Excuse me, could you tell me where the coocoos is please?

Am loving the smoked paprika which I got from the Spice Shop off Portobello Road, which had its latest outing with a couscous of peppers, courgettes and chickpeas, which was massively herbalised with fresh dill and parsley, as well as an earlier base of thyme, oregano, chives, chilli and the paprika. With some yoghurt and cucumber on the side this was nae bad. Not great, but nae bad.

Still a pearl

Richard Billingham eat your heart out!

Les fleurs et le pain bananais

Columbia Road on Sunday is pretty wonderful in itself but the cute cafe on Georgina Gardens provides yet another reason to visit. The Ts very kindly treated me to a breakfast of a big hunk of banana bread and a double espresso - my kind of start to the day. CT observed that the bb was admirable for the way that it was both bread-y and it retained its cake qualities and I don't think it could be put any better.

Stuffed peppers with stuff on the side

I had a little phase a while ago of really wanting stuffed peppers (I'm sorry notification of this and the updating of the blog has been so tardy). This time I went "doolally for herbs" as Jamie Oliver so horribly announced in one of his ads, frying onions with oregano, chives, thyme and smoked paprika, plus garlic, tomato puree and oyster mushrooms, with some feta on top (actually Sainsbury's value 'Greek-style' cheese, which you would be hard-put to differentiate from feta). Also on the menu was some Ossetian cheese and potato bread which came from a fiendishly difficult recipe on the internet (well, it was quite easy but I was knackered from other cooking by that point), so these became Ossetian cheese and potato puffs, and were judged to be none the worse for it, though I bet the bread is miles better if that on offer at Tibilisi is anything to go by. Broad beans are now in the markets: hooray!

Menara, Menara, Menara: sounds like a football chant when you write it like that

B rightly observed what an exemplary place Menara is this evening. Number7 (think Eric, not David or Cristiano) treated us to mint tea, baklava and shisha, and all three were right at the top of their class in what is a really convivial atmosphere. The mint tea, made with rose water b divined, was, well, divine. A place for times to chill.

Ragam

Finally we have discovered an excellent neighbourhood Indian restaurant in central London, and it's next door to the best neighbourhood Arab resto in central London! Ragam is a small, south Indian place where we had some of the loveliest service I have had all year: polite, discreet, attentive and modest. The food was really excellent: we had five vegetable side dishes with a couple of portions of rice, some garlic paratha (should read very garlic paratha on the menu), preceded by some hot and regular poppadoms. The attention to detail in the cooking was made plain with the three chutneys which were a long way off the usual, extremely sweet indstrial dips one gets in curry houses (don't get me wrong, I like those chutneys, but these were yummier). The beetroot and onion chutney was especially good. The vegetable dishes included some fluffy spinach with garlic, a hot/sweet/sour Keralan curry, a very good aubergine dish and a yummy chickpea curry. With glasses of tap water, refilled without asking, the bill with service was about £33. We'll be back.

Why the heck is my celery not properly wrapped?

I rather dozily went to Tesco this morning to pick up some cat food for Wotsit and a few other things which I dimly remembered as being on a list I'd forgotten. I'm not sure whether celery was or was not on that list, but I figured I wanted some, approached the vegetable section and... what the hell is going on... the celery is not in its usual plastic bag. The celery is bloody loose!

At the time, I thought little of this packaging error, but a bit later I realised what was going on: that Tesco had, as Sam Wollaston might say, only gone and got ethical with their celery. It struck me that my reaction as a consumer was emblematic of how hard it is for supermarkets and producers more generally to change their habits in the face of the incredible potential resistance from consumers who are so used to things being the way they are. Tesco's celery decision also made me think about my own food-buying habits in a way that no Guardian article or trendy organic grocery had ever done, because it made me wonder how many changes I ought to make in my own buying habits. I mean I smugly shop in street markets for fruit and veg, but realistically a lot of that produce is flown in, and I buy it there because it's cheaper than in supermarkets and I like tha banter of the market. I enjoy fruit and vegetable in season, but then I enjoy plenty which are damn well out of season. I like going to places like Konstam which source their products from within the M25, but I'm not averse to a McFlurry every now and then. All of which is to say, just how much of an ethical push should I make with regard to food, given that Tesco is making an effort and food (after rent) makes up the biggest part of my monthly budget.

Does it make sense to continue in a rough and ready fashion or is this the kind of area where it would be worth setting oneself limits in terms of the non-seasonal, non-local produce one buys? After all, London is full of great food entrepreneurs who are trying to push consumers in ethical directions and there'd be a lot of fun on a journey towards this goal. Yet, there's also a little niggling thought in my mind as to what on earth we mean by "ethical" food. I guess I do want to support people who grow and make things in non-harmful ways, who treat their staff justly, but I also want to support my man in Pearl kebab takeaway who I really like, whose chips are the best, and who lets me off with paying less if I don't have the right change, and I pay him back that time. It seems to me there's something pretty good about that food relationship yet I feel it falls outside our general idea of what ethical eating is all about. Also, I can't see myself going organic because it's pricier and I guess I have a slight residual suspicion of the idea of wholly moving in that direction.

Devon pubs

Bish bash bosh, Devon country pubs, like the Thorverton Arms in, er, Tharverton, know what they're about and what they do well. In the picture you see veggie lasagne and chocolate tart with vanilla ice cream. You may be reflecting on the impression of very great cheesiness conveyed in the image of the lasagne; t'was a reality too.

Man, woman, cake

Hot hot cross buns. Mine did not last long.

FoodeaZe

After inspecting the banal ugliness of Exeter's redeveloped Princesshay, it was a real relief to go the sillily named, but rather good, FoodeaZe, in what was St George's Market. Where Princesshay represents nothing but a confirmation of the centre of Exeter as being the ultimate "clone town" (the restos are Cafe Rouge, Tasca and Strada) and a dismissal of the city's inherent charms (in the manner in which a view of the cathedral has been occluded), FoodeaZe represents a determination to celebrate food production and sourcing in Devon. The place is rather like a food hall in a department store, without the store itself: a central kitchen and bar area, with seating, surrounded by little outlets selling or making food. One of the pictures shows the pretty wonderful oil area - rapeseed, two olive oils, walnut and various other oils were available - where I tried all on offer and concluded that the kalamata olive oil was really top notch. At £2 for a medium-size bottle, this represented excellent value for a wonderful product and I presume the idea is that you will go back to refill your bottles, which I would do if I were in Exeter. Some other foodstuffs and cooking equipment was rather expensive, but there were plenty of great things at keen prices, including Pebblebed wines and other good bottles from Vino in Topsham. We stayeyed for lunch and I had pretty tasty vegetable noodles. S found them rather sweet, but I thought them fine and I'd like to go back to check out the early evening offer (they're open till 8 but I imagine this will stretch out in time of they're successful) of a drink plus unlimited snacks for a fiver. All in all, a brave move to open a sizeable enterprise like this in a location that had been going downhill for years. I very much hope that they find a big enough market for what they're doing in promoting excellent, sustainable food.

All about the yaki

I think I've made my feelings about both okonomiyaki and Japanese accompaniments pretty plain, so you can probably tell how much pleasure the meal pictured here gave me. The side dish was a set of carrot, spinach and beansprout kimchi: dee-lish-ous.

Domburi and the art of accompaniment

One of the surprises of eating out in Japan for me was how many restaurants offered 'setto' dishes, where a main dish was acccompanied by specific and appropriate side, for one, usually very reasonable, price. I'm coming to understand how the interplay of dishes is an important part of Japanese food and was helped in this by S putting together a meal of domburi, daikon salad and daikon kimchi. Domburi is a dish which I'm coming more and more to love - there's something wonderful about its creamy, salty savouriness - and it its charms are neatly expressed through the contrast with daikon two ways. The crunchiness of the daikon contrasts completely with the softness of the domburi, whilst the freshness and zing of daikon could not be more different to the richness of the domburi.

Mediterranish

S deserved a break so I was deputed to create some kind of vegetable dish to accompany some partly home-made rosemary ciabatta. I 'll admit to being rather pleased with the Mediterranean platter I put together, which, as you can see, featured peppers, tomato, mushrooms and asparagus on rocket. The keys to succes, in a dish which I'd often fluff, were: cooking with someone who know what their doing and who acts as a kitchen assistant!, parboiling the vegetables in careful order before roasting, adding a few whole cloves of garlic, and really going for it with both herbs (oregano, thyme and others) as well as a fair bit of chilli, to give the whole dish character.

Hand rolled

I was a touch hungover on my first night back in Exeter for Easter. Sushi is a very soothing kind of dish for someone in such a state. It was so balming in fact that I began to enjoy natto for the first time. If you know what natto is and you are not Japanese then you probably know that you do not like it, but I think I am making my first steps towards becoming a fan. These fermented soya beans are quite something to both look at and, more importantly, to lift with your chopsticks for they are... ahem... slightly snotty in texture. Actually, I've just learned that 'sticky' is a more polite way of saying this.

All this is to stray somewhat off the main point, which is that S prepared a real feast for us, with, as the pictures show, a serving dish with avocado, cucumber, cress, cheddar, lettuce, egg and asparagus, as well as the natto, alongside nori for rolling, mayonnaise, soy and wasabi. Extremely carefully-prepared, simple Japanese food such as this becomes more and more appealing to me over time, so much so that I wonder if I have now opened up a part of my brain/tastebuds which craves more and more Japanese foods and is going to offer me even more pleasure as I come to understand the subtleties of Japanese preparations of food.

However you pronounce it

And thence to Marylebone farmer's market where they bought fine cheeses, salad bags, unusual + traditional Kentish apples (Malling) and a gooseberry bush. There's a good reason why this market has attracted such a buzz as there's an excellent variety of stalls, many of which are excellent value(my big salad bag was a quid and the gooseberry bush a fiver). There are some pricier stalls but nothing compared to the likes of La Bloody Fromagerie which you pass on your way in. Makes me want to try other farmer's markets in London.

SOS is not a cry for help

Number7 suggested Smiths of Smithfield for brekka and 1) who was I to argue? 2) how right she was to make that suggestion. This is without doubt one of the funkiest restaurants in London and lots of people evidently know that it is a great place for Sunday brunch. We waited a little while on big sofas with excellent Valencian orange juices and then joined the mixed crowd of trendies, families and oldsters at the tables. Number7 had a bacon and egg sandwich and I had a beanburger with houmous/babghanoush etc + chips. The food was just fine but it was the atmosphere which made the place: wonderful industrial architecture, fantastic fittings, upbeat music played that bit louder than would usually be acceptable (there was quite a lot of foot-tapping grooving going on amongst those waiting at the bar) and a really happy, metropolitan feel to the place.

Du pain

However lovingly No.7 is looking at the bread in this window, I feel reasonably confident in saying that my gaze sur le pain was even more longing. The bakery is just off Columbia Road and as the photo shows these people know what they are doing. I've just had a slice of my dark rye loaf (there's a loaf coming your way b!) and it's one of the spiciest rye breads I've ever had. Now you may shrug your shoulders and say 'but it ain't sposed to be spicy' and I will beg to differ because there was a fizzy kind of spiciness to this bread that worked just fine by me. And you may say fizzy?!

I'll have a marathon

One of the very few good things about training for a marathon is that you can eat bloody loads without putting on weight. Here's a fat-boy chilli I made for myself on Saturday after a long run along the Thames: vegetable chilli (obscured by not insubstantial amounts of cheddar), rice, Total yoghurt and a tomato, red onion and coriander salsa. They'd run out of soya mince in Tesco so I decided to cook with quinoa for the first time, on the grounds that it's super-healthy, -trendy etc. I'll reserve judgement on its usefulness as an ingredient until after I've used it to make something less hot and spicy, but the way the grains acquire little tails when cooked is kinda cool, if a bit icky.

No peas please

They'd run out of peas at the market, so I was forced to think on my feet a bit as I wanted to make another ricotta salad. I went for purple sprouting (appara you don't need to add broccoli these days), olive oil and chilli. I certainly feel that my inner Italian is channelling through pretty well these days.