deli-coffee delights

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

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'

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

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

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/