Filo evil, hear no evil- adventures in pastry.

Apologies for the terrible pun.

This week, I have mostly been experimenting with filo pastry. By which I mean I made salmon en croute with it on Tuesday, and then used the leftovers on Wednesday because I was hungover and couldn’t be arsed to go to the shops.

I like filo pastry a lot, but almost never eat it. It just doesn’t occur to me to do it at home. I think it’s the finicky layering of each sheet with butter and building up the leaves and all that hooha. Leave it to Masterchef the Professionals, that would be my motto.

However, amongst the people having supper on Tuesday were going to be the two women whose advice I would call on if I ever needed some inspiration on what to cook for a dinner party. So I obviously couldn’t ask them, and it had to be good because they are both fantastic cooks. I hit upon salmon en croute because I was, as is so often the case, daydreaming about beef wellington, and its piscine cousin just meandered into my head in the below vaguely Greek incarnation.

The whole shebang could not have been simpler – I urge you to try it. Everyone really enjoyed it (or they said they did, which is the same thing) and it looked mega impressive straight from the oven, although less so after I tried to cut it up and it turned into something that resembled spawning time at an intensive fish farm. I think that was the ricotta…

Σολομός σε φύλλο κρούστας
(told you it was vaguely Greek)
Serves 6

You will need:
800g salmon fillet
1 tub ricotta
1 small block of feta
Big bag of spinach
Juice of 1 lemon
6 sheets of filo pastry
Knob of melted butter.

Method:

Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper or foil. Ideally be prepared enough to have either of these two items in your kitchen, so one of your guests doesn’t have to bring them.

Melt the butter.

Unwrap the filo pastry and put one layer in the bottom of the tray. Lightly brush with melted butter. I don’t have a pastry brush, so used the back of a spoon. It would have been better with a brush.

Pop another layer of filo on top. Butter, brush.

Pop another layer of filo on top of that.

This is less tedious to do than it is to write, primarily because the filo is extraordinarily thin and delicate and therefore (in the direct opposite of the same in relation to human beings) fun to play with.

Cut the salmon in half lengthways so it’s in two roughly 400g chunks. Or, buy it in two roughly 400g chunks.

Wilt the spinach in a pan. Add the ricotta, lemon juice, feta and season well. Stir it around so it’s a sort of greeny mush.

Put one of the salmon fillets on the pastry. Cover with the spinach mixture. Pop the other salmon fillet on top and cover again.

Do three layers of filo over the top as per the earlier method, and scrunch the sides of them into the sides of the three layers on the bottom.

Bake at 200 degrees for about 25 minutes or until the filo is golden and crunchy.

Serve with watercress salad, new potatoes, and apparently 7 bottles of wine.

The next evening, I mixed up a bit of leftover ricotta with some chives, pesto and garlic and wrapped it up into two little filo parcels. I did not do the faffy butter thing. It didn’t matter too much. After 15 minutes in the oven during which time I contemplated the wisdom of Tuesday night dinner parties, it was delicious.

Tales of woe/French Onion Soup

The last two months have passed in a whirl of weddings (not mine), holidays, watery sunlight, minor heartbreak, and lots of wine. I have been on some kind of self-imposed summer of madness, characterised by terrible decisions and huge amounts of fun. But now it’s the end of September, and I know it’s time to get serious because my housemate has developed an obsession with gardening (she sent me an email with a link to a website of seeds).

Having monumentally failed in our pre-summer plan of setting up a herb garden on the balcony, instead decorating it with the gritty, urban realism of a bath mat and a giant pot full of cigarette butts (update: now cleaned up), we are turning our attention to late planting vegetables. Turns out all you can plant in autumn is basically onions and garlic. Which will be great for French Onion Soup and minimising the risk of a vampire attack, respectively.

French Onion Soup is something I had never made before, despite liking it so much that I have the occasions when it’s Soup of the Day at Eat marked with a reminder in my Outlook calendar. In fact, for various reasons I still haven’t actually made it, but more of that later.

The weather has turned sufficiently cold for it to be acceptable to have people over for supper and serve them soup, so a date was set, and the night before that date I sat down with my beautiful Swiss knives and a glass of brandy and set to work on the onions. NB. This is an incredibly antisocial thing to do in any kind of shared accommodation, as not everyone can cope with 700g of chopped onions. Well, that’s why I told everyone I was crying, anyway.

My recipe was a mixture of Simon Hopkinson’s, Nigel Slater’s and Felicity Cloake’s ‘How to Make the Perfect…’ series in the Guardian. There are all sorts of variations in terms of what booze to use, what type of onion, blah blah blah, but the key point is the onions must stew for as long as possible, preferably over an hour, on a very low heat.

Duly stewed, I added the stock, brought it to boil and left it overnight, my plan being to casually reheat it (adding the bits and bobs that make it special -brandy, wine, different stock, gruyere croutons) that evening in front of my grateful guests, when it would be served with a big green salad and a cheeseboard in a vaguely alcoholic parody of the Good Life.

I think, with the benefit of hindsight, my main mistake was sending a text to all guests that said ‘Bring booze. No mixers’. I had assumed that clearly meant that I needed people to bring drinks, and that I didn’t have any mixers. Apparently not, given that everyone turned up with bottles of spirits and no mixers. I am actually sort of impressed that people think so much of me.

To cut a long story short, we drank it anyway. At some point the cheese came out, and was demolished. The pot of half finished soup stared at me balefully from the hob as I insisted on listening to INXS’s ‘New Sensation’ 15 times. The last thing I remember is realising that it may have only been 9:50pm but I was in urgent need of a party nap. This was invented by my friend, the Legal Robot, who has a habit of spontaneously falling asleep in the middle of parties, and waking up totally refreshed and rebooted 20 minutes later. Just once, for 10 minutes, I was going to follow his lead.

I don’t think you need me to elucidate on how I woke up 9 hours later, with two of my sisters in my bed (one of whom hadn’t even arrived by ‘naptime’) with whiskers and ‘I am a mouse’ written on my face.

I am pretty sure I will get over the incredible embarrassment of this event, and probably sooner than I should, but do you know what the worst part is?

Crazed with neat spirits and hunger, my guests took it upon themselves to heat up the soup. The half finished soup. And so, with the hostess asleep in the next room, they all ate bowls of lukewarm hot onion water. The End.

If it’s any consolation, it’s all going to be very serious from now on.

Brasserie Zédel - review

This time last week I went to Brasserie Zédel, and had such a great time that I was determined to write a long, elegiac (rambling) piece (love letter) on France, the French, the intrinsic nostalgia of French food, the cult of the Brasserie and the egalitarianism of prix fixe menus. Pourquoi pas? Then I smashed through the Times paywall on Sunday morning to get my weekly hit of AA Gill’s writing, and guess what? He’d done it. Right there. The whole thing, and obviously better than I ever could. He had concluded, as I was going to (I promise), by saying that the food good, but the atmosphere is exceptional. I had the best evening I’ve had in a long time with great friends in the American bar and then the hyperbolically French, gold and marble restaurant. So did Gill (although he probably spent less time in the bar). I’d love to say, in the manner of an Olympian hero, that I have now challenged myself to write something better and more interesting, but I haven’t.

So that’s that.

What I can tell you is that this place is incredible, even if you’re not obsessed with French things. I know that because the people I went with are, if anything, anti-French. Or that’s how it appears from their attempts at speaking the language.

The bar is dark, low, elegant and timeless. I mean that in both the sense that it could be any year from 1950 to the present and it also could be any time of day or night from 5pm onwards. You could get seriously drunk in there. That night, due to my surroundings and also the martinis, I felt a lot like James Bond. Always my favourite type of evening.

The dining room is vast, double height, and sparkles with gold rails and soft lights. The menu is fantastic, with the aforementioned formules à prix fixe (set menus) meaning you could do it very cheaply. Starters on the main menu are mostly between 3-6 pounds, with main courses around the 12 pounds mark. This is sensible pricing for sensible food. There is nothing that is going to blow you away with creativity, but there will be something that all of you remember from a family holiday, interailing expedition, roadside café, trip to Paris, French exchange, a film or even just Encore Tricolore 3.

I had snails which were slightly muddy (but then they’re always really just the vehicle through which pots of melted garlic butter can be delivered to your table without judgement, aren’t they?) and then onglet (hanger steak) in a thick, glossy wine sauce with great chips. We had lots of good red wine. Nothing ground breaking, but I have eaten the exact same meal in France at least 5 times and I mean that in the best, best possible way.

For the record, the most successful starter by far was the oysters (fines de claire - £1.95 a piece) which were exceptionally fresh, and the stand out main course was the confit de canard. We emerged into the Soho night, tipsy, happy and emotional (not me) and were quickly swallowed by a basement margarita bar on Brewer Street. Bien sur.

It came out at £40 a head, excluding martinis.
www.brasseriezedel.com

Tramshed - review

Today, on Tuesday 3rd July, I was forced to take my winter coat out of hibernation. However, a few weeks ago it was so sunny that my friend and I drank a bottle of Pinot Grigio in the sunshine after work and went to Shoreditch for supper.

The East End is not my haunt. I’m not edgy enough. I’m always overdressed. Past the shiny buildings of Commercial Street, beyond the higgle piggle of Brick Lane and through the laboured regeneration of Spitalfields Market, I feel an aura of menace. It’s competitive cool jarring rudely with corporate money and real hardship. I suppose that’s the appeal. I just find it vaguely exhausting.

I have tried. I did Galvin La Chapelle and thought ‘wouldn’t this be nice if it was in the West End’, I went on the Jack the Ripper tour and thought ‘I can really see why he chose this alleyway as his stomping ground’, You name it, I’ve done it. Birthday drinks in achingly hip Hoxton bars, wine tasting in Shoreditch, numerous authentic curry trips, clubs in nameless archways…I have even eaten raclette at 11pm in a deserted and strip lit Spitalfields Market. And most of the time I have just thought ‘how the f**k am I going to get home from here?’.

So there you have it. Confession over, I’m not cool enough for the East. However, if ever there was a reason to gird my loins and head back over, it was for Tramshed. Tramshed is the latest Mark Hix restaurant, which is following the current vogue for minimalistic menus (my favourite so far: ‘Bubbledogs’, serving hot dogs and champagne - opening this month) and only serves chicken or steak. My friend and I were convinced the chicken would be the joke order. Who would order chicken over steak? However, as the night of our reservation (hooray) due nearer, we read increasingly hyperbolic reviews of the chicken at Tramshed, and decided to go for one steak and one chicken on the evening itself.

The restaurant is on Rivington Street in a tram electricity generation shed (or something). It is massive and noisy and looks like a canteen. In the middle is a ginormous, raised Damien Hirst sculpture of a bull with a chicken on its back in formaldehyde. Each to their own. I don’t think I’m cool enough for Damien Hirst either. That aside, the atmosphere is buzzy, informal, and the perfect place for taking 5 friends and getting seriously pissed at the long trestle tables down the centre of the room.

The menu really is as simple as chicken or steak. There are sides, but the starters are salads (served as a mix of 3 plates for the whole table at £8 each) so I wouldn’t bother with them. My friend chose the wine as she was about to go on a wine tasting course and wanted to flex her vinicultural muscles. It was good and red and reasonably priced. The starter salads were crisp and sharp, although the gigantic Yorkshire pudding with horseradish sauce was obviously finished first.

We had ordered a small chicken and a small steak and, excited by the prospect of the superlative chicken, dug into that first. Well…. it was just chicken. I can see if you’re eating battery chickens (which you shouldn’t be) then perhaps this would be very different, but it was just a roast chicken. Good, but a chicken. I am not terribly excited by chickens. What was exciting was the steak, which I thought was faultless, as were the crispy, beef dripping, fries. The table of cheery men next to us, who drank flaming cocktails throughout dinner, had eschewed the chicken altogether and gone for a giant slab of steak with chips and salad. They had clearly been here before.

We got out for £40 a head which I think is great value given you can drop that at most high street chains on a weekend evening. The crowd was cool (natch), the service was great, some of the food really excellent and we had a fab evening.

The ‘how the f**k do we get home from here?’ moment only happened as we tottered through the rain into the smudgy, shadowy glow of the nearest bar, took one look at the menu (presented as the pull out lyric sheet in an old cassette case) and legged it to the nearest taxi.

Tramshed http://www.chickenandsteak.co.uk/

Melanzane alla Parmigiana

Today we have a bake. A vegetable bake. Not my normal scene, if I’m honest. I have nothing against vegetarians but my idea of a successful vegetarian dish is one which you can finish without having shouted ‘WHERE’S THE MEAT?’ at any point.

I am pleased to report that this is one of those dishes. It’s soothing, warming, comforting and good for you (depending on your stance on cheese, which personally I think is fine). It’s quick, easy, much more than the sum of its parts and everyone ate all of it. Well, apart from sister number 4 who said it tasted ‘so rank she was literally going to vomit’. I would ignore that though, she is a teenager.

Serves 4. You will need:
· 2x 400g tins chopped tomatoes
· 2 aubergines
· 150g mozzarella
· 75g parmesan
· 1 onion
· 2 cloves of garlic
· White wine
· Tomato puree
· Handful of fresh basil

Method:
· Slice the aubergines uniformly and briefly dry fry them, or grill them on a griddle pan if you have one (turns out I do not). Set aside.
· In a pot, sweat down the onions. When they’re done, add the garlic, the tomatoes, the tomato puree and a splosh of wine. Leave it to thicken, reduce, do whatever it has to do, whack in some herbs if you fancy. Oregano maybe.
Taste it. Tomato sauces can sometimes be bitter or metallic. If this has happened, sprinkle some sugar in. I promise it works.
· Grate the parmesan. (75g is a rough estimate it was basically about half of a normal size wedge but do however much you want).
· Tear up the mozzarella ball and the basil
· Assemble in a heatproof dish. Layer the aubergine slices up, alternating with the tomato sauce, some parmesan, a bit of basil, some mozzarella. Play it by ear. See how you feel. No rules.
· If you want a rule: aubergine, mozzarella, tomato sauce, parmesan, basil, aubergine, mozzarella, tomato sauce, parmesan, basil …. Approximately 4 times. Season each layer.
· Bake in an oven at 180c for 20ish minutes and serve with crusty bread and a green salad.

I’m sorry the picture is blurry. It was taken through a haze of tears due to my sister’s cutting remarks about my culinary ability. Not.

Scotch quails' eggs

Having spent last Saturday at the Soho Food Feast seeing Angela Hartnett, Fergus Henderson and Ben from the Saltyard Group cook in front of me and eating nibbles from Wright Bros Soho, St John, 10 Greek Street, MeatLiquor, Brindisa, Quo Vadis and Kopapa (to name drop just a few), this Saturday I decided to get my apron on for the first time in ages and try to make scotch eggs.

Obvs we're not talking about those refrigerated supermarket picnic ones (my sister thought the filling between the egg and the breadcrumbs was....more bread) but the monster ones containing a whole egg which have exploded all over pub menus in the last few years. Special favourites near me can be found at the Harwood Arms (venison version), The Ship and The Sands End. During one lunch at the Harwood we had one to start, and then another one instead of pudding.  The key is a crispy shell and a runny yolk.

Having been reliably informed that panko (Japanese breadcrumbs, the stuff on the outside of chicken katsu) would give me the crispiest crust, and that I should try using quails' eggs for a more manageable bite size snack, I took the opportunity to go and hang out in Waitrose. Whilst it was a still a second to none shopping experience, they had no panko and no fresh quails eggs. Panic buying for the jubilee long weekend no doubt. So I settled on some hard boiled quails eggs, some normal eggs, and cornflakes. 

Following the recipe below, I managed to produce 12 quails eggs scotch eggs that got eaten pretty quickly and looked fairly professional. I give them 8/10. However, when I made one with a normal egg it became pretty apparent why nobody bothers with a quails egg version. The yolk was runny, the proportions were better and it was a definite 10/10. If I do say so myself. I don't have a picture of that one though so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Quails Egg Scotch Eggs

makes 12

12 quails eggs

350g sausagemeat 

2 tbps tarragon

Pinch mace, sage, nutmeg, whatever you want

1 egg yolk

Half a packet of cornflakes, blitzed to a powder

Seasoned flour

Egg wash (1 egg and a splash of milk)

500ml sunflower oil.

• Boil the eggs for 3 minutes and plunge into iced water. Peel the eggs.
• Mix the sausagemeat with the spices and the egg yolk
• Roll some of the mixture into a ball and sort of push an egg into the middle of it, shaping around the outside to make sure the meat is covering the egg on all sides.
• Dip the egg meat ball in seasoned flour, then egg wash then cornflakes so it is completely coated.
• Heat the oil in a heavy based pan. Use some of the meat to check the temperature, which should be around 160degrees for those with thermometers, or until it takes about 10 seconds for the meat to cook and bounce to the top.
• Drop the scotch eggs in carefully and fry for 10ish minutes.
• There is no real way of telling when they're done. You're looking for a crispy brown shell. 
• If you soft boil the eggs, you will end up with a runny yolk and it will stay runny throughout.

Serve with dijon mustard

Ceviche - review

Well, the big news here is the SUN, which heralded the normal panic purchase of 15 different exfoliation and tanning kits. It is understood that all of these will inevitably leave me looking more stupid than if I just left it well alone and spent my time doing something constructive, like finally getting round to the vodka homebrew idea, but ahead I went with it anyway.  I spent a whole evening buffing and polishing and bronzing and glycolic face peeling and when I woke up in the morning I did feel pretty good.  Now that my body was, temporarily, a temple, I thought I’d better keep up the good work with something that wasn’t pasta.  

So I spoke to my friend who writes a seriously good restaurant blog: http://gluttons-for-punishment.blogspot.co.uk/ . She is always useful for dinner and chat, and we had both heard great things about Ceviche, so we booked and made our way into Soho on a super sunny Tuesday evening to find some pre-drinks.  We settled on Pix, the little tapas bar on Bateman Street, and somewhere I now want to go to for actual food, as it looked great. Several glasses of pricy (£7.95!) but delicious white rioja later, we judged that we were probably about ready for some food to soak it up.  Ceviche is on Frith Street, on the uncool bit near Pret, Nandos and Starbucks. It’s a lovely bright room with a bar onto the road, and it felt like being on holiday. Disclaimer: that might just have been the sunshine. The bar serves pisco, which is not only an incredible name for a drink but a popular Peruvian spirit, and we ordered a Pisco Sour and a Pisco Soho to start with.  The Sour was nice and easy to drink but quite egg-whitey in the manner of a protein shake. The Soho was spicy. I’ve had a chilli martini or two before but this was something else. We decided to move on (or back) to wine, and went for the house white, an Argentinean Chenin, which was great.

Food wise, we tried one or two from each section of the menu, ending up with:

Don Ceviche
Seabass ceviche with chilli and red onions. Delicious, classic, the best way to eat raw fish that isn’t sushi.

Pulpo al Oliva
Octopus with an olive sauce. Really unusual and one of my favourites. The sauce was unusual and the octopus was squeaky fresh.

Causa Mar
A sort of seafood and avocado mayonnaise salad. Ice cold, soft, refreshing.

Corazon
Cow heart! This excited me just for the novelty value, but it was also delicious. Like liver but more dense and gamey. 

Lomo Saltado
Beef strips, tomatoes, chilli, wok fried. One from the ‘main courses’ section and double the price of everything else, although not that much bigger. Great quality beef and that intense smoky flavour you associate with South American meat.

This place is really, really good, and with the amount of attention it’s getting it will soon be really, really full. It’s not expensive (you could easily do £25 a head), the atmosphere is great and you’re right in the heart of Soho for that ill advised last drink.

A word of warning. I have not had a hangover that bad in a long time, so do go easy on the pisco as raw fish doesn’t seem to work as a sponge in the same way as pasta. http://cevicheuk.com/