Comfort food is an odd phrase. If you get great news at work and decide to celebrate with champagne at your favourite restaurant where you always have the XYZ - that XYZ is comfort food. Equally, feeling ill and heading home early for a bowl of soup; that’s comfort food. Seeing family for lunch and having the same roast chicken you’ve had every other Sunday since 1991 is comfort food (as long as you like roast chicken, and your family). However, the worst, worst manifestation of comfort food, and the one most people will have thought of immediately, is the stereotype of a girl crying into the Haagen Daaz in her pyjamas and sloshing Pinot Grigio all over the sofa.
Only about a third of women continue to eat healthily during times of emotional stress. Apart from the odd occasion when you only eat mashed potato for 24 hours, I think this is much more likely to mean that women don’t really eat when they’re sad. As if they’re so tired or upset or just clinically fed up that they temporarily don’t care about themselves.
We all know about the Heartbreak Diet, where a friend who is going through a break up will suddenly appear looking leggy, which is envy inducing until you ask her how she is and she can’t say answer without welling up.
Here’s the bitch: for men, the urge for comfort food is apparently (I did some googling research) triggered by positive emotions, whereas for women it’s by negative ones. This means that for every man celebrating his good news in his favourite local Italian, there’s a woman in the flat next door hoofing down chocolate and deleting old photos on facebook. If life was a film, they would meet inadvertently when she runs to the shops at 11pm to pick up another bottle just as he’s leaving the restaurant, and they would then be In Love. But it isn’t a film, so she will develop a short term alcohol problem, and he will probably grab a cab home.
The Wikipedia article on comfort food (as always, to be read with a pinch of salt please) only gives examples of comfort foods from the USA, Canada and Indonesia, which seems a little reductive, if eclectic. The page did, however, alert me to the fact that Kraft (they of the plastic cheese slices) make something called a ‘microwavable dinner cup’ in the flavour ‘Extreme Cheese Explosion’ which I am genuinely desperate to try.
However, it was either Rousseau or Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who said, “food that weighs heavy on the stomach, often weighs rather heavy on the soul too”, and the last thing you need when you’re feeling miserable is to feel stuffed as well. One of my favourite comfort foods ever is something I call, excitingly, ‘Egg Smash!’, which is where you soft boil 2 eggs, peel them and then just smush them up in a mug with salt, pepper and parmesan. Eat that, watch some crap TV, get an early night.
What I’m trying to say is that for me, comfort food doesn’t automatically mean macaroni cheese. In fact I have to be in a pretty convivial mood to want to relax and eat pasta and drink wine and chat. Recently, my godmother took me for lunch at Hush, which is not only owned by Roger Moore’s son, but is also where they have a truffled macaroni cheese with bacon (what an elegant segway into the food part).
I’m not normally a fan of f**king with the formula, but an easy way of making macaroni cheese as special as you deserve at home (assuming you don’t want to buy a truffle…) is to try the recipe below which is based on Lorraine Pascale’s ‘Glam Mac and Cheese’. I have adapted it a bit because she did include a few weird things, and none of my sisters like parsley. Full disclaimer: she used to be a model so probably doesn’t eat it very often. Also, serve it with salad or your arteries will turn into cheese.
Pimped Macaroni Cheese
Serves 4
You will need:
340g macaroni
80g pancetta
100g breadcrumbs
-handful of chopped thyme
For the cheese sauce:
40g butter
40g plain flour
1 tsp mustard powder
200ml milk
285ml double cream
200g dolcelatte
115g parmesan
-Preheat the oven to 200c
-Cook the macaroni until just underdone (it will cook more in the oven) and drain
-Fry the pancetta and thyme and add to the pasta
-For the sauce, start by making the roux. Melt the butter and mix in the flour. Add the milk and cream little by little, stirring constantly. Turn up the heat and boil it for a few minutes to thicken.
-Add most of the dolcelatte and parmesan to the mixture and stir well. Season.
-Pour the sauce over the pasta and combine.
-Spoon the mixture into a casserole dish.
-Sprinkle the remaining cheese and breadcrumbs over the top and bake for 20-30 minutes.
So, in conclusion, it may be the end of November. It may be that the weather forecast for the next three months is going to say cold, windy, dark and rainy. It may be that the moon is in the 7th phase of Zoroaster and the Mayans got it right. But it will probably all be ok in the end.
And I will leave you with the thought that the best thing in the whole world is a glass of wine with a friend*
*JUST ONE. DO NOT GET DRUNK IT WILL NOT HELP.
Friday 23 November 2012
Friday 9 November 2012
Land of the free, home of the brave
Both my flatmate and I had said no to big, official election parties on the basis we are too old to stay up all night so far from home on a Tuesday. Reasoning that there was nothing to stop us staying up all night when actually at home on a Tuesday (see posts passim), we put plans into action for an homage to the great USA through the mediums of food and drink, and had a lovely evening of casual armchair punditry.
The menu was as follows:
Jalapeño popcorn
-Representing the importance of Obama’s Hispanic vote AND the fact he has so much support amongst celebrities (popcorn…cinemas…let me know if it gets too tenuous, I’m making this up).
Super sized burgers (recipe below)
-After which Obamacare would be handy for the bypass and liposuction.
Southern Comfort, lemon and lime IN A CAN
-Something about rednecks. Unsure.
Big, oakey Californian chardonnay
-Why not
Coffee cake
-Because The Austrian ran out of inspiration in the Co-op having realised his hilarious bet on Romney was the equivalent of ‘standing in the street burning £20 notes’.
Burgers
Makes 3 super sized hamburgers
You will need:
-4 good quality plain beef burger patties (we got ours from Wholefoods)
-1 leek, finely chopped
-Cayenne pepper and mixed spice
-Worcester sauce
-Knob of butter, melted
-6 rashers of smoked back bacon
-6 slices of plastic cheese (you cannot get this in Wholefoods)
-Token lettuce
-3 white burger buns with sesame seeds
Method:
-Mash the leek, spices, sauce and butter into the meat, and reform into 3 giant burgers. Season well.
-Grill the bacon
-Toast the buns
-Assemble in the following order: Bottom bun, plastic cheese, burger, lettuce, bacon, plastic cheese, top bun.
We served these with caramelised red onions and avocadoes.
The menu was as follows:
Jalapeño popcorn
-Representing the importance of Obama’s Hispanic vote AND the fact he has so much support amongst celebrities (popcorn…cinemas…let me know if it gets too tenuous, I’m making this up).
Super sized burgers (recipe below)
-After which Obamacare would be handy for the bypass and liposuction.
Southern Comfort, lemon and lime IN A CAN
-Something about rednecks. Unsure.
Big, oakey Californian chardonnay
-Why not
Coffee cake
-Because The Austrian ran out of inspiration in the Co-op having realised his hilarious bet on Romney was the equivalent of ‘standing in the street burning £20 notes’.
Burgers
Makes 3 super sized hamburgers
You will need:
-4 good quality plain beef burger patties (we got ours from Wholefoods)
-1 leek, finely chopped
-Cayenne pepper and mixed spice
-Worcester sauce
-Knob of butter, melted
-6 rashers of smoked back bacon
-6 slices of plastic cheese (you cannot get this in Wholefoods)
-Token lettuce
-3 white burger buns with sesame seeds
Method:
-Mash the leek, spices, sauce and butter into the meat, and reform into 3 giant burgers. Season well.
-Grill the bacon
-Toast the buns
-Assemble in the following order: Bottom bun, plastic cheese, burger, lettuce, bacon, plastic cheese, top bun.
We served these with caramelised red onions and avocadoes.
Thursday 8 November 2012
The best night of my life?
It’s not often that I am reluctant to write about something, but the evening I went to Colbert and then saw Skyfall is proving difficult. There is just….too much to say. Too many emotions. Too little time. A café that could have been in Paris followed by a Bond film is just so much my perfect evening that I can’t even think about it clearly. When you add in the fact I went with my long-standing restaurant companion who is emigrating to the Middle East in under a month it becomes just about unbearable.
For all of that, I remain convinced you want to hear what I thought. Much like the megalomaniac Dr. No treating James and Honey to his life history whilst they try to eat their supper before getting to the ‘might end in death, might actually escape quite easily’ part of the evening.
So. Colbert. A very exciting event, because not only is it French French French, but it is a Corbin/King (Wolseley, Delaunay, Zédel) French French French, which means it looks like a film set from Piaf.
Due to our pressing appointment with Mr Bond at 9pm, we had booked for 6.30, and when we arrived it was already buzzing. It has been billed as an all-day neighbourhood café and appears to be doing the job. A booking for dinner at the early time of 6.30pm had clearly rung alarm bells of ‘elderly Chelsea dowager’ in the heads of the absolutely lovely team, and my friend and I hilariously found ourselves sitting between two incredibly glamorously coiffed and lacquered women of a certain age, and their silver haired dining partners.
To one side, the diamond-laden lady ordered 3 martinis ‘extra strong’ and complained that the veal sauce was too mustardy; a nuance I imagine it’s difficult to detect after half a litre of Grey Goose. Her husband patiently sipped water and made wry asides. On our other side, the couple drank champagne and wore velvet. It was incredible. Both parties kept up a running commentary on our food choices, wine choices, life choices and film choices throughout. Like your grandparents, but more fun. I highly recommend always eating at this time of the evening.
My friend and I had made a resolution that we would only eat as Bond would eat, which is not that difficult because he spends almost all of the books eating a lot. To give Fleming his due, possibly the only way you could ever describe him or Bond as modern men are in the sustainability of their eating habits.
The books don’t have that Mad Men thing of constant boozing and long lunches. Yes, Bond drinks a lot but his food tastes are conservative and, for the most part, frugal. At work he eats in the canteen. At home, he has a lot of eggs and coffee. When out with M, it’s lamb cutlets, grilled sole and English vegetables in season, and when on assignment it’s whatever is local (he bemoans extortionate French roadside cafés, loves the bouillabaisse in Marseilles, hates the breakfasts in Istanbul and has the best meal of his life in the States - stone crabs and drawn butter). The main exception to the above is that he has caviar with Vesper, but I like to think that’s because she’s his one true love and a bit of a bitch so he was trying to impress her.
To labour the point even further, I think Bond would have liked Colbert. The atmosphere is overwhelmingly lovely and, to be totally honest, the food plays second fiddle to that; but it is simple and good, and has a lot of omelettes.
We shared 12 oysters to start, which were sparklingly fresh but a bit gritty, and then I had steak tartare which tasted like steak tartare (no criticism intended), and my friend had the Croque Raclette. The croque was particularly delicious, which backs up the ‘all day neighbourhood café’ vibe.
We finished it all up with some madeleines and Muscadet, paid a bill which could have been cheaper if we hadn’t ‘gone Bond’ and had vodka as we sat down, and tottered off to the cinema for the best 2.5 hours of this year.
This place is special. Go for a coffee and a croissant first thing, grab an omelette for lunch, drop in for a kir on your way home.
www.colbertchelsea.com
I will leave you with the thought that the scene in ‘A View to a Kill’ where Roger Moore bakes a quiche led to him becoming spokesperson for the British Quiche Council.
For all of that, I remain convinced you want to hear what I thought. Much like the megalomaniac Dr. No treating James and Honey to his life history whilst they try to eat their supper before getting to the ‘might end in death, might actually escape quite easily’ part of the evening.
So. Colbert. A very exciting event, because not only is it French French French, but it is a Corbin/King (Wolseley, Delaunay, Zédel) French French French, which means it looks like a film set from Piaf.
Due to our pressing appointment with Mr Bond at 9pm, we had booked for 6.30, and when we arrived it was already buzzing. It has been billed as an all-day neighbourhood café and appears to be doing the job. A booking for dinner at the early time of 6.30pm had clearly rung alarm bells of ‘elderly Chelsea dowager’ in the heads of the absolutely lovely team, and my friend and I hilariously found ourselves sitting between two incredibly glamorously coiffed and lacquered women of a certain age, and their silver haired dining partners.
To one side, the diamond-laden lady ordered 3 martinis ‘extra strong’ and complained that the veal sauce was too mustardy; a nuance I imagine it’s difficult to detect after half a litre of Grey Goose. Her husband patiently sipped water and made wry asides. On our other side, the couple drank champagne and wore velvet. It was incredible. Both parties kept up a running commentary on our food choices, wine choices, life choices and film choices throughout. Like your grandparents, but more fun. I highly recommend always eating at this time of the evening.
My friend and I had made a resolution that we would only eat as Bond would eat, which is not that difficult because he spends almost all of the books eating a lot. To give Fleming his due, possibly the only way you could ever describe him or Bond as modern men are in the sustainability of their eating habits.
The books don’t have that Mad Men thing of constant boozing and long lunches. Yes, Bond drinks a lot but his food tastes are conservative and, for the most part, frugal. At work he eats in the canteen. At home, he has a lot of eggs and coffee. When out with M, it’s lamb cutlets, grilled sole and English vegetables in season, and when on assignment it’s whatever is local (he bemoans extortionate French roadside cafés, loves the bouillabaisse in Marseilles, hates the breakfasts in Istanbul and has the best meal of his life in the States - stone crabs and drawn butter). The main exception to the above is that he has caviar with Vesper, but I like to think that’s because she’s his one true love and a bit of a bitch so he was trying to impress her.
To labour the point even further, I think Bond would have liked Colbert. The atmosphere is overwhelmingly lovely and, to be totally honest, the food plays second fiddle to that; but it is simple and good, and has a lot of omelettes.
We shared 12 oysters to start, which were sparklingly fresh but a bit gritty, and then I had steak tartare which tasted like steak tartare (no criticism intended), and my friend had the Croque Raclette. The croque was particularly delicious, which backs up the ‘all day neighbourhood café’ vibe.
We finished it all up with some madeleines and Muscadet, paid a bill which could have been cheaper if we hadn’t ‘gone Bond’ and had vodka as we sat down, and tottered off to the cinema for the best 2.5 hours of this year.
This place is special. Go for a coffee and a croissant first thing, grab an omelette for lunch, drop in for a kir on your way home.
www.colbertchelsea.com
I will leave you with the thought that the scene in ‘A View to a Kill’ where Roger Moore bakes a quiche led to him becoming spokesperson for the British Quiche Council.
Wednesday 7 November 2012
Michael Nadra - review (sort of)
There is one group of friends who I spend most of my time with but who get very little air time on this blog. They are called the ‘Chiswick Lot’ (not in a gang way) because when we grew up most of their parents lived in Chiswick. As it happens, one of them still lives with his parents in Chiswick, but almost everyone else has long since spread their wings…to different parts of Chiswick.
In our late teens, Chiswick High Road was the aortic valve of our collective consciousness, and we never really left it behind. Well, you can’t really leave your aorta behind; can you? (pats self on back for the great analogy). One of them recently moved to New York, and wrote to us saying that the things she missed most were, in this order, ‘West Kebab, The George IV, The Katmandu Inn and Tesco’. I know. I know. The Roebuck is a much nicer pub.
I cannot overemphasise how important these people are to me. However, the reason they almost never appear here is that the things we do are still resolutely ‘teenage’. Manfully ignoring the inexorable creep of time, the unrelenting ‘grown-upness’ of work, mortgages and weddings, the undeniable collapsing of the collagen in our faces (seriously, I look like The Scream in the mornings now) and the gentle but insistent tick of biological clocks, we have always managed to bumble along pretending to be 19 years old. They were the ones who were with me during the events previously detailed in ‘A Tale of Woe/French Onion Soup’. Enough said.
Generally, apart from the odd slip up as per the above, I like to keep this blog quite sophisticated. Not only does it befit the underlying vein of Bond but I am also genuinely très sophisticated myself and I want everyone to know it. I appreciate this has gone off message somewhat with recent posts, but the intentions are pure.
So, imagine my surprise when the Chiswick Lot suggested Sunday lunch at Michael Nadra, which is officially nice and can be reviewed. Full disclosure: the one who actually instigated this dramatic shift from ‘see you in the George at 2pm for Jäger’ is a small Dutch woman who has only been hanging around with us for about 8 years, so she’s not fully down with how the group works yet.
Anyway, off we all trotted to the road behind Café Nero where this quite lovely little restaurant gave us one of the best lunches I have had in a long time.
The wine list is extensive and truly excellent. The acid test for a good wine list- apart from drinking them all, for which I did not have time, is to photograph parts of it and send them to my Dad. He is like Rain Man for grapes. Anyway, the reply came back: ‘Corrigan’s or Nadra’. And given that the former is a Mayfair Michelin joint and the latter is just off Chiswick High Road behind Nero, I think that’s a pretty good endorsement.
Without exception, everything everyone had was delicious, and I would have eaten any of it (no jokes please). It’s not often you can say that across a table of 8 people, especially when one of them has ordered a salad. Coincidentally, my flatmate and her boyfriend, The Austrian, went to the other branch in Primrose Hill the following weekend so I have double confirmation that everything is very good. And given the two locations, you have no excuse not to go.
I had soft shell crab tempura with daikon and ginger, which I had expected to be broken up into small bits of legs, all hot and crisply fried. In fact, the crab was tempura-ed whole, which was incredible to look at and hilarious to eat (I suppose I could have used a fork). Next, one of those ‘pork: three ways’ type of events in which each ‘way’ was actually delicious and served a purpose. Quite often those things are a small cube of dry pork belly and then some superfluous bits and bobs, so this was exceptional. Also the best sauce (? demi-glace) I’ve tasted in a while: almost plate-lickingly good.
With two courses for £19.50, or three for £24, this is incredible value and the most enjoyable lunch I have had all year.
http://www.restaurant-michaelnadra.co.uk/
Afterwards, you’ll be pleased to hear that we did go to the pub and the boys switched the contents of all the girls’ handbags around whilst we were away from the table.
In our late teens, Chiswick High Road was the aortic valve of our collective consciousness, and we never really left it behind. Well, you can’t really leave your aorta behind; can you? (pats self on back for the great analogy). One of them recently moved to New York, and wrote to us saying that the things she missed most were, in this order, ‘West Kebab, The George IV, The Katmandu Inn and Tesco’. I know. I know. The Roebuck is a much nicer pub.
I cannot overemphasise how important these people are to me. However, the reason they almost never appear here is that the things we do are still resolutely ‘teenage’. Manfully ignoring the inexorable creep of time, the unrelenting ‘grown-upness’ of work, mortgages and weddings, the undeniable collapsing of the collagen in our faces (seriously, I look like The Scream in the mornings now) and the gentle but insistent tick of biological clocks, we have always managed to bumble along pretending to be 19 years old. They were the ones who were with me during the events previously detailed in ‘A Tale of Woe/French Onion Soup’. Enough said.
Generally, apart from the odd slip up as per the above, I like to keep this blog quite sophisticated. Not only does it befit the underlying vein of Bond but I am also genuinely très sophisticated myself and I want everyone to know it. I appreciate this has gone off message somewhat with recent posts, but the intentions are pure.
So, imagine my surprise when the Chiswick Lot suggested Sunday lunch at Michael Nadra, which is officially nice and can be reviewed. Full disclosure: the one who actually instigated this dramatic shift from ‘see you in the George at 2pm for Jäger’ is a small Dutch woman who has only been hanging around with us for about 8 years, so she’s not fully down with how the group works yet.
Anyway, off we all trotted to the road behind Café Nero where this quite lovely little restaurant gave us one of the best lunches I have had in a long time.
The wine list is extensive and truly excellent. The acid test for a good wine list- apart from drinking them all, for which I did not have time, is to photograph parts of it and send them to my Dad. He is like Rain Man for grapes. Anyway, the reply came back: ‘Corrigan’s or Nadra’. And given that the former is a Mayfair Michelin joint and the latter is just off Chiswick High Road behind Nero, I think that’s a pretty good endorsement.
Without exception, everything everyone had was delicious, and I would have eaten any of it (no jokes please). It’s not often you can say that across a table of 8 people, especially when one of them has ordered a salad. Coincidentally, my flatmate and her boyfriend, The Austrian, went to the other branch in Primrose Hill the following weekend so I have double confirmation that everything is very good. And given the two locations, you have no excuse not to go.
I had soft shell crab tempura with daikon and ginger, which I had expected to be broken up into small bits of legs, all hot and crisply fried. In fact, the crab was tempura-ed whole, which was incredible to look at and hilarious to eat (I suppose I could have used a fork). Next, one of those ‘pork: three ways’ type of events in which each ‘way’ was actually delicious and served a purpose. Quite often those things are a small cube of dry pork belly and then some superfluous bits and bobs, so this was exceptional. Also the best sauce (? demi-glace) I’ve tasted in a while: almost plate-lickingly good.
With two courses for £19.50, or three for £24, this is incredible value and the most enjoyable lunch I have had all year.
http://www.restaurant-michaelnadra.co.uk/
Afterwards, you’ll be pleased to hear that we did go to the pub and the boys switched the contents of all the girls’ handbags around whilst we were away from the table.
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