the food she ate

she stoops to conquer

2012-01-08T09:27:00.001-08:00

I am sure I have eulogised this most wonderful of homely dishes elsewhere, but making it again today really reminded me how versatile this is.

Mrs I. calls it 'body soup' - her term for a very butch soup, at the mezzanine level, if you will, between stew and soup. When we were children it was almost always lunch on a cold, cheerless day when there were only three or four of us, and without fail was the most heartening, warming presence in the day. And from my Mother's point of view, an excellent housewifely way of using up odds and ends in the kitchen, and stretching a little mince a long way.

I made this today by sweating onion and garlic until soft, then adding a finely diced carrot and two celery stalks until these also began to soften. A dash of smoked paprika (why not?) and some ground cumin went in for a scant minute, before beef mince (an extravagant 500g) was stirred in until browned. Into this went a tin of chopped tomatoes, a good few tablespoons of concentrate tomato paste, enough water to make this very loose and soupy and a handful of thyme, stalks on.

This simmered away for 40 minutes until we were ready to eat, at which point I also slid in chopped, leftover kale and cavolo nero, and a tin of black eye beans. You don't need me to say that ANY beans or pasta or vegetables would be good in this - it's such a charm when you have too much dreaded swede hanging around.

Then all you need is heavily buttered bread, and a spoon.

wintry weekend winner

2012-01-07T12:29:00.001-08:00

Well Allens of Mayfair was out of smoked ham hocks and knuckles, so I will be back next week, looking hopeful. The butcher was just terrific and explained that post-Christmas stock meant they were low on these parts. He also intimated how large the hocks were and said they were 'proper' which is a sure-fire way to clinch my custom.

I am looking forward to braising hocks in cider another day, however the real star of the show was to be the red cabbage recipe I found, and as such, a little roast gammon sufficed wonderfully as accompaniment.

The cabbage was very easy to assemble and made an enormous quantity - unimaginable from the modest, tightly-budded cabbage I began with! Into my casserole I chucked the hand-sliced cabbage (stalk removed), two diced cox's apples, half a cup of red wine vinegar, one or two cinnamon quills and about 8 cloves. It cooked for 2 hours on a low hob. I was a mother hen and kept peeking in to see it had enough liquid and indeed it was fine for an hour or so, after which it did need an extra slosh of vinegar and a little water.

Those with a chunky style of slicing (*cough* Posie!) should know that the cabbage retains its integrity marvellously and doesn't mush down at all, so don't be too inelegant because the end result won't be forgiving. The cabbage would come to no harm if cooked for another hour, too. It was flavourful with warm winter spices, but not quite as mellow as I thought it might be, so to counteract the sharpness of the cabbage I made the mashed potato rather buttery.

Elizabeth David does a similar red cabbage recipe in her 'French Provincial Cooking', which I would love to try another time.

The gammon was the easiest thing of all: it was a modest cut so only needed to cook for about an hour and a quarter. Ten minutes towards the end of cooking I sliced off the rind (taking care not take too much fat with it), scored the remaining fat, and rubbed over a very rough mix of about 2 tsp English mustard and some brown sugar (I honestly have no idea how much, I just mixed it into a nice paste). After pushing in some cloves it was returned it to the oven for the last ten minutes.

There was even a spare 45 minutes in the middle of this all, in which I took a leisurely shower, which surely is the best of multi-tasking. The gammon was a rave success, if I do say so myself, and I loved the wintry cabbage. The only change I would make is to rest the meat properly before carving - I was too impatient - and to count the cloves in and out! The clovey Russian roulette was a bit too exciting at times.

Detail: my lovely ham. Click on image to see the full glory.

long live the King!

2012-01-06T05:48:00.000-08:00

To celebrate Epiphany – or ‘three kings day’ - I made a galette des rois.

I always thought it was very European to celebrate this festival; certainly the French and Spanish have a dedicated cake ('roscon de reyes' for the Spanish). However, after a visit to the Geffrye Museum I was delighted to discover the English have been celebrating this festival since the Middle Ages: Epiphany also coincides with the end of the pagan festival of Saturnalia, which generally celebrates the end of winter.

The English celebration involved an element of role reversal or misrule: whoever finds the charm hidden in the cake becomes King for the day, and in medieval times this meant a servant could find themselves being waited on by their master.

This year, a Mary Cadogan recipe was my blueprint:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5078/galette-des-rois

...but inevitably I made changes. The ready-rolled puff pastry comes in boxes of 320g (or similar) so I just used one of those, and instead of cutting out circles, I cut the pastry in half to make a rectangular cake and popped it on a baking sheet.

I omitted the jam and made more of the frangipane (for no better reason than I had 130g butter left in a packet to use up): 130g of butter and almonds, and 110g of sugar. I also added a few drops of almond extract to enhance the flavour, and used a slosh of armagnac. The result was rather chunky and not nearly as elegant as in the photo of Mary Cadogan’s recipe, but this worried me not a jot: well worth the trade-in for extra frangipane!

It was so easy to make that I urged some of my friends to use it as a method of keeping their offspring entertained. Wonderfully, my sister completely re-invented it for her family's tastes and my 3 year old nephew helped make one with nutella and chopped roast hazelnuts 'for the nutty theme'. With all the hazelnuts this could easily be re-christened 'galette de Roy'! I love that they now have a new tradition.

And who was King for the day? I always take the galette to work and so my colleague Gabriela was the worthy King in our office. Very fitting as she is the one who can already see the imperceptible lengthening of days: the beginning of the end of winter.

cooking away the grey

2012-01-05T09:51:00.000-08:00

Transferring dates from my 2011 diary into my new one, I found a scribbled recipe at the back. I spent a brief 2 month summer spell living with the gent and his two friends and flatmates. One of them sometimes talked about his grandmother’s amazing cooking and as he described her slow-cooked red cabbage dish I dashed down the following notes. I’m not sure I captured it very accurately but it still looks promising:

Oil, 6-10 cloves, cinnamon stick
2 apples chopped
1 red cabbage
1 cup red wine vinegar
Cook for 2 hrs on slow

I am a bit grumpy with January – being grey and dark and not yet having got my teeth into anything new – so have decided to cook my way through the grey. I think this braised red cabbage would sit very well next to a slow-cooked pork or lamb roast. And this in turn really invites itself to be followed by rice pudding - do I mean a coconut rice pudding? Quite possibly I do.

And for sure I think this is the weekend to try it!

Kitchen W8

2011-12-31T13:17:00.001-08:00

Isn't it nice to make the most of something? New Year's Eve started early for us with a bacon sandwich (true celebration food!) then a shopping trip for the gent, to include some 78's for the 'grandmaphone' and a serendipitous suit from Hornets.

To end such a satisfactory morning in Kitchen W8 was truly fitting, and frankly if all lunches were like this I would be a whole lot more enthusiastic about shopping.

A mere moment of white table-clothed tranquility was enough to restore our senses, jangled as they were by the Portobello hoardes. And then the feasting began. My starter satiated the senses with rich, extravagant flavours: fried egg with truffle soldiers felt terribly sophisticated and was accompanied by baked squash, chanterelle mushrooms and hazelnut gnocchi. Indeed, gnocchi so full of flavour that we almost mistook them for morsels of something meaty! The gent enjoyed an elegant marriage of beetroot, mackerel rillettes, smoked eel and ham.

Let us pause between courses to note that the Qupe 2009 Chardonnay / Viognier from the new world was a beautiful choice, and entirely worth the gamble. The gent's notes: "powerful full-bodied Chardonnay with the floral qualities of Viognier". But much, much nicer.

We continued with halibut, which came with pumpkin purée, Jerusalem artichoke, fricassee of winter veg (spinach and roast shallots, in this instance). If we were being po-faced and picky we might mention that the fish was just a tiny smidge more cooked then we personally would have chosen... but it was still a beautiful dish which we really enjoyed.

The deserts almost defeated us, despite their wondrousness, and we limped through the finish line, the last to leave the restaurant. If the staff minded they hid it well. To cement my budding love for this restaurant, the maitre d' dropped the espressi from our bill, to compensate for any disappointment for not being able to serve my first-choice of dessert. It is that level of charm that really hits my weak spot: people who understand what a blow it can be to miss out on a poached pear! Happily the desert menu was rare in having several puds I would say yes to, and I was most content with my passion fruit posset. And some of the gent's melting chocolate pudding.

Given that 'Kitchen W8' earned a Michelin star in 2011 I am perhaps being too easily impressed. But I care not: I had a super experience and would visit again at the drop of a hat. I would even contemplate Portobello road again, if this is the treasure at the foot of the rainbow!

Happy new year, I hope it brings you delicious food!

food the enemy

2011-12-26T10:11:00.000-08:00

The first meal after 3 days of (literally) bread and water, is most certainly the silver lining to food poisoning.

I have rarely seen food as the enemy: always it is the stuff of celebrations, feast-days and a way to everyday happiness. To look at it with suspicion and associate it with making you feel terrible is an awful way to live. It was a stern prompt to value my health much more: I really do appreciate that for some people food is a daily battle.

But, to my point: ham. Roast ham, to be specific. After 3 days with a spoon of porridge here, some dry spaghetti there, marmite toast was my gateway substance back into experiencing taste. What a world of colour after so much bland! And then on Christmas Eve I had a couple of slices of roast ham, pushed into unbuttered bread. An explosion of savoury taste sensations! Never has a slice of ham tasted so strong, so salty, so powerful. It was like tasting anew - I felt like Frankenstein's created man experiencing sensations for the first time.

My relief was great: not only did the sandwich avoid disagreeing with my stomach, but it meant I could, after all, have Christmas lunch the next day. What an alarming prospect to have been facing!

What caused the illness? I have no idea, thank goodness: as I don't know, I can't have bad associations with anything I ate the previous day. I would be loathe to make an enemy of any foodstuff for longer than 3 days. I do so hate to feud.

the walrus and the carpenter

2011-12-20T17:35:00.001-08:00

Well I think those are the fellows I mean: they who wept over the fate of the oysters until they were all eaten. Well I wept only with pleasure, this evening at Les Deux Salons. These three were sublime and my only regret was not eating six. Or a dozen.

leon + stroganoff

2011-11-30T05:44:00.000-08:00

Leon saved the day with its ham, lentil and chunky vegetable soup. I had a flat bread to dip in, too, and somehow it felt completely different to the soup-and-bread I can get so bored of. Top marks, too, for making swede, celery and lentils into something so very tasty: to me the epitome of skilled cooking is to take something wholesome (and perhaps somewhat boring) and make you want seconds! My grumpy mood lifted like a sea mist in the sun.

Last night I dashed together a mushroom stroganoff to use up left-overs, which turned out better than expected. Shallot, garlic, celery softened in a pan, then I added a sliced brown cup mushrooms and a field mushroom or two and a teaspoon and a half of spicy smoked paprika. We really must get some sweet paprika in! After it had cooked a bit, I added just a little vegetable stock (about 100ml) and let it bubble away. Lastly in went some double cream, a squeeze of lemon and some seasoning... and we had it over rice.

Actually the 'proper' or classic recipe escapes me: I have made or eaten so many variations that I am only certain that it is supposed to contain beef and sour cream! In my top three remains the delightful kidney and mushroom, from Delia's 'Frugal Food'. I must re-visit that before I even pick up Larousse to find out how a proper cook would create it...

never were there such devoted sisters

2011-11-27T04:10:00.001-08:00

And this is why.

It is hard to be grumpy after raspberry pancakes with yogurt and extra raspberries. Or watercress soup with buttered, toasted cheese scones from 'Ginger two' in Winchester.

Or a supper of smoked salmon on rye and cream cheese, with gherkins; pigs in blankets; devils on horsebacks and rocket salad. And a great cava.

I really love our almost-annual sister weekend: thank you Andy, Alex, gingers and the gent for giving up your wimminfolk! x

sobrasada

2011-11-25T13:33:00.001-08:00

Most wonderful breakfast EVER!

Despite a late night of dvds I bounced out of bed, keen to get in the kitchen.

Anun gifted us a pot of sobrasada, that bright orange paste from Spanish heaven. Or Garcia & sons, as it is otherwise known.

Spread over toast and topped with a poached or fried egg you will want for nothing more bar a cup of tea.

home alone

2011-11-24T05:59:00.001-08:00

Two days off work - a mid-week weekend, if you will - and I am having a wonderful time. You see here that I made the best of a guilty scoot round H&M's home department. The pseudo-rustic little bags charmed themselves home with me and it didn't take me long to put them to a good use, to whit: holding 4 or 5 different bags of flour on the top shelf (the naughty shelf, as in a newsagent, dedicated here to baking goods), and containing a several half-finished bags of rice and pulses on the bottom shelf.

After a shuffle-tidy I felt as if this had actually been a virtuous move. Note the famous nutmeg enjoying its bamboo throne on the middle shelf!

Oh dear, and here is evidence of my less-virtuous side when home alone: lunch for one. I was ravenous after a morning swim so had an early lunch. Broccoli and stilton soup straight from the saucepan with some bread; the extra delicacy you espy is a cold sausage with mustard. If I'm to be honest, a completely blasted, burnt stump of a sausage. I know it is a bad craftsman who blames his tools, but before this oven I'm sure I never managed to burn a sausage: I couldn't have done that if I had tried!

I won't be snobbish about shop-bought soup as it is really handy and I just love the pea and ham from *ahem* Waitrose. This broccoli and stilton soup reminded me how very lovely my own version is, too: I'll add a note to my 'foods to cook' list and make it soon.

oven: conquered

2011-11-05T09:44:00.001-07:00

Finally! After 8 cross months, a half decent cake.

I used to bake frequently, however since moving to this flat I have wrestled with this oven. This Freakin' Temperamental Stupid Oven, to give its full name. Cakes are either blasted in 30 mins or completely raw inside with a hardy crust outwith.

The gent's family are in town this weekend and I thought a cake would be cheering for anyone stopping by. By happy coincidence my favourite cake is easy to tweak, to make it gluten-free so everyone can have it: I hate having separate foods for different people, it feels so mean spirited. And anyway this is such a wonderful cake I would have this over a sponge any day. It is Nigella's 'damp lemon & almond' with adjustments. Easy, easy:

cream together 225g butter and sugar (I always use the unrefined, or golden, caster sugar. It is mad how set in your ways you can get with ingredients). Add in 4 big, free range eggs, one at a time; after each egg shake in a little brown rice flour. Just a scant tablespoon or so. At this point I was cross-eyed with love for my food mixer: hands free to work while someone else stirs!

Now add 250g ground almonds (if you grind them yourself the quantities will be a bit different); zest and juice of two unwaxed lemons; a little almond extract. Nigella uses almond essence, so Im not sure on measurements for essence: I used 'a tiny splash' then tasted to check.

50 mins in an unreliable oven, or whenever a knife comes out clean.

Very unfortunately trains seem to have major problems today so the gent's aunt & uncle are delayed for tea. This photo is evidence that, although a bit scorched, the cake did all right. We are sitting on our hands so there is some left for tomorrow.

rainy days and thursdays

2011-11-03T02:05:00.001-07:00

And November begins! Rain and wind and gloom. Luckily my friend Deb really inspired me and autumnal breakfasts in this tiny thimble of a flat now consist of porridge. Warming, blanketing porridge. Podge, as a sister calls it.

I like it best with fruit - maybe plums or apple thrown in at the start - but more cupboard-friendly for the busy, is jam. Home made in Cornwall, Sussex, Hammersmith or Hampshire, if you have productive and generous relatives!

And here is my fabulous coffee, the beans ground in my new grinder a moment before brewing.

I think I am ready to face the day now!

kate and sidney

2011-10-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

What with the weather finally turning autumnal, my thoughts have turned to stew. I will shortly be making THAT beef and anchovy stew, however I am currently enjoying a frugal streak and am trying to continue it.

In the frugal larder recently there has been carrot smudge for lunch (made regularly from the Moro cookbook, as in my June 2009 blog). At 90p per kg, carrots are easily the cheapest thing for supermarket-bound urban folks right now. And at the farmer's market we found sweetcorn cobs 4-for-a-pound - and I just can't get enough cauliflower and cabbage. All British, all wonderful.

So maximum deliciousness and minimum expense really leads me to steak and kidney. You can probably use delicious cuts of steak, but I rather think the point is to use the scraggy, sinewey ends which turn out so well after a gentle 4 hours of transformation. Offal may be getting more expensive the more that it is used in restaurants and in weekend-magazine recipes, however it is still wonderfully (if relatively) cheap: around 60 pence for two lamb kidneys at Waitrose this morning.

There are many delicious recipes and one day I will get through them all; however when I want to really enjoy a steak and kidney then my mother's recipe comes out. Only knowing how few people will read this will entice me to part with this treasured piece of my family cooking history. Brace yourself: 4 ingredients. 10 minutes to assemble; 4 hours to cook.

The butcher at the Ginger Pig goaded me into taking more meat than I needed: it really did look paltry, but I didn't explain it was only for two people. And supposed to be FRUGAL! So I took 12 oz of chuck steak (they were out of skirt) and 8 oz kidneys (5 oz lamb's kidney and 3 oz of pig's kidney - due to shortage in the shop rather than from preference). At home I carefully cubed the kidney to exclude sinew and tube, and tossed it in seasoned flour with the diced beef.

This went into a plastic pudding bowl and a china pie-blackbird nestled in the middle, in lieu of the upturned egg cup my mother always uses: this keeps the pastry from sinking soggily into the stew in the centre. I poured in cold water to almost cover the meat, then sat on top a layer of closed cap mushrooms, de-stalked and the right way up to look like floating pebbles: these also help the pastry stay above the stew.

The suet pastry is a marvel in its own right: so speedy to make! 4oz flour, 2 oz suet, seasoning and cold water to bind. This was plopped on top of the mushrooms and spread about to the edges so it covered the stew like a dimpled lid, sealing in the steam. I fitted on the plastic pudding basin lid, lashed around a helping of cling film and then foil (standing the bowl in the centre of a large square, pulling the corners up to meet over the top: to keep the water out), and boiled away for 4 hours, topping up the water to make sure it didn't dry out.

One thing that foxed me was the lack of trivet: I have no idea if anyone else even uses these, and if my teaspoons are ok as an alternative? It's how I usually do it, but I really must check up on this. It completely ruined the coating on my spoons, so if you also don't have a trivet, please use something you don't love.

A word on the plastic pudding basin: I used this as I haven't yet inherited a china pudding basin. Naturally I will never be a stern matriarch-type until I possess such a thing, but I do have two muslin cloths in amongst my aprons, for the day when I tie up a pudding with paper, cloth and string, like a proper ruler of the hearth and home. Until then, the plastic one is actually jolly fine.

After 4 steamy hours, what was the result? My best, most favourite taste-memory. Soft soft meats, a thin, inimitable gravy and a doughy, almost gluey pastry. Sprouts and boiled potato are the supreme companions but we spotted a delicious cabbage for this time. The gent was appreciative, as he always is, but was a little bemused at my delight. For me the pleasure lies not only in the lovely meal, but also in the alchemy: four basic ingredients transformed whilst I read the paper. What's not to love?

23.10.11

My kingdom for a nutmeg

2011-10-23T07:29:00.001-07:00

My mother told me something so fascinating, so revolutionary, that I have been reeling ever since. Put it this way: do you know where mace comes from?

Years ago I accidentally bought blade mace instead of powdered (for a beef + anchovy stew I rave about every 6 months; next rave due shortly). The blade mace was brown and rigid and shard-like and I had no idea how to render it into a powder. I inevitably tried the pestle 'n' mortar with poor results. But even then, with a curious lack of inquisitiveness, I didn't think to look up what mace actually was.

I guessed it was probably a spice like nutmeg, on account of its smell, which was pretty good going for my untuned senses.

Then quite by chance, a few weeks ago, my mother offered me the bronzed ovoid you see in this picture. It is the outside shell of a nutmeg, with a partial, vine-like lace-work of mace attached. When you shake the nut you can feel the nutmeg inside rattle, and it looks as if the mace will be easy to just snap off... I just had to take some photos first, it is absolutely beautiful.

I still have no idea how to powder the resiney mace substance, but by hook or by crook it will be going in that beef stew!

the gent cooks too

2011-10-20T16:27:00.001-07:00

Of course he does. The man is far more refined in his cooking than I.

Last week there was Butternut squash soup which was like a blanket of carbs and saved me from missing lunch the next day at work. Horror.

Then came a most amazing Coq au vin, the recipe an amalgam of various versions, and the taste halfway between bistro and Sunday night hearth. When he checks a recipe the starting place is the Larousse bible found in Oxfam. The bar is set high!

And when I was occupied with making pasta one evening, he returned home laden and set about marinere-ing some moules. Better than 'Aux moules' in Lille, better even than 'Les moules Zola' in Dijon: holiday in a bowl.

And for my part, I am a most appreciative eater. I can't wait for his next stint in the kitchen!

testing, testing...

2011-10-20T07:49:00.001-07:00

I am typing - or perhaps I should say tapping - this out on a cute iphone and testing the blogger app.

If all goes to plan there will also be a photo of last nights supper. I knew even as I reached for the camera that this would be a rare case of the picture not telling a thousand words. In fact it tells you no more than three... but what a trio!

Carbonara, Spaghetti + Unctuous.

It also serves to remind me that I can actually make it quite well. It was a little heavy on nutmeg but I did it the Roy-patented-best-way; that is, with one egg + one egg yolk. Normally I forget about the yolk out of ingrained frugality (little-sister's theory is that this is a relic of our pseudo- 1950's upbringing) but being 9pm and hungry made me reckless. It was worth the angst.

The gent revived a delightful red wine from the previous night and we made merry, dissecting our evening watching a modern day 'animal vegetable, mineral'. Given this is the inaugural blog-by-app, I will push the techie boat out and give you the twitter hashtag: #museumsavm

I am not abandoning the big screen of computer just yet, but this app is a *very* handy alternative for a quick note to bloggy self.

pasta caring

2011-08-01T13:41:00.000-07:00

I thought my cup could not overflow any more when I was given a KitchenAid mixer. All those recipes I have never cooked because I am too lazy to whip egg whites! All the times I made up a Madeleine recipe in order to circumnavigate the real recipe, as it requires 10 minutes of hand-beating! And all the times I have gnashed my teeth in frustration over fridge-cold butter that was too hard to mix... now all a thing of the past.

Well my cup overflowed just that little bit more when the gent gave me a pasta attachment for my birthday: more toy to play with, resulting in my favourite of carbs!

I once made pasta when I lived in Wimbledon, and spent a whole afternoon fighting a mean, uptight ball of dough. My hands were red raw from using a rolling pin to do all the rolling, and the resulting pasta fine to eat... if very chunky.

Yesterday I took no chances and bought the nicest '00' flour that John Lewis foodhall had to offer. The whole process took longer than I thought, given that I was using a machine, but this was down to a first-timer exploring how to do things.

I poured 440g of flour on the work surface, made a well in centre for 3 large eggs and threw over 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Using a fork initially, I scrambled the eggs, then began to draw in a little flour so that the central well slowly increased, as the egg mix turned more doughey. Eventually I gave up the fork and used my hands to pull in the last of the flour, kneading briefly before putting in the Kitchen Aid with a dough hook.

This is clearly a supremely lazy move, but I wanted to see how the hook worked. Brilliantly, is the answer. It didn't look as vigorous as hand-kneading, but the result was a nice, elastic dough: the kind I read about in recipes, but have never made!

The dough rested for 20 minutes whilst I cleared up (our kitchen is tiny) and added the pasta rolling attachment to the mixer. Dividing the dough into four, I worked on one piece at a time, dropping it through the roller on setting one. I fed it through, doubled it over then repeated until satisfied. Once all four pieces of dough had been rolled I repeated the process on settings 2 and 3 - incrementally thinner - until I seemed to have reams of pasta sheets! I dusted liberally with flour to prevent them sticking.

The cutting was the easiest part of all. Feeding each sheet of pasta through the cutter attachment was very quick, and I roughly shaped the tagliatelle into nests on a plate, or hung over a clothes drier.

How did it taste? Springy and firm. Delicious. It was too thick to be elegant, but I really liked it and it tasted good in the cream and salmon sauce that the gent put together. Next time I am going to experiment with rolling the pasta more finely, and also try making filled pasta: my absolute favourite.

pollen shirt social

2011-07-30T16:29:00.000-07:00

There are so many positives about lilies that their only downside never occurs to me. Today I noticed the gent covered in orange and it did then come to mind that their pollen is particularly difficult to erase from garments. Especially shirts from expensive shirt-eries.

It is a shockingly bad pun, but we were headed to Pollen Street social that night, so as I brushed and soaked the shirt, I couldn't help but chuckle at my own joke (see title of this post if you can stomach it).

Having read AA Gill's review, aghast at being explained the 'concept' of this new restaurant, I did anticipate a little pretension. And having read about everything from the 'roasted squid juice' to the 'clam and cockle emulsion', I began to feel I had already eaten there - so I promptly gave up reading reviews and didn't even look at the menu beforehand.

All of which ended in a pleasantly surprising evening. Our dining companions were the delightful Mike and Alice who were on an amazing gastro-weekend, eating at four London foodie-havens (five Michelin stars between them) before heading home. We were honoured to be invited along to the Pollen stage of the tour.

There was a zingy, lemony shellfish-based paste to spread on bread. Then I had
Escabeche of quail, chicken liver cream, nuts & seeds. Or, as I typed a few hours later 'little hams of quail, toothpick-bone sticking out, chicken liver butter on wafer-thin toast, carrot, pickled onion shells, nutty something'. It was fantastic and I barely had time to stop and taste the gent's scallop ceviche. Which was also great.

I then focused my entire attention on ox cheek with tongue and sirloin. I chose this as (a) three meats on one plate sounded an excellent plan and (b) I don't like tongue and was hoping this would convert me (still not something I'd eat quantities of...). The surprise star was the cheek, slow-cooked until the connective tissue rendered gluey, the whole thing sweet and falling into dessication. There was a pureed horseradishy thing too, which was perfect. The wine - Côte-Rôtie La Viallièret - was heady: tobaccoey, and smelling like a gentleman's library*.

Sated, I was able to look about the room. The lighting reminded me of the recent 'Frankenstein' set at the National Theatre. Then I found the (transparent) cold-room for meats, and another floor-to-ceiling wall of wine bottles in storage, all on the way to plush-grade rest rooms. It was all so beautiful I almost asked for my desert to be served there, instead.

Back upstairs my 'ham, cheese and herb' dessert arrived: watermelon granita, a 'ham' of thin-sliced melon with gelatin 'fat' attached to look like a slice of ham, intense basil sorbet (like falling face-first in a herb bed) and soft cheese. Great fun, but the only dish I didn't quite finish. We enjoyed an after-dinner Armagnac at the bar, unwinding from the sensation assault and making a mental note to come back for a post-work drink another time.

It is hard not to mention the party bags, uncovered from a little locker to which we held the key, which contained 'Breakfast on us' mini cakes and a teabag. Funny, sweet. The most charming thing about the evening was the excitement and adventure in everything, but if I go back, the reason would be the really good food, cooked perfectly.

* the gent is verbally adding descriptions, but they are his views not mine, and also I don't have a oenophile dictionary to correct the spelling. So if you are interested, then I think it's best you follow him on Twitter. And then you can argue back, too! @jamesdoeser

Lesley's courgette and Bernadette's basil

2011-07-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

I do sometimes get tired of thinking of what to eat: the natural ennui of someone who works full time and so is tempted to choose the same, quick meal, and who also has the unlimited choice of anything in the world that the supermarket provide.

Yes, I did just say there are too many option, and I do realise how spoilt that sounds, but I actually find it liberating to have restrictions. I remember my mother coping with the autumn apple glut with such imagination: just when we were at the improbable point of being sick of raw apples, apple crumble and baked apple, out would come the apple fritters. Magic!

This encouragement into creativity is one of the (many) reasons home produce delights me, and this week I was the happy recipient of garden-gifts from two colleagues. On Tuesday Lesley presented courgettes from her allotment, with the weary sigh of someone mid-glut and trying to prevent any turning into marrows! I was dining alone that night so I took just one, sliced it on the diagonal and quickly fried it in oil with some chopped garlic. Sharing the plate - but not the glory - were baby Jersey potatoes and a quick-fried salmon fillet, dusted with paprika and salt. Heavenly.

Due to good weather, Bernadette's basil plant had produced abundantly and today she brought in bags of delicate, aromatic leaves. I thanked my lucky stars that no one else got there before me and bagged a bag. Right now it lies chopped in a bowl with some toasted, chopped pine nuts, a little parmesan and a lot of extra virgin olive oil. I have made this into a proper paste before, using pestle and mortar, however I much prefer this rough, verdant version. I can't wait to put the pasta on: hurry home, gent!

These two ingredients have really whetted my appetite and I can't wait to get to the market at the weekend for more inspiration!

physic garden madness

2011-07-04T14:34:00.001-07:00

It was the most perfect summer's day: sweltering at 10am, wall to wall sunshine, scandalously blue skies. Good only for lying, panting in the shade and for the sublime evening that follows.

The dying day was cooler, the breeze balmy, and the proximity to midsummer stretched the evening to romantic proportions. Perfect for a surprise trip to the ‘Rambulance’ pop up supper club by Rambling Restaurant, hosted in the Urban Physic Garden.

A derelict site next to a train line, it looked an anxious, infertile spot. But once we had been admitted through the gates we found an oasis – never has the word been better employed – of herbs, trees, flowers and shrubs, each organised, tidy as a librarian, into the ailments they are said to alleviate.

To one side long table was set for supper, the rather home-made white awning, happily redundant on this cloudless evening. We dropped our bag next to our camping cutlery and jam jars (for water, of course – and a plastic measuring beaker for the gent) then headed into the garden. We looked at the beds of greenage to cure gastric problems, eye health and such. An imaginative irrigation system dripped water from pipes rigged above the plant beds, lending a lush, rain forest feeling.

Behind the ‘treatment room’ we found a skip-cum-ping pong table, and tried our hand. Then played on a complex three-part, jointed see-saw. Just as we were exploring the dispensary of pills, we felt it was probably time for supper. We sat down to sautéed mushrooms on lightly toasted ciabatta with salad leaves including various healing herbs. The salad dressing was reverently passed around in its huge plastic syringe.

The table was full and communal and we discovered we were seated with the most fun, interesting and lovely people: so lucky! Three lived nearby, one had an acquaintance in common with the gent, and conversation moved between teaching art, parking Borris bikes and London.

Next we had barbeque pork with a herb chimichurri, with a lovely sharp, vinegary mix of roast cherry tomatoes and cannellini beans, and potatoes. The generous rim of fat on my pork was well judged and much appreciated. Wine was byo and the gent matched the food brilliantly with a light, strawberry Fleurie which, after an afternoon refrigerating, came to a perfect coolish temperature by the time it was welcomed into our glasses.

The cooking was undertaken inside, and next to, an ex-ambulance. I took a good look on my way to the compost loo (which promised to turn our poo into gas to fuel the ovens): washing my hands outside in a free-standing china sink I couldn’t help but think what an unusual set up it all was!

A finale of cheesecake and crème brulee finished the evening. By now the sky had deepened but not quite reached full night. Still warm, we took the tube to Green park and opted to walk from there: it seemed a pity to not be outside.

If I were to be picky then there were inconsistencies in the meal: crispy charred pork to my left, rather less cooked to my right; lipstick on the wine glass. But the whole evening was so generous and entertaining that criticism feels out of place.

The gent and I agreed that were we to cater such an event, it would be easier to do a pork belly rather than chops. Belly is far more forgiving on timing so it wouldn’t matter if proceedings were delayed – it couldn’t be overcooked – and it would require no last-minute attention, except in carving.

The evening left the warm impression of an inventive use of neglected land, some delicious food and good company. And more herbal knowledge than I expected to come home with.

Dehesa

2011-06-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

And so after a long 8 days of perfect slog from the gent, the revised version of his phd was produced. He was like Daisy in that episode of Spaced* where she suddenly, after much procrastination, pings into action and types all her articles (including one about ‘bogling’) to the theme tune of Miss Maple (?). Anyway, he was focussed, stuck to his timetable and completed in time to join me at an excellent talk on the History of wine, given by Kathleen Burk.

I do love wine, but don’t have the whole oenophile obsession where it verges on academic endeavour. Despite this, I just love Prof Burk’s book ‘Is this bottle corked’ (written with Michael Bywater) which doesn’t so much have chapters as concise dollops of anecdotes, history, myth and facts. A complete treat to dip into.

The gent also had the luxury of a housekeeper for his busy 8 days, who cooked inventive meals to spur him on. There can be few sentences more exciting to read than the one that says ‘I will take you out for dinner’, but that is just what he did, to say thank you.

Sister to the sublime Salt Yard, Dehesa is definitely similar, but fits its area by being speedier and snackier. Where Salt yard is quiet and mellow, encouraging you to linger and order just another plate of cheese or jamon, Dehesa is energetic with fidgety music, tall bar-like tables and chairs, and - perhaps - a slightly different menu.

Our table was booked late and there was definitely a Friday night, post-office feel to the surrounding streets, where customers proliferated onto the pavement outside pubs. We eased ourselves into the meal with a jamon de teruel and charred, oily, soft-crispy bread. Enlivened by this, we continued with pork belly on white beans, megrim sole with broad bean puree and tortilla.

The pork belly was as heavenly as it could be – perfect, oozing, fatty chunks with perfect, teeth-alarming crackling. But the white beans beneath were a masterpiece! They could have been a dish by themselves, really creamy-tasting and heavily scented with herbs - we thought perhaps thyme and rosemary. I positively ignored the megim sole dish which also arrived, just so I could fill up on these beans, incidentally breaking all the Roy Rules of eating.

With the tortilla I set a challenge for the gent: was this tortilla as good as, or better than, the one Guy made at his and Debora’s party. The gent stared. “Guy MADE that tortilla?!”. We paid a moment’s silence to his genius, then ploughed on with the one in front of us. Answer: they were completely different, both I would love to eat again, but Guy’s might have the edge. Given my extreme chaos around Spanish tortilla I won’t ask for the recipe. We don’t need our new kitchen decorated in raw egg. Some things you have to admit defeat to in life and let the experts do it for you.

Knowing my weakness, and enjoying it himself, the gent mooted the three manchego platter. Scooping membrillo paste onto each cheese (he favoured the mid-matured, I the oldest) I pretended to be in Spain and poured more wine. How lucky we are to have Spain on the doorstep!

*'Ends', series 1, for completists.

interim report

2011-05-01T15:06:00.000-07:00

From this side of a wobbling, eggy, choc-chip-brioche-and-butter-pudding, the like of which I hope to make every day forever more, I have news.

I redeemed my 30th birthday voucher, a gift from my parents, a mere three years after the event. The gent - as ever - saved my sanity with a metaphorical shake out of the logistical nightmare of deliveries, instead offering some manly muscle. Yes yes, horribly sexist, but I was never going to be able to carry a Kitchenaid mixer from the shop to our flat. And, as he proved, he really can.

Did I just say Kitchenaid mixer? Well dang me if the first thing I don't do tomorrow is source some eggs and butter and set to it. Thank you parents, thank you! I hope you soon experience the fruits of your generosity combined with my idle down-time.

*****************************************************

Tear up remaining choc-chip brioche - today, about 4 - into an oven-proof dish. Mix together double cream, full fat milk (together about 300ml), 2 eggs, a slug of Marsala and a modest dash of vanilla essence. And 3 dessertspoons of sugar (the measuring spoons and scales were out of my effort-range). Slop it over the brioches and pop in oven for 30-40 mins on about 170 degrees. Don't burn your tongue on it and do pour more cream over.

Easter eating

2011-04-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

By happy accident I mis-typed 'Easter' as 'Eater'. Less seasonal, but just as appropriate.

I love spending Easter with my family but, with the aim of taking it easy, decided to holiday in London. In order to make the most of our location, we plan to eat in a local establishment at least once a month: cue Andrew Edmonds (Lexington Street, no website) on Maundy Thursday. A mellow atmosphere, we ate well and enjoyed watching an eatery which was clearly so well-established that it leaned twoards the old school of charm - that which can turn new custom away brusquely, when not needed.

Good Friday saw us take Boris Bikes (or Barclays bikes, as they are properly known) to London Bridge. The cycling was fine, but after 25 minutes of scouring every last street for a bike station to leave our bikes, I was largely fuming. Happily we were there for Borough Market and a brisk round the vegetables, picking the most pillowy cauliflower, muddiest Jersey potatoes and most sexy asparagus spears, soon chilled us out again.

On Easter Saturday we lunched on asparagus - steamed, butter slid over - and also chicken liver pate and crackers. We drank a half bottle of Domaines Ott Bandol rose (2008) from the wonderful Philglas and Swiggot. Supper was roast poussin (rubbed about with garlic and chilli) and fennel salad - raw, sliced thinly with lime juice, oil and perhaps a little mint.

Breakfast on Easter day was somewhat shoddily carried out, but the idea was so very lovely that I forgive myself. A soft-boiled egg sitting on toast, pulled open to let the yolk run, in which to dip steamed, buttered asparagus. I must admit that technically I broke my fast with a cup of tea in bed and some ver elegant Prestat chocolates from the gent.

That evening we roasted a half-shoulder of lamb. Recipes varied in advice, from high heat for 1 hour, to slow-cooking for 4 hours: it didn't help with the decision on how to cook it, but it did make me relax as it looked hard to get wrong! I scored the fat on top, pushed garlic slivers into little stabs, and perched the joint atop halved parsnips. Two hours at a high-ish temperature rendered it perfect, and the parsnips soggy/crispy in the most heart-fluttering way. Minted new potatoes and broccoli filled the rest of the plate. It was terribly simple but we could have eaten it twice over. Actually, we did that too...

I am trying for brevity here, but may I just add how surprisingly decent the cold lamb was the next day, with the mint potatoes now transformed into potato salad, with a few crisp leaves?

Recipes for Boynton in 5 fits

2011-04-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

I have had my first taste of being an archaeologist. It wasn't intentional, but I had terrific fun!

I had actually started out trying to cater for an archaeological dig, but after some confusion - it was on, then off, several times - it finally turned out to be very much on. A pity I hadn't prepared anything, but my panic immediately subsided when there were four, then three... then just us two! Like babes in the wood, the gent and I were left in charge of a dig.

Fit the first: sausages and sweet potato mash

By the evening on Sunday there were three of us in the country house: the gent, myself, and an Historian with archaeological sympathies who is writing about the house and grounds. Needing something quick and hearty, I planned to roast sausages with sweet potatoes and onion, with some lovely savoy cabbage alongside.

Unfortunately the lack of baking tray (or anything, whatsoever, that might fit that role) made me realise I would have to fry the sausages. In a saucepan. In fact, due to size of the pans, in two saucepans. The potatoes I could roast in foil with garlic... however, when no foil materialised I instead baked the potatoes and scooped the flesh into some hastily-made garlic oil, and mashed.

In short, after 1.5 hours I emerged from the kitchen with just sausages and mash!

Still, every last scrap was eaten, there was some warming wine, and my two companions made me laugh so much that I soon cheered up. The night was very black and we slept a long time in our huge, wonderful room.

thaied in knots

2011-04-09T12:46:00.000-07:00

Last night's triumphant red Thai curry came with the premier of my coconut rice. I have always wanted to make this and am now kicking myself that I took so long to find a recipe: it is so devilishly easy I could do it every day.

I decided to make enough for four as (a) I hate having a skerrick of something left in a packet in the cupboard and (b) I always have uses for fridge left-overs.

This was the happiest of choices.

Today was so beautifully hot, and the coconut rice was on my mind, that I came to crave some Thai salads. Larb moo took over my head around lunchtime and immediately I thought of a comment I had read last night about Som Tam.

A quick search revealed several Thai restaurants near our flat, and the gent and I went to check out the menus. I rejected one outright ("No Larb!" "Let's just ask inside" "But... no Larb!") then caved to the gent's pained patient-face at the second. There was indeed no Larb moo as they had no pork, but they offered to make a duck version instead "is it still ... (rubbing my fingers to suggest mince, in a strange improvised sign-language).... spicy?" I asked anxiously. They made sure it was.

So Som tam - for those at the back - is a green papaya salad, shredded up with a few other vegetables to look no more exciting than coleslaw. The taste-nirvana lies in the astringent, spicy, aromatic, fresh dressing. It has the exotic 'otherness' of an un-English flavour: something one has never tasted before, which is so rare in adulthood*. A few years back, fish sauce took me a little while to become accustomed to, and right after, I became addicted. Som tam is an extension of that addiction.

The Larb is heaven-on-a-plate for similar reasons: the same fresh, spicy, aromatic taste in pork or chicken mince, then served in lettuce leaves. I was bursting with pride over how good the coconut rice tasted with these two salads (and a little re-vamped red curry on the side), but the real treat was seeing how excited the gent was by these flavours, too.

I fully accept (ahem, Mother) that saying 'lettuce with mince' gives a somewhat cold and creepy image if you haven't quite got your tongue round the idea. But give it a go: if I can be converted from my ingrained, peasanty suet pudding ways, then I am sure anyone can.

*I will concede: maybe this only applies to a late starter like me. But heck, I'm having more fun because of it!

French Friday

2011-03-28T10:47:00.001-07:00

Friday evening is one of the best in the week. The whole weekend stretches ahead: perhaps a lie-in, or the promise of a good newspaper (and some time to read it in), and of course a superb coffee, taken at leisure.

Last Friday the balmy spring day made me yearn for Florence and a table outside our favourite enoteca - bliss! I proposed to the gent we meet for a glass of wine and he immediately suggested La Trouvaille in Soho. Please don't go. It is wonderful and I want to always get a table.

I arrived first so took a seat inside along a little wooden bench and spent my time choosing - and enjoying - a glass of Les Greilles (Domaine Causse Marines, 2008). La Trouvaille only buy from independent companies in the South of France and have good-egg policies about no pesticides and chemicals. They also seem interested in biodynamic methods of farming - about which there is quite some trendy hoo-ha at the moment - but I was more interested in drinking the honeyed deliciousness.

The gent went in for something like the Picpoul de Pinet (Domaine Coustellier, 2009) which he found 'minerally'. In a good way. We soon unwound and began to feel somewhat continental... which turned out to be only a short hop to hungry.

Not moving from our seats we took a look at the bar menu, ordered two portions of cassoulet, then had a heated debate about whether the meat should be confit or not. It was, and it was divine and filling. So we had a glass of Cahors (Domaine Cosse Maisonneuve. Le Combal, 2007) to celebrate. I haven't even looked at the restaurant menu but I would wager a glass of Picpoul that it would make for a blissful evening.

Really there is nothing like Florence - however for a spot of French atmosphere on the doorstep this is the place I will return to.

ploughmans jacket

2011-03-11T09:02:00.000-08:00

Last weekend the gent and I built a bed, shifted furniture and generally moved forward a step in transforming space and boxes into a home. We also purchased the most beautiful saucepan ever to grace a kitchen, about which I am still thoroughly excited!

We have had coffee at Sacred and Canela: the former has free wifi and the latter, a free Portuguese custard tart (at certain times). But the real hot tip is the cheese bread in Canela - a heavenly bread-like ball that seems 90% gently molten cheese on the inside. No, don't take my word for it: go and eat. Next time I am having the chorizo version...

Recycling bags were collected from our local - fantastic - library; and a secret gig attended at the Westminster Reference Library. With tables and computers pushed to the edges of the room, and Copyright notices still on the pillars, 'British Sea Power' created a fantastic atmosphere and a brilliant sound. Walking home through Chinatown afterwards made me wonder if four meals a day might be the way to make the most of living in the heart of London...

The bare cupboards and minimal utensils mean cooking is rather low on the agenda, however a mid-week 'Ploughman's jacket' cheered us up considerably. With a table in place, and a cloth to make it look less like the workbench it is, I laid out a hastily-dressed salad, apple and walnut pickle, and a plate of ham, Stilton and tangy Emmental slices. Jacket potatoes were halved and slices of butter pushed into furrows to melt. A rough, but heavenly meal. Quite the best meal of the past week: in fact, the best meal since the farewell Allen road extravaganza. But then, it would be very hard to live up to rabit ragu on pasta, champagne and home made panna cotta -!

I look forward to planning a welcome meal for friends very soon... something worthy enough for our new, beautiful saucepan!

onion soup for two

2011-02-28T15:36:00.000-08:00

My last night in the beautiful flat I have been living in for the past 3 years. I hadn't even thought about what to eat tonight as I rushed from work to charity shop to finishing the packing: very luckily for me, my flatmate Jo made some onion soup.

It is funny how something can be so simple that it quite gets forgotten. But when revived, what a tasty treat! The soft onions were so sweet and the stock so savoury, and on a chilly, mean February night like this, the warmth spread right through us, fortifying me for the final leg of packing.

Tomorrow I will be making a dishonest man of the gent as we move in together, and I am very excited about the adventures ahead of us. But I will never forget my memories of Jo, Ruby and Rocket. And our last evening of girl talk and onion soup!

sage sauce for house-moving wisdom

2011-02-28T00:51:00.000-08:00

It is funny how rarely things pan out in an even, measured fashion. I usually enjoy a very quiet January / February, over-wintering as I think most civilised, with any non-work time spent under a duvet, or eating stew / curry / pudding in rotation. This year, between birthdays, birth-days, and gorgeous friends visiting, I have been tempted out of hibernation and into a social whirl, so it was inevitable that the gent and I should somehow, by accident, find a cute new nest to move into. 6 months early and at a ridiculously busy time.

Hence, there has been little energy spent on cooking or writing. A plus side has been discovering which fast food is a sublime joy (an 'Adana kebab' from Cirrick on Green Lanes); which fast foods I will be very happy to leave behind forever (supermarket ready meals: ready for being discontinued, I hope); and how long I can keep going without getting scurvy (longer than you would think).

The house-move is mere days away and yesterday, after an emotional evening of forcing 4 paperbacks into the 'charity' pile - and forcing the other 400 into boxes to move - I decided enough was enough. A girl needs carbs. And to feel the weight of a saucepan in her hands once more.

I cubed and roasted a butternut squash and tumbled these together with some cooked gnocchi, then covered these with an aromatic sage sauce. This was kept company by steamed leeks alongside, cut into pleasingly plump logs.

To make the sage sauce: fry chopped sage leaves in butter: this smells heavenly, so enjoy it for a full minute or more - but don't let the butter burn. Turn up heat, splash in white wine and let bubble down to half its volume. Add double cream and heat through, then finish off with a squeeze of lime, parmesan and seasoning. I also fried small sage leaves in butter until crispy for decoration, and I would do more of these next time, they tasted so good.

+ + + + + + + +

To keep me awake during the day, I continue with my favoured past time of seeking new coffee haunts. The latest Roy-award goes to 'Store Street Espresso' (no website but they are @StoreStEspresso on Twitter) which has a really wonderful, light space, minimally decorated with allusion to the building site (in a good way) and serving all the coffees a choosy girl could hope for.

I am torn between anxiety that these lovely Aussie-inspired coffee spots are in danger of becoming generic, and being delighted that the dots are linking up on my 'coffee map'. I enjoy the safety of knowing places where each cup of coffee will be, without a doubt, extremely good. So thank you Store Street Espresso, and the Department of Coffee and Social Affairs, for making my life just that little bit better.

menu by search engine

2011-02-03T04:53:00.000-08:00

I am fascinated with internet traffic and what takes someone to a website. I can sometimes see on my blog stats where traffic has come from and it is often a google search. As a librarian I am interested in which search terms are used: as a food lovin' lady, I am intrigued by which foods are most sought after. A recent cursory look shows that, very unsurprisingly, everyone is looking for ways to eat two things right now: pheasant and Seville orange. Or, as one poor soul in Spain put it 'what else can I make with Seville oranges?' - you can just hear the fatigue!

I notice that Hugh F-W answered the latter with his usual enthusiasm in the Saturday Guardian magazine: Seville-orange meringue pie and orange curd were such wonderful ideas, I can't wait to give them a go. Just as soon as I can find some oranges! I also recommend - no, I URGE - you to make the ice cream in 'Nigella Bites'. Don't frown like that, it isn't at all like making ice cream: no churning or time involved. One merely whips cream then adds sugar and orange zest/juice, then stow into freezer. I once converted a non-ice cream lover to it, which is surely the best recommendation?

The pheasant shooting season is coming to its end: soon the birds will be raising chicks, during which time they are off-limits to us preying on them. Time for a last game-bird hurrah of the year - and a good time to know what to do with leftover pheasant bits.

I can't believe I didn't mention my new year's day meal sooner! My parents gave me a post-Christmas pheasant-present, which they had plucked, singed and done all the gruesome and boring bits of preparation to. The bird was given a streaky bacon blanket and roasted, then served on a bed of bacony, herby lentils. It followed a chicory salad in a Dijon mustard and honey dressing, and the whole thing was hearty, earthy and ever so wintry.

After, I stripped the carcass of its few scraps of meat and made stock with the bones: this makes a lovely winter risotto if you have some flavoursome mushrooms, and add the meat in at the end. Delicious with buttered chard or cabbage. End-of-season heaven!

ingredients for a weekend

2011-01-24T03:35:00.000-08:00

What a perfectly social, London weekend. It is like living someone else's life!

There was the fabulous party in the wonderful Princess Victoria; a tasty vegetarian fry up, followed by a visit to the painfully cool 'Tina, we salute you'; thence to Canteen, so conveniently situated for a night at the Festival Hall, listening to those short-listed for the T. S. Eliot poetry prize - where we caught up with some more charming acquaintances. The gent commented that I'd probably met all his friends, intentionally or by chance, over the weekend! And eaten good food, I murmured into my scarf.

My tasty veggie fry: diced, par-boiled potatoes, drained and rinsed in cold water - then fried in hot oil until crunchy outwith; a rattle of maldon salt over the top. Tip onto a plate to keep hot in the oven to make room in the pan for: mushrooms and tomato. Fried eggs, over-easy (I finally found out that this just means turning them over to cook the top too!) but still completely runny inside. If you are a decent sort, then you won't be able to help but put the egg on the crispy potatoes and let the yolk drip over.

'Tina, we salute you': the website is tres stylish, but kind of hard to find anything useful on - like opening times - so I've given a link to the Time Out review instead. That's what happens when you deal with a librarian rather than a hipster Dalstonite. Here we had fabulous coffee (from Square Mile) and enjoyed a slice of nicely judged blueberry and lemon loaf cake. So good that the gent brushed the crumbs from his trousers, strode over to the bar and ordered another slice with a further two flat whites. Good man. A gorgeous place to read the papers and lose your head over coffee.

Canteen, on the South Bank, was chosen for its convenient location, but had a lot to recommend it. The house wine was really great - coming in a 25cl carafe was even better: the booths were sweet and sociable and the menu was spot on for what we needed. One of us had pie, the other a salad: both polished off. Next time we would definitely stop at the bar for another glass or two of the wine and maybe a fish finger sandwich, or pate and piccalilli on toast. Everywhere seems to be upping the ante with their bar menu at the moment!

It is not my remit, but Simon Armitage and Sam Willetts really rocked, poet-wise.

scotched dinner plans

2011-01-23T03:19:00.000-08:00

That was shoe-horning the pun in, really. The fact is the gent and I were not hungry as we left the flat yesterday evening, as we had enjoyed a late afternoon lunch of roast butternut squash and chorizo sausage, with savoy cabbage. Spicy and sweet and sunshine on a plate.

We were headed to the Princess Victoria in Shepherd's Bush, to celebrate the wedding of friends. A few bus stops away from the tube stop, one wouldn't stumble across it accidentally, however it is more than worth the effort. Inside is spacious, charming; the wine list is somewhat vast and the snack board... lured us into stopping at the bar when we fully intended to head upstairs to the party.

A little 25cl carafe of um... a 2008 Montepulchiano? ... was a tasty start to the evening, and a middlewhite pork scotch egg was the absolute most heavenly scotch egg I have ever eaten. And yes, that includes the divine example in the pub-near-Farringdon whose name I will come back and insert, when I remember it. A whole different league of scotch egg - it probably even deserves a different name!

Also on the Princess Vic menu were pork scratchings, scotch quails egg in oxtail meat and, probably, ambrosia. And another time I will go and try them all: instead, we tore ourselves away and had a wonderful time in the be-chandeliered room upstairs. What glittering surroundings for a party!

second feast of Christmas

2011-01-01T09:58:00.000-08:00

If Christmas evening is the best sandwich of the year - ham and turkey with cranberry sauce, stuffing and anything else we can cram in (including sprouts if I can get away with it) - then Boxing day is most certainly the best bubble and squeak.

Christmas is one of the few roasts when there are actually leftovers - though sometimes, shamefully, not. For me, there has to be potato and there has to be sprouts. Any additional swede, parsnip, cabbage, carrot or peas are a bonus, but the sprouts are the finest part. At home alone I make squeak for one, a crispy messy lump, and top it with a fried egg. For boxing day bubble though, this is the centrepiece to the second feast of Christmas.

Bubble and squeak go onto plates alongside slices of ham, turkey, any left over cold sausages-in-bacon and stuffing. Depending on quantities, sometimes a separate bowl of mashed potato or some steamed greens are on the table; the only other feature is pickle. Pickled walnuts, piccalilli, pickled red cabbage - the queen of Christmas pickles - gherkins, onions, beetroot, branston pickle... almost no limit. The remaining space on one's plate is heaped with the astringent, vinegary crunch, and devoured.

Exception: people who are not me indulge in a spoon of turkey jelly, in addition. I am not yet quite that sophisticated.

The meal is rounded off with further slices of Christmas pudding, denuded of charms to be heated in the microwave, then re-charmed and doused in leftover custard and further clotted cream. Coffee and mints follow this as naturally as retiring to beside the fire for a snooze, or to write thank you letters.

Chocolates may make an appearance, but only a few: it is only a few hours until supper, after all.

yuletide feasting

2011-01-01T08:22:00.000-08:00

If you don't like Christmas, look away now. This post is one long, unashamed description of a traditional Christmas lunch. Which I love.

My wider family agreed to discontinue the million-way gift giving we formerly went in for, whilst my immediate family had a challenge to buy gifts only from charity shops. Both were most successful ventures with some ingenious gifts - and one or two naughty aunts transgressing, with the excuse that hand-made gifts don't count. My store cupboard consequently benefits from a small Christmas pudding and pots of jam, whilst my toes are now toasty in bed thanks to a delightful hand-sewn hot water bottle cover!

Mrs I invented a new Christmas Eve tradition some years back, whereby we have smoked salmon on wholemeal bread, with wedges of lemon to squeeze over. A grown up luxury which marked us young ones moving from childhood into the realm of adults. This year we also indulged in the local church's nativity (in which my goddaughter charmed as one of the three Kings) and games of charades and home-bingo.

Christmas morning breakfast is an even more ingrained tradition of chocolate coins followed by a wrestle in the street (don't ask). Lunchtime prosecco makes things more civilised and lunch follows shortly after. This year was Mrs I's most favoured option: ham cooked the day before so that we could have slices of ham and turkey together - in addition to the usual pigs in blankets (chipolatas wrapped in bacon) and fabulous apricot, lemon and walnut stuffing.

We never stint on sauces. There was bread sauce cooked with an onion and cloves; cranberry sauce made with the easy additions of orange zest and juice, and a shake of sugar (not too much, we like it tart); and some hearty gravy.

Vegetables abounded. Roast potatoes and parsnips, mashed swede, sprouts... all the favourites. It seems paradoxical to wait until the largest meal of the year to follow it with the heaviest pudding, however tradition is tradition and I can never say no to Christmas pudding. I adore it. Incredibly rich as it is, it is always paired with custard and clotted cream - and an instruction from Mrs I to watch for the silver charms!

I love the ceremony, the anticipation and the feast itself: the leftovers are just a continuation of the joy. Never will you hear family I complain about cold turkey, except to bemoan it being finished!

mincing one's words

2010-12-17T12:26:00.000-08:00

Last week I - belatedly - made my mincemeat.

I absolutely adore suet and would never say a word against it, however I think a mince pie only really benefits from suet when eaten hot. Perhaps I imagine it, but when cold I feel there is a slightly claggy, mouth-coating sensation that I don't think necessarily enhances my enjoyment. It should also be added that I have never said no to a mince pie, so my pedantry is merely whim-shaped; for the sake of doing something *exactly* as I like it. And as I librarian, I don't feel the need to apologise for this.

Well, there are my prejudices - for this year at least - and the justification for a wonderful suet-free version. Nigella's, in fact.

Having rather poo-pooed* the idea of making mince pies in 'How to eat'**, Nigella then does a volte face in her next book, ('Domestic goddess') putting the mincemeat recipe second as "I thought I'd make you want to have it". Interestingly, the pastry recipe is the same in her later 'Feast' - so good it needs no update. I agree.

(For completists: despite having devoured every book the lady has written, I drew the line at her Christmas book so can't vouch for any mince pie polemic therein.)

I thoroughly enjoyed making the pastry - no doubt unconsciously looking every bit like my mother, Mrs I., as I banged about with flour and rolling pin - feeling like a woman fulfilled as I used the homemade mincemeat. And I hope my lovely colleagues enjoy the rich, nutty, alcohol-tinted result, in their raggedy carriage of pastry.

In other culinary Christmas news, here is a link to an article about deep fried Christmas cake, courtesy of Bertie Blue. Would I eat this? Absolutely!
Would you?

*this term looks strange typed out: if it is the spelling that is wrong, please correct me - however, the word itself stays. It feels both comedic and appropriate.

** "Mince pies, I feel, are a bit like Christmas pudding: you may as well buy in." p.68 'How to eat'.

soho dreams

2010-12-10T03:05:00.000-08:00

There are a couple of coffee shops on my soho-places-to-visit list. And I like nothing better than striking items off a list.

Milk bar (sister to flat white - excuse me feminising the inanimate) on Bateman street calls its siren song.

One of my Soho fantasies is taking breakfast at Maison Bertaux on Greek Street - possibly wearing a cloche hat, certainly reading something by one of the Bloomsbury set. Yes, I mock; no, I repent not.

With less romance, Fernandez and Wells on Beak street is also luring me in with its sweet coffee arms and the tidy, clean lines of its decor. There are three establishments in all: may I suggest that the completists amongst us visit the full set?

And as if Soho wasn't full enough already, now Ottolenghi is opening an eaterie there. It is their fifth, due to debut early next year and sounds excitingly concept-heavy and lacking in finer detail. Exciting for us, perhaps fairly terrifying for those working to complete it right now! Take a look at the delicious foods they are testing:
http://ottolenghi.tumblr.com/

North road

2010-11-19T06:14:00.000-08:00

The wonders of modern technology means that sometimes you don't have to follow hot new restaurants... they follow you.

Having visited Fig in the summer, the gent was added to their email list. A couple of weeks ago they emailed the news that they were opening a new restaurant in Farringdon / Clerkenwell: we went to a drinks reception in the paint-fresh new venue. Then came a missive bearing the irresistible news of 50% off food and wine for their opening week.

The North road menu wasn't online when we booked, but a few days later we were able to peep at the Scandinavian-inspired list of deliciousness - although we questioned just how 'Nordic' it really was. We were accompanied by a couple of friends who had also experienced Fig and were keen to see the bigger, shinier brother.

I gorged on wonderful ox cheeks with pear, Jerusalem artichoke and endive. Then launched into mutton: I will confess my ignorance and admit I thought mutton would only be good in a long, slow-cooked situation. I was wrong. This was mutton loin cooked outside, dark velvety red within and utterly... utterly. To give the full description it came with 'onions in textures, wild cabbage and broth'. It was at the fancy-pantsy end of the scale but cor lummy was it tasty.

I paused, briefly, to taste the gent's scallops and very much enjoyed his 'Norfolk deer' - plus the ensuing, inconclusive debate over why it wasn't called venison. The only complaint around the table was that the food was very slow coming out of the kitchen: we were there about an hour and a half before the main meals arrived (did I get that right, gent?!).

Despite the deliciousness, and the sophisticated tastebuds of our dining companions, we were all frankly frightened by the dessert menu. Paul spoke for us all when he declared he wanted neither another vegetable course, nor breakfast*, and so three rounds of B&BP** and the caramel and liquorice 'in textures' were ordered. Next time I would be braver, or order the cheeses, which were wonderful at Fig.

The decor was fresh and minimal, the lights a bit mesmerising; the bathrooms trendily uni-sex cubicles. I know, it's uncouth to mention such things, but you can tell how far from Hoxton you are by the uni-sexness of things.

I was reminded of Texture in the (slight) Nordic influence; the crisp skin starting nibbles, and of course the all those 'textures' in the menu! Fancy-pantsy would be my final word. Perhaps a little too much 'burnt hay' and 'texture' for my personal liking, and for this reason I preferred the little sister Fig Bistro. But each to their own, and now there is more Fig to go round.

*******************************

After all that talk of rich food, you might be in need of a digestif. And to go with your post-prandial coffee how about a peruse of the latest edition of Fire and Knives? I just spotted Tim Hayward tweeting about this - what a social media day it has been! - and now I am trying to find out where I can get my hands on a copy...

Unnecessary notes:
* Jerusalem artichoke and sunflower seeds; organic sheep milk yogurt, scent of fir pine and muesli. There was also 'flavours of woodland'

**as dear Agnes used to call it, in my youth. Bread and butter pudding to those less familiar with my grandmother's household.

sacred times

2010-09-15T03:42:00.000-07:00

Sacred continues to top the coffee charts for me. It is something about the coffee, something about the chat, and a little bit of high convenience thrown in. I begrudge not a penny of the extra money it costs.

This week Michelle is in the kiosk and I find it amazing how, using the same ingredients and machine, and with the same training, coffee can taste ever so slightly different when made by a different person. Incidentally, I struggle with the right word for the person who makes coffee. I believe 'barrista' is the Costabucks term but I shy from using it to the experts - nay, magicians! artists! - that craft beans into heaven.

I always want to ask a new coffee purveyor where they trained as a [coffee-magician / bean-artist / insert your own term]? So my regular question is 'where did you learn to make coffee like this?'. It needs sharpening up, I'll admit, but it does. Never is there an easy 'two days at company x' answer: always a story ensues - which is why I ask, of course. My favourite stories start with 'back in the day...' and relate to travelling or Saturday jobs, or a lifetime in the catering trade - one even contained the words 'Melbourne coffee guru'.

So if you want to make the very best coffee, it seems it can't be taught in a day: years of practice are needed to hone the craft. And, just perhaps, a little help from a guru.

figs and honey

2010-09-14T03:10:00.000-07:00

Grey skies, dark morning, a chill in the air: all counteracted by a ray of the Mediterranean for breakfast.

Fat figs, split open, flesh bursting forth, under a hot grill with a dab of brown sugar for a couple of minutes. Then drizzled with 'caerlaverock honey' (not for sale yet, people, but take a look at the bee-keeper's book) and indulged in. The gent, living up to his name, spooned the seedy flesh up, whilst I became sticky of finger and juicy of face.

There was a small dish of plain yoghurt each, and a pert espresso of Monmouth coffee to wake our senses.

Then away on our bicycles, like a two-man fleet of earnest Londoners, sweeping south across the city, to work.

two-stage breakfast

2010-09-04T06:10:00.001-07:00

First, 'pomegranate infused granola' (no, I didn't invent that) with Greek yoghurt and raspberries. Then a pause whilst the gent fetched newspaper and bread, then onto the second stage: sausage sandwiches with plastic bread and tomato ketchup. It is my ongoing battle to resist understanding the term 'Tommy K'.

Coffee was Monmouth - as ever - and in my yellow tea-cups. Strictly speaking not the right vessel, but the canary yellow can't help but make me feel wonderful. Sort of queenly combined with headmistressy, but with a sausage buttie in hand.

And my laptop arrived this week: I'm back online! Ketchup all round.

sacred coffee

2010-08-05T02:43:00.000-07:00

My coffee of choice these days is made and poured (or rather, crafted and sculpted with panache) by the friendly Umberto at Sacred.

I had been to this coffee stall a few times over the years and thought it good, but was often with a friend and in need of a seat. Most usually, a seat out of the wind, rain or snow. However this summer has been glorious, the flat white has sprung up all over London - even in the dark recesses of corporate brands like Costa - and one fine day Melly Bo took me back to Sacred... and I got hooked on their perfectly balanced, strong coffee.

For those who like to sit down, maybe have a muffin with their coffee, then Sacred also have drink-in cafes; I have noted their location and am reassured that should I be persuaded to the Westfield centre, then at least I can get a good coffee to keep my spirits up!

cold war stores

2010-08-03T05:39:00.000-07:00

It is always the least glamorous foods that get to me. My new fad? Tinned tuna.

Last week I had it in oil (which I didn't drain off, just lifted it, dripping, onto the plate) with olives, avocado, a squeeze of lime, and salad from the veg box - a little stump of cucumber, a few leaves of curly lettuce. This week's version is tuna in brine, as it's shopping basket neighbours were sweetcorn and mayonnaise: this combo can be a bit greasy with tuna in oil, but perfect when from brine. The addition of baby gems and avocado takes it to the passe side of retro - but also raises the nutritional value, too.

Of course when I say sweetcorn, I mean tinned ... in fact, my bag was pretty heavy as there were also cannellini beans in there. I don't mean to start a rush on tined goods, but the stack next to my work desk makes it look like I have received notice of a possible 3-minute warning - as my Mother recalls it, from the fifties or sixties.

But we live in more peaceful times and can enjoy tinned food on its own merits. Humble, yes, but very delicious.

morsels

2010-08-03T05:23:00.000-07:00

So much to say, so little time, such a broken lap top!
So a lunch-break blog, squeezed in. This will do the past week no justice, unfortunately, but...

Felicity Cloake was talking about chocolate mousse recipes on the Guardian 'Word of Mouth' recently: a satisfyingly thorough exploration of different recipes, concluding in Elizabeth David's being crowned the winner. Must remember to pass on the vegan-friendly recipe for Liz - or even better, cook it for her.

I am trying to catch up on reading all the new blogs I find at the 'UK Food Bloggers Association' (UKfba to make life easier) - of which I am now a member. I have no home computer at the moment so am frustrated in this effort. I love blogs and the window onto other peoples lives they offer: so many industrious people out there, running pubs, raising families, selling ham - and all finding time to write about it. As soon as I am back online properly I will post links to some!

Excellent food in my 'summer house': I am being kindly put up by three men for the summer and my goodness they have a good time! Post-work Monday evening saw Prosecco, hummus and bread, fried chorizo... then chicken fajitas and, my offering, passion fruit pavlova. All this and it was only Monday - imagine what meals will be like come the weekend!

A wonderful meal at 'Fig' in north London with friends. Cosy, charming with lovely staff and great food. I recall, only sketchily: smoked scallop with gooseberry jelly, burnt butter sauce and some herb (the gent won out with heavenly sweetbreads) ; then we all had the stuffed quail (?) with girolles, a paste of roasted onions and divine bits and bobs. We should really have thought to order some sides of vegetables and potatoes; instead the gent and I were left with room for both dessert (meringue, strawberries, ice cream - all delicately put together) and a cheese courses. The cheese was really wonderful - two from Sussex, which warmed my heart - and the big debate was whether to have cheese before or after dessert. What would you do? The gent and I chose differently according to our own taste. The waitress allied herself with my view, but my sister, more kindly, suggested the gent preferred the 'French style'. The boys chose a really excellent wine, I would trust them with the wine menu any day.

A seminar on trends in the food industry, held at the ever-superb British Library (this time in the IP and Business centre). I wrote pages of notes and whipped myself up into a frenzy of enthusiasm for starting a business. Most encouraging was that if asked what I thought beforehand, I would have loosely been along the right lines in predicting trends, and I also knew of many of the businesses and Web 2.0 technologies that were talked about. A bit more clued up than I thought - phew. My only furrowed brow came about dropping trends: there was no mention about arriving late and getting in on something already oversubscribed. Many of the trends mentioned - locally sourced foods, novelty or pop up restaurants / bars / etc. have already gone mainstream making the small, unpolished late-start-up less likely to thrive. In my completely uninformed opinion -!

22nd July 2010

feast day

2010-07-11T03:30:00.000-07:00

Being brought a cup of tea in bed is simply the most luxurious thing.

I no longer do a slow waking procedure in the morning - tea in bed listening to John Humphreys harangue some soul on the radio - although I must have done in the past. Anyway, I took the day off for birthday reasons and very much enjoyed the leisurely morning slot, followed by a breakfast of cherries (picked the day before from my sister's tree) and a plain slab of sponge cake - made by my mother for my nephew's birthday.

Thence to the rose garden in Regent's Park to meet HG for a cheesecake-off. She made the chocolate version, and I the plain vanilla. I baked mine the day before so it would be maximally delicious, but I must admit that hers was the finer example. Exquisite is how I would describe it, if pressed. The crumb of the base was just so; the centre that perfect firmness of something like semi-soft butter, on which the retreating knife leaves a small swirl. The first time HG and I made chocolate cheesecake it was with frowns of disbelief, however I must urge you to try it: it retains that slight sour note you hope for, and somehow fails to taste chocolate-ey - instead becoming transcribed into, I fancy, a flavour-cousin of chocolate.

HG let on that, having always used Green and Black's, she had converted to the Divine dark chocolate (and in this instance to Lindt), for the slightly less gritty texture. I completely concur. I also moved away from G&B, towards Lindt, and thence to any old supermarket chocolate with 70% or more cocoa solids. For this cheesecake, or brownies, I would use the better chocolate too, though.

Anyway, for the first time ever, water from the water bath Houdini-ed into my foil-wrapped tin and the base became soggy. I was making two cakes at the same time, in different sized tins, with the result that the tall one I took my nephew was undercooked, and the HG version was rather shorter and a smidge overcooked. I was disappointed, but no one else seemed to know what I was grousing about.

Dear, dear: I meant this post to be about the wonderful chateaubriand the gent treated me to that evening, but I have written too much already. Both cheesecake recipes are found in Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a Domestic Goddess', with the amendment on HG's part of doubling the biscuit base quantities for the chocolate version.

kohlslaw

2010-07-03T14:03:00.000-07:00

Kohlrabi is back in the veg box. It is a vegetable that takes slightly more effort to prepare - unlike salad, spinach or tomatoes, for example, which can be quickly washed and thrown into something. There are also those extra moments one's brain takes to think of which dish precisely it could be made into... and another minute trying to decide if you actually want to eat that particular dish.

Seeing two huge examples of this vegetable sitting on a bunch of carrots, I made a snap decision to coleslaw them. I was inspired by my Mother who always seems to make the slaw, but quite differently to that you can buy. Firstly, it is always to 'use up a cabbage' from her garden; secondly she enjoys the addition of some very finely shredded onion; thirdly she shreds it all by hand with a knife ,and her chopping is a work of art, honed by decades of cooking for her brood; finally she makes a very thin sauce - a skerrick of mayonnaise with generous amounts of vinegar.

Children never appreciate anything: I used to think it was altogether too wholesome without the loading of mayo. Let me assure you, it lacks nothing and is wonderfully astringent and crunchy.

My curiosity to use kohlrabi instead of cabbage - an obvious replacement, given their close cousinliness - overrode my innate aversion to hand-grating anything other than cheese. Like taking medicine, the best way is to jump straight in without thinking and soon I had reduced my washed, peeled carrots and half a kohlrabi to a bright jungle, to which I added white wine vinegar, mayonnaise and a pinch of salt.

I discovered, and fried, the last, lonely pork loin chop in the fridge to sit next to my kohlslaw* and a few cold, boiled new potatoes from another part of that fruitful, but crammed fridge.

For a collection of unwanted food stuffs, it was remarkably good: henceforth it will be one of those meals I go out of my way to buy ingredients for. Although next time I absolutely must do mashed potato to go with it - heaven!

* I was inordinately proud of this ridiculous term I thought up. Of course, on 'googling' it to check, I was reminded that there is no such thing as an original thought. My hopes hadn't been so dashed since the day I discovered several websites dedicated to gloves found in the street...

pork tales

2010-06-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

I rarely buy meat in the week as I don't get to the butchers or even a big supermarket. Often I don't miss eating meat, but just occasionally I get an urge for something specific. Yesterday I decided I couldn't get through the night if I didn't have a pork chop, even if it meant going to one of those small 'Metro' supermarkets in which vegetables look so limp and sad, and meat, suspiciously pink.

There were no chops of course, however I did get the very last packet of pork loin. Loin is much less fatty (hence my favouritism towards the chop) however it still made a really nice, quick meal: definitely one to note down for tired week-nights. Here's how I did it:

Fry the chops or loin in a little oil on a medium heat, aiming to brown the edges and crisp the fat. Keep turning to bronze both sides, like a teenager browning in the sun - then remove to a plate and turn the heat up under the empty frying pan. Throw in half a glass of wine and a teaspoon of grainy mustard and swirl about. When it has reduced a little, add double cream and heat through.

As you see it is really not sophisticated, however the sauce somehow tastes much better than it's component parts might suggest; more piquant than creamy, to cut through, and compliment, the fatty pork.

I served it with baby new potatoes and savoy cabbage, and some very mediocre white wine.

eurohol

2010-06-24T03:41:00.000-07:00

Three whole weeks of holiday! I had a wonderful time travelling south from Paris by train: through France for a week, then Italy for a week, finally ending on an island in the bay of Naples.

My only regret was not having a computer to hand to blog whenever the whim took me, so I resumed a pen and paper (from whence this habit came) and wrote down my best food moments. Some highlights:

In Beaune we ate like kings - the coq au vin was a revelation: did you know it is really dark and meaty? The gent thought they had brought me beef by accident, but it was just proper cockerel which looks nothing like chicken. And I think I had a ham hock. The gent translated it as 'shin of pig' and then, before it arrived, said 'I hope it didn't mean trotter...' but it was delicious. Unctuous. Dark and sticky.

In Dijon, most unexpectedly, there was a bi-valve epiphany. Oysters! I finally understood the fuss and ordered half a dozen. As I will do any time I see them on a menu and suspect the purveyor of extreme freshness and quick turnover.

Best dish award goes to the antipasti we had four or five times from 'Caracale' on the island of Procida: saute vongole and mussels in butter, garlic and a bit of wine. I can be a bit creepy about shellfish but this was wonderful: it must have been super-fresh and perfectly timed. Also, one dish was big enough to satisfy the two of us: I love a generous portion.

To come:

recipes to research then cook repeatedly, until excellent
when not to do as the Romans do (being superior about carbonara)
enoteca
and of course, photographs

In the meantime the British weather is doing admirably well at matching that on the continent. It makes me want to settle into a plate of oysters and open a crisp white wine...

ode to HG

2010-05-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

My dear friend HG is leaving town.

She is moving from the day-job side of the fence to the more artistic side, and leaving London to achieve this. HG and I met at library school where we were also allocated the same flat -perhaps the college administrators were amused by our matching first names and so put us together. HG is also the reason I am called Roy (one for the Australians).

We moved to London at the same time and lived in Wimbledon, eating home made cheesecake at 3am in the queue to see the tennis, becoming late-night regulars at the chip shop, having an intense brownie bake-off to find the best recipe. Next we lived in Willesden where we discovered 'Deliverance' for great take-outs, and always had gin and tonic at the ready. More recently we have lived in different places, but still meet up for hot chocolate (HG) and coffee (me) and cake or breakfast.

HG doesn't love food, not in a fetishistic way. She doesn't photograph it or write about it or have bookshelves full of recipes: mostly for her, I think, food is divided into fuel and cake. But I have plenty of food memories which involve her and I am going to indulge in a few now - a good luck-card of a blog post, if you will.

A starter of HG-isms:

Peanut butter on unsalted rice cakes, with segments of satsuma balanced on top
Cold porridge from the fridge
Sunflower seeds stashed in one's bag
Sea breeze cocktails

Primo: conversions

2 or 3 years into our acquaintance, HG ate aubergine - a former, passionate, hate - in the form of aubergine rolled around a mint, cheese filling and baked in passata ('Involtini' to Nigella sympathisers. Just make sure you do the GOOD one, there are variations in different books...)
after 3 or 4 years she succumbed to butternut squash risotto

Secondo: HG-specials

HG-made vegetarian lasagne: done in such a particular way (with plenty of cheese!) that I am sure I could identify it in a blind-taste test
Pizza with just cheese and tomato

Dessert

... is, naturally, cake. And what cake! The cake-party in Loughborough! And my birthday when she baked a 'Grassmere' fruit cake for me, knowing I would love it, and a chocolate cake so she could celebrate too, as fruit cake is something like the devil's own face to her.

There was malteser cake, a chocolate yule log and fairy cakes... and the time we baked both plain and chocolate cheesecakes, solemnly declaring it was much better to have a slice of each as they complimented each other. The brownies were still our finest moment though: I almost never give that recipe away.

Amigo, I salute you! And look forward to meeting you in Boston's for a coffee ;)

phd meals

2010-05-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

Solo meals are, in my head, referred to as 'phd meals'. The gent has been immersed in his study pretty intensively recently, digging in his spurs as he nears the home run. Which, necessarily, is uphill, in the rain and the horse has a wall eye and a gammy leg. So seems to be the consensus amongst those who have passed the finish line.

I envisaged cooking up a storm whilst he wrote his thesis, he pausing only to refresh his senses on the delicious stews and lightly spiced curries before heading back into the slough of despond (Pilgrim's Progress is providing me with some choice phrases at the moment). In reality this just turned into another distraction for him, so he is banished to eternal pasta 'n' pesto, and I am re-living some of my favourite single-girl meals.

You wouldn't really match that phrase with the meals though. Tonight I have a chorizo-less version of the chicken and chorizo stew I often make*, and I reckon it could modestly feed 4 or 6 people, if served with couscous or rice.

The long daylight, though delightful, tricked me into missing the butchers on my way home, but I stubbornly felt that there was still some joy to be had of this dish, even without chorizo. It retains the smoky paprika base with onion and garlic, (and some unnecessary fresh green chilli that I just can't leave alone) but is then ratatouille-ed up with courgette, carrot and lots of tomato. As the clock neared 10pm two cans of chickpeas went into the pot, to save me pulling another pan out of the cupboard for cooking potatoes or similar.

The result? Well, it is much fresher-tasting than than its predecessor, making it unintentionally, but appropriately, summery. And having just chickpeas makes it light on the stomach, much better for eating late, although I hadn't thought of that. Altogether, it was one of the many happy culinary results I am sure everyone has, where you can't quite decide if it was coincidence or some subconscious instinct that pulled the right things together.

I think John Bunyan would think it was, if not Celestial city, then certainly something like the Delectable mountains.

*type 'chorizo' in the search box at the top left of this page to see the various mentions...

yoghurt is not a breakfast

2010-05-27T01:41:00.001-07:00

Note to self: it might be easy and quick, and appropriate for a dodgy tum, but yoghurt most definitely is not a breakfast. It is rather mean and unloving - not just because of its 80's diet connotations, but its complete lack of substance and any good flavour. What was I thinking?

Nurse yoghurt, I will eat you no more!

nut curry #2

2010-05-15T14:03:00.001-07:00

I have just made the nut curry again and found a few interesting things.

making the spice paste is much quicker and easier the second time round
chillies vary an enormous (for which read 'frustrating') amount: I used more green chilli the second time, yet it was less spicy than before
my choice of a Gewurztraminer was a pretty good match! Given my haphazard choices with wine, I was really delighted with myself. Something from the Australian vineyard tour obviously sunk in!
the cashew version is also very good

Earlier today I made some super-quick leek and potato soup (just leeks and garlic sweated in oil, then diced potato added, with some Marigold stock and hot water). It is possibly the cheapest and easiest thing to do, and repays tenfold in terms of starchy comfort.

Finally, to complete my afternoon of kitchen pottering, I made some cocoa biscuits. Like the soup, they are minimal on ingredients - although much more demanding, as you work up an arm-achingly stiff dough. They taste far better than you think possible from the source ingredients, and are utterly more-ish. If you are interested in improving your biceps, or having a delicious nibble, then the recipe is from Nigella's Domestic Goddess book, and entitled 'Granny Boyd's biscuits'.

And then I indulged in a leisurely moment on the sofa, reading more of that lady's work and harvesting some super ideas about grouse. And lamb. And scones...

nut curry

2010-05-14T07:11:00.000-07:00

I know I shouldn't jot these thoughts down without a proper reference to the source - however, if finger does not hit key right now it will go the same way as the almond madeleines (gorgeous, by the way, just gorgeous... what a pity I don't remember the recipe I invented!).

Last night I made a curry from scratch. It is fairly labour-intensive on the preparation, but once cooking I could clean up the kitchen and catch up on the news. I was really surprised at how decently it turned out, too. It looked creamy and nutty but actually had a nice, fresh taste and a spicy pinch to the lips. I needed something to lift me from being out-of-sorts, and I found it.

In a lightly oiled pan, fry until they pop: 1 tsp coriander seeds, 2 cloves and a few black peppercorns. Tip these onto:
30g fresh ginger chopped, 2 chopped cloves garlic, 1 green chilli, 80g ground almonds, 125 ml water, 1 tsp turmeric.
... and whizz with a blender into a bright ochre paste.

Brown chicken pieces (I like thighs the best) then set them aside. Add two medium onions, sliced, to an oily saucepan until coloured. Return the chicken to the pan and add the paste and 225 ml water. Simmer for 45 minutes. Add 125 ml natural yogurt and heat through.

Serve with cardamon rice, and the following scattered over the top: fresh coriander, one green chilli sliced finely, and toasted almonds. The recipe intends it to be cashew nuts, however I only had almonds to hand and didn't regret the switch.

Just... don't rub your eyes after chopping chillies!

weekend of eating!

2010-05-11T01:50:00.000-07:00

What an unbelievably good-tasting weekend! A visit to the green hills of Macclesfield rendered some wonderful food, charming company and at least two new food-obsessions for me. In fact, there was so much food I barely have space to detail it - it won't do it justice, but I hope a little of its deliciousness is conveyed in this bare-skeleton run down:

Friday evening we were treated to a home meal of:

Asparagus and rocket with bresaola, parmesan shavings and a dressing
Fish pie with salmon, prawns etc. yum etc. and a rosti topping - in which I noticed some delicious capers
Pear and almond sponge with creme fraiche

Saturday got off to an excellent start, when bacon and egg on toast extended to black pudding and sausage too, with OJ and tea. Later, there was space for apple tart and ice cream, with a cappuccino in Arighi Bianchi - a department store with a formidable cake selection in the cafe. Then tea and biscuits with Grandma Miles, before visiting the Lord Clyde pub

What a gem of a place! A G&T whetted my appetite for scallops with black pudding and pea puree. It made me want to eat it every day of my life. Some lovely red wine (gent, can you recall?) accompanied the pork three ways: pork cheek on creamed cabbage, with some specs of carrot in; roast belly pork on mashed potato; loin of pork rolled in pancetta with sage leaves entrapped between the two, on apple puree.

Three scoops of ice cream: two amaretti, one vanilla and an espresso finished a perfect evening.

On Sunday we breakfasted on smoked salmon and scrambled eggs on toast, with OJ and tea. Then a cappuccino in Buxton; sweet-spicy nuts, parmesan biscuits and pistachios to keep us going until a Sunday feast of:

Potted shrimp with bread
Wholegrain tagliatelle, underneath pork baked in a beautiful creamy sauce, topped with crispy-melted mozzarella. I wish I had asked for the recipe now, I really want to make it!
Delia's very lemony lemon tart, with cream

Well that was the short version and I didn't even touch on the breads! My two resulting obsessions are beautiful, savoury black pudding and potted shrimps. Items I have been tentative with before, but won't be now I have tasted the good stuff!

coffee continues...

2010-04-26T05:48:00.001-07:00

More coffee spots, courtesy of a Time Out article from February this year.

The gent and I have been cycling to work every day. In a delicious turn for the even-better, this morning we parked up our two-wheeled steeds and had a coffee together. Well, if you save 20 minutes on your journey by cycling, then you can afford such Monday morning treats! Lovely as my regular coffee haunt is, I had been thinking of alternative spots to keep things lively, and this list provides great riches. It is also good for just reading the delicious descriptions - how beautifully they describe their espressi et al!

I noted down some spots near work... and also near home... and then a few for when I am caught in an unfamiliar part of town and don't want to risk a lousy coffee! Hope you enjoy it too.

cold cuts #2

2010-04-23T07:36:00.000-07:00

Are you in London with a moment to spare this weekend? Then head to Kings Cross and the Food Junctions festival: free, foodie, and looks very fun. I especially like the look of the 'Hot stuff' talk on spice, the Urban bees, and hearing Kathleen Burk talk about wine.

Food Junctions is on from 24, 25 and 28th April, and 1 and 2nd May.

I meant to say more about my addition to Masterchef, I was thoroughly hooked by the last week. I love how suddenly the contestants are stretched to their creative limit and have the most amazing tasks to complete! I had a little browse of Alex's blog (one of the finalists). I read just about any food blog I can find, however his is most adventurous so is especially nice to dip into.

And finally, my top tip for transporting food to work. After many years of soup-in-handbag spillage incidents, permanently be-crumbed clothes not to mention the salad dressing drama, I thought I had all the tricks for keeping food in the tub on a commute. However, my journey this week has been by bicycle, presenting a whole new challenge! A vegetable madras with rice was frozen overnight, wrapped in a plastic bag, then some fabric to alleviate the cold, and chucked into the flimsiest of backpacks. No spillage. Until I get a bicycle basket, long live the freezer-method!

cold cuts : bits and bobs

2010-04-23T07:13:00.000-07:00

How naive! How I walked into that one!
After sweepingly declaring that I could probably make the River Cafe's 'Chocolate Nemesis' at home, and adding the RC's cook books to my Amazon wish list, I stumbled across this, from Julian Barnes:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/mar/29/julianbarnes.houseandgarden
Oh dear. Nemesis by name, nemesis by nature, it seems. And written seven years ago, too! Very old news.

In cauliflower news, I urged both my sister and Bert to make the Moro cauliflower soup which is so dear to my tastebuds, but couldn't find any mention of it on my blog to direct them to. Very remiss of me: it is the most wonderful yoghurt soup flavoured with coriander seed, first made for me by Jo, and worth buying the book 'Casa Moro' for alone.

And finally, a mention of the gent's roast lamb. He made it for me just over a year ago and it has sentimental as well as taste merits. He made it recently for a few of us and this is how he did it:

Take one huge shoulder of lamb, spear the fat with a knife, at a 45 degree angle, making a hole in the surface. Repeat, many times. Fill each mini-pocket with a sliver of garlic, bit of rosemary and about 1/4 of an anchovy fillet.
Roast about 2 hours, depending on weight.
It is sublime with anything you choose to serve, but this time it's supporting act were be-almonded cous cous and rocket.

It is amazing how much flavour this gave to the lamb fat: my vanity had left the building, beaten back by the first mouthful, so I snapped up all the semi-crisp globs of fat like a greedy gannet. Absolute heaven. Just for purposes of note-keeping though, a good reason not to binge-eat lamb fat could be heard at midnight, in the whimper: 'I feel really sick: please don't let me do that again!'.

january gaps

2010-04-05T09:26:00.001-07:00

Some photos and some mid-afternoon leafing through my cook books, reminded me of things I meant to keep a note of.

New Year's Eve saw us imbing the most gorgeous half-bottle of rioja (Monte real 2003) and finishing a particularly warming chicken and chorizo stew. I hope I made mention somewhere of how much better the 'hot' paprika is than the 'sweet' version in this warm-spicy dish.

The next morning, after some preparatory cooking, we took a brisk walk on the heath. There was powder snow, hard ground and hundreds of people out walking their dogs and children. We were back home at the time of light fading for an early evening meal of lamb shanks with figs and honey: a real feast, albeit a little too sweet for my liking. I would love to re-make it in a different way, however if it doesn't improve then it will be relegated to the bench. The gent paired it with this wine, pictured, a very special 1978 vintage (not just a good year for wine - !). Although I was terrifically excited to have the chance to try such a wine, it wouldn't be top of my list to buy again.

Epiphany is an occasion I don't have a family blue-print method of celebrating, food-wise, so I borrow without shame from other countries. Here is the galette des rois I made to mark the day:
A twenty pence piece took place of the charm, hidden inside the frangipane. Perhaps it is just me, but I felt the office momentarily forgot it was post-Christmas January and were genuinely intrigued. Lesley was King for the day and wore the crown for longer than the mere polite person would. Good egg! Anun H-C sent a message to say that next year I should try the Spanish 'Roscon de Reyes' - something I already look forward to.

Another high point in January is the gent's birthday. This is the Guiness cake I made:

We took a long, cold, birthday-related Saturday walk, taking in disused spa-fields, the TV-residence of Poirot and the Barbican. Afterwards we were cold and hungry and this miso, chilli noodle soup spiced us up very well:

river cafe

2010-03-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a gift so generous and perfect, that you are not sure the words 'thank you' cover your bosom-swelling gratitude? Yesterday I used a voucher that HG and Anj gave me for my last birthday. It was incredibly thoughtful in that I was mid-moving house (yet again) so had nowhere to house any new objects: the slip of paper was very convenient and a delicious promise of a treat to come. It was vastly generous in that it was a voucher for the River Cafe : somewhere I imagined only celebrities would frequent, and Roys not at all. I have been reading about the river cafe - its food, owners and various famous alumni - for years; I couldn't have been more thrilled.

So yesterday lunchtime found me in a state of tremulous excitement, hurrying along the Thames with the gent and an umbrella, to the much-photographed warehouse building in Hammersmith - refurbished after the fire in 2008. It was as light and minimal as the photographs you will have seen and the peasant-bloused staff as helpful as described by the heavyweights of the restaurant critic world (for example...) - always in glowing terms.

I saw both Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray speak at the Hay-on-Wye festival about five years ago and I was school-girlishly excited to see Ruth Rogers yesterday in her whites, chatting to some customers.

Back to the food. There was a fantastic winter menu lunch offer and from it I ate:

Fusilli con cavolo nero e pinoli - a very tightly-screwed fusilli which made many ridges for scooping up a maximum amount of the pesto-like sauce the cabbage was made into. Not at all what I expected and completely delicious. The gent had 'Calamari ai ferri': chargrilled squid with some fresh chilli. A generous amount came my way and wolfed down - reminding me again how bad I am at cooking shellfish and how wonderful it is when done well.

Then came 'Spiedino ai ferri': chargrilled scallops and monkfish on a rosemary skewer, very soft inside, served with castelluccio lentils, salad leaves and a chilli and parsley sauce. I paused only to take a bite of the gent's 'coniglio in tegame' which was the most beautiful, moist rabbit, pot-roasted in soave (served with polenta). A rare moment where I couldn't decide who chose the best.

The gent's pear and almond tart was probably the winner at the Dolci course - although he triumphantly declared the pear was 'more ozoney' than in the version he made recently, rendering his baking the best. Quite a boast: I'm happy to say I have eaten both. I don't normally choose chocolate desserts (however delicious, they all taste of... chocolate) but I didn't regret my chocolate nemesis for a moment. It almost brought me back into the chocolatey fold, and certainly fired me to re-create it somehow at home.

We drank ... well, as is tradition, I hand over to the pastry chef on this matter. It was bianco, almost fizzy with sherbet, almond or lemon undertones and we will ONLY drink this going around Italy ... but I don't remember the name. Would you be so kind?

I have decided to try and re-create one or two of these dishes at home for my generous friends, as a thank you. Armed with magazine clippings from the last ten years I can only try. And I know they won't mind me practising a chocolate dessert on them!

This is Roy signing off, from cloud nine.

popcorn

2010-03-29T02:22:00.000-07:00

One Saturday afternoon when taking the gent to the cinema to see a documentary on Philip Glass, I wondered if I should take something for us to eat. Inspired by my flatmate, I heated some oil in a saucepan (I would love to say 'heavy bottomed' as the cook books do, but mine are actually pretty dreadful) and added popcorn kernels. Or is that just 'corn'? Pre-popped popcorn, anyway. In the flush of genius that being in a hurry sometimes engenders, I used a pan with a glass lid.

I have never made pop corn by myself and have never had the benefit of a transparent lid through which to watch the process. I thoroughly recommend it.

I was rendered child-like with amazement that such a tiny, unyielding little seed should explode into such a delicate, perfectly rounded puff. Completely agog I watched them all. I had underestimated their might and added too many, so the lid was eventually pushed up on a sea of white mushroom-topped corn. I am not sure of the proper process here, but I melted butter in another pan, poured it over the corn, mixed it about with my hands and added liberal amounts of salt. It was rather good.

three's a crowd

2010-03-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

... or 'playing the gooseberry'.

Have you ever wanted to bottle something intangible? Sitting on your back doorstep in the first proper sun of summer; that feeling when your tooth is very lose and squelches when you agitate it; Christmas lunch - any lunch?

In the morning my single squirt of perfume brings a moment of glamour for the day: my spirits lift, I immediately stand taller. It is a serious day when I need two squirts. I think of this perfume as bottled energy, invisible armour that can be dipped into as needed.

This evening I had some toast spread with Auntie Cyn's gooseberry jam. It was a Christmas gift, and came paired with a jar of marmalade - the very same that adorned this morning's breakfast toast. This morning the bright citrus taste in a just-set jelly reminded me of bottled sunshine and I imagined myself in Spain. This evening with the gooseberry jam though, I felt that a little of my childhood home had been preserved and came alive again in my London kitchen.

Auntie Cyn lives next to my parents, so it is no leap at all to remember the gooseberries they grew (still grow) in both their gardens, the singular smell of blackcurrant bushes behind them : I have a multitude of memories from those gardens. Eating jammed gooseberries this evening made me feel as if I were right there, lifting the lid of the rhubarb forcer to see the frogs, stealing peas, jumping over the row of daffodils. It was not a misty-eyed nostalgic moment, but instead, terribly comforting. The gooseberry jam, like my perfume, preserves something intangible - not just last summer's fruit.

weekday lunch

2010-03-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

After 10 hours at work on Monday I wasn't at all in the mood too cook, let alone make lunches. I immediately put a fistful of spaghetti on to boil, to which I added cabbage for the last two minutes, and torn, wild garlic about five seconds before draining. Oil, parmesan, a squeeze of lime and a handful of toasted pine nuts - along with seasoning - were chucked over, stirred about, and was just perfect. (As always when hungry, I cooked too much pasta: after five minute of solid eating my dish didn't look any different!).

Inspired by the beetroot at my friend's house last week, I was delighted to espy some in our veg box. Whilst the pasta was cooking I speedily chunked up carrots, onions and a beet and put them in the oven to roast. After I had eaten and watched Masterchef - to which I am thoroughly hooked, again - I made some couscous with a dash of cinnamon and turmeric, and some vegetable bouillon. Once the grain had swelled I fluffed them with a fork and added seasoning, extra virgin olive oil, lime juice and toasted pine nuts. When cool, the couscous went into one big tub, the roasted veg into another and everything in the fridge to take to work the next day. I only needed to buy a little log of goat's cheese and I had three super lunches ready to hand. The only difficulty on the horizon is finding a spare moment to take a lunch break in!

winter's end

2010-03-16T10:30:00.002-07:00

More glorious, otherworldly sunshine today: blue skies ablaze, even some spring coats on show in the streets. Only a matter of time until the bare legs (rumoured to be sported in a certain Sussex village this week) are seen on display further north - rising up the country like the cherry blossom front in Japanese weather reports!

My nearest supermarket was as uninspiring as ever for foraging a lunch today. For the first time in months I didn't feel like my fall-back regulars (soup or curry) and nothing salad-like is in season. I was half-heartedly settling for a vegetable samosa with carrot soup, when some watercress from the UK caught my eye, quickly followed by mackerel pate. Delight! I have a stash of oatcakes in my desk, so from just £2 I will reap two or three meals. Two or three meals of iron-ey, hot, fresh watercress against creamy, salty mackerel pate. After last night's over-indulgence there is also a wonderful, healing pleasure in eating something healthy: the protein will keep me going, and the greens and oily fish (I like to imagine) are already repairing me inside and out.

What happened last night? Dinner with the North London Ladies, Hammersmith branch. And, to be more accurate it was the rum and coke and red wine that are to blame for any residual fragility - my fault entirely: the meal was a complete delight. We chatted to an accompaniment of manchego cheese and salted, roast almonds; olives and artichokes in oil; roast beetroot with goats cheese, and some bread and a delicious savoury red paste called sobrassada.

Then we moved on to a beautiful venison stew with roasted squash and foil-baked potatoes. It was a celebration of the end of winter, with carrots, onion and the sweet squash all having a last dazzle before retiring gracefully until next autumn. I have not had venison in a long time and had forgotten how lovely and red-meaty it is - it produced a wonderful gravy to mop up with the squash. We finished with soft chocolate puddings, raspberries and ice cream - perhaps a hint of the summer to come? A lovely, relaxed evening with great food and company that held us until that time of night when one worries what time the last tube actually is!

I am now fairly obsessed with manchego. My friend explained that she buys a whole cheese and, when fresh and unripe it tastes milky and soft, but when it has matured a little, the taste changes - which explains why it tastes so different to when I have had it before. It was a beautiful combination with the almonds and I am set on finding some for my own fridge very soon!

The venison stew was based on this abel and cole recipe but with one or two adjustments to the cooking method.

Tuesday 16th March 2010

hurry for your curry!

2010-03-16T10:30:00.001-07:00

When Slummy Mummy invited us over for dinner in honour of my birthday-last-year, I thought it was an excuse for a catch up. How wrong I was: there was no doubt that food was the star of this show! With five of us crowded round her wipe-clean table-clothed table, and my younger sister perched in the toddler's chair, we struggled to fit all the dishes on the table!

There were four main curry dishes (Beef and coconut Madras, soya mince curry, fish tenga and lamb curry); side dishes of Taka Daal and Sag Aloo, and everything served with Naan bread, chapattis, plain basmati rice... not to mention poppadoms, onion salad, raita, chutney... you get the idea.

All dishes were eaten in the first round, delicious surprises including the very sweet lamb and the soya dish, but by the inevitable second-helpings I had narrowed my favourites down to the beef madras, sag aloo and daal. Then I had a third course of beef, to celebrate: incredibly tender and spicy, but not fierce - the coconut milk lending a little sweetness to the dish. Somehow we still had an appetite for the grilled pineapple basted with rum, sugar and cinnamon, served with ginger and lemongrass sorbet. Rarely have I been so full and yet not regretted a single mouthful!

There was suspense and excitement too: names of six chefs / food writers that these recipes could have come from were provided, and we had to match the dish to the chef. Apparently one Gordon Ramsay was to thank for the Madras.

There is a coda. Back home I couldn't stop thinking about the beautiful Madras, so last night I bought some ready made paste (thank you, Mrs Patak) and made a rough-and-ready vegetable version. Swede, leek, celery, onion and carrots were sweated in oil. Nervous of the heat, I added only 2 large tablespoons of the Madras paste - about 1/4 of the jar - to cook into the vegetables. After a few minutes I added 1 or 2 cans of chopped tomatoes (in fact, they were cartons which are much lighter to carry) and some water, then simmered for 40 minutes. I threw in chopped kale for five minutes, then a slug of coconut milk and a couple of cheeky hard boiled eggs. Happily, the heat was spot-on: gorgeously warming on a chill, dark March evening.

It is still the tastiest way of using your less-favoured veg - swede and the 'prickly kale' in our household - and has the immense advantage of being something to pair with lime pickle. I am obsessed with lime pickle all over again! I won't rest until I find a good recipe and a crate of unwaxed limes. Any recommendations would be much appreciated!

deli-coffee delights

2010-02-27T04:24:00.002-08:00

Today has felt like I am acting in a film called 'My wunnerful Islington life'. After 6 weeks of concentrated frugality, making such memorable meals as 'brown soup' (vegetable and lentil soup dyed a dramatically unappetising colour by the addition of red cabbage), 'average risotto' and 'pitta stuffed with the remnants of fridge contents' I am finally making headway. Both with finances, and with getting into the habit of setting aside a couple of nights a week to cook batch lots of lunches and suppers - all of which put me in celebratory mood.

I frisked along Upper Street, smiling through the rain, purchased a beautiful cardigan (much, much more exciting than it sounds) with Christmas money from about 4 years ago, marveled at my former self-restraint, then went for a coffee.

My bag of Monmouth coffee, which has largely kept me away from coffee shops, recently ran out. The replacement bag of supermarket coffee just isn't cutting it, so I allowed myself the luxury of returning home via Ottolenghi. The taste of dark, rich coffee was already anticipated - then I saw the queue and, without pausing, walked past. I could have got one 'to go', as they say in the states, but I can't bear to walk around carrying a paper cup - and certainly not with my sacred Saturday Coffee, and when I had a newspaper and time to read it, too!

My unreliable memory saved me this time, when I recalled seeing a shop on Cross Street with an outside sign declaring 'Delicious coffee!'. There was, and it was.

It was not too busy and the staff charming. They greeted everyone in Italian and a surprising number of customers replied in kind. One of my tasks for our upcoming holiday ('Eurohol') is to learn Italian. Even with Michele Thomas as a teacher, I fare very poorly as a student: perhaps frequenting this pretty, friendly place would improve my language skills? Or perhaps that is just an excuse. My cappuccino froth was marshmallowey in texture, a phenomena I had forgotten but now recalled with an almost Proustian delight. The place is also a deli and, I realised, not only full of good things but within walking distance.

I didn't think to look for the cafe's name, but the sign outside will surely tempt me in again soon!

Stew, glorious stew

2010-02-19T10:06:00.001-08:00

Nothing brings back my cooking mojo as much as cooking for friends on a week night and I had the perfect boost on Wednesday when two friends of the gent came round.

Whilst I peeled the potatoes with the demented veg peeler, the gent mashed avocado with lime and drizzled chilli oil over. He somehow made the toasted pittas into a visual feast, arranged around the guacamole as artfully as a fashion guru ties a scarf. I swear he could scatter cushions like a pro, given half a chance.

Instead, he was put to more macho use, opening wine. And what a wine! From Berry Bros and Rudd, even the tissue paper and bag looked luxurious. The bottle itself was so big and heavy it looked as if it must have carried more than the regular amount. I will invite the gent to uncover the mystery as to what it was, and how it tasted. After this, we mellowed just a little more in the company of a perfectly charming Rioja.

I cooked my occasional-staple favourite stew - beef and anchovy in red wine - which, in a fit of organisation, I cooked the night before so just had to re-heat and make horseradish mashed potato. Previously I used a horseradish root, grated, but this time I bought a jar with the highest horseradish content I could. Mixed imperfectly into the potato it gave shooting wasabi-like nasal pains of pleasure when a small pocket was stumbled across - heaven when coupled with the rich stew.

The evening ended with ripe mango and papery physalis (cape gooseberries) to dip into hot chocolate. I confess I had no recipe, just heated up double cream (the 170ml size pot) with nearly 200g dark chocolate, a splash of milk and a spoon of golden caster sugar to taste. Poured into two rather camp, white-glass ice cream dishes, it was then between the couple to fight over who got the most. Actually, it was pretty good: I would do this again any day.

The rest of the stew became a wonderful packed lunch for work the next day, served with a homemade foil parcel of cornichons and, somehow, twice as delicious. I always make too much as I would feel hard done by without my next-day portion!

19/2/10

'It's not worth cooking for one'

2010-02-19T10:00:00.000-08:00

After a breakfast of a 'Duchy original' lemon chocolate truffle and some sesame grissini sticks - eaten with one hand, whilst the other applied mascara - I ruminated on food habits all the way to work.

Formerly, I was a breakfast devotee. Not a faddist, but it was as essential as going to bed in the evening and I would never consider skipping it. Moreover, it was always a good breakfast: a whole phase of creative porridge making, that blissful time I lived in Cardiff (not because of Cardiff, you understand -!) and discovered 'cold porridge' in a health food book - later re-invented as 'pukkola' by Jamie Oliver. My favourite variation was with roasted slithered almonds, fresh peach and yoghurt or cream on top. Weekend breakfasts, naturally, are a completely different feast.

My other firm belief was that I should always cook proper food, even though I mostly cooked just for myself. As I student I made stews, soups, bread, delicate chicken and pearl barley broth - always there was something good. Living by myself years later I would roast a whole lemony chicken for one - already planning the 5 other meals to squeeze from the carcass. I baked soft loaf-cakes and zesty muffins to glut on, then the rest went in the freezer so each day I could take something good to work.

But now I seem to have turned into one of *those* people. You know, they miss meals if there is no one to eat with, know the best dish on the take away menu and can't think beyond pasta. I haven't gone quite so far as to say, as my grandmother before me did, 'It's not worth cooking for one': it is the very reason I would cook for myself, and just thinking of it makes me turn to the stove!

On Tuesday the cupboard was bare. I didn't even have the ingredients of pancakes, and was so low on energy and enthusiasm that going to the shop for milk wasn't an option. Instead I gently revived my spirits with a leek and courgette omelette. I added shavings of Pecorino before folding it in half, waiting until it was perfectly soft - but not runny - inside before sliding it onto a plate. Necessity being the mother of invention (no bread or easy-cook carbs in the house) I heated half a tin of butter beans, made some garlic oil, then mashed the drained beans into the oil. Hot garlicky butter bean mash.

It was the best thing to happen that day.

Disasters, frugality and coffee

2010-02-09T09:18:00.000-08:00

I have had a few disasters recently. The stove-top rice pudding, made using risotto rice? Never again! The rice took so long to cook that it completely defeated the point of a getting to eat quickly. And to be accurate, it never properly cooked so the texture was somewhat chalky and the grain spent the night expanding inside me. Enough said.

A recent favourite has been noodles in miso, with vegetables and chilli. Last night, after starting the whole process I realised we had no noodles, fish sauce or proper soy sauce. Instead I used wholewheat spaghetti and low-something (salt?) soy sauce. It was actually not too bad - what a resourceful cupboard we have! - but on the whole I prefer noodles in soup, and the pasta with sauce. The gent sent me into a frenzy of envy with the news he is making Puttanesca this week. How delicious!

As I type, I am drinking lukewarm coffee from a flask and eating re-heated chicken korma from the bacteria cabinet at Sainsbury's - with sweetcorn thrown in for good measure. It is just what I wanted: this is the life! The frugal life, to be precise. February is my designated month for catching up on finances. I am taking a flask of coffee in to work: at £5 or 6 a bag, the Monmouth coffee is a wild extravagance - but far cheaper than drinking in a cafe. A flavour investment.

My Monday supermarket raid is turning up lunches from pate and rocket, to lentil soup with parmesan shaved on top. Parmesan is another item which is expensive yet has a big flavour and lasts a long time. This all supplements the days when I don't bring into work a little tub of home made Thai curry and rice, or stew from the night before. The ready-made, already-hot korma is a wild treat at more than £3 per tub.

Next on the menu this week: piles of potatoes and carrots from the veg box. The Moro 'carrot hummus' recipe will be employed for lunches, and I have rather a craving for mashed potato. With sausages - or, really, just with butter and cheese mixed through, and some pepper and salt.

More on coffee. El gentino and I had a wonderful lahmacun moment in Dalston recently (to my dismay I forgot the website url). Meandering home through the backstreets we passed this place and half-registered it as somewhere to try:
http://www.tinawesaluteyou.com/
Closer inspection yields that it uses suppliers such as Brindisa and Neal's Yard, so now it is with some urgency that we need to visit!

It also mentions another purveyor of fine coffee in London which I had previously made a mental note of, Square Mile Coffee - this is their blog.

For good measure, another wonderful-looking place to visit:
www.tasteofbitterlove.com

Hurry up March, I need some sweet mullah to carry me forth on a wave of coffee tasting!

London love affair

2010-02-04T02:43:00.000-08:00

8am on a dark February morning can be redeemed by few things. But one of them must be meeting the gent in the rain of Fitzrovia for a flattie and an over-sized bacon sandwich in a charming bijou cafe.

To be precise, bacon that has been cooked to the perfect point of crisp - not glassy shrapnel, not chewy - curled up between small blobs of tomato ketchup. And oozing its bacon fat all over the lightly toasted sourdough bread, then out of the giant holes to grease up the plate.

We both agreed that although, like Mary Poppins, the flat white was practically perfect, it could have been just a bit stronger. A minor thing really: my taste-buds are probably warped by the 3-shot espresso machine I use by myself in the morning. My top London coffee is still Monmouth.

I have just found the owner's blog and she writes beautifully. She recently posted about food bloggers, and how she reads reviews of her establishment but can't spot them whilst they are eating. Well I was the librarian-looking one covered in bacon grease. And I'll be coming back!

http://www.lantanacafe.co.uk/

PdT

2010-01-25T10:35:00.000-08:00

I am still on a cloud from eating out on Friday night at a well known, two starred restaurant on Charlotte Street.

The gent knows the Head chef, and also that he is leaving at the end of the month, hence our hurry to eat here this month. The magic started with being sent a glass of champagne, compliments of the chef. And didn't stop. We chose the tasting menu of 9 courses with the 'Decouverte' choice of wine matched with each course.

I made a big decision beforehand: I remember things so much better if I make a few notes and take photographs - and I really wanted to remember every bite of this. However, I also find it distracting to document sensations, it rather impedes enjoying them. So I left my camera at home. Although I have impressions of it all, the details are already fading. Here are some of the highlights.

Before we ordered anything, three or four tiny, delicious things were presented on a glass tray - including a filo-pastry and foie gras sandwich, balanced in the prongs of a silver, handle-less fork. A siren bread-boy kept trying to seduce us with his wares: luckily we had been warned that the bread was so delicious it would fill us up too soon, so we stopped our ears with beeswax and waved the boy away. The minx.

From the menu description I was sure I would like the fallow venison best. Or the yellow fin tuna. After the scallop and chicken oyster dish I was sure that was the best of the night ... but in the end, it was the pan fried foie gras that took my breath away. Yes, I realise I am gushing, but I think it the only reasonable response.

Before each course came a glass of wine. Where the food was described as the waiter placed it before us, the wine was presented only with smiles. We tasted, we speculated, the gent made educated guesses. Then, after the food was cleared, a Val Warner-alike advanced with the wine bottle and revealed its true identity, along with some choice descriptions and why he thought it complimented that particular course.

As we sipped an espresso, our senses bedazzled and overwhelmed - taking solace in a rack of petits fours - a waiter carried a chair to place next to our table and Chef himself came to see how we had liked the meal. He will be next at a certain restaurant in Bray, Berkshire for two weeks, then off traveling. Just as well, I was trying to work out how I could afford to come back to eat here every month. After 10 glasses of wine I might be excused such an idle thought.

An aside. One of my ongoing mini-obsessions on enjoying a meal, is what to wear. Not in the fashion sense, but rather, what enables you to enjoy eating to the maximum? I blush deeply to admit to my former, trouser-top-button-loosening (which I thought a discrete manoeuvre until more than one person mentioned it), and am trying to move on from HG's 'eating pants' reference to my restaurant-dressing. I have now firmly pledged my allegiance to the roomy frock. Friday night's was a particular success with the gent and, my vanity is pleased to report, he didn't see the beautiful draping as tummy-concealers, nor the soft jersey fabric as comfortably stretchy to allow the waist to expand with each course. In short, I think I got away with top comfort whilst, crucially, not being reduced to undressing in public.

I believe the other option is to leave a little food for Mr Manners on your plate. I can't imagine that happens often at Pied a terre

http://www.pied-a-terre.co.uk/
Head Chef, Nino Brullmann
Chef Patron, Shane Osborn

25/01/10

Persian orange chicken stew #2

2010-01-25T10:34:00.000-08:00

The Persian stew rematch was set for 19th January, and Seville oranges bought. The result? A subtle difference, which I entirely agreed with, however next time I think it would be better to add in the segments of another orange. Although a slightly sharper edge, it was not quite as orange-tasting as I remembered. Seville's are so full of pips that it was almost impossible to free the segments intact from the pith, pips and skin: instead I had a mush of tiny pieces. It also seemed to result in less orange and juice than when we did this with sweet oranges.

The preparation was less jolly with no gent to chat to, however I prepped a fair amount the night before so that the next night there was just the fine slicing of carrots - and the rest of the stew is downhill after that! It was, as before, a lovely light, sustaining combination and seemed to go down well with my 'North London girls' who were as appreciative as they were cheerful and chatty. Perfect guests.

We followed this with some Seville orange ice cream I had made, which is possibly the least effort you can make whilst reaping maximum rewards. That the tub is now empty, barely a week later, with only one un-careful lady owner, speaks for itself.

What else can I do with these beautiful, bitter oranges?

How the Gouda tasted

2010-01-15T09:01:00.000-08:00

Is 265g Gouda cheese in 24 hours, too much? I just ate a whole block in two sittings and am not sure of the health benefits or drawbacks. Lots of calcium long term, weighed against a mucousy short term future. The taste benefits I can testify to, though. Yesterday I paired it with a sharp little British Braeburn apple and some shortbread: today, eyes glazed, I just ate it slice by slice. The warmer it got, the better it tasted.

Last night I was surprised to come across 'Kombu' in my local supermarket: a Japanese ingredient of dried kelp, with which 'Dashi', a kind of stock, is made. My younger sister lived in Japan and she told me about it when I visited her there. I didn't purchase any, but instead came away with some sweet miso, which I mixed with water and simmered, then dropped in noodles, then the following, thinly sliced: chestnut mushrooms, leek and sprouts. After just a few minutes I decanted it all into a large bowl, added soy sauce and chilli flakes and lowered my face into the magic. It wasn't udon, there was no tempura or dancing fish flakes... but it was pure Japan on my tastebuds. Oishii!

addenda...

2009-12-23T07:34:00.000-08:00

I was chuckling over this Pork, knife and spoon blog - found at the height of my pork obsession when I don't seem to manage a day without sausages or bacon - when I found it was linked to this really good Gluten-Free Girl blog. I don't need gluten free food, but I can never pass up a recipe, and these cinnamon rolls look really wonderful.

virtual feasts

2009-12-22T05:57:00.000-08:00

How very exciting. Do you see I have a comment from another venerable blogger? It fired me up to see the excellent Turmeric and Saffron blog. It also reminded me that although I save food-related bookmarks to delicious, I haven't updated my list of links here (on the right of this page) so have set to sharing some new favourites. Many have been recommended by Bert whenever she sees a good recipe to pass on.

I recently tried 'Stumbleupon', a website which directs you to recommended - and therefore, generally the best of the internet - websites, on topics you specify you are interested in. It is terrifically easy, and with great serendipity the first website I stumbled upon was 'Tastespotting', a veritable treat : a sort of epicenter of food blogs. A place where all good food blogs are sucked into and each displayed via one hungry-making picture. A place where one loses all sense of time as you click on the 'dirty kitchen secrets' link, or the picture of a gingerbread-house-garnish to perch on the edge of your festive hot chocolate mug. The cheesecake brownie is the best one to have caught my eye, though. A snug fit for HG's birthday cake if ever I saw one.

I also spend a lot of time looking at the Guardian 'Word of Mouth' food blogs - and reading comments from the legion followers - but have missed it off the list. For the same reasons I don't have the BBC good food, Times Online archives of Giles Coren or AA Gill, or any other of the big ones I enjoy to read: you already know about them. I also omitted Nigella Lawson's website, but only because I already devote too much time to (re)reading her books. Or maybe the pink heart background puts me off a little -?

I have a couple of very exciting library-related finds which will have to wait until January for further investigation.

light fan-Tas-tic

2009-12-07T10:21:00.000-08:00

It is said that 'energy breeds energy', to mean that the more you exercise the more you want to: in the same way, I think good food breeds good food. Today's good breakfast led to a wonderful lunch... who knows what will happen this evening!

Fearing a breakfast slump of the type only experienced in 2007 (dark days indeed), I decided to perk up my morning with some savoury muffins and fried sausages. I was so excited that I actually woke up at 4 or 5 am, worried I had over-slept, and feeling as I had years ago on Christmas mornings when my sisters and I were so impatient to start the day. Oh for that enthusiasm now!

I had measured out the dry ingredients the night before, so in the morning I just put together the wet ingredients, grated some cheese, mixed the whole lot together and dolloped it into moulds. I chucked chipolata sausages into a frying pan and went to get dressed while the gent kept an eye on everything and made coffee. A shower later and all was ready. Given how gloomy the morning was, this was the best possible start to the day: hot, salty calories and a cooking smell to rouse even the laziest of appetites. The muffins were more heavy than sweet muffins, not at all the same texture, but welcomingly so. A couple of these were quite a defence against mid-morning hunger.

In fact, their only rivals for top-savoury-bake this year would be the watercress scones I found at a Saturday market in Alton - truly scrumptious, as the song would have it.

Lunch at Tas was fantastic. I went with work colleagues and we shared around seven meze dishes with wonderful, fresh flavours; then I had a main dish of 'kalamari', perfectly, crispily cooked, and served with a walnut sauce. I'm not sure these are flavours that I would choose to put together again - a squeeze of lemon was sufficient for me - however, the walnut sauce was beautiful in its own right, and would be pretty amazing with pasta. Next task: try and re-create the walnut sauce at home!

http://www.tasrestaurant.com/

7/12/09

Perfect Persian

2009-11-27T08:26:00.001-08:00

The first recipe cooked from my Persian cook book was chicken and orange stew. I found myself itching to fiddle with the ingredients - as always - but decided to cook it as suggested, then make changes next time. I think it only fair to give a recipe a fighting chance on its first outing. Hard as it was, I didn't even add cardamom or otherwise mess with the ‘plain boiled rice’ suggested to serve alongside.

Despite having few ingredients, the stew took a surprisingly long time to prepare. I was sorely grateful to the gent who quietly set to julienne-ing the orange peel and carrots whilst I got on with the rest: without him there would have been fluster and hunger. The orange peel is boiled and drained several times, presumably to remove some of the bitterness, but which creates a gorgeous marmalade fug in the kitchen: as Seville oranges are not in season, the book suggests to use sweet oranges and add lime juice to achieve the required sourness.

The outcome was a very delicately flavoured, thinly juiced stew. It wasn’t as sour as I expected (or hoped) so I am keen to try again with Seville oranges, as the recipe calls for, when the season arrives. The tangle of bright shredded orange peel and carrots was visually beautiful as well as adding the sweet/sour flavour, and the pistachio and almond nut garnish added a fantastic contrasting texture. In fact it seemed to crown the dish and make it doubly beautiful.

Although labour-intensive with some fiddly stages, the ingredients for the stew were not expensive or difficult to source. As such, I think it a perfect January weekend dish for when there is time to potter in the kitchen, and the bitter oranges are bountiful. I hope to find a few more treasures of this sort in the Persian book; dishes that have a sense of ceremony in the making, are a notch above average when cooking for friends, and yet not be elaborate to the point of onerous. Curious but, I sense, curiously addictive.

Two delicious things to do with a pheasant

2009-11-23T04:49:00.000-08:00

A delightful visit to the coast brought magnificent eating gifts in the form of Mrs I's roast lamb, a visit to the Millstream (more of that, later), and a pheasant and home-grown butternut squash to bring back to the big smoke. A delicious, Sussex pheasant already plucked and prepared and be-headed. Phew. For some reason I never got round to the gruesome bit of being a country girl, so not having to prep the pheasant was a great relief.

Half of the butternut squash was put to service immediately. It was chopped in two, roasted until soft and roughly scooped / chopped on top of a very plain risotto, made only with white onion and vegetable stock. Sage leaves fried in butter went atop, and some greens alongside. I love some green. It was sweet, filling and heavenly.

A couple of days later, it was time for pheasant. I peeled and chunked the rest of the butternut squash, roasting it with red onion for about half an hour before popping the bird on top and giving it a thin blanket of streaky bacon. After 30 minutes the pheasant was still a little too pink, but another 5-10 minutes rendered it perfect. The gent brought a beautiful red wine along* using his ever-ready skills to match to the dish, and we used a dash to de-glaze the roasting pan and make some gravy. Sprouts are my absolute favourite so I am undoubtedly biased, but I think their bitterness goes amazingly well with the sweet squash and salty bacon (indeed, almost anything): a mid-week feast which ended in a hands-on, thigh-bone-sucking delight.

The gent and I had pretty much demolished the whole pheasant but still the carcass looked tempting, so a few days later the remaining handful of roast flesh was set aside, and the carcass was boiled into a dark stock. Onions, garlic and streaky bacon made the basis of a risotto and the pheasant stock silkily ladled in. Once cooked, a chunk of butter and the handful of leftover pheasant flesh was stirred through, and left for a couple of minutes off-heat. Meanwhile, some roasted chestnuts had been roughly chopped up and nubbled around in foaming butter to pour atop the mound of risotto. The gent came armed with gifts in either hand: a bottle of red he had been nurturing in his wine nursery** and a cheeky young savoy cabbage to steam and sit alongside the risotto. Parmesan was unanimously rejected as being completely wrong.

I actually think I enjoyed this meal more than the roast: using a proper stock makes such a different dish to using vegetable stock (Marigold powder being the staple chez Roy), the whole dish tastes just that bit richer and the rice is more unctuous and never claggy. I can never decide if the leftovers-meal is actually more delicious, or if the joy of using up scraps somehow heightens the eating pleasure? Frugality as salt? Either way, I always save a cup of rice or a few naked bones in the hopes of an unexpected delight the next day.

Well there are three recipes when I promised only two: that's the kind of good service you get round here. Have a nice day! Please tell your family and come again soon!

* el gent: it would be a complete delight if you could name it, for posterity... it was the easy-going fruity one which gave up its delights without a blush

** Casillero del Diablo -?

Food, glorious food!

2009-10-29T15:49:00.000-07:00

What isn't made better by food?
After a trying couple of days and a few black moments, I came home to a bowl of sugarless alpen and a mint tea. I will grant you, it didn't look promising to my cold soul, but somehow it revived me marvellously. My nerves are calmed, the ghosts vanished from the corners of the room. The most meagre meal and yet still it has such a good effect.

It goes against my nature, but tomorrow I'm going to get up early and eat a proper breakfast including sharp cox's apples to wake up my tastebuds, and museli. And a nice Monmouth coffee - this is about making the world look better, after all!

thank you, Ikea

2009-10-26T14:27:00.000-07:00

That rustling noise is me turning over a new leaf. Yes, again.

I am going to cook more and I start tonight. Ikea is partly the reason, the other being that autumn feeling of plenty - of harvest, pumpkins, deep stews and sticky meat that creeps through me like sap rising, to show it is autumn. Another wave of my cooking mojo returning.

In January I decided to cook a good deal from my book of Persian food* and, as with all resolutions, I tell someone so that I can't forget, or back out. Ten months later I haven't so much as opened the book and am vexed to my very soul about this. I really wanted to discover how to use some new ingredients and find some canny little recipe that just does in that sad, hungry, post-work moment. I also really wanted to use some of the fantastic cook books that I read as novels - on the bus, before bed - but never cook from.

What has Ikea to do with it? I only needed one bookcase of specific proportions, but knew it would be a gruelling evening as any trip to Ikea ends in hating oneself and everyone in sight. I saw a picture of the famous meatballs and, with jollity, decided to pre-empt the horror and head straight to the cafe. To try the meatballs! They looked awful but at least I will have tried them and be able to criticise them 'from the heart' as they say on Master Chef. There was one poor man serving a queue of about 500, the meatballs were counted onto your plate, potatoes added, and then you are given the option of 'berries and gravy': the former is jam, the latter a strange yellow liquid. If I could have found a fork I would have been happier. Or a table to sit at. Plus, it was no cheaper than an Itsu duck soup. Let's draw a veil over the rest: sadly, I never discerned what was in the yellow gravy.

Generic Ikea horror ensued: after 15 minutes I was bedazzled by choice and hadn't even got past stroking sofa covers, and admiring incidental vases. The hour mark saw me in a pretend child's bedroom gazing at an ugly lampshade. Another 10 minutes and I was in tears of indecision about which of the 47 bookcases I really wanted, and in which colour. The mist only really cleared as, Billy bookcase paid for and too heavy for me to lift, I realised the delivery service would be twice the price of the goods. So I hand-picked the most angry taxi driver to get me home. Of course, if I hadn't had the meatballs I would have had the right cash to pay him... and when I realised I was missing a crucial screw, I blamed the meatballs all over again.

My room is a pile of boxes and half-built shelving, which will have to stay like that for the next ten days (or-Royal-Mail-so) until the screw arrives in the post. The best I can make of the situation is to use this as an excuse to ignore my room - which still needs unpacking - and any chores therein, and spend my evenings in the kitchen instead. I also need to override the food-memory of those meatballs: and so, I cook.

The nursery slopes for a tired Monday night: red Thai curry. My love of it never really went away and I had a beautiful bit of cabbage left to use up. My main change is being less afraid of the nam pla, which I really disliked at first, and being much less scared of making it spicy. I now also have leftovers for lunch for a couple of days, and a warm glow that might just be smugness.

For the past hour I have been at the kitchen table reading Nigel Slater's 'The kitchen diaries' and my Persian cook book. Bliss. I am also writing a list of my fantasy-best coffee morning cakes, in anticipation of getting some cake-lovers around the table on a Saturday morning. I'm so excited I have even started choosing which coffee to get from Monmouth. Is it too much to match coffee to the cake?

I've written three lists already, am planning a family meal I won't have to do until 2010, and my head is half-way to having cooked everything. If only I could get up tomorrow and head straight to the butchers! Some days work really gets in the way of living.

*For bibliophiles out there: 'The legendary cuisine of Persia' by Margaret Shaida, Grub Street 2006, and first published by Lieuse Publications 1992 for those, like me, who find such things interesting. Purchased with a token given to me by a librarian committee I sat on until last year. I like to remember that as I gaze on the 'jewelled rice' illustration.

'The kitchen diaries' by Nigel Slater, Fourth estate (an imprint of HarperCollins), 2005

bloggers-block

2009-10-19T03:21:00.001-07:00

I have had so many fantastic meals recently, and seen so many inspiring recipes, that I now have bloggers-block. Where to start? Does entrecote and dauphinoise really take priority over the discovery of more things to do with a quince? Can I look myself in the face each morning, knowing I haven't yet made comment on the sublime chicken soup - accompanied by the clever-clever phrase I found about it being Jewish penicillen?

Not to mention the eye-popping Pirate feast with regular toasts with grog ('here's to swimmin' with bow-legged wimmin.. argghhh!' - from the un-PC mouth of the pirate cap'n).

Instead of tackling the backlog I am having a coffee and pumpkin cheesecake to ease the panic. Oishii !!

Coq and bull story

2009-09-23T04:43:00.000-07:00

Do you think that coq-au-vin is complex and time-consuming to make? I always thought this, but one glorious warm September day - perhaps our first lazy day since Cornwall - the gent and I royally trounced this myth. We started the day with brownie and banana bread for breakfast - with special thanks to HG, who bought them for me at the South bank 'Slow Food Fair' (probably on looking at my face which spoke of a work-home vortex of hell). Then, over the paper and after tending plants and clearing a cupboard, decided on the day's food.

Waitrose and Mrs I's garden provided. Lunch was Mrs I tomatoes, basil and salad from the windowsill, fig chutney - invented and made by the gent - two types of cheese, and baguette. The Cornish Nettle Yarg was amazing, rather subtle but with complexities: the strong and silent type, if you will. For fact fans, I just read that 3500kg of nettles are required by the Lynher Dairy for this cheesey purpose alone, each year:
http://www.lynherdairies.co.uk/press-releases.html

Preparing the coq was great. The gent read out Elizabeth David's stern advice on the subject (it isn't strictly necessary to use a cockerel, we were relieved to hear) and also Nigella Lawson's low fat version from 'How to eat'. She is much vaunted as the epitome of lush larding, but everyone forgets her low-cal roots. Anyway. We took the latter recipe, but left the skin on the chicken and chose streaky bacon etc. to re-lard the dish. Between us, it was no more work than any other stew or casserole, even with the flashy finishing touch of igniting brandy. Would it be vin-glorious to say it was completely delicious?

Discussion of the day: does it matter which wine you use to cook with? One school of thought suggests you shouldn't put it in the pot if you wouldn't drink it; whilst the other says you can't appreciate the wine properly once heated - so why waste the good stuff? We didn't - discuss - but I feel the gent and I fall fairly neatly either side of this divide! Thoughts on this very welcome...

In brief

2009-09-22T09:58:00.000-07:00

Browsing some Coren back files I found a review of 'The Drapers Arms' which, delightfully, is in my area. More delightfully, it was compared - but not contrasted - to St. John. Some of the dishes sound almost identical to ones at St. John when we visited in July and I had an immediate yen to do it all again: same people, similar food, different place. And quite a lot cheaper, too.

Incidentally, one of my favourite lines was: 'travel only broadens the mind if the mind starts off narrow'. Which will get added to: 'Travel narrows the mind and broadens the waist'.

This link is to the article in the Giles Coren backfiles at the Times Online:
http://tinyurl.com/lpy2xe

Drapers Arms, 44 Barnsbury St

Pork epiphany

2009-09-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

I have had quite a weekend of it. First there was the roast belly pork the gent cooked: 3 hours at 140 degrees, atop a pile of onion and Granny Smith apples. The crackling was sheared off in one piece and put under the grill to, well, crackle, and everything served with (perfect) mashed potato and cabbage. The resulting meat was completely succulent and the fat, layered between the meat, plentiful and juicy but not at all gristly or difficult.

I didn’t anticipate that the joy would continue into the next day. For a train journey down to Sussex I was given a baking-parchment wrapped sandwich of cold pork, lettuce and mustard on Ottolenghi bread. And a separate packet whose contents were given away as it unravelled, the paper becoming increasingly transparent with grease, until the cold crackling slid out.

It has to be the best sandwich I have ever eaten. And, possibly, the largest.

My father cooked on Sunday night. I was given the options of a vegetable curry or ‘beans etc.’, there being a glut of runner beans in the garden. I chose beans etc. of course, and the 'etc.' this time was a little joint of gammon, roasted under a tin foil blanket.

This time the fat presented itself in a wide halo around two thirds of the meat. As it had been covered to cook, the crust was jammy and sticky, instead of crunchy, and I wasn’t sure I would like it. As a child, pork fat was my anathema - for the hideous oyster-texture as much as the gristly bits. So I cut a wobbly flabby bit of fat with its sticky edge, dipped it in the juices swimming in the plate, and ate it. More tasty than the meat itself, salty, melting. Converted. Hidden in the kitchen, pretending to carve seconds, I rather gorged on the fat, cutting it away in chunks and eating it with my fingers. And to think I used to feed this ambrosia to our chickens as ‘leftovers’!

Duck or grouse!

2009-09-08T09:16:00.000-07:00

I used to waitress in a sweet restaurant in Sussex (sadly no longer the same since the owners retired) in which a brass hanging warned customers to protect their heads from the low beamed ceilings: 'Duck or grouse'.

I love duck. I could eat duck at any moment and the recent post about Confit du Canard shows a new height in ducky obsession. I’m game for game: pheasant, venison, game pie, pigeon pie. But I had never had the opportunity to try grouse.

So when the waiter in the dimly lit, beautifully staffed Locanda Locatelli read out the specials and Grouse was mentioned I knew it was my lucky day. It was just a week after the 'Glorious twelfth' - the start of Grouse season in August - so it was already very much at the forefront of our minds and anticipating stomachs. The Scottish press had suggested it was a 'promising' year for Grouse, too. The gent’s eyes gleamed a little and I could see we were after the same dish.

The first course was like foreplay: a soft-as-clotted-cream goats cheese for me, perfectly dressed, perfectly perfect. The gent indulged in something else altogether. And the wine! The sommelier was charming and knowledgeable, but the gent gently surpassed him and chose an amazing wine which the sommelier approved of heartily. The plonk-chat was lost on me, but I was wild for the performance with a candle and decanting, and the cork being reverently presented in a dish. Top stuff!

It also complimented the grouse madly: I could barely decide which to raise to my mouth, next. The bird was much more gamey than I anticipated. And much pinker, too. The fat lady doesn't sing until the 10th December, so there is plenty of time to reprise the treat yet - and after that, there will still be pheasant. Eating seasonally has never been less of a chore.

Roast belly pork

2009-09-08T09:13:00.000-07:00

With the ongoing theme of ‘aren’t I a lucky Roy?’ the gent took to feeding me last week. The salads were beautiful and well dressed, the pasta with sausagey tomato sauce was deliciously filling... and then there was roast belly pork.

A Borough Market excursion to meet a sister and neph started with the very best coffee I have had in a long time (Monmouth, of course), and a gent-foraged, sublime, enormous bacon and egg bap; and ended with the wild purchase of pork belly and wine to match.

As I recall, through the heady haze of anticipation, the gent cooked the pork thus: the top was rubbed liberally with salt, the whole thing roasted on a highish heat so the fat crisped. Then the crackling was sliced off the pork. The pork returned to the oven for a bit longer on a lesser temperature, and the crackling put under the grill to do its stuff.

A succulent pig, a delicious evening... aren't I a lucky Roy?!

cornish delight

2009-09-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

The Greenhouse, St. Keverne, Cornwall
www.tgor.co.uk

So small it was almost like a front room turned restaurant, and run by just two rather dedicated people, I loved The Greenhouse from first bite of chewy new bread to the last spoon of pud. The alpha and omega of dining.

The menu was full of seafood and local produce. I know 'seasonal' and 'local' food is the big fat middle-class cliche of our time, but here it was sincere and so easily the best bet - given the plethora of farms in the area, and the sea pretty much acting as doorstep.

One of the multi-tasking two runs bread-making classes, my local hosts reliably informed me. I jested (not) that I would judge the place by their bread - and frankly, it exceeded expectation. I don't know how to describe it without the words 'fresh + chewy + crusty + holey' so I will leave it at that. For the rest, I'm going to give you a medley of what I remember from round the table: I didn't eat four meals.

There were battered sprats 'like giant whitebait' with an aioli, pigeon breasts with crispy fried black pudding, mussels, and a generous scoop of ducks pate on toast. We shared with each other liberally, tasting everything.

The next course was a shore of seafood. Crab with mayonnaise and chips rendered the gent unusually silent, except for the click of shell against plate and a murmur of 'claws are the best bit'. Fish (fried brill?) decorated with more mussels, and a Goan fish curry - at the top end of spicy - pleased Mr and Mrs Host; I had a most delicate, soft baked megrim sole with crab sauce, and just a few buttered potatoes alongside. My lack of notebook shows: I can't recall the names of anything properly, how vexing. I hope the gent can at least recall what we drank, as it was terrific, and two bottles made their way to our table.

The only criticism suggested at our table, was that the starters were perhaps too large: four sprats, for instance, would have been a more perfect size for the appetite whetting morsel a first course should be. Six were more of a meal. Nonetheless, after this barrage of delights, we bravely pushed forward to a pudding course, crossing spoons to share this time. I believe a banana vacherin (?) was polished off with delight on the other side of the table: I was too busy with my face in a treacle tart with Roskilly's clotted cream to take much notice. Dark with treacle, not just golden syrup, this was as amazing as it sounds.

It was a beautiful evening. Locals obviously loved it - as did a certain television celebrity - and I hope it continues to be successful. I couldn't help but notice that this week there is a wild rabbit and mushroom terrine on the menu...

confit de canard

2009-08-24T07:48:00.000-07:00

Confit de canard: five syllables of seduction. In Paris the gent and I had this at Brasserie Balzar, where it came gorgeously crisped, accompanied by a wonderful gravy and sautee potatoes. We enjoyed a wonderful, chewy, strawberry Beaujolais (2006) and the amazing moustache on our waiter. The next restaurant served the confit without gravy, and with fried potatoes. Unforgettable times.

Here is the perennially wonderful Nigel on the subject:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2003/feb/09/foodanddrink.shopping6

To find the optimal way of cooking this the smartest thing to do, of course, iwould be to look at recipes and writing from the best cookery writers. However, I am curious about how much of a difference the differing methods make. I am keen to make this myself so I can play with the curing stage, and the time spent poaching in fat. I would, secondarily, be interested to see if the the length of time it is stored in the hard-fat block changes the end product.

In my grand plan I will make three versions varying the curing stage and treat them the same for the rest of the cooking stages. Then from this, I will take the best curing method and start again: cure it the best way and cook it for three different lengths of time to find the optimal result.

Now all I need is an empty weekend, a kitchen to myself, and a working oven.

Hobnobbing

2009-08-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

I didn't realise how much I utilise the oven until over-summering in this flat without one.

I have several times planned an oven-cooked meal and had the raw ingredients in my shopping basket, before recalling that I have only a hob to cook with. One shameful supermarket chicken pie - now languishing in the freezer - made it all the way home and out of the cardboard before I remembered. I actually considered how else I could make it edible - slicing it up to fry? Steam?

The last thing to catch me out was planning this Italian aubergine dish, which Bert had raved about:
http://www.lifestylefood.com.au/recipes/1993/eggplant-parmigiana-melanzana-alla-parmigiana

I have been meaning to make this for some time from an Anna del Conte recipe but am separated from my cook books. And, as I later recalled, aubergine in hand, oven. So until I am back in my own flat, this dish will have to go on the backburner.

Is it wrong to laugh at your own jokes?

Cooking comfort

2009-07-22T13:20:00.001-07:00

I am frazzled. I have had such a wonderful month - two blogs nearly completed to describe it all - but I have barely had a night at home.

Last week I returned from a visit to my Mother laden with her garden produce: tomato (including tigerella toms), cabbage, runner beans and baby courgettes in yellow and green. Something my mother always cooks with the summer 'glut' is steamed runner beans, served with fried tomato and bacon. That's it: super quick, and ever so fresh tasting. I had a wave of nostalgia from being in my childhood house, so I re-created this dish back in London to remind me of home. I also had gnocchi with it, to use up some leftovers, and make it more substantial. No dressing - just the bacon fat drizzled over and pepper ground over.

Tonight I needed a quick fix of comfort so I made cauliflower cheese, my top nursery food. I can't go without carbs at bedtime, so I had this with rice (incidentally, macaroni is my usual pairing). I made the cheese sauce with a dab of English mustard and mature cheddar - and extra cheddar shaved over: a blanket of comfort.

St. John, Smithfield

2009-07-22T13:14:00.001-07:00

To start, rolled pig's spleen wrapped in bacon, some vinegary cornichons alongside. We drank 'Domaine des Roy' 2008 - delighting my vanity - which the gent described as 'like a handful of lake reeds dipped in lemon juice'.

JD: 'What is a spleen for?'
SD: 'Venting'

SD and PB had an amazing terrine, of which was said: 'How can you, like, mash up a pig and a pigeon and come out with something so light?' and to which I will add, after only a taste I am spoilt for life. I have added terrine to my list of dishes to cook.

At this point we moved on to drink a wine so good that I was moved to take a bad photograph to remember the name: notes reveal it to be 2002 for sure, and 'Laurier domaine' for unsure. The gent and I feasted on pigeon, peas and bacon with buttered greens. The pigeon very pink, very soft, more strongly flavoured than I anticipated.

And so to the finale: Madeleines were freshly baked for us, and a sweet muscat wine imbibed by the gent. The torrential rain and amazing storm which we slipped home in was not enough to quench the inner glow of that whatsit-red, beautiful, inventive food and new friends.

www.stjohnrestaurant.com

ugly kolrabi!

2009-07-22T13:10:00.000-07:00

Some veg-box kolrabi, rescued from neglect in the bottom of the fridge, needed eating. A quick glance through some books brought about this dish, which accompanied fish and potato for a quick dinner.

Thinly sliced, raw kolrabi layered up in a shallow bowl
Lemon juice and olive oil
Thyme from the garden, semi-denuded from the twig and scattered over

I was surprised by how tasty this was, and would definitely make it again for a speedy and different supper.

birthday food

2009-07-07T09:35:00.000-07:00

Having just moved my life into storage for the summer, birthdays were the last thing on my mind. The gent – henceforth to be called ‘The dreamcake’ – soothed me with words of encouragement and housed me for a homeless weekend. (By the foodie by, to say thank you for this I took us to a local Vietnamese place on Saturday evening, which I am still in two minds about. I really want to like it, but it is speedy and shonky rather than delectable.)

Then on Sunday I awoke to scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on muffins, with juice and tea. It was properly the best scrambled egg in the world: buttery and soft. Later I was royally treated to high tea at the palace of tea-time in Stokie: they bake the cakes on the premises and their sandwiches are really delicious. We discussed how to keep sandwiches fresh for picnics, whilst piling jam and cream onto scones, and the dreamcake took photos so we can forever remember the great china and the auspicious day.

We lazed in the park with the papers after this: he read out the restaurant review and I read out bits of an interview with Mr Vivienne Westwood.

A brief savoury interlude of pesto pasta revived us, and then the dreamcake again lived up to his name and revealed a hazelnut cake he had made himself! Imagine! Unable to find ground hazelnuts he had had to roast, skin and be-crumb the nuts himself – an absolute labour of love – with the inventive method of encasing the nuts in greaseproof and bashing with a rolling pin.
Reader, not only was the initial of my name outlined on top of the cake, but the whole thing tasted moist and divine. And with Valdo prosecco alongside, I was in heaven.

It will over-gild the lily to report this, but a birthday isn't a day for modesty, so I will go ahead: I was gifted a box set of original Elizabeth David paperbacks, and 'Venus in the Kitchen' by Pilaff Bey. They are in my new bedroom and I can’t wait to cook from them to test out the stove. And, perhaps, the dreamcake.

afternoon tea

2009-06-29T13:47:00.001-07:00

the pictures speak for themselves...

and full of vitamin a, too

2009-06-22T13:49:00.000-07:00

Busy times, busy eating. But before I can blog any of it, I have a debt to repay.

A while back I offered a carrot hummus recipe I had cooked from a Moro book*, in exchange for the answer to a crossword clue. The clue was guessed, my curiosity satisfied: herewith my repayment.

shopping list:

the inevitable left over bag of carrots from your box this week / month (limit to around 800 g)
100g feta

a handful of fresh mint

virgin olive oil
1 tbsp caraway seeds, roughly bashed about with pestle and mortar

scrub and chop the carrots into small chunks for roasting. toss about in a roasting tin with a fair amount of virgin olive oil, cover with foil and roast gas 6 (200 degrees c) for around an hour until soft. i thought they would take less cooking, but they are surprisingly recalcitrant.

now you should mash this. the gent nobly tried with a masher, then a potato ricer, but the frustration was least, and the puree finest, using a hand-held whizzy thing. i imagine this is what a food mixer / blender was invented for.

incidentally, the stunning geometric-print tea towel you see there was designed and hand-printed by the talented 'flotsam and jetsam'. if you like it, she sells on etsy.

onwards! stir in the bashed up caraway, half the mint torn or chopped, and a good few glugs of virgin oil - 2 or 3 tbsp - and season to taste. mix well, then turn into a shallow bowl or plate.
crumble the feta over; chop or snip the rest of the mint over; dribble with oil so it pools in the nooks.

Eat this lukewarm, when the flavours seem fuller, with toasted pitta to scoop it up. The book has a really beautiful way of preparing the pitta, which really does make a difference. Moreover, the book is amazing and beautiful and you would be mad not to put it on your Christmas list. Amazon have a wish list facility which anyone can find on google and thus know what to buy to win your affection. Top tip for any altruistic stalkers out there.

We now have three bags of carrots chez Roy, so the lucky gent might find this week's theatre picnic is a taste of the Spanish sun. If I were reading this the next statement would make me unbearably sick with jealousy, so I completely understand that you might hate me when I say, with great excitement, that I am going to Moro soon and I absolutely can't wait.

Convoluted sentence over, I'm off to bed to read the Moro cookbooks.

* Casa Moro, published by ebury press.

Last weekend in May

2009-06-03T04:54:00.000-07:00

On the most glorious sunny Sunday, after the gent's patented perfect scrambed eggs - this time with smoked salmon, on English muffins - with Monmouth coffee and smoothie, I didn't think the day could get any better.

Really, that should be the review in itself. You should read that sentence and then imagine it lasting half an hour, and then you will nearly have lived it.

Anyway, there is more: we sprung out to the park like May lambs gambolling, lounged with the paper like lizards, made daisy chains like a gardening gaoler ... but it was all too much bliss really. We soon got hungry and went to 'The Dervish' for mezze and a beer. Favourite dishes were broad beans with yogurt, spicy minced lamb pieces (I still have the taste from 'Mangal 2' the week before), and a mellow aubergine dish. We filled our boots for just over a tenner each, the food arrived quickly and tasted of holidays and garlic: in short, it's on the 'love list'.

In other news, I have been reading about the designer 'Alabama Chanin' on Burda Style and found it a brief oasis for my eyes. Although I have to confess that anything that uses the word 'lifestyle' usually makes me roll said eyes. I have an old white dress and had been thinking of stitching over it in white to make it more interesting, and am encouraged to see the same idea looking so beautiful, here:
http://www.alabamachanin.com/content/bridal-page-2

Burda interview with Ms Chanin:
http://www.burdastyle.com/blog/show/952

There is no website for the Dervish, so you'll just have to use your imagination as to the 'lifestyle' it evokes...

bits and pieces

2009-06-01T03:28:00.000-07:00

Quo Vadis was a happy oasis for an impromptu visit on Friday night. After the V&A's 'Hats: an anthology' exhibition, a beer was in order. And after a beer comes food. I always warm to a place that takes scotch eggs or pork pies seriously, and seeing scotch eggs on the menu certified Quo Vadis a good-hearted place.

I had a tasty fish pie served in an individual baby casserole dish, the gent had slow braised ox cheeks which were sticky and meaty, surrounded by rich bacony bits. The greens were garlicky and buttery. I thought it suffered from 'looks small on the plate but mysteriously fills you up' syndrome, but this is always OK in the end, despite any initial anxiety. And then we both attacked a passion fruit brulee with vim. Next time I'd like to try the gull's eggs starter...
http://www.quovadissoho.co.uk/

This website was mentioned in the Guardian Guide this weekend and I wanted to make a note for myself. 'The history of eating utensils': how could anyone resist a peek?
http://research.calacademy.org/research/anthropology/utensil/index.html

if you can't eat it, it's not love

2009-05-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

This is out of my blog-league, and completely irrelevant to food, but i am so in love with this blogger, her wonderful style and way of talking - i mean writing - that i have to give her a mention:
http://www.thesmallobject.com/stenopad/wordpress/

I had been thinking recently that it would be good to have somewhere to store information about anything crafty I undertake, but was quite decided that it wouldn't be another blog as I am already so badly disciplined with this food one. I am so entirely sporadic and un-dedicated that it would be massively infrequent: something else to start, neglect and feel bad about.

In addition, being an irritating purist over cataloguing means I can't bring myself to add craft posts to this food blog. Messy, messy! Currently i jot notes and drawings in a book and take photographs to keep track, but - and you knew there would be a but - inspiration has been creeping up on me in waves. First the cheap fabric at Shepherd's Bush market... next the subscription to Vogue... threading up my beautiful Singer sewing machine ... reading up on how to expand a trouser dart ... scribbling down how to make a circle skirt to go Lindy hop dancing in, from here:
http://www.burdastyle.com/

...it all adds up to a bit of an infatuation. I am certain it won't overtake the food though: let's face it, you can't exactly eat sewing. It's just useful to be able to expand a trouser dart when you've eaten too much.

love-ly food

2009-05-07T13:46:00.000-07:00

I chide myself that I don't seem to have made a note of the superb, if dodgily named, 'Food lab' by 'Mood for food'. I fell in love with it incrementally: first the coffee, then the people, the chilled out music. Then I had a savoury muffin with Rose, which we envisaged as a sweet muffin but stuffed with glorious savoury cheese and bacon and herbs... but which was an ENGLISH muffin filled with bacon and egg. And top notch.

Next I was seduced by the cakes: properly, deliciously home made and the prices not so N1 that I couldn't go back again. But this all felt like dipping one's toe, so the last couple of times I went the whole breakfast hog and had eggs florentine - fast turning into my benchmark breakfast of choice.

And what eggs! Interestingly, on the first occasion the spinach had chilli flakes mixed through which, though not an upfront flavour, gave a delicious background note. The second time, the flakes came as a wide, sprinkled smile under the muffin/egg eyes. Disconcerting and it didn't taste as well, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

The eggs benny, breakfast of choice for the gent, deserve a mention too: a democratic exchange meant we tasted both. And, I suspect, both enjoyed our own the most.

http://www.moodforfood.co.uk/

cold comfort

2009-05-07T13:17:00.000-07:00

I have said it before and I'll say it again: if you have a cold you need some comfort and some spice. And if it's swine flu then you'll need even more comfort, to get rid of the taste of tamiflu.

See how topical I am? I was aching all over and decidedly grumpy by lunchtime today so I cold-shouldered my stilton leftovers feast and headed to Peyton and Byrne to pretend I'm a lady what lunches. I think I ate carrot soup - I guessed from the colour - but having taste buds in a state of hibernation I wasn't sure of anything but the salt. Textures however are the taste-disabled person's friend: the bread was crispy outside, chewy within; the butter a fat sheet over this, the soup very thick, very pureed.

Recalling the gent, I delicately pushed rather than pulled the spoon. And it was a good portion too! The only disappointment of the hour was that I couldn't get the last crossword clue. If someone knows 'beat' in 6 with letters something like _E_E_T then please tell me, and in return I'll tell you the best thing to do with a carrot mountain.

Time for a honey and lemon, I think...

http://www.peytonandbyrne.com/

Christian festival, pagan weekend

2009-05-05T13:27:00.001-07:00

Mayday bank holiday and the christening of my ginger neph.

On Sunday morning I took break from filling vol-au-vents with my aunt, sister and Mrs I., to slip away into the garden. The month of May can transform anywhere: pink-white apple blossom confetti-ed the lawn, wild strawberries flowered, and that bright green blanket of spring was everywhere. Which is a rather florid way of saying the whole garden seemed to be waiting for the party to begin.

Catering for 70 must be daunting, but aunts and uncles appeared with plates of sandwiches, someone manned a bar, Rose conjured up a beach bucket to fill with bags of children's snacks and Mrs I's tray bakes of cake filled borrowed plates.

The meringues especially remind me of family weddings more than 20 years ago.

Whilst not being strictly necessary at 4pm, the food drew people outside, gave strangers a talking point and helped rescue more than one stilted conversation. It was all madly appreciated and I hope Mrs I. was not too tired from all the organising... Liz and Mark's champagne 'for when everyone has gone' was perfectly pitched!

And the left over brie and stilton was a great lunch with olives and salad today.