Accidental pasta

As I have said, my cooking has been pretty ropey lately. In part this has been, I think, because I haven't been buying vegetables from the market, but have been picking up odd things from Tesco, which is a just a bad idea.

Tonight I needed carbs and I needed them fast, so I made what I have to say was a pretty delicious pasta of ricotta, olive oil, chopped avocado (three for a nugget and wonderfully rich and creamy), chilli flakes, sea salt and a little lemon juice. Just boil the pasta, drain and add the ingredients, making sure that there is a reasonably high proportion of avocado to pasta.

In praise of EC1

In some ways EC1 can seem a right scruffy and skanky postcode to be wandering around of a Sunday morning: the City streets are empty, there's a bit too much rubbish around, and there's a certain greyness to it all, but appearances can be deceptive, because EC1 is so packed full of Sunday marktes that you can walk right across it moving from one to the other. I met Number7 at Spitalfields for a bit of a wander and we then tracked down to Petticoat Lane which is lively, lively, lively with plenty of cheap clothes stalls, shops selling African fabrics and all sorts of other bargains. From there I headed to Whitecross St near Barbican where a new, fortnightly food market started over the summer. Many of the stalls are familiar names from Borough, Exmouth Market etc, but there were also plenty that were new to me, including a Portuguese stand selling what looked pretty delicious fried goods, and two cup cake stalls. As I past the first of these - Fairy Cups..... - I evidently couldn't disguise my delight in the cakes and I was called over by the stallholder to buy one, which I wasn't that gutted about because the whole set of iced cakes lined up together was a real work of art. After much deliberation I bought a cake with vanilla cream with the icing shaped as a rose and it was bloody delicious. At £2 it needed to be, for a part of me did think "This'd be 25p in a fete", but, as I said, the craftsmanship of the icing and the whole arrangement of the cakes was really special, and I'd routinely spend that kind of sum on a mediocre cake in a coffee shop. Actually, that's not true because I don't go to coffee shops and I'd resent spending a couple of quid on a crap cake, but you know what I mean. From there I ambled up to Chapel Street to buy a big bowl of clementines for a quid, three giant avocados for another squid and some vine toms and ricotta from Olga's. This all goes to confirm that Sunday is a great market day in London and that ambly food shopping has become one of the big hobbies of londontowners.

I may have said this before

But have I told you how much I like the combination of Waitrose's Grand mange pain rustique and Bridel Breton butter with salt flakes? I try not to buy bread these days because I know how terrible I am with it and since Otis doesn't seem keen on it, it's not like I can pretend that it'll end up anywhere than round my midriff. God, that sounds a bit sad and diet-y, but I'm sure that you know what I mean, and anyhow this post is intended as a celebration of bread and butter. One of the best things about the grand pain, as you might guess, is its size, for it is truly a ginormous loaf of bread and nae bad value at £1.50 or so. I wouldn't say that it's an exceptional loaf but it does have a nice roughness to it and a pleasing contrast between the tough exterior and the pillowy insides. As for Bridel, it's a butter studded with flakes of sea salt. Um, er, I'm not sure what's not to like about that.

The Belvedere

You may have noticed that it is a slight bugbear of mine that there aren't enough dining rooms in London which are really well-designed or in any way grand, so it was a real treat to be invited to the Belvedere in Holland Park, which really is a splendid room. The ceilings are high, the art big (in all ways - Warhol and Hirst), and there are lovely leaded windows with views of the trees swaying in the park. There's a £24.95 three-course lunch menu at the weekends which offers a pretty serious number of choices, including three or four vegetarian starters, all of which b and I ignored in favour of requesting the eggs benedict minus the bacon. On doing this we then had some really great service because the waitress then returned from the kitchen to ask whether we would like spinach in place of the bacon, which was a real no-brainer and evidence of the kind of thoughtful service which is oh so rare in the capital and in general. Anyways, that dish was the real highlight for me: a well-cooked egg top a muffin and a lush pile of salted spinach, with both hollandaise and beurre blanc poured on and around the dish. Just the kind of luxuriant cooking that I like and not the kind of dish that I would ever attempt at home (though that's not saying much because my home cooking is in such a serious rut that anything more adventurous than pasta with tomato sauce would count as exotic these days).

The vegetarian main was a pasta forestiere with plenty of wild mushrooms and cream. The best thing about it, though, was the texture of the pasta which was about as al dente as is possible to be whilst still being cooked, which is meant as real praise because it meant one could really appreciate the home-madeness of the pasta. In fact, attention to texture and appreciation of the value of solidity-of-bite was a characteristic of the cooking and I really appreciated this in my pudding which was a yoghurt mousse with a kind of smashed-up blackberry crumble (T noticed just how many of the items on the menu were described as battered, smashed, crushed and so on!). The mousse was really solid and quite delicious, though by this point I was really stuffed and slightly defeated, which was a big shame as I could quite happily have a portion of it in front of my laptop now.

Gosh readers, writing about food is a funny old thing, because the more I write here, the more enthusiastic I'm becoming about food again.

Sporeboys

Uh, oh, this hasn't proved to be much of a month posting wise has it ...? For some reason I am slightly bored by food at the moment. Not quite sure why this should be the case. I want to believe that it's because I'm devoting lots of mental energy to rewriting my book about Algeria, but that somehow doesn't sound all that plausible, does it? Perhaps some weird kind of trasnferrence is going in the X because Otis seems to have become an unbelieveably adventurous/greedy eater lately. I just caught him trying to finish off a green salad and in the week found him chomping away on chilli and yoghurt spaghetti (not nearly as nice as it should have been).

Anyways, a recent food highlight was definitely the portobello mushroom and halloumi sandwich I had from Sporeboys at the Port Eliot festival. Apparently sporeboys are based in Hackney and their food was by far the best offering at the festival and I slightly regret not also trying their wild mushroom sandiwch (pictured) and wm omelette.

Ramsay

I've got to say that I really don't give two hoots about the current telly phone-in scam scandal, but I was amused to read that it has transpired that Gordon Ramsay did not apparently spear a sea bass as he claimed to have done on a recent show. Well, of course he didn't do it, would be my response, for it's obvious that they'd have got a pro to get the fish. The thing that really amuses me, though, is the fact that, pro that he is, that Gordon yelled "I feel like a fucking action man" to camera after he had apparently not caught the fish!

Anyhow, the guy is still a legend because I have such great memories of Verre, which was one of the most delicious restaurants I've eaten in, and I still have a soft spot for Kitchen Nightmares.

The Depot

I know, I know, it's been a poor show of late, so I shan't say that I deserve an empty echo for this post. After trying really hard to make June a bumper month, my enthusiasm for blogging really seems to have withered in July.

Perhaps it is then appropriate that I begin again with a restaurant which really was "blah". Regular readers will know that over the course of the year I haven't actually been to many blah places; I've been to some rubbish ones and I've been to lots of good ones, but, thanks to good tips and other people's good taste, I've not actually had all that many really unmemorable meals. Well, I did last week at The Depot in Barnes at a work lunch. It wasn't that the food was bad, it's just that none of it really sang in either a good or a bad way. The place has plenty going for it in that it's in a lovely location by the river, the staff are well-drilled and the 3-course set lunch is decent value at, I think, £12.50. I had a celeriac soup, some kind of pasta with peas and girolles, and then some chocolate and chestnut ice creams. All of them were just fine in a kinda 90s brasserie cooking kinda way, but it's always slightly depressing to eat out and not feel all tht charmed by the experience. Perhaps I am setting my standards too high - or perhaps I am lucky enough to live in a city where standards are pretty high at all price points - since this place does what it says on the tin, and I can imagine that the riverside tables are pretty romantic in the evening, but, but, but....

Dish of the year

A wedding is not generally a place where you expect to eat something which you'd seriously consider as one of your dishes of the year, yet that was what happened to me not once but twice at Louise and Craig's wedding at the Roxburghe House Hotel in the Scottish Borders. Now I should say I was in quite a good mood at the time of the meal in that the setting was lovely, the wedding itself was fun and I was on a table full of old friends. I had probably had quite a few glasses of Pimms too. Yet I'm pretty damn sure that the cooking was of the highest standard and of a level you would be very happy to eat in a really smart restaurant. Achieving that level of expertise when catering for scores of people must be really tough and while I've noticed that wedding food has got much, much better lately, this was a step beyond even the very good because, as I said, two of the dishes were really outstanding.

The first was the starter which was a tart of onion and thyme with hollandaise sauce. Now I love tarts and I love all the ingredients listed here but what really made this dish was the quality of the cooking of all the individual ingredients (superbly made pastry, onions cooked just so and creamy, frothy hollandaise) and the way that they came together really deliciously on the fork. This was followed by soem decent ravioli with spicy tomato and aubergine and then, a true stand-out of a pudding consisting of a chocolate mousse, a white chcolate version and a rum ice. The rum was rubbish frankly but the two mousses were amongst the riches dishes I've ever eaten in my life and all the better for it. The white chocolate version tasted like chilled clotted cream mixed with butter and white chocolate, and then whipped smooth - and I mean that in a very good way indeed.

Menu here: http://www.roxburghe.net/hotel/restaurant/dining.html

Tomato watch II

Number I tomato is now approaching cherry tom size and has been joined by a friend that is about the size of a pearl. There are five or six other flowers on that plant, so it's looking nae bad. The other plant is rather disappointing as there aren't even hints of flowers (the fruit come through the flowers by the way - which I'm sure you know, but I didn't), so I am getting radical in lopping off lots of the side shoots so as to encourage lush, fruit-bearing growth at the top. That makes it sound like I almost know what I am doing. The snails are loving the courgette plants but as they seem to prefer the leaves, rather than the buds, they are still in my good books. My attempts at growing aubergines and melons are stalling...

Who makes the best nuts in the world? Al Rifai. Next.

It would happen when I was walking down the street, when I was sat on the tube, when I was trying to write... that nagging feeling in my throat and in my brain that said: Indian food, Indian food, you need Indian food. I cannot actually remember when I last had Indian food, so I was very pleased with b's suggestion of Diwana on Drummond Street. They have a £6.50 lunchtime buffet which is rightly very popular and I wish I still had a camera so that you could see the wonder of my plate which was piled with, amongst other things: a poppadom, kulcha, raita, saag aloo, saag paneer, many fresh chutneys, chana masala, okra in tomato sauce, rice, bhajees and much more... The part of me that is not embarassed by the sheer quantity of food on my plate would also have liked to have weighed so that I might regale you with the stunning amount I ate. It was good too, well-spiced, a nice bit of heat and all super-fresh, from the good quality spinach to an onion, tomato and cucumber chutney which had evidently just been made. Tap water was served as a matter of course and was refilled often and more discreetly than would be the case in most flash restaurants. Now, how long before that hunger for Indian food comes on again?

Pret

Of all the chains I think I have mst affection for Pret a Manger. In their field they do a good job and a number of their sandwiches - especially when eaten as a pre-flight snack - are really delicious. I've eaten a few of their muffins lately and they differ greatly from most muffins out there in that they are actually fresh and there is some moistness to the cake, rather than the rasping dryness of most muffins. It'd not like I'd seek out lunch in Pret but if you want a coffee or a cake or a sandwich, they'll do the job.*

*This post was written with the power of bland-write: your prose can also be this numbingly dull with bland-write...

Tomato watch

This is the first post that I've written since losing my camera, where I'm really gutted that I'm not able to post a photo. My aim is that this will be the first in a series of posts tracking the growth of my tomatoes, about which I am very excited; not least because the first baby green tomato has just appeared on one of my two plants.

I bought the plants for 25p each from outside a house in Whitstable in May and they have now reached perhaps 3 or 4 feet in height and I am beginning to worry about 'pinching out' unnecessary shoots, which is apparently essential if you want to get a good crop of toms in July. I am unclear as to which shoots are viable and which are hindering the plant's progress. If anyone fancies popping round to consult on this question, they would be most welcome.

Anyhow the good news is that the plants seem very healthy and they loved being transplanted from their pots inside into a bag of compost outside. There they have been joined by two courgette plants which also seem pretty happy. They were about 70p each from Stroud market and today I picked up an aubergine and melon plant from Islington farmers market for 80p each. All I need now are a few more plants and another bag of compost and I am going to have, I hope, quite a market garden out back. Tomato watch will return.