February | 2010 | The grub worm

Portal: prime Portuguese

Posted on 28 February 2010 by The Grubworm

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?). Continue reading →

Potato & chickpea curry, tomato cachumber and raita

Posted on 24 February 2010 by The Grubworm

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. Continue reading →

Miso mackerel, sesame glazed squash and steamed pak choi

Posted on 22 February 2010 by The Grubworm

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. Continue reading →

My Old Place

Posted on 17 February 2010 by The Grubworm

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. Continue reading →

Thai dry red chicken curry

Posted on 15 February 2010 by The Grubworm

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. Continue reading →

Beetroot hummus

Posted on 12 February 2010 by The Grubworm

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. Continue reading →

Beef Panaeng, prawn cakes and garlicy greens

Posted on 8 February 2010 by The Grubworm

I woke up on Sunday with a hankering for something fragrant, spicy and defiantly Thai. Not Chinese, not Japanese, Italian or Turkish. Not even Vietnamese. It had to be Thai. There’s something so comforting and yet explosive about the delicately balanced flavours and textures you get in a Thai meal. The heat, the sweetness and wonderful, dark, deep pungency. I love it. Continue reading →

The Gunmakers (again)

Posted on 6 February 2010 by The Grubworm

No photo this time, mostly because I was too busy cramming food into my mouth to actually take my camera out. By the time I thought about it, it was too late, the table was a wasteland of chewed bones strewn across empty plates and pint glasses containing only dregs.

Now, I know I’ve raved about The Gunmakers here and on Twitter before, but that’s always been about the beer and atmosphere. The only non-liquid to pass my lips has been a few chips. This time was different. This time I took some friends for lunch. And because I had bigged it up so much, I was really hoping it’d deliver… Continue reading →

Chorizo, prawn and saffron risotto

Posted on 3 February 2010 by The Grubworm

I love paella, risotto, and jambalya – all products of very different cuisines, but all equally as wonderfully ricey, gooey and savoury. Ideal for a winter’s night. This dish has something of all of them about it. It’s closest to a risotto and uses Arborio rice for the base because it gives such a creamy-with-bite finish. But the mix of spicy sausage and prawns with chilli is definitely creole influenced and the chorizo and saffron give it a Spanish flavour as well. It probably fits in most comfortably with the New Orleans crucible of Spanish, African, French and Native American influenced cuisine. Continue reading →

My feel-better lamb meatballs

Posted on 2 February 2010 by The Grubworm

Sunday and Monday were not well days for me. In the firm belief that good food will make me feel mentally, if not physically, better I felt the need for something nourishing. Something to banish the illness, if only temporarily. And, since reading this post from Jen of TomEatsJenCooks, I’ve had meatballs circulating my brain like some irritatingly catchy pop-lite song, except meatballs aren’t irritating with a catchy hook. But they’re definitely not going to go away until I scratch this particular itch.

Because i’m feeling so crappy, I’m not going to leave the house and will make do with what I have. Happily, what I have is minced lamb, onions and coriander. Continue reading →