Encore Une Fois/Foie!

(Belated) Happy New Year! Welcome 2012! New Year Resolutions firmly in place so here I am back for a second ham-fisted attempt at this blogging malarkey (Look at me,  I’ve got a porcine reference into the first paragraph without even mentioning food yet, that’s got to be a good omen?)

Several things have kept me away from this blog including sheer laziness, a best friend on a big diet (resulted in waaaay less eating out in 2011- well done to newly svelte H) and lack of time, all in no particular order. 

Equally, various things have brought me back; lots of nice meals and plenty of travel booked into the diary, so many new(ish) eateries that I want to try, 2012 good intentions  and a revitalised interest in Twitter, social media and the myriad of amusing but generally time-wasting exploits it entails. Added to that the fact that someone I recently went on a date with did a bit of internet-based ‘research’ on me beforehand and found this self-same very out of date blog, not sure who was more embarrassed- me for letting it get so out of date or him for having been caught cyberstalking but that’s another story...

So, second time lucky, would be great to hear what you think once I get up and running again!

SJ

Hawksmoor Wine Club: Yquem & Apple Pie

I can't remember how old I was when I first heard of Chateau Yquem. Along with a Chanel handbag it was one of those things I somehow inherently knew I wanted. I do have vivid memories of hunting for it in supermarkets on French beach holidays as a teenager and only once finding it  (in hindsight 680 francs was probably a bargain for a full sized bottle but seemed a crazy fortune at the time!)

Yquem is one of the few white wine chateaux to have reached a level of name recognition and mythical status to rival its Bordeaux neighbours such as Lafite, Pétrus or Margaux.   Clichéd phrases involving "nectar" and "liquid gold" are regularly bandied about in the tumultitude of articles on the subject.  

I'm not going to bore you with the basics of Yquem (botrytis, semillon, sauvignon etc etc) and leave it to someone much more qualified. For more of the story behind both Yquem the wine and the chateau and also some fabulous photography I can't recommend Richard Olsen's book Yquem enough, he knows much more about it than I can ever hope to.  So back to actually drinking the stuff and the evening I popped my Yquem cherry.... 

Hawksmoor have founded a wine club with the intention of offering amazing and often otherwise inaccessible-to-mere-mortals wines by the glass accompanied by a suitable dish.

So last week I was pretty excited to head on over to Seven Dials for an apple pie and a glass of Yquem for £22. Now there may be some of you out there who think that £22 still sounds like a totally nuts price to pay for what is essentially a cake and a glass of wine. Contrary to popular opinion amongst those nearest and dearest to me, I'm not living in cloud cuckoo land. It is a lot to pay unless you're really into wine. Bear in mind that only a few days later I was in another London restaurant who were offering the same Yquem, same year, same everything for £48 a glass. Without the pie. Imagine that.

The wine in question was a 1998 Yquem served in half bottles of which they had bought in a few (reputedly from Roberson but not 100% sure). Anyway so onto the wine itself. Golden in the glass leaving a pattern of rivulets swirling around the glass from the sweetness. I could sit and smell it for ages were I not such an impatient creature. Pure sweet honeyed olfactory blast. 

Enough acidity to prevent the wine cloying in the mouth and to stand up to the relative sharpness of the apples in the tarte. The comparative youth has meant that the more detailed fruity notes still remain. The botrytis in this bottle has permitted a super sweet concentration but  without erring too much towards the slightly bitter, petrol note that can creep in. In short, a nicely balanced wine.  

The lovely, lovely Hawksmoor chaps even gave me a second taste from a different bottle (just checking consistency within the vintage, totally necessary y'know how it is.....)  If this event was anything to go by, I can't wait to see what other Hawksmoor wine events are coming up.

So was it everything that I hoped and dreamed of, this elusive Elysian liquid? Yes.  I'm left with an expensive problem however; I want more.

Roberson are currently selling the 1998 for less than £100 for a half bottle, it'll keep for decades. Go on, you know you want to

Oh yes and the pie was very nice too.....

Hawksmoor Seven Dials

11 Langley St, London, Greater London WC2H 9JG

Khans, Clapham Junction, SW11

J&J were visiting from San Diego and have a well known penchant for all food Indian but we didn’t want anything too fancy for a casual Friday night supper nor did we want to venture West End so Khans in Clapham Junction was right on the money.

Upon arrival in the pouring rain the door swung open and a waiter blocking the doorway greeted us with “yyyeeeessss??” After managing to convince him that we did indeed have a booking we were allowed inside to wait whilst the previous occupants of our table finished up and left. Definitely a popular place to indulge in a curry fest on a Friday night! 

Poppadums and chutneys were delivered promptly, nothing unusual in terms of chutneys, the usual mango, chillied pickles, onion cucumber offerings but all were tasty.

J&J tend to go vegetarian so opted for a vegetable korma and a pumpkin masala.   Being resolutely carnivorous (and also allergic to pumpkin) I can only go by their description but I’m told that the masala was quite spicy but bursting with flavour and texture.  It did also look quite pretty rather than the unidentifiable blobs in sloppy sauce that can be presented in some Indian restaurants. The vegetable korma was really delicious and even I might not have noticed the absence of meat as the sauce was so good. As kormas go it was a very sweet version with lots of coconut but this is a plus in my book. Steamed rice was nice and fluffy and lightly flavoured with cardamom. Garlic naan was not the most garlicky tasting bread I’d ever had but a subtle flavour is definitely preferable to the whole chunks of garlic you often get in Indian restaurants.

I chose a chicken pasanda badani which was chicken in a cream and saffron based sauce with pistachios. It had a very mild flavour but was enjoyable. I love that the curries are all kept warm on hostess trays, this is something that I thought had been dying out but very much still happens at the Khan.

The thing I like most about Khans is that they don’t use any ghee or colourings in their food. Anything containing cream or coconut cream is labelled on the menu so you are making a conscious choice to go for the less healthy option.

Ordinarily anything heralded as low fat or additive free sends me running for the hills as the resulting dish is usually a poor cousin to the one that you really wish you were eating but in this case I genuinely felt it was for the better. Sometimes clear evidence of fat in a dish makes you know it’s going to taste good, for example shiny pork crackling or an oozing creamy carbonara sauce however I’ve eaten many an Indian meal where the slick of orangey fat on the surface of a curry doesn’t make you think ooh “I’m in for a treat here”, more a case of “can I pour some off without anyone noticing?”.

My only gripe is that some of the waiters appear to have attended the Indian restaurant school of customer service where there must be training module 101 in upselling dishes as the practice is so ubiquitous. “Poppadums? You’ll have 3 each?” “no thanks just 2 each” “You’re sure?”  and then later on; “no starters only mains? And sharing rice and naan, not each?” Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess as even after our bill had been requested and arrived “Can we get you anything more, drink? food?”

We ate on a Toptable.co.uk offer of 40% off which meant that the total bill came to £30 for 3 including beers. Bargain.

I haven’t tried it (but definitely will do!) but you appear to be able to order for delivery online also.

http://www.thekhan.co.uk/

159 Lavender Hill, Battersea, London, SW11 5QH   

UPDATE: I have now had Khan's delivered to home on more than one occasion and was really impressed, decent discounts are offered for home delivery and the food was just as good quality, can highly recommend!

Hawksmoor, Seven Dials

I was in Covent Garden to see Deathtrap at the Noel Coward Theatre (Simon Russell Beale, Jonathon Groff, well worth seeing.....) and had booked a post-theatre table at Hawksmoor as soon as I heard it was opening this week. Having spent some time looking at the menu online and salivating over the prospect of big juicy steaks I found that whilst the play was good my subconscious focus was definitely on dinner.

 Hawksmoor is located in a  converted disused brewery tucked away inconspicuously on the far corner of Langley street past the fluorescent glare of Cafe Pacifico and Pineapple Dance Studios, the restaurant and bar both have real character. Considering its central Covent Garden location you also know that people dining there are in there because they really want to be rather than because they wandered past it accidentally.I really loved the interior of Hawksmoor which whilst contemporary was all dark woods, blackbloards and low lighting (hence the lightly dodgy photo quality!). It made me wonder what it would have been like to dine in one of the Victorian steak clubs that Hawksmoor models itself on.

Fancy gin cocktail

The cocktail list moves away from the classics and the predictable and focuses more on old fashioned cocktails. A “fancy gin cocktail” consisted of gin, cane sugar and lime and was tasty, not overly sweet and really packed a powerful punch, it was quite reminiscent of New York style martinis.

Not a great photo but nice lobster nonetheless!

I ordered the half Devon Blue lobster with Hazelnut butter to start. I have to admit that the hazelnut was being very subtle indeed and had masqueraded itself very effectively as garlic butter. Since I love garlic butter this was not ultimately a problem but I remain intrigued as to what hazelnut tastes like with lobster. The lobster itself was really succulent, sweet and felt like a good size portion for its price (£15). I would definitely both recommend it and have it again.

H chose the bone marrow and slow cooked onions to start at £5.50. The onions had been cooked in beef dripping and were sensationally good. It came with slices of toasted sourdough bread to heap the onions and marrow onto before shovelling quickly into your mouth.


From a panopoly of steak options I went for a rib eye steak for my main topped with stilton hollandaise.   The whole “subtle flavours” thing arose again at this point. Essentially if I had been doing the Masterchef taste chef on the sauce, stilton would not have featured on my list of perceived ingredients. It was still tasted an accomplished and tasty rendition of a hollandaise sauce but didn’t have the blue cheese flavour I’d been hoping for. The steak itself was cooked to perfection and had a nice flavour and more than met my appetite for a large slab of cow. The chargrill flavour that permeated both the lobster and my steak was full of flavour without being overpowering.

D Rump + egg

H ordered a 55 day hung D Rump on the basis that neither of us had ever eaten anything that had hung for that long before. At less than £20 for 400g it was an excellent choice and was a lovely cut. To be honest I kind of wished that I had ordered it too (despite my rib eye being lovely) as the grain of the meat was good and the depth of colour of the meat exceptional. I’m assured that the addition of two fried eggs for £3 was also well worth it.

We conducted a scientifically accurate* chip test between the beef dripping chips and the triple cooked chips (*not scientific really). The dripping chips were more like wedges and were, frankly, delicious. Crispy and rich on the outside but fluffy soft on the inside. Whilst the triple cooked chips were nice (and would have been more than acceptable had I never tried the beef chips) they didn’t rock my world so I know what I would have on a return visit to Hawksmoor. I still have a burnt mouth today from eating them too quickly!

Beef & Liberty: excellent!

Side orders of roasted field mushrooms and creamed spinach arrived. The field mushrooms were truly excellent and I could have merrily eaten a dish of them as a starter on another occasion. The spinach was, well, spinach. It was indeed creamed and perfectly presentable but as H said there was a “curious edge” to it that neither of us could pinpoint.

All in all portion sizes are huge and you will leave stuffed even if you only have a main course. I will definitely be visiting Hawksmoor again. The atmosphere was buzzy and a real mixed crowd from girls having gossipy dinners a deux to tables of macho guys phhwoaring over their steaks. The menu and style of Hawksmoor is not so dissimilar to that of Hix Oyster & Chop House but if I were to choose between  them then Hawksmoor wins for me both in terms of food and atmosphere. I would love to visit with a group and order a giant cut from one of the blackboards regularly updated by waiters as steaks are purchased. 1.4kg of chateaubriand anyone?!

http://www.thehawksmoor.co.uk/sd.php

Ferran Adria at the Royal Geographical Society

I had received an email from Phaidon publicising their latest culinary publications with a small note that both Colman Andrews and Ferran Adria would both be discussing the book at the Royal Geographical Society; no need to ask twice, I'm there!

Having set off early to thwart the killjoys that think the weekend is a good time to have engineering works on the District Line, I accidentally arrived at the RGS an hour early. I was met by a queue beginning to snake its way down Exhibition Road populated with lots of excited but very chic Spaniards.

The evening started with a video depicting autumn at El Bulli. Graphic images of hare being shot and butchered mixed with footage of how the famous “spherification” process works were shown alongside visual explanations of how the dishes are put together. Slightly overly artsy and bordering on pretentious but interesting nonetheless to see some of the techniques of the chefs at work.

US food author Colman Andrews, who has written a recent biography of Adria (details below) acted as interviewer for the evening and gave his own insights and experiences of the world of chefs and haute cuisine.

Ferran himself is very mediterranean in his mannerisms, his responses to many of the questions being evasive but still electric in their enthusiasm (example: Q. “Which is better sex or food?” A. “Why do I have to choose, I want both!”). Although he understands English quite well his spoken English is cautious and thickly accented so a translator was brought in. None of his natural charisma or humour was lost in translation however.

After some questions from Colman the floor was thrown open to questions from the audience some of which were bordering on the ridiculous (Q. “I’m a housewife, can I cook your recipes and do you offer cooking classes?”) others more insightful and interesting (Q. “if you could cook for any three people who would you cook for?” A. “Mick Jagger, Johann Kreuff and Picasso”).
A revealing element of proceedings was when both Adria and Andrews were asked for their perspective on the culture of the “celebrity tv chef”. It was apparent that Andrews has no time for Gordon Ramsay and he highlighted that many tv chefs have no formal kitchen training (naming Rachel Ray of US fame). More surprising was Adria’s praise for Jamie Oliver who he appears to hold in high esteem especially in relation to his approach to making cookery accessible and encouraging healthy eating.

The big news was the apparent misreporting in the media that El Bulli is set to close. Ferran assured the audience animatedly (and with the assistance of a whiteboard and marker pen?!) that this is not true. The entire staff is being given a two year sabbatical to go and travel and experience new foods and cultures. They will then reconvene in 2012 and will begin a new venture that seemed somewhat nebulous in concept (although some of this may have due to translation). Essentially it appears as though El Bulli will reopen and become a collective where chefs, artists and designers all work together on new ideas. No reservations will be taken and decisions on who will be invited to come and dine may be themed, Adria have an example of perhaps having a time when only children can come.

So ultimately it still looks as though I will never get to dine at El Bulli but at least I enjoyed an evening with Ferran..........

Reinventing Food: Ferran Adria. The Man Who Changed The Way We Eat by Colman Andrews.http://www.phaidon.co.uk/store/food-cook/reinventing-food-ferran-adria-the-man-who-changed-the-way-we-eat-9780714859057/

Food I like: Moo Yong

Moo Yong is strange stuff. The closest description I can offer is that it is “sweet pork fluff”. It’s kind of like a combination of pork scratching and candy floss. I openly admit and am quite aware that this isn’t an altogether attractive mental image but somehow it just works and I find it rather addictive. I’ve never found it yet in the UK but would love to hear if anyone has seen it!

It is known as "rousong" in China and is made by stewing pork in a sweet soy sauce. Once cooked to the point where strands of pork can be teased apart as finely as possible, the mixture is dried and hey presto, pork floss!

Gazette, London SW12

The original Gazette is in Battersea SW11 and any reviews that I have seen have always been good, recommending the simple but effective menu and genuine Gallic style brasserie feeling. I had high hopes that the Balham outpost would live up to these reports.

The upstairs of Gazette is quite small and, I am sure, is light and airy on a nice sunny day or balmy summer evening. On an unnaturally chilly March evening, however, every new entrant was greeted by a shudder and a glare from fellow diners until the door had been firmly closed. Tables are in a long canteen style row so I wouldn’t recommend it for discreet romantic dalliances or a first date scenario. For a weekend supper with old friends it was perfect though. Tables are covered in blackboard paint and a pot of chalks is provided so once the wine starts flowing the table decoration becomes more and more elaborate. A small basket of sliced baguette was accompanied by a tower of proper salty butter; just how butter should be in my humble opinion.

H ordered scallop chowder to start whilst L went for snails in garlic butter and I chose Oeufs Cocottes Meurette. It was some time before a waiter casually informed us that, in fact, there was no scallop chowder so Han belatedly changed to mussels in white wine.

L’s snails were served in a traditional French ceramic snail plate already out of their shells (all Pretty Woman moments therefore successfully avoided!). They were in a butter of garlic and carrot.
My Oeufs Cocotte were served in quite a deep and red hot Le Creuset pan. Pancetta and mushrooms had been pan fried in butter and three eggs added with some red wine. The result was very rustic (and very salty) but tasty if not particularly aesthetically pleasing.


My main course was a sirloin steak with chips. The steak was big in surface area but quite thin which means that if you eat your steak blue like me, it’s going to be very hard for the chef to get it right. Mine was definitely rare and he didn’t do a bad job in the circumstances. I liked the way that chips were served in a pan lined with yesterday’s menu. It seemed like a quirky take on the old adage that today’s newspapers are tomorrow’s fish and chip paper. Bearnaise sauce was clearly home made in a little separate jug but had been sitting around long enough for a thick yellowy skin to form on the top.
H ordered a tomato tarte which she reported to be very tasty if not particularly over exciting. L’s cod looked small but apparently quite a lot of fish was beaten into the mash and the flavour was nice.

During our main course the neighbouring table’s starters arrived. Well, one starter arrived. It transpired that the other person had ordered the absentee scallop chowder also but this time the waiter just hadn’t bothered telling her it was non-existent. To me this seemed to sum up the standard of service in Gazette. Red wine was poured up my arm clumsily and most questions or requests were greeted with a Gallic shrug, all that was missing was “Bof” on the end of it.

One of the common themes throughout the meal was that we had to wait an unnatural amount of time between courses. As a group of girls chattering away this wasn’t a problem for us but in other circumstances could have been quite annoying. I think this delay is caused by the fact that the majority of dishes on Gazette’s menu require oven baking and whilst their habit of serving all dishes in mismatching pans or Le Creuset skillets is quirky it also means a lot of oven space must be required and the kitchen really didn’t look that big.

I ordered a chocolate soufflé for dessert which was freshly cooked to order and was massive. A hole was pierced in the top of the soufflé by the waiter and hot chocolate sauce poured in. Not only did this add a degree of theatre to proceedings but was a welcome addition as otherwise I don’t think that the dessert would have tasted particularly chocolatey.

Hmmm the “and finally”. I couldn’t decide for a while whether to include the next bit in my review but decided as it was part and parcel of our experience I really should. In the (prolonged) wait between main course and dessert I spotted some form of insect crawling across L’s jumper. Upon closer inspection (and having both lived in & visited insect ridden countries in the past) we agreed it to be a cockroach. I drew the waiter’s attention to it and his reaction was to bash it to the floor and to crack a joke about how the restaurant really didn’t appreciate it when customers brought that sort of thing to their establishment. One thing is for sure, we didn’t bring it in and I didn’t appreciate the suggestion that we did. But, as far as he was concerned that was the end of the matter and I couldn’t be bothered kicking up a fuss. Ultimately however, this incident will probably be one of the main reasons that I don’t go back to Gazette again. The food was nice enough and I loved the idea of the upcoming fondue season followed by asparagus week but the cons outweighed the pros for me. There are plenty of other nice places nearby.

1 Ramsden Rd, London, SW12 . (020) 8772 1232