Cookwitch Creations

Calzone, focaccia and all kinds of wonderful.

2012-03-02T20:39:00.001Z

I had booked a Focaccia baking class at Carluccio's on Garrick Street a while ago, almost the very second I got their emailed newsletter. £20? Yes please!

Tuesday 28th dawned bright and sunny, and I determinedly set off on time, only to be waylaid by a small and very excited yappy-type dog on my way to the bus stop. So I walked him all the way back to his house, where another neighbour was telling his mum that she thought her dog had escaped. Once he realised he was home he ran indoors with lots of tail wagging. Not even a kiss goodbye. I set off again, only pausing to get stuck in traffic on the bus and for the bus driver to stop and give directions to a person that felt it necessary to stop the bus, on the opposite side of the road to the route she wanted, and ask directions to the hospital. There was Much Tutting on our bus.

As it happens, delays notwithstanding, I made it to Carluccio's by 10.30, as had another lady, so the lovely shop manager took us upstairs to the private function room which had been set out with baking stations, complete with ingredients, bowls and Chef's whites. I had brought my own apron because chef's whites rarely cater for ladies who are ample in the chest and hip department. I was glad I did, because I felt far more at home in it.

The Head Chef for Carluccio's Walton, Kevin, talked us through the plan for the morning, and the lovely Valentina demonstrated the different flours that we might use in Italian cookery. 00 flour is absolutely gorgeous. It's so finely ground that it glides through your fingers leaving almost no trace. Valentina told us about a Pugliese bread made from semolina flour, which of course I now want to try.

Pugliese bread

We finished our most excellent coffees, and off we went. I don’t have any photos of this bit, because dough-strewn fingers and a Canon G9 do not mix.

Add the fresh yeast to the lukewarm water. Mix in well with a fork.

Put the 00 flour in the bowl, mix in the fine salt distributing it well with your hands.

Make a well in the middle of the flour.

Add 1/2 the yeasty water and try to bring the dough together, only adding more water a touch at a time. (Flour absorbs moisture, so sometimes you may not need all the water)

Bring the dough into a ball, squashing it down into the bowl to get all the bits mixed in.

Turn it out onto a lightly floured board and knead it just enough to bring it together and gain some smoothness. You do not knead this dough for as long as you do for a traditional white bread dough.

Oil the bowl, oil the dough lightly too.

Place the dough in the bowl, cover and leave to rise in a handy warm corner for an hour.

So we did all that. We didn't get too messy though my hands got nice and soft from the amount of olive oil I had on them.
We were then given some dough that had been made earlier by Kevin, so had already proved. We were about to be allowed to play with that and make calzone. Valentina had informed us that calzone actually means trousers, which induced some laughter, as filled trousers just sounds wrong. Later on we were told that it could also mean socks, which also didn’t help.

Off we went again. Chef Kevin demonstrated what we had to do, we quaked a bit, and then got on with it.

Tip the dough out into the board, cut off a third, place remainder back in the proving container.

Gently fold the dough under so that it becomes a rounded shape.

Lightly roll out the dough to a circle (ish) roughly 1cm thick.

Heap the ragu or vegetable filling in the middle.

Top with buffalo mozzarella.

Bring the top half of the circle down over the filling and press your fingers all around the filling, so you can almost feel the board through the dough.

Trim off any excess and then crimp the edges. I cannot explain how to do this in writing! I expect you could get away with just crimping the edge with a fork, but they must seal, or the filling will leak out.

Place on some greaseproof paper and send them off to the kitchen!

We bid farewell to the calzone, but we had no time to mourn, because next we made focaccia.

Tip out the remaining two thirds of the dough and press out into whatever shape you fancy. Start pressing at the outside edges and work your way in to the middle so that the middle doesn't get too thin.

Make deep indentations all over with your fingers, and press in your choice of toppings so that the dough will rise up around them.

Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.

Then it was off to the kitchens with that too!

We cleaned up and out came the Prosecco. I had the most delicious, icy lemonade instead and Valentina mentioned that there would be a surprise. I had a feeling I knew what the surprise might be, having seen Twitter that morning, but kept very quiet.

The door opened and in came Mr Carluccio himself. I'm not entirely sure that I have smiled so much since I met Tom Baker. Signore Carluccio, you rank right up there with Dr Who for me. One of my food heroes was sat directly in front of me, and I was almost overwhelmed. This isn't the "OMG he's famous!" nonsense, because that doesn't phase me one jot, everyone goes to the loo, right? It's more the fact that I have watched and listened to and admired this man for so many years via the TV screen that it didn't feel quite real to have him, literally, within arm's reach, but we did, and it was absolutely fabulous.

Signore Carluccio. You have NO IDEA how excited I was.

His lovely, long suffering PA, Al, came in briefly but sadly she had to dash off and Do Things so we didn't really get to meet her properly.

He sat with us for a long time, happily chatting, telling us a fairly colourful joke and sampling the calzone when they came up from the kitchen surrounded by wafts of warm, Italy scented air. The lady whose calzone he sampled was terrified whilst he was eating it, but he said it was very good so she was happy. Poor girl, I'd have been scared too!

It's quite difficult to eat a calzone tidily, I will say that now, especially when the filling oozes out of the sides and is still searingly hot, but we managed. I cut mine in half and packed some away for later because I was meeting a friend and I know she would like it.

Then the focaccia arrived. Trays of hot, steaming baked deliciousness. The mixed scents of baked black olives, tomatoes and olive oil soaked rosemary was heavenly. I think we were all very happy with how they had turned out, but really had no room to eat any as we'd just demolished some fairly hefty calzone, so once they had cooled a bit they were photographed, cut in half and wrapped. Then wrapped again. And again. Okay so maybe we had gone overboard a bit with the olive oil, but it was such GOOD oil.

Antonio sat with us for quite a while, and having him just chat with us about cooking, give us tips on recipes and talk about filming Two Greedy Italians is a memory I shall treasure for a long time. He had to leave, so we set about tidying ourselves up, and packing our baked goods away. We were all given goodie bags as well, with a bag of 00 flour, the neatly packed dough we had made and some fresh yeast.

We were joking about taking photos of Antonio - I had managed a surreptitious shot of him while he wasn't looking - when suddenly Valentina said "Oh shall I go and get him? He won't mind!" and was gone. Cue most of us going "Oh! Oh my, erm..." and then he was back.

We had lots of photos taken with everyone's different cameras and phones and I am happy to say I overcame the shyness that was eating at me, and asked Chef Kevin to take a photo with my camera too please if it isn't too much trouble ta ever so.

I got to one arm hug Mr Carluccio as well (his jacket was made of the softest material EVER and I didn't want to let go) and then he really did have to depart, leaving in his eminent wake a bunch of ever so slightly shell shocked cooks saying to each other variations on "Did that just...I mean...we...He came in and...oh my."

I have to say a huge thanks to Carluccio's for organising the event, and making it possible. It would have been a lovely day anyway, even without the addition of a cheeky Italian man, but that pretty much put the icing on the already very good cake.

David Oliver Fine Foods

2012-03-02T19:50:00.001Z

A few weeks ago I was incredibly lucky to attend a foodie event with my lovely Kavita, from over at Kavey Eats. Frankly, just spending time with Kavey is enough, but this time, we got to eat some extremely good food as well.

We met up as I was wandering along Regent’s Street, map in hand. I always turn the wrong way out of Oxford Circus tube station, without fail, even when I have done all the prep in the world. For once, and I suspect only this one time, I got it right, so Kavey ended up walking behind me for a bit before she realised it was me.

We found the venue, 51 Beak Street, with no problem, but we were early. Oops. The poor chap in charge of the venue was a bit flustered, and the chefs were running late, so we took ourselves out of his misery and found a coffee shop. A small hint for other coffee shops – do not give a person who is a regular coffee drinker a cup that is 1/4 foam. They will only hand it back to you and ask you to top it up with the coffee that they have paid for. Very good coffee, I might add.

A pleasant half hour of nattering later, and we wandered back. Lo! People had arrived. Lots of people. I am remiss in not remembering everyone’s names, but to be honest, there were quite a few of them! I was also a bit busy ogling the venue and coveting it rather a lot. Oh you could do a very good Christmas in that place.

Once everyone has assembled, we were led down a very beautiful wooden spiral staircase by David. David is a partner in David Oliver Fine Foods, the company – and people – that we were there to meet.

Look what nice boys they are.

A country boy through and through, David admitted that they had underestimated the weight of London traffic, hence them being late. We all got settled into the various sofas and chairs, shivered a lot because it was a basement and quite cold, then Oliver bounced down the stairs and introduced himself.

They told us how they got started, where they had met, and how the idea for this range of dishes had come about. Primarily they are chefs, and passionate about getting this country to eat more game. I’m all for that. They have come at this from the angle of chefs wanting to get good food out there to people, not from a ‘Let’s make some money with merchandise!” angle and I found that very appealing. Both men are lovely. Funny, personable and genuine in their passion to get people eating more game and why not? This country does it so well, and we do have an abundance of it.

Quite how they’ve found the time to develop this I’m really not sure, as they both have full time jobs - David’s a chef and Oliver runs his own catering company now – but they have found the time and I’m very glad that they have.

They were going to prepare one of the ready meal recipes from scratch for us, and also cook off one of the packed meals. Then we would get to blind taste and guess which one was which.

This was done with great skill, whilst talking to us animatedly about their business and plans for the future, plus telling us how Waitrose have gotten behind them and supported them every step of the way.

“So you’ve got no backing, no equipment and no money. Just this idea?”

“Yes!”

“Okay then. We can run with that.”

After more discussion, and the agony of delicious smells coming from the kitchen, it was time to taste. Two plates were brought out, and we all took some. Both plates were absolutely delicious – smoked bacon and puy lentils are a very winning combination - and apart from some very spurious guesses, we admitted that we really couldn’t tell which was which. The quality of both was excellent.

Then it was back up the stairs to the main room, which had been transformed into a very elegant dining room. A long table, all beautifully set for lunch. We even had candles, napkins and two sets of cutlery. I couldn’t help thinking how lovely it would look set up for Christmas.

We took our places, and were served for the first course Rabbit with Courgettes, White Beans and Lemon.

Beautiful, juicy, meaty rabbit – which the boys still prep by hand – perfectly cooked beans, decent sized chunks of courgettes and a distinct taste of lemon. Most ready meals that promise lemon never deliver, unless it’s a actually a lemon pudding.

Perfect. I would be delighted with this for a dinner on an evening in alone.

Next in came the dish we had already tasted, Guinea Fowl with Puy Lentils and Smoked Bacon. I think it’s safe to say that we were more than happy to keep eating it!

I think most of us came away more than impressed with the quality of these meals, and I for one will certainly be hunting them out the next time I am in Waitrose, or do an Ocado order.

We were given some meal to take home too, and I can report back that the Venison and Sweet Potato casserole is equally as stunning.

David Oliver Fine Food deserves to go from strength to strength, and I wish them all the very best.

Olive Branch recipe: Deconstructed Caponata

2012-02-19T10:42:00.001Z

I love Italian food. Ever since my first exposure to it way back when I was a small child spending the summer holidays with my family in a friend’s apartment in Southern Italy. We stayed in Pontecagnano, a small industrial town on the coast, almost as far South as you could get without being in Sicily. The main industry seemed to be a tomato canning plant just outside town or at least it was, until it got blown up. We awoke to an entire town covered in tomatoes and tomato residue. Everything was tinged a watery pink for days and for weeks afterwards dented tins of San Marzano tomatoes would wash up on the beaches. Everyone said they didn’t know why the explosion had occurred, but the speculation of it being the work of La Famiglia was rife.

We made friends easily, helped by my Dad speaking Italian like a native and his pretending to be a long lost son of the area so our car didn’t get vandalised. You did not leave on the GB sticker. One year we forgot, on our first night, and came down to a car made toothless by broken windows.

We got to try the real food of Italy, not just the restaurants, but what people ate at home and in celebration. You’ve not lived – or known what full feels like - until you have eaten a traditional Italian wedding feast. That really is the gift that keeps on giving, sometimes even after a few of the guests are in a food coma.

The drawback to discovering all of that wonderful food is that it does spoil you for any Italian food that you get in England, that I admit, but I keep on trying different places here anyway, ever hopeful that it will have that taste that I remember.

The most elusive thing for me has been the tomato. Once you have had a simple sauce in Italy, when you try to recreate it here, very often the tomatoes are the things that can let it down. Napolina had seemed to be the best brand so far, but even then they didn’t taste quite right. Recently Cirio has become available here, and they are very good indeed. What I wasn’t expecting was Sainsbury’s Finest.

I spotted Pomodori D’Oro when I was doing an online shop, and bought a tin on the offchance. I can safely say that they are absolutely lovely. The smell when I opened the tin took me straight back to those heady summers in Italy, and the juice that they come in is thick, almost like a purée, not a watery residue to be drained off.

The colour is pure, yellow sunshine, and that inspired me to put together a version of a much loved recipe. I had some aubergines, and some olives and that, to me, says caponata. It’s a sweet sour Sicilian dish, and utterly addictive when eaten with chunks of fresh bread. I’d love it even more of Giorgio Locatelli or Francesco Mazzei were to make it for me, but that’s never going to happen, though a girl can dream, yes?

I had some of the lovely olive oil that Olive Branch had sent me left, which just made cooking this all the more worthwhile. I spent a very happy Saturday afternoon pottering in the kitchen and to my great delight the weather stayed nice and the light remained good, despite my faffing about. So here, for your delight and my tummy, is a very simple Deconstructed Caponata.

1 medium aubergine

1 tin whole yellow plum tomatoes

Aged balsamic (I used Carluccio’s. Thick and syrupy wonderfulness. You need the sweetness.)

Small black olives

Thick bread slices (I used home made)

Olive oil

Cut the aubergine in half lengthways, and slash deeply with a sharp knife, taking care not to cut through the skin. Douse liberally with olive oil, and sprinkle with sea salt. Place on a baking tray and grill until golden brown and quite soft.

While the aubergine is cooking, put the tomatoes in a shallow pan, add some olives, olive oil and drizzle with balsamic. If you can’t find the syrupy aged vinegar, then try some balsamic syrup. Merchant Gourmet do a good one and most big supermarkets have it.

Add in a good handful of black olives.

I was lucky enough to have some home-grown, oil cured olives from my very own tree to use, (yes, it appears you can grow olives in Essex if you wait about ten years for the tree to fruit…) but any decent black olive will do although please, buy them with the stones in, as the flavour is infinitely superior. By all means de-stone them before cooking, but don’t use those ready stoned ones you can buy, they all seem to look like otters’ noses and taste of rubber. You know the ones. The kind that you get on takeaway pizza, all texture and no taste.

Heat the tomatoes and olives gently until everything is bubbling. Don’t stir it, just let it cook and the flavours will happily merge into one another.

Drizzle or drench your bread slices with olive oil. I used home made bread because that’s what I had, but any decent bread that you like will work.

Toast the slices in a very hot griddle pan until golden and griddle-marked. Of course you do not have to do this, you can just toast them in that wonderful modern invention, The Toaster, but I prefer the flavour you get from a griddle pan and also, well, I am a bit poncey at times.

Once the bread is toasted, the dish just needs putting together.

Toast, aubergine, tomatoes, and top with any sauce and olives. Drizzle on more olive oil because you can, then eat and enjoy.

With many thanks to http://myolivebranch.co.uk/ for sending me their lovely oil, and to Sourced market in Kings Cross station for selling me some more!

Snickerdoodles!

2012-02-12T23:02:00.001Z

No, it’s not a new swear word, it’s a cookie. A very, very good cookie, first made for me by my dear friend Denise when we stayed with her in New England. A whole new world opened up to me – the world of American cup measurements. In some ways I find it easier, and in others…I’d much rather have a set of scales to hand. It probably just depends what side of the bed I got out of.

Anyway, yes, Snickerdoodles.

Buttery, cinnamony, sugary cookies with a melt in the mouth texture. My husband loves them, and he’s going away for a week tomorrow on a course for work, so I thought I’d make him some to take with him. A little bit of home in a tin.

Oddly, after extolling the fun of American cup use, I wanted to make these using a scale. The reason being that it is awfully cold in my kitchen at the moment (2 outside walls) and the butter will NOT soften to the right consistency to measure it with a cup without bending the handle, so scales it was. I managed to find a recipe using British measurements and off I went.

http://www.theamericanresident.com/2011/10/snickerdoodles-the-amazing-anytime-of-the-year-cookie/ is where I found the recipe, but I made a few tweaks. Come on, it’s me, that always happens, plus I remember some of the ingredients in the recipe that Denise used so I wanted to get as close to her recipe as possible.

Snickerdoodles

375g self raising flour

1/2 tsp Cream of tartar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tsp cinnamon

150g butter, room temperature

75g lard (or white Flora but lard was all I had)

280g caster sugar

2 large eggs

For rolling the cookies in:

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon mixed with 2 tablespoons of caster sugar

Method

Preheat oven to 180C.

Sift together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt into a bowl.

Put butter and sugar into another bowl. Use an electric mixer to mix the butter and sugar for about 3 minutes, until fluffy.

Mix in the eggs with the butter and sugar. Reduce speed to low; gradually mix in the flour mixture, upping the speed as needed.

Shape the dough into balls of about 1.5 to 2 inches depending on how large you like your cookies. I made mine about the size of a walnut.

Try and get them into the sugar/cinnamon mixture soon, rolling them around to get completely covered in cinnamon and sugar. I found the chilling the mixture made it a lot easier to handle, and all I had to do today was open the window a bit!

Place the dough balls on cookie sheets lined in baking parchment or a non-stick baking liner. They will spread out, so I placed them about 1.5” apart.

Bake until edges are golden. That took about 10-12 minutes for my ones. Obviously the bigger you make them, the longer they take.

It’s not a problem if you overcook them a bit, but the longer you cook, the less of a chewy centre they have. Once they are out of the oven and on a cooling rack, then you face the problem of not eating them all while they are still warm.

I promise you that there will be photos soon, but I have managed to drop my SD card into the body of my computer tower because I’m a numpty. The link above has photos, so you can pootle over there and have a look.

I can’t believe I did that.

Bread and olive oil, the staff and stuff of life.

2012-02-06T23:04:00.001Z

A few weeks ago, I was sent some lovely olive oil by the very nice people at Olive Branch. Now it is fair to say that possibly olive oil, not blood, runs in my veins, though any good phlebotomist who has had a fight with my veins may disagree.

I love the smell, the taste, even the feel of it on my skin (don’t wipe it off, rub it in, it is an excellent moisturiser) and when they asked me if I’d like to try some of their oil of course my pretty much instant answer was “Yes please!”

It arrived and I baked some fresh bread to go with it that very same day. All I needed was that bread, a bit of balsamic for a second tasting and that beautiful, greengold elixir.

I had a very indulgent afternoon, let me tell you. Just me, the warm bread and the oil.

Photos, because words cannot do it justice.

The oil is rich and smooth tasting, but this bottle didn’t have the peppery notes that I’ve tasted elsewhere. It was fresh, and green tasting, if that makes any sense, redolent of crushed wet grass. Utterly lovely, and perfect with simple bread. I admit that did also add some Carluccio’s aged balsamic after the initial tasting, because when you have that, and olive oil of this quality, then it would be foolish not to.

I’ll leave you with words from Olive Branch, telling you all about their beautiful oil.

Our Olive Oil has been produced at a community co-operative in the south of Crete. The co-operative is owned by its members, all of whom are responsible for picking the olives themselves, during the early harvest which takes place around November/December each year. Once the Olives are picked, the Oil is cold pressed within hours to create a fresh and grassy taste.

The Oil is made from the Koroneiki Olive, which is native to Crete and has high natural antioxidant content. The Olive is picked at the stage when the ripening begins as this is when the Olive is packed with vitamins and antioxidants. This creates a superior quality olive oil which is indicated by its exceptionally low acidity level of <0.3%.

Our Olive Oil will take you on a taste journey – starting with a fresh and grassy taste, moving to tomato like notes and ending with a pepper like finish.

http://myolivebranch.co.uk/

Dessert in a hurry!

2012-01-31T09:02:00.001Z

Did you ever have one of those days where you started off with the greatest of intentions, and planned out what you were going to bake, only to oversleep and have to do it all in a rush? Well, that was my Saturday.

It was my own fault, I went out clubbing and we got to bed very late, er, early…okay it was about 3am.

I had planned to get up early and make a Parsnip Cake that I had seen on the wonderful Sabrina Ghayour’s blog.

http://www.sabrinaghayour.com/2012/01/23/parsnip-honey-walnut-cake-divine/

She put it together for the Portobello Market ‘Roots Festival’ (Fri 27th & Sat 28th January) and, having tasted it, I can very much agree with her that it is indeed divine. However, I woke up at midday, and we still needed to go out and get all the ingredients, so that minor oops put paid to my fine cake baking idea. I will still be making it though, just at a more leisurely pace.

I needed a dessert that would be quick and very easy, using only ingredients that can be found at your average corner shop. So one jaunt later we came back with two Jamaican Ginger cakes, one long Madeira cake, a carton of ready made custard and a jar of fine shred Breakfast Marmalade. As we already had eggs in the fridge, I did what Simon calls my Ready Steady Cook impression and cue the assemblage!

Cake and Butter Pudding

“A conceptual variation on bread-and-butter pudding - alternating slices of madeira cake and Jamaican ginger cake, glued together with marmalade and then covered in a marmalade-and-custard mix, and then baked.” ~ S Stacey, Jan 2012

2 x Jamaican Ginger cakes

1 x long Madeira cake (or two smaller ones)

1 jar fine shred marmalade (sweeter kind, not too bitter)

1 carton of Ambrosia custard

2 tbs Bells whisky

3 eggs

Slice all the cakes up into 1/2 inch slices. Ginger cake is much easier to slice if it’s been in the fridge!

Feed some of the ends of the ginger cake to patient boyfriend. Eat other end yourself.

Empty the marmalade into a microwaveable jug or saucepan. Warm gently to loosen and stir in 2 tablespoons of whisky.

Sandwich the cake slices together with 3/4 of the marmalade mix and arrange them in a deep baking tray. I did alternate slices because it looked pretty. The madeira cake does tend to make it look like you have a pan full of Paddington Bear’s marmalade sandwiches.

Mix the custard with the rest of the whisky’d up marmalade, and beat in three medium eggs. Douse the cake slices liberally with this golden, creamy stickiness.

That is pretty much it as far as the prep goes! I baked it at around 170ºC in a fan oven for about 1/2 an hour. Just long enough to cook the eggs through and make it all bubbly. This deserves a bigger photo.

It was absolutely gorgeous, and very filling. This fed 6 of us at a dinner party later that day, and two of us again the next day, served cold with some ice cream.

Now obviously this is not an everyday pudding as it is certainly no lightweight but for a quick and luscious hit with no fuss? Perfect. You could vary it easily as well – lemon and vanilla cake with lemon curd or lime marmalade perhaps with limoncello, or chocolate and ginger cake with cherry jam and Kirsch – whatever you fancy! It is your dessert after all.

Photos courtesy of Simon Stacey, full set viewable at http://dancefloorlandmine.smugmug.com/Food/2012-01-28-Cake-Pudding/21240512_dcG7Rq#!i=1690793004&k=cTBk55F

I expect I will regret this but...

2012-01-09T18:12:00.000Z

...there's been a few things in the media this week that have really touched some nerves, and I'd better get it out there before I explode. I'm going to make a pot of tea first, because frankly, that's only proper. Of course, to satisfy the fat haters out there, I would have to make it with skimmed milk (an ABOMINATION) in case I put on an ounce. Oh and have a quick run around the block. Should I happen to want to have one of my home made, free from preservatives and additives digestive biscuits, which I make only rarely, as in maybe once a year, why then I'd have to do at least an hour on a treadmill, just to ensure that I don't offend society by becoming fat.

Oh. Wait. I AM fat. Apparently I can offend many people in Society merely by my appearance already. I find this an absolutely awesome thing. Jeremy Clarkson actually has to SAY something before that happens, so that makes me much more influential than he is without even putting in any effort so I shall revel in that for a bit. See me revel. Look, me, revelling I am.

On to the Media. There is a person called Ros Reines who writes for The Telegraph in Australia. I think she is the equivalent of our Liz Jones in The Daily Mail here. Sad, definitely screwed up over her own life, and quite bitter with Serious Issues. She decided to have a go - AGAIN - at Julie Goodwin, winner of the Australian Masterchef competition. Coincidentally, I believe Ms Reines had just lost a lot of weight with the Jenny Craig program, so she might have felt the need to crow a little. Julie bit back, eloquently and quite rightly so. You can read her response here. I tell you now, I know who I'd rather have dinner with.

http://www.juliegoodwin.com.au/blog/?p=1028#comment-1832

Of course, that response brought out some really rather horrible replies. I'm happy to see that quite a few of them are gone now, but I read them, and they went mainly along the lines of fat people are lazy and greedy and do no work. They should get to the gym, stop being so lazy and soon they will be thin.

Oh thin! Glorious thin! How we should all strive to be thin, then all our problems would fade away. We would be lithe and wonderful, and we could be 'ourselves' at last, or at least that's what the lastest spate of Weightwatchers ads would have us believe. Do you know what we really would be? Thinner. That's it. We don't stop being us, our problems don't go away. We're. Just. Thinner.

When I got married, I weighed in at 20 stones. I saw my wedding photos and I died inside. I dieted. I managed to get down to 15 stones and there I stuck. Induction Level Atkins for two years AND I STAYED THE SAME. I went on to eat more foods, because you do get very bored on the Induction level and I still eat low carb generally. I put on a couple of stones but have now stayed at the same weight for roughly 4 years, regardless of how I eat.

Do you know what I have now? A far more comfortable experience when I sit on a hard seat, that's what, and added neuroses about what I eat. Neuroses about being SEEN eating. Food is forever divided into good or bad, not just food. If I deny myself anything, I feel great. If I give in, I like what I eat, but I feel bad. In what way is this better? Before I lost it, I actually didn't care about my weight. I didn't really notice it, to be honest. It was other people who pointed it out. Other People seem to have no problem commenting on my weight, or on anyone's weight for that matter. "Oi! Eat some pies!" shouted at a skinny person is just as bad, just as damaging as "Oi! Fat bitch!" shouted at a fat peron.

Growing up, I was told I was fat. As an adult, looking back at school photos, I had the shock realisation that I hadn't been fat after all. I was bigger than the other kids, but that was it. Bigger. Taller, larger feet, wider, and more broadly built. Kids being kids of course, I was fat. To my Nan, I was fat. Thankfully, to my wonderful mother, I was just me.

I do distinctly remember squishing my stomach together with my hands once, and saying to my dad "I have all this to lose!" I would have been about 7 at the time. Of course what I was doing was squishing skin, not fat.

Adults used to say to me "Oh you'd be so pretty if only you lost weight." as if that is an okay thing to say to a ten year old child. I wasn't amused about that, and I believe I told the man so, in no uncertain terms. I admit that I do still look at my face in the mirror, and try to see the thinner face undeneath, but that way madness lies, so I do stop if I actually catch myself doing it.

The point of all this rambling? I'm not sure if there is one, but there is a worrying emphasis on BEAT OBESITY these days, instead of BE HEALTHY. It's like Obesity is the new Evil Thing that must be vanquished. Even the esteemed Michelle Obama has gotten in on the act.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/weightloss/2010-02-09-1Afirstlady09_CV_N.htm

I can see where she is coming from, but villifying a nation of children because of what they look like is not the way to do it. That just makes them targets, as if they weren't targeted enough already. Teach people, teach the parents how to cook properly, and to eat well, that is the way to go. Teach health, not size. If you teach someone to cook with real food, to avoid the processed, high sugar foods out there (you look just how much sugar is in one of those 'light' cereal bars) then weight loss MAY OR MAY NOT follow but that wouldn't be the object of the exercise would it? Getting healthy would be the object. You see, it's what is on the inside that counts. The outer layers are not always indicative of what is going on inside, and I'm a bit fed up of everyone assuming that being overweight means that a) you eat and eat and eat all the time, and b) that you are not healthy.

I fully accept that there are people out there who DO eat and eat and eat, and weigh far too much than is good for their poor bodies. If you eat six big bags of crisps every day, and a pizza or two every night, with extra added takeaways and snacks and sweets, well, yes, of course you are going to be fat.

Or are you?

I have seen many people eat like that who do not put on weight, but I cannot see the inside of their arteries. The same way that you cannot see the inside of mine, yet people assume that I am unhealthy, even though I don't eat anything akin to what many thin people do. Thin and Unhealthy exists, believe you me, just as Fat and Healthy does. Talking of Fat and Healthy, let me introduce you to another inspiration of mine, Ragen Chastain.

http://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/

Just watch her dance, read her words. I don't need to say anything more about her, not really.

The other thing that I have a problem with is all of these Help the Fat People programmes. You see, they always choose people who eat terribly badly. Even the Food Hospital, which is normally very good, the one time they showed a lady who genuinely had PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome which inhibits fertility and makes weight loss very difficult. I know. I've got it.) they chose a girl who ate nothing but white bread, crisps and cheap sausages. Once she started eating vegetables and fruit, cooking properly and cut out the processed foods, hey presto, she lost weight, the acne cleared and the PCOS allegedly got better. Why not choose someone who has PCOS, is overweight, yes, but eats right and yet still has all the problems? Now that is a challenge, but that doesn't make for a very interesting TV show, does it?

If you show a table, laden with goodies, pies, cakes, takeaways, all sorts of high sugar, highly processed foods, and have a glib, suave, THIN presenter saying "This is what you ate IN A WEEK!" and there you have just painted a picture for the nation. That is what all fat people are like. Must be, it's on the telly innit?

Fat people crying also seems to make for good TV as far as I can tell. Watching these poor people on display while they get shown what they 'truly' look like with a camera on a stick? "THIS is what your stomach and stretch marks look like from way down here!" Well, nobody looks good from that angle, not even Angelina would look good from there so I suspect it is a proper scare/repulse tactic.

They get put on exercise machines that terrify them, they are shown being bullied and screamed at in a truly horrifying Fat Camp. "Hell yeah!! Let's laugh at the chubbies getting what they deserve! After all, it's all their own fault for being lazy and greedy, right? All fat people are dumb and slow aren't they? Ha ha so funny. That girl's got great hair though, and he looks like a jolly chap. I'm sure they don't mind."

NOT SO.

Fat people are the same as thin people. We have fears and pains and hurts and terrors, just like anyone else. A heavy exterior doesn't make for a thick skin. Oh we laugh it off, and come back at the haters with a sharp, witty retort but it still knifes deep into us. Victimised for a thing that may not be our fault, but we are ALWAYS told that it is.

Are you ill? It'll get better if you lose weight.

Do you need that piece of cake?

Should you be eating that?

Losing weight would make you feel so much better! Surely you can see that?

You have asthma? Lose weight.

You have PCOS? Lose weight.

Lose weight first, and then we'll see about looking into the other stuff. No, really, we will.

Did your leg fall off? Oh I'm sure losing some weight would make you feel better.

If a fat person goes to the Dr, all the focus is on the weight, and not the actual illness. That is NOT the way it should be but it is, and many times we don't get taken seriously unless we raise merry hell.

I even got told by one consultant that he didn't understand why I was fat, his daughter had PCOS and she wasn't fat. Then he showed me a photo of her. Showing a photo of a beautiful, flawless, slim girl to a person who felt worthless anyway? Nice one.

Genes, baby. Genes. She had a very slim, very pretty, Asian mother. He was a fat, round Jewish guy so it could have gone either way, and she got the thin genes. Don't even get me started on this Gillian McKeith/Nigella Lawson comparison photo meme that's doing the internet rounds. The only physical difference between the two photos is that one is of a lady that got good genes and the other is a photo of one that didn't. Oh and one lady is all dolled up for an evening out, with make up and hair all done, whilst the other is in a photo taken after days in a jungle eating bugs and feeling sick. I might not agree with what she does, but damn, that was harsh and pointless.

I found his dietary advice to be non-existant. It amounted to "Take these fat loss pills, you eat too much." despite the fact that I had already managed to lose 4 stones, told him what I ate and STILL had all the physical problems that PCOS gives you. Which is why I was there. But apparently Xenical would make it all better. I did not let my insurance company pay his bill.

At least no-one has tried to tell me that my MS would get miraculously better if I lost weight. That would probably not go well for them.

Anyway. This has all gotten a bit too poor me for my liking, so I'll finish with what the real problem is.

Fat Hating is a trend that is alarming. Jamie Oliver, as much as some people dislike him, made it all about the health, and not about picking out just the fat kids. What Mrs Obama, and our own Mr Cameron are doing is, sadly, picking out the fat kids. The Fight Against Obesity is all very well, but what then happens to the thin kids? The ones who get missed, because they can't be unhealthy, they aren't fat so they must be doing just fine, right?

The answer to that is no. Thin children lacking in decent nutrition will suffer as much as a fat child lacking in decent nutrition. They can be fully fed at every meal and yet still lack the vitamins they need to keep their brains and bodies on track. We owe more of our appearance to our genes than to our diets but our health is dependent on a good diet. By that I mean a way of eating, not a diet as in that thing that thousands of us go on in January and give up in March.

Thanks to my genes, there was no way that I wasn't going to be this shape, need glasses and go grey prematurely. There was no escaping it. It's time to stop victimising the fat people because of their appearance, and start trying to work on how to make PEOPLE IN GENERAL more healthy. Fat, thin, or inbetween.

Making people feel that they are useless, and that their appearance, their very bodies are all wrong, and that they are a waste of space or useless or ugly unless they become thin, that is never going to be the right way to do things.

I'll say this now. Anyone says to me that nothing tastes as good as thin feels? They are going head first into a vat of Nutella.

EDIT:
Yes, an edit, for clarification. In case it wasn't clear - and I fully accept that it might not have been because, you know, RANT - by no means do I think that saying "Fat Acceptance!" when people cannot walk properly, or even breathe, is in any way proper, right or natural. If you cannot walk because your fat is in the way of your own knees, or your fat is actaully suffocating you, then you need serious help and assistance to fix it. How you got there I do not know, but I expect serious reeducation is needed.

Being the fattest woman or man ever is not an aim to aspire to. I will be honest and say that it repulses me. I'm sorry, but it does.When I've seen shows like 1/2 Ton Dad, I am both horrified that they got this way, and desperately sad for them too. I cannot imagine how they got there, or how they are going to get back to anything resembling 'normal'.

What I DO object to is people who are large, but functioning perfectly well, eating healthily and doing fine medically, being villified by the press and by the medical profession based purely on appearance. Size is not always an indicator of health. I have had one person close to me recently suffer a heart attack, and he was o n the low side of the BMI, ate well and still had blocked arteries. The Dr missed it. Well, he looked slim, yes? Judge a book by its cover, and you will forever miss what is going on inside.

Home made digestive biscuits

2012-01-09T15:08:00.001Z

I am a great fan of digestive biscuits. I always have been, especially with a nice chunk of cheese to accompany them. I will admit to dunking them in tea as well, but not when they have cheese on them of course. That would just be a waste of cheese. And tea. Neither of which should ever be wasted.

Hang on. I haven’t had any tea today. Wait right here will you? I won’t be long.

[the potter’s wheel interlude film goes here]

Right then.

I found this recipe a few weeks ago written up by Marianna over at Swirl and Scramble. http://swirlandscramble.blogspot.com/2010/01/homemade-digestive-biscuits.html

It was originally from Pascale Weeks, posted here: http://scally.typepad.com/cest_moi_qui_lai_fait/2006/01/digestive_biscu.html

I never got around to making it, because I usually get the Baking Urge early in the morning, and using the food processor to grind the oats is too loud a job to do at that time of day. So I kept forgetting about it. Until yesterday. It was the weekend, I was awake, husband was awake, I had all the ingredients and so off I went. For once I followed a recipe exactly.

They are utterly delicious. No they are not McVities, but they are a definite close runner up and they DUNK. I will say that I made them thicker than 3mm, because it was quite difficult to get the dough to spread out, but then that just makes for fewer but chunkier biscuits. You can roll it out under cling film, so I did that initially and then patted/pushed it out further by hand. It squishes together beautifully if there are any cracks, and it’s so easy to push the left over bits together so you can cut out some more.

It also occurs to me that if I add a bit more brown sugar, and only grind half the oats, they will essentially be HobNobs without the trans fats and corn syrup, or whatever it is they use to get you addicted these days. This does of course mean that I can make chocolate covered digestives and hobnobs, as the lovely Sarah from www.sarahbakes.co.uk did here:

http://sarahbakes.co.uk/?p=1130

I haven’t made Sarah’s recipe yet, but that’s only because I don’t have any wheatgerm in the house. There will be a forthcoming experiment, never fear.

Anyway, to the recipe!

Digestive Biscuits

100 grams wholegrain flour

100 grams porridge oats

1 teaspoon baking powder (I will cut this to 1/2 tsp next time)

50 grams brown sugar

100 grams salted butter, softened (I used Lurpak with Sea Salt, because it’s what I had in the fridge and it needed using)

2 tablespoons milk

Put the oats in a food processor and grind them until they take on a powdery texture.

Put them in a bowl, and add in all the other dry ingredients.

Mix in the butter with your hands, or a pastry mixer, or a fork – oh well, however you want really - until it becomes crumbly. I might try this in the food processor next time on a low speed.

Add the two tablespoons of milk. (I reckon Golden Syrup instead of milk would make them truly into HobNobs…)

Squish it all together into a big, flapjacky ball then wrap it in a plastic bag and out it in the fridge for 15 minutes. 20 would be okay too, but no longer else it goes rock hard.

Take it out of the fridge after the allotted time, and then roll it out on a lightly floured surface as much as you can, or just spread it out with your hands. It is quite sticky, but when you cut out the circles (I used a 6cm cutter) they do hold together. It’s quite a well behaved dough.

Place on a non stick baking tray and bake at 180C for 15 minutes. I put a non stick liner on the tray just in case and I set a timer. TOLD you I stuck to the recipe this time.

They are fabulous – and I really love the salt/sweet taste. If you want them sweeter, just add a little more sugar.

There is such a thing as beauty in commercial design.

2012-01-06T22:45:00.001Z

And this is it.

I love these designs, and the others across the range, so much, that I just sent an email to the company who came up with them for Morrisons. Yes, I know, I’m a sad old art student but they are so good.

People who buy the value ranges shouldn’t be made to feel less than anyone else, and some of those value ranges really are a very poor example of customer focussed design, pointing the focus back towards the Brand and The Company instead.

My email to Coley Porter-Bell.

I have just seen your designs on this site

http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2012/1/5/m-savers.html

and felt that I simply had to email you to congratulate you on a fantastic job.
So many other brands are BRAND and COMPANY focussed, and these designs are so totally not that. They are not about the Company, but about the product and the customer and I have to say, they are truly wonderful.
As as ex-design student of old, they almost made me tear up a little because they were so utterly perfect. Clean, beautiful lines, and lovely drawings. You even used a proper old pint mug! They relay such a feeling of warmth too.
Bravo to you all. Fabulous job. I will be finding a Morrison's, purely because I want some of your designs in my home. Plus, also, you know, Jam.
Pat yourselves on the back and have a big cookie each. Marvellous.

Bloody good show, Morrison's and Coley Porter-Bell. Credit where credit is definitely due.

EDIT 09/01/2012 – A Reply from Stephen Bell, Creative Director.

Dear Lisa,
Thank you so much for sending your email about our work for Morrisons M Savers range. I can't tell you how much it means to get such lovely feedback. Myself and the whole team here have worked incredibly hard on the range and are very proud of it.......interestingly your feed back pretty much summed up what we are trying to achieve with the designs.....real foodiness, a touch of 'modern retro' and of course pure and simple appeal. We hope that Morrisons customers have the same reaction you do.
Thank you for brightening up our morning and taking the time to comment. Our designers are delighted!
Kind regards
Stephen

Yay!

Mediaeval Mince Pies

2012-01-05T23:23:00.001Z

Seven years ago, I decided to have a go at making 'real' mincemeat. I saw it on a TV show and thought oooh yes. I love fruit and meat together so why not? I also detest most shop bought mincemeat so I thought making my own would make sense.

Thanks to a lovely lady called Barbara who transcribed the recipe from the River Cottage TV show for me I got started.

Here it is.

'Real' Mincemeat

1kg lamb mince
Generous slosh of apple cider brandy (I used a good cup’s worth)

Mix these together (making sure to break up the mince - as he says, you don't want mini hamburgers in the middle of the pies!)

1kg dark brown sugar
1/2 kg raisins ( I sub sultanas as I really don't like raisins)
1/2 kg diced Cox's apples
A cup and a half of suet
Mix these in to the mince

Then he added his personal touches:

1/2 cup of mixed peel (I chopped this as finely as I could, as I hate bits of peel)
1 tsp grated orange zest
1 tsp grated lemon zest
1 cup of chopped Medjool dates
4 heaped tsp mixed spice
2 tsp cinnamon
A good grate of nutmeg.

I also added in a cup of chopped glacé cherries.

Mix all this together really well, and leave for at least a week. I made some pies with it at the time and it was nice, then I packed it away in the fridge and, quite literally, forgot about it.

Seven years on and it’s STILL ABSOLUTELY FINE. I mixed in a good few tablespoons of dark rum as it did need more liquid, and then made Mediaeval Pies with it.

The Pastry by my friend Sue.

185g plain flour
95g butter
95g caster sugar
1 egg
30ml water (you will probably need much less than this - just use it to bind it together).

Mix the sugar and flour together, add the egg. Add the butter and work until it’s at the fine crumb stage. Bring together with the water.

I used these amounts:

370g plain flour
190g butter
190g caster sugar
1 egg
50 ml water

I will say that it made a very, very soft pastry, so I worked in more flour until it got to a rolling consistency then put it in the fridge overnight. It was a dream to roll out once it had warmed up a bit! Next time, FAR LESS WATER!

It is a very short pastry, almost like a shortbread in texture.

They ended up as flying saucer shapes because I didn’t have proper pie pans, and they are actually far easier to eat that way!

Apologies for the formatting here, I have no idea what’s going on!

For Cambridge people who are veggie/have allergies

2012-01-05T00:05:00.001Z

This is a heads up on where NOT to eat, from a friend of mine who, sadly, did and regretted it.

This is a very poor show, and certainly not what Customer Service is meant to be about! Allergies are not something to be laughed at, people don’t have them for fun. Would they have laughed and eye-rolled at someone with a severe nut allergy? Not for long, I suspect…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So, if you have allergies *do not* go to the Wok'n'Grill/ Coach and Horses in Cambridge, ditto if you are vegetarian.

I asked *specifically* if they had a veggie wok, and they told me they did, put my food in a sieve then put meat in a sieve on top of it. When I pointed this out, they rolled their eyes and I told them I had a severe shellfish allergy, another eye roll, they then took the same wok they had just fried oysters in, put a spoonful of water in it and swirled it around, then threw my (newly collected plate of food not covered in meat from the sieve) food in.

I asked *again* for a veggie wok and said I had allergies, and with more eyerolling they told me they had just thoroughly washed the wok - it still had pieces of food in it! They had one wok and two pots of what looked like water or soup that they just threw everything into without separating it in any way or making sure there was no cross contamination.

Had I not been paying attention as much as I was, I could have ended tonight in hospital or worse.

It was lovely seeing folks, but even though I ate only the veggie prepared food there (rather than the fresh stuff they tried to kill me with) I have a severe headache and nasty upset stomach, nausea etc. - all the symptoms I get when having eaten meat products, so I bet the rest wasn't separated properly either.

Yes, I am reporting them. This isn't just an annoyance, the shellfish thing is dangerous.”

East London Steak Company saves Christmas

2011-12-29T11:42:00.001Z

Well, okay, Christmas wasn’t in danger of being banned or anything, but I certainly had a lack of The Christmas Feeling. Having a husband with Norovirus will do that, certainly to him!

You see, we had a wonderful thing lurking in our fridge. It had arrived on the Tuesday and I was very excited to start Cooking the Big Meal. No, really, I was!

This is what we had. Look at that, all in its old fashioned brown paper-wrapped glory.

The packaging was fabulous, and beautifully done. I had a great time pulling out all the packages. There was a Christmas card too, and a recipe sheet! There may have been much squeaking, and then there was a moment of panic as I tried to work out where it would all go but I got that sorted out. There’s something terribly right and proper about a perfectly rectangular block of beef dripping wrapped in brown paper. All this for £45? I think I know what I shall be getting next year too.

Next…the unveiling.

THIS is what colour beef is meant to be, Supermarkets. THIS. With creamy, dense fat, the fat that actually surrounded the meat when it was on the animal, not a bit stuck on the top to add some hope of flavour to the hunk of bright red meat that you insist the customer wants. Only because you have brainwashed them over the years into believing that bright red with no fat is how meat should look, you silly, money-grabbing, quick profit people. Hopeless. If only you invested as much time and money into proper producers instead of mass produced blah…

Look at this piece of beef. It came with a card, so I knew where it was from, what breed, when it was slaughtered. It may not make much of a difference, but it’s information that I like to know.

The beauty of dry aged meat is that is lasts longer in the fridge. Our plan for Christmas Day dinner had to be put on hold due to the Outbreak, so back in the fridge the beef went.

On the 27th, Tex was well enough to countenance food. Out came the meat, and boy did it look and smell fabulous. It does smell strong, I won’t deny that. At first it is a bit of a shock but then you realise that that is how properly aged meat is meant to smell. There’s an almost toffee-like scent to it.

Next I painted the whole rib with dark French mustard, then stuck the beef rub that ELSC sent us, in the cutest little brown envelope, to the mustard.

Into the oven it went, at 200ºC (fan). 15 minutes at that temperature and oh my…the smells that were starting already! Then the oven went down to 160ºC and I cooked it for 25 minutes per pound. Yes, I realise that this is the timing for well done, but Tex prefers it that way and as this was to be the first Christmas thing he’d eaten, it was going to be the way he liked it. My bit was still pink though, as it turned out, even though the photos didn’t capture that.

Lovely meat! The second photo accidentally came out with soft focus and film star sparkles, but it deserved it.

I took it out of the oven. and wrapped it very well in foil so that it could rest properly. I didn’t even steal a tiny piece of the fat!

While it was resting, I cooked buttered cinnamon carrots, potatoes roasted in the beef fat (which is why they are so dark in places) and also made a very easy honey roast parsnip recipe that Lorraine Pascale did on her TV show. I will always do them that way from now on.

Peel and cut parsnips into small, evenly sized pieces. Stir fry in a little olive oil with a touch of salt until starting to turn golden brown, lower the heat as far as it will go, put the lid on so they steam cook though, then when soft, up the heat to crisp up the edges then drizzle with honey/maple syrup.

And that was dinner.

I can safely say that this was the best piece of beef that I have ever cooked. It didn’t disappoint in any way, even though it was well done. It still stayed tender, and juicy and absolutely flavourful. It has a rich taste to it, but not cloying at all. Very beefy, but not with that overly iron-rich, gamey flavour that some aged meat can have.

I still have the marrow bones, the gravy and the beef chipolatas in the freezer, because Tex really wasn’t up to a huge meal, so that’s something else to look forward to.

East London Steak Company, you have yourself a loyal follower.

http://www.eastlondonsteak.co.uk/

Spiced Apple Gammon

2011-12-28T18:28:00.001Z

Part of my usual cooking repertoire is ham, or gammon. As we are lucky enough to have a very good local butcher, I get it from them, and I usually buy an unsmoked slipper joint. I liked smoked, to be honest, but the general House consensus is that it can be too salty so I go with the unsmoked.

Guide to piggy cuts here: http://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/articles/the-meat-guide-bacon

I have bought a high quality, rare breed gammon joint before to try. Yes, I’m afraid I cheated on my butcher. I’m so sorry Mark. I hope you can forgive me.

I have to say it ended up being as dry as anything, despite me cooking it in exactly the same way that I always do, so I have returned to Mark the Butcher in good old Harold Hill, because he’s great. Mark is the kind of butcher that simply won’t stock something if he thinks it isn’t good enough for his customers. If he doesn’t have ribeye in stock, it’s because it was a) not good enough quality and b) far too high a price. A few weeks ago he stopped stocking oxtail because the price had gone up to higher than sirloin. Higher than sirloin steak. Can you imagine? Anyway, this is why we love him, and also because the meat that he stocks is always fabulous. Plus you get Cockney humour plus cooking advice when you go in, it’s great! This may seem like a blatant advert for them, but they are so worth it.

(Caring F & J, 112 Hilldene Avenue, Romford, RM3 8DT, 01708 373792 should you wish to visit)

Where was I? Oh yes, cooking gammon.

Because Husband has been ill over Christmas, I didn’t cook the gammon when I’d meant to, and we had no freezer space to fit it in as a whole piece, so Boxing Day I decided to just cook it off in the slow cooker, then at least it would be ready to slice for sandwiches when Tex felt better, plus it would fill the kitchen with Christmas smells. As I was feeling woefully lacking in anything Christmassy at all, I felt that this would be a good idea.

I had found some rope lights upstairs, so I brought them down, draped them over the back door out of the kitchen that we don’t use any more, and brought Christmas to me.

It really was a very simple procedure, but the result was just lovely.

1 x piece of gammon that will fit in your slow cooker

1 bottle Ringden Hall Farm apple juice, Spartan variety. (any pressed apple juice will do, or you can use sweet cider too)

2 cinnamon sticks

That’s it. I didn’t pre-soak the gammon, because I forgot, hence me using the sweeter apple juice. It needed nothing more than that.

I set the slow cooker to auto and just left it be for 3 hours, then turned the meat over and let it cook for another 3. Turned the heat off, and let the meat sit in the stock for another hour. Lifted it out, then wrapped it in foil to sit and cool overnight.

It was absolutely gorgeous, and I will definitely cook it this way next time. I probably wouldn’t use the stock for soup though, due to my not soaking it. It might just be too salty.

It went very well indeed with the Pain d’Epis!

Lorraine Pascale’s Pain d’Epis

2011-12-26T22:34:00.001Z

I have a confession to make. I cannot make bread. Anything to do with yeast based cookery seems to fox me completely, and I just don’t have that ‘touch’ that some people appear to. It tastes okay, but whenever I make bread it always seems very heavy and dense. I don’t mind it, not really, but after one slice you generally want a lie down and a bit of a nap. I also have an innate dislike of recipes that take too long and look like a lot of faff. It comes of not being able to really stand up for any substantial length of time. Lots of step is fine, so long as they are quick ones!

I was watching Lorraine Pascale’s Home Cooking Made Easy, and she made what seemed to be a stunningly simply loaf called Pain d’Epi. These loaves are usually shaped into an ear of corn, and look like this.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/15319/pain-d039epi-holidays

“I can make that!” I said to myself and then had to go out and buy the right flour before I could do it. Then I had to rewatch the show hurriedly before it disappeared off iPlayer, as stupid BBC decided not to put that recipe on their website.

I tried it today. My husband has been quite ill over Christmas, so I thought a nice loaf of proper, real bread would be a treat for him whilst still being a non-threatening food for his stomach. It’s worked incredibly well, despite some hiccoughs on my part when it stuck to the pan it was rising on, and had to be scraped off and reshaped. Oops.

Here be the recipe. Thank you Lorraine! I finally have an easy loaf for weekend scoffage, that doesn’t weigh everyone down.

Pain d’Epi (not quite, as I didn’t shape it in the end)

275g strong while bread flour

1 x sachet of dried yeast (I used Allinsons) the kind you add straight in to the flour.

1 tbs olive oil

1 tsp salt (I will probably cut this down to 1/2 next time)

175ml warm water

1/2 tsp sugar (my addition as I wasn’t sure how old the yeast was and wanted to give it a fighting chance)

Put the flour into a bowl.

Add the salt, yeast and sugar. Stir with a balloon whisk to air it a bit.

Add the water, and bring the mixture together with a knife, or with your fingers so it’s a ball of dough.

Flour the work top and knead the dough for ten minutes. Lorraine's way of kneading looks a bit like the wax on, wax off bit from Karate Kid and it really works. Push away with one hand, bring it back. Push away with the other hand, bring it back. It was far easier on my back so I could knead for longer.

The dough will become pliable and elastic. Really, it will. If the yeast is live, it will work. You have NO IDEA of the triumph I felt when the dough turned elastic.

Shape it into a long sausage shape, and place on an OILED or LINED baking sheet (I used a non stick baking liner which is a godsend that I got from Lakeland) and cover with oiled cling film.

Leave it to rise in a warm place for an hour. (I don’t have an airing cupboard so I just left the oven open for a bit while the dough rested on the hob)

After an hour it will have doubled. Yes, I was very surprised about this.

I took off the cling film, snipped a decoration in the top with some scissors, brushed it with olive oil and popped it into the oven at 200C for 1/2 an hour.

(Lorraine said to get the oven hot and then add some water to create a steamy environment. I forgot. SEE BBC? You should have put the recipe and method on the website!)

Then I squeaked a lot as it rose even more.

1/2 an hour later, and I had a lovely, dense crumbed but springy loaf resting on a cooling rack – and no-one was more surprised than me.

I served it up with some home cooked ham that I’d done in the slow cooker with apple juice and cinnamon.

Greek Homestyle Pork or Hirino Spithkasimo

2011-12-15T22:58:00.001Z

Now, before I start, I will say for the record that there is one sure fire way to annoy me good and proper, and that is to be a TV food show presenter who doesn't even attempt to say a Greek name but just takes the piss, even though the French and the Spanish names were attempted without fuss. Seriously, if you can’t say it, then don’t bother, use the English version - but don’t make a bunch of noises and then pull a face. Yes, Amanda Lamb, I am looking at you.

Anyway.

I saw this recipe on Market Kitchen, back in the heady days when Mediterranean food didn't just mean Italian and Spanish, it included many other countries, and it also meant that the utterly delectable Tonia Buxton was on the show a lot more. That lady is fabulous and, unlike many other celebs, answers her emails when you write to say thank you. Nigel Slater does too.

I watched Tonia cook this and then went straight out and bought the things to make it. I was NOT disappointed at all.

Easy, very few ingredients and a fabulous dish to bung in the oven and leave to cook away on its own when you’re busy off doing other things.

Greek style pork - Hirino spithkasimo

Ingredients

1kg shoulder of pork, cut into fist size pieces - I used leg, less fatty.
1kg Cyprus potatoes peeled and halved if very large
olive oil, for drizzling
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground cumin
3 onions, peeled and sliced lengthways
5 tomatoes (more if in season) sliced lengthways - I used a can of Italian chopped, as I had no fresh

Method

Put the pork and potatoes in a large earthenware dish/ovenproof casserole.

Pour a good drizzle of oil in the dish and mix around well. Add the spices and mix again.

Lay the onions and tomatoes over the top pour over a little more oil and season.

Cover with foil and cook in a hot oven (200C) for around 1 hour, then lower the heat to 180C and remove the foil and cook for another hour till browned. Keep an eye on it to ensure it doesn’t burn. (This is what the original recipe said, but I cooked it in a pot with a lid, and kept the lid on until the last half an hour.)

Serve straight from the dish with a rocket salad they said but I served it with green beans. I loathe rocket!

It’s great on the day, but even better the next. The mix of cumin and cinnamon is quite a Middle Eastern flavouring, but then Tonia is a Cypriot, and many of our dishes have that Middle Eastern influence. Even the language does. When I was trying to learn Greek, my Athenian teacher would often tell me off because I used the ‘wrong’ word.

Not wrong, just Cypriot.

Harry Eastwood’s Parsnip Vanilla Fudge

2011-11-23T19:10:00.001Z

Yes, yes, I know. Parsnip. That’s right, parsnip. That faux potato that lurks in a tray of roasties at Christmas, looking all golden and beguiling until you bite into it and realise…NOT A POTATO. I used to hate them with a passion. The only reason I tolerated them as a child was because I found the name funny. (Dad was a barber, therefore pa-snips made me laugh. I was 4, so sue me.)

Many, many years later my sister did buttered baked parsnips, cooked wrapped in foil, and much to my surprise I liked them. From then on, it seems that I couldn't get enough of them. It’s an odd thing, I know, but there we are. Anyway, since then, I have developed a fondness for the old tuber. Husband still calls them stealth potatoes, and wants nothing to do with them, so they’re all for me and Simon, which is fine.

I saw this recipe for fudge in Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache and thought “Oooh, fudge. What a faff though. Nah.” and passed it by. Then I saw it again this week, realised I had all the ingredients, and a LOT of free time (gissajob someone?) and thought “Might as well!”

So I did.

I will not say that it was straightforward, because I have never made fudge before and I was terribly scared of it ALL GOING WRONG so I was probably too timid with the heat the first time around, and it didn’t set properly. Tasted bloody lovely mind, but was like a very thick, sugary caramel sauce. That stuck to the non-stick parchment.

Eventually I scraped it OFF the non-stick (ha) parchment, back into a pan, and recooked it.

And here it is.

It has a sugared crunch to it. but then it melts in the mouth beautifully. Yes of course it does taste of parsnip – once you know that’s what it is – but if you don’t, as my friend Cat didn’t, it has a fruit overtone. I am, of course, now pondering variations, such as sweet potato and coconut, or butternut squash and cinnamon. Purple sweet potatoes would be fabulous!

Here be the ingredients:

200g peeled and cubed parsnip

450g caster sugar (I had half white and half golden)

30g unsalted butter

335g condensed milk

1/2 tsp salt (which OF COURSE I forgot)

1 vanilla pod, split lengthways and seeds scraped out (nowhere had one, so I used 1 tsp extract)

Equipment:

1 22cm square x 5cm deep brownie tin

A blender

A heatproof rubber spatula

A timer

An hour of peace and quiet (Harry’s words)

Line the base of the tin with baking parchment. Grease the parchment lightly. (I lined the whole thing because I was not in a trusting mood)

Put the cubed parsnip in a medium sized pan, cover with water, bring to the boil and boil for 8 minutes or until the parsnips are totally cooked through.

Drain, then whizz to a very fine paste in a blender. I used a stick blender because, well, that’s what I’ve got. Make sure there are no lumps. Unless you wants lumps of parsnip in your fudge of course.

Put all of the ingredients, including the parsnip puree, into a small saucepan (I only had a large one left) and put over a low heat.

HE’s words: “Stir with the spatula until the sugar and milk are well combined. Warm gently on the lowest possible heat until the sugar has completely dissolved and there are no gritty sand grains at the bottom or on the sides of the pan at all. This can take up to 15 minutes and it’s no good trying to rush it.

Stir at 1-2 minute intervals, just to make sure that the butter is melting and that everything is mixed in well. This stage is crucial to the success of the recipe and must be given the time it needs to get it there. Behaving aggressively with the mixture and forcing it to a premature boil will crystallise it – this is a pretty word for very ugly, bad-tempered, tantrum fudge.”

Once all the sugar grains have dissolved, turn up the heat a fraction (and I really do mean the minutest amount) and get ready to stir gently for the next 25 minutes exactly. (A timer is a really good idea here.)

Now I am happy to admit that whilst I did do this, I think that my heat was waaaay lower than Harry’s might have been because what follows here, did not happen. I’m writing it here though because it may well do for you, and also she describes what to do/what happens beautifully. I am forever grateful for that.

HE’s words: Make sure that you move your spatula continually over the entire base of the pan as well as into the corners in a patient but thorough motion. You can expect to hear a slight sizzle, which is where the sugar mixture has marginally overheated; it is perfectly healthy. If, on the other hand, you hear a big hiss (the likes of which you might expect from tugging hard on the tail of a cat), it’s definitely time to turn down the heat and be ashamed of your hastiness.

The sorts of sounds you should expect to hear when making fudge include; a soft thud from the large bubbles bursting lethargically at the surface, and the distant hissing song of the lazy fudge on the bottom of the pan when your spatula turns in its sleep.

The contents of the pan will gradually get more suntanned and you will know that you have arrived at your destination (in the glass elevator) when you reach a blonde butterscotch colour after the time is up. The texture at this point should be thick but not heavy.

At this stage, remove the fudge from the heat and beat for three minutes exactly, which will thicken the fudge and start to set it. If you find that it is becoming too heavy before the whole three minutes is up, stop beating – this means that it is ready.

Pour the fudge carefully into the prepared tin. It will be setting very fast at this stage, so it’s a good idea to have a palette knife to hand as well as the spatula. Pat the surface of the fudge down with the rubber end of the spatula to smooth the top. Set it aside for at least an hour to cool. Cut into 5cm squares and serve, or store in an airtight tin for up to 2 weeks.

Now. Mine did not set. Well, it set to a very thick, very sticky paste which was nigh on impossible to get off the paper, but I did it in the end with a certain amount of scraping with a spoon and a butter knife.

It went back into the pan, I gently warmed it to melt it down again, then brought it to a bubbling simmer until it darkened even more, (the narrative in my head at that point was “Set, ye bugger, burned bits can just be called toffee”) then poured it back into the re-prepped pan, and left it alone for a good few hours. It was sticky, and fudgy, but it did come free of the paper willingly.

I left it out overnight which dried it out a bit, and made it far easier to cut into pieces.

I can safely say that I will make this again, and that it is Very, Very, Tasty.

Thank you Harry!

Food Urchin Autumnal Supper Club

2011-10-16T18:23:00.003+01:00

It was a glorious autumn day. We had managed to get a good haul of ingredients on our lovely high street for not very many pennies, the sun was shining and we’d had bacon sandwiches for breakfast to fortify us for the trek ahead. We were going to look for The Food Urchin.

Now, you may not know of The Food Urchin. He is an elusive creature, venturing out only to work and forage for food to feed his little family. The Food Urchin young are highly inquisitive and voracious eaters, and so need to be fed tasty food to keep them satisfied. To this end, you can often find the Food Urchin in farm shops, and at food fairs, where the best produce can be gathered, but you have to watch from a distance or the shy Urchin will take flight, bolting home with the quickness of a gazelle to take refuge in this lair or, as we know it, The Kitchen.

On rare occasions, the Food Urchin will develop a sociable streak, for instance when there is an overabundance of a kill. Then others from outside of the lair will be invited in to share. This is a time where barriers are down, and many get the chance to participate. To be invited in is a momentous occasion, and one which I will document for you here because, yes, I was one of the lucky few that got to glimpse the Food Urchin not once, but twice in his home habitat.

It was a cold night, but the lair was warm and welcoming. Empty at first, so we were a little wary just in case we spooked the Food Urchin and his attractive mate, known as the Mrs Food Urchin. We had brought offerings with us, to reassure the Urchins and this seemed to do the trick. We had no wish to spook these gentle creatures, and it seemed our gifts of cider and chutney were well received.

Here endeth the David Attenborough section because I don’t think I can work a pork roast and granita in there without serious effort, and I haven’t the brainspoons for that kind of cleverness today.

As ever, Danny and Holly proved the most gracious of hosts. I feel like I’m visiting friends I’ve known for years, rather than this being only the second time we’ve met. The tables were laid, the food was cooking and there, proud and resplendent with flour was Veronica’s Baby.

Veronica, Danny’s sourdough starter, had not had a good week and at one point her likely demise was lamented across the Twitterverse. However, she rallied at the last minute, rallied in a superb fashion, and there on the counter as result of her labours, was the final result.

The smell was fabulous, the eating of it even better. The darker loaf was made with a smoked malt flour and that brought with it a deep, nutty flavour and a tight crumb. The sourdough loaf was….well, just gorgeous. A dense, chewy crust and a most wonderful springy insides. Soft to eat, but with a bouncy texture. I now want the recipe, of course. And some of that smoked flour.

The darker one would be just the thing for a ham and chutney sandwich, the sourdough perfect just on its own with butter. I don’t quite know how we didn’t just fall into the bread basket and eat it all there and then.

Next came the starters. A beautiful, warm seasonal salad of Pheasant, Poached Pear, Pomegranates and Hazelnuts. I adored the dressing, which I think was an elderflower or elderberry one? Help me out, Danny mate.

Juicy pheasant, soft leaves, flavourful pear and crunchy hazelnuts. A triumph of tastes and textures. I ate all of mine and some of Tex’s too.

We ate more bread. We had a rest and talked to our lovely table companions. Then came….The Main Course. Cue dramatic music if you please.

Pork Chop Roast with Cox's Apples, Crispy Sage and Cider Gravy, with Mashed Allotment Spuds and Steamed Greens.

It was So. Damned. Good. Perfect gravy, meltingly tender meat, extra crackling on the side – I could have eaten this twice and still asked for more. I loved the fried sage leaves, especially when mixed with the creamy mash. I think we all piled into it with great gusto.

I admit that I adore pork fat so I will have you know that I fought every temptation going not to nick the stuff off other peoples’ plates. I behaved. I really did.

Then a rest, and much more conversation, plus a fair bit of idle wondering what the other room was drinking because it was pretty raucous in there. We stayed safely where we are. They sounded scary.

A palate cleanser of Quince Granita came next and can I just say that this…this was a revelation. I have never eaten quince before, and this little glass of fluffy, perfumed ice crystals, slowly melting into pale pinky/tangerine juice may have made me an addict. It was so fresh, light and a very lovely, clean thing to eat.

We had a bit of a rest at this point, and talk turned to, well, it turned to all sorts of things to be honest. We did have very engaging dinner companions for the evening.

With the sorbet providing a break in the rich food proceedings, naturally the dessert that followed was actually made of richness.

Baked Blackberry and Sticky Stem Ginger Pudding with Golden Syrup and Cream.

There. That deserved a line all to itself didn’t it? And here it is.

I wanted to get a proper close up but I’m sorry, I was actually too busy eating this mound of amazingness. Soft, light sponge, with almost crystallised edges around the base – I’m assuming some golden syrup action there – with a gorgeously fruity, jammy hit of blackberry. Yes, I had cream and YES I had two helpings because it was that damned good.

We sat, sated, and contemplated our stomachs for a bit.

At this point, sadly, outside influences meant that Tex and I had to depart in a bit of a hurry but I have it on good authority that much talking was had and much wine was drunk. See The Food Urchin’s Twitter status update of “why o why o why o why?” from earlier today.

Once again, Food Urchin and Mrs Food Urchin gave us a great time. One day, I hope to be able to cook dinner for them too, but no sirree bob I am NOT doing a supper club. Not until I move the extra house’s worth of Stuff out of this house at least!

Many thanks to Danny and Holly. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.

La Gelatiera and Byron

2011-10-11T22:54:00.001+01:00

Okay, I admit it. I’ve worked in Covent Garden for three years now and I have never, ever been into Byron. I know, I know, very poor of me but I am not a great burger person, generally, and plus I’m always walking past on the way to somewhere else with no time to stop.

Tonight was different.

MissyKate and I had spent a very lovely early evening sitting in La Gelatiera in New Row, eating what felt like our weight in gelato. I tried Balsamic, which was gorgeously smooth, slightly sweet and right at the end of your tastebuds hits you with a whack of savoury out of nowhere.

Kate had dark Chocolate Sorbet and Belgian Chocolate gelato – in the same tub the slattern – and I chose Salted Caramel. This is no ordinary ice cream. It’s smooth and creamy and very rich, seriously sinful in taste. I have never, ever had a chocolate sorbet that good.

We ogled the gelato selection, we ogled the gelato sandwiches in the freezer, we ogled the biscuits and the cakes and the fabulous selection of goodies that seemed to be in every corner.

Once we’d eaten our choices, and each tried some of the other’s choice, and then gasbagged for a very long time whilst the extremely patient man behind the counter smiled at us, we bid the gelato palace farewell.

La Gelatiera, 27 New Row, Covent Garden, London WC2N 4LA, UK
Telephone (0)207 836 9559 | info@lagelatiera.co.uk

We wandered along back up towards The Strand, via a cupcake shop (Cupcake Couture I think) which has most excellent pavement graffiti outside.

A peanut butter and jelly one was purchased, and Kate walked away with it in an incredibly pretty yellow box.

On the spur of the moment we decided that dinner was needed. Actual, substantial, non-sugar based food.

“COURGETTE FRIES!” we cried. “TO BYRON BURGER!” and away we ran to Wellington Street, to the corner of Covent Garden that is a haven of beef. Sophie’s Steakhouse on one corner, and Byron’s on the other. We entered the warm, beefy smelling portals of Byron’s, feeling more and more hungry the further we went.

The smell is fabulous. There’s a tang of mustard and ketchup in the air, overlaid with smoke from the grills. A wave of heat hits you, and then one of the uber cute, uber smiley staff greeted us and we were led, smiling, to our table.

We knew what we wanted. Courgette fries and pure, unadulterated burger. So that was what we had. Two classic burgers and two portions of fries. Our waiter was quite the most hot waiter I have seen in a long time. So very hot that we feel we should mention it. Tattoos, a soft Irish accent, a big smile and…and…he was softly singing while he cleared tables. What more could two sugar fuelled ladies want?

Anyway, moving on.

To quote the Byron menu: “ All our hamburgers are cooked medium unless otherwise requested and served with lettuce, tomato, red onion, pickle and mayonnaise.” and they really are medium. Perfectly so.

Ohhh the meat was soft, and pink but with perfect chargrilled flavours and a really deep, savoury hit of moo. Mine was so well built it even sat up on its own to have its photo taken. Look!

Then it fell over and I ate it, with gusto, American yellow and ketchup. It was exactly what we wanted. Now those courgette fries. Those wonderful, heavenly, crispy, salty, battered sticks of tasty vegetable made zingy and tongue-tingling. I could have eaten just a plate of those alone.

All in all, fabulous food, lovely staff and a top atmosphere. Including drinks the bill was £21.

Go, and go soon. You never know, the lovely Irish smiley boy might be there.

Byron, 33-35 Wellington Street, London, WC2E 7BN - Telephone 020 7420 9850

Loving Hut, Edgware

2011-10-10T23:15:00.002+01:00

A few weeks ago, I was wandering along Edgware high street with Lovely Jane, in search of food. We were heading along Station Road, vaguely towards Izgara, a fabulous Turkish place, as we have been there before and have never been disappointed with the food. I say ‘vaguely’ as we started from Sainsbury’s car park and thought we’d check out what else there was on the way to Izgara just in case. We saw all sorts during our leisurely saunter – pizza place, Chinese buffet, Nando’s (there’s always a Nando’s right?) but then Jane mentioned what used to be Mr Mann’s. It’s a purely vegan Asian restaurant with a great value for money buffet, a limited eat as much as you like menu, and an a la carte menu, filled to the brim with vegan dim sum and wonderful spicy, noodly dishes. Jane is always happy to go to places that offer only a small vegetarian selection, but this time I wanted to go somewhere that meant she could eat the whole darned menu if she chose to and not have to worry.

It is now called Loving Hut, and is like something out of Space 1999 meets Akira. I LOVE IT.

The staff are very friendly, the atmosphere is nice – and they do not hassle you at all, even if you are an odd girl taking lots of photos with her phone – and the food is very good indeed. I like the fact that it is all vegan. This means that friends of mine can go and eat without any problems at all, which relaxes me, and the food really is very good indeed. I’m a fairly confirmed carnivore and this didn't leave me ‘missing meat’ in any way at all. In fact, it made me want to go back and eat lots of their delicious food to find out more about it. It’s also a great place for Jewish people to eat, as there is no chance at all of the meat/dairy cross-contamination. I imagine that this restaurant being placed in Edgware isn’t just a happy accident.

Onto the food. We went for the Eat As Much As You Like menu, which I think was £12.99 per person. They only allow you to order two dishes each at a time, which is very sensible, and they also have a lovely sentence on the menu that says “Cherish the food. Do not waste food.”

We went for veggie dumplings, ‘pork’ balls in batter, sesame toasts and tofu with salt and chilli for our starters.

I actually preferred these sesame toasts to the ‘usual’ ones. I thought they had much more flavour and a better texture. The soy and chilli dip had a dark, smoky hint to it and went perfectly with the tofu which, even though it was deep fried, was not at all greasy. Once you get used to the texture of the ‘meat’ in the ‘pork’ balls, it’s all good. I think they use gluten chunks or soya pieces, so it’s actually very soft. It didn’t take me long to get used to it though! Next time I want to concentrate solely on the dim dum because just look at the menu.

http://edgware.lovinghut.co.uk/uk-edgeware-en/menu/

Next up were the mains.

The best fried rice I have ever eaten, with spring onion scattered liberally through it, but not so much that it overpowered the rice. Light and fresh , with not a hint of oiliness or heaviness. We got brought a Szechuan dish by mistake, which they apologised profusely for and let us have for free. It was sooo spicy that we had to take that very slowly but the flavours…oh they were so good and zingy that we didn’t really want to stop eating. I had to give up after a while though, as I am a wuss. Heed the chilli warnings on the menu for they do not lie.

My barbecue ‘beef’ was a revelation. Sticky, sweet and smoky but crisped edges and soft insides. If I could choose only one dish, it would be that. Jane’s Thai Green Curry was gorgeous. Okay, so I might choose that as well. Um.

Creamy and coconutty but with a little lilt of spice to cut through the creaminess. The aubergine in it was soft and silky, a pleasure to eat. Many places simply cannot cook aubergine right, but this, this was heaven.

We had broccoli cooked with ginger as a side and that was such a surprise to me. I don’t like ginger at all but this…the freshness just worked, and sharing the dish was very difficult! The next time I visited I had it fried with garlic and that was equally yummy, but on balance I actually prefer the gingered version.

After all this food we were getting dangerously full, but after a small excursion by yours truly to photograph the dessert bar and buffet decor (yes, those are plastic cucumbers and aubergines)

we had just enough room to share a dessert. We got ourselves the last slice of home made blueberry cheesecake. Okay, maybe I should write ‘cheese’cake but anyway. Dense, fudgy, sweet, cool and creamy. It was absolutely luscious. Just as well it was the last slice else we’d have eaten even more and probably burst. The mum and daughter who work in the restaurant make all the cakes but because Mum was away, there was no more cheesecake to be had. As I say, probably just as well!

All of this spicy, zingy, mouth-tingling wonderfulness came to under £30 including the coconut and pineapple drinks we had. I could happily eat there again and again and you know what? I think I will. It was almost like a breath of fresh air. I’m fairly sure my arteries thanked me, at least until just before the cheesecake.

Loving Hut, 236 Station Road, Edgware, Middlesex, HA8 7AU, Tel: 0208 905 3033

Green Tomato Chutney and why I love Nigel Slater

2011-09-25T21:37:00.001+01:00

I appear to be on a roll with the blogging. This is, truth be told, the first time that I have actually had the chance to sit down and write things out. Life has been fairly hectic of late, but I have done an awful lot of cooking – and an awful lot of eating out at restaurants!

The one thing that hasn’t gone so well this year is the garden. To be specific, my tomato plants. The plants were gifted to me by one of my managers, and I looked after them carefully. The weather, however, decided not to cooperate. At one point the poor things looked like they had the dreaded blight, and no-one wants that. It was touch and go as to whether they needed to be binned, but upon further investigation it seemed that, for once, blight was not to blame. Damp weather was. Hardly any sun, quite high humidity and there you have poor, sad, yellowing plants with black blotches on the leaves. After some consultation with my manager, I stripped off as many of the damaged leaves as I could, fed the plants ferociously, and hoped. The weather didn’t really perk up much, so I ended up with a lot of green fruit. My poor pots have also been invaded by armies of slugs this year, and I lost a lot of what ripe fruit I had to those slimy devils. Around the 9th of September, when it seemed that Autumn had swept her way into Essex trailing brown leaves, mists and gusts of wind in her skirts, I decided that chutney was really the only way to preserve what fruit I had left. Armed with rubber gloves, and a determined face, I wrestled the precious fruit away from the maws of juicy-looking well fed gastropods.

I ended up with around a kilo of green tomatoes and a few red ones. I set some of the green ones to ripen on the windowsill

and then I did a web search for small batch chutney recipes. The internet did not fail me, in fact it led me straight to my beloved Nigel Slater where I read these words:

“I tend not to make gallons of chutney or jam or marmalade, but prefer to make smaller quantities, a couple of jars at a time.”

And that, dear reader, is why I love that man. Because I had a fairly small amount of tomatoes and only four jars. Thank you Nigel, you saved me again. (It’s not the only reason, obviously, Nigel’s writings just make so much sense.)

So. The tomatoes were prepped

I rummaged in cupboards and found ingredients, hoiked out The Big Pan and off I went. I was a little nervous and kept faffing about. My Nan used to make hundreds of jars of chutney every year – green bean, apple, onion and beetroot, green tomato – so I was used to a kitchen overflowing with produce and a process that took days. I was absolutely delighted to find that it all went in one pot, and I could leave it on its own to simmer.

The pan of lovely things:

The recipe from the website:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/04/nigel-slater-green-tomato-recipes

And my recipe. Yes, I tweaked as usual because I was using what I had.

1 kg green tomatoes, halved (will quarter them next time)

1 cup tiny cherry tomatoes, halved

400g white onions, roughly chopped

90g sultanas

150g dark muscovado sugar

150g Demerara sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp yellow mustard seeds

300ml white spiced Vinney vinegar

Put the green fruit, together with the onions, into a large stainless steel or enamelled pan with the sultanas, sugar, cinnamon, salt, mustard seeds and vinegar.

Bring to the boil, turn down the heat and leave to simmer for an hour, giving the occasional stir to reduce the risk of the chutney sticking.

Add the ripe tomatoes and continue to simmer until thickened. This took about 2 hours for mine, as the tomatoes threw out an awful lot of liquid. I also had to squash the tomatoes down a lot as green San Marzanos seem to be incredibly resistant to cooking down, those little Italian rascals.

Spoon into sterilized* jars and seal.

Yes, I know I said I have four jars, but three photographs better.

Thank you Mr Slater! Now all I have to do is wait a few months and then, cheese and chutney sandwich, you are mine.

*I sterilise my jars by running them through the dishwasher on 65º and then baking them in the oven for 10 minutes to dry them out thoroughly. A seal can be achieved by running the full jars through the dishwasher again on 65º. It’s a lot easier than dealing with jars and boiling water!

Thank you Harry Eastwood.

2011-09-25T18:04:00.002+01:00

I have a beautiful cookbook. It is a treasure trove of stunningly written baking recipes, and they all utilise the wonderful abundance of vegetables. Now, before anyone turns up their nose, can we all remember a time when carrot cake was thought of as weird and not-quite-wonderful? I know I can, but now it is such a part of our dessert scene that most people actually forget that it has carrot in it, focussing instead on the lightly spiced crumb or the creamy topping.

So. This book is about baking gorgeously naughty cakes made with vegetables but it really takes it that much further. Each vegetable is used because it imparts a particular quality to the cake or scone made. Butternut squash gives body, aubergine a soft silkiness. Harry has written has little headings for each recipe.

Lemon and Lavender Drizzle Cake
Lemon and Lavender might be the flavours of Provence, but this is an English summer garden with the tinkling of china cups and saucers, the creaking of wicker furniture, and hats like straw mushrooms. (pretending it's still 1912.)

Pistachio Chocolate Cake
Courgette and chocolate are an unlikely match, yet they are strangely made for one another since they combine sensible shoes with dark flashing eyes. As ever, Courgette has pre-booked the taxi at the end of the night to take Chocolate home. And Pistachio stands for Party.

Plum Pudding
I don't like Christmas Pudding. Its ominous countenance makes me sit up straight and mind my manners when it's brought in. Instead, the ingredients in this pudding are mellowed by a touch of Jamaican Calypso music and a dose of rum. This pudding is lighter, swings her hips when she walks, but still provokes the tingle of Christmas in the air.

This lovely book inspires, and I admit to dipping into it every now and again simply because it is so pretty to look at.

Last week I made the American Vanilla Cupcakes. They use finely grated courgette and are very light, very sweet but even though the recipe absolutely works, they didn't quite hit the spot for me. They were almost too eggy, but then again I have a bit of Thing about too much egg in recipes. I will try them again, but use some ground almonds next time to give them a little more body. However, not one to be put off, I decided to try again today and found a recipe for Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cupcakes. I had most of the ingredients, but I did have to make a few tweaks to make up for the things I didn't have.

They worked. Oh, they SO worked. So much so that I got very excited about blogging them so that other people can make them too. The cakes are that good that they do not need any icing. I will try a batch with the icing at some point but these are delicious, all on their nutty lonesome. Without further ado, the recipe. And a picture of grated butternut squash because it’s pretty.

Harry Eastwood’s Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cupcakes

100g unsalted peanuts (I used salted as it’s what I had but it works. Salt and sweet!)

3 medium free range eggs

200g light Muscovado sugar (I used 100g dark Muscovado and 100g golden caster)

200g peeled and finely grated butternut squash. (Yes, really. Squash.)

100g white rice flour

40g best quality cocoa (I used Green and Blacks)

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt (I only used an 1/8 as there was salt on the peanuts)

1 tsp cinnamon (my addition)

1/2 tsp mixed spice (my addition)

1 tsp vanilla extract (my addition)

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350F/Gas 4 and line a 12 tin muffin pan with paper cases.

Blitz the peanuts in a food processor until finely ground. I then pounded them in a pestle and mortar to get them to a fine powder. Set aside.

Whisk the eggs and sugars for 5 minutes until pale coffee coloured and fluffy.

Next, whisk in the grated squash, then the flour, cocoa powder, salt, spices, baking powder, extract and ground peanuts. I used a spatula to make sure everything was combined.

Spoon the mixture into paper case lined muffin tins until they are 4/5 full.

Bake in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes.

Take them out of the oven and leave to cool completely before icing them.

Icing (I did not do this, which is why there are no photos of iced cakes.)

60g smooth peanut butter

2 tbs golden icing sugar, sieved

2 tbsp cocoa powder

pinch salt

5 tbsp boiling water

Mix the peanut butter, icing sugar, cocoa powder and salt with the back of a spoon to form a paste. Next, slowly and very gently incorporate the boiling water with a balloon whisk, one spoonful at a time. You will end up with a smooth and delicious paste. Ice the cupcakes when completely cold.

They rise beautifully, and they taste gorgeous. Slightly salty, sweet but with a caramel hint from the dark sugar. The peanuts are there, but not overwhelming – even though I am tempted next time to put just a wee blob of peanut butter in the middle. Or YE GODS Nutella.

The words addictive and moreish can definitely be applied here.

Albert’s Table, South Croydon.

2011-09-24T22:01:00.001+01:00

I know everyone is saying “Croydon??” but bear with me on this one, okay?

At the beginning of September, Simon and I decided to go out for our anniversary dinner as we hadn’t managed to go on the actual day due to Life happening. Simon had been to Albert’s Table before, and said that we really, really had to go. Now, I am not one to argue with said chap about this sort of thing, because he does love his food so as soon as we hit East Croydon station, we hopped on a bus down to Restaurant Row. It is known as that because it is stuffed with restaurants, not all of whom last the year – or even the month in some cases – because there are simply so many of them. They have to be absolutely outstanding to last, and it is testament to Albert’s Table that it has been there for two years.

Where was I? Oh yes. We got to Albert’s at 6.30pm, but the sign on the door said ‘Closed’, so we pootled up and down the road, looking at what else was there. The Malcolm John restaurant, Fish and Grill, looked very nice, so we added that to the list of places to try at a later date, and then noticed that Albert’s had changed the sign, so we did the World’s Most Nonchalant Saunter across the road and tried to beat each other in through the door.

We didn't have a reservation, but they took pity on two poor souls standing in their soon-to-be-full restaurant looking hungry and smiling hopefully, and seated us with no problem at all.

The place is immaculate. A long room, with pale mushroom coloured walls, and elegant, comfortable seating. The tables are spaced out properly, so you don’t accidentally have your elbow in your neighbour’s soup when you stop for a breather between courses. Nor do you get to overhear the gossip from the next table, which was a problem I have had with Carluccio’s in Covent Garden. I believe I actually joined in with one conversation when they couldn't work out the menu and another when the chap was having girl trouble. Yes, the tables really were that close and yes, I may have written A Letter about it.

Albert’s has got the table distribution just right. Far enough away that nothing is intrusive, but close enough so that you can see what the next table’s food looks like, and add that to the list of Things I Want To Try Next Time, and there were a lot of things I Want to Try Next Time, because there will be a next time, of this we are both certain.

The photos on this post are a combination from my camera phone and Simon’s actual proper camera. Simon’s review is here:

http://d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com/1307705.html#comments

He was much faster at getting it written up than me!

It took us a terribly long time to decide what we wanted to order. Luckily there was lovely, warm freshly baked bread and golden butter to keep us sustained. This is a sultana and walnut roll. There were also sourdough ones and spelt ones. I think we had one of each, just to check you understand.

It isn’t a huge menu, but everything just looks so good. In the end I did my usual method of menu whittling, which is to choose things that I know I won’t cook at home. My first course was a Twice Baked Keen’s Cheddar soufflé with green beans and hazelnut oil. Simon chose a plate of deep fried sprats, with watercress and tartare sauce.

My soufflé was utterly gorgeous. It looked like a mini Yorkshire pudding, the outside was so golden, but the inside was warm, yielding and beautifully creamy. The beans were crisp with a nice squeak to them, properly cooked. I was pretty much speechless until I’d finished it, except to go “Mmm! Try it!” at Simon.

I think it is fair to say that Simon very much enjoyed his starter too.

There was a decent wait between the starter and the main, and that is just as well because my main course was incredibly filling, not to mention absolutely gorgeous. Roast loin of Hereford beef, with ceps and a mini ‘cottage pie’ on buttered kale is what it said on the menu but that seriously undersells a magnificent dish. The beef was nigh on perfect, and paired with the almost meaty flavour of the ceps it was mouthful after mouthful of loveliness. The cottage pie was actually a mound of the richest minced beef I have eaten in a long time. Full flavoured, with a very winey depth to it, crowned with a delicate halo of crisped wafer thin potato slices. It sat on a bed of buttered kale which I ate all of, even though I don’t usually like kale at all. There was a mushroom reduction also on the plate that was so thick and velvety it looked like swirls of mustard. I honestly could not have asked for anything more from a plate of food.

I quite liked the addition on the menu of “If you like your beef well done, we recommend ordering braised featherblade of local Hereford beef.” because to cook this beef to well done would have been an utter crime against cowkind. I experienced Food Joy.

Simon chose Cornish grey mullet and brown shrimps, with fresh linguini, fennel, artichokes and green herb salsa. I couldn’t spot any artichokes, and the dish had ruby red beetroot pieces on it, so they may have been a substitution. The fish was perfectly cooked, moist inside with a crisped skin, and the vegetable base on which it sat was fresh and light.

We definitely had to sit and wait a decent amount of time before dessert was even thought about, but it was a special night and, darn it, we were going to have pudding.

I had a plum and apricot tart which was almost like a Bakewell tart in texture. Very light, with buttery, crumbly pastry and served with a generous spoonful of proper clotted cream. The kind of cream that sticks to your spoon. I apologise for the quality of the photo, but it had become quite dark by the time dessert rolled around and, well, I was in a hurry to eat my pud. It was delicious.

Simon’s dessert was spectacular, both in looks and in taste.

The chocolate used was bitter, so while the dish was rich, it wasn’t sickly and the hint of orange throughout lifted it perfectly. I know what I’m having next time! That second photograph made Facebook and Twitter drool. Yes, I posted from the table. No I have no shame.

To borrow Simon’s words: “I went for the chocolate option - described on the menu as "warm chocolate fondant and tart". Which should win some kind of reward for understatement. Somehow, they'd managed to achieve a chocolate dessert plate which wasn't actually particularly sweet (allowing for the vanilla ice-cream - which was very simple), although it was very rich. A dark, bitter, chocolate orange chocolate tart on very thin pastry, accompanying a rich, unctuous fondant, spilling chocolate sauce in a slow, sticky flood when the casing was broken open. And yes, it was definitely delicious. (And also hard to photograph - light just got stuck!)”

Lovely. All of it was absolutely lovely. The staff, the venue, the ambience, the food, even the toilets were absolutely top notch. They let us sit and talk for nearly two hours after we’d finished eating, and never bothered us once, apart from to ask if we were okay and to bring us the coffee. The coffee, by the way, is also excellent, as was the dish of mini handmade truffles that they bring with it. 2 dark chocolate, and 2 soft creamed coconut.

Would I go again? You bet I would. And so would Jay Rayner. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/09/jay-rayner-alberts-table-croydon

Albert’s Table, 49b/c South End, Croydon (020 8680 2010)

http://www.albertstable.co.uk/

Kedgeree for tea!

2011-09-14T23:39:00.001+01:00

I had a friend coming for dinner this evening, and I wanted to make something warming and hearty. I was wracking my brains as to what I could do, and then I remembered that I had two pieces of beautiful smoked haddock in the freezer that needed eating. I always have rice, I always have eggs and I ALWAYS have butter so the idea of kedgeree was born.

I had bought the haddock from the Fish Man who appears at our local farm shop – Calcott Hall farm if anyone would like to know - every so often, and then stuck them in the freezer and did what everyone usually does - forgot about them.

Not tonight. Tonight they were going to be the star of the show, and deservedly so. Smokey, but not overly so, pearlescent white – none of the bright yellow garishness here – and incredibly meaty. I picked up some eggs on the way home and then once home it was straight into the kitchen. It had been a bit of a journey to get to my house, as the traffic in London was horrendous, thanks to roadworks on the number 23 bus route, so by the time I got in I was ravenous. Cue a trip to the freezer to get the fish, which I then set to defrost in the microwave. I found a recipe on the internet here: http://www.scottishrecipes.co.uk/kedgeree.htm, and followed it almost to the letter. I said almost.

350g basmati rice
2 smoked haddocks (need to crumble it)
50g butter
4 hard boiled eggs
1 teaspoon of curry paste
4 chopped shallots
750mls stock (I used a kosher chicken consommé mix)

Chop the shallots, and soften them in the butter. Stir in the curry paste and mix well.

Set the haddock to simmer in water until it flakes easily. Skin it, and check for bones, then flake. Set aside.

Add the rice to the pan, and coat with the buttery, spicy shallot mixture.

Add the stock, mix well, and leave to simmer for about 15 minutes.

(Now. I had used too much of the consommé powder, so when I checked it the stock thickened up and I panicked. I added a touch more water, stirred it well and then thought sod it, it’ll be like congee but it will taste awesome.)

When the rice is nearly done, add in the flaked smoked haddock, except for the bits you have both already eaten whilst flaking said fish. Cover the pot with a teatowel, then jam on the lid. It helps the rice to steam.

After another ten minutes on a low heat, take off the lid et voila! The rice should be cooked, the fish should be tender and there you have your Kedgeree. I served it with hardboiled eggs and we slumped on the sofa making om nom nom noises until it was gone.

My lovely friend has been sent home with a box full of leftovers for lunch. This has made her happy, which makes me happy.

Chocolate Cherry Cake for a hardworking husband

2011-08-21T15:38:00.001+01:00

My poor Tall and Handsome Husband has been working dreadfully hard of late. He got home at way past 1am last Friday and he had to work on Saturday just gone as well. It’s just not right having to go to work on a Saturday after working a full week. As I waved him goodbye at 8.30am I thought “There’s a man who deserves a cake.” I’d already bought some big, fat British cherries from Marks & Spencer on Friday as they had a half price sale on selected fruit, so I went to the shops and got a few more to add to the pile.

I wasn’t sure what cake to choose first of all, I just wanted a cake with cherries in it. I looked at Madeira cake recipes, but I also wanted cinnamon in there because Tex likes that very much. I looked at Marble Cake but that wasn't right and then...Chocolate Cake! Yes, that would do nicely but what kind?

After a few internet searches, most of which led me to American sites with cakes seemingly made entirely of sugar with a few added cherries, it slowly dawned on me that I was sitting right next to a pile of cookery books. Doh!

I looked in Rachel Allen’s ‘Bake’ and there it was. A plain and simple recipe for a chocolate cake using melted chocolate and cocoa. I had all the ingredients so off I went.

De-pipping the cherries was laborious, but fun. The cherries were a bit too big for the de-stoner, so they splattered and my sink - and my hands – ended up looking like there had been an awful massacre in my kitchen. Dark purple cherry juice was all over the place, but the cherries were finally rendered pipless. They went into the freezer while I made up the cake part, as a friend had told me that if you partially freeze them, they don’t sink in the batter.

The recipe is for a cake cooked in two sandwich tins. I, of course, being the contrary mortal that I am, didn't want to do a layer cake, so there was a flurry of checking on Twitter about baking a two tin cake in a single, deeper tin, (thank you @josordini and @sarahbakes_uk) then there was the melting of chocolate, creaming of butter and sugar, the adding of eggs and the folding in of flour. Then the cherries went in. Pour the lot into a prepared tin, and bake at around 160C for an hour, or until a skewer comes out clean.

It worked, and Tall and Handsome likes it! Yay! Thank you Rachel Allen, for making my cake a success. I’m sorry I tweaked it, but it did actually work.

Chocolate Cake

125g/41/2 oz dark chocolate

3 tbsp milk

150g/5oz very soft butter

150g/5oz caster sugar

3 medium eggs

200g/7oz plain flour

1 tbsp cocoa powder (I used Green and Blacks)

1 tsp baking powder (oops, I forgot this!)

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 level tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

Approximately 300g big, fat cherries, destoned

Chop some of the cherries in half, and leave about 6 whole, if you have any whole ones. Place in a bowl in the freezer, as if you partially freeze them they don't sink in the batter.

Preheat the oven to: Moderate/ 350F / 175C / 160C (fan) Gas 4

Grease and flour the sides of a cake tin. I used an 8" x 3.5" round one.

Line the base with non-stick parchment or liner. I lined the sides as well because I'm paranoid that nothing I bake will ever come out of a cake tin.

Melt the chocolate with the milk in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Try not to eat the melted chocolate with a spoon.

Cream the butter and the sugar together until pale, then beat in the eggs, one at a time. This went like a bowlful of marshmallow fluff, which took me slightly by surprise.

Fold in the melted chocolate. I used a spatula to do this, much easier than a metal spoon.

Sift* in the flour, cocoa, cinnamon, baking powder, bicarb and salt and fold in with the aforementioned spatula. Try not to eat all the cake mix with a spoon.

Take the cherries out of the freezer. Arrange the whole ones at the bottom of the cake tin, mix the chopped pieces into the batter, then pour the batter gently over the cherries in the tin. (You really don't need to do this, you can just chuck them all into the batter. It was just me being pretentious.)

Scrape the bowl out with the spatula so no cake mix gets left behind and so you can lick the spatula.

Smooth the top with a spoon, lick the spoon, and pop the cake into the oven.

I baked mine for about an hour at 160C fan. The centre stayed liquid for a long time, which I suspect was due to the cherry juice.

It’s a very nice cake. Not overly sweet at all, which pleases me, and would go very nicely with some ice cream or crème fraiche. One for the @Make This Again’ folder.

Oh and, by the way, it is quite nice for breakfast…

*I don’t sift flour. That comes under the heading of Can’t Be Arsed. What I do, however, is out the dry goods into a bowl and aerate with a balloon whisk. No lumps, no sifting required.

The Marvellous, Non-Mechanical Food Urchin Supper Club!

2011-08-15T11:45:00.001+01:00

Venue: Food Urchin Towers
Address: Only the people in the know need to know.
Food: Mediterranean influenced, tasty meat based dinner. Also bloody gorgeous, that's what.

Sometimes I feel like a real food blogger. Only sometimes, mind, as most of the time, when I haven't updated at all due to Life, or I'm not feeling the passion, coupled with the problem that I just do not have the time to attend all of the fabulous things that others seem to do, then I think I'm only playing at it. I am also very aware that this food preoccupation is very much a first world thing, and I feel quite self-conscious about it.

However, on Saturday 13th August I dragged Mr Tall and Handsome Husband to the house of the lovely Mr and Mrs Food Urchin. Having dinner at an actual supperclub made me feel part of the food blogging crowd again, as I was surrounded by people as passionate and as obsessed by food and cooking as me. It was gratifying to meet other people who read cookery books like novels. My wonderful Tall and Handsome Husband puts up with the house and the bedside table being liberally sprinkled with all of my books, and for that I am very thankful. He also puts up with my food and cooking fetish which, seeing as he is a man who has quite simple food needs, I am unbelievably grateful for. He's not a great one for crowds of people, preferring the quiet life, and I am still astounded that he puts up with me, being the significantly more noisy and sociable person that I am. Yes, yes, I know, I don't shut up unless I'm asleep.

After a small tussle with the SatNav, we arrived, late, at Food Urchin Towers. We wandered up and down for a bit, wondering which was the right house, until a nice neighbour took pity on us and said "You want the 'ouse party?" We nodded a lot. "Next door but one mate!" We said thank you, being the well brought up people that we are. As we approached the front door I could smell lovely cooking aromas, so figured we were definitely at the right house. The door was opened by the stunning Mrs FU. Drop dead gorgeous she was, in a beautiful floaty dress and wearing a Calm and Patience of a Saint aura around her shoulders. She made us both feel utterly welcome, and I presented my bounty of some Turkish bread that we'd brought along, plus a small tupperware with two halloumi mini quiches in it. They already had bread, but, as Mrs FU said, now they got to have some too! I was very happy to oblige.

Onward to the garden, where the Digging Up of the Lamb was about to start. I was very glad we hadn't missed the start, as the idea of watching Danny try to dig out the hole that he'd already had to dig through concrete and then fill in was oddly appealing, but then I’m horrible like that.

Look. Danny. Innahole. Essex Man at Work!

Photos courtesy of Mr FU himself.

Our very own Heston waved from the bottom of the garden, gave us a brief history of where kleftiko comes from, and soon a most valiant effort was going on, with the help of Dad, to exhume the two shoulders of lamb that had gone into the pit six hours earlier. The smell of the meat and the smoke was gorgeous. Suddenly one of the cats appeared out of nowhere but then thought better of it, so sat patiently on the trampoline instead, watching with avid interest as the lamb was raised. A quick carry of the two baskets up to the top of the garden and the Unveiling began. Even more smells wafted around the gathered peoples, and stomachs started to rumble mightily.

The Unveiling. Photos from hereon courtesy of sarahbb1, whose fab review is here: http://eatsdrinksandsleeps.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/the-food-urchin-supper-club-buried-lamb-night/

It was nearly time. We all made our way into the house, and were seated by our hosts. Mrs FU is definitely the hostess with the mostest.

The starters came out, and soon we were all tucking into delicious home made baba ghanoush, taramasalata, houmous and tzatziki, accompanied by grilled halloumi and a lorra lorra bread.

Please note, the taramasalata (inbetween the two slices of halloumi) is NOT PINK. This is right and proper and as it should be. It was all just perfect, and I happily scraped at my plate then stole what Tex didn't eat as well. This was my kind of meal, but then you probably already know that.

Next up, the star of the show, the kleftiko. Greek salad to accompany, and roasted potatoes with capers and onions.

Beautifully flavoured lamb, tender to eat, and it all just worked. Us Greeks did know a thing or two about food. Just don’t ever lend us money. Unless you get a kebab in return for it. Perhaps. Danny did my ancestors proud. He’d probably have ended up promised the Favourite Daughter or something in gratitude for his lamb cooking skills.

We were nearing a state of Fullness, but we bravely ploughed on and OH MY GOD I am so glad we did for what came next was one of the nicest, most satisfying desserts I have had in a long while.

Pears poached in a delicate rose water syrup, with praline, pistachios, crispy filo strips and a beautifully silky ice cream. There was silence as bowls were scraped clean. It was heavenly, and I want to make it myself. Inspired by a recipe from the Tessa Kiros cookbook Falling Cloudberries: A World of Family Recipes, it was just bliss in a bowl. Yes, I drooled over the beeyootiful cookbook. No, I haven’t bought it. Yet.

There followed an evening of nattering, and discussion, and swapping food memories, plus a huge amount of cat fussing. Much enthusiasm was shown for ‘eating the whole animal’, but as we were sat in the very kitchen where The Pig Head Massacre took place, this is hardly surprising.

( http://foodurchin.blogspot.com/2011/02/brawn-off.html )

A few people had to leave early to catch trains, and I admit to feeling very happy that we only lived a short drive away, because I was having such fun.

I didn’t manage to catch everyone’s Twitter/blog names, but I’m sure we’ll catch up at some point.

HUGE thanks to Danny and Holly for hosting a bunch of reprobates, and also showing such enthusiasm for it all, and such kindness to us. I do believe a bloody good time was had by all, and I will definitely be going again if they’ll have me. I think Mr and Mrs FU have captured a place in my heart.

Oh, yes, and someone was brave enough to try the marrow rum – as written about here: http://foodurchin.blogspot.com/2011/08/marrow-rum-update.html

Don’t worry, I think Paul aka @nonsenspipe is okay. If he doesn’t blog for a while I shall be checking up…

Anderson’s bar and Grill, Birmingham

2011-07-17T23:23:00.001+01:00

Back in May of this year I had the great honour of attending a very dear friend’s wedding. We drove up on my birthday, which was fine by me as I do love a good road trip, but decided that instead of going to the hen night, we would go out to dinner for my birthday. Don’t worry, I did check with the bride, and she said it was fine. Then she told me that we absolutely must, nay, had to go to Anderson’s Bar and Grill. So we did. I wasn’t going to take a restaurant recommendation from Gilly lightly.

She was absolutely spot on as to it being my kind of place. I would happily go here again and again and again.

The website be here: http://www.andersonsbarandgrill.co.uk/

First off, the words ‘bar and grill’ do not in any way do this place justice. It is far more than that.

It is hard to find, in that only the restaurant door is on street level, there is no frontage to speak of. The only clue is a sign sticking out above the door. We did hang about for a bit going “Where? It must be here somewhere…” It was. We were almost right outside it. Yes, we felt silly.

You descend into a cool, stone clad basement with lovely arches and a long bar, gleaming in the candlelight. Now, there, that word, candlelight. It is quite dark, so for us pathological food blogger photo taking types, this is a bit of a bother. I’m afraid the photos do not do the food justice, because I have to tell you, the food is absolutely top notch, first class lovely.

It took us a very long time to choose what we wanted. The starters alone took us an age. We perused the menu, in the proper meaning of the word. We were highly amused by some of it.

We decided against the momentary soup in favour of breads with warmed olives and roasted garlic. These are under the heading of ‘For the Table’ but are generous enough to make any self respecting table fall over and groan. Simon’s actual starter was a huge dish of moules mariniere. I tried one. It’s no good, I still don’t like mussels.

The warmed black olives made my delightful dining companion realise he liked them after all. Rats.

All was as it should be. Soft, slippery, toasty garlic, herbed olives with chewy bits of roasted lemon and lovely soft breads. That would have kept me happy on its own, but fear not, we ventured forth into the rest of the menu because There Be Steak.

However, first I really should mention my actual proper starter, which was a slow roast free range pork belly, with a sticky chilli and honey glaze. Perfect. Rich and juicy, with a very thin crisp of crackling and a deliciously sticky surface. There was enough glaze to dip the meat into as well, which made a nice change.

And then….oh dear sweet heaven, then there was steak.

I agonised over what to have. The rib eye nearly won out, but I always have that – and why not? It is my favourite cut of meat – but then I thought I should go for something different. A Dexter Sirloin Chop. I’d never had Dexter beef, and a sirloin chop was unusual, so that was my choice and I am very glad that I chose it. Simon chose fillet, and he was just as happy with his dinner. We both chose a brandy, Dijon and shallot sauce to go with and it was just heavenly. I could have eaten that with a spoon all by itself. Rich and creamy but not overpowering. Both cuts of beef were beautifully tender, but not squishy in texture, and the hint of char was just right. Next time I am so going for the rib eye, because I think I would probably be in beefy chargrilled heaven.

We went a bit mad, and possibly ordered too many sides but they all looked so lovely!

Basil and garlic roasted potatoes, buttered herbed carrot and courgette ribbons, buttered spinach and green beans with garlic. We like our garlic! I like to think that we did justice to it all. I think we only left a bit of spinach, to be truthful.

There was a moment of worry as to whether we could fit in dessert or not, but as we only had to go back to the hotel and lie down in our pants, we decided to go for it.

Chocolate brownie with peanut butter ice cream and cappuccino foam? Bring it on. I did get to taste a bit of the ice cream and that was stunning. The foam is served in a wee chocolate coffee cup! Cute, and tasty.

I had a white chocolate parfait, with crushed honeycomb and caramelised pineapple. It was like the most adult choc ice in the world. I couldn't get enough of it. Melting and chewy at the same time, with a paper-thin coating of chocolate that broke into shards as you applied the spoon. It was a dessert of absolute divinity.

We rounded all of that off with sublime coffee – and they even give you a biscuit with that!

This is definitely a place to go back to. The service was lovely and friendly, the atmosphere lively but not too loud, and the prices are very reasonable indeed. We enthused about it to many people at the wedding reception as well! When you find steak that good, you have to share.

10/10 Anderson’s Bar and Grill, thank you for a very lovely birthday indeed.

Anderson’s Bar and Grill - http://www.andersonsbarandgrill.co.uk/

30 Mary Ann Street, St Paul’s Square, Birmingham, B3 1RL

Low carbing, lunches and ignoring bread.

2011-07-03T15:11:00.000+01:00

According to a lovely GP, years ago, I am supposed to eat a low carb diet. I have a fabulous thing called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome – PCOS for short – which basically means that fertility is scarce (thankfully I care not) losing weight is not easy at all, and I am prone to acne, depression and excess hair. This could also be the result of coming from a family of short, round, fluffy Greeks but it never helps to have another reason as to why I’m fat. Oh, yes, along with PCOS comes insulin resistance, so unless I fancy being diabetic later on in life, I had better stick to this way of eating.

Now, most of these things can be fixed or hidden, but the losing weight thing, well, that just doesn’t happen. It doesn’t matter what I do, it takes me three times as long as anyone else to lose a pound in weight, and that is that. Believe me, I have been to enough diet classes and weigh ins to know this. It is one of the most frustrating things in the world to watch other people start Weight Watchers or Slimming World and after a few weeks have lost a stone or more. Me? Doesn’t happen. It took me a year to lose two stones on Slimming World and then another year on very strict Atkins to lose another two.

After ten years of Atkins, and more or less staying the same after that initial weight loss, I gave up. I’d had enough. I missed rice. I missed cooking ‘normal’ meals and being able to eat the same as the other people I cook for. It might seem like a small thing but when you have to cook two meals all the time, it’s a real pain in my large but lovely arse. Slowly, very slowly, the weight crept back on. Of course it did. That is what happens when you stop a diet regime and just eat what you want. Thank goodness not all of it did because even when I fall off the diet wagon that low carb fairy is still there, poking me in the stomach and telling me that pasta, sugar, rice, bread and potatoes are evil. I cannot eat those things without feeling a tremendous sense of guilt about it.

Last month I decided to get back on the wagon after a fairly disastrous month of comfort eating. I don’t usually comfort eat, but it was a bad month encompassing all the hormones in the world and some pretty rubbish emotional stuff. I wondered if the PCOS was starting to play up because of it so that was that. End of the line for YOU carby goodness. Back on the wagon for me.

The first week was easy, almost a relief to be honest. I bought the lactose free milk for work as that is lower carb (2.7g per 100ml as opposed to 4.7g per 100ml for regular whole milk). Soya milk is much, much lower but it isn’t quite the same in tea, and I drink a lot of tea.

I stocked up on things that I can eat, the difference being this time I am allowing myself beans and pulses though that might have to be revised. We’ll see. I’m loathe to give up houmous you see. I am allowing myself a few ryvita or a Dr Karg’s cracker if I need quick food, because low blood sugar leads to severe crying fits for me and no-one wants that. Anyway, my love of pulses and all things beany aside, I took photos of my lunches, mainly so I could remember what I’d eaten and prevent boredom setting in. Here they are, for your delight and excitation. This will probably only be fun for me but it is a nice record. Some days were repeated and needed no photos.

I won’t say that this is easy, because to be honest it is a lot of work for very little visible reward, but at least the food is good!

Low Carb Bread

2011-06-28T22:42:00.000+01:00

I got this recipe from my friend Mel, and, because it's me and I can't leave anything alone, I tweaked it.

I admit that it does seem like a bit of a faff initially, with all the different ingredients, but it is worth it. I keep all the stuff in stock now, so I can make it when I need it. It's a bit like that Vogel's stuff, not bad! I always have ground almonds, sesame seeds, nuts and flax seeds anyway, it was just the Carbolose and soy protein I needed to get.

Basic recipe

1 packet of dried yeast (or 15g fresh) ( I used dried for the bread and fresh for the rolls)
1 cup wheat gluten
1/2 cup Carbalose 'flour' (pricey, but well worth having. Low Carb Megastore stocks it.)
1/2 cup soy protein (I use Holland and Barratt's own one, vanilla flavour, it tastes better)
1/3 cup ground flaxseed (I use whole and toast mine first)
1/3 cup ground almonds (not in the original recipe, but they add a 'crust')
1/3 cup chopped toasted shelled sunflower seeds
1 tsp sea salt - do not skimp on the salt

1.5 tsp sugar
1 large egg, beaten
1.5 cups warm water

Put the warm water in a jug, add the sugar and the yeast and mix well. Leave to stand until foamy and emitting a 'beery' smell.

Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl. Mix well. I used a whisk to 'air' it.
Make a well in the centre, pour in the yeast mixture, add the egg.
Mix together until a dough forms. This happens quite quickly.
Knead for 5 minutes until it is smooth and cohesive. (I added 1 tbs olive oil when mine felt a bit too dry)
If it is too sticky, just sprinkle on a bit of Carbolose while you are kneading.
Form it into a loaf shape then pop it into a greased loaf tin.
Leave to rise. It will rise, but not as much as 'normal' bread.

I bake mine at 200C (fan oven) or Gas 7 for about 40 minutes. If you divide it into two loaves then you bake both together for 25 minutes.

The bottom should sound hollow when tapped.

DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN TOO SOON. Give it at least 30 minutes before checking if baking one large loaf.

I've added in chopped toasted pecans to the mix, toasted sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds. There's all sorts you can do.

(I just checked and Carbolose has come down in price.
http://www.lowcarbmegastore.com/mixes-home-baking/white-flour-substitute-carbalose
It used to be £15. It really does last a long time though, as you only use a small amount.)

I'm going to slice the loaf and freeze it for work. Then that way I can just take out a slice when I want it.

The rolls had toasted pecan nuts, toasted sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds in them.

Turkish Mangal, Hornchurch

2011-06-04T18:09:00.005+01:00

The lovely Food Urchin had extolled the virtues of his local Turkish restaurant so I, always eager to find a really good place to eat near where I live, asked for the details. High Road, Hornchurch is apparently the place to be for really good Turkish food.

Life got busy for a couple of weeks, but on the Monday following my birthday, Darling Husband said he was thinking of taking me out to dinner, and did I fancy trying the Turkish place Danny had suggested? Absolutely, said I, so off we went.

Hornchurch appears to close early when it comes to restaurants. We have an Ask, a Prezzo, a Zizzi…and a few other chains that I am weary of, all of whom were shutting or shuttered before 10pm. Danny says it far better here, and expresses the frustration at homogenisation in far more colourful terms.

http://foodurchin.blogspot.com/2011/05/this-was-supposed-to-be-restaurant.html

It’s only a small town, well I say town, possibly a hamlet rather than anything so grand as a town, maybe a suburb, so you don’t expect the choice to be grand but it is a bit samey. Admittedly we do have the terribly American Simply Blues, which used to be all exotic and exciting to us Brits, but now just seems to be trying a little bit too hard and I’m not sure that ‘succulent’ (their word) is the best way to describe their chicken dishes but it is decent food and not bad prices. A Carolina smoke pit it ain’t although I have to admit that this did amuse me on their website http://simplyblues.com/

Only the best quality Steer Beef is used, then aged and cooked to your choice.
All Steaks are Australian Free Range Beef.
We accept no liability for steaks cooked well done.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Hornchurch on a drizzly Monday night. We found the place after a wrong turn, and it is so small that it’s hard to miss. It also used to be a French bistro, so that foxed me while we were looking out for it.

It is only a small place, with one side being mainly charcoal grill and a glass fronted counter, where the raw meat is displayed, forming an L shape with the grill. Wooden tables, quite close together, Turkish music being played and it looks like the typical seating add-on to a kebab shop.

It isn’t.

The food is magnificent. Tasty and spiced, hot and crispy, unctuous and rich. The bread isn’t the bought in Turkish flat sesame seeded bread that you get in most places – not that there is anything wrong with that at all – this is a yeasted dough they make themselves and then cook directly on the grill as you watch. They will happily bring you as much as you want, and you will want more than the first basket. It turns up searingly hot off the grill, and the smell is fabulous. Cue me, bread, and a pile of olives and that’s me a happy girl.

Once we’d gotten over the OOOH BREAD bit, we had a great struggle in choosing our food. Umming and aahing and eventually we went for what we knew, because it’s almost a test. For a hot starter I chose Humus Et Kavurma, which is houmous topped with spiced lamb. Tex chose Arnavut Cigeri, sautéed lamb’s liver in butter, caramelised onions, spices, chilli & lemon juice.

Both were utterly gorgeous. The houmous was silky and smooth, and the lamb was minced, not cubed, which is how a lot of places serve it, and I’m not a fan of it that way. The meat goes cold too fast, and can get tough as it cools. This time though the meat was soft and beautifully spiced and seasoned, and oh my god so very moreish. Tex’s liver was perfect. Juicy, slightly crusted with spices and the mound of red onions underneath it were sweet, slightly caramelised but still crunchy and coated in spikes of ground sumac. As a person who does not really like liver, I could have eaten my way through that and asked for more. We had a small dish of Cacik as well – garlic, yoghurt and cucumber - because we love it. There is a case to be made here for not eating all of the tasty, tasty bread, because the mains are substantial.

Tex chose a mixed grill, so that we could get a taste of everything, and I chose an Iskende Kebab, which is cubes of grilled lamb, served on sliced pita, with a yoghurt and rich tomato sauce topping.

I think we can safely say here that we were bowled over by just how good the meat was. We have eaten in a lot of Turkish places, many in Northern Cyprus, and this was every bit as good, if not better. Everything was very well seasoned, and so very flavourful. There and then we decided that this was a place to come back to again and again. The meat was so tender, and if I were told that I could only ever eat chicken wings at this place I would be happy. Juicy meat, crispy skin and spices that didn’t overwhelm at all. Lamb chops cooked to utter crisp fatted perfection. More of the same please! The salad that came with it was fresh and crispy, with lots of red cabbage, gherkins and crunchy lettuce.

My Iskende was gorgeous. The yoghurt and the tomato sauce worked very well together, and the meat needed no knife to cut it, it just fell apart. I could have eaten the whole thing with a spoon. Next time, I am going for the chicken kebab, and then the quail, and then the wings and...and...and…

All in all, it’s definitely a place I would recommend to anyone, so thank you very much Danny for the tip!

All that, including drinks, came to £47. Okay, I know we don’t drink alcohol but even so I think that was a bargain and only a ten minute drive from home. Hurrah!

Turkish Mangal
178 High Street Hornchurch
Essex RM12 6QP
Phone: 01708 437 418

Halloumi Pie

2011-05-30T20:12:00.003+01:00

This is, basically, a variation on the filling from a Greek Easter pastry called a flaouna. I adore them. An addiction was born the first time I tasted one, still warm from the oven at my Auntie Helen’s house.

A brief history: http://kopiaste.org/2008/04/easter-flaounes/ but, annoyingly, no recipe unless you buy the book. Of course.

This link is better. http://kypros.org/Sxetikos/Cookery/Flaounes-AS.htm

In my quest to reproduce these pastries, it became clear that the cheese for the filling is not easily obtainable here, and even when it is – at Easter – it is very expensive. I also didn’t know the name, which made it more difficult. I asked the family, and they said, quite simply, "it’s just called ‘cheese for flaounes, agapi mou*." When I did find it, it was £15 for a small piece, and the label did indeed just say “Cheese for Flaounes”.

It does have a name, it’s called pafitiko, but no-one in my family knew it, and neither did any other Greek I asked.

My Auntie used half halloumi and half cheddar so that’s roughly what I do. Probably more halloumi than cheddar. She used the special dough too, but I can’t be bothered unless it is Easter.

For a VERY LARGE PIE that filled a 9” x 9” x 2” deep pan.

Enough short crust pastry to line the tin. I don’t quite know how much that is as I didn’t make it but it was probably about 500g.

3.5 x 250g blocks of halloumi cheese, grated. (I got mine from Asda. Most big stores sell it.)

1 x 250g block mature cheddar

2 tbs finely chopped fresh mint

1 tbs dried mint

2 handfuls of sultanas

2 spring onions very finely chopped

3-4 eggs

½ tsp Bicarbonate of soda

Sesame seeds - optional

Line the baking tin with your choice of pastry and bake for around 15 minutes so that it starts to cook. Cooking it blind stops the base leaking when the egg/cheese mixture goes in.

Mix all the cheeses, herbs, spices, onions and fruit together so the fruit is well distributed.

Crack 2 eggs in, and add the bicarb, mixing it in. Then mix the eggs into the cheeses. It should be wet enough to hold together, but not runny at all so you just have to adjust as you go. I eventually used 4 smallish eggs the first time I made a large pie.

Pile the filling into the case, smooshing it into all the corners, sprinkle with sesame seeds if using then bake for around 40 minutes – non fan oven – or 30 in a fan oven at around 170C.

The centre should be set and firm, not wobbly at all. Leave it to cool a while before slicing, it makes it easier!

EDIT: If you cover the pie with a lid, you will get liquid from the cheese inside it. Halloumi is a very wet cheese, so be warned. The uncovered part lets the steam escape.

EDIT 2: Easy peasy prep! I have discovered that halloumi and cheddar grate, well, cube into tiny bits, beautifully in the food processor. Do the halloumi, spring onions and mint first, then do the cheddar second else it gets claggy.

Halloumi Pie the First

d_floorlandmine 's photo of Halloumi Pie II.

The filling was piled into a sheet of short crust pastry (I did buy ready made but I don't care) and with the edges just folded over as I didn't have a baking pan the right size. More photos here. It does actually look like a giant flaouna.

http://dancefloorlandmine.smugmug.com/Other/Food/2011-05-25-Halloumi-Pie/17222662_X7DhsS#1306929545_6q5bFDd

*my love

Dickheads on a power trip?

2011-05-27T09:04:00.004+01:00

This kind of thing makes me very angry. There is no need for this type of petty behaviour from a restaurant, none at all.

Back in 2008, flywingedmonkey published a review of his experience of eating at The Masala Zone in Camden Town.

To cut a long story short, he didn't like it. It was, by his account an unrewarding experience.
http://flywingedmonkey.livejournal.com/397158.html

MZ_CT as they also like to be known in certain circles (their own) have, after a three-year gap, discovered this disadvantageous review and instead of addressing the issue by say, inviting the worthy correspondent back gratis, perhaps, to see how they have improved, they simply left an anonymous response to the review:

"Dickheads on a power trip
It think that says it all - I doubt they would want you back.
By the way your review comes in on page 4 of searches.
No worries for MZ _ CT
Go fuck yourselves"

A few more reiterations of this and flywingedmonkey's post, complete with links, may just promote them up the search page rankings.

It is an ambition. It may be a petty ambition, but an ambition nonetheless.

What IS IT with restaurants that do this kind of thing? If you have made mistakes, then fix them, don't just bleat at the blogger in an impotent and insulting fashion. Bad show old chaps, very bad show. Telling someone to go f*ck themselves? Oh dear oh dear...

Testing Windows Livewriter

2011-05-16T10:00:00.001+01:00

This is a test, so I’m about to see if this works by posting up some food photos. Here we go!

1. 2.

1. Blackcurrant Quencher from Leon. This is a truly scrumptious drink.

2. Those are Co-op meatballs, one of Husband’s favourite dinners to have. I just make the sauce.

Pork Belly, good for what ails ya.

2011-05-15T19:26:00.003+01:00

I am a great fan of pork belly. There is something so very satisfying about it, so ultimately savoury and luscious. I love the contrast between the tender meat, the slippery fat and the salted crunch of the crackling. The treat of eating the flavourful meat from off the bones is also a very satisfying thing.

A few nights ago, I read this. http://www.meemalee.com/2011/05/pork-belly-midnight-snacks-and-pork-off.html

MiMi is a woman who knows her pork. All round good egg, mischief, awesome cook and lover of Andrew McCarthy, we haven't met in person yet, but I feel it is only a matter of time. That blog entry put pork belly front and foremost in my mind. So much so that it wouldn't go away. Not just any pork belly, no. The one that she referred to within that blog post. THIS one, in fact.

http://www.meemalee.com/2009/12/harissa-roast-pork-belly-recipe.html

There was no getting it out of my brain, so there was nothing for it but to buy some pork belly when we went to the butcher shop yesterday. Mark the Butcher scored the skin deeply for me - he knows by now exactly how I want it done - and then home it came with us. Oh yes.

Last night I got all the ingredients together for MiMi's recipe, but this is me, and I tweak things so I customised it to how we like it.

No harissa, because I am not a fan of spice heat. Yes, yes, I know, I'm a wuss. Also, I didn't have any. I also didn't have any fruit sugar, so I used golden caster sugar and used white pepper because we like that better than black.

1 kg pork belly(I left the bones in mine)
1 tsp ras-el-hanout (I used Bart's same as MiMi)
1 tablespoon Maldon sea salt
3/4 tbsp golden caster sugar
1 teaspoon ground white pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp malt vinegar
200ml water

Now. These are mainly MiMi's words, because she explains it better than I do, with some of mine mixed in. The ones in italics.

Preheat your oven to 150°C / 300°F / Gas Mark 2. Mine is a fan oven, but 150ºC in it worked just fine. Later this will become amusing.

Score the skin on your pork belly using a sharp knife like a Stanley knife, if it hasn't been done already. *waves at Mark the Butcher*

Place the pork on a rack in a roasting tray, skin side up, and pour boiling water over the skin, so the grooves in the skin open up a little. Go oooh, why didn't I think of this before. Pour away the water and remove the wire rack temporarily so the pork is sitting in the tray.

Blot the skin dry with kitchen paper.

Put the ras-el-hanout, salt, sugar and pepper in a pestle amd mortar and grind so that the sugar is finer. Canny eh?

Add the olive oil mix to a paste and rub all over the meat, making sure to work it into the grooves of the skin. I used a pastry brush to get it deeper in.

Put the wire rack back into the tray, place the pork on top, skin-side up, and then drizzle the vinegar over the skin. This is a Chinese trick to help make crackling crisper - don't know if it actually does anything, but it makes me feel better. It worked. It so worked.

Pour the water into the tray from the side, not touching the meat (this helps keep the pork moist by steaming it very gently).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Me now. And here the fun started. It went into the oven, and I tended it lovingly for two hours. Okay, I stared at it every so often. It looked lovely, smelled utterly delicious, and I even set an alarm so that I knew when to switch the oven to grill and crisp up the crackling.

At the end of the 2 hours, I went to turn the grill on, and up, for the crackling. This is when I noticed that it had been on the grill setting all the time. I had, essentially, slow grilled the pork belly. Hmm. After an initial panic of OMG what if it isn't done enough, I turned the grill up anyway until the crackling was burnished like it had shellac on it but it wasn't crispy.

It was very late, and so I took it out of the oven and let it stand overnight. By the next morning, the crackling was crispy. Hurrah!

I stripped off the crackling, and put the belly back into the oven to grill the soft fat on the top. Husband ate some of the crackling. I ate some of the crackling. It was very lovely crackling indeed. Next time I may use a touch more sugar and more Ras el Hanout. Indonesian katjup manis (a thick, dark, sweet soy sauce) may also feature.

Once the fat had crisped, I cut the belly into slices, removed the bones, cubed it, photographed it, and then ate it in big, juicy, slippy chunks in front of the computer, posting photos of it to make people hungry. My keyboard is fine and I felt much, much happier afterwards.

Here, for your delight, are some of the photos. Thank you, MiMi, this was all your fault. :D

The Forge

2011-05-08T12:47:00.001+01:00

On a bit of a whim, Col and decided to forgo our usual Tuesday night gaming evening, and have an Us Night Out instead. This entailed a last minute Travelodge booking, of which more later, maybe, and a booking at The Forge in Covent Garden.

I will say, here and now, that they scored so very highly on every bit of our experience that I could quite happily adopt the entire place, take it home, give it a cuddle and call it mine.

I booked through TopTable, and chose the set special offer of £29.50 each for three courses and a Kir Royale. “You can have my Kir Royale,” I said, magnanimous to the last - nothing at all to do with my allergy/intolerance to alcohol - “but I’d like to just see what it tastes like.”

I got my wish.

When we arrived we were shown in promptly, our coats taken and neatly tucked away for us. It is a medium sized restaurant, but they have made it feel very cosy and inviting, though it does tend towards the dark, so my photo taking ability was challenged somewhat and the shots here are really bot very good.

There is a table display of cheeses right in the front of the entrance to the dining area. Cheese! Lovely cheese. I do wish I had asked to take a photo of them, it’s such a nice sight to be greeted by, plus I wanted to just dive straight in with a pile of crackers and a knife.

The staff are all so very pleasant, and helpful, a joy to be served by. It is very French in feel, but with not a hint of the snobbery or the ‘we know better than you’ that can sometimes accompany a very French restaurant. No, that isn’t a stereotype and yes, sadly, it does still exist.

But anyway. We perused, in the true sense of the word, the menu that applies to the special offer. When I called, they had said it was a reduced menu and indeed it is, but though the quantity has been cut down, the quality certainly hasn’t. It took us a long time to choose, because there are still many dishes on the pared down menu and we kept noticing something that sounded just as gorgeous as the last gorgeous thing we had spotted.

While we were having such difficulty with deciding what to pick, I tried the Kir Royale. I cannot usually drink more than a sip of alcohol without feeling very peculiar indeed, but I really wanted to know what it tasted like, so I tried a sip, and settled in to wait and see what would happen. What happened is that I very much enjoyed the taste. I do not like champagne at all as a rule, I never could see what all the fuss was about even before the allergy set in, but this was so much nicer, lacking the mouth-puckering dryness that I have encountered before. Having established that I liked it, I waited for the usual hot/cold flushes to hit. Nothing. I tried another, bigger sip. Still nothing. At this point I confess to feeling very grown up indeed because oh my, I was having a glass of wine with my dinner and that never happens. I dared to have a mouthful in between courses, just because I could.

Finally, we had at last managed to choose.

Starters:
Slow braised wild boar with quince, fennel and orange £7.50
Truffled duck egg and smoked ham hock £7.50

Mains
Confit of duck leg with puy lentils and bacon - £16.50
Roasted pork fillet with Judian beans and white onion sauce - £16.50

Sides
Gratin Dauphinois £3.75
New potatoes £3.75
Garlic mushrooms £3.50

Desserts
Key Lime Cheesecake with Salted Butterscotch Sauce
Sticky Toffee Pudding with Banana Ice cream and Caramelised Bananas

Out of all of that food, there was only one thing that I could fault, and even that was minor. The new potatoes were a touch overcooked and under seasoned, but that was it.

The Wild Boar came in two pieces, each with superbly crisped fat, and crunchy exterior. The meat was meltingly good, and fell apart as you tried to cut it. Rich, yes, but not overwhelmingly so. I discovered that I still don’t like fennel eaten on its own but eaten together with the boar, that worked very well indeed. The quince puree, well, I’m not sure what that added, to be honest, but there it was so I tried it. Oddly it tasted like a cross between a pear and a sweet potato, but it wasn’t unpleasant at all, just not really needed.

The Truffled Duck Egg was so very pretty! It had a golden crumb coating, and was perched happily on top of a frisée salad with chunks of pink ham hock dotted about. The scent of truffle was drifting across the table, so should I have been in any doubt at all (I wasn’t) that it was a truffled egg, then my mind was eased.

I tasted the egg and it was perfect. The truffle flavour was there, but very delicate, in contrast to the strong aroma, and the yolk was soft boiled to perfection. A silky, firm white and a golden, softly luscious yolk. There were many exhortations of delight from my dining companion.

I had some more Kir Royale. Gently, gently does it.

The mains. Oh my goodness. My duck was wonderful. The skin was as crisp and as light as could be, but with a serious burnished finish. The meat had stayed juicy and tender, though I did start to feel that I had been given possibly the biggest duck leg in the world after a while. It was placed onto a mound of tender, smoky Puy lentils cooked down with bacon, and that was just the perfect accompaniment. Earthy contrasting beautifully with the sweet richness of the duck.

A word about the garlic mushrooms. The menu has these named as just plain old garlic mushrooms, but that is doing them a grave disservice. They were flat, dark gilled field mushrooms, bathed in garlic butter but not overpowered by it, and dotted with tiny flecks of sea salt. One large piece of fleur de sel sat on top, just waiting for me to eat it, so I did. Not overly salty, which was surprising, but intensely savoury. I had to interrupt Col’s dinner so he could try some while they were still hot. He was certainly not unhappy that I did so.

Very dark, so apologies but you can at least see the sea salt crystal!

The pork fillet arrived on a bed of creamy looking Judion beans surrounded by a deliciously caramel coloured sauce. The beans are, I am reliably informed by Google, a type of Spanish butter bean. They were certainly not as large as the bean you find in the gigantes plaki recipes of Greece http://greekfood.about.com/od/maindishes/r/gigantesplaki.htm which I am more used to, so I may have to do some exploration to find out more about them. They looked delicious.

This was no mean little strip of pork fillet. It was presented in two large pieces, cut on the diagonal to show off just how juicy and tender the inside was. There was a hint of pinkness which, these days, is not a problem anymore with pork, and smelled richly savoury. Accompanied with a side of creamy Dauphinois potatoes, it was a dish to fair warm the heart, and certainly one I would like to try the next time I get the chance to go back, and I do hope that I will.

Now. How we managed to have room for dessert I am not rightly sure, but find room we did. Col chose Sticky Toffee Pudding, which I think is going to turn into the benchmark for rating restaurants and I went for the Key Lime Cheesecake with Salted Butterscotch Sauce, as I am a fool for anything with limes.

The toffee pudding deserves a moment of awed silence and respect. I cannot work out how a pudding managed to be springy and bouncy to the point where it resisted the spoon, and yet also be both light and rich. It was a triumph. The Forge’s chef, I salute you. The caramelised bananas were a lovely touch, and added such a nice hit of deliciously gooey texture. The noises of sheer joy from Col carried on for a while. I am very happy to say that I was allowed to taste some of the pudding, and found it utterly addictive. However, a fork in the back of the hand often offends, so I behaved.

My cheesecake was incredibly good. Excellent solid texture, with a pronounced citrus flavour, almost akin to marmalade, and the slightly grainy cheese filling was encased in a dense, dark chocolate cookie crumb. It tasted of proper curd cheese, with serious body. It was not a particularly sweet cheesecake, and as such it worked very well indeed with the salted butterscotch sauce. Definitely a dessert I would order again. I refrained from licking the sauce from the plate. Barely. I did actually drop the corner of my camera phone in it by accident at one point, and had no qualms at all about licking the sauce off that, much to Col and the waiter’s amusement. Waste not want not! Plus I wasn’t putting a toffee covered phone back into my bag. That would have been a very bad idea.

I would be very happy to wholeheartedly endorse The Forge as a fantastic place to eat and spend a gentle evening - and one which I would love to be able to visit more often.

The Forge
14 Garrick Street
London
WC2E 9BJ
Tel: 020 7379 1432
www.theforgerestaurant.co.uk

Winning ways with Cinnamon

2011-05-08T00:57:00.000+01:00

This household has a love affair going on. It's not illicit, but many just don't understand it.

"How can you do that?" is a comment I often get. "We just don't get how that would work."

But work it does.

Our many times requited love is for cinnamon. That dusky brown powder, those curls of perfumed bark so often associated with the sweeter things in life and while I am not one to go against tradition too much, I do have a theory about this much beloved ingredient. It is neither sweet, nor savoury. It is a wonderful, neutral spice and that very neutrality means that it lends itself to many dishes and takes on the nature that is present.

In an apple pie it adds a sweet brown undertone, in a Bolognese sauce there's a subtle depth and added to the coffee in my stove top coffee pot, well, that's just lovely.

Tonight the guest that was to be bathed in all that understated glory was a fine, plump breasted chicken, purchased from our local butcher this morning. A roast chicken is always something of an adventure for me, and I like to try and do something different every now and again. There is nothing at all wrong with a chicken roasted simply, a sheen of olive oil on the skin and a touch of sea salt for added crispness but there are times when I want something slightly more spiced and fragrant.

No-one here likes much heat, so that rules out anything fiery but I wanted to get some spice under the skin of the bird, so I went for a mixture of garlic and cinnamon.

The smell of this whilst it cooked drove me nuts. I couldn't wait for it to be ready, and suddenly, it was. The flesh came away from the bones beautifully and I got to lick all the sticky juices off my fingers. Cook's perks, along with the 'oysters' that you find underneath the bird. And yes, I did wash my hands before serving the dinner up to anyone else.

The new season's asparagus, some plain rice with sweetcorn and that was it. I made husband a bowl of mixed salad as he doesn't like asparagus at all.

1 fresh chicken, approximately 5lb.
1 nice fat clove of garlic
2 tablespoons of salted butter
1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

Loosen the skin on the breast of the chicken by working your fingers under it so that you have a gap between the meat and the skin.

Crush the garlic with a little coarse sea salt in a pestle and mortar until it is a paste. Mix in the tablespoon of butter and the cinnamon.

Take half of the butter mixture and place it under the skin of the chicken. I used a butter knife but generally I will use my fingers. Then smooth it out by pressing the surface of the skin down, making sure the butter goes as far as it can.

The remainder of the butter is spread over the surface of the skin, making sure not to miss out the legs and the wings.

Half a lemon gets put inside the cavity to create lemon scented steam and add extra moisture.

Drizzle a tiny bit of olive oil over the skin as well, as that stops the butter burning.

Roast for 20 minutes per pound, plus an extra twenty and do try not to dribble at the smell of it cooking.

Why such a large chicken for just the two of us? You see, tomorrow, oh yes, tomorrow there are leftovers.

The Hot Cross Bun mission.

2011-04-24T21:24:00.003+01:00

Yes, it has indeed been a mission. I was determined to make some for no reason other than I wanted to make some. I know you can buy them for silly money but it's not quite the same, plus the house smells so nice when they are baking. I never remember to get around to Greek Easter baking, but I thought I could at least make the effort and uphold the Brit part of my ancestry. Also, I have concerns with my baking prowess. I don't have any and I want to get some!

I tried one recipe twice and I think the dried yeast was old because the dough was just not elastic at all. They tasted good though.

Then I tried another one, with different yeast - dried but not the fast action one - and they were better. I used wholemeal strong bread flour so they were heavy, but tasty. I used golden marzipan to make the crosses and that was incredibly nice but I still wasn't satisfied.

Then, oh joy of joys, a friend had ordered some fresh French bakers' yeast to try and she very kindly split it with me, so today that's what I used. I found a recipe that my friend Mark gave me, because I know it works, and off I went. (Mark put pentagrams on his, I have little patience for piping crosses, let alone anything more complicated!) I did tweak it a bit as I had all that wholemeal bread flour to use up.

The yeast is wonderful. The dough had a gorgeous elasticity, the buns rose, and they have a lovely, airy texture whilst still having a substantial feel to them. A well rounded, proved dough is a wonderful thing.

Hot Cross Buns: The Revisit 4.0

Ingredients
The Wet Bit
1 Egg
8 fl oz Milk (I used half whole milk and half water)
2 oz Butter (melted)
1 tsp runny honey
1 ½ tsp Yeast (fresh)

The Dry bit
12oz Strong wholemeal flour
4 oz Plain white flour
Pinch Salt
1 tsp Mixed spice
1 tsp Cinnamon
2 oz Caster sugar
5 oz Sultanas
1 oz Chopped mixed peel

The Cross Mixture
3 tsp plain flour
1 tbs water (or enough to make a thick paste)
1/4 tsp vanilla essence (yes, essence, it has a sweeter taste)

I melted the butter into the milk, let it cool to hand hot, then beat in the egg and added the honey and the yeast. Then I ignored it. It raised a pale yellow, fluffy foam that looked like whipped egg white so I emitted a small cheer.

In a large bowl, I mixed all the dry ingredients together, added the golden yeast mixture, brought it together with a butter knife and then tipped it out onto a floured surface and gave it a good kneading. About ten minutes or so I think, adding a touch of flour if it got too sticky. When it started to spring back, it was time to divide it up into balls. I even weighed each one so I knew they were the same size. Next time I will make them smaller. This made 8 large buns.

I placed the buns onto a baking tray lined with silicone non stick baking parchment (Thank you Lakeland!), covered them loosely with cling film and then went away again. An hour later and they were proved. Rounded and smooth and plumptious.

I made the cross mixture up in a small ramekin, tipped it into a small ziplock bag, twisted it up into a cone, snipped the corner off and rather inexpertly piped on the crosses.

Into the oven they went (170C fan/200C non fan) without a glaze as neither of us like the stickiness of that and then 20 minutes later (with one turn because my oven cooks unevenly) there they were. Light, airy, golden brown and delicious. No longer tasty hockey pucks, but proper, actual BUNS. Buns of spiced joy. Oh yes.

This phone photo was taken and sent to my man Col because I was so excited I had to share!

Mmmmm....buttery....

I added vanilla essence to the cross mixture as flour paste just isn 't that tasty on its own.

I really want to make some more, but I need to go to the shops tomorrow as I have used up all of the mixed spice in the house. I can see this yeast bakery thing becoming an addiction, quite fast.

Total Greek Yoghurt Masterclass

2011-04-23T13:06:00.005+01:00

A few weeks ago I received an invitation from Alison at Total Greek Yoghurt to ask if I would like to attend something called the Total Greek Yoghurt Masterclass. Now, anything with the word Greek in it appeals to me greatly. Add yoghurt in and there I am, sold. Add to that the fact that it was being held at a cookery school and you can imagine that I didn’t hesitate to say yes. It was quite handy that the email arrived while we were sorting out holiday allocations at work, so it was a matter of mere seconds to add another day to my booked time off. Inbetween squeaking about being, like, a real food blogger and everything anyway.

The day dawned sunny and fair. I left BF’s house earlier than planned as East Croydon was having Tram Drama, made it to Victoria quite easily and then tubed it to Oxford Circus. I then did what I always do when I have to travel via Oxford Circus. I turned the wrong way out of the station. It doesn’t matter how many maps I have, that crossroads throws me right off. Luckily I realised my mistake quite fast as I was on the lookout for it, and turned back. Headphones on, a purposeful stride, and more squinting at the map and I arrived at L’Atelier des Chefs. Too early it turns out but that’s better than being late. What a place! So many cooking trinkets, gadgets, knives...

The dear people from Total were in a bit of a pickle as their Ocado order had been delayed by a computer glitch, so I got my name tag and then sat upstairs with a cup of tea and ogled the cookware. There was a whole wall of knives. I held onto my purse for dear life and tried not to look at the shinies.

One by one fellow foodies/bloggers turned up and there was much asking of names/Twitter handles. (I will update this later with names as it’s all a bit of a blur at the moment!)

One thing I will say right now is that the seating – mini bar stool things – are NOT made for those of us who have back problems, or who are rather broader of beam than the average Joe. If you go along to the school at any point, bear that in mind. It made for an awful lot of fidgeting about when the talks were happening.

When all was calm, the day began with a talk about nutrition by the beautiful Hala from Nutrition Rocks. As someone who has always been told to diet, and has dutifully done so because I commit the cardinal sin every day of being overweight, I admit that I had heard most of it before – but something I had never heard a nutritionist say is that “Fat is not bad, okay?” I could have hugged her. It was all very sensible advice, certainly no scaremongering, so that was very good.

Phil from Skinny Latte - http://skinnylattestrikesback.blogspot.com/ - was up next and though I absolutely admire her guts and determination, think that what she has achieved is utterly phenomenal and very much appreciate Phil's honesty about her story, I’m afraid that the whole “I went from fat to thin and now I’m happy” slant made me feel very, very uncomfortable. This may have shown on my face somewhat, which is a little embarrassing as I was right in front of the camera’s gaze.

Touting being thin as a Happy Making Mission is not a great thing for me. Some of us are what we are, and there is nothing we can do about it, no matter what we eat/how much we exercise and when you have been overweight from childhood, despite very healthy eating, there comes a point where you learn to accept yourself for who and what you are. I am conscious of every single thing that I eat, overly so, and face a fight with myself every time. Foods that are bad, foods that are good – it goes on every time I want to eat. I don’t just ‘go grab a sandwich’ at lunch, I agonise. I also battle some difficult health issues and at this point in my life, I am not going to let being overweight stop me from doing anything. If having MS isn’t going to stop me, then extra flab certainly isn’t! To be honest, the weight didn’t stop me when I was younger either.

I debated long and hard whether to write all that, but I am a pretty honest person, and it wouldn't have felt right to miss out a significant chunk of my experience.

But anyway. I shall quit that particular soapbox now, because it’s personal to me, and others did not feel the same way. It touched a few of my nerves I expect.

There is one thing I would like to say – pointing out a beautiful pregnant lady as being a perfect example of pregnancy fitness, because she works out and drinks lots of water, that isn’t actually fair. There are plenty of women who work out and eat well, who do not eat for two when pregnant but if your body decides it’s gaining weight while pregnant, then it’s gaining weight and there is nothing you can do about it. You can try and mitigate the damage but sometimes it is out of your control. The lady in question was utterly radiant and a real inspiration but I know people who had a very similar regime, and they put on a load of weight regardless. Everyone is different. Okay, I’ve gotten on the soapbox again. Still, that is pretty much me.

Moving on! Moving on.

After a break for tea, and me snaffling a banana from the fruit bowl on the disposal before I fainted, we moved on to The Cooking. Oh yay! Chefs and knives and all kinds of everything.

Three chefs, one at each cooking station, were showing us how to make three different dishes. Andre Dupin showed us Tartare of Mackerel with Minted Cucumber Soup, Fabricio Cano Davila demonstrated Pan Fried Medallions of Pork with Yoghurt Gribiche and Fennel, then Satyajit Welaratne made Vegetarian Samosas with a Minted Cucumber Dip. I will put the recipes up in a separate post. They were all very, very lovely indeed. After we had watched the demo, and supposedly taken it all in, we got the chance to make it ourselves. Oh yes, let me at those Sabatier knives. That makes me very happy. Also we got to eat what we cooked, and as most of us were starving by that time, everyone was up for cooking! Even Hala got involved I think.

I have to totally admire the patience of Andre while he was being filmed, as being asked to constantly redo things, tilt the bowl this way, tilt it that way, stop, start must have been incredibly annoying, especially when making a caramel! If it’s ready it’s ready, you cannot leave it on there a second longer just to get a shot. Cooking under pressure is what chefs do though, which is why I am just a cook, not chef.

I made the Pork Medallions first, and I have to say, not having control over the heat of the gas flame is incredibly frustrating but I got there in the end. Gribiche sauce is just heavenly. Yoghurt, shallots, cornichons, parsley, chervil, tarragon, capers and grated hard boiled egg make a rich tasting but light textured sauce. I may have made a double quantity and eaten it with a spoon. The dressed fennel salad was so very fresh and tangy, which leads me to think that if I am going to eat fennel, it has to be as fresh as I can get it else the aniseed taste takes over too much.

No photo from me from the day as I ate it too fast but this one was sent to me by Alison from Total.

After munching that, going “Mmmm ohmygoddnessmmmm” and having a bit of a sit down and a good old natter with the other attendees, it was back to the kitchen to make the Tartare of Mackerel with Andre. Raw, chopped mackerel, parsley, shallots, cornichons, yoghurt, ketchup – yes, ketchup – Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce and capers. I got some hot knife action going with the cornichons, so that made me feel slightly more cheffy than just adding ready chopped herbs to a dish. Lynne (http://www.clarkagency.co.uk/GreedyPiglet/) and I teamed up and had a blast making – and eating – that dish. The cucumber ‘soup that went with it lifted the slightly heavy feeling of the mackerel, and made it a lovely, summery treat. I think I would make that again, quite happily.

More sitting down, more scoffing, much more nattering, then back to the kitchen for round three. Samosas this time using feuille de brick pastry, which is like filo pastry but much more malleable. I believe it is Tunisian in origin, and it doesn’t dry out as fast as filo dough so I may get some for the freezer.

We mixed mashed potato, peas, an onion paste, ground cumin, coriander and turmeric, garlic and yoghurt together, piled it onto a strip of the pastry, folded it up into a triangle, then shallow fried it. Lynne and I teamed up again. We had enough mix for two, so we made, er, two. Gorgeously crisp pastry and a very lovely depth of taste to the filling, though if I made them at home I would bake them as the pastry holds the oil a bit too much for my liking. Off it was to sit and eat again.

Then came the desserts. Chestnut Tiramisu Rapide, Yoghurt White Chocolate Millefeuille with Spiced Plums and Yoghurt Drop Scones with Caramelised Pineapple.

I am not a huge pancake fan, and the spiced plums had a lot of wine in them so I steered clear but the tiramisu was going to be mine. I have to say that the smell of red wine added into a dark caramel sauce is utterly intoxicating, and smelled almost of dark chocolate so I wish I could have tasted the spiced plums but I wasn’t taking chances.

The Tiramisu is boudoir biscuits dipped in a coffee/cognac/sugar mixture, and layered up with a yoghurt/cream/chestnut mixture and topped with cream and cocoa powder. Andre kindly got an espresso without sugar made for me so that I could avoid the alcohol and I was so very grateful. I made my dessert and I scraped the bowl clean. I could happily have gone back and eaten another. I will make that again for definite. There was much laughter, and sharing of food ideas, tips and recipes, and for once I didn’t feel like a freak or an obsessive when I took photos.

So. I thought I didn’t like fennel, and I do. I really thought I didn’t like mackerel and guess what? Yup, I do now. I wasn’t even sure that I liked espresso neat but I do. I also made it out of a cookware shop without buying anything, not even the coconut extract, or the rose extract, though at least I know where I can get them now…

All in all it was a very good day indeed. It was brilliant to meet so many like-minded new people, and yes, there has been a Twitter Adding Frenzy. I felt like a proper blogger and everything.

Huge thanks to Total Greek Yoghurt for making it possible, to Alison and her team for all their hard work and goodie bags and to the chefs at L’Atelier for their kindness and patience.

I would surely do that again, anytime. Next time, I'd like to play with the knives a bit more...

L’atelier des Chefs
19 Wigmore Street
London W1U 1PH

I cannot abide waste.

2011-04-11T19:34:00.001+01:00

I just can't. It bothers me more than a lot of things - and a lot of things bother me. I am a member of this here website http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/ which probably explains a lot. We in the West have so much food, and throw away so much that could be used, it's almost a crime.

I came home tonight after a weekend away and find, just resting on top of the bin and still in their plastic wrappings, a whole bag of spinach with maybe a few wilted leaves, 2 carrots with nothing wrong that I can see, a box of mixed salad leaves that aren't great but would be utterly fine with a dose of good dressing and almost a whole stick of celery, maybe missing a few ribs.

I gasped. I actually gasped OUT LOUD. (There probably isn't much hope for me)

I am not too proud to use stuff that has been in the bin. If the things had touched anything else then no, of course not but they hadn't. They were all snugly wrapped up and just a wee bit tired but then aren't we all?

So now I have a pot of buttery, garlicky spinach rice simmering on the hob which will be lunch for tomorrow and Plans Afoot for the rest. The salad gets used tonight, one of the carrots will probably be grated into that and I will add a good, punchy balsamic dressing. The celery will get chopped and frozen for soup bases.

If I was at home tomorrow I'd probably make lamb, carrot and cinnamon burgers but I'm not, so I can't. Dammit.

Waste not, want not! I may not always succeed, but at least I try. I did reference my hatred of waste back in August of last year, and it doesn't go away.

http://cookwitch.blogspot.com/2010/08/great-british-waste-menu.html

And this was dinner.

Cookwitch's 'How To Buy A Good Cauliflower' guide

2011-04-03T21:30:00.000+01:00

Or 'An Excuse to Post a Photo or Two.'

The leaves of a cauliflower are its protection. They grow curled around the head and keep it shaded. The more white a cauliflower, the longer the leaves have been left on to protect it while it grows. This also helps to keep the flavour in. When you see them in the supermarket, invariably the leaves have been cut back to reveal the head, but that process serves to let the flavour deteriorate and alas the natural moisture in the vegetable dries out. Dear Supermarkets, please stop it. I love to pull back the leaves and peek at the pearly white florets within. It's part of the fun!

This is what a fresh cauliflower should look like, ideally.

The florets should be close together, and be quite hard to separate.

If it's really fresh, you can eat the leaves too. Stir fry with olive oil and garlic, or simmer for a while so they steam, then dress with lemon juice. To cook a cauliflower and keep the most flavour, steaming it seems to be the best way, or gently simmering it in water with added lemon juice. That keeps it white. Roasted cauliflower is gorgeous, and oh my...cauliflower pakoras are to die for. I have steamed a whole cauliflower before and served it with a mild egg and lemon sauce. It didn't need anything else.

And, just for the hell of it, an extra zooming in close up.

After I suggested starting up CLiF (the Cauliflower LiBeration Front) my boyfriend said I needed some sleep. He is quite probably right. *grin*

A Placeholder

2011-04-02T17:16:00.000+01:00

Just to let you know I am still alive, there will be more posts coming soon but my enthusiasm has waned somewhat over the past few weeks due to having to have our beloved feline companion of 18 years put down. Loss of appetite is a great hindrance in the food blogging world.

Yes, I am an utterly sentimental fool, who just can't concentrate on much at the moment. So I apologise, and hope that what passes for normal service around here will be back soon.

Glo restaurant, Walton On Thames

2011-03-03T21:02:00.001Z

A while ago I had the opportunity to review a restaurant, but with it being in Walton on Thames and me not, I immediately thought of my friend Mark, who lives in Walton.

Herewith find his rather nice review of the place. Of course, I now have to go don't I because it sounds so nice and I have had a look at the menu...it made me hungry.

My first Guest Review!

Apple Fizz
Spicy Orange
Thai Calamari
Chicken Satay
Ginger Lamb Chops
Manuka Steak
Ice Cream Money Bags
Mango Colada
Kyushu Pear

Glo-ing for the evening.

I like eating. Sometimes I like writing, too. So, when Lisa asked me to review my local branch of Glo on her behalf, I jumped at the idea!
I like Glo. I've eaten there a few times with different friends, and it's always felt fresh and new. The menu helps in this regard - there is such a wide choice available (in the case of the curry platters and noodles, you could go around dozens of times and still never have the same thing twice!). The venue also helps. It has a dim, restrained decor, but with unexpected touches like the light fittings that arch over the larger tables from the edges to almost meet in the middle. Unfortunately, the dim lighting coupled with the dark colour scheme meant that I didn't attempt to take pictures with my phone's camera - I'd have ended up with a series of blurs!

Anyway, I booked a table for Friday evening and took a friend who'd never eaten there before. When we arrived and I mentioned the booking, the waitress looked at me with mild consternation and requested that we take a seat in the bar area for a moment. I'd barely had time to sit down before another member of staff appeared, confirmed my name again and showed us to our table. He presented us with the menus, and left us to peruse them. Some time passed, and then a third waiter appeared and offered to take our drinks order. Given that we hadn't eaten yet, we both elected to try the non-alcoholic cocktails - I went for the Apple Fizz, Timothy requested a Spicy Orange. While we were waiting for the drinks, a fourth waiter appeared and asked if we were okay. The attentiveness was starting to wear a little, but then our drinks arrived and we placed our food orders.

The drinks were nicely refreshing. Mine was sharp with ginger, while Timothy's had a wonderful warming effect from the cinnamon. They also arrived in decent-sized glasses, even allowing for the ice.

Shortly thereafter, our starters arrived. Having recently discovered a taste for properly-cooked calamari, I tried the Thai Calamari. A pleasantly-sized portion of tentacle rings and, slightly unnervingly, entire baby squid arrived, coated in Asian spices and deep fried. The spices were not overpowering, but gently lifted the flavour of squid, and the sweet chilli dipping sauce was just hot enough. The squid itself was cooked perfectly, without any rubberiness, and I could have eaten a larger portion as a main course. Timothy ordered the Chicken Satay, and received three skewers of pieces of chicken breast marinated in delightful satay spices with a dipping sauce. I tried a piece, and was pleasantly surprised by the flavour. Too many satay sauces are based on peanut butter, with an overly sweet taste to them. This one was entirely savoury, and I could imagine it working with any number of other meats. We made short work of the first course!

While we were waiting for the mains, the second staff member reappeared. He apologised for the delay with the mains, and presented us with a basket of spicy prawn crackers and sweet chilli dipping sauce to keep us going. However, we'd barely started on them before the mains then arrived!

I ordered the Ginger Lamb Chops - three chops, marinated in a ginger and spice sauce and lightly grilled. The fat was gently crispy on the outside and melting within, while the meat was almost seared on the outside and wonderfully pink in the centre. Bliss! It was served with gloriously fat chips with a hint of chilli spices, and a raita dipping sauce. The only problem that I had with it was that since I broke my incisors in a cycling accident, I've had difficulty gnawing things! I gave the chops my best efforts despite this. Timothy had the Manuka Rump Steak, cooked medium. This is a rump steak marinated in manuka honey, coated in sesame seeds and grilled. I didn't try any, but it looked fantastic and Timothy was delighted with the level to which it had been cooked. There wasn't a lot of conversation during the main course, either...

We ordered alcoholic cocktails after the mains. I had a Mango Colada, which put in mind of a Solero ice lolly. It was gloriously thick and rich. Timothy had the Kyushu Pear, which was fruity and refreshing. We them both ordered the Ice Cream Money Bags for dessert - two round scoops of vanilla ice cream, wrapped in thin pastry and briefly deep-fried, before being sprinkled with icing sugar and drizzled with honey. They were delightful, but a word of caution. I tackled my second one somewhat incautiously, and (there's no other word for it) it spurted at me. A high-velocity jet of melted ice cream shot towards me, going over my hand and down my shirt. Timothy thought that this was hilarious! So - always treat them with care before opening them, and if possible, point them at your dining companion!

We sat still for a while after this, and then left, to the effusive thanks and farewells of the staff. To be honest, that was the only negative point to the evening. The staff were painfully aware of why we were there, and being asked how the food is all the time gets a little irritating. However, we both thoroughly enjoyed the meal, and will most likely be going back there.

http://www.glohq.com/html/location.html

Shortcuts: not always a bad thing.

2011-01-30T18:26:00.001Z

There are days when you just need a cookie. This often falls on a day when I don't have the spoons to stand up for too long so that's a bit of a bugbear and today was one of those days.

I found a box of Betty Crocker cake mix in the cupboard which needed to be used but, to be honest, cake doesn't really get eaten in this house so I fell to pondering what else I could do with this box of semi-instant heaven.

I remembered my friend Pat making Lemon Burst cookies from a boxed cake mix and thought oh hell, why not just make some cookies from this box. So I did. There had to be a certain amount of Googling as I couldn't remember what amounts of additional Stuff was needed, but after a while (put the size of the boxed mix people!) I found it.

And lo, within half an hour I had cookies.

1 14oz package Devil's Food Cake cake mix
1 large egg
1 level tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup small chocolate chips
1 x 100g bar good quality dark chocolate, chopped into tiny bits (I used Lindt Sea Salt as I love salt and sweet)

Put the cake mix in a large bowl. Add in everything else and mix like crazy until all the liquid is incorporated.
My mix looked a bit too dry so I added 1 tsp of milk at a time until it just held.
Squidge handfuls of the mix together until it holds in ball shapes then place on a baking sheet and bake at 170C/350F for about 10 minutes until they have flattened a bit and smoothed out. They do spread so space them.

Leave them on the tray to firm up and then lift them onto a rack to cool.

They are really very lovely! I can get American cake mixes from a couple of shops in Covent Garden, but I expect that any Supercook or Greens cake mix would work just fine.

Crushed hazelnuts would be a rather nice addition.

These do not stay soft and squidgy. They turn crisp and quite hard but man they tasted good.

The Cricketers, Clavering, Essex

2011-01-29T21:57:00.004Z

There was a nasty rumour going around last month that The Cricketers had closed because Jamie Oliver's mum and dad had retired and Someone Else had taken over. This was a bit upsetting as it is a lovely place that we have visited a few times but huzzah! Hurrah! It turned out to be just that, a nasty rumour. I don't know whether Mr and Mrs Oliver have indeed retired or just taken a back seat after all the years of running the place but the pub and the food is definitely infused with their warmth and good taste. There are still photos of a very young Jamie on the walls too. It's all good.

It's my mother in law's 70th birthday on the 31st, (and she doesn't look a day over 50) so as No 1 Husband's brother had to pull out of lunch because his wee toddler was ill, we decided to take her to lunch there as we all like it and we no longer needed a pub with a 'play area' for the kiddies. The Cricketers is fine for kids, they welcome them, but young A is...rambunctious at the best of times and a larger space would definitely have been needed!

It was very cold and damp when we arrived, after a nice drive through the country lanes observing iced over ponds, and so we opted to go straight in rather than hang about waiting for Mom and Dad. When you walk in - and for goodness sake do mind your head as the ceilings are very low - you see the lovely bar and then, to your left, the wonderful sight of a proper open fire. The log pile outside is not just for show. Last time we were there Trevor Oliver was busy stocking that up, which just makes for a proper, homely feeling. We were greeted by smiley staff, and shown to our table. Oh the luxury! A round table with a corner banquette with lots of cushions. We settled down happily and perused the menu. I use peruse in the true sense of the word - to read with thoroughness and care - because there is so much to choose from that it is very hard to decide but you don't want to miss anything. I had to have a small pot of tea to warm up so sat there happily taking the chill off my hands whilst the menu was making my tummy rumble.

A photo that was taken of the menu by accident but it turned out quite well! There is much more to the menu, this was the daily specials page. But look! VEAL T-BONE.

A basket of fresh home made bread was brought immediately, with a dish of grassy green olive oil and a splash of the nicest balsamic vinegar I have tasted in a long while. There are tiny pots of sea salt and black pepper already on the table so bread plus oil and vinegar plus sea salt it was.

Mom and Dad arrived quite soon after us, but we did still have to ask for some more bread. *ahem* Serious menu searching took place and the staff were very smiley and patient with us. Finally we made our decisions and were set. I have photos of only my main course as I am still rather shy of taking photos in restaurants, plus people were hungry!

Dad had the lamb shank with wholegrain mustard mash, from the main menu, and given the rate at which it disappeared I am certain that it was gorgeous. It smelled divine. Mom chose slow roast duck with a plum and honey sauce and I tried some of that. It was very good indeed, with the sauce properly tart to cut the richness of the duck. Mom said it was too tart for her but then she seems to find that with a lot of foods that others find fine. Though this is a woman who ate green, unripe grapes from our vine and said they were sweet. *blink* Anyway, she added a wee bit of sugar to the sauce which sorted it out. No 1 Husband chose the liver and bacon but with mash instead of the polenta, and they were more than happy to substitute that. I tried the sauce, which was beautifully rich and am assured that it was very good indeed, with extremely nice bacon.

I had Pie. I never make Pie at home so Pie it was. Pie is important, so it deserves a capital letter. 28 day hung Steak and Ale Pie with a suet crust.

OH MY GOD.

The pastry was utterly perfect. A thin, crispy but substantial shell to hold in the steak and smooth, rich gravy. The mash was plain, but very tasty and just enough to cope with the juices and gravy that spilled out. Serious chunks of meat too, which just flaked as you ate it.

The vegetables were also perfectly cooked. Carrots roasted with caraway seeds - but only a few, mind, which is good - steamed tender broccoli and wonderful cauliflower with a light cheese sauce. Fresh and cooked absolutely right. The veggies come from Jamie's certified organic garden, not far away. No food miles here!

Everyone except Mom tried some (she doesn't eat beef) and agreed upon the awesomeness of my lunch. I actually gave some to No 1 Husband as I was getting full, and dessert was on the horizon. Plus he really enjoyed it and I like making him happy.

Now. Onto the desserts. Oh the agonies of choosing! Lemon Posset with Lemon Madeleines? Marmalade Steamed Pudding? Vanilla Rice Pudding? Coffee Cheesecake??

We made it in the end but it was very hard indeed.

Dad - Semi Freddo with Dates, Prunes and Armagnac with a Butterscotch Sauce.
Mom - Prune Egg Custard Tart
No 1 Husband - Marmalade Steamed Pudding with Custard
Me - Coffee Cheesecake with an Espresso Glaze

And here you go. Look at how pretty they are! I apologise that I don't have a shot of the Marmalade Pudding but Tex was already well into it.

The last piece that Mom got.

Every single one of them was utterly gorgeous. The semi-freddo was creamy and rich, with a dark toffee hint from the fruits. The butterscotch sauce had started to chill and went into sticky strands of sweetness.

The egg custard was sweet and thick, not a hint of separation and the prunes were jammy, the pastry buttery and crisp.

Tex said that the pudding was perfect, with the bitter hint of the marmalade coming through in the right balance. "Needed more custard" was his only comment apart from Mmmm.

My cheesecake was absolutely to die for. Solid and rich, liked a baked cheesecake should be but not at all overly sweet. The coffee came through so very well, and the base! Oh my, the base was a cross between a biscuit and a sponge, with the coffee flavour very intense there. The espresso glaze...well that I could have drunk a cup of. In the spirit of Birthday-ness, I gave Mom the very last bit. See what a nice daughter-in-law I am? See??

Absolute perfection in every way. Please, if you can, do visit them. They are truly lovely people and they make you very welcome indeed.

http://www.thecricketers.co.uk/Oct_2010/index.html

The Cricketers, Clavering, Nr Saffron Walden, Essex, CB11 4QT
Tel: +44 (0)1799 550442
Fax: +44 (0)1799 550882
e-mail: info@thecricketers.co.uk

EDIT: Update from Sally and Trevor Oliver in reply to my email:

"And, no we are not retiring, there have been rumours of that nature for years. I think it's because a pub three miles away, which keeps closing down and opening up again, is similarly named (but with 'Arms'). The owners change so regularly and hence the rumours that it is us."

Good-oh!

Red meat and me.

2011-01-27T23:46:00.001Z

A few weeks ago I had a bit of a disaster cooking some steak. It turned out tough and it had no right to be so, as it was very, very good rib-eye from Westin Gourmet. I began to worry that I'd lost my steak cooking mojo. I managed to forget about it for a while until Thursday of last week when I realised that I had been absolutely exhausted for a few days, far more exhausted than was usual for me. My lovely receptionist, Natasha, said "Eat some red meat girl, you look anaemic!" As soon as she said it, I could feel the craving for rare steak start and knew that I had to find some. I trudged around Covent Garden at lunchtime looking for a cow. There were many restaurants but I had no idea which one to go for, as I was in that brain fog place when you know you want food but there's no deciding what to have. In the end I bought a rare roast beef sandwich for lunch and bought some rib-eye to cook that night. Believe it or nor I was a bit worried that I'd ruin it again but...

Thankfully I managed to cook it perfectly and could actually feel it doing me good while I ate it. I decided to make a conscious effort to eat more red meat this week, as I seem to need it. I've managed to do that quite well with a steak and broccoli stir fry on Friday night and a deeply rich and gorgeous bolognese sauce (more about that later) on Sunday, roast beef or salt beef sandwiches for lunches and steak again tonight. Thankfully it does seem to be working and I feel a whole lot better than I did last week. I really must remember to stick to it. Oh the hardship of having to eat beef.

Tonight I found rump steak for 20% off at my local Coop so my eyes lit up and lo the steak was mine. I snuk in a piece of sirloin as well. £12 for three big steaks? Bring it on.

Take piece of steak.
Batter it with the back of a heavy knife blade (steak hammers tear it too much) and heat a ridged griddle pan until it smokes. (I used a non stick one)
Slap the steak down and leave it. Just leave it alone. I sprinkle a touch of sea salt on the surface.
When you can easily lift the steak with tongs, turn it over keeping the heat high.
I cut a slit in Husband's one so that I can check there is no pink but for me so long as it is seared on both sides it's just fine.
I held the steak in the tongs and rested the fat on the griddle so that it cooked through.
Served on plain buttered mash and called it heavenly.

This ain't just food baby, this is medicine.

Kudos.

2011-01-16T11:50:00.001Z

I would just like to say bloody well done to my friend Gilly. This is her blog: http://gillsrecipearchive.blogspot.com/

She is the most amazing woman, and her recipes for both the Weight Watchers and Slimming World eating plans are wonderful, so they need sharing, okay? It's all too easy to fall into a slump when one is On A Diet, but Gilly's ideas are colourful and tempting. As is she!

Gilly, my dear, I salute you.

I blog, you blog, they blog, WE blog

2011-01-13T20:22:00.003Z

I have been thinking rather a lot lately about this whole food blogging phenomenon that has swept across the pages of our much beloved Internet. Long gone are the days when The Interweb was purely a geek preserve, a place to swap conversations consisting of capital letters and ASCII characters, spark amazing – and not so amazing - new ideas and programmes, or even to just trade Star Wars memorabilia. It started out as a big wide world full of technical things that I really didn’t understand, much less want to get involved in. I moved on to having a few chatrooms that I visited and I could keep up with friends living far away uses them, and good old AIM, but I think that was about all my involvement.

Now we are in the days when AOL start up discs are so prevalent they are used as wall hangings, bird scarers, place mats and ashtrays and the Internet has morphed. It has changed, the media would have us believe, into some sprawling, hard to control, hyperactive Gorgon that traps innocent people into Gaming Worlds and never lets them go. A place that nurtures anti-social behaviour and enables isolation.

Of course it can be all those things, but it can also be a source of great fun and sociability. It can be a life line in many cases where, for example, you may be a new mother, feeling totally alone, and then you can log into www.mumsnet.com, or myriad other sites, and realise that what you are going through at 4am with eau de nappy burned into your nasal passages and your hair on end, is actually normal, and not even out of the ordinary. You can link with other people who feel the same way that you do, and who, hopefully, will not shout you down for it. (Yes, yes, I am well aware there are Militants out there but let’s not give them any more page room than they deserve.)

This brings me around to the subject, not so neatly I admit, of food blogging. The day that I found a food blog, my eyes were as wide and round as Botham's Yorkshire teacakes. Oh I had joined recipe sites before and found them useful, but, ultimately, wanting. Some were passionless places, some even run by people who just wanted some control and grip over their contributors. If your food ideas disagreed with theirs, heaven forfend. You were outcast into the cold, left only to wander WalMart, or Sainsburys, in search of inspiration. Luckily I shrugged that off, after a while, and branched out into finding fellow food lovers. Not just cooks, oh no, but people passionate about ingredients and contents, the history of food and how it speaks to us, the memories that go to make up a part of each dish that we serve.

I found that the majority of food bloggers are like me. They love to eat, but more importantly they love to cook and share with others too. People who get to know me realise, after a while, that whilst I adore food, and oh my goodness I really do enjoy eating, cooking for someone and making them happy, or sated, is the best way for me to be happy too. This can, of course, lead to tragedy, and when a dish fails, or people don’t like it, then I get that small voice telling me that that I have failed my friends. I also have to say that when someone rejects what I have cooked, it is one of the most staggering solar plexus blows that can be dealt to me. Well, it used to be, thankfully I have managed to get over that one but there have been times when I have been in tears over a rejected dinner.

I am very nervous cooking for new people, and I worry that it was all just be inedible, and the terrible truth will come out that I am Just Not That Good at it, that somehow I will be found out as a person who talks a good dinner but isn’t actually that great. I am well aware that this is nonsense, because I trust my friends to be honest with me, but it’s an underlying fear which probably stems from growing up watching my Nan bustle around her kitchen, creating dishes that were always amazing and delicious. Perfect pastry, beautifully risen cakes, melting casseroles and silky soups. I still have the ‘not as good as Nan’s was’ whisper when I bake.

Luckily I also had my wonderful mother, who taught me about all kinds of foreign foods and how to have FUN while you create delicious meals, which is far more important than any old crimped bit of pastry. My mum and my step dad far surpassed my Nan in the cookery stakes because everything was imbued with love and care – plus their cooking was OH MY GOD delicious. I still remember home made deep dish pizza, made in a circular curved pan, tuna pie made with puff pastry, and the gorgeous flatbread that went on the barbecue. Roast lamb with red onions, gammon with pease pudding, a thai style beef casserole that killed off any cold germs going around and slow cooked spicy chicken soup made in a big, brown crock pot. Now my mum is in Cyprus and she still makes me hungry when she tells me what she is making for dinner!

To find a community of people who live and love food, who will talk about it, think about it, recreate it, revel in it, that, to me, is worth more than a tonne of gold and truffles. These people will not laugh at me for taking photos of my dinner – which I did before I had a blog anyway – and they will understand when I say that I read cookbooks like novels. They will just get how happy the first asparagus of the season can make me, how a trip to a farm shop is as imbued with as much excitement as the first visit to the circus or the fun fair was as a child. I can share my obsession with these people, I can meet up and we can share food, which is just heaven on a gourmet cracker for me.

Food bloggers have also become the restaurant trade’s free form of advertising. In the same way that when Delia mentioned cranberries the shops ran out within a few days, when a well known blog praises a restaurant their bookings can soar.

Restaurants need to realise that the folks taking photos aren’t just food nerds, they are potential attractors of revenue. When bad service happens, it can start on one blog and go viral within a few hours. I would point people at www.meemalee.com to see just what can happen at even the best restaurants. Mr Blumenthal should maybe keep a closer eye on his people and possible revamp the ideas that his staff have on what constitutes service or, at the very least, jack up their willingness to help out patrons who are in distress and trying to do the right thing.

Ripping people off can no longer stay behind the closed kitchen doors. People will report it. They will blog it, they will Facebook it and retweet it. The very same way that they will heap praise upon praise for what is good and deserving of mention.

However, this does mean that, as bloggers, especially those of us who have a substantial following, (not me, I hasten to add) we do have a duty to do things right. There is a difference between constructive criticism, and a downright slating. By all means say what was wrong, but say what was right too. Remember that the people behind the food are human, and whilst a restaurant needs to know when things are not up to standard, they do not need to be told that in derogatory or insulting terms. Your visit may have been on an off day for the kitchen, they could have been down by three members of staff, we cannot know as we aren't out there doing it.

We should strive to be constructive, and fair or we shouldn't really be doing it.

Food Bloggers Unite - and be cool to each other.

Red and Black, Addiscombe.

2011-01-11T22:02:00.001Z

I was actually going to go to bed about half an hour ago and then I started looking at the photos from my meal out on Friday. So now I'm hungry again despite eating the last of my brown rice and gammon bake.

Lovely New Person (okay, Col from hereonin) and I had a weekend date with East Croydon, weekend just gone. We were tempted by Miso right by East Croydon station but it was busy being a Friday night and so I opted to to go Il Cavallino, nearby in Lower Addiscombe Road. It's been a favourite of mine and Boyfriend's for ages, being quiet and comfortable, with excellent food and a wonderful host to boot so it was a sad shock for me to find that it was no longer there but had morphed into Red and Black. After a moment of "Oh dear!" we decided to give it a go anyway as it looked warm and inviting.

I am ever so glad that we did because we ended up having one of the most excellent dinners. They still do excellent pizzas and pasta but the new things are just gorgeous. The staff are very sweet, even apologising for having to move our hands as they put the food down. (Yes, yes, we were holding hands across the table, bleurgh I know.)

The menu is small but perfectly formed, though I did wish that I had been allowed to proof read it for them.

We began with three starters and it was a struggle to choose even then. A plate of Italian cured meats, with a small pile of olives and cornichons which I very lovingly saved Col from eating, a bowl of sweet and tender king prawns with garlic and parsley on fresh rocket, and then a plate with the biggest chunk of deep fried brie I have ever seen. Fair took us aback that did.

The meats were of good quality, the salami nicely spicy and the olives good and garlicky. The prawns were luscious - not too much garlic so the natural flavours came through. I loathe rocket as a rule but this was so fresh that it tasted just right with the garlic/olive oil juices from the prawns. The brie was delicious, although it could have done with being cooked for a wee while longer but with that large a wedge I can see how it's hard to judge! The cranberry sauce with it was very nice indeed. It tasted home made, and was tart enough to cut through the creamy brie. There was not a hint of greasiness at all, and the crumb was utterly perfect and uniformly golden brown and crispy.

I am afraid photos did not happen there as we were too hungry to pause.

The mains...well now.

I chose slow roast pork belly because it's slow roast pork belly dammit and that is always a good test for a restaurant. They did not disappoint.

This is a very generous portion indeed. I really should have posed something next to it to show the size but, er, I was in a hurry to dig in. The meat melted and pulled apart into silken strands. The mash you can see there is a spring onion version and that was creamy, but not sloppy, with decent sized but soft onion pieces and a deep, buttery flavour. The green beans were cooked perfectly, with a bite to them but still tender. I could not stop making "Mmmmm" noises as I ate because it was so darned delicious. The gravy, jus, call it what you fancy, was rich and full flavoured, a proper porky flavour very evident.

I took the crackling off and set it aside as that was to be my last piece of the feast. Joy of joys, there was still that sticky, full of flavour layer of fat underneath the crackling, and oh how I adore that. Please, leave the fat alone. It's meant to be there and I get quite cross if people remove it. Having enjoyed the meat so much, I was wondering if the crackling could compare and it absolutely did. Thin and crispy, with a slightly chewy texture but so easy to crunch through. Marvellous.

Col had lamb fillet with butter beans and spinach.

That description just doesn't get across the depth of flavour in the dish. The meat was heady with rosemary but there were no bits of that notoriously woody herb to be seen. The fillet was superbly cooked and very tender with another rich gravy which tasted of the very essence of lamb. Knockout, all of it. I have had food in 'upmarket' Central London restaurants that could not hold a candle to this cooking.

On the strength of what had gone before - and aganst the better judgement of my stomach - we chose dessert.

My chocolate brownie was beautiful.

A thin slab of dense chocolate cake with chewy edges and a gooey centre. Any bigger a serving would have been way too much. I loved how the chocolate sauce almost froze on the ice cream whilst the ice cream itself was pooling down over the sides of the brownie. Heavenly.

Col chose a sticky toffee pudding with nuts because he has hollow legs. The smell wafting across to me was delicious.

I got to try a bit, but Col did have the "Mine! All Mine!" look on his face. The sauce was so smooth, I suspect condensed milk. The pudding was rich, but still light and the nuts had soaked up a goodly amount of the sauce, whilst still having some crunch.

After all of that we were beaten. Okay, well, Col still had a hankering to try their seafood linguine but that may just have been a pipe dream at that point of the evening!

All of that loveliness and taste, plus 2 Peroni beers and a soft drink came to £53.

We aim to go back again and work our way through the rest of the menu. Sadly they do not have a website yet and I cannot remember what else was on there, so I have to go back, right? It's a duty!

Red and Black
89 Lower Addiscombe Road
Croydon
CR0 6PT
0208 656 9679 / 07800 800 082

That's the leftovers done with.

2011-01-04T21:46:00.000Z

Rice and gammon bake. That's what I had in mind.

Now. I have learned a lesson here and that is that brown rice takes AN AGE to cook and far more water than white rice does.

I have cooked brown rice before, and never had any such trouble but my word, I must have had what a friend called 'super 'ard bastard rice' this time around. Nevertheless I persevered with a certain sense towards the end of die you bugger - and it did turn out rather beautifully in the end.

Simple ingredients too.

1 cup (S'ABR) organic brown rice
1 small red onion
3 thick slices of cooked gammon, cubed
2 level tsp Ras el Hanout
1 level tsp cinnamon
3 - 31/2 cups chicken stock - or more if the rice refuses point blank to soften. (I used a rather nice stock powder so needed no salt at all)
Olive oil
Butter

In a dutch oven or oven safe casserole dish (must have a well fitting lid) fry off the sliced onion in olive oil, add in the rice and stir well to coat with the oil. Add in 1/2 tsp butter here. It's just used as a flavouring.
Add in the spices and the gammon cubes and mix very well.
Pour in the chicken stock, bring to the boil, cover with a very tight lid and then bake in the oven.
Take lid off after an hour and swear at it. Put it back in the oven.
I used 170C in a fan oven, and had to bake it for nearly two hours all told to get the rice to soften and absorb the liquid.

It's a bit of a hit and miss affair. Add a bit more liquid if it needs it, but it may not...*rolls eyes*

It's dark and spicy and even worth cooking a bit of gammon just to make it. I know I could have used white rice but brown seemed to fit better with what I wanted it to taste of. It's a very comforting dish, and it made loads. Lunch tomorrow!

Oh. My. God.

2011-01-04T20:13:00.000Z

Smoked salted tablet.

Thank you Gin and Crumpets!

http://ginandcrumpets.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/smoked-salted-tablet/

Di Paolo café, Bexhill on Sea

2010-12-28T16:02:00.003Z

Every so often, No 1 Boyfriend and I head to his place in Bexhill. A sort of a Pied à Mare I suppose.

We either go for a spot of much deserved RnR, where I squeak happily at the sea and have all the windows open so that I can fall asleep to the sound of the waves, or we go to utilise the much larger space for a photo shoot. Damn all this taking photos of our beautiful friends, life sucks eh?

Anyway. The two of us are both very much into good food. I just happen to be the one out of the two of us who's good at cooking it too. He is also king of the cheese based diet, so I feel it's a good idea that every once in a while vegetables or salads are presented, or food that is not served on a cracker is introduced. He does in fact like greens, though he'll not admit it until you poke him with a spoon and promise to put bacon with it or butter on it.

One of the times we stayed in Bexhill, we very much needed Lunch. Not just a quick snack, but your actual full on Lunch so it was decided that we should go to the local family run Italian café, Di Paolo, for it. They do amazing homemade Italian gelato (Great Grandad started off way back in the 1800s with a bicycle mounted ice cream cart!) but they also serve very good, simple food. I had a craving for fresh fish and chips, and they always have fish that has been caught locally.

We chose the table service area at the back of the café (through wooden double doors with checked curtains) because we could. The maître d' is a rosy cheeked young Italian chap with a charm offensive going on. He welcomed us in, and made sure we were comfortable. It is all so very...well, it's old fashioned and utterly appealing because of it. The waitress (skirt, blouse, sensible shoes and white pinny) took our order for tea, and then said "The young Sir will be over to take your order soon." We just love it in there. It is also the Sunday Lunch destination for many of the area's OAPs and the staff take very great care of them, knowing most of them by name and, possibly, ailment.

Young Sir (black trousers and waistcoat, white shirt, slicked back hair and a big smile) did indeed take our order. (I believe Old Sir, Papa, has retired.) Now, No 1 Boyfriend doesn't usually eat fish and chips outside of his twice yearly Whitby visits but on this occasion decided to take the plunge. He was well rewarded.

A pot of tea, some bread and butter, fresh haddock in a light, crispy batter and golden chips with the sea a stone's throw away and the art deco wonder of the De La Warr Pavilion visible out of the front window. Heaven. The fish was to die for, perfectly cooked and not oily at all. I did manage to at least take one photo of it before I wolfed down the rest of it but it was a struggle I can tell you.

Dessert had to be done. We both chose apple and sultana crumble with ice cream. You can select any of their ice cream flavours to have so I picked their gorgeous vanilla with morello cherry sauce through it and by golly it is good. Smooth, creamy but with a nice tart spike of cherry every so often. It went very well with the rich crumble. Very generously sprinkled with brown sugar, and with hints of nutmeg and cinnamon, it was sweet and homely. Just fabulous.

I have eaten a fair few of their ice creams - their gianduia ice cream which is like Nutella and cream, frozen, is probably my favourite.

The bill was very pleasing indeed. As was the paper it was written on. It felt like they had a stack of them in the cupboard that they'd bought way back when they first opened. There is an old style comfort and civility in this place and I wouldn't change it for the world.

Food Blogger meet ups: No 1

2010-12-28T00:54:00.002Z

The 16th December dawned icy, snowy, sleety and cold. Not the best weather for a meet up but I donned many layers, sensible boots (like I own any other kind) a hoodie and my bestest red fraggle skin coat. I was on a mission and nothing was going to put me off it.

I had a date with destiny. My destiny being entirely full of the lure of dim sum. I managed to get through the morning at work, but all I could think of was small parcels of loveliness, served with tea and chopsticks.

My partner in crime for this mission - and we'd both chosen willingly to accept it - was Kavita of Kavey Eats. The only self-destruct that was going to happen was us being too full of dim sum to walk back to the station.

I had forgotten just how close to Chinatown I work, so I was there early. I took refuge in the pagoda and watched Chinatown bustle around me. It bustles really well. Seconds before I took this photo there was so much steam coming out of the stall on the left that I couldn't actually see them. I am going to have to go back and find out what they were doing. I kept thinking that Jackie Chan would appear at any moment and chaos would ensue.

Kavita met me under the bandstand, (which is what I keep calling the pagoda) resplendent in her lovely purple hat and green coat. "TO THE CRISPY DUCK!" we cried. Well, okay, we didn't but we would have done if a) I had know where we were going and b) we not have been so cold our teeth were chattering. We did go to the Crispy Duck though. http://www.chinatownlondon.org/cuisine_restaurant.php?ID=47

The dim sum menu has pictures of each dish. This is extremely helpful but also tends to lead to the choosing method which consists of a stabbing of the finger on the menu with an accompanying dialogue of "I'll have this and this and that and oooh look at that" . I think we had decided to try and eat our own weight in dim sum anyway, so nae bother. They have another menu too, and that seems to be full of meat. I will be going back, and I will be eating my way through crispy duck and large amounts of roasted pig.

We chose Thai Style baby octopus, (bottom left) Char Siu buns (on the right) because you just have to, Deep Fried Taro Cakes - a minced beef dumpling covered in shredded taro - and paper wrapped prawns, (both on the top left of the photo) cheung fan, which is a very tasty translucent rice flour pancake wrapped around a deep fried savoury doughnut, and deep fried prawn beancurd rolls. I didn't get photos of all of it as we were too busy talking up a storm and, well, eating.

We also ordered a main dish, because we're just like that. Peppers, tofu and aubergine stuffed with a delicious prawn paste and covered in black bean sauce. Quite tricksy to eat with chopsticks but oh so worth the effort. We had lots of oolong tea to wash it all down.

The octopus was very nice, extremely flavourful but just a little too spicy for me. Yes, yes, I am a wuss. I left most of that to Kavey. The taro cakes were exquisite. Oddly reminiscent of a very grown up Findus crispy pancake to be truthful! The shredded taro covering is most odd, but in a good way. It's almost feather light and does get everywhere if you aren't careful when you eat it. I suspect we made quite a mess. I have a recipe for taro pastry somewhere so I shall be trying that out at some point, now that I know I like the taste of taro.

Paper wrapped prawns are pretty much what they say. Whole prawns wrapped up in rice paper squares, twisted to close and then deep fried. Very yummy indeed.

Char Siu buns are old favourites of mine. The soft wheat flour bun conceals a chopped mix of sweet barbecue pork filling. So very easy to eat. These also come in a puff pastry version. Seriously addictive.

Cheung Fan is another dish that is tricky to eat with chopsticks as the pancake covering is slippery, but oh it is worth the effort. The mix of slippery pancake covering, and deep fried crispy filling is a bit of a texture shock, but a very appealing one.

I really liked the prawn stuffed vegetables, even if they were quite hard to eat. The prawn paste is very flavourful, and the peppers still retained their shape and bite. The aubergine was soft enough to cut with chopsticks and had soaked up lots of black bean flavour.

I can say without a doubt that I will most definitely be going back. All that food plus copious buckets of tea came to just over £30. I can also say without a doubt that I will most definitely be meeting up with Kavey again. She's ace! Hurrah for food bloggers I say.

(Oh and yes, we made it back to the station. Via the Chinese bakery...)

Christmas 2010 reading haul!

2010-12-27T19:25:00.002Z

I usually forget what I add to my Amazon wish list, but that is a bonus as then everything is a surprise! I got other books too, including a lovely signed copy of Maureen Lipman's biography - but these ones are for posting here.

My amazing Christmas Haul!

I also received At Elizabeth David's Table. It's a beautiful book, now with colour photographs, and that makes a hell of a difference. Truly exquisite photography, which brings the food to life. Cookbooks need photos, to be honest. If only to make the reader hungry and inspire them to cook something. I know that works for me.

Michael Psilakis - How To Roast a Lamb - well now. I cannot wait to sit down and read my way through that one, even if I hear the aunt from My Big Fat Greek Wedding speaking every time I read the word Lamb. I have a serious weakness for Greek cookery books, and the more I get the more recipes I gather together that I remember from my childhood. There's usually a couple in every book.

The Cook's Book. For the cook who's best at everything - this seems to be a book full of useful tips and hints. Thank you ma and pa in-law, I suspect sarcasm was in play here...

Heston Blumenthal - In Search of Perfection - aaah my lovely mad scientist turned chef. This man's thought processes utterly fascinate me. I love watching him take an idea, run with it and then develop it into something magical. Okay so many people think it isn't really cookery but my lord, it keeps me happy. He cooks for all the senses, and that appeals to me very much indeed. This is going to be a book to get utterly lost in. I love how he turns things on their heads and crosses all the accepted lines of what constitutes good food. He's also a geek, and I just adore my geek boys.

The Complete Book of Greek Cooking - I had this book may years ago but I loaned it to someone, and they never gave it back. They also moved country which made it rather difficult to just pop round and demand the return of it. However. Now I have it again and I can read through it like a novel. So many recipes collected from so many people, so much tradition in one place. It reads well, and it takes me back home, back to a home I have never really lived in, but one that fostered how I am.

Willie Harcourt-Cooze - Willie's Chocolate Bible - well, it's chocolate innit? What's not to like? It has some of the most delectable chocolate recipes going and you can buy his products online now. That's a treat book, one to take recipes from for Special Occasions or Special People.

Nigel Slater, Appetite. - what more is there to say about Nigel? I love his enthusiasm and his childlike wonder when it comes to fruit and vegetables, and fresh food. He cooks in a manner that is similar to mine, and I find him so very appealing. His love of food and his great knowledge shines through, but he isn't arrogant or big-headed in the slightest. I'd like to invite him round for dinner! I read his book Toast, and cried buckets for the poor, bereaved young boy that he was so in a way, it's grand to see him all grown up and happy now which is daft, but it's how it feels.

All in all, this is going to be me happy for months!

Le Garrick

2010-12-27T02:03:00.001Z

The last time that I went out to an evening dinner with the rather lovely New Person it was to Acornhouse and we had a very good time indeed. http://cookwitch.blogspot.com/2010/11/acornhouse-restaurant-kings-cross.html

Last Thursday, after an email conversation that went along the lines of "I have a hankering for French. Can you look at Top Table." and then a flurry of "Oooh look...." we ended up with a reservation at Le Garrick. I have never been, which is a travesty considering I work 2 minutes' walk away. I didn't actually know that I worked that closely to it, which is why, when we found it, I was very embarrassed to have gotten lost on the way...okay so we were coming at it from a different direction but even so.

Anyway. It's a very small restaurant, and on a cold, cold night it was a lovely, cosy - dare I say romantic - place to be.

Once the Very Loud Group of Media Types had finally vacated the narrow space between the tables ("Please move your bottom away from my face or I will have to take a fork to it.") and moved into the bar area, it become an even nicer place to be. The ensuing braying from in there had us both in hysterics after a while, with me wanting to poke my head around the wall and say "Damn it Marjorie*! Damn it all to Hell!" but I didn't because La fondue était arrivée.

Oh my. It was not the 1970s saucepan with a ton of unidentified melted cheese and Blue Nun in it. No. It was a whole Vacherin cheese, baked in its wooden box with a dash of white wine and fresh thyme until it was almost liquid. We were given pieces of baguette to tear apart and dunk into the cheese and that we did with accompanying food appreciation noises. It was gorgeous. Rich and creamy but not overpowering, and as it cooled the edges turned delightfully chewy. We finished that off in short order, with Col graciously letting me have the last bit of chewy cheese.

I did not take this photo. This is just to show you what Vacherin looks like in its wee box.

For the main course we had both decided on steak. Not just any steak though, oh no. It was on the menu as 'Entrecote grillée sauce poivre: 14 oz char-grilled 28-day hung rib-eye steak on the bone with pommes frites and the chef's pepper and cognac sauce.' They also offered béarnaise.

The waitress who looked after us was superb. Col had gone for blue and she said "Ah oui, you want it still to moo? We will just pass it over the flame." and I chose medium rare as I like slightly more bite. Stop laughing at the back.

What arrived, gentle reader, was a 14oz beef chop. Quite possibly the tastiest beef chop I have had in a long while and I have eaten a lot of beef. Entrecote is, essentially, a rib-eye steak on the bone. Oh the joy of beef on the bone again! It was even better than the rib eye that I had eaten at Hawksmoor. Yes, really. The chef who cooked our steaks got them utterly spot on as to how we wanted them and the meat was as tender and juicy as any I have had at other, more pricey places, more so in fact. The béarnaise sauce which we chose to accompany the steak was also incredibly good. So many places don't get it right, and it ends up being a greasy, slightly vinegary glop more akin to cheap mayonnaise with a bit of greenery added but this...again, perfection. It was thick, and creamy but with the proper amount of shallot and tarragon. Tarragon can overpower but in this sauce, it didn't. Beautifully balanced.

The frites were as I have only had them in France. When the first frites you had were from a roadside stall in the mountains of France, every other plateful after that gets compared and these utterly lived up to the memory. Slim sticks of crisp, golden and salted potato, as perfect a pile of frites as I could have wanted. Belgo take note, that is what a plate of frites should be. Not a bowlful of frozen chips fried until they are vaguely done.

At this point I must apologise for the lack of photos as we simply dived straight in and only surfaced again when a steak induced coma was about to set in. I will state for the record that, as at Acornhouse, we simply had no room for dessert. We obtained the bill (I don't know what it came to but there ar eprices on the website) and then sloped off through the freezing night air to have a bit of a lie down at our hotel. One of us may have had a nap.

I will most definitely go there again, it was absolutely stunning. Anywhere that can cook steak that well is a Must Visit Again place in my book. Well done everyone at Le Garrick. You made our evening a very special one indeed.

http://www.garrickrestaurantbar.co.uk/
10-12 Garrick Street
Covent Garden
London WC2E 9BH
020 7247 7649

*from the TV show A Bit of Fry and Laurie

Christmas! Well good grief.

2010-12-27T00:35:00.000Z

After many years of being a confirmed Christmas pudding hater, I finally tasted one that I liked. It took me by surprise I can tell you! Why did I taste it when I hate the stuff? Well, it smelled heavenly for one thing and for another, I have a habit of trying a foodstuff I don't like every few years or so, just to see if I have changed my mind. (Mussels? Still a definite NO on that one.)

This pudding wasn't the Heston miracle of candied orangeyness, though I admit I would like to try that to see what all the fuss was about - it was a Duchy Originals organic pud. (£7.99 from Waitrose)

Ma in law chose the steaming method to cook it, and the pudding was beautifully light whilst (in your face Campaign for Plain English) still being very rich and flavourful. Quite boozy tasting too though it didn't have any effect on me which I was quite grateful for. I am allergic, for want of a better word, to alcohol, and usually the tiniest amount sets me off to feeling quite unwell but despite how boozy this pudding tasted, I was fine. We tried it first with custard and then with cream, and I think the cream won out. Custard made it a bit too claggy, but cold double cream was absolutely perfect.

9/10 there!

A Thank You.

2010-12-24T23:16:00.000Z

I have many thank yous to say for this year. People have been outstanding in their gifts of time, and love and care.

In the foodie world, I would like to thank people too.

Kavita of Kavey Eats - http://www.kaveyeats.com/
Mimi of Meemalee's Kitchen - http://www.meemalee.com/
Danny of Food Urchin - http://foodurchin.blogspot.com/
Anne of Tales from the Tiny Kitchen - http://tinykitchentales.blogspot.com/

These four were my first foray into the reading of food blogs, and they got me hooked. I love how they write, how they cook and their sheer enthusiasm. I have so far managed to meet up with Kavey and hooray for she is My Kind of Woman. We are both death to a dim sum menu and seem to have similar ideas on many things.

Anne's writing style made me want to be her friend, she just sounds like so much fun!It was Anne's blog that I read first, and she made me want to write so you can all blame her.

Danny, now, there's a geezer. I have to be careful reading his blog and not ever drink tea whilst doing so because too many times there has been a tea + keyboard/screen interface. See here for an example. http://foodurchin.blogspot.com/2010/12/food-urchin-meets-manchester-egg.html
Soon I hope to cook a little extra, and feed a poor, starving print monkey.

Mimi is like a quickfire bundle of energy. I have no idea how she does all that she does, but boy am I glad she does. She also shares my...fondness for Andrew McCarthy. We so would.

I don't have a lot of time to read food blogs, but when I do, there are the ones I go to first so to you all, thank you for your words and your time and your inspirations. Long may you cook.

Food Bloggers I salute you.

Nigella's Devil's Food Cake

2010-12-19T23:58:00.001Z

I did it. I actually followed a recipe for once. Ok. I tweaked it a wee bit *looks shifty* but only twice.

Today is our 11th wedding anniversary and as my husband had been away (I'd not seen him since the Thursday before last) I decided to make a cake.

Nigella's Devil's Food Cake looked like it would fit the bill and indeed it does.

The recipe is from Nigella Kitchen.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/devils_food_cake_49392

50g/2oz best-quality cocoa powder, sifted (I used Green & Black's)
100g/4oz dark muscovado sugar (I used Billingtons)
250ml/8fl oz boiling water
125g/4½oz soft unsalted butter, plus some for greasing (I used salted)
150g/5oz caster sugar (I used golden)
225g/8oz plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 free-range eggs

For the frosting
125ml/4fl oz water
30g/1oz dark muscovado sugar
175g/6oz unsalted butter, cubed
300g/10oz best-quality dark chocolate, finely chopped

3 bowls.

Method in Nigella's words.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line the bottoms of two 20cm/8in sandwich tins with baking parchment and butter the sides

Put the cocoa and the dark muscovado sugar into a large bowl and pour in the boiling water. Whisk to mix, then set aside.

Cream the butter and caster sugar together in a separate bowl, beating well until pale and fluffy; I find this easiest with a freestanding mixer, but by hand wouldn’t kill you.

Stir the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda together in another bowl and set aside for a moment.

Dribble the vanilla extract into the creamed butter and sugar – mixing all the while – then crack in one egg, quickly followed by a scoop of the flour mixture, then the second egg. Keep mixing after each addition.

Incorporate the rest of the flour mixture little by little, then finally mix and fold in the cocoa mixture, scraping the bowl well with a spatula.

Divide this fabulously chocolatey batter between the two prepared tins and put in the oven for about 30 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Take the tins out and leave them on a wire rack for 5-10 minutes, then turn the cakes out and set aside to cool.

As soon as the cakes are in the oven, get started on your frosting. Put the water, muscovado sugar and butter into a pan over a low heat until melted.

When this mixture begins to bubble, take the pan off the heat and add the chopped chocolate, swirling the pan so that all the chocolate is hit with heat, then leave for a minute to melt. Once melted, whisk until smooth and glossy.

Set the frosting aside for about one hour, whisking now and again – when you’re passing the pan – by which time the cakes will be cooled, and ready for the frosting.

Set one of the cooled cakes, with its top side facing downwards, onto a cake stand or plate, and spread with about one-third of the frosting. Top that with the second cake, regular way up, and spread the remaining frosting over the top and sides, swirling away with your spatula. You can go for a smooth look, but I never do and probably couldn’t.

Lisa's notes:
I added 1/2 tsp cinnamon to the batter and that works a treat.
The chocolate was 200g 75% Tesco's plain and 100g Coop Orange and Spice. Bloody lovely!
I mixed it all with a hand held electric mixer.
It takes a LONG TIME for the frosting to set up. Don't panic. I put mine in the fridge for a while as it was taking so long but do keep an eye on it or it will set solid. *coff*
I added some wild cherry jam in the middle to break the richness.
You could probably do this in two steps and not need three bowls. Make the cocoa mixture, then cream sugar and butter, then add the rest of the dry ingredients and then the cocoa mix. Saves on one bowl but hey.

Should you wish to see Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall...

2010-12-18T00:49:00.000Z

in velvet flares, platform heels and with a glittery hair-do, go here and watch part one.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/tv-dinners/4od#2927221

Camp as Christmas, and bloody brilliant.

The Tommyfield - Kennington

2010-12-15T22:36:00.003Z

It was Boyfriend's Birthday last week so A Meal was arranged. K and I had read reviews of a few gastropubs, because that's what we do for fun, and The Tommyfield looked rather good. A booking was made and so on a very cold Saturday evening Boyfriend and I set out from the exotic climes of East Croydon and tootled an hour across London to darkest Kennington. It's only a short walk from the tube station through a pretty square.

The pub looks very warm and inviting. It was very warm and inviting. Full marks there. I love being able to see into the kitchen, especially when Smoking Pans and Flames happen as you can see the chefs grinning.

The table wasn't quite ready but we were early so we sat at the bar. Well, sort of sat. The amount of time it took me to get up on the bar stool was exactly the amount of time it took them to ready the table. I'm useless at bar stools. Being utterly teetotal means that I have not had the chance to practice the technique as I don't visit pubs enough.

Anyway. The one drawback of the pub was evident at the bar. The music is way too loud. If you cannot hear what your customers are ordering then you need to turn it down sharpish. I know it's all hip and cool and happening but, well, really.

The chairs at our table were very comfortable, which is a bonus point in their favour because bad seating makes for a Lisa who ends up not being able to walk. This did not happen! Hurrah!

After the usual umming and aahing over the menu - http://www.thetommyfield.com/menus.php?menu=6741 - (grocer's apostrophe on pie's!) we all chose what we needed.

The Pies of the Day were beef and stout, and Shepherd's.

Starters (no photo, sorry, we ate too fast!)
The girls: Ham hock and guinea fowl terrine with piccalilli and damson chutney
The Boy: Smoked salmon and crayfish croquette, baby red chard salad, crème fraiche

ALL excellent. The one thing I will say is that the toast needed butter. It was very thick white bread, gorgeous flavour but...well, butter please! The damson chutney was amazing, sweet and unctuous. I could happily have eaten more of that.

The croquette was creamy but not too much, and had a lovely smokey flavour. Good crisp coating too. That disappeared very quickly indeed.

The Mains
The girls: Shank of venison, parsnip tart, devils on horseback (sides of clapshot and brussel tops)
The Boy: Wild Bass, braised fennel, tomato and mussel velouté

The venison was very good indeed. Properly hung as the gamey flavour was very evident, and the meat simply fell off the bone. The parsnip tart was very nice too, though K felt it was a bit too sweet for her taste. The filling was a little too liquid, but I'd rather that than dry. The pastry was very good, and there was a decent hint of nutmeg in there. That's proper.

My devils on horseback were quite dry, and I felt that more gravy was needed with the meal.

The sides were nice again but the brussel tops needed either butter or bacon (we couldn't decide) and the clapshot, though incredibly tasty, well, that needed butter too. We came to the conclusion that we should just have asked for some butter...

The plates weren't really hot enough so everything cooled down quite fast though that didn't stop us.

I have it on good authority that the sea bass (with a side of chips) was truly delicious. I tasted a bit and pulled a face but that is totally a personal preference. The skin was brilliantly crisp though. I liked that bit!
Two of the mussels were closed, so really should not have been served but that is easy to miss I expect. Still, keeping a watchful eye out would be better. (I pointed out the closed ones to the waitress as people who don't know might have forced them open and eaten them That could be bad.)

It certainly disappeared fast enough and there were appreciative noises. It looks so very pretty too. Brussel tops were obviously in the veg box that week.

Desserts:
The girls: well we actually had different things for once. Sticky Toffee Pudding for K and The Boy and I ordered apple and blackberry crumble with damson ripple ice cream. We were undecided for a while but the damson ripple ice cream swung it.

The sticky toffee pudding was very light indeed, and had a decently toffeeish flavour. A lot lighter than anyone expected, to be honest, but seeing as we'd eaten half a bambi that was a good thing.

The crumble was excellent. Beautifully tart, with a good crunchy topping, and sweet pieces of apple very evident.

HOWEVER. There was no damson ripple ice cream. A wee pot of extremely good vanilla, yes, but where was our damson ripple? We asked if they had run out and were told, with very many apologies from the brilliant waitress, and a promise to bring it to the attention of the manager, that the crumble has always been served with vanilla ice cream, so the damson ripple must have been a mistake on the menu. We felt rightly cheated, seeing as it was that tantalising promise of deliciousness that had swung our choice. It's still on the Christmas menu on the site.
http://www.thetommyfield.com/menus.php?menu=7055

Back to the music problem; I had asked for a cup of tea, and it didn't turn up. When we enquired about it (different waitress) she said "Oh did you want it with your dessert?" Well, yes, I did really. So off she went and came back with three knives. She couldn't hear what we had said, so assumed cheese.
Really Tommyfield, turn the music down! I'm an old Goth and Rock clubber, and love my loud music but for heaven's sake guys, when it gets in the way of service, and your customers have to shout to each other, you are doing it wrong.

The tea, when it turned up was delicious though. Tea Pigs English Breakfast, gorgeous!

The bill wasn't too bad. Took me aback initially but then I forgot that there was alcohol involved as I never order it. All of that food, plus 4 pints of Thatchers, a port and a dessert wine and service (already added in btw) came to £123.00.

Our very perky blonde Northern Lass waitress was awesome and great fun, and we could have chatted to her all night.

All in all, were I in the area I'd go back. If they turned the music down!

Edit 16.12.2010: the nice people at Renaissance Pubs have read and responded on Twitter. Now THAT is service. Thank you guys!

Costa Coffee Christmas Sweet Treats Range

2010-12-14T20:32:00.002Z

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to get sent a box of cakes. Did you see that? Maybe I didn't type it loudly enough. CAKES.

Ho yes. Very yummy cakes they were too. I decided to do A Taste Test in the office and, oddly, everyone wanted to help out. They never seem to want to help with the filing but that doesn't come with a cherry on the top or a sugar paste scarf.

The red ribbon was ceremoniously cut, the hordes beaten back with a spoon and then I allowed everyone to try one thing. They were all quite well behaved because there was the promise that they might be allowed to try another one later.

We had Gingerbread George, Mincemeat Tarts and Black Forest Cupcakes. There was a bit of a scuffle but order prevailed.

Gingerbread George: so cute! This is a very hard gingerbread, and some people said it was too hard but dunking in tea or coffee sorts that one out! Very good dipped in a latte. He could have done with a bit more ginger I thought, (sorry George) but then I like ginger.

Black Forest Cupcakes: Oh my. I loved the look of these and really enjoyed eating them too. The hit of cherry sauce in the middle is luscious. The sponge was a little too dry and it crumbled but that was sorted out by dint of the OMG CREAM CHEESE FROSTING. One of the lads said that there was too much frosting but we didn't really agree. We just ate his second one for him. The frosting was sweet and creamy but stood up well to both a fork and a feckless George falling on top of it.

Mincemeat Tarts: now these were a total hit with everyone. The mincemeat was spiced generously enough and not sickly at all, which can be a problem with mincemeat. (Mr Kipling I am looking at you here.) Mincemeat is not meant to be a sickly, gloopy jam with a bit of peel in it, it should have body and oomph, and I speak as someone who made her own Actual Meat Based version. This version was just lovely. The almond slivers gave it a lovely crunch and contrasted nicely with the beautifully short pastry.

Look at happy, smiley George there with his tasty scarf.

The tart! Lovely to look at and very good to eat.

The Black Forest Cupcake. I blame the blur on the sugar rush shakes.

Thank you to Costa for creating a delicious Christmas range. I need to go and visit them now to get a slice of Chocolate Hazelnut Cake.

Slocombes.

2010-12-05T17:15:00.001Z

Those of you who are old enough will remember the colours of Mrs Slocombe's hair in Are You Being Served. I am old enough for this.

Today's recipe was inspired in part by my friend Mark making a white chocolate version of Nutella Cheesecake Brownies (which we christened Blondies), and a Gizzi Erskine recipe from a while back using sweet potatoes to replace the fat in a brownie recipe. Her brownies are rich and dark and very decadent. My version has turned out a lot lighter but that may be due to not using quite so much sweet potato. 500g of raw turned into only 300g once cooked so, er, oopsie there. Anyway.

A word of warning. Purple Mountain Sweet Potatoes (I found them in Tesco's Finest range) are rather more dense than other kinds. My old but powerful stick blender actually got stuck so it was fork to the rescue and I had to add about 5 tablespoons of water to get it to a stiff puree. However, I had a hell of a lot of fun doing this, even if most things in my kitchen went purple.

Today's recipe went like this;

300g (cooked and skinned weight) purple mountain sweet potatoes (baked in their skins until soft, then cooled, peeled and pureed)
5 tbs water
3 free range eggs
140g white caster sugar
A pinch of salt
150g white chocolate, melted and cooled (Green and Blacks white)
100g ground almonds
2 tsp white flour
70g of good quality white chocolate drinking powder (I used Whittards white with praline flavour)
11/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 heaped tsp cinnamon
Handful of cinnamon chips as I had some in the cupboard but any chocolate chips would do.

Heat the oven to 160°C.  Line a square brownie tin with greaseproof paper. (I didn't have a square one, so my Slocombes are a bit on the thin side)

In a clean, dry bowl whisk eggs, sugars and salt until they become really voluminous and pale. This will take about 5 minutes.

Scoop out the sweet potato from their skins and mash with a fork to a puree. Add some of the water if it is too stiff.

Fold this into the egg mixture. along with the chocolate, ground almonds, flour, chocolate powder, cinnamon and vanilla extract until it is incorporated.

Add the choc chips if using.

Pour into the lined brownie tin and bake for 35 minutes or until the top is firm.

They are soft, and moist with a vaguely ice cream smell about them. Quite moreish it has to be said! Next time I think I'll use slightly more ground almonds and 200g of melted chocolate, not 150g. They possibly needed a tad more vanilla, but that might just be me.