2012 round-up

Best new Brixton opening

There have been a few recent arrivals in Brixton which have garnered considerable press.  By contrast, the chocolatier Paul Wayne Gregory, trained in Paris and maker of the Queen’s 80^th birthday truffles, just turned up one day in a little sliver of a shop in Market Row. There are beautiful desserts, highly credible salted caramels and some superlative passion fruit ganache, all a five minute walk from our door.

Favourite new products

Following in the wake of the hipsters, I’ve been dutifully tromping through the optimistically named “Bermondsey Spa” most Saturday mornings, finding a new way to get turned around each time, but also discovering both some great new vendors, and outposts of Borough favourites (particularly Neals Yard Dairy and Mons Cheese) which are far less crowded than the originals. Three highlights:

Heather honey from the London Honey Company

Lots of India Pale Ales at the Kernel Brewery

Chicken from Fosse Meadows at The Butchery

Most enjoyable read

Notes from Madras, Colonel Wyvern (1878). Wyvern wrote for Englishwomen abroad and their native cooks, explaining how to prepare both Anglo-Indian and European foods.

Greatest recipe

Lamb pizza from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s Jerusalem. This may be no better than the fish cakes in spicy tomato sauce, or the hummus or stuffed peppers—all superlative. It gets the nod for perfectly recreating the soft, pliable dough of the lahmacun I ate in Istanbul last winter, and pairing it with a topping that is at once sweet with caramelised meat, crunchy with fresh herbs and sharp with pomegranate.

Best eating moment

A breakfast of chilaquiles—eggs, refried beans and tortilla chips covered with a cooked red salsa, garnished with sour cream, cotija cheese, avocado and coriander (cilantro)—at San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza Market, while watching the fog clear over the Bay Bridge.

Most memorable drink

Ruinart champagne at the Royal Opera House, just moments after receiving my engagement ring.

Sleeper hit

A custom mix of Formosa Lapsang Souchong and Higgins Breakfast tea from HR Higgins. We’ve been drinking their Creole Blend coffee for years; this is fast becoming the house tea: smoky, smooth and mouth-filling without being tannic.

Best evening out

A “Shambolic Sherry Tasting” put on by our local wine shop and held in a freezing upstairs room at the Dogstar pub. There were half a dozen non-sherry pours from natural wine importers, Les Caves de Pyrene, including a Savennières and a Jura chardonnay made in a vin jaune style, and quality nibbles aplenty. The sherries came thick and fast, and ranged from the merely very, very good to the absolutely exceptional (in the form of a rare Palo Cortado). We met a wine consultant working in Kazakhstan too, and heard all the gossip on the Brixton restaurant scene. And all for £7.50.

Jerusalem, and lamb meatballs with quince

I’m very late in joining the Yotam Ottolenghi bandwagon, having been vaguely aware of his Guardian columns, cookbooks and beautiful, vegetable-driven cafes for years without feeling any particular interest in exploring further. It all seemed a bit too pretty, precious even. But a one-off TV programme he did last year, entitled Jerusalem on a Plate, suggested that I had been far too quick to dismiss him. In championing the food of his native city, he came across as fiercely smart, inquisitive and with an intuitive feel for food that was not just pretty to look at, but seriously tasty.

His new cookbook, Jerusalem, co-written with his business partner, Sami Tamimi, explores the city’s polyglot cuisine, taking in its Palestinian, North African, Central Asian, Levantine and Central European influences, amongst others. They highlight iconic local dishes like kubbeh (semolina dumplings stuffed with meat and poached in soup, served in luncheonettes in the Machane Yehuda market), Jerusalem mixed grill and chocolate kranz cake, while also playing with regional staples like topped flatbreads, dips and chopped vegetable salads, making them sharper and more interesting.

The cookbook is beautifully photographed and gently informative about Jerusalem’s culinary, social and political history.  Almost all instinctively appealing, the recipes consistently deliver. From long peppers stuffed with herbed rice and lamb mince, to fish cakes poached in a spicy tomato sauce, a distinctively upgraded spanakopita and hummus made far creamier and airy than I thought possible (the trick is to blend it in a heavy-duty food processor for a full 5 minutes), the book is delivering winner after winner. Even a simple-sounding carrot salad well exceeds any I’ve made before. Although we’ve only had it for two months, Jerusalem is already becoming one of the most-used on our cookbook shelves, as well as the holiday gift of choice.

If only he did weddings.

Lamb meatballs with quince, pomegranate and coriander

adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem

Total time: 60-70 minutes; Active time: 30 minutes

Serves 4

Special equipment: large, lidded frying pan

400g minced lamb

1 garlic clove

Small bunch coriander

Small pinch Turkish chilli flakes

50g breadcrumbs (ideally soft and fresh)

1 tsp allspice

1 egg

Small knob fresh ginger

1 lemon

4 medium quince (about 1.3 kg)

2 onions

3 tbsp olive oil

8 cardamom pods

2 tsp pomegranate molasses

2 tsp sugar

500 ml chicken stock

Seeds of ½ a pomegranate

Additional coriander (optional)

Place the mince in a large mixing bowl. Mince the garlic and coriander add, along with the chilli flakes, breadcrumbs, allspice and egg. Finely chop about a tablespoon of ginger and add as well. Season well with salt and pepper and mix thoroughly. Roll the mixture into balls about the size of a squash ball and set aside.

Squeeze a bit of the lemon into a bowl of water. Peel the quince, core and chop into small cubes, placing them into the acidulated water as ready. Chop the onion finely, along with the remaining ginger.

Heat the olive oil on a medium flame. Add the onion and ginger, along with the cardamom, and sauté for 10-12 minutes, until the onion has softened and begun to change colour. Add the molasses, a good squeeze of lemon juice, sugar and stock. Season well. Add the meatballs and pieces of quince and simmer for about 30 minutes, or until the meat is fully cooked, the quince soft and beginning to turn a peachy-pink, and the sauce is well thickened.

Serve over couscous, bulgur or rice, sprinkled with the pomegranate seeds and, if desired, more coriander.

March odds and ends

Today’s lunch was spaetzle with wild garlic pesto. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few garlic leaves find their way into tomorrow morning’s scrambled eggs, while on Monday they’ll be the finishing touch to a soup/stew made with some leftovers from tonight’s roast chicken. I’m hoping that over the next few weeks they’ll also be a play on a watercress-potato soup and lots of leaves to be mixed with soft, spreadable goats cheese. And if the spring lamb prices don’t get too silly, that pesto would be great alongside some chops.

Planning for this summer’s vegetable and herb garden has resulted in a (too) long list of things I’d like to grow—tomatoes again, more of all the usual herbs, plus maybe chervil, lettuces, peas, broad beans and courgettes. I’m toying with the idea of a cold frame or mini greenhouse (really more of an outside bookcase with a heavy plastic cover) that would allow me to start seedlings somewhere other than the bedroom floor and perhaps concentrate light and speed up growth enough to make it worth attempting some larger tomato varieties.

I’ve been rereading Julian Barnes’ Pedant in the Kitchen this week. It’s probably an unusual way into the work of a Booker Prize-winning author, but I’ve again enjoyed the wit and lightness of touch with both literary references and anecdotes. Plus it’s reminded me that I really should try to cook from Elizabeth David.

It seems that Franco Manca is offering pizza master classes on the first Thursday of every month. I assume this doesn’t include lessons on how to build a pizza oven.

Also in Brixton, the Heritage Deli has opened in Granville Arcade. The Canadian, Italian and Greek and Maltese by way of the Antipodes crew are serving up artisanal salume and all sorts of savoury pies. I’m partial to the feta and pumpkin combination, as well as any of the spicy ones, as they use some of the excellent red pepper flakes I brought back from Turkey last month (exchanged for some very tasty filled pizza with mushroom and truffle oil and a little crimped pie of rabbit and peas).

We cooked goat, which was nothing like mutton (far leaner and gentler in flavour) and absolutely delicious. (The Ginger Pig is occasionally bringing it over from France along with some poulet noir and other birds. It’s claimed that lots of what’s sold in this country as goat is actually hogget or mutton.) Madhur Jaffrey’s Curry Easy yielded up a dish of Pakistani origin which was rich with (homemade) garam masala, cinnamon and cardamom and fantastically succulent after 3-4 hours of gentle cooking.

October Round-up

Dosa n Chutney

Revisiting our London favourite for dosa and uttapam this weekend, I was relieved to discover that it measured up even post-Malaysia. The chutneys were fantastically fresh and sprightly in the mouth, the rava dosa—extra-lacy and crispy around the edges—was a great new find, and the service was as friendly as ever.

Rowley Leigh's Financial Times column

Intelligent food porn.

Muscat grapes

Oddly, these are a plummy, dusky purple, not green, as muscats are meant to be, but the tiny French grapes at Tony Booth’s greengrocers (formerly at Borough Market, now happily resettled at Maltby Street) are nonetheless delicious. I’m tempted by Amanda Hesser’s recipe for adding them to a foccaccia-like bread dough, and by this suggestion of roasting them with thyme, but that would leave fewer to just eat now.

Jamie Oliver’s new food programme

I know the man became ubiquitous a long time ago, but his new show on British food is both winning and informative. The producers have clearly employed some good researchers—hence the visit to the burger pop-up which was a big hit on Chowhound, and the accurate explanation of fish and chips’ origins with Jewish immigrants to London’s East End. Refreshingly, there’s no preaching, just enormous enthusiasm for British ingredients and recipes new and old. And the food looks damn tasty.

Venison

Advocates for eating more venison like to point out that it’s local, sustainable and low in fat. All true, but I think the best recommendation is the taste. We splurged on some saddle a few weeks back, which we sealed in duck fat then roasted in the oven to a rare pink. Last night we sautéed some onions, leeks and carrots, added bay, thyme, stewing meat and a bottle of brown ale and cooked in a low oven for half the afternoon, throwing in some vacuum-packed chestnuts about an hour before serving. Next up, I think, a ragu.

Brixton

According to no less an authority than the Observer’s Jay Rayner, Brixton Village is the “most exciting, radical venture on the British restaurant scene right now.” And to think I live just three minutes’ walk away.

Here and there

Cookbooks

I’ve recently become a member of the local public library. I did so mostly to support the reading demands presented by my four hour a day commute. (The recent haul has included some Philip Roth, Paul Auster and lots of mystery novels.) But it turns out that the cookbook section is surprisingly extensive. This week we’ve been perusing Thomasina Miers’ Mexican Food Made Simple and Madhur Jaffrey’s Curry Easy. As well as both having the now-requisite artfully simple photos, they share a common goal of demystifying what are perceived as complicated cuisines (and in the case of Miers’, introducing it to a UK audience). While there are a few compromises made on ingredients (tomatillos, for example, don’t figure prominently as they’re very difficult to find in the UK) and processes are simplified, the food, on early evidence, doesn’t taste dumbed-down at all.

Beer

Our household doesn’t get through a lot of beer. But we’ve tried a few English ales lately which have generated the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for stinky red wines from the south of France. The most memorable was a golden ale from a microbrewery near the Mendip hills in Somerset. It was fruity, bright and the perfect complement to a far better-than-average ploughman’s lunch: bread from our favourite local supplier, Westcombe Cheddar from Neal’s Yard and pumpkin chutney. Cheddar Ales aren’t really sold outside the local area, but we liked this enough that we’re considering using some our wine storage space to house a few dozen bottles. (Closer to hand, the St. Austell’s Cornish IPA sold by Marks & Spencer has also proved very enjoyable.)

Sorrel

It hasn’t been growing as out of control as I might like, but there’s still been enough to put into scrambled eggs and herby potato salads and to mix with chopped mint and soft cheese for a tasty pre-dinner spread, perfect on thin slices of toast.

Blogs

In anticipation of July’s trip to Malaysia and Indonesia, I’ve been searching for good information on where and what I should be eating. Eating Asia has been a great discovery. Authored by a professional food writer who’s spent the last 20+ years living in Southeast Asia, it features ingredients, street food and markets from the China to Sulawesi and everywhere in between, shot beautifully and explained with a knowledgeable but light touch. This will be my guide to the best fried chicken in Yogyakarta, central Java, and to what can’t be missed in one of the region’s best eating cities, Penang (Georgetown).

Odds and ends

To ease myself back into blogging, I thought I’d start with a quick round-up of recent discoveries in and out of the kitchen:

• Lina Stores, one of the survivors of Soho’s Italian renaissance, has gotten a refit. The mid-century marble and pistachio-green tiles are still intact, but the overall effect has shifted from pile-them-high to a more curated selection of fresh and packaged food products. Day-to-day operations now appear to be run by the children of one of the original owners, and changes include a tiny stand-up coffee bar, Twitter and, somewhat curiously, branded aprons and espresso cups. The hand-filled pasta remains superlative and well-priced, and the service is now far sunnier, with the daughter offering half a dozen suggestions of different sauces for the ravioli.

• I’ve bought a copy of Joan Nathan’s recent book about Jewish cooking in France. Her aim is less to create a canon of recognisably French-Jewish recipes than to record the culinary traditions and practices of Jews living in France today. The recipes fall into four categories: North African, a product of the emigration of several hundred thousand Jews from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia in the 1950s and 1960s; Alsatian, reflecting the pre-war majority of Ashkenazi Jews, many from Germanic countries; historic dishes from France’s small, post-Inquisition community in the country’s southwest, or of the onetime Papal Jews in and around Avignon; and popular French dishes made distinctly Jewish largely by the absence of pork and shellfish, or the mixing of meat and milk. The recipes are, on the whole, highly useable and appealing, but what makes this book distinct are the stories about how French-Jewish identity is reflected in, and understood through, food.

• As an East Coaster, my Mexican food credibility is likely limited, but the corn tortillas made by Cool Chili Company seem in every way authentic: sweet, earthy and perfectly pliable when heated. They’ve nearly made it into the weekly repertoire, with mackerel grilled or citrus-cured (the latter was particularly delicious with the juice of a Seville orange) or with shredded roast chicken. For the chicken, a winter-friendly grilled tomato salsa dirties the food processor but is very good indeed.

• Over the last few months, I’ve been drinking a lot more German Riesling. I was reminded of its existence when reading the memoirs of the wine writer Hugh Johnson, who claims it’s the best white wine grape in the world. He may well be right.