The Silver Spoon

Beetroot Salad

 

Beets | June 16, 2011

I recently dated the purchase of my most favoured pair of work pants (trousers, obviously!) to sometime in the fall of 2003.  So needless to say, I am not the most up to date with the current trends, although said trouser manufacturer still makes that style of pant and so if you were being generous you could say my look is timeless.  It was therefore a great pleasure to learn from my friend/ex-landlord, Lavinia that my rooftop activities were very of the moment.  Yoga, you ask? It is certainly not warm enough here in London.   It is, however, pretty much perfect for growing vegetables.  Travel & Leisure or some other equally in the know magazine had just declared roof top gardening the thing to do.  So I am pretty pleased with myself. I love all my little plants and although I am only harvesting lettuce and kale right now I am eagerly anticipating the rest of the bounty.  Thus, my Abel & Cole box will still arrive with vegetables until summer is truly in full swing and I have no choice but to open a stall on Portobello Road to get rid of the surplus.  So between the lettuce from upstairs and the beets from the box, my favourite salad this year was born. 

Of all the root vegetables, with the exception of potentially radishes, beets don’t really make me think of autumn.   They are literally a bright vegetable which belongs to summer.    So what better than a salty, sweet, savoury, crunchy bed of lettuce topped with roasted beets, goats cheese, crisped pancetta, some seeds and a light vinaigrette for that needed tang.  Not much really, except perhaps had I grown the beets.

Ingredients

Serves 2 

2 beets roasted

2 handfuls of lettuce

2 matchbook size slices of pancetta cut into matchsticks

2 inches of a goat cheese log

Sprinkle of nuts

Vinaigrette

Step 1: As soon as you get home grab your beets, splash some olive oil on them and wrap them individually in some bits of tin foil to cover them.  Leave them in a hot oven (375°F, 190°) for about 1 hour 15.  Feel free to do yoga or whatever on your roof during this time.  When the beets are done, take them out of the oven and leave them to cool until you are able to handle them.

Step 2: While the beets are cooling, pop the pancetta matchsticks into a pan turning them to prevent them from burning, then rest them on kitchen towel to drain and cool.  

Step 3:  Once the beets have cooled, use the back of a spoon or your fingers to rub the skin off.  This can be a rather messy process so I suggest you use rubber gloves as I do or be prepared for your colleagues to think you have extremely strange pastimes.  Slice them up into the desired size and slip them quickly into a bowl.  They will dye a wooden cutting board very quickly so get it to the sink

Step 3: Form the base of your salad with lettuce, lay the beets on top, crumble the goats cheese on top as well as the pancetta and sprinkle on some seeds and dress with vinaigrette.  Salt and pepper to taste.

NOTE: The vinaigrette. Make it from scratch, takes 1 minute and is truly rewarding.   For two people, put a dime or 5p size of mustard into a bowl, splash a bit of vinegar in and mix them til they are smooth.  Then drizzle in olive oil slowly so they emulsify.  Taste it with a leaf of lettuce and you are good to go.

Asparagus

 

Asparagus | May 31, 2011

It’s official. I have overdosed.  I have eaten asparagus with every possible meal since they first appeared on the scene in April.  Coping with the weather can make living in London a little grim and the arrival of the English asparagus to the market does a lot to perk you up.   And then this year we had the most spectacular Spring so that was a double and simultaneous bonus.  Some people don’t like asparagus because of the way it affects the smell of their pee.  I mentioned this at a dinner the other day (I am a rather uncouth dinner guest) and was super surprised that not everyone seemed to notice a change.  It turns out, after comprehensive asparagus research and Pascal and my fifth consecutive meal of said vegetable, that only 22% of the population have the gene to smell a difference.   I was shocked and then felt sort of special.  My father is a recovering asparagus hater due mostly to the fact that he had only eaten it out of a can growing up in Texas in the 50s.  So given that, I understand.  It was only upon discovering the fresh version, which I am sure he did not think was the same vegetable, that he was converted, pee smell and all.  I personally like mine relatively unadorned.  I drop them into boiling water until I see the first tinge of green in the water and take them out put them on a plate, a drizzle of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon and if all goes according to plan some shavings of parmesan.  (Pascal prefers a quick marinade of olive oil and a minute on the grill, then again he will grill pretty much anything.) Nothing could make me happier.  Although our houseguests cooked us dinner that night which was pretty great too!

Ryvita Crackers for Cheese

I recently had dinner with a teacher from my high school who, when asked about how teaching has changed since we were in school (before the internet!), she answered: “Teaching our girls how to manage their online profile and reputation.”  I hadn’t really thought of that but I guess what you put on the internet sticks and is available for all to see.  I should therefore not have been shocked when the publicist of Ryvita emailed me to see if I,  ‘a bit of an all around foodie and interested in nutrition to boot’ (her words), would be interested in sampling their new crackers made for cheese.   I thought sure I can do that.  Then she said she would send me the crackers and some cheese.   I hastened my typing to reply faster, YES!  Now I have read about the pitfalls of accepting free things in return for endorsement but I promised to be honest to myself, Ryvita and my readers and tell the God’s honest truth.  

So given my rearing in the good ole’ USA I have no preconceived notions of Ryvita.  After canvassing my British friends the words “dieting” and “healthy brown cardboard biscuit” came up.  I worried that my ‘interest in nutrition’ might have gotten me into a bit of a pickle.  So when my hamper full of cheese and crackers came I opened it with a bit of trepidation.  Was I going to have to pan this product on the internet for all of the world the see?  So I took the lot home to share with my husband, brother and future sister-in-law, who better to get honest feedback from than family, right? 

The verdict? There are two types, Golden Rye and Black Pepper.  With the cheese provided, mostly overwhelming favourite was the golden rye which didn’t interfere with the flavour of the cheese.   The black pepper, it was decided, would have been better with a double cream cheese or a brie (it has been tested since and they fared very well).   Overall we liked them a lot. They have a great crunch missing in a lot of crackers and are filled with hearty ingredients without feeling “diet.”  All in all there are a very nice accompaniment to cheese. 

Barbecoa

 
Barbecoa

20 New Change Passage

London, EC4M 9AG

website

 

Background: About once a quarter, my INSEAD friend Andrew and I try to meet up for lunch somewhere in between Old Street and Fleet Street.  He picks my brain about my views on online shopping (a subject on which I can assure you I am an expert) for his company farfetch.com and he buys me lunch.  A pretty sweet deal if you ask me.  It’s not the easiest task trying to triangulate a restaurant in exactly the right spot but given the newness and relative hype we thought Barbecoa might be a good choice. Do forgive the iPhone pics, after a full year of silence I am a little out of practice.

For what it’s worth, I like Jamie Oliver.  I also happen to be one of the few people who live in England or America for that matter who have never eaten at one of his restaurants or cooked from one of his cookbooks.  I do, however, admire what he has done with his restaurant Fifteen and am truly appreciative of the effort to reform the School Lunch program in my home country.  God knows we need it.   Let me also say that I have been a Daisy May’s fan for a long time.  One of the first Street Carts to hit Manhattan, Daisy May’s introduced the pulled pork sandwich to the mid-town Manhattan lunch scene and never looked back.  That said I had high hopes for Barbecoa even if it was housed in a shopping mall.

 

The Meal:  I am generally not a fan of eating in restaurants housed in shopping centres.  You could perhaps attribute it to my New Yorker view towards suburban living or something else entirely I am not sure.  The last meal I ate in a mall was a corn dog with my late grandmother when I was about 10 and I haven’t yet fully recovered.   But One New Change is kind of different.  It is mostly open air and extremely helpful if you happen to need a last minute outfit and can only spare 30 minutes from work.  So off we went to Barbecoa on the second floor of One New Change. 

Since it was a lunch date, we weren’t going to go all out and order starters and mains.  So Andrew ordered the Barbecoa Burger with Westcombe Cheddar, Smoked Bacon, Sweet Onions, Pickles and Chips  and I went for the Pulled Pork Shoulder with Coleslaw, BBQ Sauce & Jalapeño Cornbread ( seems we weren’t dead set on making it a light meal after all), we also ordered the Curly Kale with Rosemary, Anchovy and Garlic. 

 

I personally love a chef who imposes his view of the world upon a dish.  I believe that all burgers should come replete with cheese and bacon so the sound and look of the Barbecoa Burger was right up my alley.  Disappointingly, Andrew took the bacon off without even trying it or waiting for me to take the picture (I made him put it back on), but I will forgive him this small injustice.  A rather more serious injustice which cannot be forgiven was the servers’ failure to ask how he wanted his burger cooked.  Our mistake for not having noticed, but given the ambient noise level was verging on bursting; it is easy to see how we missed it.  Thus, the burger arrived well-done.  A crime in my opinion, but I bet the rare/medium rare version is really good.

As you can probably tell, I can get a little sentimental over burgers.  I also have a real soft spot for pulled pork, so much so that we served it at the rehearsal dinner for our wedding.  Needless to say I was excited.  Maybe the mention of BBQ sauce as a line item should have been a hint but the meat was absolutely doused in it.  Overall it was good, but I was hoping for the tenderness to come from the pork rather than the sauce.  The cornbread, however, was really nice with a good bite from the jalapeño and not heavy.  Surprisingly, for a restaurant showcasing meat, the real shining stars of the lunch were the sides.  The coleslaw and kale were great.   And not just great for vegetables, but really good in their own right. 

 

Closing thoughts:  The meal was decent.  The service was slow and a bit spotty and the noise for a Friday lunch was almost unbearable.  The burger had the potential to be great; the pork needed a couple more hours and a lot less sauce but also has the makings of a great dish.  But all in all, its just not there yet, but the sides are enough to bring me back to give it another shot. 

 

Silverware:  Nice looking and substantial.

Silverspoons: 6.5/10

Damage: I was treated!

Rochelle Canteen

Rochelle Canteen

Rochelle School

Arnold Circus

London E2 7ES

website

  

Background: One of the inevitable consequences of moving to a new city, or country even, is that your existing friends and family try to set you up on friend dates.  On one such occasion, when my mother and her friend connected their daughters ‘who were looking for friends in London’, I met up with a girl who had been living in London for no less than 8 years, thinking she was helping out a newcomer (3 years deep).  That relationship was not meant to be and I believe our respective relationships with our mothers suffered as well.  It does happen every so often that you are connected by someone else and it just works.  In London it has happen three times, this particular time it was my step-brother Lopo who put me in touch with Rachel, a foodie, setting up her own catering business who is a super cool East London chick and we ate a great, simply meal together and just chatted and chatted forever.  The plan was to meet in Shoreditch, no small task in the snow (this post is about as current as the January snow storms), at a place called Rochelle Canteen.  I took the Hammersmith and City line, which means it’s a miracle I made it all, and even found the restaurant which is located in a schoolyard behind a wall with no sign (further indication that I am a genius).   

  

The Meal:  The menu is simple and to the point.  The ambience is no different.  No nonsense.  We were there for lunch, ordered starter and a main (see why I like this girl), we split the Oxtail Soup and the Roast Sirloin & Horseradish.  Oxtail soup is one of those menu items that I cannot get enough of.Though how I try, I cannot not order it.  The most popular way of serving it is usually in a consommé type broth, though usually more robust in flavour than a typical broth, with a dumpling or something with some of the meat.  This was not that.  It was Osso bucco in a soup; hearty and soulful, truly not what I was expecting but really delicious.  The roast beef, was well roast beef. But perfectly cooked, the way you wish most of the roast beef you will ever have would be cooked. 

 

For the main course, Rachel chose the Braised Faggot & Peas and I went with the Black Bream, Leek and Green Sauce.   Being a prudish American I could never order a meal called Faggot but it was very good and not at all what I was expecting.  I have always been under the impression that the non-pejorative term meant a bundle of sticks, therefore I was, perhaps foolishly, expecting a bundle of something rather than basically one big meatball.  At New Year’s I resolved to eat more fish, this was one of my inaugural meals and I was not to be disappointed.  The skin was perfectly crispy while the flesh was tender and moist.  As for the sides, well you might comment on a sort of lacklustre colour profile going on, they were the best that the dead of winter will lend to a restaurant trying to source local and in season food. 

 

For desert (yep, it was that type of meal) we split the Prune & Almond Tart.  Since childhood, I have avoided the prune like the plague associating it with regulating one’s tummy.  My views have now shifted.  For a dried fruit it still holds onto a bit of the succulence of the original fruit and the combination with the almond was great. 

Closing Thoughts: Rochelle Canteen, tucked away in a school yard, serves good solid fare.  It was a pleasant excursion from West London and a great casual place to meet a new friend.  Also its BYOB with a £5 corkage fee.

 

Silverware: Fittingly school canteen like

Silverspoons: 8/10

Damage: Don’t she paid, but I am guessing pretty reasonable 

Cheese Souffle

I tend to be very sceptical of expiration dates.  When it comes to meat, they are too long, butter and eggs, too short.  Ibuprofen and film? Not sure what they mean but I usually ignore them.  Pascal, on the other hand, is a purist.  If it says March 1st on the package then you can only safely eat it up to February 28th and even that might be pushing it.  This means that every now and again I need to come up with a recipe that gets rid of nearly expiring items (see Bread Pudding).  Soufflé is the end all be all of kitchen sink dishes.  You can put pretty much anything in it and it will still turn out great and be impressive to your fellow diners  (mine was a total disaster and still got a wow).  The word soufflé comes from the French souffler or to puff or to blow, which is basically what happens to this dish made mostly from egg whites and a custardy béchamel.  Usually the reason for a soufflé in my house is a surplus of cheese in this instance it happened to be eggs; really nice farmers market eggs that I bought way too many of when the farmer wooed me with his stories of happy chickens;  eggs that just so happen to be approaching their expiry date.  No matter how many times I demonstrate the ‘how to tell an egg is not bad’ trick to Pascal, the date on the box always supersedes, thus cheese soufflé for dinner.

How to tell an egg is bad:  Fill a tall glass ¾ with water and slowly lower the egg into it.  Make sure the glass is wide enough to fully accommodate the egg otherwise, bad or good, the retrieval can get embarrassing.  If the egg is good then it will sink immediately to the bottom.  If bad, it will float either in the middle or to the top, the badder the egg the higher it floats.  The reason behind this is that there is a small pocket of air in every egg which grows as the egg ages due to dehydration thus allowing it to float.   

Ingredients:

1 tbsp flour
1oz butter
2 ¼ cups milk, warmed
2oz finely grated parmesan cheese

4 large egg yolks

5 large egg whites
salt and freshly ground pepper
cayenne pepper

Preheat the oven to 200˚C/ 400˚F, with the shelf place low in the oven.  Place a baking sheet on the rack to rest the ramekin on.  See picture above for obvious reason.

Step 1: First prepare the béchamel.  Melt the butter in a sauce pan and stir in the tbsp of flour, then integrate the milk until the mixture is smooth. Cook for about 10 minutes continuously stirring as the flour can clump at this stage.  Then add the cheese (It doesn’t have to be parmesan but that is the traditional) and the thoroughly beaten egg yolks.  Remove from the heat and continue to stir for a minute or two.  Then add the seasoning.

Step 2: Whisk the egg whites until stiff and creamy and fold into the custard mixture in halves into a 20cm buttered ramekin. Only fill the ramekin up ¾, see above picture for reason. Put in the oven immediately.  Cook for 20 minutes then keep and eye on it.  Depending on the weather (seriously) it can take between 25-35 minutes.

Note:  You can make step 1 well ahead of time.  Also should you wish to add other ingredients such as vegetables etc, just dust them with flour before adding them to the step 1 mixture, this prevents them from migrating towards the bottom.  

 

Zürcher Gschnätzlets mit Nuedeli

 

Each year I approach New Year’s with a bit of trepidation.  Resolutions have never been my strong suit and the pressure of making good on them day 1, ie Jan 1, is daunting.  Thankfully our friends Brett and Miles have remedied that problem by hosting an annual New Year’s Day party, Southern style.  This means you can stuff your face with honey glazed ham, black eyed peas (for good luck), grits and collard greens (for good sex, the spicier the better!) and put off any looming resolutions until later in the month.  So with our bellies full and our hang-overs cured (did I mention Bloody Mary’s were involved) we flew the red eye home to London from New York.  

Upon arrival we decided to do the only normal thing, rush to the grocery store and start cooking.  If there was any doubt, this enthusiasm stemmed from me reading cooking magazines the entire flight home and Pascal watching Julie & Julia. The promise of food was basically the only thing that was going to keep us from going straight to sleep for the rest of the day, an attempt (later proven unsuccessful) to stave off jet lag.  On the menu: two soups for the week, fresh whole wheat egg noodles and Zürcher Gschnätzlets, perhaps the most famous of Swiss dishes after fondue, raclette and rösti.  It’s taken me the better part of three years to even remotely pronounce it but nevertheless the dish is delicious, consisting of thinly sliced veal (the actual meaning of Gschnätzlets) with mushrooms in a cream sauce. It happens to make a wonderful ‘last supper’ given its richness. While the usual side is rösti, a large potato pancake which originated from the canton of Bern as a common farmers’ breakfast, we opted for egg noodles or 'nuedeli' since the secret to a good rösti is that you must boil and grate the potatoes the day before thus not even worth the effort for a ‘day of’ dish.  

Almost exactly three years ago, I made my first trip to Zurich with my now future husband. We had about 12 hours in the city during which time; I got a small tour, met his mother, and ate a very memorable meal of Zürcher Gschnätzlets mit Rösti at the Goethe-Stübli.  To this day I remember it as one of the best meals of my life.  We recently revisited this restaurant to celebrate our engagement and I was extremely nervous that my first impression of the dish may have been skewed by my massive in-loveness.  Thankfully the in-loveness and goodness of the dish are still intact.

Ingredients

Zürcher Gschnätzlets (serves four)

600g veal  (ask for scallops and slice into thin strips by hand)

3 tbsp butter

Flour for coating

200g button mushrooms (sliced)

Half an onion, (finely chopped)

100ml dry white wine (a Swiss fondant works well, or a sauvignon blanc)

100ml veal stock

200ml double cream (or heavy cream in the US)

1 tbsp cornflour

2 tbsp parsley (finely chopped)

Salt

Pepper

Step 1: Season the veal with salt and pepper and toss in the flour to coat before browning in 2 tbsp of clarified butter for about 2 minutes (to clarify butter, melt the butter in a sauce pan until the milk solids separate, then remove them.  They are the white bits).  You may have to do this in batches, don't despair if 2 minutes is not enough time to cook through, they will finish later.  Then set aside and keep warm. Drain the pan of any liquid.

Step 2: Using the remaining 1 tbsp of butter slowly sweat the onions and mushrooms together. Once tender add the white wine and reduce by half. 

Step 3: Follow with the stock, cream and corn flour. Stir in and add the meat, heating through for about 3 minutes.

Step 4: Salt and pepper to taste and garnish with the parsley 

Note: The cream might fool you, but this is only 520 calories per serving.  You can use a mild Greek yoghurt to reduce that number significantly.

Whole wheat Tagliatelle

2 cups whole wheat flour (sift to remove the big bits)

1 tsp kosher salt

3 eggs

Extra flour

Step 1: Whisk the eggs in a separate bowl and then combine with the flour and salt. Combine to make a dough and knead for about 10 minutes on a flour dusted flat surface (Tip: If you wear latex gloves the process is a lot less messy,it looks weird but helps), wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes to set.  Note: You will need extra flour to keep the dough from sticking.

Step 2: Cut the dough in quarters and roll them out into strips that will fit nicely into the pasta machine.  Begin running the pasta through the machine adjusting the thinness as you go.  We went very thin as whole wheat pasta can be gummy.  Then cut into noodle length and run through the cutting side, flouring as you go to prevent sticking. This is best done with two people, one to turn the crank, one to catch. 

Step 3: Hang to dry until needed.  Cook in boiling salted water for three minutes

Note:  Whole wheat pasta has its drawbacks, it’s much more robust and can often have a gritty mouth feel, in the case of making it yourself, while I wouldn’t recommend it alone with a butter sauce, due to the thinness and the texture it did do very well in picking up this heavier sauce as an accompaniment. 

Bread Pudding

There are many advantages to marrying a European man.  In my case one of the many stand out benefits of marrying into the Swiss culture is that a fondue party is neither kitsch nor a seventies throwback, reserved for ski vacations or even a novelty. It is the Swiss national dish.  Instead of Christmas turkey, they have Fondue Chinoise (a Chinese hotpot of sorts).  What is not to love!  We have not one but two fondue pots AND a raclette machine.  Fondue is a fun dish, however, perilous for the lactose intolerant.  The dish hails originally from the town of Gruyère in the Fribourg canton of Switzerland.  Legend has it that while the walled city was under siege from a hostile neighbour canton (Switzerland was not always one happy neutral nation), the food supplies ran low and all that remained was stale bread and the rinds of cheese.  So they melted it down and used the bread to sop it up, it turned out it was a filling dish that also created solidarity among the villagers due to its communal nature.  I learned all this on a recent trip to Gruyère so if you happen to be from another part of Switzerland and have a different rendition (that potentially includes your hometown) I apologize for any historical inaccuracies.

So when preparing for the evening’s festivities, I asked Pascal what we needed to get and how much, concerning the bread the answer was, “when it comes to fondue, if you run out of bread it’s game over.” So as a good American girl, I overbought and subsequently over cut thus leaving me with a ton of cubed bread. Hence the real reason for this entry, bread pudding, fondue was just a side plot.  Like fondue, this sort of bread pudding was a wartime, WWII, replacement for cake when supplies were being rationed.   Most of the ingredients are already in your fridge and it is exceptionally easy to make.  The resulting dish is delicious and very homemade in a grandmother kind of way.  One tip would be to make sure that you are having some sort of party to serve the bread pudding lest you feel inclined to eat it for breakfast lunch and dinner.

Ingredients

Left over bread cubed to fill a 13 x 9 inch baking pan

Butter to grease the pan

1 cup raisins

3 free-range eggs

4 cups milk

2 cups sugar

2 tbsp vanilla extract

1 tsp cinnamon

Pre-heat the oven to 190˚C or 375˚F.

Step 1: Put the bread and the raisins into the greased pan.

Step 2: Whisk together the eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon and pour over the bread.  Let soak for about an hour, pressing down with a spatula every now and then to make sure the top gets soaked too.

Step 3: Put into the oven for about an hour.  Let cool slightly then serve.  

Note:  You can use white or brown sugar, I used both. My house is now white sugar free!  More brown sugar means a more earthy flavour.  Also this pudding is great warm but also excellent room temperature.

 

The Hinds Head

The Hinds Head

High Street

Bray

Berkshire, SL6 2AB

01628626 151

website

 
 

Background: Our dear friend Jeffery is moving back to the States and to send himself off, he had planned a wonderful boozy lunch out in Henley the other Sunday.  So what is one to do when they find they need to be out in the countryside on Sunday for lunch? Well, schedule two meals around it, of course!  It was this magical thinking that brought us to The Hinds Head.  The Hinds Head is the pub of the world renowned Heston Blumenthal whose claim to fame, The Fat Duck, is just down the road. The pub, built in the 15th century, has been operational for over 400 years and although its original function is unknown some say it was a royal hunting lodge while other the guest house of the Abbot of Cirencester. In an unusual turn of events, I was not burdened by the responsibility of making a reservation but was told by my friend, Michelle that her new boyfriend, Dawid (pronounced Daa –Vid, try it once more) had made a reservation and we would be having a double date. Fantastic! Luckily the skies were pouring down with rain so there was nothing more we all wanted to do then sit down to a nice pub lunch.

 

The Meal:  One glance at the menu and it is obvious that a measured pace is advised although it was pretty clear that was not going to happen.  We started off with two “snacks”, Devils on Horseback and Scotch Quail Eggs (we opted out of Warwickshire Wizzers); all of which needed to be explained by the waitress as there wasn’t not an Englishman among us and I was too embarrassed to admit just how familiar I already was with Scotch Eggs. That being said, The Devils on Horseback were exactly as good as any meat lover (pork in particular) can imagine sausages wrapped in bacon would be and the Scotch eggs were cooked to perfection.

For the starters we elected to go for some of the lighter options on the menu; the Duck and Smoked Guinea Fowl Terrine with Spiced Apples, the Picked Anchovies with Tomato and Garlic, the Scallops with Smoked Pollack Champ and a grilled squid that was not on the menu but an additional special.  All of the starters were very good but the anchovies and the scallops were the stand out favourites.  Fish, like aubergine, has never been a particular favourite of mine, strangely I am a diehard fan of anything shellfish.  The anchovy, therefore, poses several problems; a) it is fish shaped, b) it is a fishy fish, and c) it has lots of little bones in it.  Imagine my surprise when this rather large anchovy melted in my mouth without a hint of fish or bone.  It was a delightful dish.  The scallop was also very good but in a very different way.  Where the anchovies were simply and beautifully prepared in a classic Mediterranean style the scallops were more inventively put together a la late 1990’s with a foam to represent the sea and breadcrumbs the sand.  As cheesy as it sounds, I was still extremely tasty.

For the main courses, Dawid chose the Blade of Highland Beef with Savoy Cabbage and Black and White Pudding, Pascal got the Oxtail and Kidney Pudding, Michelle opted for the Wild Boar and Apple Sausages with Mash and Caramelised Onion Gravy, and I ordered the Aberdeenshire Beef with Bone Marrow Sauce and Triple Cooked Chips.  Given that it was Dawid who brought us all together at the Hinds Head, it was only fitting that his choice would be the winner among champions.  The beef shoulder was cooked sous-vide (in a plastic bag in water) for 17 hours! (I believe the hype)  It was rich and tender and succulent and really anything you could hope for in a braised shoulder of beef with the crisped Savoy cabbage balancing the flavours very nicely.  

The second favourite were the Wild Boar and Apple Sausages; a step up from your traditional bangers and mash and very good.  My steak was lovely.  And although am not such a kidney fan for those around the table who are more smitten with offal, the Oxtail and Kidney pie was also a winner. 

  

Dessert:  It’s hard to imagine that after such a feast we could muster the energy for dessert. But desperate times call for desperate measures and we dug deep; deep enough to order two desserts among the four of us.  I choose the Caramelised Apple Crumble with Vanilla Ice Cream and Dawid chose the Chocolate Wine ‘Slush’ with Millionaire Shortbread. The crumble was a very good, solid, stand-up crumble, certainly worth another pass. The ‘Slush’ was an entirely different matter.  If you were to analogize it would go like this: anchovies are to scallops as crumble is to slush.  Make sense?  It seems that culinary inventiveness was not just limited to the late1990s but also to the 1660s (there is a nice symmetry or palindromeness or something to that).  Chocolate wine (made by whisking a strong wine like claret or port with sugar and chocolate) hit the scene in the days of Charles II and was seen as an aphrodisiac.  The resulting dessert was very good in an “I can’t really figure it out but I like it” kind of way.    

Closing Thoughts: It’s hard to say that you were blown away by a pub.  Emotionally I find that difficult, but this place was really good.  The beef shoulder is up there with best pieces of meat ever.  Everyone walked out of lunch into the rainy afternoon and said, “Man, do I want to go to Fat Duck for dinner ... and come here for lunch.”  I hope to find a reason to venture to Bray again, and soon!

 

Silverware: Classic and substantial

Silverspoons: 8.5 / 10

Damage: £50 / person including wine

Ottolenghi's Chocolate Fudge Cake

If only the lack of blogging this summer would be the direct result of lack of eating.  Alas, it is not.  I not only ate my way through the summer but I have nothing to show for it except half a dozen pairs of jeans that don’t fit. I have therefore embarked upon no less than five attempts at dieting only to find myself in the South of France or other such environs where dieting is, indeed, impossible.  I welcomed the first of September, with its ever so slightly cooler breeze, as a new start, fresh beginning, or back to school if you will:  I have sworn off carbs!  And I haven’t been so bad, one French fry here and there but I have been pretty good.  So what to do when lovely brother and sister-in-law invite themselves over for dinner (I wish more people would do this by the way)?  Well there isn’t much else to do than whip out the Ottolenghi cookbook and start flipping through the pages of what can only be categorized as food porn. It’s not too difficult to put together a starter and a main course and avoid the dreaded carbohydrate but dessert is a different matter altogether.  Enter the flourless chocolate cake: pure genius.  As soon as I laid eyes upon this recipe I knew that it was meant to be.  Isn’t that cheating you say?  Yes, of course it is.  But were my guests to suffer because of my personal battle of the bulge.  I think not!  Does that mean I have full license to have chocolate cake for every meal until I finally gave away the rest to my housekeeper? No! But did I?  Yes! And with pleasure. 

Ingredients:

240g Unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

360g Dark Chocolate (70% cocoa solids)

290g Light muscovado sugar   

4 tbsp water

5 large eggs (separated)

A pinch of salt

Cocoa for dusting

Pre-heat the oven to 170˚C and prepare your baking tin. 

Step 1: In a large bowl combine your chocolate and butter.  Both should be sufficiently cut up into small pieces. At the same time mix the sugar and water into a sauce pan and bring to a boil over medium heat.   Once boiling pour over the chocolate and butter until it is all melted together. (If you ignored the “cut it up into small pieces” directive, insert step 2a, melt mixture further over a double boiler until smooth.)

Step 2: Stir the egg yolks into the chocolate one at a time and reserve the whites in another bowl.  Then whisk the whites and the salt until firm.  Let the chocolate cool room temperature before folding in the whites. 

Step 3: Pour 2/3 of the mixture into your cake tin and cook for 40 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.  Then set aside until completely cool.  Then pour the remaining mixture over and cook for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick shows a moist crumb.  Set aside to cool and dust with cocoa and/or icing sugar. (Tip: To best dust a cake, use a tea ball.  You get the right amount of dusting material with little mess and no lumps)

Notes:  Make this cake and you will make yourself and anyone around you happy.  It will keep for a couple of days.