As mentioned in the previous post, my friends who run a lovely boutique B&B in Margate have asked me to contribute a dish for their breakfast menu, and this is it.

Lou and Liam opened the doors of The Reading Rooms last year after restoring the amazing grade II Georgian Town House where it’s situated and appearing on Ruth Watson’s Hotel Rescue on Channel 4. It’s a really relaxing and luxurious place. Insanely comfortable beds, stylish decor, beautiful bathrooms and they cook a mean breakfast too. And that’s where I come in.

As well as the full English and pastries on the menu, they’re going to offer this alternative to a warming winter porridge. The oats absorb most of the liquid, becoming lovely and plump, and the apple juice’s natural sugar means no need to add anything extra, unless you’ve got a sweet tooth. I like to serve it with chopped summer berries.

Ingredients (serves 2 / 3)

120g jumbo porridge oats

250ml apple juice

250g low fat natural yoghurt

2 apples, peeled and grated (I like granny smiths, but anything juicy with a bit of tang is good)

Seasonal fruit and honey to serve

Method

Mix together the oats, apple juice and yoghurt together in a bowl or Tupperware container with a lid. Next peel the apples, coarsely grate them and add to the oats. Mix well in, making sure as much of the the grated apple as possible is below the surface of the mixture , this will stop it from going brown. And thats kind of it. Super easy.

As you’ll see, the mixture is pretty loose at this stage, but this will change. Put a lid on your Tupperware or cover your bowl with cling film, and then pop in the fridge for a good few hours or preferably over night. In the morning, the oats will have absorbed a lot of the liquid and puffed up making a much thicker consistency.

Divide the the mixture accross two bowls, and the serve with chopped seasonal fruit, and if required a bit of honey to sweeten.

Healthy, delicious and best eaten overlooking Hawley Square towards the sea.

Been crazy busy since we got back from Oz, so have got a bit behind on the writing stuff. But back to the land down under for a quick coffee related post.

As mentioned previously, there’s been a bit of an Australian coffee shop invasion in London over the past year or so. Places like  Lantana, Flat White, Milk Bar and Kaffeine have their own style and atmosphere, but all have one thing in common. Great coffee. As I understand it, ‘coffee culture’ hit Australia and New Zealand about the same sort of time as it did in the UK in the early 90s, but interestingly instead of succumbing to the big brands pumping out the brown liquid passing itself off as coffee sold the length and breadth of our high streets, our Antipodean cousins adopted a more artisan based approach. In fact, such is their devotion and knowledge of good coffee that even the mighty tentacles of Starbucks have failed to gain a foothold in Australia. As my friend Mutber put it, “…you can’t sell a bad product to an educated audience.”

Melbourne is probably better known for starting this Australian coffee revolution, but Campos in Newtown has been leading the charge in Sydney since 2002. Like Harry’s in the previous post, it’s a pretty unassuming looking place on a side street off the busy Kings Street, but once you’re inside you know you’re in a temple to coffee. When we visited, it was packed with people queuing diligently for their daily dose. There were around 5 baristas behind the bar, and interestingly that’s exactly what Campos feels like. A bar. There’s a real buzz about the place. It’s loud, full of people catching up with friends, standing, sitting, hanging out, chatting with the staff, reading the papers, and so on.

We ordered flat whites, which is apparently a bit of a cliche these days. I’m sure the real connoisseurs only drink espressos, and I’m sure they also let you know all about it too. Anyway, each to their own. When our coffees arrived, not only did they look beautiful with the trademark flat white foam ‘art’ but they tasted amazing too. Really rich and creamy, but also smooth. It sounds odd, but you know you’re actually drinking a cup of coffee. I guess my pallet has become too accustomed to coffee flavoured hot milk. You also get much less in a cup than you do at most places in the UK. Probably a good thing as a Campo’s coffee packs a pretty heavy caffeinated punch.

Sufficiently impressed, we wanted to take a bit of Campos home with us so went back later that day to get some ground coffee to smuggle back. We opted for the Obama Blend, which like the man himself is a mix of African and American, and promises a cup with, “Great depth of character”. We’ve not sampled it yet, but it ounds like the kind of change all coffee lovers can believe in.

Just about recovered from my trip down under, so lets talk crabs, specifically Singaporean style critters.

Harry’s Singapore Chilli Crab is a bit of a Sydney institution that the Missus and her family have been going to for years, and they very kindly introduced me to whilst we were over there.

It’s an unassuming place above a slightly grotty looking pub in the Surrey Hills area of the city, but that doesn’t seem to stop people coming in their droves. Opened in 1982 by the eponymous Harry (Lau), the place doesn’t feel like it’s changed much since, and from what understand the menu hasn’t either. And whilst there is plenty on offer to eat, it all feels like a bit of a formality, as the main event is definitely the chilli crab that gives the restaurant it’s name.

After ordering, you are invited to go up and chose your victims from a selection of healthy looking Queensland mud crabs at the front of the restaurant. They are big, muscular beasts, and it almost felt a bit daunting plucking them out of their bucket to await their fate. But we soldiered and kept the wolf from the door by having a couple of portions of salt and pepper squid whilst we waited for the stars of the show. The squid was super fresh, tasty, not at all chewy and served with a poky chilli soy sauce. A fitting start for what was to come.

Then the crabs arrived. Ay carrumba. Already partially dismembered and laid out on large platters, they came smothered in a deep red rust coloured chilli sauce, and served with Chinese greens, rice and delicious roti bread. Like the squid, the crab was very fresh. The meat sweet and clean tasting, and surprisingly not overpowered by the sauce. And what a sauce. Amazing. It had this really deep and intense flavour, and was flecked with what was either crab meat or egg. We quizzed our waiter on the ingredients, but he would only give us the obvious onion, garlic, ginger and chili. The rest, he told us, was a secret. I can’t blame him, the stuff is like liquid gold.

The charismatic Harry himself made an appearance during the meal to see if we were enjoying his signature dish, as did several large bowls of water to rinse ourselves down with. Both the bowls and complimentary aprons are testament to the fact that this is not refined and polite dining, and that was one of the great things about the meal. It was a very communal experience. You really have to get in there and get dirty, and was all the more enjoyable for it.

Had we been stranded in Sydney due to Eyjafjallajokull’s eruptions, I would certainly made a strong case for a return visit to Harry’s, but I guess I’ll just have to wait until the next time we’re in the area.

Just got back from a whistlestop trip to Oz to meet the future in-laws. Sydney is definitely a town that loves to eat, and we munched our way through the city from North to South, East to West.

Highlights included discovering toasted banana bread (where have you been all my life), fish and chips on the beach in Balmoral, some fine Roka style Japanese nosh at Toko, a dirty pie at Harry’s Cafe De Wheels, amazing Lebanese at Emma’s On Liberty in New Town, a cracking roast chicken sandwich from Chargrill Charlies, great coffee from Campos, and a couple of delicious breakfasts at Pure Bronte Pistachio on Bronte Beach. A very fine way to start the day.

But probably the best meals we had were at a cute little Italian place called A Tavola in Darlinghurst. A seriously good veal ragu pasta and a nice bottle of Sicilian red. I could eat it again now. And feasting on the famous chilli crab at Harry’s Singapore Chilli Crab. Insanely good.

Oh, and I also picked up some great recipes from my future mother in law, Connie.

I’ll be reporting back on my findings in more detail once I’ve recovered from the jetlag.

Until then…

Photo: Neets & Dre

Hand To Mouth is off to Australia for a couple of weeks to meet and greet the future outlaws and extended family.

As well as (hopefully) lapping up a bit of much needed sunshine, I’ll be getting my teeth into Sydney’s cafe culture, fresh seafood, and if I get my way, a few meat pies from Harry’s Cafe de Wheels.

Have a cracking Easter.

A tweet from Warp Records got me a bit hot under the collar yesterday. The reason? A few posthumous new tracks from the donut obsessed J Dilla. Released on Stones Throw Records, you know this is going to be one of those occasions where style and substance go hand in hand. Just check out the packaging and donut slip mats. Tasty!!!

For those that don’t know, J Dilla was an incredible Hip Hop producer who sadly passed away in 2006. He was prolific, and insanely talented, producing for the likes of Busta Rhymes, Erykah Badu, A Tribe Called Quest and even Janet Jackson (possibly a low point there).

In collaboration with Madlib, he made one of my favourite Hip Hop albums of the noughties, the awesome ‘Champion Sound’. Just check ‘The Heist’ and the title track if you want any evidence. Mad and Dilla were supposed to make a follow up. I’m not sure whether they got started or not, or whether any tracks will ever see the light of day, but we live in hope.

His music has had a lasting impact on hip hop and beyond, and many consider him to be the father of the so called ‘wonky’ sound being championed by artists like Flying Lotus.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with one of the tracks off Donut Shop, Dilla’s rather acidic take on Men With Hat’s 80’s folky synth-pop tune ‘Safety Dance‘. Enjoy.

For more info on Dilla, check out the fantastic three part Stussy Produced mini documentary on the man himself.

RIP.

There’s an old adage about doing one thing well as opposed to doing a few things averagely, which would have been very apt for this post, but despite trawling the whole interwebs I can’t find it. Oh well.

So last night our fiends Charlotte and Mark introduced to us this restaurant called Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte. It seems it’s a bit of an institution, but somehow never made it onto my radar. It’s on Marylebone Lane, right opposite the awesome Golden Hind fish and chip shop (which deserves a post all of its own – all in good time), and is a great example of the benefits of  the ‘do one thing well’ mantra.

At L’Entrecôte there’s basically no menu. You sit down (after a lengthy queue if you arrive at peak times) and get served a lettuce and walnut salad with a lovely mustardy vinaigrette, followed by steak frites. The steak comes served thinly sliced, covered in the restaurants own special sauce, the recipe of which is closely guarded. And that’s it. Kind of.

The story of the sauce, and the restaurant itself is quite an interesting one. In 1959, a guy called Paul Gineste de Saurs bought an old Italian restaurant in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. He decided that he was going to serve a very simple menu, which remains unchanged to this day, and instead of serving his steaks with the traditional herb butter, he created his own sauce. Everyone went mad for the sauce, and the restaurant was a hit. There are rumours of a family fallout between Monsieur de Saur’s kids, but one of his daughters now runs the restaurant, and is responsible for opening other locations in London, New York, Barcelona and bizarrely Bahrain. She is also the guardian of the secret sauce recipe. The waitress told us that it is still made in France and shipped over as a paste, where it is finished in house with butter, parsley and shallots.

The venue is a bit Disney does bistro, but the quality of the food more than made up for it. The salad was very simple but tasty, and the steak tender, flavoursome and cooked to perfection, the frites excellent, and that sauce. WOW. It tastes a bit like a pesto remixed with extra Parmesan, butter anchovy and no pine nuts. You can understand why those Parisians went so crazy for it all those years ago.

The portions aren’t huge, but they do come round with seconds, which is a nice touch. The house wine was also pretty decent, and there is a menu for cheese and dessert, both of which were also good. But to be honest, what you’re really here for is the steak and sauce, and I for one will be going back for more soon.

Apologies for the quality of the photos. I only had my iPhone on me.

So to much hype and fanfare, Marmite has launched a new limited edition product, Marmite XO. Billed as the only choice for true Marmite connoisseurs, XO (Extra Old) purports to have a deeper, richer, more complex flavour, like a fine wine.

Now off the bat, I should probably admit that I’m a Marmite fan. I love the stuff. Always have done, probably always will. But I’ve got to admit that there’s something about Marmite’s recent behaviour thats beginning to piss me off a bit. I was quite into the Guinness variant that came out a couple of years ago, and then the champagne one that came out around Valentine’s Day. Neither tasted as good as the original, but they felt a bit special. No song and dance, just a nice little treat for Marmite fans.

But now with the whole XO marketing campaign, premium price tag, ’spoof’ website and Facebook blah blah blah, it all feels a bit of a cynical money making operation. It stinks of Unilever’s clumsy brand police and ad agencies trying to be ever so clever.

And it doesn’t stop here, there was a ‘pop up shop’ on Regents Street at Christmas selling all sorts of branded rubbish like cook books, toys, T shirts, and then there’s the current brand campaign. The whole we’re so ‘crazy’ that we’ve made a Marmite cereal bar!! Have we gone to far?! Did I mention that we’re kkeerrraazzee??!! Replete with the now ubiquitous ’social media’ elements, again the whole thing feels so try hard, and to be frank, predictable.

Anyway, rant over. I tried the XO earlier and it’s nice. Beefier and maybe a little fuller flavoured than the original, but not really any better. And definitely really not worth all the bother, or the £3.99 price tag. In my mind its time these big companies and conglomerates stopped screwing with the brands that people love and just kept it simple. More noise doesn’t make better products.

Verdict: All mouth and no trousers.

It’s been around for a while, but I first read about Jim Lahey’s ‘no knead bread‘ in a Saveur magazine when I was in New York last year. I’d already got the bread baking bug, and the idea of a loaf that required no kneading seemed a bit odd, even a bit sacrilegious. I did a bit of research on line, and found out that everyone raves about the loaf, and it basically put Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery on the map.

Anyway, it definitely got me interested. How could a loaf requiring so little work be so good? Life just isn’t like that. So I gave it a go. The loaf is cooked in a cast iron pot, a bit like an Australian damper, so you’ll need a Le Creuset or something similar for it to work.

Ingredients

3 cups (430g) flour
1½ cups (345g or 12oz) water
¼ teaspoon (1g) yeast
1¼ teaspoon (8g) salt
Olive oil
Rye flour (for dusting)

Method

Mix all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together for a minute or so to form a ’shaggy’ dough. Transfer the dough to a larger bowl oiled with some olive oil. NB. the dough will expand to around 4 times the size, so make sure your bowl is big enough. Cover with clingfilm and let the dough develop for 12-18 hours at room temperature.

After this time the dough will be aerated. Remove it from the bowl and fold on itself once or twice. The dough is stickier than with regular bread, a bit like when making a sourdough, so be prepared to get a bit messy. Using dough scrapers is a good idea. Let the dough rest 15 minutes in the bowl or on the work surface, then try and shape into a ball. Generously coat a tea towel with rye flour, place the dough on the left hand side, scatter the dough with more flour, and then fold the towel over the top to cover it. Let rise for around 2 hours at room temperature, until more than doubled in size.

Preheat your oven to 230°C. Place a cast iron pot in it at least 30 minutes prior to baking to preheat. Once the dough has more than doubled in volume, remove the pot from the oven and put the dough in it. Shake from side to side so it fills the base. Cover with the lid and bake for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake for another 20 minutes or so uncovered, until the loaf is nicely browned. Take the loaf out and place on a wire rack to cool. I know this is going to sound a bit sad, but the loaf’s crust crackles as it cools, which is pretty exciting.

When you cut into the loaf, you won’t be disappointed. The crust is crisp, crunchy and satisfying, and the dough inside a cross between really good French bread and a Ciabatta. Honestly, its great. And for so little work. There is such a thing as a free lunch.

Two final notes. I cooked mine in an oval 27 cm pot, but think it would have worked better in the round 24 cm version. Secondly, I tried this recipe again at the weekend substituting the strong white flour with a ‘Farine Bise‘ that I bought in Paris, but it was much less successful. The crust was less impressive, and the dough much heavier. I guess it rises better with the plain white.

UPDATE: Tried the loaf again at the weekend in a smaller pot, with great results. Check out photos on my Flickr page here.

The video write up says it all:

“John Nese is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA. His father ran it as a grocery store, and when the time came for John to take charge, he decided to convert it into the ultimate soda-lovers destination. About 500 pops line the shelves, sourced lovingly by John from around the world. John has made it his mission to keep small soda-makers afloat and help them find their consumers. Galcos also acts as a distributor for restaurants and bars along the West Coast, spreading the gospel of soda made with cane sugar (no high-fructose corn syrup if John can avoid it)”.

In an age of faceless corporations and consumerism, its a joy to see a guy who’s so committed to his particular niche, his suppliers, and his customers. I hope the Galcos Soda Pop Stop weathers all the financial storms and fashions that come it’s way, and gets passed down to the next generation of soda obsessives. And apologies for the bad Star Wars pun in the title.

It’s no understatement to say that that I’m a BIG fan of pizza.There’s something genius in it’s simplicity. Bread. Good. Tomato sauce. Good. Cheese. Good. Some kind of meaty topping. Goooooood. And when I’m talking about the kind of pizza that I love, I’m talking about the traditional Italian kind, not the whole farmyard on a base that you get delivered at 3am after a session on the wife beater.

I’ve been lucky enough to work around Soho, central London, for most of my career, and that also happens to be the location of what must be one of the best pizza joints in the UK. Situated in a little side road between Berwick and Wardour Streets, Malletti has been knocking out  amazing pizza to a small army of adoring and loyal fans for at least as long as I’ve working in the area. The queue that snakes out of the door most lunchtimes is testament to this.

The first time I tried what Malletti has to offer was when I was working on a pitch. My then boss, who was to be frank an arse, proved that he could get something right by heading out and bringing back a load of Malletti’s pizza for his hard working troops. I can remember sinking my teeth into my first slice of spicy salami (which is still my favourite) and being blown away. The thin almost pastry like base, deep tomato flavour from the sauce, and just the right amount of mozzarella, piquant salami and chilli. It’s making me hungry just thinking about it.

It’s only a small shop, but is dominated by the glass counter on the right that displays the wide range of tasty stuff on offer. As well as traditional pizza, they do focaccias, panni style sandwiches, really great pasta specials each day (the wild boar ragu is insane)  and some sweet stuff too. There’s a small bar on the left where you can stand up and eat, but it’s a bit tight in there so most people take away. The only trouble you’re really going to have at Malletti’s is working out what to have, although you will get an earful if you’re on your mobile when you try and order. They don’t like that, and fair play to them. There’s a sign on the way in to warn you.

Malletti is a great example of somewhere that’s perennially popular because it’s always been good at what it does, and not because it’s tried to move with the times. It’s staffed by the same people who have always been behind the counter, and you get the impression that it’s a family business.

Malletti doesn’t have a website, in fact there’s surprisingly little written about it on-line full stop, but if you’re interested in getting a slice of the good life (sorry) you can find them at 26 Noel Street, London, W1F 8GT.

To take some of the strain off last year’s Christmas shopping, my brother and I both decided that we’d buy each other an evening butchery class at the Ginger Pig in Marylebone as our Christmas presents. I’d been looking forward to it since we made the booking in November, and Last Friday was the day of reckoning. They do four different classes at the shop, pork, lamb, sausage making, and our class of choice, beef.

On arriving at the shop we were cheerily welcomed by Borut and Perry who were to be our guides on planet beef for the evening. After they’d kitted us all out in butchers whites, our hosts started off by explaining about the type of cattle that they rear on their farm in North Yorkshire (Longhorns), the difference between free range and organic, and how they actually go about preparing the beef for consumption once it’s slaughtered.

It was good to learn a bit more about the ageing process, and the rather underhand tactics that supermarkets employ when talking about their aged beef. The Ginger Pig, and most other quality butchers, dry age their beef. This means hanging the carcasses in cool ventilated rooms so that blood and moisture can leave the meat, thereby intensifying the flavour (the meat can be hung for up to 100 days, but the guys at the shop reckoned around the 35-40 day mark was perfect).

The only problem with ageing is that it leads to some wastage, as the extremities of the meat tend to go off and have to be removed and discarded. But what the supermarkets do is vacuum pack the meat before they ‘age’ it. Vac packing the meat means that none of the moisture can escape from the meat, so the flavour doesn’t develop, but importantly for them there is no wastage. So supermarkets can legitimately claim that their beef is aged and offer it at a cheaper price, but they are supplying a greatly inferior product. I guess t wasn’t a great surprise to find out yet another way in which consumers are being screwed by the big chains, but it never fails to amaze me the lengths that they will go to make money.

We then moved over to the chopping blocks to get a bit more hands on with the Longhorns. We were talked through all the different cuts and joints that the animals are broken down into, mainly focusing on the middle section of the carcass where the rump, sirloin, fillet, porterhouse, T-bone, wing rib and fore rib are all found. It was all a bit baffling at first, but it wasn’t long before we started to be able to identify our wellington from our cote de boeuf and our skirt from our strip.

It’s not really a course for the squeamish, as an important part of the action is getting up close and personal with the carcass and handling the meat. Not only feeling the different textures, density and marbling, but also cutting it up. We each had a go at sawing and jointing up a different section of the middle, aside from one of the group who was a vegetarian who came along with her partner – all rather odd.

The final practical part of the course was to prepare our own cote de boeuf joint to take home. This involved removing a section of the back bone (the joint had already been chined for us ), taking off the cap (the layer of tougher meat that sits over the rib eye meat), trimming it, French trimming the ends of the rib bones for presentation, before tying the cap back on with the most bloody complicated butchers knot known to man. Despite having all been total novices a few hours earlier, there were no real disasters, and to our untrained eyes our joints all looked pretty professional.

After all that graft, it was time for a few glasses of red wine and dinner. Whilst we’d been ‘working away’, Borut had been in the kitchen preparing an awesome roast fore rib for us. He showed us how to carve the joint properly, separating out the ribs, cap and the rib eye section of the joint. I’ve got to say, it was cooked to perfection. The rib eye was pink and moist, the cap a bit tougher but richer in flavour, and the meat around the ribs sticky and sweet. They served it with amazing dauphinoise potatoes, roast potatoes cooked in beef fat, and some green stuff. The meal was rounded off with a few more glasses of wine and a bread and butter pudding made with brioche.

I think we were all a bit high on meat when we left the shop at around 11.30, but we all agreed that it had been a really good fun and interesting evening. I came away with a fair bit more knowledge than I had before, and the confidence to know what I want to buy from now on. My local butcher is going to hate me.

The course costs £125 per person, and you can find out more about them here, and see some more photos from the evening here.

I had the good fortune to be in Cornwall for Christmas, and then Paris for New Years. Good food was eaten accross the festive period, more on this in subsequent posts, but first of all something for the bread geeks out there.

Whilst in Paris I made a pilgrimage to Poilâne. It may not be a familiar name, but if you love good bread it should be. It’s a bakery in Saint-Germain, and makes the most insanely tasty ‘miche’ or traditional French sourdough loaves. Set up by Pierre Poilâne, a young baker from Normandy in 1932, the shop has been knocking out these beautiful large round loaves ever since to Parisians hungry for something a bit more interesting than the regular baguette.

The bread gets it’s darker colour and deeper flavour from stone milled ‘grey’ flour, also known as T80 or ‘farine bise’. The only other ingredients are sea salt, water and sourdough starter that is derived from batches of bread prepared all those years ago. The loaves are shaped by hand, and then cooked in a wood fired oven.

The bakery is still in the family, run by Pierre’s granddaughter, the rather marvelously named Apollonia Poilâne. They now have a second store in Paris, and have more recently opened one in London. As well as half a loaf, I bought some flour from the shop in an attempt to re-create a Poilâne miche at home. Thus far my sourdough attempts have been less than successful, but hopefully a bit of French inspiration will help lift them. You can find out more abut Poilâne and the locations on their website here, and I’ll update you on my baking succeses / failures as they happen

I was first taken to Mangal 1 6 or so years ago by my friends Lou and Liam who lived down the road in Hackney at the time, and I’ve been going back ever since. Back then it had a real impact on me because I’d never really been anywhere like it in the UK before. It’s completely unpretentious, a bit ramshackle, and when you step through the door you feel like you’re in a different country.

You immediately get hit by the heat and smell of grilling meat from the massive open barbecue style grill that is slap bang in the middle of the restaurant. And that’s what the Turkish ocakbasi restaurants are all about. Meat and fire. The menu is dominated by kebabs, mostly lamb and chicken, although you can also get quail and offal too. I suggest you go with a few friends, because you’re going to want to try everything, but I can heartily recommend the following.

For starters I’d go for the cacik which is like the Greek tzatziki, but here it’s really thick and creamy, and made all the more tasty by a good punch of garlic. They serve it up with warm ’sac bread’ which is a bit like a focaccia, but thinner and without the olive oil. You should also try the Lahmacun, or Turkish pizza. It’s topped with minced lamb, onions and peppers and will leave you wanting more.

For main, you should try the Beyti. A bit like a minced lamb kofte, but with more garlic, some extra spice, red pepper and parsley. The fat from the mince gets almost caramalised on the grill, and is packed with flavour. The Cop Sis is also very good. Small cubes of marinated lamb grilled to perfection and so tender. The Tavuk Sis is the same, but with chicken breast, and equally good. If you’re still hungry, get a portion of the Pirzola lamb chops. Again marinated and cooked to perfection, and tasty as hell (my mouth is literally watering as I write this). All the main dishes are served with a salad packed with fresh, crispy veg, dressed with lemon juice, a bit of oil and sprinkled with sumak. A great accompaniment to the smokey meats.

It may not be much to look at, but the long and short of it is that Mangal is amazing, and also incedibly good value for money. They don’t serve booze, but you can bring your own. There’s a sister restaurant, imaginatively called Mangal 2, just round the corner where artists Gilbert & George have dinner every night. Thats right, every night. Now, if that isn’t a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is.

Luckily, my day job allows me to escape the office from time to time to get some head space and thinking time. There are a number of places I like to go for a bit of peace and quiet, and the Nordic Bakery is right up there with my favourites.

As the name suggests, it’s a Scandinavian style cafe, specialising in bread. The food and bread are good; simple Nordic fare including rye bread open sandwiches and cured fish, but the killer for me are the amazing cinnamon buns and the coffee.

I don’t think the buns are as fluffy as they used to be, but they still taste amazing. The cinnamon is almost intoxicating, the dough satisfyingly heavy and so sticky it’s almost a challenge to eat. Add to this a rocket fuel strength latte, you’ve got yourself a perfect afternoon break.

It’s also a really peaceful place, which is a bit of a rarity in Soho, so f you’re going to check it out, put the phone on silent and shhhhhh.

London is awash with KFC immitators who knock out chicken of a very dubious quality at very low prices. From the lyrics it’s clear that the ‘Junior Spesh’ consists of a piece of chicken (leg or wing), a portion of chips and a can of drink, all for £1.50. Not a bad deal.

Don’t forget, mayo is an extra 20p.

Image - factmagazine.co.uk

Joe Goddard of Hot Chip fame has just released a solo album called ‘Harvest Festival’, and I’m liking it. I’m a big fan of the Chip, and listening to ‘Harvest Festival’ it’s clear who influences the beats and bleeps in their releases.

Each of the tracks has a fruity theme (hence the post), Apple Bobbing, Go Bananas, Sour Grapes to name but three, and range from the melancholy and melodic to the more bass bin troubling.

There’s also a nice surprise if you buy the CD or vinyl. You get a recipe for a Tomato Harvest Chutney from the suspiciously well connected Rosie Lovell of Rosie’s Deli Cafe in Brixton. Nice touch.

It’s arrived. The inaugural edition of ‘Fire & Knives’. I’ve been excited about this new ‘Food Quarterly’ since Tom at Nation told me about it a couple of months ago. The way it was described to me was a food magazine written by and intended for enthusiastic amateurs, and despite contributions by undoubted professionals like Matthew Fort and Ton Parker Bowles, the magazine sets out it’s editorial stall very clearly.

”Fire & Knives’ has to be about love of, enthusiasm for and fascination with food, in all its aspects. It could never be about being a connoisseur – literally ‘one who knows’ – it has to be about being an amateur – ‘one who loves’. Everybody eats. And a fundamentally elitist ‘connoisseurship’ is no longer appropriate in a country that’s finally maturing into a proper relationship with it’s food culture.”

I’ve yet to get properly stuck in, but the articles look really interesting and refreshingly unexpected. From cooking with Vincent Price to what defines English food, the magazine could only be the product of independent publishers with a real love for their subject matter. The magazine has been lovingly put together by the guys over at Present Joys, giving it an old fashioned quality feel, and making it even more of an attractive proposition. I hope it’s a huge success.

Enough of the typing, I’ve got some reading to do.

My day job takes me in to central London each day, and whilst I’m spoiled for choice for places to get lunch, I tire of giving the Prets and Eats my cash every day.  That being the case, a year or so ago my old work partner and I set ourselves on a bit of a mission to find some alternatives to the standard fayre, the results of which you can find on this map. I’ll be posting about some of the names on the list in the not too distant future, but first up I want to talk about Benito’s Hat.

No longer the preserve of stoned Californian students, the burrito has made it’s way to the UK (well London at least) and seems to be growing in popularity. I used to get my fix from an imaginatively named place called ‘El Burrito’ which promoted itself with a young Mexican kid dressed as a donkey (burrito means ‘little donkey’ in Mexican) handing out flyers, and then Benito’s Hat opened across the street. I think I went in there on the day it opened, and I’ve never darkened the donkey’s doorway since.

Based on Goodge Street, Benito’s hat has been open for a little over a year, and pretty much every lunchtime has a queue out of the door. It’s not hard to see why. The food is fresh, tasty and fast, and if you leave out the sour cream and cheese, probably not that unhealthy.

I’m a bit of a creature of habit, and always opt for a burrito with pork, black beans, hot sauce and guacamole (which costs an extra 50p – my only complaint). Once unwrapped from the foil, you know you’re in the presence of greatness. The tortillas are as soft and as warm as (I apologise for this analogy) a baby’s bum. Taking a bite you immediately get a hit of the seriously tasty stewed pork. Very similar to a ‘carnitas’ burrito you’d get in the states, the meat is intensely flavoured with lime, cinnamon, oregano and pepper black pepper. Then you taste the beans, then the heat of the chili sauce, before being soothed by the cool of the salad and guaca. The flavours are big and bold. It’s a seriously tasty and satisfying lunch.

I’ve tried other things on the menu, they’re all good, and would easily rival anything that you’d get in the Mission area of San Francisco, but I’m not sure that I’ve really done the experience justice here , so do yourself a favour if you’re in the ‘hood and eat like a Mexican this lunch time.

Then I came across ‘River Cottage Bread’; a small but sensible handbook on the subject, which has basically become my bread bible. The book contains lots of recipes for breads from standard loaves, to ciabatta, naan and beyond, which are great, but for me the most interesting part of the book is the more practical stuff.

From my limited experience, it seems to me that once you’ve got the basics of making dough down, you can freestyle to a certain extent. But the stuff that is more rigid, and vital to creating consistently good bread, are the techniques and tips, and thats why this  book has become so invaluable.

For example, the book explains that you need to try and re-create the conditions of a bakers bread oven as closely as possible in your own home. It recommends that as well as having your oven as high as possible for the initial baking process, that you should also have a tray of boiling water in the oven to generate steam, as this creates optimum conditions for the bread to rise. This is the sort of stuff that you don’t discover by trial error, and kind of need to know. As you might expect, there’s also lots of practical advice on rising, proving, how to prepare your dough properly for the oven and so on.

The other great thing about the book is that it has kept me motivated to keep baking. It’s honest with you, and manages your expectations. You’re not going to produce a Poilane loaf on your first attempt. Like most things in life, baking bread takes practice, but if you stick at it your results improve quickly. I’ve created a bit of a visual document of my progress over on my Flickr account.

If you want to get a copy, you can get one from River Cottage or Amazon here.

Back to New York, if only briefly, for a quick bit about what might be my favourite place to eat breakfast in the World. Serious claim I know, but Williamsburgh’s Egg is amazing. So amazing in fact that the New York visit prior to this one I think we had breakfast there 3 times out of the 5 days we were there. We only managed twice this time, but if I lived in the neighborhood I’d have to stop myself eating here every bloody day of the week.

Egg is a really unassuming place tucked on a little side road off Bedford Avenue in Williamsburgh. It’s light years away from the city’s brash diners (that I also love) and has a really relaxed almost ‘hippyish’ atmosphere. The owners have their own little farm on the outskirts of New York state, which supplies as much produce to the restaurant as possible. I’m not 100% sure how long it’s been open, but probably around 2 years. It’s open all day, serving breakfast / brunch until the evening when the menu becomes a bit more substantial. I’ve not eaten there in the evening, but I’ve heard it’s good.

My absolute favourite thing on the menu is a dish called ‘Eggs Rothko’. I’m not sure if it’s named after Mark Rothko, but it’s a whole lot tastier than his paintings (IMHO). At the heart of the dish is a kind of remix of eggy bread. A thick slice of toasted brioche with a hole cut in the middle is popped in a frying pan, and then an egg is fried in the hole. They then top the bread with a grated, tangy mature cheddar and slide it under a grill until the cheese bubbles. I know it sounds pretty insane, but when you slice open the bread and the yoke of the egg oozes out, you know you’re in the presence of breakfast greatness.

They serve it with your choice of meat or seasonal greens. I always opt for the sausage, which is a little different to the sausages you get with a fry up in the UK. They are basically little sausage meat patties which are flavoured with chili and fennel. Spicy and seriously tasty, and they work really well with the eggy bread.

I wish I was there now.

Going to Peter Luger’s pretty much as soon as I get off the plane in in NY has become a bit of a tradition. The routine goes. Land in NY. Head to Williamburgh. Dump bags at my mate Matt’s place. Head to Luger’s with him. Eat large quantities of meat. Drink a couple of beers. Sleep. Come round smiling the next day.

Peter Luger has been rated New York’s number one steakhouse for twenty four years in a row. For a town that prides itself on good food, that’s a serious accolade. They have two outlets, one in Williamburgh and one in Long Island, but it’s no chain; it’s an institution.

When I went a few years ago, former New York City mayor Rudy Guilliani walked in with some dolly bird and got a standing ovation from the whole restaurant, and that sets the scene pretty well. It’s a place for ’stand up guys’. A no nonsense temple to meat, styled a bit like a Bavarian beer hall, and staffed by old timers who have clearly been working there for years.

The menu is short, and not surprisingly, meat focused. To start with, we ordered an extra thick slice of Luger’s bacon and a tomato and onion salad, followed by the porterhouse steak, German fried potatoes and spinach.

The bacon is really satisfying. About the thickness of four standard rashers, sweet and smokey. The perfect accompaniment to the salad, especially when drizzled liberally with Luger’s own sweet, tangy and mildly spicy steak sauce.

The main event is the steak. The cut they specialise in is the porterhouse, or short loin. Served on the bone, it’s charred and crispy on the outside, and sweet and moist on the inside. The meat has great flavour, and is as tender as something very tender indeed. They serve it of a red hot plate, cut into strips, with melted butter to baste the meat with to keep it moist. It’s making my mouth water just thinking about it.

It’s not cheap, but its worth it. The portions are generous, and anything you don’t eat, you can take home in a doggy bag. If you’re planning a visit, I’d advise booking a table, and remember that they only accept cash, although there is an ATM outside.

The only downsides to Luger’s is that I only get to eat there once a year. But I guess that’s one of the other things that makes it special.

To cut a long story short, there’s a guy called Doug who makes the most amazing speciality hot dogs that come in a bewildering and surprising array of flavours. And when I say bewildering, I mean it. Pork, duck, lamb, beef, weisswurst, bratwurst, veal, rattlesnake, vegetarian…I could go on. Doug’s place is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, so if you’re an un-escorted newbie, you can pretty much forget about finding it (we were lucky enough to have a couple of willing guides). But, despite the location, the place is RAMMED every day. It’s open between 11am and 4pm, and there’s a queue pretty much from opening to closing.

Photo: MSN

When we got there at about a quarter to twelve, there were already a lot of people waiting. It took us about an hour to make it through the doors  and get a look at the wall mounted menu and specials, but when we did I nearly exploded with excitement. After much debate, my girlfriend and I decided to get 4 to share between us. We went for a duck and fois gras, a merguez and goats cheese, veal and pork weisswurst, and a classic Chicago dog (all pictured).

First up the duck. Now I was fully expecting this to be a gimmick, but I could’nt have been further from the mark. You could taste everything. The duck and fois gras in the sausage, the fois gras mousse on top, and the insane truffle and garlic mayo. Every bite was ridiculous. Too sickly to nail another, but amazing.

Next up the weisswurst. Again a taste sensation. The tangy apple and pork meat in the sausage was well seasoned and wrapped in this creamy mustard and parsley sauce. Then a nice bit of tangy, peppery horseradish cheese finished it off with style.

The traditional Chicago dog was probably the least impressive of the four, but still damn tasty. Your classic frank dog accompanied with fried onions, mustard, tomato, a slab of pickle and a kind of atomic green relish. When in Rome and all that.

Finally the merguez. One of my favourite sausages of all time. This baby came served up with a kind of smokey chipotle sauce that was a cross between a mayo and a gravy , and was topped with this amazingly fluffy and light goats cheese. Again you could taste all the flavours, and the cheese cooled down the chili kick of the sausage and sauce. Phenomenal.

It’s not hard to see why people get evangelical about Hot Doug’s. It’s one of those proper institutions that specialise in one thing, and nails it time after time. It’s also fun and completely unpretentious. In the UK a place like Doug’s would probably fall out of favour as soon as it ceased to be fashionable, which is a great shame as I feel England’s restaurant scene would be a lot richer if there were more of the local neighborhood heroes of the kind I’ve written about in the past few posts.

I’ve always liked the idea of starting a local sausage restaurant, maybe there’s a gap in the market?

Photo by Buzz100Ca

If you’re going on a road trip down the pacific coast through the Big Sur, there’s one place that everyone tells you to go, and that’s Nepenthe. In his 1962 book ‘Big Sur’, Jack Kerouac, describes the restaurant thus, “From the baths we go to Nepenthe which is a beautiful cliff top restaurant with a vast outdoor patio, with excellent food, excellent waiters and management, good drinks, chess tables, chairs and tables to just sit in the sun an look at the grand cost…”

Whilst Kerouac’s description is less than effusive, it is pretty much spot on; so allow me to add a few superlatives. The location is amazing, the view of the pacific ocean fantastic, and the food bloody tasty. We both ate the trademark Ambrosia burger, which as the name suggests (in the work of Homer, Ambrosia is the food of the gods), was pretty heavenly. The meat was clearly good quality, the bun toasted and beautifully soft, but what really set it off was the sauce – a kind of tomato, chili mayonaise. Served with a huge side of fries and a light slaw, it was a great lunch. But with a view like that, you can’t go that far wrong.

Photo by Meatmeister

It’s pretty rare that a restaurant lives up to the hype, but Nepenthe does, and not much seems to have changed since Kerouac wrote his description. It’s a simple formula, but one that works, and the owners have stuck to it.

You can get the recipe for the Ambrosia burger here, but I’m not sure it would taste quite so good without that view.

As mentioned in the last post, I’ve just returned from a holiday in the States. From a food perspective, one of the things that I noticed about a lot of the stuff we tasted in California was the Mexican influence. Plenty of lime, avocado, coriander, chilli and corn. Fresh, tasty flavours.

We also ate quite a bit of of straight up Mexican food. Great Burritos in the Mission in San Francisco, Huevos Rancheros for breakfast, torta Mexicanas in LA, but the pick of the bunch was a a tiny little place called La Super-Rica in Santa Barbra.

Reputedly Julia Child’s favourite Mexican restaurant and tucked away in the Mexican area of town, La Super-Rica is basically a little shack with a tent attached to the back. Always busy, the tiny kitchen knocks out fantastic traditional Mexican street food. There are daily specials, firm favourites and apparently the best horchata you’ll taste outside of Mexico.

We tried the daily special, a vegetarian tamale, which came served in the corn husk it had been steamed in with a side of pork and beans. The corn meal was really tasty and kind of creamy, enriched with a bit of cheese and with vegetables through it. We also had a portion of the most delicious buttery guacamole, and a couple of servings of chorizo tacos. Amazing.

It was also a really charming place. No frills and not in any way poncy, it’s location also means that you have to make a real effort to get there, so people really go for the food. And there was a proper cross section of them. From the WASPy Santa Barbra set to students, Mexican locals and hipsters. I’d go back at the drop of a hat.

Super-Rica? As Omar Little would say, indeed.

Anyway, breakfast fast became our favourite meal of the day, and right here are out top four breakfasts from the trip.

Huevos Rancheros – literally ‘eggs ranch style’. Mexican style eggs (in this case scrambled with ham) served up on flour tortillas smothered in spicy tomato sauce, topped with black beans and avocado, with a side of home fries. Ay carrumba

Huevos Rancheros at The Crepevine, San Francisco

Hash & Eggs – despite the name, probably the poshest breakfast of the trip, but totally amazing. Spring onion, bacon and potato hash topped with a couple of poached eggs. The breakfast of champions.

Hash & Eggs at Rose's Cafe, San Francisco

Granola Waffles – I’m not a massive fan of majorly sweet stuff for breakfast, but these were insane. They were part of the make your own breakfast buffet at the place we stayed at in The Big Sur. When making the waffles you toss in a handful of the home made granola. Proper ying and yang business.

Granola Waffles with Banana, Nectarine and Maple at Treebones, Big Sur

Cornbread Egg Muffin – I know this looks like some kind of Scotch Egg disaster (not that there’s anything wrong with a Scotch Egg), but these took us by surprise. A slightly sweetened corn bread muffin, a touch of chili and a boiled egg in the middle. Awesometown.

Cornbread & Egg Muffin at Sweetcakes, Chicago

A couple of years ago whilst planning a trip to the apple, a friend told me that I had to check out this guy called Kenny Shopsin’s place in the Lower East Side. I’d never heard of him, but after a bit of digging I discovered that he’s a bit of a local hero. The best way I can think of describing Kenny is that he’s a kind of gutter Heston Blumenthal. He’s become ‘famous’ for his innovative combinations of foods, but not in a molecular gastronomy way. More thinking laterally about whats really tasty. His menu lists over 900 items, which he creatively names; dishes include ‘Slutty Cakes’ and ‘Blisters On My Sisters’. He’s also well known for his slightly unpredicatable temprament and strict house rules that are supposed to have partly inspired the ‘Soup Nazi’ character from Seinfeld.

Needless to say, I HAD to pay him a visit, and I wasn’t disappointed. The man himself took out order, and luckily seemed to like the cut of our jib. I can’t remember what everyone else had, but I ate a pretty atomic plate of huevos rancheros, which were very tasty, and we shared a plate of the slightly random, but totally delicious mac & cheese pancakes. I know. They sound a bit rank, but trust me. Drenched in maple syrup, they are ridiculous. So in honour of them, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

Peanut oil for the griddle

Butter for the griddle and for serving

3 cups of pancake batter (American style)

1 heaped copy of cooked macaroni – tossed with olive oil and warmed before using

1 heaped cup of grated mild cheddar cheese

Warm maple syrup

Method

Prepare the griddle of frying pan and drop on the batter. When bubbles appear on the surface (after about 2 minutes) drop a tablespoon of macaroni onto each pancake and sprinkle with a thin layer of cheese. Use a thin spatula and flip the pancakes over. Turn the heat down to medium, and press the cakes down with the spatula. When the underside is golden (another two minutes), remove them from the pan and place on a plate, macaroni side up. Smother with maple syrup and devour.

I’ve just finished reading Kenny’s book, where I stole the recipe from, which is part philosophy part cookery book, and is an interesting read. As well as including a small selection of the hundreds of recipes on offer at his place, he charts the progress of his restaurant from a bodega in Greenwich Village to his new-ish home in the Essex Street Market, and how along the way he developed his own style, pallet and attitude to his customers.

Shopsin’s General Store is in the Essex Street Market, New York. His website is here, and you can see Kenny cooking those famous mac & cheese pancakes here.