February 8th, 2010
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.
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February 6th, 2010
This is a really fast and easy mid week dinner. The dried porcini and their soaking liquid really beefs up the mushroomy flavour of the finished sauce, without them the dish can taste a bit insipid.
Ingredients (serves 2)
2 large shallots, peeled and finely sliced
1 large clove of garlic
20g dried porcini mushrooms soaked in 150ml boiling water
250g chestnut mushrooms
100ml white wine
70ml half fat crème fraîche
Chopped parsley
Grated parmesan
Salt and pepper
Linguine
Method
First up, soak the dried Porcini in boiling water and let them rehydrate. Next clean the chestnut mushrooms, chop off the ends of their stalks, cut them in half and then slice. Now fry the shallots and garlic in a little olive oil and butter until soft before adding the mushrooms. Season with a pinch of salt and some fresh ground black pepper.
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January 31st, 2010
My friend Darren sent me a link to this insane blog on Friday (via his lady Thais) and I can’t stop looking at it.
It’s called Selleck Waterfall Sandwich and does exactly what it says on the tin. It features pictures of actor Tom Selleck and sandwiches badly photoshopped onto waterfall scenes. My favourite is the little animation of Magnum blowing away a ham bagel with a shotgun.
This is what the internet was invented for 
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January 30th, 2010
As mentioned in a previous post, I’m a bit obsessed with Poilâne bread. I bought some grey flour from the shop in Paris when I was over there for New Years, and just got round to using it to bake my first loaf of the year. It also gave me the chance to use a couple of Christmas gifts I got from The Lighthouse Bakery, namely a peel and a proving basket.
Not surprisingly, I’m still a way off nailing a good imitation, but this bread is pretty tasty, even if I do say so myself, and has a great crust. The recipe uses an 80 to 20 mix of grey flour and rye flour to add a bit more flavour and texture. If you can’t get grey flour, strong white would do just fine.
Ingredients
400g grey flour
100g rye flour
5g yeast
7g salt
300ml water
1 x teaspoon honey
1 x tablespoon olive oil
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January 25th, 2010
The 25th of January means that it’s Burns Night chez Hand To Mouth. Despite my name I’m not Scottish, and neither of us are huge poetry fans, but we both love a bit of haggis so we celebrate Scotland’s favourite son with a bit of haggis and a drop or two of whiskey.
People get a bit squeamish about haggis as it’s made with sheep offal (lungs, liver and heart) and (traditionally) cooked in a sheep’s stomach. These days most haggises are sold in artificial casings, and there’s really nothing to worry about as all the contents are mashed up and mixed with onion, oatmeal, beef fat, spices and salt.
When it’s liberated from the casing the haggis it warm, sticky, hearty and really tasty. We have ours with neeps (mashed swede – still no idea why it’s called neeps), greens, and and intense onion and whiskey gravy.
Tradition dictates that you welcome the haggis to your table with one of Burn’s most famous poems ‘Address To A Haggis’. It’s pretty tricky to read, but it’s a bit of fun.
Ingredients
Serves 2
1 small haggis
1 medium swede
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January 24th, 2010
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).
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January 19th, 2010
I meant to blog about this Starbucks un-branding story when I read about it last year, but totally forgot until my mate Toby reminded me about it yesterday, so now seems like a good time.
The long and short of it is that Starbucks is going to pick a few select outlets and un-brand them in order to create coffee shops with a more old fashioned and local feel. If this test is successful, they will then roll it out to other sites. Some people have described this move as a demonstration of a business being mindful of what their consumers want, but in my mind is proves what a cynical and aggressive brand Starbucks has become, and to be frank it pisses me off.
How Starbucks started as a business is a million miles away from where they are now. Originally a one off shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market that sold artisan coffees and equipment, it didn’t become the phenomenon that it is today until it was sold to an entrepreneur called Howard Schultz in 1987. Famously in the 90s, Starbucks opened a new store every working weekday, and this pace was maintained well into the noughties. Read the rest of this entry »
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January 10th, 2010
I was in Paris with the missus for a few days over the New Year period. The weather wasn’t great, but it’s still one of the greatest cities in the World (IMHO). As you might expect the food has a great deal to do with this, and I’m a huge fan of the traditional French bistro.
I love the simple, tasty food, the still tobacco stained walls, the atmosphere and the tradition of it all. Maybe it’s because we don’t have many good examples of this type of place in London, but I’d honestly prefer to sit down at a chequered tablecloth in a back street bistro to a plate of oeufs cocotte and an entrecote, than some foam drenched nonsense from an Alain Ducasse restaurant. No offense Al.
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