Fava - Yellow Split Pea Soup

Little family traditions are very important to me and, I imagine, to most people. In my family most of these traditions revolve around food: the vast family Sunday meals, with the political discussions in the background of the heavenly food, the fresh fruit arriving with my parents in the afternoons (on market days) in the summer, sharing the brownie with my husband at the end of a long day etc. One of these traditions is also eating pulse on Fridays - remnant of religious traditions, I believe... These recipes are great for vegetarian/vegan meals and fantastic for sharing with lots of people. Specifically this time I cooked fava.

Confusingly, the term 'fava' in most countries means broad beans, but in Greece is a specific type of yellow split peas. I am not sure whether you can get this variety of yellow split pea in the UK, but it is slightly different to the one found in the UK. It is actually more 'split' or 'broken' than the stuff found here, but having used both (I often bring a kilo back with me from Greece) the flavour is very similar, though the texture does differ. The Greek variety seems to disintegrate more, creating a smoother soup, almost like a dip, but if you cook the variety found in the UK for a little longer, or blitz at the end of cooking, you will get a similar result. If you can somehow get your hands on fava from Santorini, then you are in for a treat, as it is world-renowned to be some of the best!

You can cook this as a starter or as a main, serve warm or cold. There are also different schools of thought in regards to how thick or loose the soup should be. I prefer it loose enough to be called a soup, but thick enough to not look like there is excess liquid in it - if that makes sense...

Serves 2 (as a main)

250g dried fava (yellow split peas)
4 spring onions or one small red onion
olive oil
1 lemon
salt
pepper

In Greece the fava is often sold loose out of big bags and therefore you have to sift your way through for any potential stones etc. If you are sure there are none, then don't bother! Wash the fava under cold running water, thoroughly. Put in a heavy base pan and cover with water - water should cover the fava by about 1-2 centimeters. Put on a medium heat and bring to the boil. Once at that point, reduce the heat to simmering and scoop any 'dirt' from the surface of the water and discard. Keep your eye on it for 30 minutes, adding water if necessary, not letting it boil, removing any other 'dirt' and stir occasionally so that the bottom does not burn. After 30 minutes check the consistency and add water if too thick, or boil a little harder while stirring to make it thicker. The fava should be completely soft - not al dente. Add salt and pepper and serve with a drizzle of olive oil and a good squeeze of lemon. Chop the onions and sprinkle on top. Bread is always a good accompaniment.

PS. Once, a good friend of mine took us out for a fantastic Italian meal in Paris (yes, I am aware its the wrong country, but that's what happened!) and I had a pureed chickpea soup with beautifully cooked whole langoustines in it. Fava would also lend itself to nice langoustines or prawns, if you feel like a treat. In that case, I would leave the onions out!

Maltby Street Market

Since having a baby, we have found ourselves getting up and about much earlier than we would often wish to, especially on a Saturday morning. Sometimes we try to ignore this fact and insist on trying to get the extra sleep, although these attempts are usually futile. Other days we decide on being more constructive. Today was one of them. We thought we would give Maltby Street Market a go (a market that has been offering a home to some of the stalls that Borough Market has decided to evict). It also shares some of the shops/stalls as Borough Market, but in a much less chaotic or touristy environment (we tried Borough Market once with the little one in the sling and I spent the whole time trying to protect her from people bumping into us!).

One of the places they share with Borough Market is Monmouth Coffee. The coffee there is always of a decent quality, but I do feel they have become a bit of a victim of their own success: the coffee making is often rushed and lacks in depth of flavour and any hints of treacly or caramel notes, that good coffee often has. In any case, it is not bad and the environment they offer is friendly with interesting interiors.

 

 

Maltby Street Market is based around Maltby Street (obviously) in Bermondsey. It is fairly spread out and you need to know what you are looking for and where to go for it, but it is all part of the fun and adds to the sense of adventure - I need to spend more time out, don't I? Plenty of great places for cheese, veg, coffee, bread and meat are to be found! For us the most exciting bit of the market is the St. John's bakery. They bake all their produce there on site and it looks and taste scrumptious! They sell brownies, their famous eccles cakes and the most delicious custard doughnuts - the custard is so light and creamy, jewelled with specs of vanilla. They also do a variety of breads - I have not tried them yet, but I shall be sampling some tomorrow with some goats cheese from the market.

 We were also very pleasantly surprised by the Topolski stall. A huge variety of polish sausage, pickles and horseradish (the horseradish with beetroot is delicious!). The sausages are all great quality and the flavours great; sausage flavoured with juniper or marjoram or caraway seed, traditional smokey polish sausage etc. It is hard to believe that pickles could ever be exciting, but they had a sour and a sweet variety and they were both very tasty.

Sharing the warehouse space with Topolski is KaseSwiss and their delicious oatcakes. They also sell cheese - as the name might imply! The oatcakes were freshly prepared for us and filled with cheese and onion. The flavour was fantastic and surprised us both. It was rich from the cheese filling and earthy from the oats - sourced from the Hophurst farm. Frying the oatcakes in butter had also given it a delicious nutty quality - needless to say we both thoroughly enjoyed our first warm oatcake experience!

Maltby Street can offer you a fun Saturday morning - especially if you are in need of inspiration for your weekend meals. I do strongly recomend you get there early if you want to get any of the decent stuff though!

Good Cookbooks - Bad Cookbooks

Yesterday I was doing some baking - helping a friend with a bakesale. I decided not to be too adventurous with a new baby and all and thought I would do some brownies. I mean, you can't really go wrong with brownies...Or can you? I usually make them following the 'Chocolate' cookbook, by Linda Collister. They always work, though they are a little drier than I like my brownies to be - there is a whole debate on whether brownies should be dry or gooey, crunchy on top, or not etc! I prefer them to be fairly gooey and so thought I might try another recipe. So I went to my decently stocked cookbook bookshelves (it is obviously separate to the 'other' books bookshelves!) and picked the most exciting looking one for brownies - The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. Their cupcakes I have bought in their shops are always great and that was the best red velvet cake I have ever had!

To be honest, I am not sure why I decided this was a good idea - we had tried making the red velvet cupcakes from this book and they didn't work out very nice at all: they tasted very bitter. In fact since the book was first published, a few corrections have been issued for some of the recipes... In any case, I thought this recipe looked good enough and gooyer than Linda Collister's, so I went for it.

The mixture didn't look quite right, even as I poured it in the baking dish - it almost looked split... I put it in the oven and took my patient - till that point - daughter for her nap. I checked on them 30 minutes later, as the recipe suggested and they looked done and maybe slightly over. I took them out and let them cool, before I tried to cut them into pieces for the bakesale. They crumbled... One batch wasted! They tasted fine, but they were very sticky in texture, almost caramel-like. They definitely were not very gooey and I also found them a little too sweet.

I normally don't complain about recipes... I usually alter them slightly anyway, so if they fail, I only have myself to blame... But this time, I really made an effort. I wanted them to be perfect and stuck to the recipe exactly! I just found it so disappointing, really. And it made me want to have a rant about cookbooks with recipes that just don't work! Nigel Slater's recipes work, Leith's recipes mostly work (those scones are my nemesis!) and my mother's cookbook recipes work (she tested the recipes enough!), but the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, does not seem to have very success-prone recipes! I guess a good bakery does not necessarily make a good cookbook... Just thought I would give you a heads up! End of rant! x

Steak and chips

We hadn't had meat for ages, so when I went to the butcher last week, I ordered two of my favourite cuts of beef: cheeks (hence the previous recipe) and onglet steak (otherwise known as hanger steak, a fairly cheap cut, with lots of flavour). When I went to pick it up, I was given skirt steak instead (they insisted it was the same as onglet, but its not!). In any case, both can be cooked the same way and are similar in flavour and texture. Another similar cut is flank steak (bavette). So any of these would be fine: they all offer a cheaper alternative to the mainstream steaks, have tons of flavour and can be fairly tender if cooked medium to medium-rare.

I decided I would keep the steak for Sunday and treat my husband to a nice 'Father's Day' meal, along with home made chips (he perfected a recipe while we were still students) and some home-made coleslaw. In fact, aside for some prep for the potatoes, it is a pretty quick meal and it does taste absolutely great!

Serves 2

500 g of meat (onglet, bavette or skirt steak)
500 g potatoes, chopped into 1cm thick strips
half a cabbage (red or white, but not savoy)
3-4 medium carrots
salad cream
mayonnaise
salt
pepper
olive oil

Put the strips of potato in a pan of cold water and bring to the boil. Allow to boil for 5 minutes, then drain and set aside to dry off. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. In the meantime, chop the cabbage and the carrots in thin slices and mix with a ratio of 4 quantities of salad cream to 1 quantity of mayo (for a lower fat content you can replace the mayo for Greek yoghurt). The amount will depend on how wet or dry you like your coleslaw - I like mine fairly dry. Pour a generous amount of olive oil into an oven tray (should be enough to just about cover the tray in a thin layer) and put the tray in the oven to heat the oil for 5 minutes. Once heated, add the potato slices, salt and pepper and return in the oven for 20 minutes - turning over half way through cooking. Preheat a frying pan till very hot. Cover the steak with olive oil and salt and pepper, then add to the hot pan. Sear on each side for 3 minutes, then lower the heat to medium and cook for 5 minutes on each side for a medium (fairly bloody) steak. Allow to rest for at least 5 minutes, while you plate up the rest of the ingredients, then carve and serve the steak.

Ox Cheek Ragu

Studying Architecture meant that I had to live as a poor student for a number of years, which, in turn, meant that I spent years trying to source cheap ingredients to fill my stomach. In fairness, for the first year or so the cheap ingredients involved sharing the Sainsbury's chicken lasagna with friends or camping in the Chinese eat-all-you-want buffet restaurant. It really is no wonder that I put on weight the moment I set foot on this island.

When I moved to Oxford with my husband a few years ago, my pallet had been trained for a few years, and I was now shopping at the butchers, green-grocers as well as Sainsbury's for my cheap ingredients! On one of my trips to the butchers (M. Feller Son & Daughter) I asked about some of their cheaper cuts, instead of just getting mince every time. She recommended the ox cheek and suggested I slow-cook it in the oven. That afternoon I went home, chopped some onions, added the ox cheek, some spices, water and tomato and cooked it in the oven for 2 hours or so. It came out a treat! Ever since I have been cooking this recipe fairly regularly - with minor alterations, depending on moods and ingredients - and it is always a success.

Serves 2 very hungry people or 4 people with normal appetites

600 g ox cheek (2 cheeks approx)
1 large onion, finely chopped
200 ml of water OR red wine OR stock (depending on how rich you want the sauce) - I used wine this time
350 ml tomato passata
1 bay leaf
1 stick of cinnamon
salt
pepper
handful of finely chopped parsley

Cut the ox cheek in 3cm cubes and add to an oven proof casserole dish along with the chopped onion. Pour over the 200ml of water/wine/stock, add the bay leaf, cinnamon stick, salt and pepper and put in a low temperature oven (150 degrees) for one hour. After that take out of the oven, add the tomato passata and return to the oven for a further hour and a half to two hours. Finally remove from the oven, take the pieces of meat out of the sauce and shred (they should be so tender that they fall apart). Once shredded return to the sauce and add the chopped parsley. You can serve with pasta as a sauce or use as a base for cottage pie. If it is your first taste of ox cheek I am pretty sure you will be converted! x

Macaroni Cheese

I just realised that, yet again, I have cooked something with cheese! This is mainly because I tend to make an effort to use up all the ingredients in the fridge. And today it was time for the Stilton. I always use blue cheese for my Macaroni Cheese. I think it works really well; salty, spicy blue cheese, with velvety, creamy sauce and filling pasta.

This dish can easily be done with other cheese (Cheddar, Gruyere etc), but if you use something other than Stilton, add some mustard for some spice and to cut through the richness of the cheese. I also love using mushrooms in this - they add texture and really work with the Stilton. Anyway, here follows the recipe - I seem to be unable to babble today, I am too exhausted from Missy's latest growth spurt/ teething or whatever this is...Babies are a mystery!

Serves 2

250 g pasta (rigatoni, penne or macaroni)
200 g mushrooms
150 g Stilton or other strong cheese
40 g butter
30 g flour
300ml milk
pepper
handful of walnuts

Boil pasta till just under the al dente point. In the meantime fry off the mushrooms in 10g of butter till soft and put aside. Melt the rest of the butter on a low heat and add the flour. Mix together thoroughly and allow for the flour to cook out a little. Then add the milk slowly till you get a loose white sauce. Add the crumbled Stilton and the mushrooms (along with their juices) and grind some pepper. Mix the pasta with the sauce and put in an oven-proof dish. Chop the walnuts finely and add on top to create a 'breadcrumb' effect crust. Cook in a preheated oven (180 degrees) for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown and bubbling. Yumilicious!

Avga me Ntomata - Eggs 'Poached' In Tomato sauce

This is a family classic. My nona (in Kefalonia we call grandmothers nona, from the Italian influence on the island) cooks this for the whole family every summer and we all love it! I think its because its so simple, but so delicious! Obviously in Kefalonia we use fresh tomatoes, full of rich, sweet flavour, free range eggs, fantastic local feta and freshly baked bread to dip in. But having made it as a student in the UK for plenty of friends, I can say, with some certainty, that even with basic, budget ingredients it can still taste delicious!

The one ingredient I find does make a difference is the feta. Now, this is a big issue for me: You can't seem to get good feta in the UK! At least not at supermarkets... Feta should be a SALTY cheese, but the feta available in the UK seems to just be sour... I don't understand why this is, as most of the feta available is actually produced by Greek dairy companies! In any case, seeing as I still have not been able to source any good feta myself (please let me know if you have any suggestions!), I cannot make any recommendations. What I can say is this: taste the feta before hand. If you find it is fairly sour and not that salty, add some salt to the dish!

Serves 4

1 kilo of tomatoes (passata or fresh sieved)
10-12 eggs (2-3 per person)
100 g of feta, crumbled into small pieces
4 pureed garlic cloves
4 tbs olive oil
pepper

Add the tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and pepper to a frying pan and heat slowly till its simmering. When the sauce begins to thicken (if using fresh tomatoes, this takes longer than if using passata), add in the crumbled feta. Once the feta has melted, make wells in the sauce and break an egg into each. Cook gently until the eggs have set. I find that covering the pan, allows for more even cooking. If you like your yolk soft, keep an eye on the eggs, as they can cook quite suddenly! Serve with some fresh bread, to dunk into the sauce and make sure you mop up any sauce left on the plate!

I apologise for the pictures. Its not the best, but please trust me, when I say it tastes delicious. My eggs don't seem to be photogenic - I blame the photographer... :)

Grilled Stilton Salad

I know I have probably mentioned this before, but I love cheese! In fact, monitoring my cheese intake during pregnancy (by the way, I am still unclear as to what cheeses are allowed and what are not during pregnancy) was one of the hardest things I have had to do! And yes, I know how sad that sounds...

Anyway, this is a very easy and light-ish meal that you can be eating within 10 minutes of opening your fridge to get the Stilton out. I usually make it with fresh figs, but as they are not yet in season, I substituted them with dried prunes.

Serves 2

100 g Stilton
4 slices of bread
16 (give or take!) dried pitted prunes (to make them a little juicier, leave them in a bowl with water for 10 minutes to plump up)
10 halves of walnuts - chopped
mixed salad leaves
a drizzle of vinaigrette (mix equal amounts of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, a smidgen of mustard, salt and pepper)

Crumble the Stilton over the bread and grill until melted. In the meantime mix the salad leaves, walnuts and prunes and drizzle with the vinaigrette. Crumble some more Stilton on top if you like. Top with the toasted bread and enjoy with a nice glass of wine.

Roast Belly of Pork

When I first moved to the UK I didn't eat much meat at all! I just wasn't a great fan of the taste, especially lamb and pork. I couldn't go near the stuff! When I was young my mum used to do roast lamb as a treat for my brothers (they loved it!) and I remember having to hold my nose, because even the smell made me feel weird! I also remember going to parties where they used to have burgers from McDonald's or, even better, Goodies (the Greek equivalent) and I couldn't eat the burgers, even though I loved the idea of them! What a strange child I was...

So when I came to the UK and met my meat-eating boyfriend (now husband) it took a few years of training me to start eating meat again. I first conquered my 'fear' of beef, then lamb (shanks braised slowly, served with mint sauce) and finally pork. Pork was the hardest, but I remember going to taste of London in 2008 and trying the spit roast middle of pork from Le Cafe Anglais and the infamous Pigs Trotters dish at the Trinity stand. I fell in love with it! So much so, that now if I order meat at a restaurant, it will, most frequently, be pork!

I love cooking pork belly (and its a cheap cut, so its good on your wallet too). It took a few goes to get it right, but I think I 've now got there. I always ask the butcher to score it for me, as I never used to have sharp enough knives - though that is no longer a problem. It really helps with getting good crackling! Of course getting decent quality meat also helps. Lets support our local butchers! :)

 

Serves 4

1 kilo of pork belly
2 onions
1 tbs of dried fennel seeds
salt
pepper
2 tbs clear honey
2 tbs soy sauce

Preheat the oven at 180 (fan oven) and season the pork on both sides with salt and pepper. Rub in the fennel seeds on the fat side of the pork - make sure they go between the scores of the skin. Chop the onions in half and put them in a baking tray, then place the belly of pork on top (fat side up). Put in the oven for 30 minutes, then take the temperature down to 150 and cook for a further hour. Then take out of the oven and remove the crackling from the rest of the pork. Put the crackling aside. Mix the soy sauce with the honey and drizzle over the pork belly. Put back in the oven for a further 20-30 minutes. Once you remove from the oven, let the belly rest and return the crackling to the oven at 200 for another 20 minutes. That should give you a beautifully crispy and light crackling. Carve the pork, smash the crackling in shards and serve with boiled potatoes and greens/salad.


I really do hope this works for you, because it works for me every time and is delicious. Don't forget to put the glazed onions on the side of the plate too. As we say in Greece: Kali Oreksi! 

Prawn Pasta

I apologise for the lack of recipes in the last week or so. I have been struggling a little with Missy's sleeping patterns and some screaming. We are slowly on the road to recovery (I hope!!), but it has been a hard couple of weeks!

I have, of course, been cooking and eating for the last few days, but I have not been taking any pictures, nor particularly logging what I have been having, except for this pasta dish. Needless to say that 90% of what we have been having has been prepared in less than 30 minutes - especially as that is all I had before she would wake up again!

Serves 2

250 g of pasta (spaghetti)
100 g of prawns (I used raw frozen ones)
5 chopped tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/4 tsp of chili flakes, or 1 mild fresh chili, chopped
salt
pepper
olive oil (1tbs)

Pour the olive oil in the pan and add the garlic. Allow to cook for 1-2 minutes, till starting to sizzle a little, then add the chili and the chopped tomatoes and lower the heat to medium. Allow to cook down for 10 minutes (Don't let it cook too fast, so lower heat if necessary). In the meantime, put the pasta in boiling salted water. If using frozen prawns, add to the sauce 6 minutes before the pasta is ready. If using fresh prawns, add 2-3 minutes before the pasta is ready. Once the pasta is al dente, add to the sauce and cook for a further minute, while mixing thoroughly. Add salt and pepper according to taste.

Weaning

This post will not be of great interest to most readers. But I did start this blog with the view that it would be aimed at ALL members of the family, and babies need to eat too! So I apologise in advance that this is not going to be a fantastic roast beef recipe, but instead I will talk about the tedious, to most, subject of baby weaning.

We have been going through a difficult week with the little one. Apparently it may be what is known as 'four month sleep regression', involving less sleeping in the day and at night, grizzly mood and a generally unsettled baby. Originally I thought she was just teething, so that got me thinking about eating and weaning and all the theories/ideas there are out there about it. I am currently still exclusively breastfeeding her, which amongst other things, is extremely convenient in terms of prepping food for her! So the idea of weaning is a little intimidating, but also very exciting!

Before I had her I was, for some reason, convinced I would start weaning a little earlier than recommended. But having her around, talking to specialists, other mums, reading forums and all the other things that new mums - often obsessively - do,  I decided I will most probably wait until she is 6 months old. UNLESS she shows extreme interest in food before then (trying to grab what we are eating for example)...

Still, 6 months is less than 2 months away and I still have to consider whether I will follow the baby led weaning or not, what that entails, what they are meant to eat at each stage of their development and so on and so forth! So much to consider! And what is the right choice?! Well I have to say that I change my mind every time I talk to someone about it! Baby led weaning is the most appealing option to me, though my OCD self is already freaking out at the idea of all the mess it might cause.

Basically, baby led weaning, from what I have understood, is when you give the baby what you are eating, without pureeing and the baby learns how to chew, before it learns how to swallow food. The idea appeals to me mainly because it might make meal time more interactive and fun. It also appeals to the food lover in me, that she might become more open to trying different foods - I am petrified she might become a fussy eater! But if you are giving a  baby some of your food to hold and feed themselves, the majority of it will end up on the table (if you are lucky), on the floor, in their ears and a variety of other strange places!

I will keep you posted on what happens and will obviously have to start considering recipes that will be baby friendly - no salt, spices etc...Anyway, this was just a brief post to lay out my initial ideas about weaning and also even attract some opinions/ideas from you. Off to feed the little one now. Night night...

Street Food at The Rye - Buen Provecho

I love Mexican food! Or at least I love the stuff I have been able to get my hands on in the UK and the US. I remember my husband and I walked for about 1.5 hours through Mission in San Francisco to go to El Farolito Taqueria and try their Super Burrito. It was worth the walk and I 'd do it again, and again and again! I still dream of the burrito - the silky tortilla, wrapped around the perfect amount of smokey meat, smooth guacamole, rich cheese and sour cream and delicious beans - and even though we only shared one and felt stuffed, I still regret not getting one each. Even if that had meant feeling absolutely ill for the rest of the day!

Since then my Mexican food experience has been limited to Daddy Donkey on Leather Lane, near were I used to work. I was pregnant and could easily devour a whole one on my own, no problem! In fact it was my Friday lunch treat - seeing as they are £6 each and I can't afford that for every lunchtime! The burritos there are great too: very good flavour in the ingredients. But it seems to be done in too big a rush and the fillings are just mounted onto each other, without 'spreading' them thoroughly and therefore you get pockets of flavour, instead of each mouthful having  the great flavour of all the components combined. Still, they are the best burritos I have had in the UK. And I haven't had any since the week I went into labour months ago!

So from that you probably now understand that I do love Mexican food and when my husband discovered that the Rye pub near us is doing the Street Food at The Rye and Buen Provecho was cooking there on Monday Bank Holiday, we got excited! Very excited! So much so, that we got there at 12.30 lunchtime only to be told that they open at 14.00 and food would only start being served at 16.00... The disappointment was indescribable! We were like little children being told there would be no presents for Christmas this year! We reluctantly left and decided that one of us would pop out again around 17.00 and get them to take away - while our little lady was still decently behaved in the afternoon, before the evening grizzles began!

At 17.00 the plan was set to motion. My husband left and called me from there to tell me the 'menu': he does tacos and Arturo Ortega Rodriguez's reputation precedes him, so we decided to get two of each of what he does: pork, chicken, beef, potato, peppers and an omelette type thing.Oh and quesadillas!

The 5 minute journey home probably didn't do them any favours. We started with the quesadillas: nice and simple, a soft taco shell, filled with cheese and folded, then grilled. The veggie potato one was OK, but not great: mashed potato topped with peppers and beans. It lacked a little in substance and flavour. The other veggie option though was lovely: peppers and sweetcorn in a creamy sauce, topped with beans again. The omelette thing was interesting, if a little bland. I loved the texture of it, but once again, lacked a little umph! The beef was good, though not amazing. It was stewed with carrots and potatoes and the veg was a little undercooked. The sauce was perfectly sticky and thick, though I found it a little sweet. Finally the two stars of the show were the chicken and the pork. The chicken had great deep, smokey flavour and was served in chunky succulent chunks. The pork was cooked in an orange sauce and was shredded to perfection! Incredibly deep flavour, with the perfect balance of spice, sweetness and smokeyness.I must also comment on the tacos shells, which were themselves the best  've had! Soft in texture and nutty in flavour, with a hint of 'burnt' from the hot plate.

All in all it was perfectly enjoyable, but just not as good as it had been built up to be by what I had read about it online. We paid £26 and I managed to finish all my tacos, so I would say it was a tad overpriced. I would be interested to try them again on his home turf on Lower Marsh Street market in Waterloo, in case it was just a bad day. Not that it was bad! But when you have been craving something for so long and you build it up in your mind, nothing less than perfection will do. And perfection, unfortunately, it was not...

 On the left is the chicken and next to it the two pork tacos, all topped with beans and guacamole and the middle one with a chilly salsa.

Vegetarian week

I 've seen and read a few things about it being vegetarian week this week and its got me thinking about my own diet. Even though I am a proud carnivore, I do think that people in the UK eat way too much meat. I think that people should be much more aware of where their food comes from and especially be aware of how the animals that produce the meat they so enjoy are reared and killed. In order to get good meat (both in terms of quality and in terms of animal welfare) you have to pay a higher price for it. So unless you have money pouring out of your pocket, then meat can and should only be enjoyed a couple of times a week - if that! I know that my husband and I only eat meat once a week, and we often opt for the cheaper cuts anyway (beef cheek, pork belly, feather blade etc) and a chicken is a special treat and we make it last for at least 6 meals of the week with all the leftovers.

What I am trying to say is that vegetarianism is definitely valid, but you can still make a difference to animals and the environment (and your health) without necessarily becoming a vegetarian, but by sourcing your meat responsibly and by planning your meals, so that your beloved meat goes a long way.

Jacks Cafe - Pellatt Road SE22

My husband and I first visited this cafe in October 2010, during my pregnancy. From the first visit we were hooked! Jacks serves delicious food, sandwiches and cakes, makes some of the best coffee South of the River and its two friendly owners - Di and Alex - make you feel right at home. Since I had my daughter I pretty much go there weekly. There is always something new and delicious on the menu, not to mention Di's awesome triple chocolate brownies! Now the weather is brightening up, there is a pretty little outdoor seating area in the back too.

To be honest, I 'm not sure why I 'm even writing about this place...In a way I 'd quite like to keep it to myself and guarantee myself a table every time, but that would be too selfish! Or would it...?!

In any case, here are a few pictures of some of the great food that they serve. An Original Reuben sandwich - pastrami, lettuce, sauerkraut, thousand island sauce and some Swiss cheese. Di was very excited when she added it to the menu and I can see why! Absolutely scrummy, served in nice, warm, thick, toasted bread.

A jersey royal, artichoke and tomato frittata, served with a fresh, seasonal salad. Light and fluffy, full of flavour.

Finally, Di's fantastic Victoria Sponge. Deliciously light and creamy, yet completely satisfying! Served with a side of vanilla mascarpone! Rich, indeed! Just thinking about it makes me drool...

Easy Cheesy Dinner

This is perfect for a chilled evening with some wine! You can use whatever cheese you like, but for me a baked Camembert just makes it more of a 'meal'!

For the baked Camembert:
1 whole Camembert
drizzle of clear honey
4 walnuts
Remove the paper from the cheese and return it to the bottom wooden tray it came in. Drizzle with honey on top, place the walnuts and bake in a preheated oven at 170 for 20-25 minutes or until wobbly and melted inside. 

For the cheese board:
any cheese you like
grapes
walnuts
bread and/or crackers
chutney
baked garlic bulb (chop the bulb in half across the cloves and bake in a tray with a drizzle of honey, salt, pepper, olive oil and a splash of vinegar for 30 minutes at 170)

Serve when Camembert is just out of the oven. Dip in the bread, walnuts and grapes and eat with some of the baked, sweet, softened garlic cloves! Serve with wine.

Tuna with avocado salad

I apologise for the delay in posting anything... Had a lovely, but busy weekend and thought I would chill/sleep any minute I had free! Last Friday I felt like eating fish, but I also wanted something light. Usually this means sushi, but we have no Japanese restaurant anywhere near us (that I know of!) and so I thought a nice medium rare tuna steak would do instead. This recipe actually worked out pretty good.

Serves 2

for the tuna:
2 tuna steaks (150g-200g each)
1/2 medium heat chili
1 tsp of grated ginger
2 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs vegetable oil


for the avocado salad:
2 avocados
3 plum tomatoes
1/2 medium heat chili
half a red onion
juice of half a lime
salt
pepper
drizzle of olive oil

About an hour before cooking, take the tuna steaks out of the fridge. In a bowl, mix the soy sauce, vegetable oil, 1/2 chopped chili and grated ginger, add the tuna steaks, cover them well with the marinade and leave for 30 minutes - 1 hour. In the meantime, chop the avocado and the tomatoes in similar size chunks, finely chop the onion and the chili. Drizzle with olive oil, the lime juice, salt and pepper to taste.

Preheat a frying pan and then add the tuna steaks to the pan (no oil is needed in the pan as there is oil in the marinade). Fry for about 1,5 to 2 minutes on each side (I like mine just seared). Once you have removed the fish from the pan, you can add the juice of the remaining marinade to the pan to deglaze and pour over the steaks. Serve with the salad.

Chorizo and eggs

I forgot to go to the supermarket today, as I spent most of the afternoon in Jacks Cafe enjoying a delicious sandwich and a good chat (a post on Jacks Cafe will follow shortly). In any case, I had to make dinner with whatever I had left in the house and asked my husband to pick up some parsley on his way home. As anyone who has read more than 2 posts on this blog would know, I had some chorizo in the house. I decided to make a chorizo-based medley and then fry some eggs in there. One pot wonder again!

Serves 2

1 onion
2 large potatoes
3 plum tomatoes or 1 tbs tomato puree
50 g of chorizo
1 can of chickpeas
4 eggs
salt
pepper
olive oil
1 tbs chopped parsley

Chop the chorizo and the onions and add to a frying pan. Fry till oils are being released from the chorizo. Add 1 tbs of olive oil to the pan and continue frying on a low heat, till onions soften. In the meantime, dice the potato to 1 inch cubes, add to the pan along with the drained chickpeas and 2-3 tablespoons of water and cook on low heat for 10 minutes. Add the chopped tomatoes or the tomato puree (diluted in 2tbs of water) and salt and pepper (not much, as the chorizo has lots of seasoning). Cover the pan and allow to simmer for 10 minutes or until potatoes have softened. Break the eggs into little pockets of the mixture and cooked till nice and runny. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and enjoy! Maybe with some bread - something I unfortunately didn't have...

Banana Bread

I am pretty proud of this one! Because I kinda made it up a little and it worked really well! So I am going to boast for a second or two... OK, done boasting. I based this recipe on Nigel Slater's recipe for Black Banana Cake, but changed things a little to suit what I had at home.

175 g of unsalted soft butter or oil-based spread (I used Flora, as it is already soft and a little healthier every now and then)
175 g of self raising flour
175 g of golden caster sugar
2-3 very ripe bananas
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp ground cinnamon
70 g of pecans or walnuts
30 g of almonds

Grease and line a loaf tin with baking parchment and preheat the oven to 170(fan). Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in eggs slowly, followed by the self raising flour. Mash up the bananas and add them to the mix, along with the vanilla, cinnamon and the chopped nuts (I like to leave the nuts in decent chunks, for the texture). Put the mixture in the tin and bake for one hour or until top is golden and skewer comes out clean.

This is best served warm, alongside a chilled glass of full fat organic milk! Night night...

Bean and chorizo stew

This is yet another speedy super, even though it doesn't sound it. I used butter beans for this one, but chickpeas and haricot beans could work just as well. Once again, I have improvised, so ingredients can be omitted or added, depending on what you have at home. Parsley would go great with this dish and you can use passata, or tomato puree, instead of fresh.

Serves 2

2 cans of butter beans
1 onion
2 medium potatoes
200grams of cherry tomatoes
50 grams of chorizo
olive oil
salt
pepper
squeeze of lemon

Chop the onion and the chorizo and fry off lightly in the olive oil. Cut the potato into 1inch cubes and add to the pan. Fry off for 2-3 minutes and then add 1 cup of water. Add the drained beans and the cherry tomatoes to the pan, cover and allow to simmer for 30 minutes. Check that there is enough liquid in the pan. The potatoes should be nice and soft and there should be a thick 'gravy' in the pan. Add salt and pepper to your taste and serve with a squeeze of lemon - and parsley if you have it!

Lunch at the Ledbury

We had visited the Ledbury before and we absolutely loved it, but because I was 5 months pregnant, there were restrictions on what I was and wasn't allowed to have (no undercooked eggs, no soft cheese etc etc...). Throughout the meal, I was staring at the cheese trolley wistfully and my husband promised me then that we would go again and do the tasting menu with the cheese trolley! Lo and behold a few months later, we take the brave step all new parents have to take eventually and left our little 16 week old for a few hours. OK, so not all parents leave their babies to go to the Ledbury, but a promise is a promise!

Initially I thought I would struggle, worry too much and not enjoy the meal at all - especially as she started crying 2 minutes before we left the house... In any case, I convinced myself that all babies cry, she was in great hands, she wouldn't remember this in a few days time and I will have to leave her every now and then anyway! So we got to the Ledbury and the staff and chef started working their magic.... I stopped worrying about Missy and started enjoying myself - just like in the old days! So much so, that I am afraid I am guilty of forgetting to take pictures of all the courses, AGAIN! I remembered half way through, so I have pictures of half the tasting menu! So sorry everyone!

We sat down, negotiated for a few minutes and we both decided that it was going to be the tasting menu indeed! In the meantime, a little canape of fried breaded chicken arrived. It was crispy on the outside, moist in the middle and served on top of little pine tree branches, which allowed for the flavours of the pine to infuse slightly into the crust. Could have eaten a whole bucket of it! Then the bread arrived. Warm bread, served with delicious creamy, soft butter. They had sourdough, malt bread and bacon and onion bread. All amazing, though the winner for me was the malt bread - as shown in picture!

Next came the amuse bouche of cured salmon, watercress jelly over a ewe's milk curd. The salmon tasted absolutely fantastic and all the textures worked really.well. The first course was a 'Ceviche of Hand Dived Scallops with Seaweed and Herb Oil, Kohlrabi and Frozen Horseradish'. There isn't much I could say about it, other than the fact that I asked my husband whether it would be bad etiquette to mop up all the food with my bread! The scallops were great and the frozen horseradish, a pleasant surprise.  

'Flame Grilled Mackerel with Avocado, Celtic Mustard and Shiso' followed. I think this was my favourite course. I have often found mackerel too fishy, but this tasted so fresh and delicious! The skin of the mackerel had a fantastic 'flame grilled' taste and it was so crispy! The avocado was a perfect accompaniment and the most perfect of surprises was a little package of cucumber jelly, stuffed with mackerel tartare! Dreamy!

After that we had the 'Salad of Spring Vegetables with Hazelnut Oil and a Warm Mallard Egg Rolled in Truffle'. On paper it doesn't really excite me, but on the plate it was great! Each vegetable had such depth of flavour and they were each, individually, the best vegetables of their kind that I have tasted (carrot, asparagus, white asparagus, peas). The poached egg was delicious and perfectly runny, but for me the star of the show was the combination of a Parmesan mousse with the white asparagus and the truffle! This is when I realised I hadn't taken any pictures and I started with taking one of the finished plate:

The fish course followed: 'Roast Cod with Mousserons, Onion and Ash Puree and Potato Gnocchi'. This is the other contender for my favourite course! The mushrooms and the onion puree complemented the cod perfectly, and the Parmesan gnocchi gave the dish that little extra substance. Hopefully the picture will convince you if my words haven't .

The main course would have been lamb, but as I 'm not the biggest fan, we asked to substitute it for the 'Loin of Muntjac Baked in Hay with Beetroot, Bone Marrow and Malt'. Once again everything on the plate complemented each other perfectly - including the bonus venison sausage! I got so excited, I started cutting into the venison and moved the crispy potato, before taking a picture. Thankfully I remembered before I put anything in my mouth...

We then had one portion of cheese to share. I will not even attempt to remember the names of the cheeses we had. I know there was an English blue, two soft french cheeses and a hard sheep's cheese. Served with walnuts, grapes and crackers. Mmmmm cheese...

There was a pre-Dessert of wild strawberries with frozen blackberries and a cream of some kind. It was absolutely delicious, fresh and bursting with fruity flavours. The garnish of fresh mint really brought out the strawberry flavour.

Finally the dessert of 'Pave of Chocolate with Milk Puree and Lovage' arrived. The pave of chocolate was extremely rich and chocolaty, the lovage ice cream was strange and new to me, but actually worked well with the chocolate! The milk puree didn't really taste of much, but it was pretty to look at...

The meal finished a little abruptly, when we realised what the time was and decided it was probably time to get back to our baby. Petit fours were bought to the table without us even having to ask for them. They were served in an old tin sweet box: mandarin jelly, biscuit with praline filling and salted caramel dark chocolate. All in all a perfect way to finish a fantastic meal.

This was by far the best tasting menu we have had, both in terms of flavours, as well as quantity. I am sure he does not need me to tell him, but Brett Graham knows what he is doing - fresh flavours, great textures and interesting combinations. I can't wait to go back - once I have saved for a few months, or years!

The Ledbury, 127 Ledbury Road, Notting Hill, London