March 9th, 2010
I found myself wandering around Bicester Village last Saturday, at loss as to where to keep myself occupied among all the posh outlets, the likes of Vivienne Westwood, Jimmy Choos and Alexander McQueen. I’m not the world’s greatest shopper, unless there is something involving food, wine or books on the agenda. Or cooking gear. I really love my pots and pans.
Then, in the distance, glimmering like the promised land I saw a sign emblazoned with “Le Creuset”. In a retail outlet park (albeit disguised as an Oxfordshire village built by the Asda architect) no less. Rubbing my hands with glee I ambled in to marvel at the wonders within. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: eggs
Posted in Eating in | 2 Comments »
March 8th, 2010
This is the rest of the the meal I cooked for Where’s My Pork Chop. And this is where, in the time honoured fashion of all young *cough* heroes *cough cough* on their quest for: the holy grail/the destruction of The Ring/their Shadow/cook a half decent meal, I hit a bump in the road. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: aubergine, dates, honey, lamb
Posted in Eating in | No Comments »
March 4th, 2010
And breathe… My nerves have just settled after submitting a meal to Food Urchin’s Where’s my Pork Chop challenge, now comes the seemingly endless wait to see what the outcome is. Will he like it? Is it too bland? Too spicy?
Happily, whatever the food’s like, it was a real pleasure to meet and chat to FU over a St Peter’s Honey Porter and burger in The Jerusalem Tavern. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: apricots, dessert, levantine, pistachio, WMPC, yoghurt
Posted in Eating in | 2 Comments »
March 2nd, 2010
I first discovered tagines on a short trip to Marrakech and I was immediately entranced by their full frontal flavours and the combination of sticky sweet dried fruit and slow cooked tender meat. It was a revelation – fruit and meat? It was like having pudding and a main course all at once, and you can’t go wrong with that. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: chicken, levantine, Moroccan, onions, shallots, tagine
Posted in Eating in | 2 Comments »
February 28th, 2010
88 St. John Street, London, EC1M 4EH, 020 7253 6950, www.portalrestaurant.co.uk
I have to confess, I didn’t really know what Portuguese cuisine consisted of, bar sardines and bacalhau (salt cod). I thought maybe it might be a bit like Spanish, but then, isn’t that like saying Italian food is a bit like French? Sure, they share a border but so do many places with quite distinct cuisines. I do know that Portgal has always looked outwards rather than to its bigger neighbour. And it’s thanks to Vasco de Gama and his ilk that SE Asia and the Indian subcontinent have chilli, so it can’t be all bad.
Portal has had great word-of-mouth reviews and I suspected that the menu probably included bacalfau and sardines somewhere (gross stereotyping – moi?). Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Portuguese, restaurant
Posted in Eating out | 8 Comments »
February 24th, 2010
No-place does vegetarian food like the South Asian subcontinent. I’ve had very good vegetarian Italian, Japanese, Thai and for want of a better name, fusion food. But nowhere, and I mean no-where, that I’ve come across takes vegetarian based cooking so seriously and has such a breadth of veggie food. It’s my go-to cuisine when i’m in need of a serious green (or orange, yellow, red etc) flesh-free hit. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: curry, potato, South Asian, spice, tomato, vegetarian, yoghurt
Posted in Eating in | 3 Comments »
February 22nd, 2010
Man, am I in the mood for Japanese. After an artery-clogging, liver-straining, too-short trip to the seaside (no reception, no wifi, lots of bliss) my body needs a few days of no-fat, simple, cleansing and otherwise healthy but flavourful food. It needs this because, quite frankley, I ate an obscene amount of meat. Not quite up to the baccenalian levels of Blokes eat Beef, but still far too much, especially when you added in pints of Sharp’s seasonal Winter beer.
In a bid to salvage what I can from the satiated wreck of my body, I’ve decided to cast aside meat and booze for the next few days. And if there’s a cuisine more suited to detoxification than Japanese, I’ve yet to see it. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Japanese, mackerel, miso, pak choi, sesame, squash
Posted in Eating in | No Comments »
February 17th, 2010
88 Middlesex St, London E1 7EZ
Rule number one when you eat somewhere new and unfamiliar: Don’t be timid. I know this rule. I live by this rule. This rule defines much of my eating and travelling experience. So why (Why? WHY?!) was I timid when visiting My Old Place. Half the dishes we had were bold as brass, exciting and new to me. The other half weren’t anything out of the ordinary in terms of culinary mind expansion.
That’s not to say they were bad, quite the opposite. They were well cooked and refreshingly simple in many respects. But after watching dish after dish of deep red chilli laden food waft by, I was suffering from a bad case food envy. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Chinese, Sichuan
Posted in Eating out | 4 Comments »
February 15th, 2010
The thing about cooking curries, tagines and other big pot dishes, particularly if there are only one or two people eating, is that there is a minimum amount that you can realistically make. So I often – with varying degrees of success – have to find other uses for those bits and bobs. This is particularly true of Thai curry pastes. They act as a kind of counterbalance to the law of diminishing returns, in that past a certain point, the less you make, the more effort you have to put in to get good results. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: chicken, curry, Thai
Posted in Eating in | 5 Comments »
February 12th, 2010
Beetroots aren’t something I’ve ever really got to grips with. I used to eat those pickled ones as a kid, and they were tasty enough, but they had the downside of tinging your wee a disconcerting red. Something that panicked me when I first noticed it aged about seven. It wasn’t until much later when the red root started appearing on a few restaurant menus, in veggie crisps and at foodie friends houses, that I started to think about it as something other than a slightly squishy sweet-sharp ball that came vacuum packed from Tesco.
What really opened my eyes, after a few desultory attempts to roast it, was when somebody served a beetroot and chocolate cake. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: beetroot, hummus, tahini, walnut
Posted in Eating in | 15 Comments »
