate them too fast for me to take a photograph of them.

Saltie
378 Metropolitan
Williamsburg, Brooklyn NYC

The Clinton Street Baking Company, New York

2011-04-15T16:49:00.001+01:00

Want a brunch of epic proportions that will stretch your stomach three-ways? Feeling organised? Get ready to queue here – at least one hour before you want to eat. Obviously if you’re going to come on a weekend, allow perhaps an hour and a half. But it’s worth it – the ambiance is great, and the food is pretty decent. Plus this place ends up rocking the top of many ‘best places to eat brunch’ lists in New York. Make sure you wear very forgiving jeans – or some kind of stretchy lycra – if you plan to eat here. Even the coffees are the size of a pillar box, and cookies the size of a lumberjack’s fist.

It’s not the most challenging or exciting food (as much as many people would have you believe on all the websites raving about this place) but it’s decent, hearty and well put together. It just lacks a bit of seasoning, a few herbs and a bit of punch. But really not to be sniffed at as a once-in-a-while experience. And they make bloody good Bloody Mary’s…

A lake of mocha coffee hanging out next to an ocean of Bloody Mary:

Spanish scramble with chorizo, hash browns and sourdough bread:

Buttermilk biscuit (that’s a savoury scone to us Brits) with roast tomato sauce, scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns. The cheddar melted onto the eggs tasted of nothing, which was a shame:

Country plate: ham, biscuit, scrambled eggs and hash browns:

If you can actually polish off the whole plate of food here, you have something in common with Elvis. All four of us were totally defeated, and we are greedy mo-fos. It’s definitely worth coming here once, as it has such a buzz, but the food isn’t THAT amazing.

I really do wonder about the logic behind the portion sizes in the US and how much food waste they have in this country. I know there is a strong culture of taking leftovers home, but I haven’t seen many people taking cold scrambled eggs with them to eat later…

Clinton Street Baking Company
4 Clinton Street (btw. East Houston & Stanton)
New York, NY 10002
http://www.clintonstreetbaking.com/

Momofuku Noodle Bar, New York

2011-04-14T02:43:00.002+01:00

Well I never - I managed to find a truly wonderful restaurant in New York that serves magical and exceptional food and is…(are you sitting down)…cheap! The food here is literally amazing. If, after several days of scoffing burgers and heavy American fare, your palate is in need of a recharge, this is the place to come. David Chang’s menu is a mixture of Korean and fusion, and boasts combinations of ingredients that that I have never put in my mouth before.

Chang is one of New York’s most super-hyped chefs – he has several restaurants all serving complex and original Asian food, and it’s about as far away from the bland Wagamama concept as you could imagine. One of his restaurants is called the Momofuku Milk Bar which serves only puddings – sadly we didn’t have time to make it here, but people do rave about it with a far-away look in their eyes.

If you had only one night to eat out in New York, I would say to come to his Noodle Bar without hesitation, even if it meant crawling across broken glass on your bleeding stumps. You can’t reserve, but it’s worth the wait. Or take a tip from my book – turn up at 10pm on a Sunday night and you’ll be seated within a mere 10 minutes…

The menu changes daily and uses seasonal ingredients:

Striped raw sea bass in a cucumber broth – literally the freshest tasting thing, zingy and light. The cucumber broth tastes of the colour green!

Chargrilled octopus – aromatic five spice flavours on the outside, tender on the inside. Comes with tangy pieces of grapefruit, spring onions and a yoghurt sauce. My favourite dish of the lot, absolutely outstanding:

Smoky chicken wings: sticky, smoky, salty, sweet:

The famous pork buns (this is what EVERYBODY talks about when they mention this restaurant) filled with pork belly infused with star anise. I got a bit freaked out by the inch of gungy fat clinging to the meat, so I removed it. A bit hardcore for me, but delicious once removed. My companions had no such qualms and gulped the whole lot down:

Roast potatoes with ‘ramps’ (seasonal wild spring onions) sprinkled with bonito flakes that moved and shimmered around from the heat of the food. A delicious mayo-style sauce underneath tasted smoky. Yum:

Momofuku ramen: delicious smoky broth with silky egg noodles, a barely poached egg (isn’t it a perfectly beautiful oval?), shredded pork, pork belly and scallions. Really comforting:

Chilled spicy Schezuan noodles: crisp nuggets of red-hot and mouth-tingling sausage sat atop noodles and baby leaf spinach, sprinkled generously with honey and chilli-roasted cashew nuts. Amazing – and made our lips tingle then go numb with heat:

Passion fruit soft serve, which was tangy, zingy and the perfectly refreshing end to the meal:

Oooh look: naughty chocolate crumbs hiding underneath:

Now these were seriously delicious: coconut and tangerine truffle cake balls. Soft cake on the inside, chewy coconut on the outer shell:

In terms of cost, the bill for four greedy people came to $150. We didn’t skimp on ordering, and this works out at roughly £25 per head including beers – an absolute bargain. We had eaten a dire meal out the previous night that cost us almost triple that amount per head, and with less food on table!

Momofuku Noodle Bar
171 First Avenue NYC 10003
Tel: 00 1 212 777 7773
momofuku.com

New York, New York

2011-04-12T15:10:00.002+01:00

It has long been said that New York is one of the best places on earth to dine out. And even though I’m sure that thousands of people have proof of this, I can’t say I’m 100% convinced. If you’re a hapless tourist such as I, and don’t have much time to do a lot of research beforehand (beyond the skimming of a Time Out guide on the plane and swotting up on Chowhound) the process of getting fed well can actually be quite a nightmare. And I’m not even a first-time visitor. There are so many rules – which I think would probably apply to anyone with only days to spare in a large city, but for some reason, it seems to be super-hard to get a decent good value meal in NYC.

For starters, don’t even BOTHER thinking you can get a table anywhere decent on a Saturday night unless you have booked at least a week ahead. Which makes it rather daunting if you only arrive in town the day before, jetlagged to the eyeballs and just getting to grips with everything. As a result, last Saturday night we headed to an esteemed gastropub called The Spotted Pig because, not only did it sound wonderful, but it was one of the few restaurants with a ‘no reservations’ policy. How naive we were – we were told there would be a three hour wait minimum. We had to abandon ship, but luckily my friend B had a organised a sneaky back-up reservation somewhere else, but unfortunately the meal turned out to be dreadful with dire service (that’s another story).

If restaurants don’t take reservations, such as the uber-popular brunch spot called the Clinton Street Baking Company on the Lower East Side, you should basically turn up and get your name on the list at least one hour before you want to eat anything. Even if that means going for a ‘pre-breakfast’ somewhere else. You will spend much of your time queuing in this way in New York – be it at an ice cream parlour or a breakfast joint – and nothing is ever going to change this. It makes it hard to be spontaneous, but you’ll just have to suspend that urge while you’re here. Alternatively, just prepare to eat dinner every night at 10:30pm when everyone else if finishing. It has just occurred to me that the entire process of eating out here is like a competitive sport – once you know the rules, be prepared to play hard to reach the finish line.

Another thing that I had forgotten since my first visit to NYC was just how jawdroppingly expensive everything is. I mean, really expensive. We are talking bagels that cost $15, ice cream sundaes costing $20 and steaks that will put you back on average $50 per head, just for the meat without sides. Wowzers. Ironically, the bagels that we enjoyed in Katz’s Deli (yes, yes, I know, probably considered the ultimate tourist trap) were MORE expensive than the souvenir T shirts for sale at the exit!

A great way to circumnavigate all of this is to know a couple of locals who can give you tips. My friends B and D have proven invaluable with advice and recommendations. B says that you have to reserve EVERYTHING weeks ahead, and be warned that restaurants will double book you unscrupulously, as it’s no guarantee whatsoever to be told that you’re on the list. D says that he sticks to a few close favourites and prefers the small, local places. And failing that? If you have no friends based in NYC, take a tip from me. I just badgered a complete stranger on the street for pancake recommendations (when the queue for yet another brunch place snaked ominously around the block) and even though he looked slightly afraid of me, he gave me a great recommendation for a diner a few blocks away. Which did sterling pancakes…and had one free table! Phew…

It’s not all doom and gloom however – I have managed to have some really great meals here, and individual reviews for places I have enjoyed will follow soon…

I’m on my way to San Francisco next – anyone got any good recommendations? I thank you!

The Duke of Cumberland Arms

2011-03-27T17:59:00.002+01:00

I can be extremely demanding, often. One one such occasion I wanted to have lunch in a country pub that had all of the following things: a log fire, beams, a display of friendly dogs, relaxed and amiable staff, proper ales, nice wooden tables and rustic charm in abundance. Not to mention a total absence of a TV blaring in the background, silly posh furniture and novelty ornaments. When it came to the food, I wanted delicious hearty home-cooked food NOT served on irritating square plates, and not heated up out of a sous-vide packet. Not much to ask is it??? Well I find that sometimes country pubs have all the charm of a Harvester, with those horrible over-long menus filled with flowery menu descriptions, that always have some strange kind of faux-Asian crispy duck pancakes in the starters menu, or something ‘drizzled in balsamic jus’. (Weird).

This pub happily ticked all of the boxes that I needed it to – no mean feat! Tucked away down a verdant country track, flanked on either side by tiny houses that look like fairytale woodcutter cottages, The Duke of Cumberland, near Midhurst in West Sussex, is a little jewel shining in a sea of lacklustre country taverns, serving wonderful food and ales in a blissful setting.

It looks like something out of a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale:

The homely interior, like a cosy front room:

On one afternoon in February, the friendly staff at the Duke accommodated 16 hungry adults and 3 energetic toddlers with such a chilled out friendly attitude I thought I’d died and gone to service heaven. They seated us in a lovely snug room with wooden trestle tables at the front of the pub, which we had all to ourselves. Even though we were chaotic, noisy and messy, the staff catered to all whims with wide smiles. It’s not easy finding a pub that will happily let kids run riot and make a mess. The Duke has pretty gardens and ornamental trout ponds which kept the kids captivated, and the adults didn’t feel they were having to compromise on having a grown-up style lunch. Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention a splendid wooden outdoor seating area inside which a log fire was kept roaring all day, so you could sit outside and have a ciggy while keeping warm and dry.

And now to the food…

Ham, egg and chips - mighty fodder:

Hare pappardalle: rich delicious sauce, light buttery noodles:

The Duke’s signature Cumberland sausage and mash - hearty:

A crab risotto, full of spring-like flavours:

Desserts were also good, although I was slightly mystified by the need for the sticky toffee pudding to be cut up into several ornamental pieces and presented on a swanky square (tsk tsk) plate – I would have preferred it wedged in a bowl drowned in custard. But it still tasted lovely:

The chocolate fondant was deliciously gooey:

I can’t wait to go back to the Duke of Cumberland for a lazy summer afternoon where we can all sit outside in the beautiful gardens and sip ales in the sunshine – followed by a light lunch of sausages and puddings!

The Duke of Cumberland Arms: website
Henley, nr Midhurst
West Sussex

Fire & Knives

2011-03-25T12:24:00.000Z

This is a delicious new(ish) print quarterly on all matters to do with food and drink. And I’ve got an article published in this month’s issue, hot off the press! You'll find all sorts of quirky articles in here from a wide spectrum of writers covering weird and wonderful topics - retro food, knives, ham and all things nostalgic. One contributor has submitted photographs of his deceased grandfathers's beautifully handwritten food shopping lists, and there is even has a crossword! Fire & Knives is lovingly put together by The Guardian's Tim Hayward.

You can subscribe to it here.

Lemon curd cheesecake

2011-03-22T20:54:00.002Z

I used to work as a freelancer on various food magazines – when I was allowed to write something, I loved it. But most of the time I did sub-editing and proofreading of recipes and supplement sections – it could be the most toe-curlingly-dull work ever. Not least because everyone typically ignores the freelancer, stuck at the crappy corner desk, as though they are some kind of alien species. But one benefit of my time on these magazines was that it made me super-anal about recipe quantities. I get so irate when cookbooks and mags don’t get their quantities right. It’s easily done, though – we’re all human.

I often find that Nigel Slater’s recipes in the Observer have mistakes in them. I know too well how that must happen – the recipes get sub-edited down to death to fit a tiny space. Many was the time I was driven around the bend by the same problem – trying to make 250 words fit a 50 word space – argh! I probably did exactly the same thing 1000 times over during my years at Delicious or Waitrose Food Illustrated magazines. And probably do it all the time on this blog. Oh well!

Anyway, since the news is unrelentingly depressing at the moment, I thought I’d put up a nice cheesecake recipe to cheer everyone up. I love cheesecake, and recently have been craving lemony tangy flavours. This one is based on two recipes by Nigel Slater, which I’ve tweaked around a bit. It’s a bit bloody good.

Serves 8 – 10 people who don’t count calories

You will need:

Lemon curd topping

Zest and juice of 4 unwaxed lemons
150g sugar
100g butter cut into cubes
3 organic eggs and 1 egg yolk

Cheesecake

Biscuit base:
90g butter
350g digestive biscuits (or a mixture of 200g shortbread and 150g oatcakes)

Filling:
1 x 284g tub double Jersey cream
100g sugar
500g full fat cream cheese (eg Philadelphia)
Scant capful of vanilla extract (use cap from bottle)

First make the lemon curd. Put the lemon zest, juice, butter and sugar into a heatproof bowl set over a simmering pan of water – make sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water. Stir from time to time until everything is melted. In a separate bowl, mix the eggs and egg yolk with a fork, then stir into the lemon mixture. Let the mixture cook over the simmering water, using a whisk to stir regularly, for between 10 and 15 minutes, until it thickens up like custard. Take off the heat and let cool down. As it cools, give it an occasional stir with the whisk. (If you can wait that long, it will keep for 2 weeks in the fridge)

Your lovely lemon curd:

Now make your cheesecake base. Line the base of a 23-cm springform tin with a disk of greaseproof paper. Blitz the biscuits to fine sandy crumbs in a food processor, then melt the butter and mix everything together in a bowl. Press the buttery biscuit crumbs into the base of the tin with your fingers, pressing hard to compact the crumbs together. Put the tin in the fridge to let the base harden for about 30 minutes.

To make the cheesecake mixture, whip the cream and sugar together until just stiff – it will take mere seconds if you use an electric whisk. Then using a spatula (not the whisk) mix in the cream cheese and vanilla extract. Then take your cooled lemon curd and fold two thirds of it into the cheesecake mix – try not to mix it in totally as it’s nice to get a ‘ripple’ effect. Tip the mixture into the cake tin and spread flat with a spatula. Then spread the remaining lemon curd on top of the cheesecake – you want to get a nice even spread of lemony goodness. Chill in the fridge for at least 4 hours before serving with a dollop of lemon curd on the side if you have any left…

A deliciously untidy slice of lemony heaven:

Parmesan, mozzarella and pomodoro bake – thanks Joanna Lumley

2011-02-24T19:52:00.002Z

Last night I was gripped by a food memory that I hadn’t had since I was an angst-ridden teenager. I thought I wanted macaroni and cheese for dinner, and while I was going through the list of what I needed to buy, I suddenly recalled a recipe that my mum had made at my 18^th birthday party way back in the early 90’s. It was inspired by a Joanna Lumley ad for Sainsbury’s where she coaxed the viewers, in her posh velvety tones, through making a pomodoro pasta bake with mozzarella, parmesan and tomatoes. One sighting of this ad and I was hooked!

The sight of Joanna Lumley tearing fresh basil leaves up with her glossy lacquered fingernails was mesmerising – in the late 90’s I don’t think I had even seen fresh basil outside of a jar of pesto sauce. The mozzarella I was used to was the rubbery grated stuff on top of pizzas, and parmesan came as a dried powder in a tub smelling of sick. Joanna talked through the process of adding chunks of fresh mozzarella and grated parmesan to a tomato sauce, then adding fresh basil to it and mixing with penne (penne? How exotic!) then baking in the oven, topped with more fresh parmesan. By the end of the advert, I think most of the UK was drooling. Sales of those ingredients must have soared.

I begged my Mum to make it for my 18^th birthday party, which she did very graciously. I don’t think she was quite expecting that her weird daughter wanted all her friends to come to the dinner wearing drag, and since the majority of my mates were male, we had a few of bearded ladies with comedy makeup sitting around the table. Some of the boys were squeezed into ballgowns with their hairy chests poking out at the top. The few girls that came along had drawn burnt cork moustaches on themselves. (KW do you remember this?!)

Everyone arrived with bottles of cheap booze in carrier bags, which my Mum, horrified, promptly confiscated. We were allowed exactly 1 bottle of Martini Rosso on the table, shared between about 15 of us. Luckily, I managed to ‘release’ the rest of the booze from its prison and we hid it under the table, furtively topping up our glasses. It was a hilarious night. But my most abiding memory was this amazing pasta dish, courtesy of Joanna Lumley, Sainsbury’s and those trusty recipe cards given out at the checkouts – does anybody out there still have this one in an old ringbinder somewhere?

Here’s the recipe, which is entirely cooked from memory, so it won’t be accurate. Not bad recall, though, after such a massive gap of years – it tastes just how I remember it!

Serves 4 – 5 people

You will need:

300g penne shaped pasta, cooked until just underdone. I like wholewheat penne – it has a nice flavour.
2 x 400g tins plum tomatoes (use the best quality you can afford)3 tablespoons tomato puree
2 medium sized balls of fresh mozzarella, chopped into large chunks
100g + 70g fresh Parmesan cheese, grated
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 small stem fresh rosemary, chopped
3 tablespoons fresh chopped oregano
1 large bunch fresh basil, chopped into thin slices
6 large fresh tomatoes, chopped into large chunks
Olive oil
Salt & freshly ground pepper

Preheat your oven to 180C. Oil a large baking tray. Put the chunks of fresh tomatoes in the tray and whack in the oven while you sort out the sauce and pasta.

Then make your sauce. Gently heat the crushed garlic over a medium heat in some olive oil. Add the chopped rosemary, then when everything is fragrant (but don’t burn) add the tinned tomatoes. Chop them up over the back of a wooden spoon if they’re whole ones. Add the tomato puree and oregano and simmer for about 15 minutes. Then add 100g grated Parmesan and all the chopped mozzarella. Let it melt slowly in, simmer for about 5 minutes, then season to taste with salt and pepper and add the chopped basil right at the end. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Phwoar – tomato-ey cheesy goodness!

Once more with herbs – I could probably drink this like a smoothie:

While you make the sauce you can get the pasta on the go. Don’t cook it through completely – it has to be a little bit hard as it’ll cook more in the oven.

When your pasta and sauce are ready, take the tray of tomatoes out of the oven. Mix everything together in the tray, then top everything with the remaining 70g of grated Parmesan. Bake until the top is crusty and golden – about 20 minutes.

Woah, it’s like food porn – look at those crunchy bits just tempting you:

It’s intensely savoury, cheesy and herby with a lovely rich taste of tomato. Great for a big carbo blow-out!

I was so hungry I couldn’t be bothered to make the bowl look smear-free for the camera:

Does anyone else remember the Joanna Lumley Sainsbury’s ad?

Food sharing anxiety

2011-02-04T12:45:00.001Z

I have long harboured a realisation which I’ve felt too ashamed about admitting for years, but now I’m going to come out into the open with it. In a nutshell, I absolutely HATE sharing small plates of food with other people – ie tapas style dishes. It really drives me round the bend and ruins many an eating out experience. It just won’t do for me!

I think it probably stems from university days. I would be minding my own business eating my beans on toast, or tuna and cheese toastie, and then from out of nowhere my annoying housemate C’s fork would plunge into my plate from across the table as she cheerfully helped herself to my dinner. I would cry out ‘Oi what the hell are you doing’ and she’d retort with ‘Oh stop being so uptight’ while plunging her fork in for a second time with complete impunity. I would feel almost murderous rage at what she’d done – she had violated my dinner. It amounted to a complete lack of respect for my personal space and annoyed the crap out of me.

Then began my first forays into Spanish-style tapas eating. I would find the whole process unbearable – people umm-ing and ahh-ing about how many plates of food to order: did we have too much, did we have too little? Then I’d find that the plates that I’d ordered would be placed at the opposite end of the table to where I was sitting, and by the time I’d get it passed to me, someone else would have polished off most of it. There would never be enough tapas for everyone, but no-one would really speak up and order more. I would find the whole thing an ordeal and leave feeling disgruntled and still hungry, cheated out of a proper dinner. I still can’t get the memory of an unbearable tapas meal I experienced in Bloomsbury out of my head – there were at least 20 people around the table, and tapas is only bearable for two people at most, perhaps a maximum of four, but 20 is sheer insanity. How I hated the ridiculous dance of forks around the last morsel of chorizo or mushroom, and the fact that a lot of the food came in portions that were impossible to divide among more than two people. Spanish tortilla, I rest my case.

I have two good friends who have a habit of always ordering two separate dishes when we eat out and dividing them down the middle to share them with each other. I find the whole thing incomprehensible – imagine if you are really enjoying your plate of food to know that halfway through you have to surrender it and swap over to something that you might not like as much? It's like they don't want to commit to anything. I’m clearly far too impatient and greedy. I like nothing more than to have my plate of food in front of me, safe in the knowledge that I’ll get to enjoy the whole thing, without someone’s fork plunging rudely into it for a taste. Unless I give them permission first…

The only real exception to my dislike of sharing food is in Asian cuisine, where you traditionally order a lot of plates between you and share. It just isn’t really the done thing to order one dish for yourself. For some reason this experience is really satisfying as the portions tend to be larger, and you get to try a lot of different things. (Actually I've just thought of one annoying thing: there are four of you dining, but three spring rolls arrive on the plate. Trying to carve them in half with chopsticks is SO annoying!) But I’m afraid tapas, and all those small trendy plates of food that seem to be cropping up everywhere in gastropubs and Soho Italian tapas restaurants just make me feel on edge and perpetually irked. How on earth are you meant to share a soft boiled duck egg and soldiers between four hungry diners? Gah!

Are you as intolerant as I am, or do you think I should just mellow out? I’d love to hear from some similarly picky diners…

A working lunch

2011-02-01T20:05:00.001Z

We all have different experiences of the working lunch. Above is my typical lunch in the office: lentil soup eaten while hunched over the keyboard. The soup was lovely but the scenario is pretty dire huh? In an ideal world I’d be sitting in the sun in some kind of picturesque piazza, wolfing down a homemade baguette filled with rustic ham and gherkins, delighting at the vibrancy of passers by. However, the mediocrity of my weekday lunchbreak is nowt compared to whoever has to eat lunch in this thing:

See how both toilet and canteen are in cheek-by-jowl proximity? Just imagine - your colleague sitting on the khazi while you heat up a cup-a-soup in the illustrious ‘canteen’ end, mere centimetres away. Shudder!

What’s your typical working lunch like? A travesty like the two examples mentioned above, or a lovely civilised affair? Go on, make me jealous.

Death of the Montezuma Orangutang!

2011-01-22T12:59:00.001Z

Argh. Something is afoot in my world as a lover of dark orange-flavoured chocolate. Yes I know that’s a pretty niche type of interest, but I feel compelled to vent!

Above, you will see my favourite chocolate bar ever. It has been killed off. Montezuma Chocolates, who in my opinion make some of the most delicious dark chocolate in the Western hemisphere, have decided to discontinue their Orangutan, the Yorkie-sized dark chocolate bar flavoured with orange. How very dare they! Why would anyone do such a thing? What were they thinking?

I used to go to the Montezuma shop in Spitalfields when I worked nearby and load up on 10 bars in one go so that I had a stash of them in the house, and I would sit eating one slowly as a treat after a bad day, making each square last as long as possible. The Orangutan tasted so darned good – a classy, glossy dark choc flavoured with tart orange oil, silky in texture and with a lovely aftertaste, formed in satisfyingly big chunks (hence the Yorkie comparison). It made Green & Black’s Maya Gold orange/spice chocolate seem sickly and over-sweetened in comparison. (You see, I have a thing about dark orange choc!)

But now the bar has been discontinued! I actually requested some Orangutan bars on my Christmas list, before I knew of this monstrous calamity, and my husband had to beg a sales assistant to find some in the storeroom. Seeing the desperation on his face, she very kindly tore open some gift packs to prise the remaining ones out. I now have two-and-a-half bars left – IN THE WORLD.

Montezuma’s please explain to me why you have removed this bar from your range? What possessed you to keep ‘Space Hopper’ and ‘Gourmet Gorilla’ instead of ‘Orangutan’? I can’t find a replacement that will match it (and believe me, I have looked)… what the hell am I going to do? Sit here with a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and sulk?

Well, for starters, I’m going to email them this…

Blood orange and grapefruit jelly

2011-01-19T14:00:00.006Z

Argh - why is it that jelly is such a royal pain in the arse to make? Every single recipe I've tried gives a specific number of gelatine sheets to use, and the jelly never EVER sets. The recipe I tried below (tsk tsk Nigel Slater) was no exception - it took three attempts to get it right. I thought I was going mad, effing and blinding and stomping around my kitchen in the early hours. I mean, how many flipping sheets of gelatine does one jelly need? Apparently the confusion occurs because chefs use a different size of sheet, but my gripe is that food recipe editors should realise that ordinary punters wouldn't use catering sized ones. We just buy the regular Supercook ones in the supermarket. Anyway. Rant over.

A really great fruit to make a jelly with is the blood orange. Blood oranges are in season right now. Don’t hang about, though – you can only get them for a couple of months a year, and they’re really worth snapping up. Really nice ones, I think, come from Sicily – you can get great organic ones from small growers there. In terms of flavour, blood oranges are slightly more perfumed than regular oranges; some have dark red flesh, others are a mottled mixture of red and orange, and some are just orange coloured on the inside. Part of the fun is unpeeling one to see how dark the segments are inside, then squeezing out the vivid juice. The only clue on a blood orange’s skin that the inside might be red coloured is a little red blush or mottling, otherwise they look exactly the same, albeit a bit smaller than normal oranges.

Uses? You can make a very grown up vodka and blood orange cocktail (fresh juice and voddy) and in terms of desserts I got the idea to make a posh fruit jelly for a dinner party. Jelly is such a great pud to make for a dinner party – it wibbles on the spoon, feels nostalgic, but if you make your own with fresh fruit juice, it’s very grown up!

This jelly came in very handy when I had to provide the pudding course at a mate’s dinner party (a sort of pot luck supper where everyone brings a course) because you can carry it across London on the tube in your bag and it won’t break or spill, it’ll just wobble amusingly.

Blood orange and grapefruit jelly

Based on a recipe by Nigel Slater; serves 8

You will need:

10 – 12 cardamom pods
1 litre fresh blood orange and pink grapefruit juice (it's nice to use a bit more blood orange juice than grapefruit - approx 1.5 kilos blood oranges and a couple of pink grapefruits)
Juice of half a lemon
Juice of half a lime
3 tbsp caster sugar
6 slices of peel taken from one of the blood oranges (if you use organic, you don’t have to worry about pesticides on the skin)
12 - 15 sheets of Supercook gelatine

Bash open the cardamom pods in a pestle and mortar and extract the black seeds. Juice the fruits, then put the juice of the oranges, grapefruit, lemon and lime in a stainless steel saucepan, add the cardamom seeds, sugar and the strips of orange peel. Stir until the sugar has dissolved, taste to check it's sweet enough, if not add a bit more sugar, then bring almost to the boil before turning off the heat and putting the lid on, letting the liquid cool down for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, soak the gelatine leaves in water until floppy, then when the juice mixture has cooled down a bit (but still warm) add the gelatine to it and stir until dissolved. Pour the jelly mixture through a sieve to remove any seeds or peel, into either moulds, wine glasses or a large bowl and leave to set in the fridge overnight.

You could serve the jelly on its own, or with some nice shortbread and a blob of vanilla ice cream or double cream.

Normally I would have put the jelly in individual glasses or moulds, but as I had to carry it across London, a big bowl had to do. Tastes the same, innit!

A rotten fishy business

2011-01-12T14:53:00.001Z

Last night I watched ‘Hugh’s Fish Fight’ on Channel 4 – where Hugh Fearnley Whittingtsall lifted the lid on the shocking state of the UK fishing industry. He interviewed fishermen on their boats around the UK who were furious at having to throw around HALF their catch overboard, also known as ‘discard’, to meet absurd and outdated government regulations.

I was horrified – I knew the fishing industry was in dire straits, but I had no idea that BY LAW fishermen were forced to throw much of their catch overboard to meet certain quotas. What a disgusting waste of food. Not to mention the environmental havoc that this wreaks on the over-trawled oceans.

It made for very powerful and compelling viewing – the fishermen, fishmongers and fish processors were all sickened by the laws which have been in place for many years, and many felt depressed and angry. Hugh looked as sickened as they did. It makes no sense whatsoever to have these quotas in place.

Watch the programme here

And, for the love of haddock, cod and mackerel, please sign Hugh’s petition to get the law changed here

There are fantastic Channel 4 programmes on fish airing all this week, with Hugh taking on the state of the global fishing industry tonight at 9pm…

The perfect ‘99’

2011-01-04T20:20:00.003Z

I recently chanced upon a fantastic ice cream kiosk in West Bay, Dorset, manned by twinkly husband and wife team, Margaret and John. They’ve been selling ice cream in this very spot for the past 42 years, whatever the weather. (I think the Bassett Hound wants an ice cream).

Don’t Margaret and John look nice? I like the way John lets his lady get on with chatting with all the punters, looking wise in the background, smirking behind his hand:

I didn’t really need an ice cream that day – I’d been festively overdoing it for at least two weeks, grabbing at hunks of cake, cheese and fistfuls of chocolate as though they were the only three food groups left on the planet. But I couldn’t resist a peek at the ice creams, despite being three shades away from developing gout, to have a browse and a chat with Margaret.

“We’ve been selling ice cream here for 42 years,” she said in a tiny birdlike voice. “We were with Wall’s for years, but when they got taken over by Unilever, they stopped sending their reps round, so we now get our ice cream from a small family business who make it in the New Forest instead.” Hurrah for them, I say!

Margaret tempted me with a free sample, cranking up the ancient looking and noisy ice cream machine in the corner, filling the cornet up with vanilla swirls. She then turned the whole ice cream upside down to prove to me that this wasn’t just any old 99-style frozen dessert – this was good quality stuff that held its own, not collapsing in a pappy mess. And it tasted absolutely delicious – really creamy, solid but soft, proper vanilla. Bloody flippin’ gorgeous. You wouldn’t find any gelatine, potato starch or engine oil thickening up this here ‘99 – this was the total shiz:

I totally fell in love with this kiosk – it felt like a portal to happy bygone seaside days of the 1950s (just in my head, mind – I wasn’t alive then!). But of course, when I asked Margaret and John whether they’d be happy with me taking their photographs, she laughed: “What are you going to do with them, put them up on the internet?” Hah!

Here are a few more pics…

Signage from the outside:

Margaret shows me her flavours – somehow I think it’s a good plan to stick to plain ole vanilla:

Margaret does the biz; John wishes us a ‘happy new year’ :

Two tremendously elated punters, my friends A and P:

Seriously, what better thing to do on a blustery and freezing cold day in January than to stroll down the beachside in West Bay and buy a ‘99 and a cup of tea from Margaret and John?

New Forest Ice Cream

Festive greetings!

2010-12-24T16:58:00.001Z

I couldn’t resist sharing this image with you from the old Fail Dogs website:

Are the dogs about to share an iced Pedigree Chum? I think my favourite one is the podgy golden laborador looking puzzled, his fat head jammed into his green cornet hat. Durrrrr.

Anyway, hope this brings a smile to your face. Have a great Christmas and New Year!

Thai green curry with smoked tofu and aubergine

2010-12-19T17:23:00.002Z

I am in the rather disconcerting position of having completely lost my sense of taste and all cravings for food after a nasty bout of winter flu. It’s the strangest sensation ever – I don’t feel hungry or want anything that tastes exciting. My palate is currently as developed as a wet piece of cardboard, and for the past week I have been living on toast and chocolate. I’m desperate for something that will rev up my palate and get it back on track. Can’t think what on earth that will be. I’m all off kilter, it’s so very weird.

Anyway, this post is to give you the recipe of the last thing I really enjoyed eating before I got this darned flu. Even though I can’t stomach anything like this at the moment, it’s the best Thai green curry paste recipe I’ve ever tasted, made by my hubby. He rather unorthodoxly doesn’t use sugar (which is the mainstay of Thai cuisine) which makes it all the better for me, as otherwise I find Thai curries a bit on the oversweet side. This paste can be used with chicken, beef, pork, tofu, vegetables – whatever you like. It’s the perfect fodder for winter – aromatic, fiery, zesty and full of herby flavours that dance on the tongue. (Except that at the moment I can’t taste ruddy anything!!!)

Serves 4 (with rice)

You will need:

For the paste:
2 generous thumb-sized pieces fresh peeled galangal root (or use fresh ginger)
3 long stems of fresh lemongrass, outer husks discarded
1 white onion
7 fresh lime leaves, central leaf veins removed
5 cloves garlic
4 – 10 birdseye chillies (up to you how hot you make it)
1/2 tsp shrimp paste
About half a 400ml tin of full fat coconut milk
handful of fresh coriander root (or just a few stems)
1 tsp ground coriander
lots of ground black pepper

For the rest:
1 big aubergine, chopped into 2cm pieces
1 x 225g block smoked tofu (we love Clear Spot organic smoked tofu)
1 handful dried small shrimp
Remainder of tin of coconut milk (used for the paste)
juice of 1 fresh lime
Fish sauce, to taste
Chopped coriander and Thai holy basil

When you open your tin of full fat coconut milk, scoop out a large blob of the thick white coconut gloop that is concentrated around the top of the tin and set aside. Chop all your paste ingredients roughly and blitz it all together in a food processor. If you find it’s too dry, just increase the amount of coconut milk. You’ll probably need to leave the food processor on for about 5 minutes so that you get a roughly blended paste.

Preheat a wok over a medium flame, then add the coconut gloop you reserved earlier, fry it until it gets hot and transparent, then add your paste – fry it, stirring so that it doesn’t catch, for about 10 minutes. Add the aubergines, dried shrimps and the rest of the coconut milk and stir well; then add the wok lid. Cook until the aubergines are tender – will take about 30 minutes. Keep an eye on everything and give it a stir from time to time. Then add the tofu, cut into cubes, cook for a further 5 minutes, then add the herbs before turning the heat off. Season with fresh lime juice and fish sauce, to taste. Serve with basmati rice.

Fergus Henderson’s Rice Pudding

2010-12-16T17:22:00.001Z

I love the writings of chef Fergus Henderson. I’m not really one for his experimentations with offal – even he can’t convince me that pigs eyes and cows knees are a lovely thing to eat, sorry – but my goodness can this fellow cook a sterling pud and write about it wittily. I chanced across his excellent book ‘Beyond Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking Part II’ at a second hand market, and found the section on puddings captivating. Its prose made me chuckle, and I was tickled that Fergus described his puddings in mock lofty tones as ‘steadying’ and ‘gastronomically as exciting as Prince Albert’. Ha ha! This man doesn’t do low fat – we’re talking serious usage of butter and cream, so look away now if you can’t handle it…

Anyway, this is his rice pudding. The book’s version is a little more complex as he completes his with an additional custard and raisins soaked in booze, but if you need just the rice pudding part to immediately improve a glum, wintry afternoon, this will be just the thing you need. It’s rich, warm, vanilla tones will wrap you in a big generous hug. Just the thing for a Sunday afternoon when the rain is pissing down and you have no need to go outside. Bliss.

Please don’t be tempted to try low fat replacements for any of the ingredients – your rice pudding will be much worse off for it.

Rice pudding, adapted from the recipe by Fergus Henderson and Justin Piers Gellatly

Serves 6

You will need:

125g unsalted butter (I use salted, it works fine)
150g caster sugar
200g pudding rice
1.5 litres full-fat milk
300ml double cream
1 vanilla pod
a pinch of salt (don’t bother with this if you use salted butter)

Place the butter and sugar in a large, heavy-based casserole and melt over a medium heat, stirring occasionally. Bring to the boil and let it bubble, without stirring, until it turns into a golden brown caramel. Add the rice and stir to combine it with the caramel, then add the milk and the cream. Once the liquid hits the caramel, the caramel will become hard and stringy. Don’t worry; as the liquid heats up, the caramel will melt again into it and become smooth again. Slit the vanilla pod open lengthways, scrape out the seeds and add the seeds and pod to the rice, together with the pinch of salt (if using). Bring to the boil and place in an oven preheated to 160C/Gas Mark 3. Bake for 1.5 – 2 hours, until golden brown on top and thick and creamy.

Dreamy! If you need proof of Fergus’s other excellent puddings, try out this recipe for his mighty fruit crumble cake (where you can use rhubarb, damsons, apples etc).

Retro Britain: Harry Tuffins supermarket

2010-12-14T23:09:00.002Z

I love this country, especially when I feel as though I am being sucked into a timewarp, being the retro enthusiast that I am. On my recent travels, I was constantly reminded how the 1970’s – or the 1950’s for that matter – are all around us in certain parts of this splendid isle.

Observe this independent supermarket in Shropshire (pictured above: its welcoming lobby area) called ‘Harry Tuffins’. It stocks everything from bags of peat, rubber boots and tubs of processed meat – and even has an aisle called ‘Fancy Goods’. I’m not joking!

Pray, where are the chipped potatoes? Oh, look:

All three freezers-full. Or ‘deep freezes’ as they used to say in days of yore…I like the special effort the staff have made with these laminated signs, to enable folk to find their frozen chips in every shape, size and hue.

There is a heavy grey atmosphere of pre-Iron Curtain Soviet shopping - functional and frill-free goods storage:

Tissues, anyone? There is a whole aisle dedicated to them:

I’m less in love with the retro meat presentation – how terrifying:

Aha! Pants from the Victorian Era!

Aside from its functional and sometimes disturbing array of produce, the supermarket name ‘Harry Tuffins’ makes me think of some kind of Robin Hood character prancing around in a forest, drinking mead out of a bell jar - not exactly evocative of a large food and ‘fancy goods’ retailer with a whole aisle dedicated to ‘tissues’. However, my teasing aside, it’s inspiring to learn that Harry Tuffin – an actual real person, not a marketing slogan - actually started up the business with his wife Doris in 1955, and it remains a strong independent mini chain of supermarkets to this day, run by Harry’s daughter, son-in-law and their children. You’ll find the shops in Shropshire and Wales, should you ever need some corned beef, gardening shears or some enormous underwear…

Barrafina, Soho

2010-11-27T11:43:00.002Z

What else can be said about Barrafina except for this: make haste and go there – it serves probably the best tapas I have ever eaten, even better than in Spain itself. You can’t book, but don’t fear the queues – just order a sherry and some nibbles while you wait, and the charming Spanish staff will sit you down at the marble countertop bar for the feast of your life…

Please note – the below wasn’t consumed in one sitting… I would have had to have been winched out of the restaurant, carried out Tudor-style in some kind of sedan chair!

Pan con tomate: garlicky, fresh, crispy and soft, drizzled generously with grassy olive oil – sensational:

Pimientos de Padron: one in every 20 is said to be hotter than Hades, but these little fellows were lovely and mellow:

Cured meats: melt-in-the-mouth:

Sardines: I don’t normally like sardines in this country because they’re never fresh enough, but there was no problem here:

Chipirones (baby fried squid): crsipy and very moreish, a bit like squid popcorn:

Chorizo with potatoes: smoky intense and delicious sausage offset beautifully by the creamy flavour of the potatoes:

Coca with spinach, raisins and pine nuts: beautifully savoury with flavours of nutmeg and bechamel sauce underneath the spinach – much more impressive than you’d imagine:

Ham and cheese croquettes: phwoarrrrrr! Crisp on the outside, creamy on the inside – nutmeg and salty nuggets of bacon. Yum!

Clams (left) and fried potatoes with aioli and salsa brava: gorgeous garlicky plump clams, and the chips were a revalation because they’d been sprinkled with crushed garlic, fresh thyme and rock salt.

Santiago (almond) tart: flaky buttery pastry, gorgeous buttery almond top. Not really suitable for sharing.

Pedro Ximinez Hidalgo sherry: like drinking liquid Christmas pudding – intense!

Barrafina
54 Frith Street
Soho, London
W1D 4SL

Joanna’s, Crystal Palace

2010-11-21T17:58:00.001Z

Had a mediochre day blighted by tedium and annoyances? Feeling lacklustre and needing gastronomic comfort and a back rub? Well, Joanna’s in Crystal Palace doesn’t do back rubs, but their food is the next best thing. It’s the kind of place that every neighbourhood should have, serving delicious and well-executed food that is reasonably priced, and cleverly manages to feel posh and luxurious without being intimidating. And they make the best posh fish and chips I have eaten anywhere.

The restaurant, distinctive from the outside by its smart navy awnings is just swanky enough for you to feel special when you are eating there, but has a lovely snug laid back atmosphere. The waitors and waitresses are all super friendly without being overbearing, the bar staff make a mean cocktail, there is a great wine list and you can imagine that no matter how shite a day you’d just had, popping in to Joanna’s would somehow make everything seem better. Who cares that your boss might be a dick or that your job sucks when you can come to Joanna’s? Hmm?

The food is a mixture of British, European and Asian dishes – hearty portions presented beautifully. The decor is all dark woods, brass lamp fittings and mirrors. There is even a private booth nicknamed the ‘train carriage’ tucked away at the back which you can book out and have a tiny private party in. I did just that, last year, and it was brilliant. We felt so naughty!

Last night hubby and I popped there for a mid-week treat after both having experienced incredibly average days and needed cheering up. We thought we’d try the fixed menu as it was amazingly good value - £16.75 for three courses. We’d have been fools not to. At no point did we ever get the impression that we were eating from a pared-down bargain menu…just check out this amazing tucker…

Starter of mushroom soup – so much intense wild mushroom flavour, with a crisp garlic crostini:

Starter of chargrilled squid with chilli and rocket: great flavours, and the squid tasted as though fresh off a Greek beach barbecue:

The poshest fish ‘n chips: beer-battered goujons of haddock with homemade tartar sauce and minted pea puree – simply stunning:

Look at those bodacious chips – ooh me hearties:

Shepherd’s pie made with a combo of beef and lamb, with magnificent gravy – what a perfect slab of comfort (even though I dislike lamb, I couldn’t help but admire this creation):

A very decent Stilton and quince jelly:

A heartstoppingly-good chocolate brownie and vanilla ice cream sundae – there was a whole untouched wodge of brownie in here sandwiched in between molten vanilla ice cream on the bottom, and a ball of vanilla with choc sauce on the top. I actually couldn’t stop shovelling this into my mouth, even though I was totally full. Ah…greed…

For some reason, I always have the sensation that Joanna’s feels very much like a New York brasserie. I have a very limited knowledge of the New York dining scene, only having visited the city once in my life, but I have the idiotic fantasy that I will walk into Joanna’s one evening and see someone like Ted Danson propping up the bar, soaking up the swing jazz music, nursing a Whisky Sour. Whatever – the place is very definitely British, but I love the idea of it being like a portal that whizzes you directly to a neighbourhood on the Lower East Side! Great escapism.

I can’t believe we don’t go to Joanna’s more often – it’s just around the corner from our gaffe, and the chef cooks like a dream. Seems crazy – maybe we subconsciously always save this place ‘for best’. The meal we had above, including two glasses of wine and two cocktails was £30 per head. This menu is available from Mondays to Thursdays. Get your gourmet-loving asses down there!

Got a neighbourhood gem where you live? I want to hear about it…

Joanna’s
56 Westow Hill
Crystal Palace
London SE19 1RX

Wahaca, Soho

2010-11-16T23:01:00.003Z

Tomasina Miers (victorious maiden chef-ess of Masterchef several years hence) has several very successful outposts of her Mexican streetfood restaurant under her belt, spanning Canary Wharf, Covent Garden, Westfield and now Soho. I had been a devotee of the first branch when it opened in the restaurant wasteland that is Covent Garden a few years back and was excited by her zingy, fresh Mexican food that actually tasted Mexican, as opposed to flabby Euro-Tex Mex. But then I became super-irked when the restaurant became so popular that you had to actually QUEUE to leave your mobile phone number so that the maitre’d could call you on the off chance that a table became available. SO infuriating. Many, many harrumphing snorts of indignation and aborted trips to Wahaca. For the past two years or so, I had been in a ‘can’t be arsed’ huff with the place. I couldn’t take the rejection anymore!

But then quite by accident I stumbled upon the newest Soho branch a couple of nights ago, when out with my husband and mother-in-law. We approached the place with a fair bit of trepidation, because I really, really couldn’t be arsed with a long queue again – when I don’t eat I become absolutely vile-tempered and irrational like a child. But we walked in and a very friendly chap seated us straight away. I was almost in shock. The acid bright walls and Mexican kitsch gladdened our souls on a gloomy, rainy November evening, and as soon as an array of chilli sauces and tortilla chips was plonked down in front of me, I felt all was right with the world. And the food spoke for itself – all crisp, zingy and fresh flavours. Flavourful, aromatic Mexican grub served with flair and unpretentiousness. Lots of lovely smoky chipotle in everything. Great value, too.

Fill your boots – a selection from the streetfood menu:

Seasonal vegetable tacos:

Chicken taquitos:

Pork pilbil taco:

Super-crunchy corn tortillas and guac:

Black bean tostadas:

Chicken guajillo:

The restaurant has some great design touches – I coveted the hexagonal turquoise mosaic tiles in the toilets, the massive Jesus/Mary printed metal chain curtains hanging up in the stairwells (lush!) and the general riot of clashing bright colours on the walls. Lovely chunky recycled glassware, too. Instead of books of matches, they give away match books of chilli seeds. Brilliant. So…my advice is get there quick, before the restaurant becomes too popular again – give it a month or so and the queues will be out the door and you’ll have to get your elbows out!

Wahaca Soho
80 Wardour Street
Soho
London W1F OTF

Feast your eyes 2

2010-11-06T13:29:00.002Z

So many photos of gluttonous moments, so little time to write about them all properly - so feast your eyes on this lot:

The best 'pan con tomate' I have ever eaten, at London's Barrafina tapas restaurant in Soho. Had anyone attempted to share this with me, I might have stabbed them with a fork:

Mini tomatoes grown in my windowbox - I liked how they were all misshapen:

Apple and damson crumble with almond topping:

Sourdough bread live yeast starter - bejesus, it's alive:

The offspring of the sourdough starter – a craggy loaf made with spelt flour:

The best rice pudding I have ever eaten – recipe from St John’s:

Go away, I’m busy eating my rice pudding, and no, I’m not sharing…

Stroud farmer’s market veg, fruit and bread:

Stroud farmer’s market alternative to Starbuck’s – much better!

Superb ploughman’s and ale at The Woolpack pub, Slad, Gloucestershire – the pub where poet Laurie Lee used to drink:

Making fresh pasta sheets, using a chair as a drying rack:

Making porcini and mascarpone ravioli from Theo Randall’s book ‘Pasta’:

The finished dish – smoky, woody porcini mushrooms and mascarpone make a robust and deliciously punchy filling:

Till next time…

Voluptuous Victoria sponge

2010-11-03T18:54:00.002Z

For months I had wanted to make a really big, luxurious cake - one that, if I was a lady who lunched, I would have positioned on an elegant cake stand when my friends visited for afternoon cocktails. Sadly my life is not an endless succession of tea parties, and the moments I have to enjoy a proper sit-down cake-fest are limited and few. Making a proper Victoria sponge was something I had saved up as a 'treat for the future’, when I had a few days off. Which would mean that I enjoyed every single crumb.

I used Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s recipe, bouffed up with extra vanilla. This produced a generous, sexy cake, its two ample vanilla scented sponges voluptuously sandwiched together with a soft pillow of whipped cream and tangy raspberry jam. Oh yes. This was a cake that whispered ‘come hither’ from across the room. It tasted like the very best of British, but with its starchy tea room undertones flung usunder in a raunchy celebration of gorgeous gluttony, cream, vanilla and tart raspberry.

Would you just look at it, flaunting itself:

Can you hear it calling you?

Phwoar…you naughty thing:

Champing at the bit to make this? I’m actually drooling while writing…

Adapted from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s recipe, found in the River Cottage Family Cookbook

To make a 20cm cake

You will need:

4 free range organic eggs
Organic butter (I always use salted – it’s just my preference)
Fairtrade caster sugar
Self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
2 tsp natural vanilla extract
A little milk, if needed
Good jam (raspberry) – about 4 tablespoons
200ml (small pot) organic whipping cream, whipped until soft peaks form, not too stiff

Set the oven to 180C. Line your 2 cake tins with baking parchment. Stand your eggs on the scales and weigh them – make a note of the total weight. Weigh out the same amount of butter, then using a handheld mixer or the back of a wooden spoon, beat it until very soft. Weigh out the same amount of sugar, and add to the butter a third at a time, blending together until the mixture becomes fluffy.

Weigh out the flour, add a pinch of salt, and set aside. Break one of the eggs into the butter mixture and beat quite hard until completely blended in. Add the other eggs in the same way, one at a time. Sift in a tablespoon of the flour with the last egg – this will help stop the mixture from curdling. Add the vanilla extract. Set a sieve over the mixing bowl and tip the flour into it – shake it all gently into the bowl. Using a tablespoon, fold the flour into the mixture, taking care not to knock out all the air.

Test the consistency of the mixture – if it sticks to the back of a spoon, add a tablespoon or two of milk to ease up the mixture a little. Spoon the mixture equally into the two prepared tins, then smooth the tops with a knife. Bake in the preheated oven for 25 – 30 minutes – until a skewer comes out clean. When you take each tin out of the oven, hold it 30cm above a hard surface and drop it straight down – this will release the air bubbles in the cake, and you’ll see that on the surface some of the bubbles on the surface will have broken. Essential to stop your cake sinking in the middle.

Leave the cakes to cool then loosen and turn out onto a rack. When completely cool, turn one of the cakes upside down so that the flat surface is uppermost and place it on a serving plate. Spread the jam over it, add the whipped cream on top, then gently sit the other cake on top. Sprinkle a little caster sugar or icing sugar over the top.

You won’t be able to eat just the one slice…I think I had three in a row, then more for dinner…

Heart be still!

Ghoulish Halloween food

2010-11-01T21:52:00.001Z

Halloween is a great time to eat some really wacky food. At my friend P’s fancy dress party at the weekend, the food did a bit of dressing up too.

R made a delicious pair of carrot cakes and decorated them with an assortment of paper parasols, a vintage toy car, a Spanish flamenco doll and various plastic figures (the cake is hiding underneath, spread with a delicious brown sugar and orange frosting):

Her second sliced cake was adorned with pictures of Anne Widdecombe, plus Withnail and I. And why not? Remember the scene in the film where Withnail and I demand ‘the finest wines and cakes known to humanity’?

J and M made this absolutely sensational loaf of beetle bread, where black olives nestling in the dough pretended to be cockroaches. Insects never tasted so delicious!

My contribution to the party food – the ever-tasteful retro cheese and pineapple hedgehog (plus a plate of ‘dead man fingers’ sausages and a bowl of ketchup blood, which sadly I was too drunk to photograph):

The local supermarket had just one pumpkin left, so I had to improvise with a honeydew melon for the lantern on the right:

I almost prefer the honeydew melon lantern – happy smiling ghoul!

Guests really went to town on their outfits, too. R dressed as a Victorian wolf-woman, P was a ghoulish pagan dandy, S was a pale-skinned vampire, I met a young Ziggy Stardust, my husband was a serial murderer complete in blood-soaked body bag, and I dressed as a 1980’s aerobics instructor knifed to death in the New York subway. A number of people wore very disturbing masks. And actor Willem Dafoe made a surprise appearance, in the form of an extraordinary art installation. All as it should be! I have now almost got the fake blood stains out of my skin and hair…thanks P for an unforgettable night!

Damsons and a crumble cake

2010-10-25T20:58:00.002+01:00

I had never eaten a damson in my life before this year. The past month or so, I’ve made up for lost time – it’s literally been ‘damsons ahoy’ since we picked a whole bunch of these inky blue-skinned plums on our recent holiday in the Cotswolds. If ‘purple’ had a flavour, cooked damsons would be it. When raw, they taste like a regular sweet plum, but when cooked, they’re much more intense – deep and sweet, with a touch of sourness and a hint of alcoholic cough mixture hidden in the mix…

Since neither my husband or I ever remember to eat jam (it’s not that we don’t like it, we just can’t be bothered, and I still have a jar of marmalade on the go from 2 years ago) we thought we’d make a whole stash of damson compote adding a dash of water and a scant scattering of sugar to the plums, them simmering them for 10 minutes. Damsons are small plums with fiddly stones, no bigger than a large fat grape, and some people say not to bother removing the stones when you cook with them, but the idea of spitting out stones as you chomp through a crumble seems mental, so we thought we’d press the cooked plums through a sieve:

What you end up with is a perfect puree that is sensational stirred through thick Greek yoghurt to make a fool, or dolloped into a crumble mixture. My mate C said she’d put it on her porridge. Check the colour – it’s so rich and vivid! Definitely don’t wear your best pastel slacks or shirt when making or eating this.

I have a whole batch of compote frozen in ziploc freezer bags, and I can feel a whole bunch of crumbles and pies coming on…

One afternoon, I thought I’d make the St John’s Rhubarb Crumble Cake, but use damsons instead. It was a very relaxing process, and the ensuing cake made a lot of people smile. I mean, who wouldn’t smile at a cake with a crunchy crumble topping and a hidden fruit centre? Pure brilliant-ness.

St John’s Crumble Cake, adapted with damsons:

Serve six to eight

You will need

Three handfuls of damsons
50g caster sugar
Grated zest of 1 orange

Cake mix:
125g organic salted butter
125g caster sugar
3 large organic eggs, lightly beaten
160g self-raising organic flour, sifted
50ml full-fat milk

Crumble mix:

125g plain flour
95g organic salted butter, cut into small cubes
60g Demerara sugar
30g ground almonds
30g flaked almonds

First stone the damsons. It’s fiddly but essential. Mix them with the sugars and orange zest and set aside in a bowl for 30 minutes.

For the cake mix, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Gradually add the beaten eggs, bit by bit to prevent curdling. Then fold in the sifted flour and last of all mix in the milk. Put to one side.

For the crumble mix, put the flour and butter into a food processor, blitz until everything resembles large breadcrumbs, then briefly mix in the ground almonds, sugar and flaked almonds.

Butter a deep 20cm springform cake tin and line the base and sides with baking parchment. Spread the cake mix evenly over the base of the tin, then place the damsons on top:

Sprinkle the crumble mix over the damsons. Place in an oven preheated to 180C and bake for about 1 1/2 hours, covering the top loosely with foil if it gets too dark. The cake is ready when a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Note: don’t mistake the cooked gooey Damsons for uncooked cake mixture – I nearly overdid this cake because I thought it hadn’t baked all the way through.

Serve warm, with custard or extra thick Jersey cream.

I ate three slices of this cake in quick succession. Easy for a greedy mare!

The Cheese Box, Whitstable

2010-10-19T23:30:00.003+01:00

A few years ago, the cheese-starved inhabitants of Crystal Palace, South London, only had a dismal branch of Morrisons in which to buy their fromages. It was a sorry state of affairs – anaemic cheddar and Edam, and not a lot else besides, sold under fluorescent strip lights. But then, lo! Rescue came in the form of a lady called Dawn and her beautiful vintage Citroen van converted into a cheese-selling wagon called The Cheese Box. Every weekend, Sarf Londoners would queue up to buy quirky independent brands of British cheeses from Dawn in the car park of Crystal Palace’s vintage Collector’s Market. I became seriously addicted to wonderful sheep and goat’s milk cheeses that made the roof of my mouth sing.

But then, sadly, Dawn and her small van disappeared off the face of the earth. Crystal Palace cheese lovers were left bereft, mourning the loss of interesting varieties such as Sussex Slipcote, Rachel Goat and Keen’s Extra Mature Cheddar. I heard on the grapevine that Dawn had escaped London and moved to the seaside. But nobody knew exactly where.

Then last weekend I found the reincarnation of the old van in Whitstable, Kent. Hurrah! I was delighted to find The Cheese Box had transformed itself into a very charming traditional cheesemongers, co-run by Dawn and the very friendly Tom. It is such a lovely shop – cheeses are temptingly displayed within throwing distance of Kentish ciders and Whitstable-produced pickles, rustic breads nestle in old wooden crates and blues music plays on the stereogram. You can pull up a chair and have a plate of cheeses and a glass of wine. It’s hard to tear oneself away.

Tom has been a cheesemonger for 15 years, grew up in Whitstable and knows just about everything there is to know about cheese. He’s also an artist when he’s not mongering cheeses. He’s very happy to let you taste everything, and knows a lot about the area and its history, should you a have time to linger and have a natter. Here he is below:

The wonderful range of stonking British cheeses:

Fantastic decor – eclectic and very personal:

If you happen to be spending a day by the sea in Whitstable, you could do much worse than pop in to see Dawn and Tom, try a few cheeses that have big personalities and perhaps pick up some interesting ciders. Who would have known that we Brits could make such good fromage, eh? Dawn and Tom have sussed out some of the best independent producers in the Kentish area and beyond. Beats buying shrink-wrapped soapy slabs of mild cheddar in the supermarket any day. Oh – and they deliver, which means that there is possible salvation for the inhabitants of Crystal Palace…because even though we now have a Sainsbury's, it's not quite the same thing, is it?

The Cheese Box
60 Harbour Street
Whitstable
Kent CT5 1AG

Tom Swift, cheesemonger and artist

Wild Man: foraging with Fergus Drennan

2010-10-18T14:00:00.000+01:00

When the end of civilisation is nigh and we are all scrambling over each other to get the last tin of beans in Sainsbury’s, forced to scavenge rubbish out of bins and inevitably turning into crazed zombies, the one man who will outlive anyone (at least in Kent) will be Fergus Drennan, wild food forager extraordinaire. As well as woodlands and seashores, he knows how to find nutrition in the form of edible plants and fungi from areas of waste ground, carparks and motorway verges. If you hang out with him long enough, you will never go hungry.

We had booked a day’s course with Fergus to learn how to identify and pick wild foods, having had our appetites whetted by sloe picking earlier this year. What we didn’t anticipate was an adrenaline-soaked adventure lasting the whole day and most of the night. At 9am sharp, Fergus greeted us wearing a wide brimmed hat and carrying a wooden box of eclectic and gnarly looking mushrooms under his arm. He drove us at breakneck speed to a nearby woodland and proceeded to talk very fast and excitedly about all the Latin names and characteristics of the fungi we were finding, barely pausing for breath. Every few feet or so, we would come across a new species of mushroom and Fergus would run around waving his arms, hollering “Come and see this one, it’s even better than the last!” We harvested amazing bulbous cep and boletus mushrooms with their reddish brown tops, delicate chanterelles and something resembling a large brain called Hen of the Woods, growing at the foot of an oak tree:

N with his prize Cep – what a corker!

Hedgehog fungus (see the spines):

We examined many poisonous fungi, with Fergus telling us to look out for cobwebby threads, milky sap and colour changes when the mushroom flesh is cut into. When we came across the poisonous yet beautiful Fly Agaric toadstool (below), he recounted the time he rubbed some Fly Agaric skin onto the back of his head where it was absorbed by the skin, causing him to collapse immediately and fall down onto his front, with his foraging knife underneath him. “I still don’t know whether I passed out for several hours or a whole day,” he mused. “If the knife had stuck into me, I would have probably died. But if you leach the mushrooms in liquid for a day or so, you can make a great risotto with them.” Hmm, might give that a miss…

Fly Agaric:

Fergus then produced a flask and poured us thimbles of his own roasted substitute coffee, made from a mixture of roasted goose grass seeds, acorns and some other seeds whose names I can’t recall. It actually tasted remarkably coffee-like, and it turns out that goose grass is in the coffee plant family – fact! As we emerged from the woodland, I noticed some unopened cans of Fosters lying at the roadside – my key contribution so far to the foraging bounty. Fergus seemed very excited, saying he might whip up a beer batter with our dinner later. I wondered if we had just plucked items from the scene of a car accident, as there was lots of broken glass and a couple of hub cabs lying next to the cans…but waste not, want not, right?

Then to a grassy seashore verge, where we picked bags of Sea Purslane (salty leaves and seeds, tasting a bit like Samphire) Sea Beet (like salty spinach), Alexanders (the leaves and roots taste like a cross between Thai lime leaves and chervil) and mallow leaves (mild and good for salad).

Sea Purslane:

Common Mallow:

Alexanders:

Sea beet:

Fergus then led us down a steep grassy slope and instructed us to tear off branches of sea buckthorn, whose bright orange berries would make a great pudding later on. It felt a bit wrong pulling actual branches off the trees, but Fergus said he’d been harvesting from the same ones for over seven years and that everything grew back extremely quickly.

Sea buckthorn:

We then found a tiny apple tree growing miniature fruits – Fergus said that it had most probably grown from an apple pip deposited in a bird dropping. It looked like a tree you might find in Alice in Wonderland – just a bit higher than waist height:

Then Fergus instructed us to run down to the seashore and harvest seaweed off rocks – all in a sustainable manner, of course, snipping off just enough with scissors so that the roots and stems remained in order to re-grow.

Sea laver (the black stuff):

It suddenly dawned on Fergus that we were running very late for lunch at his house, as it was now 3pm. I was on the verge of fainting from hunger, and considered the possibility of going and foraging a Mars bar from a nearby local pub, but seeing as we were going to enjoy feasting on the ingredients we had just bagged, didn’t quite have the motivation. A Mars bar might have lowered the tone a bit….but to be honest, I would have eaten my own arm at this stage. “I’m going to freak out,” I whined to my husband, who shot me a look as if to say, “Don’t ruin my birthday treat, you old bag...” I decided to man up and shut up…and before too long we were enjoying an eye-opening lunch at Fergus’s house, all made with the foraged ingredients…

Rosehip and beetroot soup with yoghurt:

Wild mushroom quiche made with acorn flour pastry, potato mash with chopped Alexander leaves, and braised Alexander stems:

Mixed leaf salad with raw wild mushrooms, purple mallow flowers and Feta cheese:

Vanilla pannacotta made with seaweed carageenan and candied bramble stem (black star shaped garnish):

Sea buckthorn sorbet (amazing – sweet, aromatic and almost alcoholic tasting):

I asked Fergus how he got into foraging. He said he started as a child, rooting out choice leaves and dandelions for his pet tortoise. “Then when I was at university,” he said, “I was so poor in my final year that I had to live in a tent, eating the remains of stew that the refectory was throwing out. I got heavily into foraging then to survive.” Fergus’s house was filled to the rafters with jars of intriguing looking pickles and preserves, and he owned three freezers to store big batches of produce. He produced a large jar of acorn flour, which was the last of his 18 kilo batch. He had to meticulously pick the acorns, soak them in a river for weeks to leach the tannins out, roast them, remove the husks and grind each kernel. He had no plans to make any to sell commercially, surprise surprise. I asked him what he thought of supermarkets. “They have great toilets,” he laughed. “Plus good car parks, where I can forage lots of plants.” Good answer, I thought.

Full to the eyeballs after our amazing lunch, with a myriad of new flavours dancing on our tongues, Fergus then drove us to some scrubland next to a busy main road, where we harvested rosehips to perfume vodka. “Great if you leave them steeping for six months, then filter the rosehips out, then add dog rose petals for a maximum of 2 days, then leave it for as long as you can bear,” said Fergus. The result would like “nothing you’ve ever tasted before,” he assured us.

Rosehips for the vodka infusion – use the squashy ones for the best flavour:

We also found wild fennel growing at the side of a council estate, which bore aromatic seeds:

Darkness fell, and Fergus handed out the head torches. We arrived at a pitch black field, and he scampered over to some wild damson bushes growing at the side of a verge. I have never picked fruit by torchlight – it was exhilarating and made us feel like a naughty children. (It wasn’t trespassing as such – Fergus always asks permission from all landowners before he picks plants on their land). We stumbled back to the car with two baskets of dusky blue plums, for that evening’s pudding.

Night time damson harvest:

And then back to the beach for dinner. Despite the fact that there was a gale blowing, it was absolutely freezing and that it was intermittently pelting with rain, Fergus insisted that eating a three course meal down on the sand at high tide was the best plan. (The other option was to have dinner in a more sheltered wood, but he admitted that the area was so secret that he had trouble remembering how to find it in the dark). So we stumbled behind him in the gale, head torches blinking, carrying wood, pans, crockery and everything we had foraged that day. Despite the freezing temperatures and the fact that I couldn’t feel my hands or legs most of the time, it was one of the most memorable meals I have ever eaten. Fergus allocated us all various tasks like an army sergeant, then proceeded to make a trio of fires, grinning like a maniac. He put a wok filled to the brim with vegetable oil over the intense flames, and deep fried four different types of seaweed, and each time he put the wet fronds in the smoking oil, a mini explosion of flames would rise up from the wok. I thought he’d blown himself up at one point…

Fergus gets the oil nice and hot:

Ka-boom! Fergus adds the wet seaweed to the boiling oil:

Fergus is still alive:

Main course was sea bass fried with laver seaweed, fried sea beets with sesame oil, plus fried mixed wild mushrooms. De-licious!

Pudding was a less successful damson and apple crumble. Fergus forgot the milk for the custard, and thought it would be a great idea to replace the liquid with Fosters lager. Then he added cherry vodka to make it pink. Inedible is an understatement – most of this ended up in the sea!

I will never forget that evening – there was a moment when I was at the sea’s edge fetching water in a pan from the churning waves and I thought I was going to get swept out to sea when my wellington boot got stuck between two rocks and a huge wave smacked into my legs. As I looked back to the group, I saw the orange embers of our three fires, Fergus gesticulating and waving his arms, and six blinking head torches, with people sat on rocks chopping up apples, stoning damsons and stirring mushrooms in their pan (in the rain). It was surreal, energising and completely mad. I loved every minute!

Cooking dinner in a gale, beach-style:

Our wild foraging man drove us all back to Canterbury, and I snoozed all the way home, dizzy on cherry vodka. Fergus, you’re a crazy dude and we salute you – thanks for a captivating experience!

- Wild Man Wild Food – Fergus Drennan’s website

- Fergus cooks roadkill badger and declares owl to taste ‘of urine’

Huevos rancheros and avocado stories

2010-09-20T20:25:00.001+01:00

Ever since I bought an avocado sandwich from a car park kiosk in Costa Rica about seven years ago, I have been obsessed with anything that involves this luscious fruit. There was nothing fancy about the sandwich – it was made with cheap white sliced bread, and contained nothing but ripe sliced avocado, a squirt of ketchup, some mayo and salt. Costa Rican pop blared out from a loudspeaker somewhere. I hoovered the sandwich up and then went straight back for another one. It was possibly one of the most delicious things I had eaten in my life.

These days, I get through about six avos a week, and am always on the hunt for the best source – recently my market stall man has had the nicest ones, as those bought in the supermarket never seem to ripen up properly. As a result of my Costa Rican ‘grail moment’, my tastes at breakfast time have really changed – instead of shoving muesli into my gob such as in days of yore, I now often have avocado instead. On crackers, with chilli sauce and coriander, or a mixture of cumin, garam masala and salt. People look at me a bit strangely at work as I’m eating this at my desk while they tuck into Special K, but I promise you it’s to die for!

Here is an example of my dream breakfast - avocado on sourdough toast topped with olive oil, smoky chipotle chilli sauce and chopped coriander – frickin’ amazing!

I’m also a huge fan of Mexican-style breakfast options, such as huevos rancheros. Here’s a little recipe my husband and I conjured up…it’s not strictly authentic, but tastes out of this world.

Huevos Rancheros

Serves 2

You will need:

2 tsps ground coriander
1 tbsp dried oregano or dried mixed herbs (eg herbes de Provence mix)
1 dried smoked chipotle chilli + half a cup of warm water it was soaking in
1 400ml tin tomatoes
1 chopped red pepper
2 cloves garlic
1 medium onion
3 inch piece of spicy cooking chorizo, chopped into small dice
4 free range organic eggs
Grated mature cheddar (we like the Welsh Collier’s extra mature cheddar)
Chopped fresh coriander

First of all put your dried chipotle chilli in a mug and cover with hot water – let soak for 15 minutes. Then remove it (reserve the soaking liquid) and chop up. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a casserole dish, finely slice your onions and cook for a minute or two on a medium heat. Add the red pepper and diced chorizo, cook for another 2 minutes, then add the chipotle, garlic and dried herbs and cook through for a further minute or so – making sure that you don’t overcook the garlic as this will make everything bitter. Add the tinned tomatoes, tomato puree and the liquid that the chipotle chilli was soaking in. Stir everything a few times.

Let everything simmer away for about 20 minutes, then gently crack the four eggs into the sauce (don’t break them up or stir – you want the tomato mixture to ‘poach’ them) and let them cook through for about 3 to 4 minutes. Dish up and serve sprinkled with freshly chopped coriander and grated mature cheddar. A bit of sliced avocado on the side drizzled with lime juice and smoky chilli sauce makes this an absolute winner. Muy rico, as they say in Mexico…or f*cking ragga, as I am oft to exclaim…

Sloe vodka

2010-09-19T19:35:00.002+01:00

Ladies and gentlemen: there are wondrous berries lurking in our hedgerows right this instant that are FREE and will enable you to make wonderfully flavoured falling-over drinking booze. The above are sloeberries, which can be used to make sloe gin – or, in my case, sloe vodka, because gin makes me really argumentative, tearful and boring.

Sloes grow, I’m told, just about everywhere, from the skankiest urban wasteland to the prettiest country lanes. This is what you should be looking for: hard dark purple berries that are covered with a bluish bloom, attached to twigs that have very long large thorns. They are a bugger to pick – you might want to wear gloves, but to be honest, you can make do without as you’ll only get a few grazes.

Once you’ve picked as many sloes as you can find, it’s a good idea to wash them, remove any leaves and woody bits, then shove them in the freezer for a few days. This will soften the berries up so that when you defrost them, they are easier to crush to release the purple juices and aromas.

Here’s what you’ll need:

225g sloe berries
55g Fairtrade caster sugar
50cl vodka

This will fit into a 75cl vodka bottle, with a bit of vodka left over.

Take your sloe berries out of the freezer and leave to defrost and soften. Then put your berries in a bowl and gently pound them with a rolling pin to squash them slightly. This is my mate D’s trusty time-saving trick. (Many people recommend you prick each berry individually with pin, but this is so time consuming, and you’re aiming to slightly release the juices, so the rolling pin method is very effective). Then place a funnel in the top of a clean empty vodka bottle, and push your squashed sloe berries through into it, pushing them down with a wooden spoon for ease. Then pour the sugar through the funnel, followed by the vodka, all the way to the top of the bottle. Screw the cap on tightly and shake the bottle to distribute all the sugar.

You’ll need to shake the bottle every other day or so for 3 months to ensure everything is moving around properly and the sugar is dissolved. Once the 3 months are up (and if you make this now, you’ll be just in time for drinking this at Christmas) you’ll have to strain the vodka from the berries through muslin to remove any bits, and then you can bottle it up again. The colour of sloe vodka will be a rich, vivid maroon – so pretty, and just luscious to drink chilled.

Great for cheap and original Christmas gifts – how much nicer to give someone a bottle of something homemade and harvested from hedgerows by your own fair hand? It has ‘smug’ written all over it – ha ha!

Frozen sloes:

Defrosting the sloes:

Clockwise, left to right: pushing the crushed sloes through the funnel into the vodka bottle; adding the sugar; the final mixture; the beautiful coloured vodka embarking on its 3-month voyage.

Yalla Yalla

2010-09-17T00:20:00.003+01:00

Flamin’ heck. I’ve been to Yalla Yalla twice in the space of one week – their food is that good. This tiny little cafe just off Brewer Street in Soho serves delicious Beirut-style street food and makes a baba ghannouj dip that I would walk across hot coals for. Well it’s at least worth queuing up 45 minutes to get a table for…

Last week I had my first taste of their heartstoppingly superior aubergine and yoghurt dip – my husband and I nearly fought over every last drop in the bowl. It was intensely smoky, tangy and smooth, topped with pomegranate seeds and chopped mint, accompanied with a bowl of warm homemade wholemeal pitta breads. Sheer heaven. I followed this with a gorgeous chicken shish taouk – tender chunks of chicken marinated in something lovely, served on a bed of buttery vermicelli rice and a thin bread wrap, with a sumac and onion salad.

I had been daydreaming about this meal all week, and then I had the chance to go back, this time with my lovely my friend S who I never see often enough. I thought she would like Yalla Yalla – she loved it. Again, I ordered the baba ghannouj; it was even better than the first time. (So good, in fact, that I ordered a tub to take away). I followed this with a main course of charcoal grilled sea bass with lemony rice – all very good indeed. S ordered falafel – they were crisp, light and rather pretty, with a lovely smoky cumin taste, accompanied with a garlicky mayonnaise dip and chilli sauce:

Here is my sea bass – not one, but two juicy fillets:

S’s chicken shawarma: phwoar!

That perfect baba ghannouj, again:

The service is friendly and efficient, the staff play energetic house music, and the atmosphere is buzzing with happy chatting diners. People queue outside all night. You will eat like a prince and still barely bust a £20 note, with vino. Such a great little find in Soho, it’s really worth being patient to wait for a table. If I worked around the corner, I would probably buy their baba ghannouj every day for my lunch…and I would be the size of a house.

Yalla Yalla
1 Green’s Court
Soho
London W1 0HA

Cook like it’s 1899

2010-09-14T21:04:00.003+01:00

What in this day of uber-connected internet-obsessed fast-paced living, clearly what was required by my friends and I to calm down a little was a weekend living as one would have done in the Victorian era. Forsooth! With nary a network signal or electric plug in sight, we spent two days in a picturesque farmhouse cottage near Ludlow in Shropshire for a dose of hardcore Victorian living on the Acton Scott estate. With chamber pots and horsehair mattresses.

Yes, this is the same cottage where they filmed the TV series ‘Victorian Farm’ on BBC2 – so there was no running water, electricity or flushing toilet in the house whatsoever (although we had a little outhouse with a proper loo and shower at the end of the garden), and all floors were linked by very steep rickety wooden stairs. We hung out, chatted, ate and read to the light of a coal fire and oil lamps. We were permanently covered in a dusting of soot, and grew giddy on fumes from the lamps. We extracted water from a well connected to a hand pump. The hardcore among us insisting on washing in the Victorian manner built a fire in the bathhouse to heat a cauldron of water to fill a coffin-shaped tin bath, which took at least two hours from start to finish, but created a magical sauna-like atmosphere. And most of all, we spent an extraordinary amount of time preparing food – everything took five times as long, from lighting the fire to figuring out how slowly or quickly everything was cooking (using Victorian cooking implements) in the dim lamplight. One morning I cheerfully waited for the kettle to boil for a cup of tea on the range; I waited one-and-a-half hours…

The kitchen and its implements were fascinating – much of the tools were similar to what we use now, such as cutlery and enamelware dishes, but some items were very antique and we had great fun using them. For example, the thimble sized wine glasses that had to be refilled over and over, and the pewter tankards to drink water from which had mysterious glass bottoms. The tool for whipping cream was nothing much more than a coil of wire stuck to a wooden stick, while the copper double boiler was an amazing implement in which to make custard.

The cooking range – Aga, eat your heart out:

Whipping cream with a very effective wire coil:

Drying tea towels by the fire:

Fancy a brew? It might take about 90 minutes…

Victorian washing up implements plus draining racks – everything done by candlelight:

As luck would have it, the three friends we hung out with are all very accomplished chefs, so there was no danger that we would go hungry. Which gave me more time to sit in the corner, dose myself with laudanum and work on my sampler. Hurrah!

Preparation for crumble, in enamelware dishes:

Apple and blackberry (picked from local hedgerows) crumble with Barbados cream (D’s awesome mixture of whipped cream, yoghurt and soft dark brown sugar):

D’s amazing beef stew, with courgettes and runner beans from the outdoor veg patch:

Scrambled eggs and garlicky tomatoes:

My beetroot and cardamom spice cake, brought from home:

M’s braised leeks in local cider:

Victoria plums ready for roasting:

Sausages from Ludlow food festival:

Even though by the end of our two day break we were all slightly sooty with blackened lungs, and a bit crazed from laudanum intake, it was a wonderful way to get away from it all. I never managed to finish my sampler – the lamplight was just too dim. Typically, though, N managed to locate a cupboard where he could charge his iPhone to get the latest footy updates, so it’s not as though we were completely isolated! No matter - we managed to pick enough local sloe berries to fill a Victorian gin palace…so I will be shortly posting something about making lovely booze with the below…

Fernandez and Leluu

2010-09-05T20:14:00.001+01:00

Underground supperclubs are like a little dip into the unknown. Unlike going to a restaurant, where you roughly know how the experience is going to pan out, going to a supperclub requires taking a big leap of faith. You’re essentially paying complete strangers money to eat a meal in their living room, sitting alongside other complete strangers. What could be weird about that?! Well...they could feed you revolting school dinners, bore you with their stamp collection or lock you in the basement. And much other worse things besides.

Thankfully, nothing like this occurred earlier this week when we visited a supperclub called Fernandez and Leluu, run by charismatic couple Uyen and Simon in their artfully decorated Hackney flat. We ate a generous spread of prettily presented and delicious Vietnamese dishes and chattered away to a very nice couple. M did scary sounding things with helicopters and oil rigs in his day job, and H once owned a wedding dress shop which she sold to a crazy woman who immediately burned it down for the insurance money. It's always fascinating meeting new people and hearing their stories – not something that is always easy to do in London.

This is what we ate:

Wide rice noodles with spicy sausage:

Pork terrine and pork spare ribs –ribs flavoured with (I think) star anise, and an interesting Vietnamese-style terrine that contained egg and glass noodles; much lighter than the traditional French version:

Prawn and squid paste on sugar cane – yummy sugar cane juice squirts out when chewed!

Bun Bo Hue (spicy beef noodle soup) – fragrant and light with pieces of tender beef:

Chicken and lemongrass wrapped in vine leaves, with a citrus and fish sauce dip in shot glasses:

Coconut sorbet – absolutely delicious and light, just the right thing to end the meal:

The only slight thing that went wrong, though, was when I drunkenly wobbled out of the door to go home, and only realised the following morning that I had been wearing someone else’s denim jacket. I tried to wear it to work, and several steps out of my front door I realised it just didn't feel right...d’uh!

The rightful owner of the jacket will be reunited with it soon...meanwhile, my cheaper and vastly inferior denim jacket is being posted back by the lovely Uyen, who says that diners have left large quantities of umbrellas and scarves behind in her home. She probably has a special 'lost property' cupboard. Imagine if one day somebody left behind their wooden leg or glass eye - that's not as weird as it sounds, especially since someone lost their prosthetic leg at a music festival my husband N used to work at - it got handed into The Big Chill's Lost Property!

Fernandez and Leluu supperclub

The Great British Waste Menu

2010-08-30T17:19:00.001+01:00

If you care at all about what's on your plate and feel that we waste too much food in this country, I am seriously nagging you to watch 'The Great British Waste Menu' on the BBC iPlayer. It's essential viewing, illustrating the scary fact that one fifth of all food in the UK ends up in the bin because we've become a nation of picky consumers. One fifth!!! And given that we're in the middle of a recession and that millions worldwide are underfed, this makes my blood boil. I am furious...

The programme charts the progress of four top chefs (Angela Hartnett, Richard Corrigan, Matt Tebbutt and Simon Rimmer) who have each been given the challenge to assemble the very best restaurant dishes for a banquet of 60 diners using waste ingredients only. They have to scavenge perfectly edible food from supermarket bins and beg for other produce from farms, fishermen and dairies that are forced to throw away mountains of food because the supermarkets won't accept it for cosmetic reasons.

It makes very sobering and fascinating viewing. Three point six million tonnes of food each year in England and Wales is binned - and most of it is totally fine to eat. When the chefs embark on their task, they are all horrified by how much waste food they have access to. Matt Tebbutt visits a lettuce farm where the farmer tells him that any lettuce that isn't the correct size or slighly blemished has to be discarded and ploughed back into the field - on one day alone 30,000 'non uniform' lettuces are shredded and composted, most of which are beautiful specimens but demmed too large or small for the supermarkets. Richard Corrigan visits a fisherman who can't sell his catch of slip soles because they are considered 'too small' and 'too fiddly' to cook and have to be discarded or sold abroad. He also visits an egg farmer who has to throw away thousands of eggs every week because they are slightly smaller than average - the supermarkets tell him that people apparently only want to buy big eggs. What total madness!

(Unrelated to this programme, my husband recently met a farmer who had such a bumper crop of potatoes last year that he couldn't sell them due to the glut and was forced to re-compost them, costing him £200,000. I think it's outrageous - people are going hungry and food isn't sold or distributed in the right way.)

Anyway, I don't want to give away what happens in The Great British Waste Menu - so make sure you watch it. It's available on the iPlayer for two more days until Wednesday this week. Watch it here.

C'mon people - I want to hear your thoughts on food waste...are you a sell-by-date junkie? Are you fussy about the size and shape of fruits and vegetables? Do you throw away food because you buy too much? Would you buy a smaller egg?

Love Food Hate Waste : useful tips on how to waste less food. Get involved!

Why I love bin-diving - Alex Renton, The Guardian

Choc Air flies back to Wales!

2010-08-26T22:25:00.012+01:00

If you happened to be at last weekend's Green Man music festival mucking around in the Welsh mud, you might have purchased a delicious chocolate brownie from a lady dressed up as a retro-style 1980s air hostess. She was glowing with very orange fake tan and frosted eye makeup, and carried an usherette box and an oxygen mask. That person was me - thanks to all of you who tapped me on the shoulder(pad) and bought dark chocolate or salted caramel brownies, and white chocolate blondies with pecan nuts...and Choc Air salutes all of you who came over and bought all three flavours in one go!

This year was Choc Air's second flight (last year's Green Man festival having been my debut) and it was even more fun because lots of festival-goers recognised my garish get-up from last year's event. Nothing quite like a gimmick to shift those cakes, that's what I say!

Yet again, I had a lot of requests for brownies containing hash - sorry I had to disappoint y'all! Quite frankly, who in their right mind would sell hash cakes dressed so conspicuously? Especially since a lot of my customers were nine-year-old kids demonstrating pester power...although I'm sure that this might have calmed them down instead of my 'non-special' brownies whipping them up into a sugar-induced frenzy.

Choc Air will be flying again soon...I have a potential invite to take my usherette box to a friend's warehouse party in September, which am I very excited about...he might even let me loose on the decks!

Is your seat in the upright facing position? Would you like any duty free? Want the brownie recipes? Find them here.

The legendary Paula Deen

2010-08-26T19:43:00.014+01:00

Image courtesy of Good Housekeeping

Oh mah gawd, girl-freyends. Have you seen the rootin' tootin' Texan version of The Two Fat Ladies? Paula Deen is actually just one fat laydee from the deep South, and she is possibly responsible for the obesity epidemic over the pond, y'all. She wraps cheesecake in pastry, deep fries it, tops it with cream and slathers it with sugar. She eats massive slices of lasagna sandwiched between two bodaciously buttered loaves of bread. She cackles in the face of the normal-sized portion.

Watch the Paula Deen collection here...

Paula deep fries a store-bought cheesecake: super fast track to gout! You might want to wear a heart monitor if you adopt her method.

Paula Eats a lasagna sandwich the size of a Jack Russell. Shee-it!

Paula 'makes love to my tater' (sic) - i.e. serves a mammoth baked potato, smothers it in creamy cheesy mushrooms, and gets a little flustered...

Yeee haaah! I'm fascinated and I think I like her...

Regency Cafe

2010-08-09T21:00:00.001+01:00

Imagine the following words being belted from the small mouth of a slender, bespectacled woman with fair hair, looking as though she would usually whisper and work in a libary:

"TWO EGGS, SAUSAGE, CHIPS AND BEANS!"

or

"HADDOCK, CHIPS, PEAS AND BEANS!"

Here is the lady in question, manning the counter at the Regency Cafe in London's Pimlico area:

She has a voice like a Cockney docker. It is gravelly, rich and booming, as though she used to be some kind of bullring commentator in a previous life. It cuts though the cafe like a hurricane. She could command army troops. Her body doesn't look large enough to house the kind of lungs needed for such a voice. Woe betide you if you somehow manage to miss the name of your dish being called out, as she only shouts it out twice. I think you'd have to be wearing silicone earplugs and have your head stuck in some kind of vacuumed astronaut helmet to succeed.

The food is good, old-fashioned British greasy spoon fare, but done rather well. You can have the usual range of fry-ups, fish 'n chips, pies, pasta dishes and even salads. The portions are really generous. I don't really see the point of coming here for a salad, though. Why would you?

I think people come not only for the unpretentious good food, but for the amazing decor. The cafe is built into the base of a block of a 1930s block of mansion flats and its exterior is decorated with old black Deco tiles. Inside you can lap up the wonderful retro atmosphere. There are gingham curtains and the white tiled walls have black and white portraits and old posters of boxing legends. Inside the booths, you sit at green formica tables; the salt cellars and vinegar bottles are all of the old-school. You can even order a glass milk pint bottle of cloudy apple juice to have instead of the industrial-strength tea. The danish pastries look a bit over-frosted and formidable. I usually go 'vegetarian' here as I'm not sure where the meat comes from, but I can't resist the fish and chips on a Friday which are super-fresh, hefty and rather excellent - you can adorn them with a ladleful of special tartar sauce and lemon wedges from the counter.

And on the days when the Very Loud Lady isn't working? There is a man with an almost-as-deafening voice, belting out the orders. Not quite as impressive, but almost as terrifying. I wonder if they're married?

Regency Cafe
17-19 Regency Street
London SW1P 4BY
Tel: 020 7821 6596

Guilt-free eating out

2010-08-04T19:42:00.013+01:00

Last time you went out for dinner, did you worry at all about whether your meal was sustainably sourced and whether the restaurant had any kind of ecological business practices? Chances are that you didn't: the majority of us are usually too distracted choosing something good on the menu, gossiping and worrying about the price of the wine mark-up to really pay this much attention. Or, being British, we're usually too self-conscious to ask whether the pork chops are outdoor-reared.

Did you know that, according to the Environment Agency, the hotel and restaurant industry has the lowest environmental awareness of all business sectors? It’s pretty sobering to learn that food services and restaurant industries chuck out a horrifying three million tonnes of food waste annually, and that restaurants bin a massive 600,000 tonnes of glass bottles every year! It’s enough to make anyone choke, Queen Mother-style, on whatever they are eating, and ask for a doggy bag to take home all leftovers - something which I do often (no, not the choking part!)

But hope is on hand for all restaurateurs in the form of the superheroes at the Sustainable Restaurant Association (otherwise know as the SRA). Founded by restaurateur Mark Sainsbury and ethical business consultant Giles Gibbons, they have made it their mission to get restaurants to behave more responsibly – whether it’s getting their meat from farms with good welfare standards, sourcing ethical fish, reducing food miles and cutting their waste and energy use. It's a pretty tall order.

For an annual fee, restaurants can sign up with the SRA and get all kinds of support in tackling these tricky issues. Many have joined already – I was interested to know that it’s not just trailblazing independents that have become members (such as The Duke of Cambridge, Moro and The Clerkenwell Kitchen) but larger more well-known restaurants or chains such as Carluccio's, Canteen, Leon and Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons. (I now am forced to hate Carluccio's a little less...even though I find their branches as charmless as a punch in the face, with bland food and deafening acoustics!)

Recently the SRA put on a foodie evening out and bravely invited a motley crew of food bloggers (including me) to demonstrate to us how restaurants in the Clerkenwell area of London are all getting on board with the sustainability message. Our first stop was The Clerkenwell Kitchen for a starter, where they treated us to summery loveliness in the form of courgette and goats' curd canapes, and a salad of mixed leaves, peas and eggs with homemade salad cream (see above). Then we hopped over the road and ate a divine main course of sustainably-fished sea bass with chermoula and quinoa at The Modern Pantry (who I might have now forgiven for a previously lacklustre brunch). Finally, we heaved our rotund selves onwards to The Zetter to eat a delectable raspberry and passionfruit sable, with fresh mint teas and chocolate truffles. All three of these restaurants demonstrated clearly that you can still serve wonderful, luxurious food that tastes exciting, while still staying true to ethical ideals without forcing people to wear hair shirts, stroke their beards and eat lentils.

The Clerkenwell Kitchen's impeccably-sourced sweet peas:

If you'd like to know more about the SRA and its noble aims, all the info is here. If you happen to be padding about Clerkenwell, I'd recommend a meal at any of the three restaurants above. Perhaps some of you could be persuaded (if you don't already) to ask a few more questions when you eat out - remember all it takes is a few people nagging to see small things start to change for the better. Ask where the mystery meat comes from. Don't be afraid to find out if the restaurant recycles. And if you can't finish that whopping steak, always ask for a doggy bag, the absolute epitome of foodie chic!

The Clerkenwell Kitchen
The Modern Pantry
The Zetter

Urban Orient

2010-08-01T21:14:00.003+01:00

I am so very excited. Why? Crystal Palace finally has a superb Vietnamese cafe/restaurant, just a stone's throw from my house. Hurrah! And the whole neighbourhood seems thrilled to be able to say 'welcome' to Urban Orient, which has been packed to the rafters ever since it opened its doors. It houses a once-unloved site that used to be a drab, smelly kebab joint, and has filled the place with happy vibes and delicious food.

I have travelled to Vietnam and so of course am biaised when I say that I believe Vietnamese food to be the best in all of South East Asia. I am always hooked by the crisp and zingy flavours, the subtle mixtures of sourness and zestiness in the dipping sauces, the abundance of fragrant fresh herbs, pungent 'umami' of the fish sauce and soothing flavours of anise and caramel. It's less sweet and heavy than Thai food, and to my palate much more exciting.

The cafe offers a bewitching atmosphere that is reminiscent of some of the arty cafes I went to when I was in Hanoi's old town several years ago. (Pretentious? Moi?) The owners have tastefully decorated the space with a huge carved wooden mural filling up one entire wall, and eclectic touches such as old typewriters, tea chests and standard lamps. Vietnamese music burbles away gently in the background, and the menu is simple and unpretentious. Oddly, the owners choose not display the menu in the window, so you have to go inside and ask what's good to eat that day - which might deter some customers - but on a Saturday night the place is full.

You can buy special 'banh mi' Vietnamese baguette sandwiches until 5pm, and the evening menu comprises staples such as noodle soups, chopped noodle salads and Chinese dim sum. It's simple, good and flavoursome. The quality of the food isn't as bombastic as that served in the Vietnamese restaurants on the Kingsland Road in East London, but Urban Orient have definite skill in the kitchen and I'm sure that once they have been open longer they will have refined their dishes a little. The food is a little light on the fresh herbs that are commonplace in Vietnamese dishes, and condiments such as fish sauce and chopped chillies could be offered on all the tables so you don't keep having to ask for top-ups. But these are small details, and essentially the food is really good.

This is what we ate:

Steamed Dim sum - packed with pork and prawns, really delicious:

'Bun' noodles with lemongrass beef, salad, fresh herbs and fish sauce dressing - could have done with a few more fresh herbs, more fish sauce and less raw onion:

The eclectic decor - what a lovely space for chilling out!

The restaurant currently doesn't have an alcohol license, and neither does it allow BYO, which they reassured me they'll be changing soon. (Not least because London is a city of drunkards!) But you can grab a lovely Vietnamese-style coffee, complete with its unique cup filtering system and splash of caramelly condensed milk. I find the name 'Urban Orient' a rather strange choice for this laid back cafe because it sounds a little more suited to a generic fast food noodle chain. If I had my way, I would call it something more befitting its bohemian atmosphere, such as 'Old Hanoi' or something. No matter - I will be returning to try the fresh summer rolls, the squid and lemongrass salad, the banh mi baguette sandwiches, the pho noodle soup and the Vietnamese curries...

Urban Orient
74 Westow Street
Crytal Palace
London SE19 3AF

Want to try a really special Vietnamese pork stew? Make this delicious Pork Stew in Clay Pot recipe.

Vietnamese pork stew in clay pot

2010-08-01T21:10:00.002+01:00

Pork stew in clay pot is one of my favourite dishes from Vietnam. It takes a few hours to simmer away on the stove top, and has really aromatic and comforting flavours - star anise, ginger and chilli all combine with caramel to create a warming and savoury mixture that is great with greens and rice. This recipe has been conjured up by my handsome hubby N. You don't need a clay pot - you can use any type of lidded casserole suitable for long, slow cooking. If you've had a rough day, this stew will make everything feel better.

The type of clay pot that we use is a Columbian Tierra Negra one:

Serves 4

You will need:

500g diced pork
1 tbsp annato seeds (optional)
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
3 tbsp palm sugar (or 3 tbsp golden caster sugar)
3 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
500 ml chicken stock
2 sticks lemongrass, bashed and cut into 3 large sections
4 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 2-inch pieces
2 whole star anise
3 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 thumbs fresh ginger, peeled and cut into thin matchsticks
2 Bird's eye or half a Scotch Bonnet chilli, finely chopped
Fresh chopped coriander to garnish

First you need to colour your oil. Put a tablespoon of annato seeds into vegetable oil over a medium heat, let them bubble for a minute or two, then remove from the heat and discard the seeds. You are left with a lovely red-coloured oil. Use this oil to cook with - brown the pork in it.

While the pork is browning, make the caramel. Heat the palm sugar (or caster sugar) in a saucepan on its own over a medium flame and wait for it to go dark brown. As soon as this happens, take it off the heat and add a tablespoon of water: be careful as it will spit. Don't stir it, it will just come together naturally to form caramel.

Add all the rest of the ingredients to the pork, add the caramel, put the pot lid on and simmer slowly on your stove top on the lowest possible heat for a minimum of two hours - any less and the meat will be tough.

The ingredients prior to slow cooking:

Srinkle with chopped coriander and serve with steamed greens and basmati rice. The finished dish:

Feast your eyes 1

2010-07-29T20:25:00.003+01:00

Above: Vanilla biscuits with cinnamon and brown sugar

Sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day to write this blog. What with trying to leave the house on time in the morning suitably attired, somehow bluffing my way through another day at the office talking into phones and writing stuff (I'm amazed I haven't been found out yet) and not offending anybody with inappropriate jokes - some days I find it astonishing that I can keep it together appearing as a responsible adult. And then I must cook! But I can't, I'm afraid, write as much as I'd like to about each and every recipe. So here are some photos instead - wouldn't it be nice if the computer screen had active Smell-o-vision?

Mexican breakfast - fried eggs, tomatoes with chipotle and guacamole:

Lemon and thyme cake with Greek yoghurt (Nigel Slater's recipe):

My husband N making pasta:

The result - Ottolenghi's goats' cheese ravioli:

Peach, raspberry and frangipane tart, adapted from a recipe by Thomasina Miers:

Hummingbird cake, from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook:

I might do a few more posts like this, as feels pretty good to set my photos free!

Get your fruit from the man on the street

2010-07-25T18:14:00.003+01:00

The fruit you can buy from small market stalls peppering London's pavements might not be organic, or always sourced from UK farms, but I think it tastes so much better than what you can buy in the supermarket. These stalls aren’t flashy or posh – they’re just geezers selling fruit out of cartons at the roadside. But the difference in quality compared to a supermarket is amazing – when I buy a nectarine or apricot from a supermarket, three times out of five they are bullet hard and either go mouldy upon ripening, or don't taste of anything much at all.

I would like to say a big 'hurrah' for my regular 'Fruit Man' whose stall is near House of Fraser on Victoria Street in central London. Recently I have bought nectarines from him that are properly ripe upon purchase or that ripen to perfection in the fruit bowl, and taste so perfumed that you believe that they have fallen off the tree in Italy into your lap. The same goes for his fantastic white peaches – the curiously shaped flat variety – they taste so good! Until recently I had banned myself from buying apricots in the supermarket, because they are so disappointing, but you can ripen up the ones from his fruit stall until they almost taste of summer in the South of France...

Fruit Man of Victoria Street is there every week day, transistor radio blaring out classical music, and he always stocks the more interesting varieties. For example, I had never encountered a flat white peach before seeing them here, and he always has interesting seasonal UK produce, such as the best of the strawberries, raspberries and greengage plums. You can smell the heady aroma of the berries when you pick the cartons up, wafting out of the punnets like an intoxicating drug!

Fruit Man always adds the personal touch – he can tell you how long to leave something to ripen up, or what’s tasting particularly good that day. He is proud of the fact that he gets his fruit fresh from Covent Garden market every day. “I don’t eat rubbish,” he says. Quite right. He adds lovely signs written in old fashioned handwriting, with messages such as ‘Please don’t squeeze me until I’m yours’ and is excited about the figs and grapes that will soon be flooding in. Sometimes he pops a free avocado into my bag.

Here is some of his produce lovingly installed in my tiny kitchen...

Yellow nectarines and flat white peaches (note the smaller, more insipid nectarines on the far left that come from Sainsbury's), and apricots in the paper bag:

White nectarines and greengage plums:

Why would I buy my fruit anywhere else? You don’t get this service in the bleak over-refrigerated atmosphere of a Tesco. By buying your fruit from small stalls, you're supporting small independent businesses and not doing all your food shopping through the supermarket monopoly. Spending a few less quid per week in the supermarket won't hurt the fatcats one little bit, but it will make a huge difference to the fruit man on the street. Right on - and peachy!

Got a favourite market street stall you can recommend? I want to hear about it...