Monday 3 February 2014

Brindisa

I don't 'get' Spain like I 'get' France, but I do love their food and also the existence of the Basque country (I'll qualify that by saying yes to more Xs in words, and no to ETA).  My personal opinion is that jamon iberico de bellota (the acorn one) is nicer than any other ham in the world. As my uncle said when we went to Casa Brindisa (aha, a link!) recently, 'it's one of the times when it really is worth spending the money'. So there you go; to women, wine and cars you can now add ham. Not literally.

Anyway, the ham at Brindisa is spectacular. 'Melt in the mouth' always makes me think of some sort of high temperature plastics accident, but unfortunately it does apply here.  We picked at that quite happily for a while and then moved on to the parade of croquetas, gambas and boquerones that Spanish tapas restaurants in London continue to march out with varying degrees of success  (amazing: Brindisa, Tendido Cero, Opera Tavern, Barrafina) because we all love them, despite the fact the chefs are dreaming of Can Roca. I ordered monkfish cheeks as a special because they sounded interesting and they weren't, really, which was annoying since my uncle ordered everything else and it was spot on.  They didn't have any padron peppers, which was upsetting but they had taken them off the menu so I suppose it was silly to ask (although let the record show this did work with pre-11am martinis at the Dorchester). We had a glass of albariƱo and then something red that was possibly tempranillo; my knowledge and appreciation of wines being an ongoing but slow moving project that can currently be best summed up in the words of an 80 year old contributor to Trip Advisor "red and white: wow".

Having had such a good time at Brindisa, when I invited some friends to the flat for supper to discuss our group's summer holiday plans I decided to cook Spanish stuff. Despite hoping to have the holiday in Italy, I wasn't ready to revisit that particular culinary danger zone yet; not after Christmas Pastagate (see Christmas dispatch, somewhere below). The memories, like much of the dough, were still too raw.

So I decided to do lots of picky things (chorizo and prawns - surf and turf of the gods - nuts, olives, manchego... we've all been there) and then aubergines stuffed with lamb.  I thought this sounded Middle Eastern, but Rick Stein assured me it was a Spanish dish and my godfather kindly bought me some pimenton recently, so 'why not' was the attitude with which I tacked this one.  I love Rick Stein but Sister Number 4 doesn't (she quite literally won't have him in the house - she turns off Saturday Kitchen if they're running an old clip of his show.  We don't know why but I'm pretty sure they've never met), so I told her I invented it.  I was stymied by my failure to buy either onions or tomato sauce, believing myself to be in possession of both.  I wasn't.  And the co-op wasn't in possession of lamb.  So it was basically just aubergines with mince.  What's 'better luck next time' in Spanish?

Ducksoup

I used to live with lots of blonde girls in a house with a pink door, which sounds a bit like Barbie but really could not have been less child friendly. One of them recently got engaged (hooray!) and couldn't join us for supper because she was having a ring fitting (boooooo, but, also, still hooray!), so the remaining blondes and I resolved to have a relatively quiet evening, a plan which went about as well as that type of plan used to go when we all lived together.

Ducksoup is one of those narrow Soho corridors where you eat at the bar and there's a terrible draught at one end from the door. They've recently opened up downstairs, which has tables you can book. I continue to find the no booking thing a hassle because, ultimately, I don't want to queue for a £40 a head supper.  You end up doing bizarre things like spending three hours in a campari bar beforehand, rendering you incapable of tasting your much anticipated hirata bun, or actually being able to use your artisan meat cleaver.  The only option to avoid the queue is to eat at 5.30pm, which I haven't done
since I was six. Chances are you'll actually be eating some form of macaroni cheese too, which only adds to the children's tea time vibe.

I love almost everything else going on right now: handwritten menus, sharing, cramped tables, bio wines, places only serving one thing (I know a lot of it is annoying and derivative but it hit me at the right age, much like Sister Number 4 and Harry Potter- hence the presence of a Hogwarts goblet in my glass cupboard) but I want to be able to book a table to try out your concept.  I think the reason everyone hates bloggers is because they're always drunk before they get to eat, so can't remember anything properly.

Ducksoup's (handwritten) menu changes every day so, whilst you could go to their website and play the fun game of trying to figure out exactly which evening I went (please, don't write in), you won't eat
what we did.  The main thing I noticed was that there are no sauces; not in a Puritanical way, more in a 'things tasted of themselves' way. Everything was very natural and fresh. For example, raw Jerusalem artichoke is exactly the same as a green apple in terms of texture, which was news to me.  We had small plates of mozzarella, kale and chilli, the aforementioned shaved Jerusalem artichokes with herbs and salted anchovies, blistered aubergines, lentils, garlic yoghurt and sumac, blood orange, pink radiccio and salted ricotta salad and a whole chargrilled mackerel with guanciale, which were all polished off
quite happily as the three of us toasted the fourth with something white from Chile (wine knowledge TBC) and gossiped into the Soho night.

Mistletoe and wine

I have previously mentioned how fussy my sisters are. They are like birds, picking and pecking and preening and prodding at their hair and their faces and the things on their plates. This is why their make-up is always immaculate whereas mine looks like I did it in the dark, upside down with a marker pen.  It is also why trying to plan a Christmas lunch that wasn't actually Christmas lunch was an absolute nightmare. I wrote down everything that one of more of them wouldn't eat and it basically eliminated everything Christmassy, special, expensive or celebratory that you could possibly imagine.  So I gave up and did the following:

Kale salad with lemon and parmesan

This is one of Jean Georges Vongerichten's signature dishes.  My flatmate recommended it to me in New York and it was one of the stand out things I ate last year.  Ribbons of raw kale are covered in a thick lemony parmesan dressing and finished with green chilies and croutons - delicious and light as the starter for a long lunch.  I couldn't get kale that was as fine as the dark green strands across the pond; I think the curly type I picked up is a bit harsher, so I would potentially pulse the raw veg through a food processor briefly to soften it up a bit.  If you make this, you will be bang on track with the kale trend this season, 
but actually able to enjoy it rather than turning it into juice (which tends to break the juicer anyway).


Chicken ravioli in truffle cream sauce

You know those food shows where Italian grandmothers roll out pasta dough with the heel of one hand whilst laughing, throwing flour around and drinking olive oil? Yeah...it's not true.  Pasta dough is TOUGH. The hubris of embarking on making ravioli from scratch for the first time for eight people without a pasta machine occurred to me approximately forty three hours too late, as I stood with my back to my darling family, gathered expectantly at my table, prodding at hockey puck sized flying saucers that were turning over and over in the water and basically sinking. I just couldn't get it thin enough. The minced chicken filling and sauce were obviously nice but, if I'd wanted to serve meatballs with cream, I could have. Thousands (eight) wished I had.

Venison with sauce poivrade, fondant potatoes, carrot puree, broad beans and pancetta

This was well received. I decided to make a sauce poivrade having read Richard Olney's The French Menu Cookbook in which he describes it as one of the pinnacles of classical cooking techniques. Sounds like a challenge, I thought, and immediately I was hooked.  It's not that I am driven and motivated and keen to excel so much as I love showing off.  The sauce involves making a full blown stew from scratch, and then throwing all of the meat and vegetables away.  It took seven hours to make, forty five minutes of which required the constant vigilance of standing at the stove skimming it.  It  quickly became a chore, especially when the end result tasted just like a nice gravy.

Clementine cake

Sister Number 4 made this from Nigella's recipe (hashtag TeamNigella, needless to say) and it was delicious - surprisingly light as it's a flourless cake, and not too heavy after cheese. The hours we spent boiling the clementines on Boxing Day made the whole house smell of Christmas.