Moules Marinière

Today, you find me, at 8am on a grey weekday morning, almost overwhelmed with excitement. In a matter of hours, I will be heading to PARIS. Paris, my favourite place in the whole world. I almost never mention this, but I lived there for a year. This will be my first trip back since I locked the door of my unheated attic apartment for the last time, tiptoed down the 5 flights of stairs to avoid waking the sociopath neighbour, jumped in a car full of my most treasured possessions and hot footed it back to the UK almost five years ago.  I am expecting overwhelming surges of nostalgia as well as standing on street corners (not like that) scowling at tourists and muttering ‘well it wasn’t like this in my day’.

In honour of my imminent triumphal return to the City of Light, and because it was International Women’s Day (not really, although I did recently read Germaine Greer’s The Whole Woman and I have a lot of thoughts on this subject *glares at the patriarchy*), yesterday I invited my friend over for moules marinière.

By happy coincidence, this particular friend lived with me in Paris and some/most of my nice memories from that year involve her. I would particularly like to mention NYE 2006, where we accidentally celebrated the new year 15 minutes early wearing men’s clothes, and she developed an actual allergy to rum that lasts to this day. It was a good night.  

Anyway, over she came and we ate moules and drank kirs and sat up for hours singing along to Leonard Cohen songs and hugging each other a lot.  Maybe this is why men hate women.

Moules Marinière

Serves 2

If you are put off by the thought of preparing mussels at home, don’t be. Almost nothing could be simpler, they don’t smell and they take literally 3 minutes to cook.

You will need:

Knob of butter

1 small onion

1 clove of garlic

1kg of mussels

Glass of white wine

Splash of double cream

Handful of chopped parsley

-Rinse the mussels thoroughly in cold water. (I put them in a colander under the tap and shake it a lot).

-The mussel shells should all be tightly closed. Any open ones should be tapped firmly. If they close, it’s probably fine. If they stay open, they’re dead and will quite possibly kill you too in revenge. Joking. But do discard them.

-If there are any fronds/stringy bits/seaweed attached to the mussel shells, pull them off.

-In a large saucepan, melt the butter, add the chopped onion and garlic and heat through.

-Throw the mussels in, throw the white wine on top, put the lid on the saucepan.

-Do nothing for 3 minutes.

-Shake the saucepan.

-Take the lid off, add a generous splash of double cream, stir through.

-Serve with the chopped parsley on top and possibly some chips or bread.

(you might need a spoon to eat the sauce with)

et voilà!

It's (not that) grim up North

Two very good friends of mine recently got engaged, and to mark the occasion, albeit it almost 2 months later, a few of us decided to go up and celebrate with them. Unfortunately, they live in Hull.

So the Dream Team (previously mentioned in these pages, and the name seems to have stuck), a banker and I got on a train.  The journey was much as you would imagine. Actually, maybe you can’t imagine it. If you have children, you might be able to. One of the Dream Team had a tantrum half way through because he was tired. The other one had inexplicably bought a desktop computer along. The banker won Trivial Pursuit. Eating crème eggs produced a massive sugar high. We saw real working power stations for the first time.

Although it had seemed like the never ending story, in due course the train arrived in Hull. Our friends were waiting and we made our way back to theirs for a cup of tea and a catch up.  Despite most of us being something akin to legends whilst at university (between us we can claim alcohol related kidney problems, gastritis, gout, countless near death experiences and at least one unexpected 2.2), gone are the days when we could start drinking at 3pm and push on through until the next day. We needed something fun and safe to do whilst we waiting for international official drinking time – 6pm – and settled on the world’s first submarium, The Deep.

It. Was. Awesome. We saw feeding time in the lagoon, mini sharks, cute deadly frogs, a blue lobster, the ugliest eel in the world, rays, swordfish, jellyfish, other fish…ooh and there’s a glass lift! Even an incident where hand sanitizer gel was used to imitate bodily fluids and wiped on my arm couldn’t dent the mood.

Cute deadly frog

Our hosts (who you can tell are real grown ups because not only are they engaged but they have things like airbeds, spare duvets, clean towels and chilled tonic water) then decided on a local restaurant for dinner using the dubious skills of Trip Advisor, and after a quick pit stop for a g&t and a clean shirt (boys)/more eyeliner (girls) we headed out.

The restaurant, Brimble's Bistro, was lovely. The owner Dean was quite possibly the friendliest man in the world and the great ‘British brasserie’ food and atmosphere made it a wonderful evening.

I have just seen on the website that their dinner service is 6-9.30pm, in which case it gets an even bigger thumbs up as we definitely outstayed our welcome.  If you are ever in Hull, go there immediately.

3 hours later, we headed back and got stuck into the parlour games and amaretto, which you really don’t need to hear about. Suffice to say that the next day, whilst 4 of us sat around and ate huge amounts of truly excellent home cooked roast chicken and apple crumble, one member of the party was forced to retire to bed for a time out. Older, but not wiser.

http://www.brimblesbistro.com/

Mele e Pere - review

A Thursday evening brought a long overdue catch up with an old friend. We both work in Mayfair, so Soho was an obvious choice for the evening. After considering Pitt Cue Co., the incredibly hyped and surely excellent new barbecue shack, but not sure if we could stand a queue when hungry and sober due to their no reservations policy (please say the West End will get over this fad soon?), we settled on the very new Mele e Pere on

Brewer Street

and booked (hooray) accordingly.  The balmy spring weather briefly disconcerted us and we exchanged a few afternoon emails wondering if we should try to find somewhere with an outside area for pre-dinner drinks. Coming to our senses and realising that a) it wasn’t that warm and b) nowhere in Soho has a decent al fresco seating area (USP for the next West End opening?) we decided on the new(ish) Campari bar at Polpo. Everybody knows about Polpo, and my friend and I are agreed that Russell Norman (Polpo, Polpetto, Spuntino…) is probably the most amazing man ever, apart from Michael Fassbender. He (Russell not Michael) is also fantastically funny on Twitter, just for the record. So it was no surprise that Polpo was full even at 6pm when I arrived. Heading through the door to the loos, now also marked with the words ‘Campari bar’, I was pleasantly surprised by the little underground space, with only 4 tables and not much more standing room. Very atmospheric. A couple of negronis later and the place had really warmed up. Great cocktails for the price of any drink in a chain bar – not too shabby. Conscious that our reservation awaited, we left the happy hordes and made our way into the dark, and not warm, Soho night. Via a brief stop in a pub for a swift glass of Pinot Grigio, we arrived on

Brewer Street

. The corner glowed brightly with the neon lights of Mele e Pere which looked absolutely nothing like a restaurant. The ground floor was basically an empty room with an incredible display of apples and pears (Mele e Pere in Italian) in Murano Glass. Have a look!

Down the apples (cockney rhyming slang for stairs, keep up) was a huge basement with a nice bar and lots of seating space. It was dark, but intentionally so. An effusive greeting from an ‘espanish’ waiter later and we had a bottle of Montepulciano and some delicious homemade foccacia in front of us as we perused the menu. And what a menu *pause for emphasis*. Barely 6 starters, 6 mains, 6 pastas and a selection of nibbles and sides. Absolutely ideal. My friend, who is another intrepid food explorer, and I had had a conversation about the fact that neither of us had ever eaten tripe and, seeing it on the menu, were resolved to try it.  With slight trepidation we ordered the tripe alongside hand chopped veal and snails with pecorino to start. Yes, three starters to share. Shut up, my friend goes to the gym and I don’t care. They arrived in due course and we began with the veal. Well, it was raw. Veal tartare with fennel, toast and parmesan. Absolutely incredible. The snails were as good as anything is in a garlic butter sauce and we were suitably happy.  Now it was time to tackle the tripe, which came in thin strips slow cooked in a tomato sauce. You know what? It was great. Non scary protein. Ok, yes, it smells like a farmyard but it’s nowhere near as pungent as andouillette (the French sausage made of guts) and we ate it with pleasure. We asked our Spanish waiter what it was called in Spanish, expecting the answer ‘tripas’ perhaps, and he looked at us, looked at it, and said ‘intestinos’. So there you go. I wouldn’t recommend it for the faint hearted, or if you can’t get your head around where it comes from, but it was delicious. Genuinely delicious.

By now the place was filling up, and it was time for our main courses. 2 pastas. For me a classic carbonara, and for my friend a ca-something (annoyingly I can’t remember the spelling and google can’t help, but it was small, squiggly pasta – answers on a postcard) with meat ragu. Both were perfect, perfect, perfect pasta. Faultless.

By now full to bursting, we could only manage a scoop of blood orange sorbet (me) and a scoop of pistachio ice cream (my friend) to finish the night. As we relaxed into the evening after a great meal, we discussed topics as varied as high street clothing sizes, crocodiles, and why the man at the next table was having dinner with 9 women (film star? Pimp?).

All in all, a fantastic evening at a great new restaurant. What more can you ask for?

http://www.meleepere.co.uk/ Price: £50 a head with more food and wine than anyone could possibly need.

Happy New Year

For a variety of reasons, including apathy, my sisters and I decided to eschew big New Year’s Eve events for the 2011 – 2012 handover.  Instead, after a particularly heavy sisterly session in the local pub, we decided to have a dinner party for 12 people at our mother’s house, with each of us cooking a course of the meal. (Just to clarify – the mothership wasn’t there. She had no input on the food). Now, inviting people to break bread (there wasn’t any bread) on arguably the most important night of the year (but then again, arguably not) is risky. The food, drinks, conversation and atmosphere all have to be especially memorable.  In a good way.  As with so many things in life, planning was crucial.

And so it was that I found myself bowling round Tescos with wet hair in a summer dress at 11am on New Year’s Eve with sister number 4, who was wearing normal clothes but being spectacularly annoying nonetheless. Sample of conversation:

Me (terse): You’re in charge of making sure we have all the ingredients for the blinis, ok? I’m keeping track of everything else, I just need your help with one thing.

Sister 4, texting boys and lounging near the celery: Ok

Me (more terse): Are you listening?

Sister 4 (with attitude): Yes, obviously. I can do more than one thing at once.

Me: Right. Well don’t forg….

Sister 4 walks off

Me (strangulated voice): Where are you going? What are you doing?

Sister 4: The blinis are over here.

Me (hissing): No they’re not you idiot. God, PAY ATTENTION. You have ONE job. That’s the fish section.

Sister 4 (holding 3 packs of blinis aloft) Yes (puts one in trolley), and they’ve obviously set it up (puts one in trolley) so that people don’t miss any ingredients for their canapés (puts one in trolley, raises eyebrow, walks off) .

Me (fraught, running with trolley): Come back! Ha, see, you’ve just walked through the dairy aisle without getting the crème fraiche. I knew you weren’t listening.

Sister 4 (with a withering look): Are you chasing me?

Me: No

Sister 4: For God’s sake.

It wasn’t my finest hour.

We spent the afternoon prepping the food, decorating the table and checking the prosecco was bubbly, whilst waiting for Sisters 2 and 3 to descend from the wilds of outside the M25.  By 7pm we were, miraculously, good to go.

The menu was as follows, and I have asked each of my sisters to write a little recipe for the course they made. Happy New Year all!

Cocktails and canapés (sister 3)

‘Apologies all but not got time to do this blog thing at the moment”

Risotto allo Champagne (mine)

Serves 6 as a small starter (it’s very rich), 4 as a bigger deal.

300g risotto rice

3 shallots

1 bottle of cava

250ml chicken stock

6 scallops on the half shell

-2 knobs of butter

-chives and edible gold leaf (optional jazzy garnish)

-Clean the scallops and shells. Set aside.

-Chop the shallots and sweat in a knob of butter until translucent

-Add the rice and coat in the butter until glossy

-Start adding the cava in the usual risotto-esque manner, i.e. stand by it and keep stirring.

-Once the whole bottle is gone, stir a bit more to burn off the alcohol, as you just want a subtle flavour:

-Fry the scallops in a separate pan until bouncy and opaque with a nice golden colour to the outside:

-Just before serving, add the stock, stir until incorporated and beat in the remaining knob of butter:

-Serve a spoonful of risotto in the shell with a scallop on top.

-Decorate with an insouciant scattering of chives and golf leaf:

Ballotine of Chicken with potatoes Dauphinoises (over to sister 2)

(Serves 4)

Ingredients:

4 chicken breasts

1 packet pancetta (aprrox 8 large slices)

250g spinach

125g ricotta

1.5litres chicken stock

olive oil

For the dauphinois:

6 large waxy potatoes (Desiree are a good choice)

150ml single cream

150ml double cream

1 garlic clove (crushed)

250g mild cheddar (grated)

Potato Dauphinoise

You can make these with or without cheese (a debate which usually leads to some stony silences

between me and my traditionalist sister!) Because I’m right – Ed. I like to make them with cheese as I think it makes for a much more sumptuous and deliciously creamy finished product.

Preheat the oven to 180’C. Mix the single and double cream together in a large mixing bowl. Add the

crushed garlic clove, a good crunch of salt and pepper and stir together.

Peel and thinly slice the potatoes with a sharp knife or mandolin.

In a gratin dish, layer some of the potatoes in a circular pattern to cover the bottom of the dish. Pour

over some of the cream mixture until the potatoes are well covered. Sprinkle some of the cheese on.

Repeat the layering process (potatoes> cream> cheese) finishing with a top layer covered with lots

of cheese.

Cook for 1-1.5hrs or until the potatoes are soft and the cheese on the top is golden brown.

Ballotine of chicken

Place each chicken breast between two sheets of cling film and bash with a rolling pin until the

breast has flattened and is approximately 1cm thick. Set aside.

Trim the stems and wilt the spinach in a pan with a little water. Drain, transfer to a bowl and allow to

cool a little before stirring in the ricotta. Season with salt and pepper.

Lay two sheets of pancetta length ways next to each other so that they just overlap in the middle of

a sheet of cling film. Put the flattened chicken breast on top of the pancetta. Next add a line of the

spinach and ricotta mixture about a third of the way from the chicken edge. Grab the edge of the

cling-film and tightly roll the chicken into a sausage shape. Make sure the ends are securely tied.

Once all the chicken breasts have been rolled and tied, place the ballotines into a large saucepan of

boiling chicken stock for 30 minutes.

Remove from the stock and cut the ballotines out of the cling film. Be careful as they will be very

hot. Add a little olive oil to a frying pan on a relatively high heat and fry the ballotines until the

pancetta crisps up.

Cut in half, serve alongside the dauphinoise and your choice of veg… then look smug!

Galette des Rois (sister 4)

“I’M TOO BUSY”.

Told you she was annoying.

She was a good time, had by all

Get stuffed

I have two very good friends who I sometimes refer to as the Dream Team in an ironic fashion. I never thought they would feature in these pages because a) they’re annoying and b) they can’t cook.  One of them hasn’t even read any of my oeuvre yet, if you can believe it – that’s the kind of hands off friendship that I appreciate…

Off the top of my head, their culinary heights include Tesco Finest spaghetti carbonara covered in chilli death sauce, Super noodles covered in chilli death sauce, fire rum (which caused the demise of a cheese grater), blue milk, protein shakes and dismissing the present of a 'Quick Easy Suppers' style cookbook on the basis that some of the recipes took (gasp) a whole 30 minutes. So it was with some trepidation that I accepted an offer to go over to their flat and eat turkey donated by a bank in honour of the recently passed Christmas weekend. My fear was not allayed by the increasingly bewildered texts I received throughout the day from the one who had been designated as in charge of the cooking (we’ll call him the house husband) due to having the day off work. I transcribe a few below:

“We are planning to have it ready by about 7 or 8 but given we have never cooked a turkey before I have no idea when that will actually be”

“Can you show us how to cook the turkey?”

“If you put max heat does it cook faster?”

“Where does the beer/orange go?”

“What’s basting?”

Meanwhile, the other one (think Richard O'Brien), in response to a simple query about whether any accompanying dishes had been prepared or even thought about, replied with “No trimmings. No sides. Just Turkey”.

Needless to say, I was mega excited.

Imagine my surprise when I turned up to find a scene of touching and festive domestic bliss. Two young(ish) men slaving over a hot stove in perfect harmony. The turkey appeared to have survived its ordeal and was resting on the side whilst I was poured a drink and we laughed and joked and ate great food and had a lovely evening, like some kind of heartwarming Christmas film.

Aha, I thought, maybe they’ve grown up.

At that point I hadn't noticed the stuffing had been made in the shape of penises.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, ho ho ho and a bottle of rum to everyone who reads this blog x

Another kind of penis.

Gauthier Soho - review

My mother once cooked minestrone for Alexis Gauthier. If you are an avid follower, or even a casual visitor (please be an avid follower), of this blog, you will realise that this is potentially quite an awful state of affairs. My mother, the non-cook (I thought she’d invented cheese stew the other day. Turns out it was meant to be carbonara), serving soup to the Michelin starred French chef, previously of Roussillon (which is excellent), and now chef at his own venture, Gauthier Soho. Hilarious.

Anyway, slightly in honour of the end of the London Restaurant Festival, but primarily because my friend had a last minute cancellation, off I popped to Romilly Street on a Monday evening. The restaurant is a narrow townhouse on two or three floors and lovely in a kind of French beige way. It seemed very cosy to be sipping g&ts in what was essentially someone’s sitting room. Choosing from a set menu, we opted for foie gras and open lobster ravioli for starters, following on with magret and sweetbreads. Yes, I double ducked it. A bottle of Pinot Noir also seemed like a sensible idea.

The foie gras had been seared and had that slightly crunchy outside that helps you forget that you are literally eating an exploded fat liver. I can’t remember anything standout in the smears of puree on the plate, but that’s often the way. The bread was exceptional. The lobster ravioli (raviolo? It was only one and it wasn’t even shut properly) was pronounced ‘mushroomy’ which I imagine is a good thing but possibly quite a surprise. Main courses were not the most inventive of dishes, but I don’t mean that in a bad way because the French are fantastic at the classics and these were both perfect.

Pudding was a Louis XV – ‘tastes a bit like a Kit Kat’ - and some cheese. The cheeses were good but mean spirited. Seriously, a 2 millimetre slice did not cost you or anyone else on the planet seven pounds. Even if you painted it gold and studded it with diamonds it should still only have been a fiver. Probably.

A lovely evening, and exceptional value at £30 for three courses. Definitely worth a (return) visit.

Viennese whirls

This was it. My first trip abroad since July. My first trip abroad without my family since March. My first trip abroad with this particular friend EVER. As you can see, it was a momentous occasion.

So, quite why I was sitting in the Wetherspoons at Gatwick South Terminal drinking Strongbow at 11am on a Friday morning is unclear. My friend was eating a cheeseburger smuggled in from the McDonald’s next door.   She is amazing.

For a variety of reasons, October has been a bit rubbish for both of us. Hers for actually valid reasons, and mine because I’m in a funk. I’m not going to lay all the blame on the Autumn equinox, but it certainly didn’t help.  So it was with a huge sigh of relief that we boarded the plane, passed out, and woke up in Vienna.
Having made our way into the city, the first thing we saw was a roadsign to Budapest and the second was some graffiti that said ‘tourist are terrorist’.  Whilst this would have been much more intimidating had the grammar been correct, we did noticeably pick up the pace after that and found our hotel pretty sharpish. It turned out I had inadvertently booked a mini suite, with a redundant little seating area wedged between the bathroom and bedroom. I say redundant, it did come in handy when I woke up the next morning at 7am and needed somewhere to go and hang out so I wouldn’t disturb my friend. You could also do yoga in it, probably. I didn't try. The major plus point of this hotel was that they put cava out at breakfast and appeared to operate a no judgement policy.

Anyway, Friday evening.  A quick face wash, some more eyeliner and we were good to go for the evening.  We walked through the centre in the early evening light and found a little beer house (pub seems so unromantic) that served lard on bread and small glasses of beer from about 40 taps around the bar. We opted out of the lard and into the beer, which was lovely.  We then made our way to a ‘traditional Austrian Gasthaus serving classic Viennese dishes in a charming atmosphere’. I quote from the guidebook. All I can say is, someone took a hefty backhand of cash for that review. My goodness. Arriving in an empty room blazing with light, the waiter greeted us with all the enthusiasm of an interrogator.  (I mean nothing by that beyond this causal observation. I am casting no aspersions re. history). 2 extremely small glasses of wine later (warning: they serve wine in 0.8cl measures. That’s almost literally a shot), we decided to have a go at the menu. Apologetically, and bear in mind I am a) fluent in at least 2.5 languages and b) naturally very polite, we signalled that German wasn’t a strong point and we might need some help with ordering. The man rolled his eyes and bought out a pile of flashcards. You may remember these from when you were being taught to read in kindergarten. These had a German word and an English word on each. For example: ‘schnitzel’ and ‘pointlessly thin, greasy, breaded piece of meat’. Unfortunately, not many of the German words were even on the menu. We eventually opted to share a house special, which we thought was schnitzel and in fact turned out to be goulash. After some desultory conversation in which the waiter seemed to warm up a bit (probably excited about how much spit we’d just eaten) we escaped into the night, found a busy bar, met some new friends and drank a lot of vodka.

On Saturday, we did a lot of sightseeing and walking, which was nice and almost all entirely purposeful, given that we ended up at an Irish pub. That evening, we struck gold. Ignoring all alarm bells about going into an Austrian cellar (sorry) we crossed the threshold of the oldest wine hall (or Heuriger) in Vienna and descended in an intrepid manner. It was full of locals, smoking and drinking. Result. We ordered a bottle of red and a starter of liptauer to share. We only ordered one because the descriptions of it, when I googled traditional Austrian cooking, were alarming and it appeared to be bright orange. It was bright orange, but it was a delicious spicy cream cheese dip thing that was very nice with some dark rye bread. For our main course, both of us picked the house speciality: pork knuckle with dumplings and sauerkraut. Two huge knuckles (how big were the pigs, one wonders idly) duly arrived, together with two dumplings the size of my fist (or, actually, my friend’s fist, and she has quite big hands) and a heap of cabbage. It was incredible. In terms of ‘things that intrinsically don’t have a lot of flavour’, dumplings have got to be pretty high on the list, but they were the perfect carrier for the eye wateringly sharp sauerkraut and the fatty meat. Which was clever, because normally I don’t like eating mouthfuls of vinegar. (Un)comfortably full, it was all we could do to stagger home via a nightcap of a 10 euro glass of port and fall asleep.

By Sunday, the consistent eating and drinking had taken their toll somewhat. We were liverish and could barely force down the breakfast cava. We did however, make use of their ham and cheese selection to avail ourselves of some free sandwiches, which came in very handy when we arrived at Vienna airport, found our second wind (and a pub) and drank quite a lot of wine before our plane home.

All in all, an excellent weekend.

Massive dumpling alert: far left