Foto Friday # 38

Lot's of rubbish outside, but great Salt Beef inside ..... 

Cook the Books : Made in Italy Food & Stories - Spaghetti al Crudo

I made this and took the photos way back in June last year, before I went on that trip. I just forgot it was there until recently, but as it is a great dish I though I would share it with you all.

Since returning from Colombia back in March 2010, I haven’t had the same passion for cooking that I once had. No idea where it had gone. But it went somewhere. Maybe the one dimensional cooking style of Colombia zapped it out of me. But slowly it is coming back, so maybe I will put more recipes on here. That’s the idea anyhows. But we’ll see.

I know I am a good cook. I’m a crap photographer who had a crap camera. Now I have a good camera, which took a beating over those 10 weeks. As I took over 4000 pictures. At least 3500 of them were of hotels and the like. All very dull. Now I just have to name them all for work. No idea when I will get around to that. (It’s been 6 months since I returned and I still haven’t got round to it)

So back to the recipe. This is a great dish for those summer months, when tomato’s are at their juiciest and most favourable, which is what Italian food is all about. The quality of the ingredients. It is worth for this one dish to buy the best of everything.

The below recipe is from Giorgio Locatatelli’s book: Made in Italy Food & Stories. A truly great coffee table book, with lot’s of great stories and pictures. Some of the recipes are not even worth trying unless you have an army of chef’s to hand. But it is full of practical advice and good tips which you can use in everyday Italian cooking.

The many times I have eaten at Locanda Locatelli I have enjoyed the food and the ambiance of the restaurant, although the bill’s have been some of the highest I have paid for food in London, and always left with a feeling that I wanted more. Especially for the price you pay. Over priced. Maybe. Good food. Definitely.

So anyhows the recipe in the book calls for

2 Tbsp Capers

4 Tbsp Pitted Black Olives

5 Finely Chopped Anchovy fillets

2 Chopped Best Quality Tomatoes

2 Tbsp Tomato Passata

400g Spaghetti

Bunch of Basil

5 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

1. Put all the ingredients except the spaghetti, basil, ½ the olive oil and seasoning in to a pan.
2. Bring a large pan of water to the boil. Add salt and the pasta.
3. Whilst the pasta is cooking, put the sauté pan on top of the pasta pot, and let the steam gently warm those ingredients up a little.
4. When the pasta is cooked. Drain and reserve some of the cooking liquor.
5. Add the pasta to the sauté pan and mix through. Add some of the water to loosen if need be.
6. Add the rest of the oil and toss.
7. Season and then tear the bsil leaves. Add them and them toss again. Serve. Enjoy.

If you would like to buy the book you can here. Or sample some of Giorgio’s food here. But for sure try this recipe in the summer if you can. It’s worth it.

Sunday Roast @ The Royal Inn On The Park & The Pub on the Park

We are currently in the process of finding somewhere else to live. Not only are we paying too much for this place, but our landlady has decided to increase the rent once our contract exprires. Can’t blame her really, I’d do it also, but we don’t want to pay it. So we are moving.

We have been thinking about moving out further east for sometime now, mainly as the rents are cheaper, living is cheaper and it gives me another excuse to quit my job and look for another one. Now I can blame the distance, amongst other things.

So off to Victoria Park we tromped to look round a few houses that we just about had enough money for. Just. But they were all the same. Nice area, crap flats. Finding this a lot recently. So scrap Victoria Fields off the list. Phew. I did find the area a tad dull to be honest so I am not too unhappy that we won’t be moving there. Except that there is the Lauriston there. Which is part of the group that owns my own personal favourite pizza pub, the Regent in Islington. So all is not bad.

Whilst visiting the area one Sunday we decided to grab some food at the Royal Inn on the Park. I can only describe this as an old time boozer jazzed up into a gastro but still has the old time boozer feel about it.

I was half expecting to see the two old guys at the bar with their little Jack Russells standing over half empty glasses of bitter putting the world to rights. Maybe they have been scared off by the new clientele.

The menu for a Sunday was quite standard. Pork, beef, chicken, lamb and the token veggie dish, which I cannot remember what it was. It was that memorable.

I’d hate to be a veggie, as most places really do not cater to them. Most chefs scorn veggies like they are the scum of the earth and only under duress and pain of death put one option on the menu for this mutant breed of being.

I went for the lamb, and Lina had the chicken, well it was a poussin. Same same but different no.

They must have an experimental chef in the kitchen. As the poussin came with the bread sauce napped over the breast of the poussin. I had a most odd mint sauce. I’m still tying to figure out what those cubes were.

My lamb was well cooked, it never had a strong lamby flavour, so slightly disappointed in that. The poussin again was well cooked, nice and moist. The bread sauce was really well seasoned and creamy. Nice.

The veggies were ok. Nice carrots, broccoli (good to see on a roast menu) and courgettes (this I hope never to see again on the same plate as a roast). All were well cooked, seasoned and had a slight bite to them. Nice.

Potatoes were not as crispy as I like, but were floury and fluffy inside. The yorkie was small and a tad soggy. But it was hiding underneath both our meats. It needed to assert itself on this plate and be the star of the show. The gravy had a nice meaty flavour to it and was quite thick. A relief, plus as a bonus the plates were hot.

A good selection of beers and wines to be had here, good friendly staff, and if we did move here, which we are not, I’d be very happy to spend at least one Sunday a month eating a good solid roast with a few pints of real beer.

The next area on our list was London Fields. Who doesn’t want to live near to Broadway Market, and all those lovely people that frequent it every weekend. Well me for one, but the rents on the otherside of the park were cheap. With good reason as well. Crap areas and crap flats. The only good thing we found was the Pub on the Park. A really quality place.

We’d been told about this place after some friends of Linas got married and had their after vows drinks there. These I missed, but made up for it later at a different pub somewhere on a dodgy estate in Hackney.

We’d already eaten and were passing when some friends called us to meet up for a drink and some nosh. You really need to be lucky to find seats downstairs, when we arrived it was heaving. In fact it was more than heaving, there were people sharing seats it was that busy. We did however manage to find a small table that just became empty as we arrived. So the table for 3 now became a table for 5.

If you can, I’d recommend sitting downstairs. The vibe up above was a tad flat, mainly due to two children sleeping on the sofa and their parents giving everyone the evils if you spoke above a whisper. If you want your kids to sleep put them to bed in their beds, not in a pub. Grrrrrrr.

As we had eaten, we had to sit and endure the other three munching on their very good roast beef lunches. Even though I was full, I was tempted to order one for myself.

I never tasted any of the food, as the other three are non-sharers. But we were told it was delicious. The beef looked quite nice, quite thickly cut. Good mix of veg, and several (yes I say several) good size roasties. Nice looking Yorkshire pudding and it was crispy. Good amount of gravy and all this for less than a tenner. Not bad.

But for me the vibe made the place, shame we were apart from it upstairs and the mum with the evil eye.

As we are unlikely to be moving to or around London Fields, as the places we liked are out of our price range, which is a shame as we really like the area, even if some of its inhabitants are not to my taste.

Next stop South London.

Foto Friday # 37

A quality beer in a quality area. 

Sunday Roast @ Le Mercury

Le Mercury is a good, not too expensive place to go and get some nice nourishing food. What it isn’t, is a good place to go for a Sunday Roast.

The food was good, I mean it best Sunday Roast I’ve ever had, but it also wasn’t the worst Sunday Roast. That still sits with The Bull. Still having nightmares about that.

What really spoilt it was the vibe of the place. If I was pre or post theatre, or on an early date with a girl, then this is the perfect place. It’s all very dimly lit, candle lit, romantically lit type of place.

The service is a little more than you would expect in a place such as this. It’s all a bit formal. It’s all a bit pre or post theatre.

It’s not for a Sunday Roast.

Saying that, the roast wasn’t bad. Nice cut of well cooked, juicy beef. A bit tight on the roasties, but they were good none the less. Well cooked carrots and broccoli. Pretty tasty gravy. The plate was restaurant plated, not Sunday Roast plated.

It’s just the vibe that killed the roast. I’m not really into eating Sunday Roasts in the evening, although I’ve done it a few times recently and there is something about it, that isn’t right.

It’s not for a Sunday Roast.

I want to go back during the week, and have a romantically candle lit dinner with the wife, and I know we will enjoy it.

It’s just not for a Sunday Roast. 

Homemade Burgers

I love burgers. There is something about a mound of minced beef, seasoned and either grilled, bar-b-q’d or fried, then slapped between two bits of bread, sauced up and then biten into it. It’s heaven. Pure heaven.

I’ve never been a big fan of the burgers from a certain well known chain with a pedo looking clown as its marketing piece. I used to have nightmares about that.

I was surprised that in the states their burgers are exactly like those chains we despise so much. But after tasting burgers from the Shake Shack and the Burger Joint, I realized we are doing it all wrong.

We use way too many fillings, sauces etc over here. I mean who wants or needs their burger dripping with some concoction of a sauce. That’s for ribs, not burgers. I want to be able to taste the meat, not swim to get a bite out of it.

I used to have to make the burgers for a while at Café Boheme. They were piss easy to do, and it’s still the way I make them today at home.

1. Take minced beef
2. Season with salt and pepper
3. Weigh out to 150g
4. Mould into a burger shape. We used to do this with a lid from a large jar of black peppercorns
5. Cover and pop in the fridge for a while to set
6. Cook on the griddle until done. Medium rare is my preferred doneness
7. Pop between a toasted bun, pop in some sliced onion, a slice of tomato and enjoy

Sometimes now, I may add an extra seasoning like cumin powder or merquen (Chilean smoked pepper flakes), but that is generally about it. My mince normally comes pre ground from either HG Walter by Barons Court tube or the Ginger Pig. Both sell excellent meat, so I’ve never needed to experiment with buying different cuts of meat and then grinding it yourself. It would be interesting to try that though.

As I do not have a griddle, I am using a large frying pan to cook the burgers. It works very well. Just need to remember two things. Let it get smoking hot, and only oil the burger not the pan.

I cook them for a time on one side until they self-release, then flip them over and add a slice of cheese to the top, and as it finishes cooking the cheese slowly melts over the burger. I then pop it under the grill to melt a tad more then whack it between two buns.

The toppings all depend on how organized I am. Which at the moment is pretty much none of the time. But these could range form a slice of tomato and some onion. I like to sweat off onion slices until they are soft and starting to take on some colour, then I whack up the heat and fry them until they are a dark brown colour. Man they taste good on a burger.

Burgers done this way may not look like gourmet burger but they will taste a 100 times better than a certain kiwi chain I know of.

Happy eating. 

Birthday Treats @ Moro

It has been so long since we were last at Moro’s, it really is quite sad indeed. When we first went there, it still had a big reputation of being full of tosser media types, and it was pretty full of those types back then.

Nowadays it doesn’t seem to attract those twats as it used to, although there were a few in when we arrived.

Everything else about Moro was just how we remembered it, from the warm welcome to the buzzy vibe, to the great food and that great kitchen. How I always wanted to work in there.

I really cannot understand why it has taken us over 5 years to return to Moro. I know it will not be as long before we return, but I’m pretty sure we said that last time.

I brought the first Moro cookbook when it came out, and have been regularly cooked from it for many a year now. Although I kinda prefer some of the recipes from Claudia Rodens Middle Eastern book. They have been cooked over many generations and have a long tradition. Moro’s recipes are modern and chic, just like the restaurant.

I wasn’t that hungry when we came to ordering, as we’d been house hunting in Herne Hill, and had a pretty good late breakfast in a small café near to the station, plus I wanted to save some room for the pud, so I passed on the starter.

Lina however was pretty keen to get stuck in. She was very glad that the dish she had the last time, which still haunts her even today. Scrambled egg and prawns was not on the menu.

This time she opted for a dish of mojama and wilted spinach. Mojama is dry cured loin of tuna, which is normally sliced very thinly and served with almonds and olive oil as a tapas snack in Madrid bars. Well that’s how I’ve had it before. Moro served it with some warm wilted spinach drenched in lush olive oil.

The mojama was not as dry as I remembered it, it had a slight tuna taste to it, but was as silky as the texture. A lovely starter, shame I wasn’t allowed but a few mouthfuls. But at £8.50, I wouldn’t have given her much either.

Our mains were wood roasted chicken with stuffed cabbage leaves and seasoned yoghurt, and the wood roasted seabass with cabbage puree and piquillo peppers cooked in white wine. Now that’s a mouthful.

My chicken was perfectly cooked, still very moist and not dried out, but it did lack any hint of being wood roasted. The cabbage leaves were stuffed with a lentil and rice pilaf, they were well cooked and well seasoned. The yoghurt dressing was nice and light and not too thin. A very easy dish to conjure up back home, but what sets Moro apart is the quality of the cooking.

From what I remembered of the Seabass (I was too involved in my chicken) was that it was again well cooked and well seasoned. The piquillo peppers were cut into slithers and were a treat indeed. I do love these small sweet spicy red angels. But I was blown away by the cabbage puree. Such a great cabbage taste, but yet so smooth and velvety. Wow. That would work well with a Sunday roast.

We shared the yoghurt cake with pistachios and pomegranate. This is how I remember yoghurt cake form the Middle East, with the added goodness of pistachios and pomegranate seeds on top, it was a great way to end a great meal.

The strangest thing is that the bill including service came to £88.88p. A most certain lucky bill. One I was happy to pay. It was a shame that our lottery numbers were not that lucky that night, or the fact that I got a bit of a roasting come Monday morning at work. It looks my good fortune was confined to a few hours on a Saturday night in a great restaurant on Exmouth Market.

Pho @ Mien Tay

We were disappointed with Mien Tay. It has all the hallmarks of being a great place. Nice, small, friendly restaurant, being busy when others around it were empty. But sometimes looks can be deceiving.

I have to say however that the food wasn’t the worst I have ever eaten. I mean its Pho was nowhere as bad as that chain of the same name, then again who would serve a lukewarm broth with under cooked noodles. Utter disgrace. Once bitten, twice keep hand in wallet.

So on a cold Sunday afternoon, we found ourselves sitting inside a nice warm and fairly busy Mien Tay. There was a nice vibe inside, with lots of people chatting and tucking into some nice looking food.

The menu reads as it should do. Lot’s of good Vietnamese staples on there, of the Vietnamese kind. Which is a blessing these days, as I keep coming across Vietnamese restaurants of the Chinese kind, or are they Chinese restaurants with a beef noodle soup on the menu. Marketing.

To get things going, we ordered some Salad rolls. You kinda know how the rest of the meal is going to be after tucking into a staple of any Vietnamese gaff. They were not bad. A little too fat and stumpy, but with the peanut sauce they were tasty. So far so good.

Next up really should be the star of any show in any Vietnamese restaurant are the Pho’s. So we ordered one beef and one chicken.

The Pho’s, which were well made, and had all the right accompaniments, but were just a little underwhelming. There was not that roasted spice depth of flavour that you come to expect from a good Pho. The stock was the problem. I’m guessing they can’t either make a good stock, or they had watered it down a bit to get more out of it. Either way, bloody disappointing.

But as it was near arctic temperatures outside, the Pho did warm us up and supply some well needed nourishment and soul boosting energy for the trip back outside. Damn it was a cold Sunday.

I kinda wish we had tried the fried fish, as everyone around us was eating it and enjoying it. Maybe that is their star. Not sure if there will be a next time, but if there is, then maybe.

Foto Friday # 36

A sign in the window of a pretty good noodle joint in Surabaya. Shame there was no pork on the menu, otherwise it would have been a whole lot better.

Cook the Books : Sichuan Cookery - Hot and Numbing Chicken Slices

I am a big fan of Fuchsia Dunlop. You have to hand it to her, not many people would not only learn how to cook in the Sichuan way, but also learn the language so she could learn how to cook in the Sichuan. Amazing.

I’ve had her book “Sichuan Cookery” for a few years now, and am slowly (too slowly if you ask me) working my way though it.

The food of Sichuan has hooked me, I think it’s something to do with those peppers, they don’t attack you full on, but slowly oh so slowly they work their wonderful magic upon you, and instead of burning your mouth, they numb it. But in a fresh way, not a painful way. Well I do not find it painful, I enjoy the sensation.

I recently made a “master sauce”. It’s three weeks old now, so it will take many more months and uses for it to become how I want it. So after poaching a chicken in it, I let the chicken cool down, then sliced the meat very thinly, as I was a twitching to make this recipe again.

It’s great as a snack or part of an appetizer for dinner with friends. I did however forget to buy the spring onions, they add a good textural addition to the dish.

Hot and Numbing Chicken Slices by Fuchsia Dunlop

300g Cold cooked Chicken meat

4 Spring onions, white part only (if using)

4 tsp White sugar

2 tbsp Light Soy Sauce

2 – 4 Tbsp Chilli oil

1 tsp Sesame oil

½ tsp Ground roasted Sichuan peppercorns

1. Cut the chicken into thin slices
2. Thinly slice the spring onions on the diagonal
3. In a bowl, add the sugar, then the soy sauce. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Add the oils and stir.
4. Place the spring onion and chicken slices on a plate.
5. Sprinkle over the ground Sichuan pepper. Drizzle the sauce over the chicken and onion slices.
6. Mix the chicken in with the sauce so every part is covered.
7. Eat and enjoy.

Sichuan Cookery by Fuchsia Dunlop - Buy Here