Dans le noir at Gaucho's

After the sumptuous elegance of the art deco foyer of Claridge's we arrive at the curvy cow seating and chandelier encrusted glamorous Gaucho Piccadilly with a keen appetite. This one is split into a bar - restaurant - bar/restaurant sandwich and I believe a wine cave, but we only visited three of the four floors.

We started on the ground floor in the cow bedecked bar with another Kir Royale and then ascended to the restaurant with yet more cow and more chandeliers though curiously seemingly dull chandeliers as it was surprisingly dark. This darkness got me thinking about Dans le Noir where it is supposed to be dark in fact it's apparently a totally pitch black restaurant. the concept being that the lack of one sense enhances the others and you can really taste your food and enjoy a more unencumbered meal without the preconceptions of sight getting in the way. The waiters are blind so they don't stumble around and trip over sending your dinner into your lap as a sighted waiter may in the dark but act as your much more experienced eyes instead. I've yet to try this place yet but I'm beginning to suspect that many other restaurants are experimenting with a similar concept or they are just trying to save on the electricity, Gaucho Piccadilly included.
T and I both give our usual order to the waitress forgoing a starter in favour of the gorgeous cheese bread followed by the spiral cut steak with a peppercorn sauce (for a change!) and baked potato for me and the chicken and fat chips for T. We ordered still water and a nice bottle of white wine. That done we could examine the décor, discuss our shiny purchases from today and then slowly begin to wonder what had happened to our drinks. We have cheese bread - very good, but no drinks - not so good!
The restaurant manager miraculously recognised our drink free state in the gloom (clearly he'd eaten plenty of carrots!) and rushed over to rectify this condition immediately. He also found out how much we adore their cheese bread and kindly brought a couple more of the just-from-the-oven cheesy rolls as an apology for our lack of drinks , very good indeed!
The spiral cut steak was as delicious and perfectly cooked as it always was with a nice sauce (not as wonderful as the foie gras or the béarnaise but fine) and we split the potatoes so we could both have a few fat chips.
After sharing a portion of the ever so rich chocolate truffle cake in the steadily increasing gloom (the dark slab of chocolateness served on a glass plate on a black table almost made it disappear entirely) we are trying to decide what to do next when the manager suggests we check out the top floor (which T had just suggested anyway) so we ascend further into what they call a 'supper lounge' which open until much later for our delictation. We enjoy a further round of Kir Royales in yet another opulent Gaucho bar and just when we think of being good girls and leaving our friendly neighbourhood restaurant manager swings by with (you've guessed it) another round of Kir Royales. We may have been left wanting for drinks at the beginning of our evening but I have to admit our ever so attentive manager kept us well lubricated for the rest of the evening. And no, we didn't take him up on his kind offer to go on, there's only so many Kir Royales a girl can take! But it was a very nice of him to offer.
A fabulous evening, delicious food and copious drinks but next time, maybe I'll take a torch!

A little nibble at Claridge's

T had promised a visit to a funky Gaucho's for tonight. We'd had 'endured' correction 'thoroughly enjoyed' a days shopping at Selfridge's and beyond and were both clutching intriguing bags containing exciting shiny things. At T's suggestion we headed to Claridge's to freshen up in their fine marble facilities before going on for our meal and then avail ourselves of the first Kir Royale of the evening. And what a fabulous place it is to freshen up!
Our drinks were delivered with some very tasty nibbles, some bar nuts and fabulous Parmesan cheese wafers. Our Kir was finished off with fresh raspberries also which makes it extra special. We sat and sparkled in the main foyer listening to the pianist and smelling the gorgeous lilies everywhere.
I have enjoyed some sumptuous meals at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's courtesy of his rather tasty protégée Mark Sargeant and wished we could linger longer but I had an Argentinian steak with my name on it so we had the doorman grab us a taxi and headed off in the direction of my third London Gaucho's.
Though I'd forgotten how lovely it is at Claridge's; I really must return and eat very soon.

A child friendly Café Rouge

The child friendliness of a restaurant isn't normally my first consideration but today is a special occasion. Today is my first meal out with KK and of course H, as at only 10 months KK is not dining out by herself yet! We had a choice of Café Rouge or Carluccio's as both had proved to welcome diners of all ages. And as we hit Café Rouge first on the high street the decision was made.
And they were ready for us. KK was swiftly transferred from her Bugaboo to one of the large stack of wooden high chairs where she could proceed her systematic removal of all the various cards, wine promotion leaflets and menus from the table onto the floor. Fortunately the waitresses seem to find this rather endearing; I guess it helps that KK is such a little stunner!
I choose the Paupiette de Poulet - Chicken breast stuffed with Brie, wrapped in jambon cru served with risolée potatoes, French beans and an oregano & mustard sauce And it was rather tasty indeed! The chicken was moist and the Brie oozed magnificently over the vegetables.
KK watched with deep interest and wondered what she could fling next onto the floor. Though it seems she is more fascinated in drinking than eating, drinking from a glass rather than a sippy cup seems particularly alluring to her and she demonstrated she is already able to do so. Eventually H decided that to protect fellow diners from various missiles the only solution was to release KK from the constraints of her highchair and allow her to crawl freely and I hasten to add speedily around the floor.
Though much to her disgust she had to curtail her foraging and be shackled again after a short while so that H and I could enjoy going halves on a smidge of Fondant au chocolat. And very chocolaty and unctuous it was too. But half seemed just about right!
Maybe this particular visit to Café Rouge hasn't been the most relaxing I've ever had but we've had fun, enjoyed some good food, caught up on some much needed gossip and given the staff some entertainment with KK's antics. What more could we ask for?

And there's more...

As promised... it's all up to date now - click here for a bizarre brush with aspic and what happens when you ignore the instruction to use a bain marie. Also Stephanie has posted this month's free-for-all blog party, and got me very interested in some appetiser spoons. Next month's theme is mint, mmmm, I better get thinking!

A little Italian in the sun

This posting is a little late but I got to eat al fresco at the Cantina del Ponte in a brief spurt of summer evening sunlight a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was definitely worth a review. Cantina is in the bank of restaurants previously presided over by Sir Terence Conran overlooking a picturesque part of the Thames, especially when we experiencing some rather rare sun. These restaurants are now owned by D&D (not dungeons & dragons as far as I know) as a result of a management buyout, but I think Sir Terence still has significant interests there.
The neighbours to Cantina are Blueprint Café to the right and Le Pont de la Tour and Chop House to the left so you get to choose between British, French, Meaty and Italian. We were feeling like a little Italian tonight so Cantina Del Ponte it was. This was not a long luxurious lingering meal but more a refuel before heading for home. So starter was just a shared basket of crusty bread dipped in a dish of olive oil splashed with balsamic vinegar. But as long as the oil and vinegar are good quality, this is never a bad thing.
American M chose a plate of spinach and ricotta ravioli, sage and parmesan and I selected a dish of potato gnocchi, pesto alla Genovese. They both looked good, green flecked, fresh and herby. Clearly we were not just 'feeling Italian' tonight but also vegetarian. Fresh pasta and gnocchi can be a good test for a restaurant; they can both be stodgy and flaccid. But they know what they’re doing here so we were in safe hands! I haven’t made my own gnocchi for such a long time and I was only saying when I was last cooking with D that it was something I fancied doing. The only niggle with gnocchi, (and risotto and pasta to a lesser extent can share this) is even though I love fine versions of them all (I thought I better add fine here as some dreadful crimes have been committed in the name of Italian food) but sometimes you feel you've had enough before the plate is finished. So they can work better as a more delicate starter portions.
And there was an element here with my gnocchi, as delicious as it was I got a little bored with it before I had finished the bowl. And I wasn't full so it was more that I craved a little variety in my mouthfuls. But that was possibly our fault for skipping starter and therefore being given a main course sized portion of our ravioli and gnocchi.
For a dessert we both opted for the sliver of Italian chocolate cake but as neither of us do coffee we substituted the coffee ice cream for the vanilla one. And this was a perfect cake, and the perfect size, rich, dense and chocolatey but not too much that I had some sort of sugar rush part way through. Two Italian forks for Cantina del Ponte, I'll definitely be back to have a full meal here.

Getting there...

I know that my naughty work life has been getting in the way of my blog life but I am slowly filling in some of the gaps. Click here for Starting a new tradition, another use for potatoes and a religious experience at Gaucho's. And there's more to come soon, if only I didn't have to work and sleep I'd be able to blog more frequently!
And if you haven't read them yet M, click on these links individually to get Steven to read just that post from the top, then you shouldn't get too much repetition. Happy reading!

All white on the night

And yet again I've left it to the last minute to cook and blog my canapés for the latest blog party. When Stephanie said that this month’s party could be the last I gasped, what am I ever going to do with my expanding collection of little forks and cocktail sticks? Well I guess I just need to make more party nibbles. I am fairly positive that M would happily live off a pure canapé diet as she really only likes little tastes of everything so maybe I'll have to do the same. And then Stephanie also said that the theme was of our own choosing. This seemed a good idea at first but then I just couldn’t decide. Should I go for a regional theme? Or maybe something inspired by my exhaustive and dare I say teetering crockery collection? Perhaps I could be inspired by Stephanie’s Blogging by Mail theme ‘Some of my favourite things’? In fact I started with that idea but it was all getting a little wayward. In the end I decided that as one of my favourite themes from a previous month was black & white, I would go even more minimalist and have all white.

Okay now I’ve decided on the theme I just needed to formulate the menu. My mind lurched in that gastronomic butterfly way from cauliflower risotto to potato soup, to scallops; white chocolate ice cream (which was a discovery when I did the black & white party), white truffles and quail eggs. And because I was so indecisive I ended up with too many ideas and then too little time to put it all together. But dismissing some of the more unseasonable options I ended up with a four course (nearly five courses until I realised that I was just overreaching myself again) canapé meal. I can guess what you’re saying; I just don’t know when to stop!

So for the amuse gueule of this white feast I opted for the unusual option of Pizza Bianco. And being incredibly pushed for time I chose not to make my own pizza base and bizarrely decided to adapt some supremely fluffy part-cooked garlic bread by covering it in the thinnest rounds of sliced mozzarella. I guess it was similar to a pizza bianco if you are rather partial to garlic! The resultant cheesy garlic bread was cut into one to two bite squares and of course placed on a white plate. Despite M thinking that you wouldn’t be able to see the white food on a white plate, but of course none of the food appears entirely white in the photographs.

Next it was the fish course. The scallops were an obvious choice, I never miss an opportunity to use scallops, and these were exceptionally lovely, and I forgave their ‘not with the theme’ caramelised tingeing as it tastes too good. And don’t they fine impaled by my new glass and white pearl cocktail sticks? I’d been pondering using for them and the day has come! I have inadvertently acquired quite a few sets of cocktail sticks, all due to eBay, since joining in this monthly fun. At least they don’t take up as much space as the plates do!

To accompany the scallops I thought a little nibble of fish pie on a spoon would be both white and tasty. I used some un-dyed smoked haddock (not that I wouldn’t have done even if I wasn’t going all pale and interesting tonight). I kept the sauce fairly cheese sparse and mustard free to preserve the lightness, and wasn’t too liberal with the butter in the mash potato for the same reason. A fish pie works in any quantity and bite-sized morsels works very well nestled in the white spoons.

For the meat course I pondered poached chicken but after a peculiar conversation with the multi-brothered J about the horrible things his staff used to inflict on mountains of poached chicken breasts in a previous life whilst running some sort of hostelry, I decided to rethink. Poached chicken can look so incredibly flaccid, so I opted to roast the chicken breasts instead and then tear it into chunks to stab with the pearly cocktail sticks again. And as someone in this family should eat vegetables, I sliced some white of leeks and sautéed with some double creamy, well would one of my meals be really complete without creamy leeks?

Dessert was alternating white china egg spoons either loaded with cold creamy vanilla risotto and even colder Waitrose white chocolate ice cream. Both very nice indeed!

I had my usual quandaries regarding the obligatory drink to serve alongside the burgeoning plates of tasty morsels so I just plumped for a martini glass of milk, well a girl got to use a little style! I even thought I'd try some, I used to happy guzzle a glass for breakfast before school each day and I'd also much less happily drink the mandatory little warm bottle at school later the same day. My main problem is that I can't bear milk if it tastes creamy and this was full fat milk for my fish pie béchamel and the mash and it was horrible, well to my taste anyway. I shouldn't have been surprised. I haven't drunk milk for maybe twenty years and I don't even like creamy cocktails. I liked the crystal cocktail glass though.

Even today I came across an interesting recipe in Lyndsey Bareham's new Dinners in a Dash book for white gazpacho soup, with garlic, lashings of white bread, white grapes and white wine vinegar. I ambitiously bought the bread on the way home but unfortunately ended up being overwhelmed with work deadlines, blog party deadlines and too much Patrick Dempsey. Can you have too much Patrick Dempsey? And the bread is supposed to be a day old anyway. So the white gazpacho will have to live for another day.

I think I've probably gathered enough gorgeous little white things for one pale party anyway. Cheers!

And to check out what everyone else brought to the party...

A daily dose of Jeremy!

The truly fabulous Jeremy Lee of my favourite Blueprint Café is on the daily food show filmed at London's Borough Market - Market Kitchen on ukfood all this week. He was utterly wonderful today with his usual horseradish loving ways and true appreciation of British seasonal goodies. And I have sky+'d the show to be entertained by him for the entire week, I always find him a highly engaging speaker and obviously a brilliant cook. We've always said he'd be perfect for television. When are you getting your own show Jeremy, I feel you need a larger arena on which to showcase your talents? And no pressure, but when is that book coming out also?

Fast final fish feast

I had promised to whip up a tasty little treat for M and myself with the pot of white crabmeat Ocado had dropped off. I had intended to revitalise my interpretation of M's favourite M&S's crab gratin but instead I thought I might try a crab version of Clotilde's oeuf cocotte. I poured a little double cream into the bottom of a couple of buttered ramekins (not the M&S ones ironically enough because I thought they were a little shallow) and topped this with well seasoned crab meat, a little grated Cheddar cheese and then a sunshine yolked egg. I remembered the oven temperature and timing but I utterly forgot to dunk the ramekins in a bain marie before placing them in the oven. The cocotte was very tasty but the slip up with missing water bath meant the eggs weren't cooked as delicately as they should have and subsequently the yolks were not as runny as I would have liked. They were rather scrummy though, the crab meat stood its ground more than you'd expect white meat to do so.

After our crab starter we had one of the delicious H. Forman salmon and lobster fishcakes with a light creamy horseradish and finely chopped chive sauce (the influence of Jeremy Lee is still guiding me) and a mâche salad. And we very crucially got to christen the new black damask crockery. New House of Fraser black damask crockery that M kindly agreed to split with me so we could both enjoy their lacy loveliness. If of course I can carry mine back home in one piece, but I'll happily try when it comes to supplementing my crockery further. Though frankly there's no room at the inn really!

What the Dickens!

M had been trying to reserve a table at Copperfield restaurant on my last couple of visits and we hadn't been successful but this time she managed to secure a Sunday lunch slot in this popular local eatery. It is one of restaurants where you order your food whilst enjoying your aperitif in the slightly chintzy bar.
When M heard that there was crab on offer, that was an easy decision and the king prawn and crab salad was immediately her starter. I ordered home made chicken liver pâté for my starter and I have to admit I utterly adored the pâté but was totally floored by the truly bizarre plate decoration.
The ice cream scoop of pâté was placed on a plate flooded with aspic and with a tomato petal flower set into this pink pool. Apart from a rather artificial clump of jellied bay leaves and peppercorns sometimes lurking on top of supermarket pâté I can't recall stumbling across any aspic this century. I did stick a tentative knife into the pale pink puddle but I really didn't like the taste. Maybe the proximity of those creepy tomato petals tainted the taste. So full points for fabulous pâté and nil points for scary aspic!

For my main course I had chosen fillet of pork dusted in crushed peppercorns in a cream and brandy sauce. But I was surprised to experience the full silver service treatment. Though thinking about the aspic, why was I surprised? This was seriously old school Sunday lunch. And being that I am dining with the great vegetable avoider, I got to have a veritible allotment worth of chaffing dishes heaped up on my plate whilst someone else got to cherry pick two carrot slices, the merest scoop of creamy leeks, a small roasted potato and a broccoli spriggette. The pork and creamy sauce weren't too bad at all, though not up to heady heights as the pâté.
And to continue our fabulous trip down culinary memory lane when we were ready for dessert they wheeled a multi-shelfed trolley over for our persual. They were all there, profiteroles, fruit salad, cheese cake and slabs of chocolate mousse cake. And that's what we plumped for - chocolate cake. I also discovered why M holds back on the vegetables, she can polish off all her dessert where I can only have a few sweet mouthfuls. When I eat out it's quite rare that I have my own dessert as I'm normally splitting something cholately with several forks so we have our sweet finale to our meal. I really couldn't face all of this but M licked her plate clean.
Copperfield's is a fabulously retro experience, clearly many of the diners are regulars as they all seemed to know the many waitresses by name and it is extremely popular for Sunday lunch. A nostalgic fork for Copperfield restaurant, I am sure it will be the only time I see aspic on my plate for the rest of the year.

Holy cow!

When M and I went searching for sustenance and a good sit down in Manchester after a day of thrashing the credit cards in the shops it seemed appropriate to try out the meaty delights of apparently the only Gaucho outside of London (according to their website). Though I have been to one in Barcelona, does that count? And Barcelona is quite out of London if I recall!
M had already set her heart on the salmon but when our waitress swung by with the customary platter of carnivorous cuts, she totally got won over by the hunky fine looking (Churrasco Lomo) and all fishy aspirations were abandoned. I ordered the same both fabulous looking spiral cut fillet steak to be served with a foie gras sauce, which seemed most intriguing and I ordered fat chips and M deigned to have a baked potato near her meat. But this was swiftly liberated by me so I got to have meat and two potatoes for a change! I could say so much about being related to someone who loves tomatoes, goats' cheese and coffee but doesn't like potatoes and rarely dabbles with vegetables, but I'll get into trouble so I won't. And why should I, I get more potatoes and other sundry green things. Though in this case I only had half a of the baked potato and half of the fat chips.
We immediately hoovered up the basket of cheese bread and marvelled at the fact we seemed to sat in a large hall with stain glassed ceiling and a large organ just next to us. Fortunately no one was playing it as we would have been truly deafened. It transpired that this particular Gaucho used to be a Methodist church and hence the cavernous appearance, the unusual restaurant accoutrements and only a smattering of their trademark cowhide decorations.
And after all that delicious meat a slice of something sweet to round off the meal. A rich chocolatey soft chocolate truffle cake for me and a dulce de leche cheesecake for M, it's the caramel sauce that does it for her.
We had a very good meal, a fruity full bodies glass of Syrrah and an exceptional piece of meat for a church! Holy cow indeed!

Well if I must...

Clotilde urges us all to stretch our creative culinary muscles by challenging ourselves to conjure up a feast from the random scraps remaining in our fridge and/or cupboard. And not that I was intending to test myself i nany way, it was more 'needs must' as I'm going away at the end of the week and want to use up any goodies lurking in the fridge before I go. Though frankly this situation could describe my fridge on most days that Ocado haven't just unloaded a little mango decorated van (and then I am guaranteed abundance). I don't generally do a big weekly shop, it's more a random gathering of food on my travels.
But without hitting the shops, what do I have to contend with for this meal? I could have just stuck with a gratin Daupinoise as they are always fabulous when faced with a small potato and cream glut but I decided to add a couple of twists. Hiding under all the potato and creamy fabulousness is a layer of pesto, well it's such a shame to waste a good pesto! And they're also little crispy smoky hits of bacon dotted throughout the concoction and also the dregs of some garlic and chives soft cheese.
So not really a gratin Daupinoise but a small dish of delectable potato-y creamy unctuousness! I'm not sure this was what Clotilde had in mind but it was good, very good!

Four course Sunday lunch

D and I have been poring through towering stocks of cookbooks and back issues of Olive, Delicious and other magazines considering what shape our Sunday should take. All we’ve really decided is that we want to do something on the barbecue and possibly a little bit different from the gorgeous butterflied lamb we normally indulge in. Seemingly we are inexplicably drawn to everything that requires 24 hours plus marinating time but we want to eat in a few hours so that doesn’t really work. We are both huge fans of Food from Fire by Charles Campion as it really gets our barbecue juices flowing. After much pondering we settle on Lemon and Black Pepper Chicken. Charles describes it as “a dish so profoundly simple that it hardly looks worth bothering with, but I urge you to try it”. LLcT isn’t joining us today and as he isn’t a fan of chicken we normally don’t often inflict it on him. But today, if we desire, the world is our chicken! So we settle on this and nip off to Knibbs Meat Safe at Burwash Manor in search of some of his plumpest breasts. D has already suggested that we should also grab a bunch of their most pert asparagus and start our meal with Crispy Parma Ham with Asparagus from the ‘fast drinks party’ section of Gordon Ramsay’s Fast Food. Whilst with Mr. Knibbs we are struck as usual by his yummy looking sausages and decided to add some onion marmalade and pork and stilton to our package. We’re not sure how they’ll feature in the meal but we’ll worry about that later. We are shocked to discover The Pantry is entirely devoid of asparagus, D explains that before Burwash Manor became the foodie paradise it is today is was purely as asparagus farm so it seems ironic that we are deprived today. We visit another purveyor of fine produce and amongst the stuffed peacock and other assorted taxidermist’s delights we find they are also lacking the green spears. We suddenly realise that the deprivation of the asparagus has unsettled us and made us forget that we haven’t even decided on vegetable accompaniments, so we grab a few perfect Bugs Bunny carrots and a few potatoes and whilst at the till spot the ice creams and get a tub of raspberry and another of rhubarb and ginger. Ever indecisive!

We place a quick call to MC with a plea for him to search for less auspicious asparagus (though with the Parma ham jackets we are pretty confident that we’ll get away with it even if our asparagus turns out a little jet-lagged).

We haven’t been able to get chicken breasts with the skin still attached unfortunately, but we never let little things like that bother us. This is another one of those dishes that needs some marinating to get the magic happening but a judicious deployment of a vacuum box speeds the process up considerably.

We decide (or maybe that was just me!) that our Sunday lunch deserves another course; we had planned to get some oozy cheese as we’d contemplated a little Fab Cheesy Garlic Bread from James Martin’s Great British Village Show Cookbook. We’d meant to get some Brie for the garlic bread but as we didn’t we abandoned the garlicky dreams and switched to plan B. And plan B was to replace the intended cheese course with the less well known sausage course, so that’s what happened. After the rather delicious asparagus enveloped in the crispy Parma ham we enjoy a plate of the two different sausages, indecision problems again! I think the sausage course could really catch on!

The lemon and black pepper chicken worked very well, the final flourish was a sprinkling of celery salt. I am not sure that was my favourite flourish. I know that celery salt is a traditional condiment for quail eggs but I kept harking back to the 'crazy salt' that we made for D's birthday lunch at N & R's in Normandy so many years ago. I wonder how that would have worked with the chicken? Charles was right though, the chicken stayed very moist. I am sure it would have appreciated it's extra layer of protection that the absent skin would have afforded it, but we had to do without. The carrots were sliced obliquely with a scattering of thyme inside a fat foil parcel which could be added to the barbecue to steam/roast. When we were deciding the potatoes we had one of out usual quandaries, what potato delight to serve this time. Yesterday we'd been watching Saturday Kitchen and an old Nick Nairn program was shown and he cooked his version of fondant potatoes (though I think he called them "stovies" which I believe are slightly different) so we thought this would be a good extra to whip up with the chicken. I'd always envisaged that potato fondants required braising in chicken stock or something but I was mistaken as some do use a glass of wine or stock but most just use lots of butter. We ended up with Gary Rhodes' recipe for buttered fondant as his was the first I recall tasting when I enjoyed it at City Rhodes so many years ago. The potato fondant was served with leeks as was my main course (you see I don't always have to have meat!) but bizarrely (or maybe not so for me) I had his infamous mash potatoes as a side order. These turned out slightly different than I recall, rather like fat sautéed potatoes and not as soft an unctuous as my memory insists. But still very tasty, actually the entire meal was delicious and a fresh lighter twist to a Sunday roast dinner.
There was really only room for a soupçon of dessert (possibly the downside of a sausage course!) and as we couldn't really choose we had a small scoop of raspberry ice cream topped of course with a raspberry and the ginger and rhubarb with a chocolate ginger and the whole lot with a rather liquid raspberry coulis.
I like this Restaurant 74, I wish I could eat here more often!

Midsummer night's pizza

After a lively rendition of Midsummer Night's Dream we were all in the need of some quick but decent late night sustenance and headed off towards Pizza Express. I used to frequent their popular establishments quiet regularly, it used to be an occasional TGI Friday lunch treat before the lure of the slimy noodles of Wagamama excluded me from these excursions and many years ago if we were working late in the office we'd often ring up and order a few tasty rounds then go and collect them as they've never lowered themselves to delivery!
I always used to have he same pizza, tuna and mozzarella minus the tomato sauce and then I’d generally find a willing recipient for the one black olive that was always placed in the middle of the pizza. I was quite pleased to see they longer do a tuna pizza and I would be forced to be a little more adventurous. I was hoping they’d adopted the popular pizzeria option of including at least one “pizza bianco” choice for the “tomato dodgers”, perhaps with a crème fraîche base instead but that doesn’t seem to have caught on here. But that didn’t deter me, the menu suggest that “if you want to take their world-renowned recipes and change things, just ask”, so I did. D and I were both drawn to the Campo di Fiori - Artichokes with creamy mozzarella, black olives, fresh parsley and a scattering of onion, named after the Roman market famous for fresh spring artichokes in their new thinner based Pizza Romana range. D was happy to have hers as is but being the high maintenance pizza eater that I am I had to make a few adjustments. Firstly the tomato sauce base was out, I asked if they had a pesto or crème fraîche alternative and our waitress said “no but that they normally whip up a little béchamel instead”. But them bizarrely added that as they had none (being a late Saturday night and all) they’d do something with crème fraîche instead, I know a little odd. Whilst I was asking I also had the onions and olives left off and the inclusion of pancetta.

With the pizzas chosen we thought we’d share a cheese bread, though LLcT didn’t hear the sharing bit and was convinced we were stealing it off his plate, as if we’d do that! Though honestly he let us get away with only the tiniest morsels anyway! Well this thumbnail sized piece of cheese bread had to fortify us for a while because the sudden flux of late night Shakespeare lovers had thrown them and turned Pizza Express into Pizza Distress as LLcT renamed them. We could see the open kitchen, we could see the various plates and glasses being dropped and then cleared away, we could see what we suspected was them making their own meals for the night (and we turned out to be right) but what we couldn’t see was our much awaited pizzas winging their way to us. After an interminable wait they turned up but they were very much worth waiting for.

Despite D and I starting off with the same pizza obviously with my minor alterations (okay, entire rebuild), they seem entirely different, though clearly I think mine looks way better. And I definitely vouch for the perfect combination of a thin Roman base with artichokes, mozzarella, smoky pancetta and of course, crème fraîche. Very good indeed!

D’s had the unasked for extra ingredient of a piece of receipt, hmmm tasty, but she chose to leave that to one side!
It’s been too long since I partook of a Pizza (not so it seems) Express pizza and this was a very good one, though possibly due to my tinkering! So compliments to them and to me for a very fine pizza, and I’m sharing the fork with them this time!

Summer? Fete

When we heard there was going to be a summer fête in the nearby field we didn’t immediately leap at the idea until we heard the phrase “hog roast”. The hit the bell to win a giant inflatable hammer didn’t really intrigue us, mainly if MC had won said hammer LLcT would have tormented us with it until either the hammer had been punctured or he’d been strangled. So we thought we better pass!
The summer’s day was an unfortunately typical summer day at the moment with torrential rain, but it did clear and we sallied forth in search of the elusive hog roast. The ground was rather sodden and squelchy underfoot but we made our way towards the aroma of pig. We were rather disappointed to not come across a fine bronzed beast rotating slowly over a fire as the phrase “hog roast” may imply but instead a man in a van. A van containing a few cooked pork joints which were deftly carved and thrust inside a soft roll, with the option of apple sauce and mustard if desired. It wasn’t too bad but not the juicy chunks of golden porcine pleasure we’d anticipated. Never mind, we’re here and we decide that after our pork sandwich that we must go off in search of a tombola. We felt that tombola is de riguer at such a fête, where else could we win something small and entirely useless whilst contributing to the local rotary club? The general idea is that you buy a handful of folded raffle tickets and on straightening them out if the last digit is a 5 or 0, the other part of the raffle ticket will be taped to your prize. We fared very badly as after four small handfuls we netted a can of Diet Coke! For the sad losers however you could choose from a pile of booby prizes and we all ended up with packets of salt and vinegar crisps. Ah well, the only time I’ve won anything on a tombola was a bottle of tomato ketchup and you imagine how overjoyed I was with that. MC was strangely fascinated in the antique tractors and vintage motorcycles. D and I tried to find something particularly interesting about them; I rather liked the shiny red badge on the BSA! But I have to admit it didn’t hold my interest for too long.

After our failure to win big on the tombola and the decision that the inflatable hammer would definitely have to be a bad idea the only final thing to do was enjoy a Mr. Whippy 99 ice cream, with a flake naturally, as we made our way to the hall to examine the photographs of how the village used to look. An ice cream such as this has to eaten in such a way, clearly forged when we were all children. First the flake has to be submerged in the soft ice cream into the cone as far as it will go as that will be a treat for later. Next the ice cream is licked evenly round and around the top as otherwise any protruding scoop of ultra soft creamy ice cream would melt and cascade off the side. As the ice cream is consumed the flake re-emerges and you can start to eat it with the rather bland cone. I always preferred the ice cream and chocolate flake to the cone so pushing the flake and the remaining ice cream into the point end of the cone to increase the pleasure of eating the cone. And another fête stable is finished.

Shame about the rain, but if we weren’t moaning about the weather would be really be English. Our friends in the North are suffering so much worse than us at the moment and I can’t imagine how their summer has been truly ruined by the phenomenal downpours and flooding they’ve suffered and are still suffering and the dreadful reminder to us all how water can be so incredibly destructive. It does seem churlish to complain about another soggy field or cancelled tennis match when compared to their suffering.

Picnic bread

D had been in charge of preparing some picnic food for an event last night. I hadn't been able to get here in time to sample it unfortunately but luckily there was some of Jamie Oliver's picnic bread left which MC and I discovered worked rather well toasted with a smidge of butter the next day. When D and I had made this recipe before, in deference to my tomato and olive avoiding tendencies, we left those out. As this was not intended for my consumption there were some dreaded chopped up sun dried tomatoes (though in my mind these are the least of all the tomato evils) and a handful of black olives layered with the Parma ham, torn mozzarella and whole hard boiled eggs wrapped in the bread dough. The dough hadn't been as soft and risen as when we had made it last year and the resultant loaf was rather dense in the centre, however toasting the slices livened it up a bit, it also made the mozzarella melt and deliciously stringy again. The melted cheese mingled with the stripes of Parma ham and hard boiled egg slices and I managed to eat the olives and sun dried tomatoes also. So very brave! It didn't have the appearance of a snake that had swallowed a nest of eggs as our first effort had done but made a very fine brunch indeed.

Chancing the Chancery

The so stylish T had agreed to meet me for an early dinner at the Chancery as it was awfully convenient to where she was working today. I knew very little about the place but the website looked promising and it didn't disappoint with the dark wooden floors, a few select tables and lots of white linen. We were offered olives and some delectable warm bread as we were seated, the olives went untouched but two devout bread monsters made inroads into the little basket immediately.
I was surprised by the little salmon amuse gueule notwithstanding our waiter telling us it was tuna. We peered at the little elliptical dish and marvelled at the orange pinkness of the tuna, a colour you could perhaps call salmon. We were just admiring it when our apologetic waiter hurtled over to say that he had been mistaken and our tuna was indeed salmon. It was very good whatever the provenance!

I chose the seared foie gras, cherry and apple salad with black treacle dressing for my starter though I was most intrigued by the rabbit beignet. Chancery is one of those places that like to paint a picture on the plate with the artfully scattered salad sprigs and the Rothko streaks of treacly dressing. The cherries were quite potent and a tart contrast to the soft buttery-ness of the foie gras. A very fine start to our meal!

The main was a rare fillet of beef beef with oxtail wrapped in pancetta and sat on top of a potato gallette. I was in the unusual situation of being informed that chef recommends this medium rare and I asked for rare. Well I know how I like my beef, and he was good enough to comply! This was a top hunk of meat, perfectly cooked and juicy with enticing morsels of even meatier oxtail. T looked on in mild horror, not really being a fan of red meat. The creamy and yet rich sauce mingled with the mash mopping up the meaty juices. I know it was a gallette, but it was actually a mound of mash shaped into a cake, but I wasn’t complaining, it was delicious!

We were fortunate enough to receive a little pre-dessert, a tangy, refreshing shot glass of lime posset. This set us up nicely for a final chocolate hit. Whilst I went noisily off in search of the facilities; the lovely wooden floors being a perfect sounding board for my high heels, T selected a cheeseboard and intriguing sounding chocolate B52 dessert for us both to share. The idea of the dessert being that it's layered like a B52 cocktail.

The cheeseboard had some tasty creamy portions, something like Manchego with a tart quince jelly. If it was Manchego then it was slightly lost as this was supposed to be a French selection but it was flavoursome whatever nationality it was.

After sampling the least blue of the cheeses we tried the B52. It was lucky I'd taken the picture the moment the dessert arrived as it did rather collapse on itself as we tucked into the cheese. This was kind of an exotic tiramisu, which is something I wouldn't normally indulge in due to the unfortunate inclusion of coffee, but actually it wasn't bad at all. The Chancery was a surprise all round really, not that I'd thought we would be disappointed but when you select a restaurant mainly on its location, delicious food and extremely convivial surroundings are just a positive bonus. It was also so nice to receive the addition of thoughtful little tasters; so many restaurants don't bother now. It's a shame because it's such an opportunity to show-off the chef's talent, entice is with something that maybe we wouldn't normally plump for on the menu and add a new little taste sensation to the memory banks. I applaud their efforts, taking a chance on Chancery has been a wise decision and we'd enjoyed some two fork food.

A sausage fit for a train driver

I must have walked past the Lord Aberconway pub so many times without seeing the 'world famous sausages' sign. But once I spotted it, it would have been extremely difficult to just carry on walking, I mean it was lunchtime and I needed to hang around here, due to an annoying best unmentioned proclivity of a client. So I ventured forth in search of a world famous sausage and from the sausage menu I settled on the good old Cumberland ring, which came perched on a mound of quite dense mash. I could find no mention of whether the mash shared a similar global reputation but it wasn't bad and complemented the sausage perfectly.
The menu as well as having an an extensive selection of sausages and other less sausage-shaped food also explained that Lord Aberconway had something to do with the railways, though I can't remember exactly what he had to do with them. Sausages can do that to me! Though the proximity to Liverpool Street station may be a clue, but apparently not enough of one.
They weren't the best sausages in the world but not a bad effort at all and it's nice to know there's a handy sausage emporium should the need ever arise.

Eat her words

It's very remiss of me; Chocolate & Zucchini written by the world renowned food blogger and lovely person Clotilde Dusoulier winged its way to me ages ago but I just haven't had the opportunity to rave about it. However planning ahead to a fortuitous train journey to take on Friday I thought I could slip it in my bag and really concentrate on absorbing this fabulous little book and giving it the credit that it's due. And in anticipation of this I have been flicking through her book at every opportunity.

I don't always fancy Clotilde's recipes as she really does embrace “le chevre” and even though I can occasionally be persuaded to take a tentative nibble, I generally just feel it's too goaty and takes all the other ingredients hostage. Clotilde seems rather partial to “les tomates” also but then I can see beyond that also. What I really like about this book (and her blog) is the heart and soul that is so prevalent in all her writing. I'm a huge admirer of her work and would obviously love my little blog to have the tiniest bit of the global impact that hers does. I am immensely jealous of her writing, lifestyle, cooking and eating especially as she gets to do all this in Paris. I do have a secret yen for such a lifestyle and reading her book just makes me yearn for it more. D and I have already decided that we will while out our twilight years in a chic apartment in Paris and frequent those fabulous food markets wearing a purple hat and lashings of insane sparkles, vintage Chanel and furry scarves respectively. Though I guess we’ve only thought about this plan in the winter as August in Paris can be very steamy, I can’t imagine wanting to wear anything other than wisps of cool silk and linen. Oh and maybe a teeny bit of Chanel. But I digress…

Reading Clotilde’s foreword immediately made me feel that we may have been foodie twins separated at birth, the first sentence is: “Food joyously occupies a large portion of my waking thoughts – it even makes appearance in my dreams – and I find pleasure in every single on of its facets: the shopping, the looking, the talking, the reading the thinking, the chopping, the kneading, the sharing and of course, the eating.” I could have written every word, okay maybe not as eloquently but with the same passion – I might have added photographing as well. Every delicious dish I am presented with or make myself compels me to have a camera in one hand and a fork in the other. It seems to be that I’m convinced that it is even more delicious if I capture a little piece of each meal’s soul for posterity, my own personal Dorian Gray taste library if you will. Hmmm, that’s not slightly odd! And I know Clotilde loves to photograph all her dishes as well, and the book is chock full of her mouth-watering photographs.

Every time I pick up Chocolate & Zucchini, so named as Clotilde explains - to capture both her love of fresh vegetables and chocolate side of her foodie nature, I am transported to her kitchen table – if only! Ironically after having to explain so many times why her blog is called Chocolate & Zucchini and say that it doesn’t refer to a curious hybrid recipe she does actually include a chocolate and courgette cake recipe which sounds rather yummy. Though I have to admit the chocolate bit intrigues me more, maybe!

Despite having to circumnavigate many a touch of goats’ cheese there are many joys contained in these little purple covers – lamb’s lettuce salad with clementines and seared tuna, onion and cumin quiche, gratinéed chicken soup with pink peppercorns, soft boiled egg with artichoke soldiers, tuna and green apple mousse, pistachio pesto and cumin cheese puffs and I’m not even half way through.

But I must have been particularly inspired because instead of reverting to my old standby of scrambled eggs when faced with conjuring a meal from eggs, cream and Parma ham, I made an oeuf cocotte instead. Though naturally I eschewed the suggestion of cherry tomato halves and instead spooned a little double cream into my well buttered ramekin and topped with strips of Parma ham, some fabulously mustard seedy Y’Fenni Welsh cheese and carefully broke two golden yolked eggs on top of it all. The ramekin was placed in a loaf tin that I was using for a bain marie, half submerged in kettle boiled water and baked for 15 minutes. The mixture was perfectly translucent on removal from the oven and was finished with a dusting of finely chopped chives. If I hadn't had the thick double cream I could have substituted it for crème fraîche or soft cheese with garlic and chives. Clotilde suggests some crusty bread for dipping but I didn't have any to hand so just ate mine with a spoon. It was creamy, perfection and truly delicious. Scrambled egg, what scrambled egg?

I don’t think Clotilde is quite as ardent a fan of crockery as I am, though she mentions inheriting some shallow earthenware soup bowls from her boyfriend’s grandparents. My oeuf cocotte was beautifully cooked in my new Gordon Ramsay Royal Doulton ramekins that go magnificently with my other Gordon Royal Doulton more delicate pieces but have the added advantage of being oven proof, result! I think it may have made it taste even better!

I now can’t wait to dive into her book for more; each recipe has its own little story, a little daylight thrown on the magic, some background colour and/or an evocative memory. This is a lovely cookbook/memoir and I am really grateful I know so much more about the wonderful Clotilde, I will read her blog even more avidly now and hanker even more after her extremely covetable life. I am also very pleased that I have a cookbook that I can just about slip into my bag to drool over during the inevitable commuting to and from the city, as much as I love the coffee table tomes, they're hardly easy to slip into a quilted handbag for those moments. I know she's already nearing completion of her second book, so that's another treat in store for next year.

Eat her words, I don't mind if I do!

Pasta - as good as going out?

I adore making pasta and I probably just don't do it as much as I should due to a lack of a regular willing and hungry audience. It barely seems worth the event for a solo meal. The last few times I've cooked for D and MC I've toyed with making pasta but MC is really not keen and any chance I have to bring him round to the idea was quite possibly ruined by that shocking so called fine fresh pasta we had on New Year's Day. It was truly abominable and now I can't convince him to let me try to convert him. I mean how could ribbons of beautiful silky freshly made pasta with some crab or lobster be a bad thing? I would be a million miles away from that last misjudged foray into fresh pasta, honest!
When I saw this Creamy Horseradish & Salmon Open Ravioli in the Waitrose as Good as Going Out range, my interest was definitely piqued. Hmmm, horseradish has been a fairly recent passion, I blame Jeremy Lee. He's increased the dosage in my meals over the last couple of years until the pinnacle of horseradish-ness also known as his peppered steak last week had my eyes streaming and lips tingling. And whilst on the subject, I have to mention the finger licking good and utterly sublime and considerably more subtle horseradish sauce Gary Rhodes W1 served up with the smoked eel beignets. Gorgeous!
As it turns out the pasta was very nice but the horseradish perhaps a little too laid back for my new cravings, salmon has pleasing flavoursome chunks. The spinach was a little sombre and sludgy in appearance but tasted delicious stirred into the sauce. It wasn't the most attractive of dishes as it just kind of lays there, but then open ravioli does tend to be rather deconstructed. Was it as good as going out? I guess it depends where you go out to eat your pasta, I am sure Gennaro Contaldo would conjure up something infinitely superior and I also think I could if I was allowed. Luckily M is always a willing recipient and consumer of my pasta making hankerings so as a trip 'up North' beckons maybe it's time to dust off the Imperia again and whip up some new pasta-y treats. I know M that you've got some fabulous Black damask Manhattan plates we could eat it off?

Never mind the strawberries

This time of year it's all about strawberries. Everywhere I look I see either ten thing to do with a strawberry or statistics about strawberry consumption at Wimbledon (for the record - 28,000 kilos of the red English berries are snaffled by tennis fans over the fortnight), but as much as I like strawberries occasionally macerated in a tiny sprinkle of sugar and water for a few hours or with balsamic I think the dark exotica of a cherry is more compelling. I like the tangle of the stems you get though admittedly the stones can be a little trying. It seems that some of Waitrose's customers like to sample the cherries as they shop and just spit the stones out onto the floor or as I found out on Friday onto the last remaining Evening Standard - nice! But you can't blame cherries for that, just inconsiderate cherry consumers!
I also like it when the cherry blossom is out and a light breeze causes petals to flutter confetti like on you as you walk underneath. Apparently cherries are good for treating gout which I thought was a very Dickensian ailment until Giles Coren admitted such an afflication. Mayeb more cherries for you Giles.
Strawberries are so last year, let's hear it for the cherries.