A little bit of Argentina on the Wharf

I was really surprised when T suggested Gaucho Grill for dinner as when I think of Gaucho Grill I conjure up an image of a large rare hunk of steak possibly even resplendent with a fine set of horns and probably still mooing. And that isn’t really typical of T and her risotto loving ways. But I was wrong, she might not be partaking of any slabs of meat but she loves the atmosphere and has become a aficionado of Gaucho Grills around the city. So T plumps for chicken whilst I peruse the impressive steak menu.

BIFE DE CUADRIL Rump – a uniquely lean and flavourful cut

BIFE DE CHORIZO Sirloin – with a belt of tasty crackling

BIFE DE LOMO Fillet – the tenderest cut of all

BIFE ANCHO Rib eye – a marbled sirloin with a tender skirt

GAUCHO SAMPLER - A taste of all four cuts of prime Argentine beef

CHURRASCO ’CUTS’ - A choice of cuts, spiral cut and marinated

And then with a choice of the following sauces: BÉARNAISE SAUCE, PEPPERCORN SAUCE, CHIPOTLE, BLUE CHEESE, MUSHROOM or FOIE GRAS

First you select your cut, then the size of your slab and then a sauce. They are very happy to bring all the cuts out from the kitchen for your inspection and as much as I fancied the Gaucho sampler, I probably should leave that for another visit when I can share it with a fellow beef fiend (LLcoolT - when are you next in London?). So I went for a rare rib eye sirloin with béarnaise sauce, grilled mushrooms and the fattest of fat chips.

We decided to forgo a starter in favour of T’s suggestion of the fabulous cheese bread. We had to wait for it to come from the oven and T had to chase it but it was well worth it – a very good tip form a Gaucho regular! We dip it in the herby oil whilst we caught up on all the gossip! The Gaucho Grill is very buzzy and the Canary Wharf branch has twinkling blue lit trees lining the terrace outside. There are plenty of cow hide accoutrements, most of the chairs are backed in brown and cream cow hide as are the wall panels and the fat barstools. There’s lots of dark brown leather and dark wood, a little taste of Argentina at the Wharf. It's quite dark and not good for taking my food blog photos but good for atmosphere.

Our mains arrive and they are seriously tasty. My steak in very tender and perfectly cooked, the fat chips are indeed wonderfully plump, delicious and sprinkled with herbs, the mushrooms and dark and juicy and the béarnaise sauce just perfect for dipping the fat chips into. A very fine plate of food indeed.

Somehow we managed to squeeze in a shared chocolate truffle cake which is a rich chocolate cake topped with more chocolate in the form of a chocolate ganache, but rather frightening served with crème fraîche. Something we could both ignore!

Even after my lovely lunch today, I really enjoyed our meal. For various strange reasons I have never visited Gaucho Grill in this country, I’ve booked many a table for others and D and I once went along to one to find they was a problem and they’d had to close early. But now I finally eaten one of their succulent steaks and I really loved it. Three Argentinean beefy forks for the Gaucho Grill - Canary and I now, thanks to T, have a few more recommendations to visit!

Artistry at Addendum

I had my second visit to Addendum today, again with a client, again with a vegetarian client (well, strictly a pescatorian as fish would have been acceptable!) and again I didn't know beforehand. Clearly I'm failing in my duty as a hostess to ascertain my guests' food preferences. I guess I need to ask more pertinent taste questions when verifying restaurant choice next time. Fortunately Addendum has diluted their caveman only menu in favour of a small but perfectly formed meat, fish or vegetable selection and V seemed happy with her albeit limited choice of blue cheese starter followed by braised celery hearts, wild rice and red wine sauce whereas of course I had to go all carnivore. At least I needn’t have worried about V finding the restaurant rather tucked away in the Apex hotel as her hotel that happened to be booked for this trip for coincidently the Apex!

We were given some interesting amuse gueules to whet out appetites. Firstly there were pistachios and anchovy breadsticks followed by little espresso cups of spinach soup. The anchovy breadsticks were a revelation as I’m not a big fan of anchovies, I would insert them with rosemary into slits onto my leg of lamb but I would never let them infiltrate my pizza. And I recall a painful meal in Valencia when I forgot my Catalan menu primer and ended up with a plate of bones with the merest morsel of flesh clinging to them. This time the anchovies were more of a success and just gave the breadsticks an intriguing salty hit.

My starter was a pan roasted wood pigeon, apple, beetroot leaves and potatoes which were all arranged with Addendum’s usual artistry. I particularly thought the pink beetroot ‘crisp’ was awfully pretty against the dark pigeon meat and the green of the beetroot leaves. And importantly it tasted as good as it looked.

For the main I’d been trying to decide between the chicken breast with truffle panisse or braised pork belly but when I heard about the special of roasted & confit duck, creamed celeriac, figs, radish I immediately went for that. And I received another really attractive plate though the radishes look rather like the sous chef’s fingers. But the duck was really succulent so what’s a dismembered finger amongst friends?

And as the portions were just the right size so as not feel too stuffed, V and I were both able to fit in the very elegant dessert of rhubarb bavarois, ginger ice cream, orange sorbet, poached rhubarb.

Then to accompany our latte and Earl Grey we had our pick of some delicious petit fours especially my new found favourite mini macaroons. V called them something else which unfortunately I can’t remember, I know there’s one of the fabulous Ladurée tea salons in Geneva – home of the world renowned macaroons so she may have had them there. I also had a luscious little jelly cube and V the miniature lollipop as it seemed rude to leave them!

I think Addendum is the perfect spot for a lovely little business lunch and very probably any lunch. The food and service are impeccable and you can even entertain a vegetarian there. The plates looks fabulous and the place is stylish and well lit – surely what every food blogger dreams of? Addendum have two very stylish and well illuminated forks.

Fares of the heart

It all started initially because I was due to take some clients out for lunch today. And when I booked it a few weeks ago, I was surprised that when I got the confirmation back it mentioned a special set menu that was more expensive than usual. And then it hit me, we were entering a restaurant on 'that' day and would possibly be surrounded by couples holding hands and toying with heart-shaped chocolate confections speared with caramel arrows or encouraging each other to taste something off their proffered spoon. Hmmm, maybe not ideal choice of day for a client lunch!

I checked with the restaurant and they assured me that they definitely wouldn't foist any heart-shaped food on us and we didn't have to eat the Valentine's menu anyway, which was pleasing. As it turned out sickness meant the lunch ended up being cancelled (or postponed until next week). So in some strange sort of homage to an anti-Valentine's meal (especially after my anti-heart shaped stance with the restaurant) I decided that tonight it would all be about ‘the heart’!

I got out my delicious heart-shaped YSL plates and started pondering the menu. As shapes go I've always found hearts to be particularly pleasing. Someone who I used to know had a total abhorrence of heart-shaped things, especially these lovely elegant YSL plates. So, naturally, to be contrary I liked to slip in the odd heart motif and then see if it would be spotted by his heart-dar. He would be seriously unhappy with this meal!

For starters, there's a little hearty meat pie. I've had heart shaped biscuit cutters for ages but I've never used them to make a pie. I think it came out rather well, albeit somewhat dinky. I was going to serve it with some little new potatoes and shredded buttered cabbage but they both looked rather passed their best so I made this rather minimalist starter instead.

Next I made three heart shaped rösti, though you can't really tell their shape because of the rosy curls of smoked salmon perched on top of each of them. I finished this by poaching my final egg. I didn't really try to make this heart shaped. I thought in deference to the photographic mode du jour I should display my salmon and rösti astride a folded tea towel. Actually I'm not sure it works maybe the delicate lines of the china is not really enhanced by the casual rusticity of a tea towel, I should have used the fine Irish linen instead!

And then I thought , 'what shall I do about the dessert?' Well ‘plan a’ was a little heart-shaped mousse but out of my three remaining eggs, two were cracked and one I poached to accompany the rösti. As I don't know how long they've been cracked and a mousse consisting of pretty much raw eggs, I decided to forgo that chocolaty treat in favour of something else. But there wasn't really anything else. All I really had was these heart-shaped caramel chocolates that I was given when I made a purchase the other day. Thus they formed a very minimalist 'dessert' to round off my hearty meal.

Happy Valentine's Day!

A bacon buttie to be proud of!

It can't be always gourmet food, today it was a quick bacon and cheese on toast. And of course with the obligatory tea towel close by!
And what a blast from the past it was! It transported me straight back to weekends in my childhood. On Saturday evenings it was probably lentil or oxtail soup and on Sunday morning it was generally a good old bacon buttie. Most of the time it was Warburton's with not too crispy bacon and dripping with butter. But occasionally I wanted an open sandwich with the bacon topped with a little melted Cheddar. And that's exactly what I opted for today. And they tasted as good as they did all those years ago.

Chopping - Epicurean style

I've been on a chopping frenzy! I bought a new chopping board from the Art of Living website and it's really rather good. I found out about the Art of Living site when I was looking for stockists for the Nigella liquorice espresso cups and this was one of the places recommended by Nigella's site. And I want to recommend them also, it's so rare that when you purchase something from the internet that you get a personal email about your items and when I asked if they could bring the delivery date forward, they did. I'll definitely use them again.
So whilst I was browsing for my gorgeous liquorice goodies, my eye was drawn to one of these boards. I have seen Epicurean chopping boards in cook shops but not in black before. And as everything I bought in this order was black, it seemed appropriate to continue the theme. The boards are very unusual, they are light and thin and made of wood pulp and resin which is good for your knives. They could go into a dishwasher, if that's important to you, but also are heat resistant - though I am not entirely sure I want to test that property. But what is important is that they're environmentally friendly as they are constructed of a composite laminate. The brown ones always looked a little too MDF for me hence me not being a great fan before, but who ever heard of black MDF?

And every time I chop something, I'm always reminded how delighted I am still with my fabulous drop-forged Global knife (GF32). It has a very pleasing weight and makes many other knives, even others in the Global range, just seem too light. I keep it super sharp with my Shinkansen water sharpener as I've never really grasped the steel sharpening technique and these water sharpeners are recommended for Global knives.
I do have a great chopping board already, but I wanted a second bigger one as I really like chopping things. I even have a chopping board under my desk at work in case I get the urge to chop something up there.
Does that sound vaguely sinister?

If you want to watch cheese mature...

I had seen this picture on a couple of food blogs but hadn’t really taken in its true brilliance until M said there was a piece about it on the news and I thought I'd better investigate further. Basically West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers have launched a “cheese cam” called cheddarvision.tv where you can watch one of their fine cheeses mature. And a lot of visitors (well over a quarter of a million so far) have popped by to see the cheese ‘in action’. It really is the maddest site! You can tune the TV to other cheesy channels and if inspired by the delicious cheese aging before your very eyes, you can click on the ‘red button’ and purchase. Well, what will they think of next?

Well done to the West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers for coming up with such an inspired marketing ploy, it’s pure genius and I hope they sell a lot of cheese on the back of it!

update: Check who's received a cheesy Valentine's Day Card!

I'm counting tea towels...

I was browsing through the March edition of Good Food magazine and noticed something quite peculiar; they seem to have a very impressive collection of folded tea towels. And this inspired me to go through all this month’s food magazines and count all the tea towels that are featured in their food photographs. But before you think I need to get out more, remember I have been ill this week and counting tea towels is almost the most strenuous action I can perform at the moment.
And it really does seem they’re all at it, it was Good Food that set me off and they were top of the pops with 27 pictures of a random tea towel or thick napkin folded casually under the plate or dish that they were featuring. Olive were close behind them with 25, Delicious with 22 and Fresh and Waitrose Food Illustrated use less food shots and had 4 and 2 respectively. What is it with the tea towels? Let’s be honest if you’re lifting a dish from the oven maybe you’d grab a tea towel and then if you put this dish down it may still be sitting on the said tea towel. But personally I’d grab my skin burning hot dish from the oven with an oven glove. The clue is in the name, oven gloves are for removing hot meals from the oven and are pretty good at their job and tea towels; are generally for towelling ummm tea things? But apparently when photographing food, it’s just not going to look tasty unless a gently folded tea towel or napkin is somewhere in the frame. Even the advice on the UKTV Food site has “ten tips to making your food look good enough to eat” recommends both folded napkins and tea towels. Napkins I understand as you’d normally have some fine linen cloth to hand to drape over your lap or tuck into your collar if you insist to protect you from splashes. But as the photographs generally show the plate on top of the folded cloth, how is one expected to retrieve it and use it?

But apart from the proliferation of tea towel photographs what else has this month’s Good Food got to offer to tantalise my taste buds? Okay to be fair probably the reason I got distracted and started counting superfluous cloths was that there’s some good old stalwarts of recipes that I’d happily eat but very little to set the foodie world alight. There’s cheesy ham with leeks, Swiss cheese schnitzel, baked cabbage & cabbage risotto and salmon, broccoli & potato bake. For St. David’s day there’s a lovely looking Welsh goat’s cheese & leek tart obviously rather spoilt by the inclusion of goat’s cheese, a cheese substitution would make this very palatable. There’s a stack of things to do with tortillas illustrated with a shredded chicken and Brie dish. There’s a step-by-step on how to roast a chicken and as much as I love, absolutely adore a good roast chicken, I’m not sure I need another recipe. In the get kids cooking there’s some interesting looking Welsh rarebit muffins which getting back to my original rant, are sat rather incongruously plonked on top of a striped folded towel or possible paper serviette. The caramleised passion fruit & lime tart looks rather splendid and John Torode’s pepper steak and big oven chips is never going to be a bad thing and his gooey chocolate pots with boozy cherries sat, naturally on top of a folded black & white spotted cloth.

I’m always partial to pan-fried pork with crème fraîche & prunes and the rare beef with mustard Yorkshires looks succulent.

I’m also intrigued by the warm duck salad with walnut & orange dressing and the sticky marmalade loaf featured on the front cover looks tasty but I’m not sure I’d be crazy about eating it.

I thought it was a little naughty interviewing the chef that won the role of pub landlord of The Cock on Jamie Oliver’s new show Jamie’s Chef as I read it before the episode which showed the eventual winner had been aired. So the surprise was spoilt somewhat. I was pleased to read however, that Nigel Slater’s excellent ‘A taste of my life’ is returning and a new five-part series called rather magnificently ‘Kill it, Cook it, Eat it’ come to BBC3. They print the legendary Simon Rimmer’s mum’s lasagne recipe that uses cottage cheese instead of béchamel and somehow got Something for the Weekend’s (nutritionist) devout vegetarian Amanda Hamilton to tuck into it before realising it contained meat! Obviously all that tomato would have put me off but Amanda just forgot what lasagne normally contains! Hmmm!

So reliable old Good Food had some recipes that I might try but mainly it was all about the tea towels!

Not slow to spot a trend, I realise that the way to pep up my food photography and be in vogue is to deploy more indiscriminate use of folded tea towels and other cloths from now on. Here’s a picture of some figs that I took whilst in France back in October, perhaps I was just ahead of the game with my folded white linen tea towel? But going forward, I intend to raid my tea towel collection and join the fashionable crowd.

Honey, I shrank the dinner

When Stephanie set the theme for February’s Blogging Party I was very pleased to see that it was comfort food. And this month I am sticking to her rules and producing only comfort food themed canapés instead of an entire three-course meal. So I got my thinking cap on to decide what little nibbles I should I consider produce. I made a list of some of my favourite comfort foods: sausages and mash (number one on the list, of course), beef Wellington, steak and mushroom pie, fish pie, cauliflower cheese, soft boiled egg and soldiers, fish and chips, risotto, poached egg on toast and macaroni cheese. And then all I had to decide was which ones to cook and how to miniaturise these into bite size canapé portions.

The first one was easy – abundant teaspoons of creamy mash topped with half a pork chipolata cocktail sausage. I got the idea years ago when hosting a client event and the caterers served platters of stainless steel spoons with yummy sausages and mash. And these went down extraordinarily well! In fact every time I organise any client entertainment now I try and have at least sausages if not sausages and mash. I did get one caterer to recreate this particular desire but they didn’t do a brilliant job frankly, plastic spoons (yuck!) and rather scalded mash. The clients still lapped them up but ‘must do better!’ kept ringing in my head. So when I recreated this it had to be a generous scoop of perfectly cooked mash on a tea spoon topped with part of a really tasty sausage. Just delicious!

Next I thought I’d shrink one of the egg dishes. I could not really think how a soft boiled quail egg would work but a poached quail egg on a toast square should work quite well. I consulted the French Laundry cookbook by the great Thomas Keller as he does a fabulous and infamous egg and bacon canapé that I painstakingly recreated years ago for a dinner party.

The method he recommends is whilst the pan of water is coming to the simmer, take your box of quail eggs and carefully slice the more rounded end of the egg off with a serrated knife (this allows the yolk to slip out more easily). Quail eggs are notoriously difficult to release from their shells, whether peeling them to dip into celery salt or cracking them raw like I needed to do. Mr Keller suggests placing the beheaded quail egg shells back into egg box ready for poaching as they don’t take long to cook and if you place one on the water and then start tackling the next, the first one would probably be overcooked. It’s a good idea and I prepare my little topless eggs and line them all up ready for their two minute poaching. They really don’t need any more than two minutes, in fact maybe a moment less. And even though they look a tad alien perched on top of the little blond toast squares, they are very tasty.

As I wasn’t having an actual party that I needed to make some canapés for, I opted to cook my petite comforting tasters over several mealtimes. And rather coincidentally my actual desire for culinary solace increased meal by meal as I caught the nasty cold bug that has been going around and craved comforting food.

My next meal was going to be steak and mushroom pies with cauliflower cheese. I didn’t want the pastry to be too overwhelming so I opted for making little puff pastry vol au vents and then fill them with a steak and mushrooms with a creamy peppercorn sauce that I'd already cooked. Doing it this way was a good idea because they weren’t too hot and made perfect little two bite portions.

I struggled to think what receptacle I could successfully serve the cauliflower cheese in and eventually opted for china spoons as these would enable me to glaze the cheesy top under the grill and would be easy to eat off. What I didn’t really take into account was how hot they would be and firstly they’d be almost impossible to pick up with oven gloves on as I couldn’t get a safe grip on the tiny china handles and they were way, way too sizzling to pick up without oven gloves. When I did finally get them out from under the grill and onto a plate I did wonder how on earth I would manage to actually eat them. Fortunately they took so long to get safely out from under the grill, arrange and photograph they were just the right temperature to wolf down. And so I did.

As my cold really took hold I craved a nice warming baked macaroni cheese so this seemed the perfect choice for my final canapé. I learnt from struggling to retrieve cauliflower cheese spoon from the grill so I served spoonfuls of macaroni cheese straight from the oven on my Alessi heart-shaped spoons and didn't attempt to glaze under the grill. When I first served the macaroni I realised that the pieces of pasta were just too large for a canapé portion and lined up on the spoon like little soldiers, so I swiftly cut the macaroni pieces up and tried piling it on the spoon again. These spoons are slightly bigger than a teaspoon but still the right size for a good mouthful so worked well as a macaroni cheese carrier.

The rule of Stephanie’s blog party are canapés and a drink, but a comforting drink? This week I’ve been consuming many a mug of hot lemon but I wouldn’t inflict this on any party guest and it doesn’t really so to go with the nibbles so my thoughts turn to hot chocolate instead. Now as much as I love chocolate I’ve only had hot chocolate a few times. And this would be generally abroad like when very cold half way up some Swedish snow covered mountain, or on a balmy day in a fabulous little house of chocolate café in Valencia, or on a rainy day in the Vendee sipping very intense hot chocolate out if a tiny cup accompanied by a glass of water because the chocolate is so intense. But I’ve never made my own! My main issue is that I don’t like warm milk and I can’t bear cream just whipped and put on top of things so this might be a bit of a challenge. So the first thing I ensure is that I have some very fine chocolate to work with. I consulted the hot chocolate aisle in Waitrose and marvelled at the choice. There seemed to be a whole plethora of hot chocolate drinks flavoured with everything under the sun. Personally I was aiming for an intense chocolate flavour and was worried that these might be a little pale and watery. Green & Black’s have some interesting options but they all seemed to be cocoa and I wasn’t sure that was the comfort I had in mind. After due consideration I plumped for this sleek skinny tube as there were some words that particularly attracted me – ‘dark’, ‘100% real Belgian’ and ‘pure indulgence’. It seemed like I was onto a winner. As the thought of both milk and cream make me feel a little queasy, I opted to make mine just with boiling water. It was okay, definitely not my favourite drink, not even my favourite hot chocolate but an interesting experiment. Next time I’d perhaps make it with cooked cream or convinced myself that the boiling milk is just part way to making a béchamel (which I love) rather than just hot milk which I think smells funny! I think this hot milk abhorrence is deep routed in some sterilised milk trauma suffered at the hands of my grandmother. Sterilised milk is utterly vile, and probably the reason I’ve eschewed tea for so long! What a revelation weak milk-free Earl Grey was! I’m not utterly sold on hot chocolate but it did give me the chance to christen my Nigella liquorice matt and gloss cappuccino cup complete with egg-shaped saucer. So designed to have a resting place in between bites of a biscuit or small delight or in this case - more chocolate! As I can’t ever imagine drinking cappuccino ever, I think these will make perfect little soup bowls. And when I’ve decided how to inaugurate my new tiny Nigella liquorice espresso cups, they will be featured here.

I’ve really enjoyed pondering, preparing and consuming my shrunken comfort food morsels. It’s been an really interesting challenge to consider both scale and two bite-ability! And I feel thoroughly comforted now. See you at the party on Saturday!

Chicken soup for the bowl

I haven’t been particularly well this week, nothing fatal, just one of those ever so debilitating colds that aggravate your desire for comfort food. Luckily ‘comfort’ was a theme of mine of this week – more to come about this later.

I really fancied a chicken soup and on a brief foray to Waitrose I thought the Duchy Original Organic fresh chicken & leek with lemon and parsley might do the trick. Chicken – definitely considered therapeutic and isn’t lemon a main ingredient in the Greek Avgolemono soup (as well as an egg)? So surely this would make me feel much better.

But somehow it didn’t quite hit the mark. Maybe the first problem was when I tipped it from the plastic pot into the pan on the hob, it didn’t pour out as I expected but sat there like either a sandcastle fresh from the bucket or how I recall cat and dog food used to come out of the can before you took a fork to it. I squashed the solid soup down and continued stirring hoping that the consistency would improve on heating. And after plenty of stirring and gently heating it started to resemble soup, but still not with exactly the texture I desired. Secondly I wasn’t too sure about the colour, it was too green (from the leeks I guess) and with little pools of orange (from the diced carrots). I am sure all those lovely organic vegetables were doing me good but I just wanted a culinary hug, I wanted comfort. And I wanted my chicken just chickeny, creamy, yummy and not full of green vegetables. It just didn’t work for me today. Maybe I was hankering for good old Heinz Cream of Chicken soup from my childhood. I am sure it wasn’t as full of fabulously organic chicken and all the other goodies in the Duchy Originals soup is but it’s what I needed today. I think two of the important criteria of comfort food is simplicity and familiarity and this Duchy soup was a little too posh, too royal or something.

Perhaps the most sensible option would be to make my own chicken soup when I'm feeling better and freeze some for next time I have such an urge and not feeling so good. That would probably be best.

Masterchef - the third

I was pleased to see that Harriet got through to the semi-finals of MasterChef goes large last night. She seems quite young but has such a laudable passion for British food especially very local and wild food, maybe she is the love child of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall? The scallops and the venison, with apparently a sublime sauce, looked very good and I thought it was quite amusing that she called her dessert a rather un-British "tarte tatin" but as she used sweet shortcrust and not the usual puff pastry, John and Gregg insisted on calling it apple pie - which is considerably more British.
If the format stays the same as the last series, we will have two more weeks of new amateur cooks testing their skills and then in the sixth week some previous contestants who were not quite successful enough last time return to see if they can fare better this year. That's how Daksha Mistry got through to the finals of MasterChef goes large 2006.
John and Gregg didn't seem quite so irritating this week though they obviously have their favourites and you can't always agree with them. One theme that keeps appearing throughout all the series of MasterChef is risotto. I adore risotto but it seems a very risky thing to cook on this show. A promising contestant this week fell by the wayside attempting and failing to make a quick risotto from the rather slow-cooking brown rice. If you go through to the Friday quarter-finals and make a risotto, you are often accused of making a dish that's too simple for MasterChef. However if you serve your risotto alongside say a piece of meat as an accompaniment you are reminded yet again that "risotto is a dish in its own right". If I were them, I steer clear of risotto on MasterChef - it's just too dangerous!

And another top tip, to really impress Gregg you just need to do something with figs and Amaretto and ensure it’s not too sweet for John’s savoury taste buds. I am fairly sure that Gregg would do anything for figs and Amaretto!

Two little pigs

I had mentioned previously that D had bought me the fabulous little salt piglets from the new Nigella liquorice range for Christmas, but I was waiting to get another salt before showing them off. I had considered the aromatic red 'piment d’ Espelette' much prized by Pascal Aussignac of Club Gascon. But then I remember that I already had some unopened Fleur de Sel from my last trip to Normandy. I guess you're supposed to display salt in one of the pigs and pepper in the other but as I insist on my pepper freshly ground, it will have to be two salts instead for me.
In the left one I have Maldon sea salt with its fat soft crumbly ever so white crystals and in the right the hand harvested Brittany Fleur de Sel (flower of salt) with its smaller and slightly off-white crystals.
And the piglets themselves are just so very lovely, pleasingly ovoid and curvaceous, they just beg to be stroked. They come complete with a little black tray to catch any errant salt crystals. Here they are with all their oily and otherwise friends lorded over by the Alessi tripod lemon squeezer - another thing of beauty!
I use pepper more often than salt so my electronic pepper grinder is very useful for one handed grinding.

This is my first foray into the Nigella liquorice range but I 'may' have some other goodies on order! What is particularly delightful about the design of most of the range (piglets excluded) is the matt black voluptuous curves on the outside contrasting with the glossy black convex interior. I first heard that Nigella was branching out from the cream and eggshell blue range (which lovely as it was, would never be happy in my monochromatic home) to the gorgeous black on my birthday whilst in Gap in Manhattan with DD shopping for crocodiles. And how did I find out about them in the middle of Gap? Because D spotted them in a Sunday magazine and immediately texted me as she knew I would just have to have them for my kitchen paraphernalia collection.
And now I do!

The way the cookie crumbles

This morning I just happened to hear the trailer for an interview with Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, and the burning question was ‘what is your favourite biscuit?’ and we hear Noel pondering this very seriously and trying to recall his most preferred biscuit. We don’t actually hear the answer to this career defining question, that will apparently be put to rest on Monday but as many (global!) listeners called in to suggest what might be Noel’s choice it got me thinking how I would answer such a question.

I don’t generally have biscuits in the house but if I did they’d probably be McVitie’s Dark Chocolate Homewheat – now renamed to Plain Chocolate Digestives. I would always have to go for dark chocolate but I know many who would favour the milk chocolate camp. Their website (now United Biscuits) informs us that 52 chocolate digestives are consumed every second in the UK (that amounts to a whopping 71 million packets, in case you want to know). I have never considered dunking a biscuit into tea, as only an occasional tea drinker I can not imagine how either the tea or chocolate biscuit could be enhanced by having bits of damp biscuit floating in your tea or just the total danger of the soggy biscuit collapsing into a sodden heap on the floor. Not a pretty sight!

I also have very particular childhood family memories concerning Marks & Spencer’s dark chocolate ginger biscuits. The deal was each packet contained a mere twelve of the finest ginger biscuits enveloped in thick and very tasty dark chocolate.

And there were three of us so that meant we were fairly assigned four of these delicious biscuits but the cunning of a female when the chocolate is at stake knows no bounds.

So M and I would wolf our allotted four fairly quickly whereas (the original) D would maybe eat one and hoard the other three. However, with guile and stealth known only to chocolate-loving females we were normally able to encourage D to hand over one of his to each of us, thus giving us a much fairer(!) share of the packer of five each and D had the remaining two. Perfect! And we were very good at this! You would have thought that D would have cottoned on and got quicker at consuming his portion, but no. Them were the rules with a dozen M&S dark chocolate gingers on offer, we got the lion's share!

My main contact with biscuits now is the occasional plate at client meetings though they are much rarer than they used to be, cutbacks I guess! Now these plates normally have a little selection of standard British biscuits and the one I’d always have my beady eye on is a Chocolate Bourbon. Though I’m pretty confident I’ve never gone out and secured a packet of these but as a option out of a random plate, they are a very good bet. When I was contemplating this question of preferred biscuits I consulted the great oracle Google and was not slightly surprised to see the number of sites dedicated to the consumption of biscuits, notwithstanding the excellent " A nice cup of tea and a sit down". For example, the rather unconventional guide to life, the universe and everything - h2g2 (the web version of the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy) website has the following words on Bourbons: “The chocolate bourbon cream is the single most perfect object known to man.” And I do kind of understand and will try and explain the lure of a Bourbon. First of all these are pleasingly oblong shaped and should have ten holes, the word Bourbon and just a slight scattering of sugar crystals. Two of these dusky chocolate rectangles are sandwiches together with a neat oval of very particular Bourbon cream. Now in private, I would want to eat a Bourbon in the same way I would consume a Jaffa Cake. I would want to attempt to eat one chocolate rectangles, scrape off the cream with front teeth until the second rectangle is totally naked and then this can finally be consumed. But I promise you, not in a client meeting. Even though I’m sure I am not alone in this I don’t really want to share it in a business meeting! The other Bourbon bit of trivia is that Gary Rhodes used to serve up a giant Bourbon biscuit dessert (much like the acclaimed giant Jaffa Cakes) but I’ve never tried this, it is just a legend in one of my old Gary cookbooks.

As I’ve never had a yen to buy a packet of Bourbons (possibly because they are rather sickly and I don’t think I’ve ever had one than one in one sitting) I’m not sure if I can officially declare it my favourite. I'm also not positive what Noel would favour in the biscuit world (finally, update here!) but I think I’ll always have to save a special place in my heart for both the iconic dimpled Plain Chocolate Digestive and the M&S Dark Chocolate Gingers (all twelve of them!)

Chop, chop, chop

On a random chilly day in February there's really nothing better to do than go for a cockles-of-the-heart warming meal to a fine purveyor of meat and fish such as the Paternoster Chophouse, especially with the lovely m. This is another chophouse which is part of the extensive Conran empire as is so named, I guess, as it sits in the shadow of the mighty St. Paul's Cathedral.
The Paternoster Chophouse is modern, lively and rather popular place with an open plan kitchen so you can keep an eye on the progress of your lunch. And they really love their fish and meat! The menu has both a “catch of the day” and rather magnificently a “beast of the day”. Today the theme is definitely veal and the “beast of the day” is veal faggots and I spotted three other veal dishes.

Well I don’t want a total veal inspired meal so both m and I start with a rather lovely warm potted veal, prune and bitter orange marmalade. This was very good, the marmalade sauce was pleasingly sharp and zingy and complimented the warm veal mixture perfectly. An excellent choice for both of us! Then I plumped for the Galloway spit roasted fore rib, beetroot and horseradish and m opted for the Sutton Hoo chicken, Judas ear mushrooms and leeks with mash (naturally!) and buttered greens to share.

The fore rib was truly a magnificent beast, the fat yellow as it should be, clearly well hung and just cooked to perfection. The tender slices were accompanied by a little (sorry, large) pile of shredded beef (it's hiding under the mash!) which was also extremely moreish. You certainly can’t complain about the portions here. The vibrant purple of the beetroot especially intrigued me and I tried a bit. What was the surprise was that the horseradish was mixed with the beetroot and boy, it was hot. Eye-wateringly hot! Eating it with the beef calmed it down a bit and the whole effect was very tasty indeed. The mash was just perfect, the greens were great and I couldn’t fault any of it. Okay, it wasn’t the most attractive plate of food (mainly because it was so exuberant) but it was delicious so I’m not complaining.

And even though there wasn’t much room yet we ‘forced’ ourselves to share a dessert. We wanted the chocolate pudding with the parsnip ice cream because the combination seemed perplexing and just had to be experienced but the 15 minute lead time wasn’t a luxury we had today so we went for the sticky toffee pudding with caramel sauce instead. And as you see from my photograph, it looks like we were quite impressed! In fact it was very good, very sticky and unctuous and I just managed to take quick snap after we put our spoons down after having our fill!

After all that delicious food we really couldn't move, m and I utterly enjoyed our meaty meal. The provenance of the food is clearly excellent and the Paternoster Chophouse it is a temple to good British ingredients. They get three forks for their succulent meat and two spoons for the stickiest toffee pudding ever! Though I'm still full now!

A box in a box

I’d read quite a bit about the ‘studio in a box’ on the web over Christmas. It seemed a very good idea! You get a lightweight portable wire framed tent structure covered in a translucent fabric that can diffuse the lights shone onto it. And you get a series of coloured infinity backdrops so you can change the look. The idea is that you place whatever you wish to photograph in the box and then you can control both the ‘noisy’ background and the shadows falling onto what your subject is. I’d only seen this for sale in the US and they came with photographic lights which I suspected would not work well with our extra powerful electricity. However last week, I discovered a very reasonable priced one in the UK and I thought I’d definitely give it a go.

And today it turned up in a little disc shaped case that now my light box tent thingy has sprung out of I am fairly confident that I can never get it back into again. Well, not without damaging myself!

This picture of a box of partially used quail eggs is my first attempt at using it. I need to play around with the backdrops and lighting but I think it could be very interesting tool to enhance my food photography. It is currently sat on my spare room bed as I cannot work out how to fold it again to get it back into the itty bitty case from whence it came (that's the black round case in front if the tent).

I guess if someone come to stay I either persuade them to sleep in the tent, perhaps not a good idea, or find a way to get it to de-construct itself and no, it didn’t come with instructions unfortunately!

Update: I found a great site that explains how to shrink my tent to fit back into its case again but it makes a reference to 'making a giant taco' and as I've never made a taco of any size, I still need to work on this. But I got it to go flat already a useful skill; I just need to master the rolling stage!

Rising to the challenge

The stylish Tami over at Running with Tweezers set the challenge of making soufflés for the latest “Hey, hey it’s Donna Hay day” and today she’s added a round-up of all the high rising entries. It seems quite a few of us rose to the challenge and the idea is that we check out the photos, the posting and recipes of all the soufflérs and vote for our favourite. The winner of the soufflé round-up gets to host the next HHIDHD and choose the next theme to stretch our culinary talents.

Tami has been a great host for this homage to Donna Hay because not only she did come up with the sky scraping idea but she demonstrated her food stylish credentials and explained lots of tips for making the perfect soufflé and taking the perfect shot of a soufflé.

I only realised the theme late on the last day of entry so my posting was a bit of an express recycle job and I just got it in under the wire as luckily we’d already made a soufflé (in fact three!) in January. If I hadn’t left it so late I think I would have tried an Arnold Bennett soufflé, you’ve heard of an Arnold Bennett omelette but I think the flavours would translate well into a soufflé also. Maybe next time.

So what’s your favourite?

Masterchef - second semi-finalist

Today the second semi-finalist on Masterchef Goes Large was announced as Stephen (I think he’s a ph not a v, he looks like a ph!) And I am pleased! John and Gregg were making their usual contradictory assessments and Gregg especially complaining that Stephen had been too ambitious with his three course meal. Ironically, others were accused of not doing enough to get through to the final of MasterChef. Stephen made a really interesting looking starter of smoked eel pâté with chicory which John was very impressed with. And I think Gregg was quite amazed that Stephen identified all his exotic fruit and all the vinegars in the product identification test but then again he didn’t do so well working in the restaurant kitchen earlier in the week.

Personally I think it’s a cooking competition so I want to see people who show real culinary genius succeed but I know the emphasis has switched to being able to work in a professional kitchen and I think that’d be the toughest challenge on the show. I believe some of the contestants that weren’t successful in the last series at the beginning of last year are returning to have another go. It will be intriguing to see who is back and how much they’ve improved since last time. Let’s hope they’ve worked out how to walk the imaginary fine line between keeping it too simple and not showing enough skill and demonstrating complicated techniques and being considered over ambitious. Well, I’m sure the contrary pair John and Gregg will let them know if they haven’t!

I love food and love Paris!

A new cookbook turned up on my desk today! Yes, I was as shocked as you no doubt are! And saying it turned up almost implies that fairies brought it. Well that's not quite true! In fact it came from play.com, my bookseller of choice. To my mind a much better option than that rainforest based one! Ordering off play.com is perceptively easy; you almost don't feel like you're doing it. You don't do anything irritating like having to dig out your credit card or type in a delivery address. That's all remembered. You just click a few buttons and generally a couple of days later you are a proud possessor of a new book, DVD or CD. It's almost scarily easy! And my deliveries seem even easier and I have them delivered at work to save the aggravation of not being in to sign for a parcel - the scourge of internet delivery. Those nice people in the post room used to squirrel away my parcel until I was free to collect; now they just deliver it straight to my desk. What a service!

Many of the book orders I place are pre-orders, I get the merest sniff of a new book (generally cook book, surprisingly!) coming out and add it to my order for future delivery. This means I generally get a new book as soon as, if not sooner, that it's out in the shops. I can be one of the first to open the virgin cover, smell that special new book smell and start slowly turning the pages. Bliss! It's not just me that feels the same about books. I was reading my favourite blog that's not about food (and yes, they do exist!) Dooce, and she talks of her three year daughter Leta who loves her Elmo and Dora books so much that she has to sleep with them all. Well I don't go that far, granted I may read a book in bed but if I took them all to bed, if need less of a bed more like an aircraft hangar with sheets!

But this book was a little different than usual, it hadn't been pre-ordered like most of the others but whilst browsing in a bookshop I spotted the title Love Food, Love Paris and immediately thought yes, yes! This is totally up my street, or even up my boulevard! And it's more than just a cookbook; it's more a culinary journey through the artisan food shops, the markets, the bistros, brasseries and restaurants of Paris. There are some recipes including a better version of the petit pois a la Français that I made for our French dinner but the emphasis is really on where to go and what to buy. In the prologue it says "It is almost impossible to think about Paris without thinking about food". And that's true I recall some wonderful meals in Paris, not just great food in convivial surroundings but the unforgettable times with fabulous family and friends. I can remember sharing a big cheese fondue followed by an everlasting pot au chocolat. Not that I could squeeze in any seconds after that fondue, but the concept was very pleasing. I recollect middle of the table bowls of fat moules alongside plates of skinny frites, dining rather finely in the Train Bleu which is rather madly above Gare de Lyon (this seems rather mad as I defy you to find a restaurant remotely as impressive in a British station!) and there's been a plethora of croque monsieur or madame in little art deco mirrored cafés and a magical lunch cruise on the Bateaux Mouches enjoying exploring both wonderful food and the joys of Paris without risking blisters. And I still have Parisian foodie adventures I wish to experience. I had booked a table at La Tour d’Argent to partake in the ever so famous ‘canard à la presse’ enjoyed by kings and epicureans the world over for my birthday before last. According to my new book you receive a commemorative postcard when you eat this special dish. Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances I couldn’t go to Paris for my birthday and I still haven’t experienced the fabulous duck. But one day…

As well as La Tour d’Argent there are many other places in the Love Food, Love Paris book that I’m keen to discover. For example, Place des Vosges has always been my favourite Parisian square, the stunning classical architecture and the elegant façades but I wasn’t aware that it’s also home to Ambroisie, one of France most luxurious three Michelin starred restaurants. But it’s not just about the stars; I also want to drop in on some of Paris’ legendary gourmet emporiums that are nearby also.

Since discovering the amazing confection that is a macaroon, I am now compelled to explore Ladurée as their celebrated macaroons just look stunning. There’s a beautiful photograph of the most stunning dark pink cassis macaroons in their window in the book and there seems to be many websites dedicated to worshipping them.

And for more mouthwatering images please visit the Ladurée site as you will just literally drool!

I’d also love to revisit Fauchon and Hédiard again; it’s just such a pleasure to peruse the shelves of these well stocked world renowned purveyors of fine epicurean treats. And if I feel the need of further kitchen apparel or table accoutrements (as if?) I could pay a fruitful visit to either A. Simon or E. Dehillerin.

This is certainly a book to make you salivate, immediately start searching for your passport and reaching down your biggest case (just to ensure there's plenty of room for your Parisian treats!)
If I hurry I might be able to make the last Eurostar train, see you there!