London – Two Weeks in Food / Part 1

It was over a year ago that I moved away from my birthplace and home, to explore the north of England. Tired of the daily grind and claustrophobic commute, I went in search of pastures new. How easy it is to take a city like London for granted. Returning twice over the spring period (inc. The Royal Wedding) I was able to see London with fresh eyes again. I crammed my time with theatre, exhibitions, public parks and lots of beautiful food. Allow me to talk you through where I went, on my food tour of London.

Broadway Market

What better way to start the weekend than with a stroll through Broadway Market and London Fields? Where else can you find the plumpest olives, the freshest bread and the gamiest game? Okay, probably Borough Market in London Bridge, but this is better. It is better for being scaled down to fit a residential road crawling with young and vibrant minds. I couldn’t help but say to my friend, how nice it was to see so many young people thinking, doing and absorbing. Not only can you eat like a king here, but you can feel part of something that is current and exciting. This is the generation of people that have grown up listening to their parent’s LP’s, the generation that are revelling in their freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

At the beginning of the market is ‘The Cat & Mutton’ pub. The staff seem to think their shit don’t stink and they don’t do ale, but the sardines are good and so is the atmosphere, that happens to flow from the market and through their doors. Grab a pint and people watch, whilst you take a rest from the bustle of the market.

Recently, a program focusing on the revival of British baking saw Michel Roux Jr visit an artisan bakery in one of the arches underneath London Fields rail. Arch 402. It was the gentleman’s 200 year old sour dough starter mix that sold it to me. At £3.20 a loaf, it is worth it, just to remind you what bread is. Not bleached, tasteless pap, but fluffy and filled with depth of flavour that runs through the satisfyingly crunchy crust.

At the market, you can eat Persian, Indian, French, British Game, Mediterranean & Greek amongst others. There should be something to satisfy all palettes.

Atariya (Japanese Sushi) - Restaurant Review

Located just off of Oxford Street on the Bond Street end, this Sushi restaurant doesn’t look like much from the outside. With a sign dirtied by the nearby buses and cars, it looks a world away from the super clean and sleek environments we are used to eating our Sushi in these days. However, do persevere for some excellent food. A trio of chefs await you on the left as they prepare the orders of local workers who have rung in advance. If you are in a hurry at all, you do have to know about this, as it is all sliced and prepared to order. I ordered Edamame beans to nibble on whilst I waited.

The interior is rather like a small cafe, with only a few tables inside and a couple outside. I think most people just takeaway here, but sitting in wasn’t at all unpleasant for a light lunch. I wanted to sample everything I saw but ended up getting some bream, bass, tuna, octopus, mackerel and scallops. All came served with the usual accompaniments of soy, pickled ginger and wasabi, with what looked and tasted like some finely shredded Kolrahbi or similar. Everything was fresh and moist apart from the octopus, which maybe could have been slightly wetter. For me, the highlight was the scallops. Up until this point, I didn’t know they could be eaten raw. Sliced about 3/4cm thick and served between slithers of lime, they were so soft and juicy. Very different from cooked scallops, I think I could eat them like this every time. Texture is a big part of our perception of food and this simply melted. The rice was light and sticky and the fish was fresh, what more could you want?

For everything pictured it was £13. More than you might normally pay for Sushi, but a world away from the conveyor belted chains of two hour old, revolving fish. Also, for me it always comes down to that old adage, “pay a little more, gain a lot more”. This is the nicest sushi I’ve eaten, but I’m by no means an aficionado on the subject. If you’re in the area, I would recommend popping in, but maybe make a note of the telephone number, if you don’t want to be hanging around.

20 James Street, London, W1U 1EH

0207 491 1178

Stay tuned for Part 2, in the coming week...

Recipe: Indian Methi (Fenugreek) Chicken

I first smelt this herb in dried leaf form years ago, whilst at University. It isn't until now that I have had a proper go at cooking with it. If you like dishes such as Balti and Jalfrezi (i.e. medium hot tomato curries with a touch of yogurt) then you’ll really like this. All served up with an India Pale Ale named after the Bengal Lancer’s of the 19^th century.

It is important you use thigh meat here as we are not searing the meat. Using breast meat will make the meat rubbery, less full flavoured and less authentic.

Ingredients

1 Tbsp Sunflower Oil & 1 Tbsp Mustard Oil (Or just 2tbsp Sunflower/Veg Oil)

1/3 tsp Methi (Fenugreek) Seeds

½ tsp Cumin Seeds

1 Medium Onion, finely chopped

2 Large Garlic Cloves, grated

1 inch piece Ginger, grated

3 small hot green chillies, chopped

½ tsp Turmeric

2 Vine ripened sweet red tomatoes, chopped fairly fine

2 Tbsp Ground Coriander

½ tsp Red Chilli Powder

2 Tbsp Fat Free yogurt, whisked with 2Tbsp Water

450g Chicken Thigh meat, bone and skin removed cut into 1 inch pieces

2 tsp Rice vinegar (or other vinegar)

½ tsp sugar

1 ½ Tbsp Dried Methi Leaves, ground nearly to a powder

½ tsp Garam Masala (preferably homemade)

Salt to taste

Fire it up...

Heat a thick bottomed casserole pot or non-stick frying pan to a high heat, then add the oil(s). Add the Methi seeds and Cumin Seeds as you turn the heat down to medium. Allow the seeds to splutter for about 30 seconds. Add the chopped onion and fry for 5-7 minutes, stirring frequently. Add a little bit of salt at this stage to season as you go and get flavour all through the dish. Add the garlic, ginger and green chillies. Fry for a further 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the turmeric and turn the heat down to medium-low. Stir for 30 seconds.

Now let’s make the sauce happen...

Add the chopped tomatoes, ground coriander and red chilli powder. Stir this all together, adding the yogurt slaked with water. Bring this to the boil, then turn the heat down to very low, put the lid on it and simmer gently for 5 minutes to bring the sauce together. Whilst this is happening, just mix the chicken with the little bit of vinegar, a pinch of salt, the sugar and the methi leaves.

Add the chicken and it’s mixture to the pan. Stir this all together and cover with the lid again. Simmer for about 5-7 minutes until the chicken is almost fully cooked.

Finish it off...

Remove the lid and cook for a further 5 minutes to thicken the sauce and finish cooking the chicken. Add the Garam Masala and check the seasoning. Add more salt if necessary. Put the lid back on with the heat off to allow all the flavours to infuse whilst you prepare the rice on the plates.

Spoon the curry onto the plate with Basmati rice and garnish with freshly chopped coriander. Blow the top off your favourite beer or lager and enjoy.

N.B I left the skin on the thigh meat for more flavour but it adds more fat/oils to your dish. Remove the fat if preferred.

Gourmet Crisps: An Article

I have been thinking about writing this article for a while. However, it is not until today that I have felt compelled to do so; the crisp packaging that pushed me over the edge? The Hairy Biker’s ‘Keralan King Prawn with Coconut’ crisps.

When I was growing up, you had salted, salt & vinegar, cheese & onion and beef. This was about 15 years ago. Now, I am not someone who doesn’t like when things change or evolve, in fact I love it. I love when things get re-invented or gain a new lease of life.  However, the price of crisps has gone up and so has the expectation. Do they live up to that expectation? Of course not. Mind you, can we blame them for not being able to make the humble potato taste like a Sunday roast, or a Thai green chicken curry? What’s next? Heston’s 12 course - Michelin starred tasting menu, dehydrated, powdered and then shaken in a bag with fried potatoes being sold for £20 a bag? I think we may have an idea that could get to market there!

Back to the Hairy Biker’s.

How can anything in this bag possibly be Keralan? Okay, so it’s possible that they sourced the powdered Crustacean’s from Kerala, which begs the question, ‘Why did you waste some of the greatest produce this world has to offer on a bag of crisps!? Also, who are we to prove or disprove that the prawns were ‘king prawns’ and why would we care, seeing as they’ve been obliterated into a crisp seasoning!? Picture in your head now, a beautiful steaming dish of spiced Keralan prawns with a splash of coconut cream and half a fresh coconut on the side, sat on the beach looking out at the Indian Ocean. Now imagine yourself eating a bag of crisps. These two things are poles apart! Stop making heaven seem attainable on a Waitrose supermarket shelf!

Then you have the more commercial, saturated end of the market, such as Walker’s Thai Sensations and Pringles Gourmet Beef Burger. Gourmet? Crisps? Unthinkable!

It all reminds me of an over the top cafe, me and a friend once joked about opening. The business plan was, ‘see how much you can rip people off by selling them everyday food at inflated prices, just by tinkering with the description.’ So, here’s an example.

Jacket Potato & Beans gets sold at £12.50 by telling yummy mummies the following;

The finest British baking spud, sourced locally and crisp roasted with Lebanese Olive Oil, piped with mature cheddar, locally churned butter and Britain’s favourite...haricot beans baked with a sweet and salty tomato sauce.

Funny I know, but is it that far removed from what Waitrose and the Hairy Biker’s are selling us in order to keep their profits gigantic?

What it all boils down to is this; Don’t just buy any old crap at inflated prices, because someone has romanticised it as much as humanly possible. After all, we’re famous for our abundance of potatoes, how much can you possibly get away with charging for them?

Hairy Biker’s Crisps are now available at Waitrose for £1.79 per 150g. Flavours available are (try not to laugh);

Keralan King Prawn with Coconut

Chicken Tom Yum

Prosciutto Ham & Blue Cheese

Lemon & Olive Tagine

NB. I actually quite like these two. They remind me of my nan, only my nan never got rich off crisps.

Restaurant Review: Horoscope Chinese Harrogate

Name: Horoscope

Cuisine: Cantonese, Szechuan & Peking

Location: Harrogate, North Yorkshire

Ever since my first bite of a Thai dish, Chinese food descended down the ranks of my favourite cuisine. It was like eating Chinese food with bells on, lots more bells... and whistles. I’m not going to proclaim that Horoscope changed these views, but it has gone a long way in restoring my faith in what this vast country has to offer.

After a string of disappointing experiences with gloopy sauces and wilted vegetables, I gave up ordering Chinese takeaways and begun cooking them at home. This works great and I am proud to have that ability. However, sometimes you just want someone else to cook for you. Someone you can trust. Enter Horoscope.

I have eaten in here and ordered take-away. I have tried the char siu barbecued pork in scezchuan sauce, the chicken satay (hong kong style), the spring rolls, the kung po, the crispy duck and a few others. Every time, I have been impressed. There seems to be a good stock at the base of their sauces, mother’s marinade at the healm of their meats. It is these extra touches that make you want to pay the extra. A carnivores choice at the local Chinese might set you back £6-7 with today’s fuel prices, but Horoscope charge more like £9-11. This begs the question; ‘Do I want to eat inferior meat and old veg in a melange of monosodium glutamate and cornstarch thickened salt water? Or do I want to be able to taste the variety of ingredients that I read on the menu, which enticed me in the first place?’ Well when you word it like that...

Like a lot of good quality Chinese restaurants, this has a deceptive appearance. A dodgy name, dated decor and fortune cookies. All of that falls away when you sit in and see families of people enjoying the super efficient, friendly service and the extremely tasty food. Some people think that the efficiency these restaurants show is backed by a desire to get you in and out as quickly as possible. I don’t agree. These guys watch without being intrusive and are there when you need them, because they know that if a desire is felt by the customer, but not met, they have failed themselves and the client.

The duck from here is superb. A bone-in piece is taken to the table and shredded for the customer (very quickly by someone who clearly has years of experience) and served with the usual accompaniments. When I asked how it was cooked, he was happy to answer that it was slowly boiled with flavours such as anise and peppercorns, then deep fried to order (giving the crisp). I never realised this is how it was made. When we thought we were done, another waitress came over and offered to remove the last bits of meat from the bone, giving us one more round of wraps.

The spring rolls were light, tasty, well filled, not greasy and a good size. The main of chicken satay was done hong kong style. Which basically means it is fried in a sauce with veg as opposed to the satay you might know as being barbecued on sticks with a dip. Clean flavours with a smokyness and a good level of heat.

Whenever I have eaten out here, I am always given prawn crackers, even if the order is small. We are always given 1 or 2 more fortune cookies than we need, just in case we are feeding more than it may seem by checking the order. Little touches.

Tasty food and good service = returning customers. Horoscope understands the formula for a successful catering business and I have somewhere to get good Chinese food from on a Friday night. Hallelujah, or should I say 哈利路亚

2 courses for two excl. drinks £30-35

4.5 Stars NB. All ratings are given with respect to the cuisine and the price range. e.g. a review for 5 stars in £30-40 price range, will not be equivalent in quality to a 5 star restaurant costing £100+

An 'Old Fashioned' made with Maker's Mark

This drink is well over 100 years old and is a simple, classic recipe.

I would also like to start out by saying that I have had this drink before and thought it was enjoyable enough (mainly because it comprises almost solely of whiskey). However, the Hotel Du Vin in Harrogate recently opened my eyes to the possibilities. The gentleman at the bar painstakingly added the whiskey to the orange peel, bit by bit, muddling, bruising and stirring. Extracting that aroma and making sure that every ml of Whiskey was sweetly infused with lipsmacking and aromatic zest tangs. I told him that any ‘Old Fashioned’ I ordered from here on in, would most likely be an underwhelming experience. He informed me that was “the point”. Attention to detail meant I didn’t regret the £7 fee. However, I knew I could make it home for a lot less.

Most people think Bourbon isn’t much of a sipping whiskey and I suppose you could argue that you’re not exactly having it straight here. But, it is close enough and is the perfect choice for this drink given its oaky sweetness. Pick it up for around £25 at most supermarkets.

On with the show...

½ tsp fudgey brown sugar

A few dashes of angostura bitters

½ orange (zest only – peeled away in one long thin winding strip)

½ small lemon (zest only – peeled away in one long thin winding strip)

3 large ice cubes

50ml Makers Mark Bourbon Whiskey™

3 Maraschino Cherries

Equipment...

A long ball ended skewer or cocktail stick

1 Tumbler Glass

Plastic cocktail skewer for the Cherries

Place the sugar and bitters into the tumbler glass and stir into a paste with the cocktail stick. Add the orange and lemon peels and bruise them with the rounded end of the cocktail stick or skewer. Add 2 of the ice cubes and then 10ml of the whiskey, keep stirring, bruising and infusing the zest into the whiskey, 10ml at a time. Once all the whiskey is in the glass at the final ice cube and give it another stir. Garnish with the cherries on a skewer and some decorative winds of thin peel. Sip into heaven.

Devilled Lamb's Kidneys on Toast, with a poached egg

I know this won’t be everyone’s cuppa tea but give it a go if you can. It hasn’t got a massive offal flavour as the strong seasoning helps to balance it with more familiar tastes. This is a British classic which is nutritional, cheap to make and very satisfying.

For the dressing...

2 Tbsp Tomato Puree

1 tsp English Mustard

2 tsp Lemon Juice

A few of dashes of tobasco

1 tsp Worcestershire Sauce

Salt & Pepper

Kidneys...

1 tsp Vegetable Oil

1 tbsp butter

3 Medium sized lamb’s kidneys (sliced into inch strips)

And finally...

1 Free Range Egg

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Combine all the dressing ingredients in a bowl and stir thoroughly.

Put your egg on to poach (about 3-4 minutes for a nice runny yolk). I use these great silicon egg poachers.

Heat the oil in a small frying pan and then add the butter. When it is fully melted, add the kidneys over a medium high heat and fry for 1-2 minutes until nearly cooked. Throw in the dressing and simmer for another 30 seconds to 1 minute until the kidneys are cooked through. Too little cooking and they could taste of raw offal, too much cooking and they’re tough. Be Careful.

Serve the kidneys with the pan juices over 2 slices of thick granary bread, generously buttered. The poached egg sits on top. In the image below I have tossed in a few halved cherry tomatoes with the sauce, but only because I had them lying around.

Recipe: Sprats in Seasoned Flour

Sustainable fishing. Where is it leading us? Where are we with it now? Well, watching tons of cod being thrown back into the sea, dead, gives us a clue. This practice known as ‘discarding’, is clearly not the best way to control stocks of Cod in our waters. However, there was an aim behind the practice. That aim, is to get our fisherman targeting less popular species.

Why are they less popular species? Do they taste bad? Are they expensive? Is there less meat on them? Are they rarer?

The answer is ‘no’, to all of the above. The reason is because people (like they always have done) are sticking to what they know. Let us just say that stocks were endless and it was guaranteed that fish would reproduce, faster than we could eat them. Would you still just carry on eating the old favourites? Where is the fun in that!? Variety is the spice of life. Luckily for those of you that like variety, there is plenty of it and the supermarkets have jumped on board because it makes them look like they give a shit! (They don’t, they just exist for profit). However you look at it, we have more variety.

I was in a well known supermarket the other day as I’d heard good things about the fish counter. It excited me to see such variety. Coley, tilapia, mackerel and river cobbler were amongst the selection. I plumped for 12 small sprats. A fish I have never eaten before. They are slightly smaller than sardines and you can eat the whole thing, head to tail. The reason being, that the bones are not fully formed and are therefore, perfect for eating. What made them taste even better (apart from my seasoned flour) is that they cost me £0.49 for 12. I ate them with smoked mackerel but double that amount and you can feed 2-3 people their main portion for under a quid!

There are no good reasons not to eat new fish, especially with this recipe for sprats rolled in seasoned flour and fried.

Sprats in seasoned flour (with optional parsley & lemon)

4 Dried bay leaves (broken into small pieces)

1/3 tsp fennel seeds

½ tsp white peppercorns

½ tsp salt

4 heaped Tbsp plain white flour

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1 Tbsp Olive Oil

12 whole sprats

1 heaped tsp unsalted butter

Optional additions

½ lemon (juice only)

Small handul of finely chopped Parsley

Put the bay leaves, fennel seeds and peppercorns into a pestle and mortar or spice grinder and grind to a fine powder. Add the salt and flour to this and stir until fully combined.

Take your sprats and place on greaseproof paper or a chopping board (just to keep the mess to a minimum). Then dust your sprats generously with the flour. Turn them and dust the other side. I like to make sure the flour mix covers each fish quite nicely. This will give your fish a nice thin, crispy, ‘batter’ like texture on the outside.

Heat a large frying pan to a medium-high heat. Add your oil and swirl it to make sure it covers the pan. Put your sprats in and fry for two and half minutes on one side until golden. Turn them over gently and do the same for the other side.

About 30 seconds before the end, add the knob of butter. Toss the fish in the butter. Turn off the heat and squeeze over the lemon juice and add the parsley. Serve with buttered new potatoes or sweetheart cabbage. Or just serve them on their own as finger food with a glass of aperitif champagne. Delicious.