Going With My Gut

Lobster Pot Popup by Nicos Popupalot

Above: Chef Nicos, who wouldn't smile out of respect for the lobster about to meet its saffron brothed end.

 

Lobsters, my brother says, tell horror stories about The Kraken to baby lobsters, to make them behave. "The Kraken searches out, destroys, consumes the biggest, the gnarliest, the meanest among us", Mama and Papa lobsters bubble, with waving antennas and clacking claws. "Entire lobster armies, battlescars and all, get decimated. Ground to umami dust. Just think what The Kraken would do to you. The Kraken would have you for breakfast. Literally."

"In Lobster World," my brother tells me, "You are the Kraken".

So when Chef Nicos invited me to attend his Lobster Pot popup at The Arch Gallery in Cambridge Heath (9-11 May 2013) as a media guest, I probably said yes much more quickly than is cool. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth among Canadian lobsters - the lobsters of choice for his seafood menu.

Chef Nicos grew up in restaurants. His Greek Cypriot parents ran one until late last year, which has nudged Nicos to want to carry on the family legacy to start his own restauarnt, sometime, somewhere. In the meantime he cooks at Junction Tavern, and Angels and Gypsies in Camberwell. And hosts popups to try out different food formats and locations. His last one, also at The Arch Gallery, featured comfort food pie mash and gravy.

 

 

The Arch Gallery is a beautifully refitted railway arch in Cambridge Heath. What used to be a long stretch of car mechanics now hosts a varied mix of furniture and bike stores, real estate agents, and now, a flexible arts / events space.

 

 

I can't remember the last time I had a live piano man carress the keys over dinner. Fancy! With a gas-cannister-powered open flame heature right next to him. Edgy!

 

 

For starters, Rubenesque Colchester rock oysters. Mr Edible is nervous about me eating raw shellfish, as we're expecting Baby Edible #2 in August. I sulk when I'm told I'm allowed only one.

"Which one is least likely to get you into trouble?" he asks.

"The biggest one," I snap, and snatch before he can say much more.

I eat mine completely plain these days, and the fattest oyster on the platter was sweet and creamy, with none of the metallic tang that sometimes comes with their more anorexic looking relatives. Mr Edible tells me the shallot vinegar "didn't taste commercial" - a compliment.

 

 

And now to the main event. A lobster bucket for 2. We wonder if it will come with 2 lobsters, or 2-person sized lobster. (The Kraken declares there is no such thing as a 2-person sized lobster.) In any case, this bucket came with 1 lobster to share.

 

 

The booty at the bottom of the bucket: A generous portion of baby prawns, razor clams, clams, mussels, and samphire, swishing in a very pleasantly spiced saffron broth. With celery, carrot and onion for sweetness, and some pepper and lemongrass for kick, Chef Nicos tells me.

 

 

Afterwards I wander back out towards the entrance of the gallery, where the open kitchen -- not just to all punters walking in, but also in full view of the street as it's right next to the full height windows of the arch -- is positioned, and spy on the action at the pass. The pop up menu choices also included Devon crab claws, and giant tiger prawns. When I saw this fresh portion of prawns coming out for service, it was possibly the first time in my life I wondered if I should have asked for something else instead of the lobster.

Briefly, anyway.

 

 

In addition to cooking, Chef Nicos tells me that his other passion in life is drumming. There's something about this setup of pots and lids and the way Nicos whizzes his way around them that captures both for me.

 

 

So what next? Watch out for something in Camden, Nicos says. And his hometurf, Camberwell, where he wants to dig deep into his roots. "I want to do My Big Fat Greek PopUp," he says. Kali Orexi!

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, and attended this event as a guest.

Click on the logo below to view upcoming events by Nicos Popupalot.

Curated Afternoon Tea at The Modern Pantry with Lalani & Co.

Above: The Lalanis titled this "No More Teacups!", a nod to their dedication to drinking premium teas like you would a fine wine or whiskey - from a glass.

 

Bollyfood. The edible version of a starry-eyed Bollywood party.

I've been having a bit of a Bollyfood phase lately. At the end of April I got to spend time with Chef Vivek Singh and veteran restaurateur Iqbal Wahhab at Darjeeling Express's popup at The Cinnamon Club . Just one week later, I got to meet the hugely talented Chef Anna Hansen of The Modern Pantry , and share a table with Asma of Darjeeling Express , Dana who started and runs argan oil company Arganic, food writer and popup chef Ravinder Bhogal , and Rekha Mehr who started Pistachio Rose , which makes and sells Indian-inspired boutique pastries.

 

From left: Asma of Darjeeling Express Supperclub, Dana of Arganic, and Ravinder talk shop

 

The fine (looking) line joining these star-dots to reveal the Bollyfood constellation? Jameel, Nadeem and AK, the GQ-cover boys of London's tea scene (Well if they aren't already they should be). The 2 brothers and 1 cousin started and run Lalani & Co , a tea boutique focused on the best leaves picked at the best time of the year, from small plantations obsessed with quality rather than commercial volume. They started the business in 2010, and already count training the butlers at Buckingham Palace as one of their more unusual engagements.

"When we were trying to decide what to do, we were playing around with tea, coffee, cotton... but we kept coming back to tea. It's something we actually care about, and Jameel and Nadeem really have a palate for it," their numbers man AK tells me over tea. Possibly influenced by the fact that the guys grew up with an uncle who had tea plantations in Kenya. I wonder what tea runs are like at their office...

 

Above: Jameel (left), our host and tea-sommelier for the afternoon, and his brother and brewmeister Nadeem on the right.

 

On this spectacularly sun-drenched Friday afternoon, we were all in the upstairs dining room of The Modern Pantry to partake in an exquisite afternoon tea cheffed by Anna Hansen and tea-paired by the Lalanis.

 

Above: The gorgeous Lalani & Co tea chest. The Lalanis package their teas in black glass jars, "what works best for preserving quality of the leaf". The fact that they end up looking like health supplements is a somewhat happy accident. On each jar you'll find instructions for the perfect brew for that particular leaf - weight of leaf per portion, quantity of water, temperature of water, and brewing time.

 

Jameel and Chef Anna kick off proceedings. The care for their adjacent crafts burns in their eyes.

 

 

To start, umeboshi (Japanese pickled plums) custard tart, cauliflower, fennel seed and almond seed pastry (middle tier in the photo below), paired with Mannong Village Ancient White Buds 2010 from Yunnan, China. Amazingly fresh and delicate, none of that usual tannic feel on the tongue whatsover. My favourite standalone tea for the afternoon. The Lalanis age the tea themselves in the UK, doing their best to regulate temperature and humidity in their black glass tea storage jars.

 

 

Then we have perroche (an English goat cheese) and roast tomato sanwiches with sencha mayonnaise... paired with Okumidori Cultivar 1st flush sencha 2012 from Kyoto.

These ruined me for all other tomato sandwiches from here on in.

 

 

We have a holy communion-style whiff of the Yunnan white tea. Blindfolded, you might think you were smelling flowers rather than leaves, pink rather than green.

 

 

The beautifully designed teacups on the table stayed untouched all afternoon. The Lalanis drink and serve all their teas in Riedel glasses, which they say is better for teasing out the aroma of the tea. For that reason the composition of this shot below, with the teacup nudged out of frame, really resonated with them, it seems.

Here a tender and juicy grilled Persian spiced poussin leg gets paired with Makaibari 2nd flush Grand Reserve 2012 from Darjeeling.

 

 

The Darjeeling is paired again with the tonka bean, caraway and hazelnut frangipane tart. Jameel solicits a vote to see if the Darjeeling pairs better with sweet or savoury. I vote sweet. In retrospect I wonder how much of that is influenced by habit since tea is often sipped at the end of a meal soon after dessert?

 

 

A minute please, to zoom in on these white chocolate, urfa chilli and black garlic caramel truffles. Time for me to fess up - Modern Pantry's / Anna Hansen's reputation for unusual and creative fusion flavours was the reason I'd be a sceptic of her work for so long. I find that a lot of the time, fusion food ends up just being confusion food. It's a tiny minority of fusion chefs that really produce something really special.

And even just reading it on the menu for the day, my brain fritzed a bit, seeing white chocolate, chili, garlic and caramel all in the same sentence. It just didn't compute.

And then I actually tasted one of them.

Paired with LaKyrsiew Spring Reserve 2011 from India's Meghalaya region.

Tasting notes: An explosive punch of sweet salty spicy pungent heaven. And a pinch of humble pie.

This was the precise moment when I finally became a Anna Hansen convert.

 

 

Despite my doubting Thomas-ness, Nadeem gave me 2 leftover truffles to take home to share with the Mister. Some girls have all the luck. And some girls have all the truffles. You can keep your damn luck.

But my luck continued anyway. Midway through tea I was trying to entice AK to see what could be done about using tea in cocktails. I told him wistfully about an absolutely beautiful green tea martini I had in New York in 1999, and why don't more people make them? To which AK smiled and pointed to the closing drink for the afternoon, an organic matcha mar-tea-ni, matched with a matcha marshmallow.

Wahey!

Delicious and PUNCHY! "Something to kickstart your evening and bank holiday weekend," smiled Chef Anna.

 

 

Whatever else it fuelled for the evening and weekend, it certainly kickstarted a chat around the table about what other tea-led experiences might appeal. Ravinder found spent tea-leaf compresses to be a great cure for puffiness and dark circles around the eyes, so there might be a tea spa afternoon afoot. There was mention about how the Darjeeling was actually a great pairing with (would you believe it?) a rare steak. Anyone from Hawksmoor or Goodmans reading this?

So far, Lalani & Co teas have been available only at hotels, restaurants and very special events such as these. But soon you'll be able to buy them directly online. Stalk them here.

And maybe I'll have have to stalk Chef Anna until she makes those chocolate-chilli-caramel-garlic truffles for retail....

 

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, and provided marketing and ticketing services for this event by The Modern Pantry and Lalani & Co. I attended this event as an invited guest.

Click on the logo below to view upcoming events by The Modern Pantry.

Chef Vivek Singh, on Darjeeling Express Popping Up at The Cinnamon Club

Above: The glowing Asma Khan of Darjeeling Express Indian supperclub.

 

Let's face it. The more prestigious the restaurant, the more likely the head honcho chef is to have a reputation for being protective of their turf.

So much so that Chef Vivek Singh opened the doors to the hallowed halls of The Cinnamon Club - one of the big league fine dining Indian restaurants in London - for Asma Khan of Darjeeling Express Indian supperclub to host a pop up lunch banquet, restaurant guide stalwart Square Meal sat up and took notice, pinning it on their calendar of upcoming events.

Even Asma herself was taken aback when she first shared the news with me a couple of months back: "I'm an untrained chef and a woman! Their kitchen have never let in either before!"

So what made Chef Vivek do it?

 

Above: From left, Chef Vivek Singh of The Cinnamon Club, Kalyan Karmakar of Finely Chopped and me spend a delicious afternoon swapping stories about authenticity, Indian-Chinese food and competition among restaurants and bloggers at the Darjeeling Express Cinnamon Club popup. Photo courtesy of Ming Tang-Evans.

 

Asma's fabulous cooking, certainly. When the Darjeeling Express pop up came to pass at The Cinnamon Club this past weekend, Chef Vivek made our table get up and ladle our biriyani onto our plates ourselves, rather than passing the giant platter around. "Because this biriyani deserves a standing ovation!" he declared!

Asma's colourful family history, perhaps? Asma doesn't talk about it much, but she is actually a member of old Mughal royalty. But a penniless princess, she shrugged to me over a cup of chai when she first shared with me the news about The Cinnamon Club, with not even enough money to upkeep a token crumbling family palace in India. Her grandfather gave away all the family lands when India gained Independence, she says, with glowing pride rather than bitterness.

Chef Vivek's own enlightened attitude to perceived competition, partly. "The stage is big enough for all of us," he says, hinting at collaborative events to come.

"Here's the real hook for me", Chef Vivek confides as he leans over his chicken kebabs and momos this past Saturday (27 Apr 2013) at the popup, "All my life, I've met so many women who tell me they are tied down by food. They do a hundred and one different things not food related, to liberate themselves from food."

"Then here's Asma. A woman who is highly educated academic lawyer. A mother, whom, now that her children are old enough, is liberating herself through food! I find that utterly fascinating."

Could this it be the start of an edible liberation movement within ethnic minority communities? At the Darjeeling Express popup I also have the pleasure of meeting the irrepressible Iqbal Wahab (below), the original founder of The Cinnamon Club, and now CEO of Roast Restaurant at Borough Market. He and Sahara Quli (2 seats to his right) are involved in a new programme to train up ethnic minority women (and a few men) to leverage their (hidden, possible under-appreciated) home cooking expertise to make a living outside of the home.

 

 

All exciting food for thought, possibly the best pairing of all to Asma's beautiful cooking that just kept on coming that afternoon. The full menu below.

Delightful collaborations included:

A curated tea flight by British tea boutique Lalani & Co, featuring exquisite small batch leaves from the Darjeeling region.

Green Saffron Rice's aged basmati for Asma's biriyani. Salted and stored in between leaves, the rice dehydrates, strengthening its grain structure and concentrating its flavour.

Cocoa Hernandos' addictive masala chai-infused chocolate buttons.

Duke of Delhi's spicy ginger cookie in a take-home goodie bag.

 

Above: I couldn't resist featuring the gorgeous Shu of Mummy I Can Cook twice in the collage above. She could definitely pass for a pretty girl from Darjeeling, so close to the Chinese border!

 

The menu:

Canapes

*Potato and Peas Samosas
*Chicken Seekh Kabab
*Salmon and Dill Fish Cakes

Starters

*Black Tail Tiger Prawn in a Glass
*Okra Boats (Vegetarian)

*Steamed Nepali Momo with Green Himalayan Chutney
* Vegetable Momo (Vegetarian)

*Papri Chaat (potato and chickpea with tangy tamarind chutney)

*Tengri (chicken) Kabab
* Baigan Bhajja- Aubergine Pakora (Vegetarian)

Mains

*Sirka gosht (Slowcooked lamb with Calcutta's signature vinegar)
* Bengali Niramish (Dry-fried mix vegetable fish, lightly spcied and sprinkled with lemon juice)

*Chicken Chaap
*Channa (chickpea) Dal (Vegetarian)

*Bengali Fish Malai Curry
* Paneer Malai Curry (Vegetarian)

*Aloo Dam

*Paratha

The Rice Finale

*Calcutta Mutton Biryani
*Vegetable Pallau (Vegetarian)

*Cucumber Raita
*Darjeeling Express’s signature tomato, apricot and prune chutney

Dessert

*Bhappa Doi
Steamed Bengali yogurt (described by a guest as what a chai latte pudding would taste like!)

*Fruit Chaat
Selection of fruits marinated in Himalayan rock salt, lime juice and brown sugar

 

Want to get on board the Darjeeling Express? Asma's next event is a Gymkhana tea party on Sat 18 May 2013. Taste for yourself what happens when Indian and Pakistani high society mingle with English Colonials!

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, and provide ticketing and marketing services for Darjeeling Express. I attended the Darjeeling Express - Cinnamon Club popup as an invited guest.

FedbyTang Hongkong Supperclub v. Seafood: Flawless Victory

Above: The turbo power dish - Stir fried crab with sticky rice. If the awesomeness of this dish doesn't make you fall over backwards before eating it, the enormity of it will afterwards.

 

Were you a teenager in the 90s? Remember that arcade game Mortal Kombat? This supperclub dinner was like that.

Cherry of FedbyTang Hongkong Supperclub, versus Creatures of the Deep.

And in the notoriously little-room-for-error genre that is Chinese-style seafood, Cherry scored a FLAWLESS VICTORY.

 

Above: Battle gear.

 

Cherry was cooking up a seafood dinner this particular evening partly because there was a pescetarian friend at the table who she'd been meaning to host for ages. But it's hard for a Chinese person to resist pork completely. So to warm up, we had deep fried tofu with bits of crispy pig skin. Who says tofu has to be virtuous, eh?

 

 

Prawn toast is a popular starter snack at Cantonese takeaways. This evening Cherry served it old school Hong Kong style, the way she ate it growing up. Prawn paste slathered on white toast, coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried. And garnished with a whole deep fried prawn head. This could totally work as a bar snack at St John or Wright Brothers or Elliots Cafe, or The Clove Club, whenever it is they catch on. A girl can hope.

 

 

Succulent steamed scallops, dressed in garlic, soya sauce, sesame oil and coriander. An indulgent favourite in Chinese seafood banquet halls. Much more affordable here in London if you use local scallops. Bliss inducing!

 

 

Spicy stir fried razor clams. Another luxury dish in Asia, again much more afforable here if you use UK razors. Half a minute too long on the fire and these can make you feel like you're chewing on a rubber hose. Cherry timed her frying time perfectly. I heard from our lovely front of house Phoebe later that Cherry had different timers on the go in the kitchen throughout the evening, to keep her bang on time. Stressful (I heard Cherry calling out to Phoebe to hustle out of the dining room a few times this evening to help out in the kitchen) but what a great result!

 

 

Steamed seabass with soya sauce and sesame oil, garnished with ginger slivers and spring onion. Again, so little room for error on this dish. The fish must be very fresh and you have to judge the steaming time according to the weight of the fish. I still don't have the guts to make this dish for a dinner party. Cherry had the guts. And the glory.

 

 

Stir fried squid with snow pea and carrots. I think just a touch more salt would have really lifted this dish but the textures were bang on. Bouncy and crunchy right where they needed to be.

 

 

And now we come to that bit in the battle where your power bar is fully charged, and it's time to unleash your secret-combi-attack.

Behold! Cherry's stir fried crab, sat upon glutinous rice cooked in sweet-savoury crab stock. KNOCKOUT! Apologies to my dining companions - pretty sure I scarfed an unfair share of this magnificent dish.

 

 

And finally a glee-inducing dessert. The result of Cherry's recent waffle iron acquisition. A popular streetsnack from growing up in Hong Kong, she said. For me it brought back many happy memories as twentysomething gallavanting around New York City. There was just such an egg waffle vendor, unfailingly on Canal St just before you headed south into the guts of New York's Chinatown. The warm scent of the sweet eggy liquidy mix taking shape on the hot irons never failed to lift my mood, and it served as the perfect nightcap now.

 

 

All this for an unbelieveable £30! Whenever it is that Cherry decides to do another seafood banquet, I can't recommend it enough that you go. Meanwhile, Cherry's next supperclub is an Indian-Chinese collaboration with Asma of Darjeeling Express on 11 May 2013. Check out their double-trouble menu, and grab the last few seats!

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, and provide marketing and ticketing services for both FedbyTang and Darjeeling Express. I attended this event as a paying customer. Click on the logo below to see upcoming events by FedbyTang.

London: A Very Stylish Table for 10 Vietnamese Supperclub

 

 

Above: Aromatic duck noodle soup ala Table for 10 Vietnamese Supperclub. Seconds absolutely not necessary, but see if you can resist.

 

Ah, quiet long weekends. Perfect for catching up on writing. For example, this long overdue post on Table for 10 Vietnamese supperclub in London's trendy Whitechapel, which I had the privilege of visiting as an invited guest late last year. Table for 10, cheffed by Vietnamese-Australian Damon and hosted by local MJ, jumps instantly onto my favourite supperclubs list, for incorporating modernity and style into the presentation of their dishes, without sacrificing any boldness and depth of flavours.

Upon entering you're likely to be presented with a welcome house cocktail by MJ. It will likely have Asian influences, and be dangerously delicious and drinkable, especially if the guys are feeling generous. Which is often, so other guests tell me. You have been warned!

 

 

The evening opened with a very exotic canape of smoked trout with a sweet-savoury chilli jam spiked with mashed up dried shrimp, salmon caviar, slivers of dried and candied orange peel, served on a large betel leaf. Utterly authentically Asian in the way it harmonises sweet, salty, sour, spicy and a tinge of bitterness. Utterly fresh and modern in plating. Good luck trying to find something like this on Kingsland Road. While eating this I hear squabbling at the other table over who gets to keep Chef Damon's leftover stash of chilli jam. Regulars, no doubt.

 

 

Our second starter: crispy moist fried chicken thigh bites, with a spicy mayo dip. Chef Damon and I discovered later that we have dirty fried chicken as a mutual secret shame. I'm very pleased Damon's found a way to use it, own it and elevate the genre (yes I consider fried chicken a genre, as trendy London street food traders are now proving) for his guests. I spotted several fellow diners watching me and my portion of fried chicken like vultures while I shot the photograph below. Luckily I am not of dainty build...

 

 

An in-between course: Bo la lot, Vietnamese-style dolmas, where aromatic minced beef is rolled up in betel leaves and then fried or charcoal-grilled. Served here with thick rice noodles, pickles and fresh herbs. Gorgeous in every way.

In case you're interested in making these at home, here's a bo la lot recipe from the wildly popular City Caphe in Bank.

 

 

And to send me off waddling home, a giant bowl of fragrant, earthy, very comforting duck noodle soup. Given the relatively petite prettiness of every dish up to dine one, I was well pleased at this less pretty, much more butch and hearty main. Having grown up in Singapore I'd be happy to eat this in the midst of a muggy tropical heatwave, but this will no doubt be a hit dish during London's loooooooong winter months.

Did I mention there were seconds? Not at all necessary. But I couldn't say no to that soup!

 

 

Dessert was vanilla ice-cream with lychee cream and chocolate sauce. Not especially photogenic, and personally I felt the chocolate overpowered the lychee flavour. Desserts have never been my strong point when I host dinners, and I get the sense that Damon is still developing his dessert repertoire as well. But other than that I thought the dinner was stellar, and I'd be happy to pay £30 (their usual supperclub price) to come back as a paying guest with friends.

Many thanks to Damon and MJ for hosting. They have big plans ahead, but are using the meanwhile to test and grow their arsenal of food and cocktail recipes. So watch this space. Better yet, secure a space for yourself, here. Their suppers regularly book out 2 months in advance, so keep an eagle eye on them on our Edible Experiences newsletter alerts!

 

Have you been to Table for 10? What were your favourite dishes?

 

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, which provides event ticketing services for Table for 10. I attended this event as a guest of Table for 10.

Click on the logo below to view upcoming events for Table for 10 Vietnamese Supperclub.

London's Backdoor Kitchen Italian Supperclub Pops Up in Singapore

Above: Welcome to Singapore, Backdoor Kitchen!

 

Prologue on The Backdoor Kitchen:

I've had the pleasure of dining at The Backdoor Kitchen Italian Supperclub several times in London now, as well as working with them through our food startup Edible Experiences. I'm delighted to say that as we "grew up" in London's food scene together, Chef Roberto and I also became friends. I love it that every time I think I have Italian food all figured out, he throws me a new region's cuisine, a new story about some dish or ingredient's story, some new twist on a classic or familiar dish.

(Backdoor Kitchen on Twitter)

Prologue on Smothering Suppers:

Last year my beautiful and talented sister in law Sarah spent the summer volunteering on a farm in Campagna, Italy, learning how to cook the big cold hearty cuisine of the region from the Mama of the farming family. She hosted a dinner at Edible HQ during her one day transit back in London enroute home to Singapore. I invited Rob to dinner, and since then Sarah and Rob have, I hear, been whizzing emails and recipes back and forth, as Sarah hosted supperclub dinners in her home in Singapore to share what she learned in Italy.

(Smothering Suppers on Twitter)

===

So when the stars aligned, and there was a tiny whiff of an opportunity that Rob and I could overlap for a few days in Singapore, Rob, Sarah and I all jumped at the chance, wrestled it to the ground, and pinned it down by the jagular, to host a Backdoor Kitchen Sunday lunch at Smothering Suppers HQ in Singapore.

If we could grin anymore with glee at how Backdoor Kitchen's debut in Asia turned out, our cheeks would fall off.

And now to the menu.

Antipasti: A gently sweet-sour caponata salad studded with copa, a highly addictive terrine made from pig's head (a perfect accompaniment to shooting the breeze late at night in Rob's kitchen). This dish needs its own song. Something like.... "At the Copa... Copa-caponata...". Sorry Mr Manilow.

 

 

At my request, Rob made his stunning marinated sea bream and chickpea salad.

 

 

Definitely a crowd pleaser with our 16 guests that day. This handsome dude made Sarah's day by telling her that he felt like he had walked into a Wallpaper magazine when he walked into her flat.

 

 

The trickiest dish of the day: Rob's vegetarian inside out (or is that outside in?) twist on cabonara. Here, diced courgettes are mixed in ricotta, creating a base for a raw egg yolk.

 

 

Which is then blanketed with a pasta sheet, to create giant ravioli pillows.

 

 

Mind you, this is Chef Rob in as good a mood as I've ever seen him while prepping.

 

 

A very quick blanche to keep the egg yolk runny...

 

 

... and then a dollop of creamy saffron sauce with more courgettes. Gooey gorgeousness.

 

 

A little breather in between courses for guests to chat, stretch, and get ready for the enslaught of yumminess coming.

 

 

A Backdoor Kitchen classic: Squid ink risotto on a bed on basil cream, topped with caramelised onions, tomatoes and guanciale. Modern Italy on a plate.

 

 

In Singapore a rainy counts as cold weather, which was the perfect setting for Rob's slow cooked pork and sausage stew on savoury polenta.

 

 

And the crowd went wild. (Or at least, WOW.)

 

 

And then fell into a long silence as they chowed down. And chowed down. And chowed down.

 

 

The Italian-coloured remains of the day.

 

 

A sweet finish: Rob's white chocolate and strawberry tiramisu, in tribute to Singapore colours. Uttered one guest, "Omygod I could have just this for lunch".

 

 

Take a bow, Rob and Sarah!

 

 

The relief at the end of a successful service, and the dreading of all the dishwashing to come...

 

 

Epilogue:

After eating his way through Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Rob is now back in London. You can keep track of his upcoming suppers here. (He's cooking up a wintery Alpine menu this weekend, a few seats left!)

Sarah now works full time as a chef at the much hailed Immigrants gastrobar, studying under Chef Damian D'Silva, one of my favourite and most respected guardians of heritage Singaporean cuisine. Email smotheringsuppers (at) gmail.com to receive alerts about Sarah's upcoming supperclubs.

 

Disclosure:

I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, and provide event ticketing services for Backdoor Kitchen. I've attended Backdoor Kitchen events both as a paying guest and as a member of the team.

Click on the logo below to view upcoming events for Backdoor Kitchen.

London Supperclub: Dining on the Darjeeling Express

Above: Chef Asma of Darjeeling Express whirring in action.

 

Chef Asma Khan of Darjeeling Express Indian supperclub is runaway train of deliciousness, and I consider myself very lucky to be part of her exciting edible journey.

When the law PhD graduate is not running her free legal clinic for women, or raising funds for new infrastructure for her childrens' school, or volunteering with with food charities (to the point of fighting their parking tickets incurred while making crucial deliveries, goes one story), she's feeding supperclub guests -- sometimes 30 to 55 at a time -- some of the finest Indian food I've tasted this side of the Bay of Bengal.

Quite a feat for someone who learned how to cook only after she got married. Her kitchen mentor, she told me, is an old blind chef back home in India. Who taught her how to cook recipes which have been in her family for 4 generations with all of her senses.

The result? Have a look at some of her starters, for starters.

Haleem: a traditional Hyderabadi pounded wheat porridge, slow-cooked with shredded mutton and spices, lifted and lightened by a sprinkle of coriander and a squeeze of lime. Its hefty comfort-food appeal makes it a popular dish at break-fast time during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. I think of haleem as baby food, if your baby is a sumo wrestler.

 

 

Calcutta-style chicken kaati rolls and momos (Tibetan dumplings). One day, if we're very lucky, we will see a Darjeeling Express food truck selling these kaati rolls for lunch. A girl can hope!

 

 

Expertly fried chicken and samosa and tangy tamarindy potato, a popular street snack in many Indian cities.

 

 

I struggle to photograph curries well. So these photos here really don't do justice to Darjeeling Express's Bengali fish malai curry (left) and prawn curry. And even if I did, how would one capture the spice-mix profile of the curry, so much deeper, more subtle, more complex than your neighbourhood Balti house?

 

 

I also realised after 2 Darjeeling Express events that I have consistently failed to photograph Asma's lamb dishes (evidence below). It's only when I get down to the lovely bones that I smack my forehead and reach for the camera. I blame Asma's blind mentor, who went as far as to hold Asma's hand and teach her how to read the weight and balance of a ladle when lifting slow cooked lamb out of a pot, so that the tender meat doesn't flake and fall off off before it reaches the serving platter.

That's why other cooks' lamb dishes are not as tender, Asma tells me. They fear the pre-platter disintegration and so they don't cook it as long. I suppose the unintended effect is pre-camera inhalation!

 

While Asma demonstrates her culinary prowess with her meat dishes, to me she demonstrates her bigness of heart with her vegetarian dishes. At my debut Darjeeling Express event this past summer I sat next to a vegetarian, who was presented with this special platter below. She was taken aback by the generous spread, and said to Asma "Oh gosh you didn't have to do this, I would have been ok to just eat more of the vegetable dishes already on your menu."

To which Asma replied, "Nonsense, my dear. Our cuisine is so deep, so wide, so varied. Of course we can take care of you."

I didn't have to taste her vegetables to be impressed.

 

 

That said, her paneer with cashews was pretty kickass.

 

 

As is her tender and gently spiced cauliflower. I have deep admiration for anyone who can make cauliflower interesting without adding the obvious and overdone cheese-and-bacon combination to it.

 

 

Many Indian desserts are some rendition of milk-and-so-much-sugar-it-hurts-my-teeth. So I really enjoy Darjeeling Express's fruit chaat - a very lively light fruit salad laced with jaggery (raw brown sugar) and tamarind. Perfect after a typical Darjeeling Express avalanche of rice, breads and proteins.

 

 

After a very successful summer debut at The Supperclub Summit at London's Goethe Institut and our very own Sunday Feasts series, Darjeeling Express is upping the ante this winter. Friends and fans of Asma's food are rallying around her to dream up and execute new exciting events, like Indian food and wine pairing events, and Indian food-themed walking tours followed by a soul-warming supper.

So come aboard the Darjeeling Express, and discover a few new spice routes right here in London.

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, and provide event ticketing services for Darjeeling Express. I've attended 1 Darjeeling Express event as Asma's guest and another as a paying guest.

Click on the logo below to view upcoming events for Darjeeling Express.

Lisa the Jamaican Supperhero - Fundraising Supperclub for Action Against Hunger's Love Food Give Food Campaign

Above: Saltfish and ackee, widely regarded as Jamaica's national dish. Lisa served it with fried breadfruit, the perfect foil for the salty chunky dip.

 

I first discovered Lisa's Jamaican Kitchen's cooking when I helped out with service at her supperclub debut back in June. I was so bowled over by the morsels she insisted I try while "on shift" that I couldn't wait to come back as a proper guest, with Babs (Mr Edible Experiences) and friends in tow.

After a hectic summer of foodie events we finally got our chance at the end of September, when Lisa was hosting a Supperhero dinner in aid of internatinal aid agency Action Against Hunger's Love Food Give Food campaign.

The short version of this writeup is that I REALLY REALLY wish I was just shameless enough to ignore Babs's rolling eyes, and bring takeaway boxes with me to buy up Lisa's leftovers.

Next time, eh. And yes. There will definitely be a next time. *CRAVE*.

Others evidently feel the same. Half the table in Lisa's living room in Surrey Quays this evening were repeat guests, still willing to pay, still willing to bring friends, still with a childlike excitement in their eyes.

Lisa opened the evening with Jamaica's national dish: Saltfish and ackee, on a canvas of fried bread fruit.

Then came "festivals" - Jamaican fritters spiked with salt fish and shrimp.

We at the dinner table were keenly aware that this was all a trap. If we failed to pace ourselves with the breadfruit and festivals, we'd suffer during the mains later. But YOU try these starters tell me if you can pace yourself.

 

 

And here they come. Escovitch fish: Succulent fried red sea bream with a spicy, sweet, tangy vinegary dressing that really lifts the dish. A Jamaican rendition of Spanish escabeche / Peruvian ceviche / Persian al-sikbaj - essentially a mild preservation method of fish or meat via sugar and acid.

Whatever takeaway ambitions I may have had for this dish, there was none left to take away!

 

 

Lisa's Jamaican chicken curry, with carrots and "spinners", the little pasta-like tails in the mix. Gorgeous comfort food. This will be massively popular during her winter suppers I imagine.

 

 

The star dish of the evening was ripped to shreds before I could even snap a photo - a big brown slab of jerk pork belly seasoned in Lisa's family-secret jerk marinade, pressure-cooked, then roasted to crisp the skin, and served with a fresh-pineapple laced homemade BBQ sauce. So beautiful, so moving, that one of our fellow guests made a marriage proposal to it. Yes really.

For veggie side dishes we had fried plantain, and a cooling cucumber and mango salad.

And now to desserts! Hominy corn is served as a breakfast porridge in Jamaica. This evening Lisa sexy-ied it up with cinnamon, nutmeg, sultanas and a torched-sugar top. By this time everyone was groaning in their seats from the volume of food consumed, protesting they would manage a spoonful each only. Of course they pushed through to the bottom of the porridge pots anyway.

 

 

These may just look like fritters again, but they are in fact deep fried banana bread balls. Light, fluffy, sweet and caremelly with cooked bananas. My only question is, this is obviously such a genius idea, why hasn't anyone I know done this before?

 

 

Another highlight of the evening that disappeared quickly: Lisa's "Reggae" hot chocolate, made from pure, unprocessed cacao and Lisa's blend of spices. Why have her past guests called it "reggae" hot chocolate? You just have to be there to see and experience it for yourself.

Before we go, I nip into the kitchen to photograph Lisa with her stash of jerk seasoning. Someday she will bottle and sell it. We can only hope.

 

 

Lisa' next supper will be a Jamaican Sunday Feast in Covent Garden. Come curious. Come hungry. Come ready to reggae.

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, and manage bookings for Lisa's Jamaican Kitchen Supperclub. There was an advance payment to cover the cost of food, and a cash donation on the day that went to Action Against Hunger. For this event I paid only the charity donation.

Click on the logo below to see Lisa's Jamaican Kitchen supperclub's upcoming events.

Flavours of Spain Supperclub

Above: Ana (left) and Teresa of Flavours of Spain supperclub, talking their guests through their cheese and charcuterie platter.

 

Ana and Teresa run Flavours of Spain, an independent outfit that import fabulous goodies from Spain, with a special focus on Ana's native Galicia - a region on the country's north west coast, famous for its seafood. I first met them at The Stock Mkt on Bermondsey Square this past summer, and have been a regular buyer (it sound better than "addict") of their manchego cheese and quince paste since.

This past July the 2 lovely ladies decided to start a supperclub to showcase their products and Ana's family recipes. Ana grew up around cooks and farmers, she told me in the kitchen. But somehow she found herself working in a telecommunications company for a number of years, before she made the leap and embraced her true passion - food. Ah well, it was the same with Pedro Almodovar and film, I shrug and smile. And aren't we glad he made the leap.

Ana and Teresa very generously had me along as a guest at their supperclub debut. Here, finally, is my long overdue writeup!

We open the summery evening with delicious strawberry mojitos.

 

 

Next, an elegant platter of what you might find at their weekly market stalls - a mixture of cheeses, charcuterie and olives. The little cubes on the middle right are cave-matured Cabrales, a Spanish blue cheese. "Probably Spain's strongest cheese," the ladies said on their little cheeseboard. They weren't kidding. I'll stick with their manchego.

 

 

An absolutely delightful take on gazpacho. That gorgeous hue and hit of sweetness comes from a special secret ingredient - cherries!

 

 

Tortilla - the classic Spanish omelette with potatoes. Personally I'm convinced you have to be Spanish to make a proper tortilla. That is, not have it fall apart into a sorry broken heap just as it transits from pan to plate. (Sigh of shame). Here, Flavours of Spain cleverly cut the tortilla up into tasting cubes, so that you can pace yourself. Because look what comes next...

 

 

Chorizo cooked in Galician Mencia wine. A perfect pairing with the tortilla above.

 

 

Squid in ink, serived with bomba rice from Spain's only existing wooden mill (perhaps Mr Quixote did manage to get all the others). I love squid in its own ink. I could stand to eat about a cauldron full of this.

 

 

Except there was one more hefty dish to go before dessert. A stew of oxtail with pochas beans from Rioja. *Mops sweat from brow*. I look forward to making pots of this in the coming chilly months.

 

 

And now to dessert: A coconut flan, a dessert made primarily of eggs and sugar. Combined with coconut, this is basically what kaya (South East Asian egg and coconut jam) would taste like, much to my delight. At some point I'll need to introduce Ana and Teresa to kaya toast.

Sidenote: At their stall at Brockley Market yesterday I discovered their fuet, little sweet-salty sausages that Ana apparently calls "candy meat" because of the way she snacks on them in front of the TV. I sheepishly confess that I cleaned them out of their last 320g of the stuff at the end of the market day. My excuse was that I was taking them to a party. Except there was already so much food at the party that I thought "Ah well, no sense wasting them here, I'm taking these babies home!" And so here I sit, snacking on candy meat. Promising myself that since they do resemble Chinese wax sausages in flavour, I should really see how they perform as a Chinese-sausage substitute in say, claypot rice. I wonder what other unexpected Spanish products could be used in Asian dishes... any thoughts, readers?

Back on plot: We also had a lemon tart that got consumed before I could get a photo of it!

 

 

A wonderful hearty dinner indeed. Perhaps a wee bit too heavy in total for a warm summer evening, but the mains would all be excellent comfort food in the months now coming. Muchas gracias to Ana and Teresa for having me along.

 

Above: I often picture Ana as a main character in an Almodovar movie. I really hope she takes this as a compliment.

 

Flavour's of Spain's next supper will be on 14 October, as part of Edible Experiences' Sunday Feast series in Covent Garden. The chorizo and flan will make an apperance again (Hurrah!), as will the squid in ink but served differently. They will also be serving one of my favourite Spanish dishes ever - Pulpo ala Gallega. Galician-style Octopus. Gotta get my grubby tentacles some o that!

 

Disclosure: I attended the supperclub above as a guest. I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, and manage supperclub bookings for Sunday Feasts on behalf of Flavours of Spain.

Click on the logo below to see and book upcoming events for Flavours of Spain.

Come Join Us for a Sunday Feast

Above: Poster design by Shuhan Lee of Mummy I Can Cook

Ah Sundays. Where I grew up, Sundays were the days to have long leisurely meals with family and friends. To forget weekday foods and their sterile plasticky sheen of convenience and expediency. To instead remember more labour and love-intensive dishes. To distribute such labours of love and culinary obsession onto plates lining a long table. To share stories from the week just passed. To laugh, nod, tut at those stories, and recharge body and soul alike for the week looming ahead.

It warmed my heart to meet in London a whole community of supperclub hosts who instantly recognised that Sunday phenomenon when I described it to them, who so enthusiastically said YES when I shared with them my vision of creating and sharing that kind of Sunday Feast here in London.

 

Heck, I'll let them speak for themselves here:

SUNDAY FEASTS 2012 from Fabio Forin on Vimeo.

Video by Fabio Forin of the Backdoor Kitchen Supperclub

 

Our troupe of multi-ethnic multi-national feeders found a Sunday kitchen and dining room at the brand new School of Wok cooking school in Covent Garden, stitched together 11 elaborate Sunday menus over 3 months, and TADAH! Sunday Feasts was born.

Below is a teaser of the dishes from the various Sunday Feasts menus, served up as canapes at our press preview event on 28 Aug:

Photo credits: Fabio Forin, Cherry Smart, Jason Ng

 

1st row from left:

• Soy dashi eggs with salmon roe, and Cantonese "mouthwatering" chicken by FedbyTang
• Prawn malai curry shots and samosas with Himalayan chutney by Darjeeling Express

2nd row from left:

• Sago gula melaka by Budaya Kusina
• Our Sunday Feasts home School of Wok in Covent Garden
• Peruvian potato cakes with cheese sauce by FabCooking

3rd row from left:

• Squid and squid ink pastries, garnished with olive oil caviar and marcona almond sprinkles by Flavours of Spain
• A pop up canape-matched wine tasting by our press preview supporters A Grape Night In
• Pork belly satay and chwee kueh (steamed rice cakes with pickled turnip) by Plusixfive

4th row from left:

• Canape-style lasagne with radicchio by the Backdoor Kitchen;
• Poudine Mas (Mauritian polenta cakes with coconut) by Yummy Choo
• Surprise-flavour French crepes by Pauline Cuisine and Carib Gourmet

Come! Be tempted by our Sunday Feasts menus. Slow down, sit down, eat with some old friends, make some new friends. Fill your tummy and your soul.

Start your week right. Come feast with us. You bring drinks and an open heart. We'll bring the rest.

All Sunday Feasts are £36 + £3.60 booking fee. BYOB.

 

BOOK YOUR SUNDAY FEAST SEATS HERE.

Edible Experiences, Action Against Hunger, and a League of Supperheroes

By day they walk amongst us, spending their weeks unnoticed, as they live out a normal life as teachers, journalists and doctors. But at the weekend, their super-human cooking powers come to life, turning their homes into pop-up restaurants around London to become ‘The Supperheroes Series’.

Starting this weekend until the end of October 2012, these culinary crusaders are working with international aid agency Action Against Hunger to help fight the injustice of child hunger around the world, conjuring up the most magical menus and using their own recipes to bring delicious food to paying diners – with all profits going towards this worthy cause.

Our foodie startup Edible Experiences is delighted to be the ticketing partner for Action Against Hunger and our league of Supperheroes. Come meet them and try their hunger-busting secret weapon dishes!

 

Win Fabulous Foodie Prizes!

Guest who attend at least 3 Supperhero suppers will automatically be entered into a prize draw and stand to win

• A Delicious Hamper of Unearthed goodies
• 3-hour Asian Cookery Masterclass for 2 at School of Wok
• A “Sausage-Wrangling” Course for 2 at The Butchery Ltd

 

Our League of Supperheroes!

25 Aug: A Hong Kong dinner by FedbyTang - aka Cherry Kung Fu Panda! (SOLD OUT)

 

(Photo on right credit: Cherry Smart)

 

25 Aug: A Vietnamese dinner by Table for 10 (SOLD OUT)

7 Sep: A Mauritian dinner by Yummy Choo - aka Selina Warrior Princess! (Photo credit: Charlotte Hu Photography)

15 Sep: A Malaysian Nyonya feast by Wild Serai

15 Sep: An Indian Street Food Mela by Darjeeling Express

16 Sep: An Italian and Spanish dinner by Backdoor Kitchen and Flavours of Spain

22 Sep: Soda Bread Sensations by The Lazy Baker

29 Sep: A Jamaican dinner by Lisa's Jamaican Kitchen

19 Oct: A Nietzche - themed dinner by The Thinkers Balcony

21 Oct: A Punjabi & Bengali dinner by Khana Commune London

27 Oct: A Pakistani and Keralan Monsoon Feast by Pukka Paki and Absolute Indian

Let the culinary legends begin!

 

Are you secretly a Supperhero? What's your supperhero name and secret weapon dish?

If you'd like to join the league of Action Against Hunger Supperheros, email admin (at) edibleexperiences.com

Sneak Preview of FedbyTang Hongkong-Cantonese Supperclub

Above: Chef Cherry of FedbyTang supperclub. A long lost sister?

 

I confess, I felt a touch sceptical when Chef Cherry of FedbyTang supperclub first told me that she wanted to serve Cantonese cuisine at her supperclub. Wasn't London's Chinese restaurant scene already awash with Cantonese-style cooking? Why would someone trek south to East Dulwich to eat more of the same?

Still, my approach to these doubts is to just recognise that we're all so new to this foodie entrepreneur game. And so my response tends to be, "Let's just try it. See what works, tweak what doesn't."

What stuck with me a lot more in that same conversation with Cherry was the bit about our friends and families. About a creeping sense of loneliness as one more and then one more of our loved ones moved back to Asia. About how that loneliness was kept at bay each time we made a new friend in this big city, usually met through foodie Twitterverse, as she and I did. The seeming hyper-friendly banter on Twitter is a touch shrill sometimes. So I was disarmed, utterly charmed, really, when Cherry reached out with her vulnerability.

"You've said what I've been thinking for a while," I confessed back, "But I've had less courage to admit it."

Mawkish girly talk, I hear you thinking. What does any of that have to do with the FOOD?!

...

And so I soon found myself at FedbyTang's sneak preview dinner. I wonder now if she really needed to do one, really. Cherry's charm evidently reaches far -- her first two suppers sold out even before she managed to actually host her first one!

To begin, we had a summery pork rib and papaya soup. My eyebrows jumped when Cherry first told me about this dish. Growing up in Singapore, papaya was always a breakfast fruit for me, eaten on its own, or if in Thailand, with a squeeze of lime (divine, try it). But never in a soup! As it turns out, the sweetness of the papaya enhanced the sweetness of the pork bone in the broth, and the result was quite delightful.

 

 

Assortment of nibbles: (From top left, clockwise) char siu (roast pork) in shortcrust pastry, oozy slowcooked egg seasoned with dashi, and masterfully deboned and stuffed chicken wings. Exquisite. I really wasn't expecting these at a homecooked dinner. Dimsum strikes me as incredibly faffy to make. These homemade efforts wouldn't be out of place in a professional dimsum parlour. Hell, Ping Pong chefs could stand to spend a few weeks interning with Cherry, frankly. Anyone else agree?!

When asked for feedback about the nibbles, I said "I could eat a bucket of those stuffed chicken wings. Which is not at all a comment about your portion sizing."

 

 

Luscious and generously sized prawns, sitr fried with a slightly sweetened soya sauce gravy. Very similar to how my Mum makes them at home when we have special guests over for dinner! (Even my visiting sister in law Sarah recogised the flavour profile of the dish). By the way, it's rude -- or at least, a real pity -- if you don't suck the savoury sea-salt-sweetness from the prawn heads. As noisily as you can.

 

 

The name of this dish -- kou shui ji -- which translates as "saliva chicken" never fails to amuse me. The dish is named as such not because of what the poached chicken is seasoned with, but rather the salivation that its Chinese wine and Sichuan peppercorns dressing will stimulate in your mouth. Cherry's version was much milder than what I'd usually find in a Sichuan restaurant. But then again, this was closer to the more subtle Cantonese style. Still, I wonder if I could persuade her to turn up the heat over time...

 

 

Another dish that reminded me of home. Cherry's triple cooked pork belly with mui choi (preserved sweet and salty mustard greens). Her Cantonese version is a drier dish compared to my swimming-in-gravy Hakka version. The neatly lined up pork belly slabs also make for a more professional presentation, though it does mean that the gravy doesn't get to work its way as far into the meat. Either way, the dish tends to be a sure win with English guests, as was proved again at our table this evening.

 

 

Pan fried seabass with Chinese chives. Frying fish is a delicate art, and these were done perfectly. My main reaction to this dish was that I couldn't believe guests would be getting big prawns AND seabass in the same meal for a mere £25!

 

 

Desserts: A Hong Kong favourite - Sweetened and chilled red beans with coconut ice-cream. Cherry specially bought these retro ice-cream soda glasses for this dessert!

 

 

And a light and fluffy homemade swissroll with a summery raspberry cream.

 

 

And to end, some fragrant warming Chinese tea to calm our swelling bellies while we waited for our carriages home.

I'm glad to say that despite the many Cantonese-staffed restaurants in London, FedbyTang's cooking will indeed show you a side of Hongkong - Cantonese cuisine that you're not likely to find in any of them. These are the more hearty, honest, subtle dishes that Cantonese people actually eat at home. Rather than the garish greasy neon sweet-and-sour takeaway gloop served in buffet slop troughs in Chinatown.

On a much more personal level, eating at FedbyTang was like eating at a long lost sister's home. It felt like a family reunion dinner, with the discovery that this sister had remembered many of our family recipes, but had put her own stamp on them. Familiar and comforting, yet with delightful new details to discover.

So I personally will be back at FedbyTang sometime soon. Sometimes it will be to quell a craving for Chinese food. And more times, I suspect, it will be to quell a craving for family.

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, which runs marketing and ticketing for FedbyTang supperclub. I attended FedbyTang's sneak preview dinner as a guest.
Click on the logo below to track FedbyTang's upcoming events.

La Dolce Vita at Backdoor Kitchen Supperclub

Above: Backdoor Kitchen's Chef Roberto. When fame comes for him, don't say I never told you!

 

There is an incredibly heady (sometimes dizzying to the point of nausea) sense of romance that goes along with that time of your life when you're chasing your dream on a wing and a prayer... and a lot of blood sweat and tears.

Even more so when you meet kindred spirits who are chasing similar dreams, who immediately understand your rollercoaster spikes of joy and anxiety.

Even more so still, when you find said kindred spirits in your own neighbourhood.

The rain may have been brutal outside, that afternoon when I had coffee with Roberto and Fabio of Backdoor Kitchen supperclub, but under one's sodden clothes and skin I was feeling plenty of warm fuzzy community spirit I thought I might never feel again once I grew out of my 20s.

Roberto and Fabio are both natives of Rome, who came to London to follow their dreams. Roberto works in an Italian deli but dreams of being a chef in his own restaurant. Fabio works in film distribution but dreams of making documentaries.

They decided to start Backdoor Kitchen supperclub (practically in our backyard in Bermondsey) as a challenge to themselves. To see where it would go.

"Maybe I have no name now to open a restaurant," said Roberto, "But if we do this, if we work hard, maybe we'll make a name for ourselves a few years from now."

Amen, brother.

Fabio is working on documenting their adventures, simply with his video camera on his iPhone.

How can you not love the shoestring pluck of it all?

Ok, it helps massively that Roberto can actually cook like a fiend. Not my head or heart, I go with my gut, after all!

By the time we had coffee I was already a fan, as this was soon after I had dined at their Sicilian night supper. I had heard much about Sicilian food, about how it was markedly different from what we recognise as stereotypical Italian food. Their menu certainly sounded different. I wanted to see how it would taste.

The evening opened with polpette di sardines - a Sicilian classic of "meatballs" made with fish.

 

 

Crisp at the crust, moist on the inside, absolutely delicious with Roberto's homemade aioli.

 

 

A dish I could keep on eating, if not for the other diners(!): Cous cous alla Trapanese. Packed densely with seafood, in homage to Trapani, a fishing port on the west coast of Sicily. Beans and lentils were mixed in with the cous cous, making it very hearty indeed. The lovely anchovy sauce kept the potentially stodgy dish moreish.

 

 

Handmade Gnocchi alla Norma. Definitely started to feel like a cement truck after this course! To be fair the food was served family style, so I could have stopped at any sensible point. But we all know that just wasn't going to happen.

Love the hand-written menu and fairly realistic cartoon of Roberto, by the way.

 

 

And now to the meat courses. Here's Caponata al Cacao. Caponata is in essence a sweet and sour eggplant-based stew with endless regional variations. Roberto's twist on this was to serve it with grilled tuna strips and a touch of cocoa powder. The hint of cocoa definitely added a caramelly depth to the balanced sweet and sour of the dish. Personally I would have preferred my tuna to be much pinker on the inside. In spite of that, this unusual dish was my favourite of the evening.

 

 

The last main: Bocconani di Maiale su Verdure Arrumminate - diced pork cooked in a saffron sauce, on a bed of chard sauteed with garlic, chilli pepper, sultanas and pinenuts. The inclusion of the last 2 ingredients is telltale Sicilian.

 

 

Desserts are always a surprise at Backdoor Kitchen. This time it was a duo. In the back, a very traditional Sicilian cassata with pistachio glaze. Too heavy and marzipan-y for my personal taste, though Italians at the table gave a nod to its authenticity. In front, a lovely light canoli.

 

 

The boys may not have a proper restaurant yet, but I definitely feel like I've found a gem of an Italian local - where the food is full of heart, the crew and ambience of the room full of warmth, and the £25 "damage" at the end of the evening full of value. La Dolce Vita. The Sweet Life. Of course I'll be back for more. And soon.

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, which helps to sell bookings for Backdoor Kitchen. I attended this supper as a paying guest.

Click on the logo below to view Backdoor Kitchen's upcoming events. If you're too far west for Bermondsey, consider trying Backdoor Kitchen at the Supperclub Summit at the Goethe Institut in Kensington this August.

Lisa's Jamaican Kitchen Supperclub Debut

Above: Not just any ol' jerk chicken. The jerk sauce is Lisa's family's homemade secret blend.

 

When I first met Lisa to talk through her ambitions of setting up a supperclub to introduce Londoners to authentic Jamaican and Carribean home cooking, one of the things she mentioned by the by was "Oh if the weather is nice we can eat and maybe BBQ on the terrace".

Lovely Lisa was so laid back and understated, I was gobsmacked when I showed up at her Surrey Quays apartment building to help out with front of house at her debut, and found this professional table setup below, with a panoramic view of the Thames and Canary Wharf.

 

 

I am very pleased (and relieved!) to tell you that as lovely as the ambience was, it was not the best bit of the evening. Bring on the food!

Is there anything as lovely as light-as-a-feather freshly fried dough fritters? The slightly spicy ones on the right with very traditional saltfish and ackee were especially delectable.

 

 

Here's team Wild Serai in da house! Lisa was apparently inspired to start her Jamaican supperclub after she attended Yolanda and Sharif's Malaysian supperclub in New Malden. Just so you lucky future guests know who to thank...

 

 

I always encourage hosts to share some history and stories about the dishes they choose to make. Again, Lisa's poise and depth of knowledge about Jamaican cuisine and its foundation in "making the best of whatever scrap bits slaves were given to eat" really impressed me, given this was her first supperclub.

 

 

My personal favourite dish was the day was Lisa's oxtail stew, marinated and slowcooked for... what, days? Given the depth of flavour? I've never tasted oxtail like this, in any cuisine. In this particular rendition it was cooked with white beans and carrots.

 

 

Another Jamaican classic - curried goat, with some deadly rum punch in the background (going by increasing volume of conversation and laughter at the table!) I wish the goat looked as good as it tasted.

 

 

Accompaniments: Rice and peas, but the rice here was much more savoury and fragrant than any Carribean restaurant I've ever been to, as the rice was cooked in freshly squeezed coconut milk (a real treat in London as any islander or Indian auntie will tell you). Also, very sweet fried plantain.

 

 

If the above dishes look very substantial, just keep in mind that we haven't gotten to the "meat courses" yet!

Here's Mark, master of not 1 but 2 down-home drum grills for the evening.

 

 

You've probably had jerk chicken (above) before, but how often do you see jerk pork belly? The one nitpick I would make here is that the grilled meats should be served as soon as they're ready, rather than left to sit, cool down, and dry out a little. Ok, it'll probably cause a nuclear meltdown in my mouth, but heck, I'll risk it.

 

 

For dessert, Lisa made 3 kinds of (very potent!) rum-soaked cakes. Here's one of our guests taking in the fumes... I mean fragrance!

 

 

To finish, luxuriantly thick hot chocolate, hand ground from unprocessed cocoa pellets (below) and infused with herbs and spices. This is going to be knock-your-socks-off addictive when the weather turns cold again (errr I guess that means now).

 

 

The verdict? Well I heard later that some guests paid Lisa extra so that they could take boxes of leftovers home with them!

If you're curious about authentic homecooked Jamaican cuisine, or are homesick for the real deal and frustrated with the shallow samey-samey powdered flavourings of more commercial eatery options, then get thee booked into a Lisa's Jamaican Kitchen supper.

And pray for "terrace weather".

 

Click on the logo below to see Lisa's Jamaican Kitchen's latest events.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, and run marketing and bookings for Lisa's Jamaican Kitchen.

New Delhi's Bukhara Pops Up in London

Above: Bukhara's Chef Manjit Gill

 

When it became apparent that I was attending the media lunch at Bukhara's London pop up last week, I received a whirlwind of wistful sighs from foodies on Twitter. "The dal! The dal!" they hollered. I could picture their eyes rolling into the back of their heads, giddy with epicurean nostalgia for the 35-year-old New Delhi landmark tandoor restaurant.

I admit, it was a bit lost on me. The only time I've been in New Delhi we were backpacking, and I was running around the old city grazing local streetfood, rolling the dice with Delhi Belly (we evaded snake eyes, somehow).

So it was quite the treat to get a glimpse into this edible hallmark of Indian high society dining via its temporary London satellite.

On the 1st floor banquet room balcony of London's Sheraton Tower in swanky Knightsbridge, Bukhara's pop up's creative director Waris Ahluwalia set up a tented garden-bar, complete with a budding jasmine bush.

 

 

The far corner of the tent had a cosy low-seating lounge, its appropriate use demonstrated by my lovely lunch companions Selina of Yummy Choo (left) and Sabrina of Sabrina's Kitchen.

 

 

 

After the champagnes were sipped, we were ushered inside and told that the meal would be served in the traditional way -- family style and without utensils.

For those game enough to eat with our hands, we were given giant apron / bibs with a plaid pattern reminiscent of Indian-uncle sarongs. Thanks for modeling the bib Sabrina!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First up: a traditional starter of papadums with (from top, clockwise) thinly sliced raw onion, raita (yoghurt with diced onion, tomato and cucumber) and mint chutney. A small detail, but raita yoghurts are usually quite thin and drippy. I quite enjoyed Bukhara's thick yoghurt raita, which sticks more easily to the papadum.

 

 

And then the tandoor treats began. I know it all looks a bit beige below, but these were quite possibly the most succulent tandoori prawns and chicken kebabs I'd ever tasted. Chicken is usually fairly tasteless and overcooked to death in most restaurants, but here the goujons were juicy and very deeply flavoured (a multi-day marinade that involves yoghurt and lemon juice I'm guessing.)

It made such an impression that I leaned over to the veteran print food journalist seated next to me and said, "It doesn't look like much, but make sure you try the chicken." She thanked me later, and asked our waiter for seconds!

 

 

On the right, fall-apart lamb leg, and potato hash pockets. Nice enough, but eclipsed by the chicken and prawns, really.

 

 

The veggie dishes: Paneer (Indian cheese) and roasted stuffed green peppers. Again, paneer in less able hands tends to end up having the personality of styrofoam. These cubes were big, bold, bitey and springy.

Somehow in the process of trying to get a few good pictures I missed out on actually securing myself a stuffed pepper. Snooze I lose I guess!

 

 

And now, the unlikely marquee-name dish for a tandoor restaurant. Dal Bukhara - black lentils, tomatoes, ginger and garlic slowcooked for 18 hours.

That dollop of butter right at the end might have something to do with the dal's gorgeous velvety-ness...

 

 

What a dilemma! Does one eat it straight up like a soup? (Yes.) Or slather all over Bukhara's array of freshly made naans? (Yes.)

 

 

Luckily we were given the option to have seconds. AND a supermarket-style ready-meal pack to take home with us.

 

 

A Mumbai-native dining companion told me that whenever she goes home to India, she comes back with cartons upon cartons of these Bukhara dal packets. I am now considering making a call to friends in New Delhi...

 

A dessert duo: Gulab jamun below, and a rose-fragranced broken rice pudding above. I tend to struggle with the over-sweetness of Indian desserts. So I had a taste of each before settling down to a cup of hot mint tea.

 

 

There was some debate after lunch about whether one would pay the retail pop up rate of £59 for the vegetarian meal or £79 for the meat and seafood meal if left to our own devices. No doubt, even though there was no fancy plating, the attention to quality of ingredients and detail of technique for this meal was subtly but in clearly a different league from your usual curry night out. Ultimately I wouldn't, though that's mostly because we're currently living on a full-time startup budget.

But as the Bukhara pop-up's sold-out status suggests, there are plenty of people who will. Some of them are probably the same punters who are happy to shell out £250 to have The French Laundry's Thomas Keller or £195 for noma's Rene Redzepi fly into town (Noooooo I'm not shriveling up with envy...)

Many others are proof that edible nostalgia is a hot commodity in this city.

 

Bukhara's London pop up at runs until 1 June. Online bookings are sold out, but...

Tip 1: I've been told it's worth calling +44 20 8045 0715 and following @buhkaralondon to check for updates on released 2nd seatings.
Tip 2: Check also about slots for Chef Manjit's not-widely publicised cooking class.
Tip 3: For those of your with gardens and tandoori fantasies (if you read this blog there is a fair chance you do) check on eBay post 1 June -- Bukhara is apparently going to auction off the 3 tandoors they procured just for the popup.

Bukhara London Pop Up (until 1 June 2012)
1st floor,
Sheraton Park Tower
101 Knightsbridge
London SW1X 7RN
United Kingdom
+44 20 8045 0715

Bukhara
ITC Maurya
Diplomatic Enclave, Sardar Patel Marg
New Delhi 110 021 India
+91 11 2611 2233

Two Hungry Girls and Platform 65's Suppertime Stories

Above: The run-list for Two Hungry Girls' debut supperclub.

 

One of the unexpected but very special privileges of running our fledgling startup Edible Experiences, is to be involved in the birthing of a delicious new supperclub. I've now been the midwife to 4 such lovely ventures, Plusixfive Singapore supperclub and Wild Serai Malaysian supperclub, and 2 in this month (April 2012) alone: Two Hungry Girls and Platform 65's Literary Supperclub Series, where dishes get paired with stories and poems.

Today I was going to write about the magic I felt when Two Hungry Girls (Leigh and Shu) partnered up with another two hungry girls (storyteller Cui and me). But I woke up this morning to realise that Emily of The Long Way Home blog had already done the hard work, and done it well. So I reckon you should just read her very kind and generous post! Thank you Emily!

For my part, let me just tempt you with a few teaser shots of the treats by the very talented, creative and dedicated Two Hungry Girls and our hungry storyteller. If you like what you see, there are more photos here on our Edible Experiences Facebook page. Take a minute to "Like" us too please!

And if you like what you hear, a hungry little bird tells me that Two Hungry Girls and Platform 65 might be teaming up again soon for a new instalment of delights for both the belly and the mind. Email thgsupperclub@gmail.com and / or cui@platform65.org to get early alerts when event details get decided.

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences and I run marketing and bookings for Two Hungry Girls and Platform 65's Literary Supperclub series

Click on this logo below to track the latest events by Two Hungry Girls

Click on this logo below to track the latest literary supperclub events by Platform 65's Literary Supperclub

London: Catalan Cooking's Grand Calcotada

Above: Rachel McCormack of Catalan Cooking, demonstrating the proper way to eat a calcot.

 

The one thing I've grown to love most about living in a seasonal part of the world is to celebrate foods at the peak of their season. By celebrate I mean eating said foods in grand obsessive festive fashion.

It's this seasonal celebration mentality (or mental something, at any rate) that caused me to buy and hand-squeeze kilo after kilo of blood oranges week after week in the late winter months. This mentality also recently caused me to spend some 9 hours shucking and gutting 120 scallops in our wee flat / home office. More of that madness in another post soon.

Thanks to Rachel of Catalan Cooking, calcots and calcotadas are now firmly on my calendar of festivals that I didn't grow up with, but will henceforth brazenly adopt because they taste so damn good.

Calcots are a delicate flavoured cross between a green onion and a leek, grown in the Catalan region of Spain. Earth is heaped up around the stems as they grow, to keep the stems white and tender. A calcotada is a big party where the community gathers to heap calcots on the grill, then peel off their scorched outer skin, then dip them in romesco sauce, then eat the sweet stalks in the most phallic way possible.

And then everyone eats a lot of meat.

What's not to like?

On this particular Thursday we gathered at The Drapers Arms in Angel to carry out this grand Catalan tradition, with calcots brought in from their spiritual home Valls. I ended up sitting next to a group of Spaniards, whom assured me that all the flavours, from the croquetas to the calcots to the romesco to the allioli, to the perfectly grilled chicken thighs and morcilla links and lamb chops were absolutely spot on. I believe them. As they ate, they had those slightly teary eyed smiles and little gasps of people who were getting homesickness assuaged after far too long.

 

 

The only hitch to the whole evening, they said, was that it wasn't on a Sunday and a booze-all-afternoon affair, which would be the case in Spain.

Ah well. Perhaps something to look forward to next year. Oh yes. Rachel is planning to host more calcotadas next year, and for many years after, I hope. Meantime, she's closing out this year's calcot season at Borough Market this Sunday (22 Apr). So get a taste if you can, and join me in marking your calendars for next Spring.

 

The Drapers Arms
44 Barnsbury Street
London, N1 1ER
United Kingdom
+44 20 7619 0348

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences. Unless otherwise stated, I attend events as a paying guest. Click the logo below for the latest events and classes by Catalan Cooking.

Nordic Home Cooking Class with Culinary Anthropologist and CPH Good Food

Above: I knew zip-bupkus-nada about Nordic cuisine, old or new, when I got to meet noma's Danish chef Rene Redzepi in London in 2010. I wonder if he knew. Who am I kidding. I'm sure he knew. Thanks for smiling anyway, Chef.

 

Besides Ikea's Swedish meatball and lingonberry sauce, Iceland's foul fermented shark, Sweden's liquorice and some vague notion of a lot of smoked fish, up until earlier this month I knew nothing about Nordic cuisine. That northern bit of Europe had always been too far away and too expensive for me to explore. And I had the bias that with the lack of heat and light during the long winter months, the region's cuisine would probably be too bland and stodgy for me to really bother with.

Probably, many other people felt the same way. Possibly, this was the reason for noma owner Claus Meyer starting up the New Nordic Cuisine movement back in 2004, long before noma got its San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurant No. 1 ranking.

Eight years of percolation and perseverance re: evangelising about Nordic cuisine later, Nordic restaurants like noma, Bastard and Faviken are hot topics in the international food press and blogosphere, showing and finally convincing the world what edible art Nordic kitchens are capable of.

Enter Mia Kristensen, of CPH Good Food. Currently the only provider of English-language food walking tours and cooking classes in Copenhagen, Mia is keen to show off the beauty of her home region's cuisine, its modern developments, and most of all, the techniques by which to bring it into one's home kitchen.

Mia and London's own Anna Colquhoun -- who runs her Culinary Anthropologist (Facebook and Twitter) cooking school and supperclub from her gorgeous home kitchen in Highbury -- partnered up earlier this month to bring a little Nordic magic to London home cooks, and generously had me along as a guest for the day.

 

Above: CPH Good Food's Mia Kristensen (left) and Culinary Anthropologist Anna Colquhoun

The class lasted about 4 hours and covered 11(!) recipes, which we took home in a booklet at the end of the class. To make it through all the recipes, we had a mix of hands on involvement, split-team tasks, as well as demonstrations by Anna and Mia with a few clever here's-some-that-we-made-earlier steps.

At the end of the class the group of us sat down to a sumptious lunch, where I was happily proven wrong on all my biases about Nordic cuisine. Instead of bland, monochrome and stodgy, my eyes were opened to a whole new palette of surprisingly strong and sharp flavours, vibrant colours and diverse textures that I'm looking forward to trying out at home for friends and loved ones.

Here's a whizz through of what we made:

I love cured and smoked fish, and I'm beyond excited that I now know how to do this at home, with just a stove top! We did a light cure for a salmon, and also a hot-smoked rendition of that cured salmon. The key, I learned, is to keep the sugar-salt to fish proportion constant. All other flavours and seasonings are up to one's imagination.

Mia and Anna suggested that the same curing recipe would also work well for cod and scallop. I might also try it out with seabass and mackeral. Fingers crossed!

That's ramson / wild garlic pesto in the bowl below. The season is now and always too short and I can never buy enough of it. Someday I will find my own secret wild garlic foraging patch...

 

 

We also learned how to cure and smoke pork belly bacon, again using just a stove top. Which then went on as topping for a malt-base pizza. Great sweet-savoury flavour combination in both the bacon as well as the pizza base.

 

 

The building blocks of curing and smoking. When buying wood chips for smoking make sure that they haven't been chemically treated in any way.

 

To keep things Nordic, use rapeseed oil rather than olive oil. And semi-soft aged cow's milk cheese such as Danish Danbo, rather than mozzarella. Garnish with fresh herbs (foraged if you have that kind of access) and sour cream or creme fraiche.

Life and pizza might never be the same again.

 

 

I love the idea of salads that combine a range of flavours and textures rather than being just a bowl of leaves, but I'm still very much a novice on ideas for this front.

I really enjoyed the 2 salads we made. This spelt salad with horseradish, kale and apples also includes roasted celeriac, which together with the ancient spelt grain added a lot of body to the salad without feeling stodgy.

 

 

And this Nordic Christmas-coloured (raw) cauliflower, cranberry and hazelnut salad is a fabulous way to pimp up the sometimes bland-on-its-own cauliflower without the usual bacon-and-cheesing it to death.

Can't wait to try both these salads at home!

 

 

This stew of pork cheeks in wheat beer is a surprisingly light-tasting one-pot wonder. Cheeks -- be they pork or ox or cod -- seem to have grown in popularity by quite a bit over the last year as the recession nudges people to be more creative with previosly lesser known "butcher cuts". No wonder, as cheeks are wonderfully tender, flaky and gelatinous. A tip off from my butcher friends: Fellow food nerds might consider upping the ante by swapping out the £12 per kg pork cheeks for a whole £2 per kg pig's head!

While very tasty, I wonder if this dish was really necessary to include in the class, given it didn't feel particular Nordic in any way. Or was that the point? That this cuisine can be much less foreign than I think?

 

 

We also made a few kinds of breads -- the most visually stunning of which was this beetroot crispbread below. A great holder for the cured and smoked fish we made. You can play around with colours by using other root vegetables like carrot or golden beetroot or parsnip.

 

 

And now to dessert: what Mia calls a Danish apple trifle with oats, hazelnuts and Icelandic skyr (a kind of cheese) foam.

It may look all modernist and exotic, but hey, apples, oats and sea buckthorn for garnishing are so very English! And local cobnuts would be a simple swap for hazelnuts.

The toasted oats make this dessert taste very much like a granola-based breakfast, but Anna showed us how to make it naughty by drizzling in a little fruit liqueur - raspberry and blackberry, in this instance.

 

 

For the range of dishes taught and high quality of ingredients used, I thought the £80 price for the class was very reasonable. I hope at least a few of you out there as well, so that collectively we can persuade Mia to come back to London to do another class, perhaps in the summer or the fall, by which time the ingredients available and therefore recipes promise to be delightfully different.

 

Photos by Mia Kristensen, Anna Colquhoun and me.

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, and attended this class as a guest of Culinary Anthropologist and CPG Good Food. Click on the logo below to track Culinary Anthropologist's upcoming classes and events.
 

Supping with Two Hungry Girls

Above: Two Hungry Girls' absolutely fabulous green tea profiteroles

 

There are a certain type of people, who every now and again confide, slightly mope-ily, that it's so much harder to make friends and really connect with people as adults, compared to when we had the condusive environment of school to bind us together. All the more so if one is a transplant in a big city far from home.

This remark always used to sadden me, and constrict me with a wee bit of anxiety, especially when I was on the brink of moving to a new city, and definitely when I was on the brink of leaving a traditional work environment, diving into the seeming murk of freelancing and startup-ing (is that a verb?)

But the foodies of London (you know who y'all are, lovelies) have, over the last year and a bit, continuously proved my anxiety wrong. No one's claiming or promising kinship at first sight. But make the effort to break bread together often enough, and smiles and laughter inevitably start to bubble, and heart starts to warm (maybe due to arteries slowly clogging, but why fight a good feeling?)

Leigh and Shu of the newly formed Two Hungry Girls supperclub are a case in point. I met fellow Singaporean transplant Leigh through working with Singapore supperclub Plusixfive, and over subsequent coffees, ramen and gingerbread, found ourselves egging each other on with our freelance ventures (Leigh is a professional pastry chef, and started Craft Cakes to design custom cakes and teach pastry making and decorating classes). Shu -- a Malaysian native and author of Hungry Female who left her corporate sales job to spend time learning Chinese in Beijing -- charmed me immediately with her irrepressible energy and infectious laugh.

 

Above: The Two Hungry Girls, Leigh (left) and Shu. Photo by Nathalie Malric

 

And so I am delighted to introduce to you all Two Hungry Girls supperclub, and its mission to share their own brand of creative Chinese and South East Asian cuisine with London.

I got a sneak peek at Leigh and Shu's handiwork last month when they hosted a charity supperclub for the Great British Chefs / Action Against Hunger charity supperclub competition. Here's the supper that got them into the competition finals.

 

Their opening act? An absolutely delicious lychee and raspberry sangria. These were fresh, hand-peeled lychees, mind you, not the syrupy canned variety. Very addictive. This is going to be a major hit in the summer months I reckon.

 

 

To start, lightly picked cucumbers with shredded cloud ear mushrooms; and tea-soaked eggs.

 

Mains: A dish I immediately recognised from tramping around Laos - a platter of visually delightful "birdcage" lemongrass skewers. Utterly yummy, fragrant and so much fun as diners inevitably peer at the skewers intrigued at how the chef got the meatballs into the birdcages.

 

Tofu tends to get absolutely butchered (ironically) by Western vegetarians. When treated respectfully as a star in its own right rather than a shoddy stand-in for meat, tofu can be a real delicacy, as the girls pull off here with a simple soya sauce and sesame oil dressing and fried shallots.

 

 

Stir fried prawns and asparagus. A deceptively simple dish since it is actually very easy to overcook. This rendition had a lovely crunch.

 

 

Panfried fish, with the skin crisped to perfection (again, tricky for many home cooks). For Two Hungry Girls' debut supper they'll be combining fish with a Sichuan style mala (literally meaning numbing and spicy) sauce.

 

 

However much of this Chinese soul food you shovel in, be sure to save room for dessert, or kick yourself afterwards. Behold Leigh's parting shot (and what a whammy it was!): A tower of green tea profiteroles. (Did I mention that Leigh used to work at the Michelin-starred Sketch?)

 

 

Two Hungry Girls make their supperclub debut on Sunday 1 April (no joke) in Hampstead. Come sample some Chinese soul food, scarf some scrumptious desserts, meet some interesting people and maybe, just maybe, chase away a few big city blues.

You can book seats via our foodie venture Edible Experiences.

Hope to see some of you there!

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, and run marketing and bookings for Two Hungry Girls. Click on the link below to keep track of events by Two Hungry Girls.

Learn the Lamb, Love the Lamb with The Butchery Ltd

 

You know you've had a bloody good day when you come home with your camera streaked with lamb fat.

I have butcher Nathan Mills (above) to thank for such a day, when he invited me to attend his "Love the Lamb, Learn the Lamb" butchery class late in January.

I first met Nathan (fittingly) at Niall Davidson's Beef Cartel pop up dinner. Nathan and his lovely partner Ruth had a friendly, charming, laid back vibe. Later on I found out that Nathan had come from a long family tradition of butchers, and in London had done tours of duty at The Ginger Pig, was part of the start up team at Barbacoa's Butcher Shop, and currently leads the meat team at Whole Foods in Kensington. He and Ruth recently set up their own venture The Butchery Ltd in one of the railway arches of the Maltby Street enclave, in a bid to offer customer high quality traceable meat. Rather than crates upon crates of popular but anonymous cuts, The Butchery Ltd buys only whole animal carcasses from a small trusted network of farmers. This year, in a smart and very sensible move, Nathan has started offering classes to teach meat-loving customers how to utilise every bit of the magnificant animals in his cold room.

People after my own heart... heck, offal in general, really.

The proposition for lamb class, for example, was to partner up with a fellow classmate and, under Nathan's instruction and guidance, take apart a whole lamb, so that at the end of the class each person would take home half a lamb. Even though I was days away to giving birth, I jumped at the opportunity to spend 5 hours on my feet in an apron and butcher's coat, downright gleeful at the thought of putting our newly purchased chest freezer to good use!

Here's Nathan with one such lamb, talking us through various butchers' knives and saws before we get down to separating the neck and shoulder from the ribs and the hind quarter.

 

 

Next up, Nathan busts our chops. Hah! I mean, we work on our lamb chops -- removing the racks from the spine, and removing the paddywack. Remember the children's song "This Old Man"? That bit that goes "... knick knack, paddywhack, giveadogabone; this old man came rolling home"? Well. Now I finally know what a paddywhack is! We learnt how to French-trim the rack as well, to achieve that pretty restaurant-ready look. I'll be the first to admit I need a lot of remedial work on working a butcher's saw and tying a proper butcher's knot, but dammit I think I scored myself a job offer to specialise in rack trimming. (Perhaps I'll drop in to help out before the Saturday rush on days I'm feeling particularly obsessive compulsive)

 

 

Now here's the bit where we all go belly up. I knew nothing about the lamb belly, sometimes also called breast of lamb, before coming to London. The first time I had come across this usually cheap cut at all was at a dinner by chef Ben Greeno, who's now head chef at Momofuku's Seiobo restaurant in Sydney Australia. Then earlier this year lamb belly came up again briefly on BBC2's foodie quiz show A Question of Taste. The mention prodded the ever humourous food blogger and supperclub host Danny Kingston aka Food Urchin to share his recipe for scrumpets, if you're in a proletariat kind of mood, or epigrammes, if you're feeling a bit French / sniffy.

Anyway, today we were going to make a stuffed lamb belly roll. Which first involves tenderising the belly with a meat mallet. POW! BOSH! KA-BLAM!

 

 

Then we make a mince from all the trimmings we made from the various cuts of the carcass, seasoned with onions, garlic, thyme, and a special Italian spiced salt. Into the cold room we troop, where Nathan keeps his mincer so that fat stays intact when he's making sausages.

 

 

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world... And wouldn't it be wicked if at this point the soundtrack to Sweeney Todd started booming in the room. Heh...

 

Back to the butcher's block. Position the belly flaps, slather on the mince, roll, and secure with multiple knots. Enough knots to FINALLY get me into the knot tying groove. Wahey! Not that I remember it now, obviously. Ah well.

 

 

Serve up said belly roll at a dinner party for friends a couple of weeks later, and, unlike me, snap a photo BEFORE your friends show it no mercy. Doh! Oh well. I hope Nathan takes this as a compliment -- we continued to pick at and bicker over the sausage crumbs to nibble on even after this photo.

 

 

All in, I had a whale of a time. Nathan is undoubtably knowledgeable about his craft and even more patient and good natured with those of us who are more botchers than butchers (i.e., me). You get a good vibe from someone who names his classes the likes of Punish the Pork and Bash the Beef, no? Bonus: I could barely lift all the lamb I took home at the end of the class - a couple of neck fillets, a shoulder, a rack, half a lamb belly and a leg. So be sure to bring a large bag or two with you when you go. My classmates didn't think to do so. What a sight they must have been riding off into the sunset on the tube.

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, an online hub for foodie activities in London. This class costs £140. I was invited to attend and was charged only the cost of the lamb.

Click on the logo below to see the latest updates on classes at The Butchery Ltd.

 

 

The Butchery Ltd
Classes at
Arch 2B
Dockley Rd Industrial Estate
London SE16 3SF
United Kingdom

Saturday trade (9am - 2pm)
Arch 98 Druid St
Pedestrian entrance on 1 Ropemaker Walk
London SE1

 

Catalan Cooking Class - Allioli and Romesco

Above: Patatas bravas. With squid ink allioli (front) and romesco sauce (back).

 

This past week Rachel McCormack of Catalan Cooking very kindly invited me to be a guest at her Allioli and Romesco cooking class.

I jumped at the opportunity as I've tried romesco sauce a number of times, but had no real idea what went into it. As far as I could tell, it was kind of a nutty tomato sauce. Turns out, according to Rachel, except for Chef Jose Pizarro, most folks who serve it here in London probably don't really know what goes into it either. And end up making it too in-your-face spicy or garlicky or something else, when actually the balance of flavours is key.

Rachel started the evening off with a tasting of Mallafre olive oils and olives, which she sells at Arch 76 Druid St at the Maltby Street foodie enclave every Saturday morning. Mallafre infuses their flavoured oils by crushing said addition (say lemon or orange) along with the olives, rather than just steeping it in the oil post-press. We have a bottle of the chilli oil at home, a lovely addition on salads, fish and fried eggs. This evening I was particularly intrigued by the coffee oil, which Rachel reckons will go very well with beef. And a few coffee-pork ribs recipes from back home in Singapore, I plot in my head...

 

 

And now to the Romesco sauce. Which turns out to be dry-fried nyora (a dried red/black Spanish pepper), hazelnuts and almonds, roasted tomatoes, singed flat-leaf parsley and garlic. If you like it old school Catalan, you'll want to pungence of raw garlic. Otherwise, roast the garlic first.

 

 

Combine the ingredients in a food processor. And there you go! If you want it thick enough so that it can serve as a dipping sauce, add a couple of small slices of dry bread into the processor.

 

 

Next up we learn how to make Xato salad, a lovely pescatarian winter salad popular in the seaside towns of Sitges and Villanueva just outside of Barcelona.

Start with some curly endive...

 

 

And combine with anchovies, flaked roasted cod, olives and romesco sauce. Amazing. Definitely looking forward to trying this at home. I might experiment with pollock or mackeral as a substitute for the overfished cod and see how that works.

 

 

The anchor dish of the evening is an osso buco with romesco sauce. Beautifully tender with just 2 hours of simmering. Be sure to scoop out the marrow when eating!

 

 

We also whizz up 3 kinds of allioli for the evening. Plain, curry, and (my new addiction) squid ink, which we use as a dipping sauce for very simply steamed mussels...

 

 

... and schmearing on some deep fried potatoes.

 

 

We snacked on Cava, wine, olives, bread, nuts, xato salad and mussels along the way, and ended the evening by catting over osso buco and patatas bravas.

What I appreciate most about Rachel's style of cooking and teaching is her constant mindfulness about what is pragmatically achieveable in a beginner-intermediate home kitchen. "Otherwise you'd just leave here tonight and then never try this at home," she says. Throughout the evening, she shared her kitchen tips and shortcuts learned from Catalan matriarchs and professional chefs alike, and a couple of times decided against a few "restaurant" techniques because it would involve equipment one probably didn't already have.

I reckon the biggest risk from taking one of Rachel's classes, is that you will will have no excuse to practice just about all of it for your loved ones afterwards!

 

Stay updated on Catalan Cooking's classes and events by clicking on the logo below.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences and I was a guest at this cooking class, usually priced at £65.

2011: With A Little Bit of Help From My Friends

Above: Bacon, goat cheese and lentil salad... and a lotta love... from Kopibren

 

I struggle with "End of Year Wrap Up" posts at the best of times. On a good day I feel like life hurtles forward at about a million times faster than I can write.

And 2011, especially, was the year Babs and I started pursuing in earnest Edible Experiences, our foodie startup dream born out of 15 months of backpacking around the world. For a bunch of time each we worked days to pay the rent, and then nights and weekends to build the website. Then we made the (sometimes still) terrifying move of both committing to our startup full time.

Then, as if gestating one baby wasn't enough, we're now just a few weeks away from starting the mind-blowing journey of birthing and raising another one, of the human (though I'm not sure about humane) variety.

Soooo yeah. 2011 was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster ride. The kind that was was missing seatbelts. And brakes. And sections of visible track.

Besides the anchor that is Babs and family -- mine in Singapore and Babs's here in the UK -- I would be nowhere without the love, support and nourishment of my friends.

Spritual nourishment, absolutely.

But hell, you should see what they feed me as well.

So to Si, Kopibren, Jas, Melf, Evie, Deeps, Goz, Heavenwildfleur, gourmet traveller Pleasure Monger, D&V, Kerry... and also Mich and Ken, Chris and Helen, Lloydy, Bru, Leo and Da Pimp (sorry I don't have photos of your poh piah, sushi, raclette, moon blushed tomatos, sushi and jellof rice respectively), a very very big thank you.

Cos in 2011, you were the ones who kept my Gut Going. In more ways than one.

 

 

P.S. Yeah, my friends seems to be a bit obsessed with roast pork belly, huh? I consider this my good fortune. 

Debuting Wild Serai, A Malaysian Supperclub in London

Above: Ikan bakar -- grilled fish in a tangy tamarind sauce. The guests were faster than my camera!

 

A few gluttonous glimpses from Wild Serai's (Blog, Twitter, Facebook) solo debut in Brixton over the weekend (17 Dec). The menu was inspired by the Malay wedding feasts that chef Yolanda attended on her most recent trip to her native Malaysia.

 

 

A few guests were literally holding their sides after lunch, heaving from the volume of food served, but I reckon Wild Serai erred on the right side of pain...

We know there were quite a few of you out there who were keen to join in the fun over the weekend but had other Christmas-time commitments. I've been told that Yolanda is already plotting a nasi lemak feast and a seafood feast (possibly a reprise of this previous test dinner, but watch out for a few new tricks) for early next year, this time from the comfort of her own home in New Malden, rather than the logistical obstacle course that was the community hall in Brixton!

If the thought is making your mouth water, email wildserai@gmail.com to get on the mailing list. Feed you soon, we hope!

 

Click the logo below to keep track of Wild Serai's upcoming supperclub dates.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, which manages marketing and bookings for Wild Serai

Persian Supper at Sabrina's Kitchen

After spending a week in Iran waaaaaay back in 2004 on a brief work assignment, I fell in love with Persian cuisine, and have since taken any opportunity to try any renditions that sound suitably authentic.

So when the feisty Sabrina Ghayour included her native Persian cuisine in her supperclub menu lineup, I jumped as if caller ID was showing a familiar name, one associated with a brief, faraway, long ago, but nonetheless torrid fling.

Not that this caused any fluttery anxiety when the evening rolled around. Sabrina's hearty homey Persian cooking felt like a big bear hug from a favourite slightly batty relative. Familiar yet just a touch edgy, reassuring yet giving little allowance for complacency.

In short, downright enjoyable. Two of my dinner companions had never tried Persian cuisine until last Tuesday (6 Dec), and I'm mighty pleased this was the introduction they got.

Starters. The irresistable trap in any middle eastern meal. Usually so delicious you just keep on eating until you are sensibly full. And then the mains arrive. *Facepalm* I challenge you to pace yourself appropriately given the following:

Maast-o-khiar: Yoghurt and cucumber with mint, rose petals and pomergranate seeds. Gorgeous.

 

 

Mirza Ghasemi: The orange glop on the left is smoked aubergine dip with tomato and garlic. This was both Babs's and my favourite dish of the evening. Wonderfully smoky, silky, sweet and tart. Hm. We seem to have drifted back into fling imagery...

 

 

Salad Shirazi: Cucumber, tomato and onion salad with a lemon dressing. Refreshing, but admittedly not anything overly exotic or exciting.

 

 

Kashk-e-Bademjan: Sauteed aubergine, caramelised onion and whey. Possibly my least favourite dish of the evening. The whey, which had neither the familiar rich silkiness of cream nor gentle tartness of yoghurt, was too unfamiliar a taste and texture for me personally.

 

 

All to be mopped up and scarfed down with flatbread, along with a mix of fresh herbs, radishes, walnuts and feta cheese -- staple opening acts at any Persian table.

 

 

And now to the mains (Oof. Make space, tummy, dammit...)

Khoresht Gheymeh Bademjan: Incredibly tender lamb, aubergine and split pea stew with preserved lemons. Love it that we've managed to have aubergine 3 ways in 1 meal!

 

 

Khoresht Fesenjan: Chicken, walnut and pomegranate molasses stew. Very fragrant and pleasantly sweet-sour. After I was way past the point of sensibly full I still couldn't resist spooning another bit of gravy onto a bit of rice for that one last mouthful for the road...

 

 

Coucou Sabzi: Mixed fresh herb and barberry frittata. My table got into a discussion about what barberries were. Based on hazy memories from meals in Iran I said they were little sour berries, often found in Persian rice dishes. Thankfully, I don't have to eat my words, at least this time!

for those of you who are curious enough to try this at home, I managed to find Sabrina's recipe for coucou sabzi online. Wahey!

 

 

Silly gluttonous me, my brain was so food-addled by this point that I forgot to take a photo of dessert: Almond, carrot, pistachio and orange cake, with rosewater cream. Or maybe it was just too yummy and I ate it too fast.

All of the above, including some stellar hosting by Sabrina's friend and soon-to-be Leiths acoltye Hanna and fabulous table chat, cost £40. Definitely on the steep end of supperclubs prices, but understandable when Sabrina was running these suppers at Toynbee Hall. Hopefully if she continues to host more suppers in the new year, she'll be able to find locations that will make the overall meal a bit more affordable for punters. I certainly had no regrets about spending the money on this dinner, but £40 would naturally limit my ability to be a repeat customer in the new year.

 

Click on the logo below to keep track of Sabrina's Kitchen's upcoming events.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences. Unless otherwise stated I attend events as a paying guest.

Food Urchin Christmas Supper Club Rises From The Pits

Back in the summer, Food Urchin Danny Kingston hosted a supper club where he dug a big hole in his backyard and cooked a whole lamb in it. I really like the idea of that kind of primal whole-animal cooking, and was gutted I couldn't go. Then he got it into his head that for Christmas he'd cook a turkey in the same pit. Bloody genius! I was sold, and put the date in the calendar about 2 months in advance.

Then disaster struck the week of the scheduled supper. (Evidently Mr Food Urchin managed to find a photo of my reaction to the news). He graciously offered me the option to back out, knowing that the turkey pit was the main draw for me for the evening. But flakes are one of my top pet peeves in life, and I'm a big subscriber of the "do unto others..." school of thought. So I stood firm, and put my faith in the Food Urchins to resurrect their supper from the (flooded) pits.

And boy oh boy did they.

The Food Urchins opened with a "can of peas". To be honest this was the closest to breaking point of my faith. Did they really leave prep till so late that this was all they could be arsed to do for the opening act? Please please please let this be just another demonstration of Danny's oddball wit (my favourite of his works being his Halloween supper menu).

Thankfully they of course mean canapes. My favourite was the anchovies and salmon eggs on cream cheese soldiers. Very tasty and very pretty. Pretty sure I ate an unfair share of these!

 

 

If I remember right, these were prunes and cheese wrapped in bacon. Can't go far wrong with this sweet-salty combination.

 

 

Potato mash balls stuffed with cream (or maybe creme fraiche). Best eaten piping hot.

 

 

For starters, home-cured smoked salmon 2 ways: The darker one on the left is with beetroot, and the lighter one on the right is with grapefruit and basil. I enjoyed both thoroughly, but preferred the latter, for its novel refreshing light flavour.

 

 

Mains: Braised pig cheek (the dark shitake-looking knob in the back) and pork belly confit in a red wine sauce, with carrots, shallots and celeriac mash. The cheeks were beautifully cooked, pulling apart easily with a poke of the fork. Fellow diners commented that the taste was more akin to a beef brisket than pork. Very professional plating, by the way!

 

 

Bravo on the plating for dessert of a poached pear and Christmas pudding ice-cream as well... if you've got an inherently potty-minded-teenager sense of humour like me...

 

 

We ended with a cheese and very cleverly done (and strong!) port jelly course. I got a bit greedy here and forgot to take a photo of the cheese, sorry!

 

 

For £25 you get all of the above, and the opportunity to meet a table of lovely fellow diners. Having attended the Food Urchins' first home-based supper club earlier in the spring, and now their last one for this year, I'm very pleased to report that the strength of cooking, plating and hosting is all growing and blossoming very nicely. I hope this continues on the uptrend in the new year.

Meanwhile, I'm glad I didn't chicken out just because there wasn't turkey.

 

Click on the logo below to keep track of Food Urchin Supperclub's upcoming events.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences. Unless otherwise stated, I attend events as a paying guest.

London: Whizz Over to Pizarro

 

I'm still sitting on a stack of photos and a post on Jose, Spanish chef Jose Pizarro's cosy and much beloved tapas bar on Bermondsey Street. But for right now I thought it more urgent to tell you about Pizarro, his brand new sit-down restaurant just a few doors down the same street, as they are offering a 50% soft launch discount until Sunday. And dress rehearsal or not, the food is pretty bloody stellar.

Babs and I sneaked out to Pizarro for a cheeky lunch yesterday (in part to celebrate Edible Experiences' first corporate gig sale, but really, I was going to snatch at any excuse) and the lovely renovated rustic space that used to be Bermondsey Kitchen had a first-day-of-opening nervous charm about it -- There was a guy fixing the door; Handsome Herve (front of house chief and Chef Jose's business partner) regularly briefing waiters and barmen with tips big and small, and Chef Jose himself making it a point to personally welcome anyone he recognised and regularly asking them for feedback as the meal progressed, in between goading his kitchen team on like a veteran cox.

We opened with ham and prawn croquettas (above). Be sure to eat them hot! I like these better than the blue-cheese spiked ones at Jose. And when I say I like them, what I mean is you could lay out a Hansel-and-Gretel trail of these croquettas between me and Hell, tell me where it leads, and I probably wouldn't resist.

We absolutely loved this beetroot cured salmon, served with capers and egg yolk. I have no idea if this is at all traditionally Spanish, but it's a spark of bloody genius between a pescatarian steak tartare and a very sophisticated Eggs Royale. The guy sitting across the bar from us loved this dish so much as well that he had to pipe up about it too: "I've known Jose for 6, 7 years now, and he just keep pulling them out of a hat!"

 

 

Our 3rd starter (I know, we're weak): Squid, potatos and allioli. When pushed for feedback the only thing I could come up with was that this dish could do with a sprinkle of parsley or paprika, but more for prettiness rather than taste. The squid hit that sweet spot of crunchiness just before the descent into chewiness that very few eateries manage.

 

 

And now to the mains. Babs had an absolutely stellar salt cod with potatos, vizcaina and capers. One of those moments where after you bite into it and and it's SO GOOD you can't even hog it, you turn to your partner and say "Holy shit you need to try this."

The meat was wonderfully firm, springy and bitey and had that wonderful seafood sweet-saltiness (I find a lot of restaurant fish fillets to be farmed and pre-processed to the point of blandness by the time they hit the dining table).

Chef Jose once told me that Spanish cooking is very easy, the magic is really to get good ingredients. I always take a chef's humility with a pinch of salt, but nevertheless I will definitely need to find out where he buys his cod...

 

 

Drawn in by the black cabbage and clams, I had the hake. I suspect some diners might find the gravy over salty, but I find hake to be a naturally bland fish, so the strongly flavoured gravy was a good balance for me.

And they definitely kept a hawkeye on those clams. All perfectly cooked but still tender, rather than chewy. Well done.

 

 

Back in August before renovation works kicked off, we snuck in for a training-period dinner, and tried the iberico fillet with mash and piquillo peppers. I remember absolutely loving the the deep flavour of the pork, but wasn't feeling any magic in the bog-standard looking mash. This dish was on the menu yesterday so I'd love to hear from someone who's tried it more recently.

 

 

And now onto desserts. Firstly, I am delighted to note that there are 5 desserts on the menu, compared to the usual 1 or at most 2 at Jose (and 1 of them is usually rice pudding with does absolutely nothing to get my pulse racing).

We had the chocolate, toast and hazelnut ice-cream. My grin got more and more idiotic as I watched Maria make it in front of us at her station at the bar. The menu description was already an easy sell for Babs. The realisation that this was going to be something really special despite its simplicity was watching Maria sprinkle on the salt flakes then drizzle on the olive oil.

At this point I really can't decide between telling you to keep reading or to just hurry up and drop everything and just bloody get over to Pizarro already...

 

 

Well for those of your who stayed: An irresistable Cava with pear sorbet. I was expecting maybe a splash or a spike, but no, Maria (the lovely lady in the background) just kept pouring and pouring and pouring! Lovely, light, bittersweet, naughty. I hope they experiment with berry and soft fruit sorbets in summer because this is going to be HUGE on a warm day.

 

 

Ok. Enough. NOW GO. Really.

 

Pizarro
194 Bermondsey Street
London SE1 3TQ
United Kingdom

No reservations, except for private room. 

Khana Commune Supper Club London (and Singapore)

 

While nowhere near as operationally complicated and stressful as running a restaurant, running a truly special supperclub requires hard work, a bit of alchemy and luck. The food, AND the vibe emitted by the hosts, AND -- when the stars truly align -- the guests, all have to be full of heart, and it has to shine through. This gold standard is what I aspire towards when helping out at Plusixfive and Wild Serai, and it requires ongoing effort. Indeed, the supperclubs I've attended so far in various countries usually manage 1 or 2 out of 3. But last week, I am delighted to say, Khana Commune London (blog and Twitter) nailed 3 out of 3 for me.

Khana Commune London, run by Fareena Alam and her husband Abdul-Rehman Malik out of their Whitechapel flat, has its roots in Singapore. There, former journalist Zina Alam (Fareena's sister) embraced her and her mother's love for food, cooking and hosting, by starting one of Singapore's first supper clubs out of their family home in Pasir Panjang. I got to meet Zina during her most recent trip to London, yakked incessantly about supperclubs and other foodie venture dreams, and felt like I had met a kindred spirit. On our recent trip to Singapore last month (Nov), Babs and I got to try Zina's family's Bengali cooking, and met a charming cinematographer among other guests. (My camera really struggled with the low light of their front porch, sadly, so I don't have many photos from that dinner that I care to share here.)

 

Above: Zina preparing tea at Khana Commune Singapore

 

By that time we were already booked in to try Fareena's London arm of Khana Commune (coincidentally on the 1st anniversary of Khana Commune Singapore), and by a stroke of luck Fareena's mother was in town to visit and cook as well.

We opened with a very refreshing homemade lemonade, and these crispy crunchy very moreish piaju, onion and lentil fritters.

 

 

Alarmingly addictive. Especially when slathered with coriander chutney.

 

 

But then it was topped by aloor chop, potato parcels -- crumbed outside, savoury mash inside -- with mincemeat filling. They're not much to look at, but ultimate comfort foods seldom are. But just you try and stop at one, after the first bite...

 

 

I love it when a vegetable dish makes me jump up and say, "Whoa. If I could make this at home, I'd actually be excited about this usually boring vegetable." Just like Yotam Ottolenghi and David Chang changed cauliflowers and brussel sprouts for me forever, Khana Commune London's broccoli bartha below finally made broccoli sexy for me. The kick, it seems, comes from the lacing of mustard oil. I will be trying this at home.

 

 

Daal, another dish I don't usually get overly excited about, was on this evening brilliantly spiked with green mango, waking up one's palette without tipping it over into discomfort. And who can say no to deep fried onions?

 

 

Tandoori chicken. The spice rub is much wetter than what you'd probably be used to seeing in a North Indian restaurant, but very tasty nonetheless. It's a small detail, but I just love the sheer height of the contents in the bowl!

 

 

Chilli paneer (cheese) with sweet peppers and onions. It brought back amusing memories of running around Mumbai and Bangalore with Babs, trying Chinese-Indian food (trust me, it's a cuisine unto itself). Also, stir fried baby pumpkin, skin and all (first photo above). Sweet and light and not at all stodgy.

 

 

Dessert: The best gulab jamon I have ever had in my life, ever. Usually these are so painfully sweet my teeth hurt and I give up after half a ball. But these were light and had just the subtlest crisp in the shell. I think Babs was sorely disappointed he didn't get to vulture up my portion. One of the other guests even blurted out, "This is better than my mother's gulab jamon!"

Fareena is happy to share most recipes if you ask, but has been sworn to secrecy on the gulab jamon by her mother. Apparently when she made these as a child at her mother's elbow, her aunties would sit her down on their laps afterwards, feed her sweets and try to get her to divulge technical details!

 

 

I hope you're getting the sense now of the openness and many laughs shared around the table. Stories swapped included those of coping with inter-cultural relationships, the ongoing poignancy of the India-Pakistan-Bangladesh split for families who have roots on both sides of the borders, and so on.

Fuelled no doubt by the charm and warmth of front of house chief Abdul-Rehman, and his disarming passion about coffee. We had a spiel and smell of about 8 varieties, including the not-usually-seen cascara (photo below), the husk of the coffee berry. I'd first heard about cascara via the cutting edge Young Turks, who made cascara jelly with it. On this evening I got to try a plain brew of the stuff, and a traditional Yemeni kisher, a cascara tea brewed with spices such as cardamon, ginger, cinnamon. Very soothing and warming upon ingestion, but boy did it provide a pleasant buzz for our hour-walk back home from Whitechapel!

 

 

My heartfelt thanks to team Khana Commune for hosting such an absolutely lovely evening (lasting far longer than I thought it would, mostly due to coffee, kisher and chat at the end, not because of any slowness of service!) Perhaps such a friendly chatty combination of guests is a bit of a roulette, but I hope Fareena and Abdul-Rehman will hang on to whatever magic is within their control, and keep building on the good thing they have going.

 

Click on the logo below to find out about Khana Commune London's upcoming events.

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences. Unless otherwise noted, I attend events as a paying guest.

Introducing Wild Serai Supperclub via Plusixfive

 

Londoners, I'm delighted to introduce Wild Serai (Facebook and Twitter), London's latest supperclub to showcase cuisine from my native South East Asia.

An oncologist by day, British-Malaysian chef Yolanda Augustin started Wild Serai (serai means lemongrass in Malay) to pay homage to the memory of foraging for wild lemongrass and other herbs that grew in abundance close to her grandmother's house in Malaysia. When she later moved to the UK for university and work, homesickness for her family's cuisine kicked in. Soon she -- like many of us food-mad adult transplants -- spent visits back to Asia harrassing relatives for recipes, and hoarding and transporting comical amounts of hard-to-find-in-the-UK ingredients, in order to host epic dinner parties for friends here.

Finally, Yolanda decided to test the waters with a paying crowd, guest cheffing for the main dishes at a recent Plusixfive supper. She sure as heck pulled out all the stops, serving up a tricky-to-execute seafood feast! Here's a few peeks at what we got up to that night.

To open, Plusixfive chef Goz's formidable pork belly satay.

 

 

Yolanda's sweet and fiery sambal prawns with a scatter of stinky petai beans. The potency of flavour and fragrance of belacan, the fermented prawn paste that goes into a sambal, is greatly affected by terroir, much like wine and cheese. Much of the commercially available stuff in the UK, for example, is from Indonesia. My Mum swears by belacan from Penang, Malaysia. The belacan in this dish apparently came from Bintulu in Sarawak, its specialness handily researched by Cinnamon and Truffle.

 

 

Next up, scallops baked with butter, garlic, chilli and curry leaves. So pretty a hotshot chef we happily count as a repeat guest at Plusixfive added it to his "ideas" collection.

 

 

Mussels steamed in yellow bean sauce, Chinese wine, garlic, onions and chilli, if I remember right. A welcome respite from the heat of the other dishes.

 

 

Sauteed kang kong (water spinach) with sambal and lemongrass.

 

 

And now the headline act for the evening: Malaysian chilli crab. Sweet, spicy, brothy, fragrant with lemongrass...

 

 

... best paired with fried mantou buns to mop up all the gravy.

 

 

There is no polite way to eat this, and we were so pleased by and proud of the uninhibited enthusiasm of our guests!

 

 

Dessert: Goz grinds up ice for chendol...

 

 

... and whips up not one but TWO types of Nyonya kueh: Cassava cake, and gao-chang-gou, the rainbow-hued 9-layer cake.

 

 

You'll have to come to your own conclusions about Wild Serai's cooking. Suffice it to say, Yolanda was encouraged enough by the evening's feedback to go ahead and launch Wild Serai properly, and set a date for a solo Pop Up Mamak lunch! Yolanda's Malaysian-Basque boyfriend Sharif will be heading up the front of house team. Details below:

 

Wild Serai Debut: A Pop Up Mamak
Saturday, 17 Dec
12.30pm
Brixton
£30 suggested minimum donation, BYOB
Details about the menu here

(Full address will be sent to guests, but closest stations are Brixton and Stockwell tube, and Loughborough Junction Rail)

Email wildserai@gmail.com if you'd like to join the massive makan on 17 Dec, or if you'd like to get on the mailing list for future events.

When requesting seats please include the following:
Your name:
Your contact number:
No. of seats you would like:
Any food allergies / dietary restrictions:
How you heard about Wild Serai:

Hope to see some of you there!

 

Click on the logo below to keep track of Wild Serai's upcoming events.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, which manages marketing and bookings for bothWild Serai and Plusixfive.

Young Turks at The Ten Bells

If you've been reading this blog for a while now, James Lowe and Isaac McHale of the Young Turks chefs collective in London are probably familiar names to you by now. For newer readers, welcome! The Young Turks consist of James (St Johns Bread and Wine; Fat Duck), Isaac (The Ledbury) and Ben Greeno (NOMA, Sat Bains) who is now cheffing at the Momofuku's Sydney-side venture Seiobo in Australia. I've been following the collective's adventures in fresh, local, fun and accessible cuisine in London for the past year -- see posts on a dinner by Ben; a dinner by James; their take on Burger Monday; a stint at The Loft Project; Canary Wharf and Frank's carpark / cafe in Peckham.

And so I was very happy to hear that the chaps secured a 3 month arrangement to serve dinners on the 1st floor dining room of The Ten Bells pub, a couple of doors down from James's old digs at Bread and Wine, and better known in decades past for being a watering hole for 2 of Jack the Ripper's victims.

The Young Turk £39 set menu dinners at The Ten Bells run from Tuesdays to Saturdays (a private room that sits up to 14 is also bookable), and James and Isaac have issued themselves the challenge to create a new 7-dish menu every week. Apparently one group (not me, I wish) that includes the manager of a red-hot London restaurant has already booked themselves a regular Friday table to ensure that they get to taste every damn one of these dishes.

Once you elbow your way to the back of the busy pub, past the door that says "No entry, toilets downstairs" and mince your way up the narrow staircase, the dining room is dark is decidedly distressed vintage chic-y meets London East End cheeky (the medium for at least 3 installations are in neon lights of lurid colours).

The chaps cook in the kitchen one floor up, but alongside their regular front-of-house collaborators The Clove Club, periodically bring dishes down themselves to make sure they have a good handle on the vibe in the dining room.

Hendricks gin is sponsoring the welcoming cocktail (a yummy combination of apple, damson and lots of spicy ginger), as well as an amusing "Etiquette for Gentlemen" booklet for boys to take with them at the end of the evening. These days I'm past the point of demanding why isn't there something for the ladies as well; I reckon this specific gift is being given where it's more needed!

And now to the food. First, an opening salvo of "snacks".

Snack 1: Pear and Middle White Ham. A lovely delicate twist on the more traditional prosciutto wrapped around melon. Utterly delicious. I'll have to attempt this at home soon! An interesting observation was made after dinner -- while ham and melon is a great flavour match, it's actually sometimes a texture mismatch, because the ham and melon break / tear off unevenly on the bite. Not so with this particular combination. Your thoughts?

 

 

Snack 2: Devilled Sprats. Babs really enjoyed this one, especially the dot of hot sauce on the head. Actually I didn't even realise there was hot sauce until I worked through my photos. I liked the texture of the fish, but I thought it could stand to be saltier and and spicier.

 

 

Snack 3: Pumpkin and Ogleshield Bun. Ogleshield is a kind of cheese, the very same kind used in the much loved Hawksmoor burger and Kappacasein raclette at Borough Market and Maltby St. These buns were cute, but personally I didn't feel the hit of cheese sufficiently.

 

 

Now onto the bigger dishes: Grilled Leek, Dried Scallop (I think this was Isaac's homemade XO sauce, which I first tasted at Frank's) and Seaweed. The purple seaweed was my favourite part of this dish. It was so fresh and had such a wonderful smell of the sea, we held our plates up to our noses for a few good inhalations before settling in.

 

 

Parsnip, Oats and Pheasant. A very comfort-food dish perfect for the weather outside, with a sophisticated dodge from the usual chicken or beef and potato. Parsnips make such pretty crisps!

 

 

Old Spot Belly, Molasses and Red Radish. I have to admit, when faffing with my camera over this dish, I muttered "I feel sorry for all these English people who keep attempting pork belly. They'll never do it as well as the Chinese." My dining companions (2 Chinese, 1 Indian) looked up, and countered, "Taste this one first."

The skin was so crispy, and the meat was so tender, but still I was a doubting Thomas. "D'you think they cook the skin and the meat separately?" Not likely -- I was shown where and how they were attached. Ok! Ok! I believe! Bravo, chaps. And by the way, my buddy Jas reckons the Young Turks could set up a stall selling nothing but strips of the crackling, and she would buy them all.

 

 

Dessert: Apples, Sour Cream and Apple Brandy. An absolutely delightful carb-free apple crumble of sorts. We also got treated to a bonus scoop of malty ice-cream later, but I figure you don't really need to see a mud-coloured scoop of ice-cream, do you? I can tell you that I managed to drop a dollop of it on my shirt, and I had a really hard time trying to decide whether I should wipe or lick it off given how yummy it was.

 

 

To close, slightly nipply tea cakes (with whiskey infused marshmallow, if I remember right), served with your choice of mint tea or Square Mile coffee.

 

 

Speaking of nipply... at this point one of my dining companions tips his chin, gesturing at something behind me, and asks "Is that them, then?"

I turn around, see this painting for the first time, and nearly fall off my chair laughing.

 

 

When the chefs came around to chat, it's down to me to ask. We're clearly on the verge of embarrasingly pubescent hysterics, and I'm asked if I've been drinking! (The worst thing is that I haven't, so I'm having to ask the question stone cold sober). A bit of resigned eye-rolling ensues. Apparently we're not the first to ask. Luckily the chaps have enough of a sense of humour, though let's see if I ever manage to get a table again in the time left on their stint...

All in all, I'm absolutely delighted that the Young Turks now have a slightly more permanent space of their own to hone and display their craft. This week's menu felt to me relatively safe, and for future visits I look forward the riding both the crests and troughs of their experiments. Read: anyone looking to have dinner with me in the next couple of months, don't be too surprised if I try to drag you off here. You can thank me later.

 

Young Turks at The Ten Bells
84 Commercial Street
London E1 6LY
United Kingdom

£39 for fixed menu and welcome cocktail; wines separate. Until 29 Jan 2012. Email reservations@tenbells.com

 

French Laundrette Supper Club

 

This all started as a joke apparently. Food writer, freelance cooking instructor, past "Come Dine With Me" winner Sabrina Ghayour -- like many other London foodies -- was very much looking forward to Thomas Keller's French Laundry pop up in London in October. Until it was announced that the meal was going to be a rinsing £250 a pop.

The morale of those of us with mere mortal paychecks got trouser-pressed flattened. Ms Ghayour, had a different and utterly fabulous reaction. She and Dan VN who runs the Montpelier Basement supperclub in Bristol started joking that they should run a rival supperclub for all us folks who couldn't afford the French Laundry £250 ticket price, charging £2.50 instead.

People, farms, and corporates alike started offering produce. Then some naysayer said she'd never be able to manage it. Obviously that tipped the very feisty Sabrina into being determined-to-pull-it-off mode. The cheeky French Laundrette name was born. Action Against Hunger UK (Sabrina's pet charity for many years) got picked as the charitable cause. The media loved the angle and ran with it. A veritable army of kitchen and front of house volunteers got mobilised. If the chatter is real, the event sold out even before the official booking line opened.

Through sheer luck I managed to secure seats for Babs and myself for the evening at The Chancery Restaurant (one woman's last minute cancellation nightmare is another woman's bonanza).

The opening act: Salmon tartar cornet with sweet onion and creme fraiche. A homage to Chef Keller. Really enjoyed the saltiness of the smoked salmon combined with the sweetish cone and the tang of the onions. Gone all too soon!

 

 

A thick cauliflower soup infused with black truffle. Creamy, velvety and savoury to the last drop, which you could mop up with a piece of bread, or else with some very obscene looking tongue acrobatics in the espresso cup.

 

 

Gloucestershire Old Spot pork loin, rolled in pancetta, with a sliver-lining of mushrooms in between. If only all Gloucs had such a sliver lining, eh? The tomato and tarragon cleverly cut the grease from one's tongue.

 

 

Mackeral carpaccio with dill oil and beetroot sorbet. Probably the prettiest dish of the evening, but for me personally also the weakest dish of the evening taste-wise. If there was horseradish on the mackeral it didn't show through sufficiently for me, neither was there any kind of acid curing of the fish. With just the earthy sweetness of the beetroot, the overall impact came across a touch flat.

 

 

The main meat course: Hogget cutlets with cavalo nero, black garlic and galette. A very enjoyable macho dish, robust in taste and texture throughout. I was delighted to find that most folks at our food blogger table had no reservations about using their hands to help them gnaw on the meat close to the bone. I would've have gone ahead anyway, but I sure enjoyed having company!

Hogget is that year between lamb (up to 1 year) and mutton (at about 3 years), or what we've decided to term "teenage sheep". It's an angsty, confused, mildly angry phase, we speculate. Possibly because it's just had its first shear... right about when it's become aware of the attractions of the opposite sex. (Best to check the veracity of this babbling with your nearest sheep farmer.)

 

 

Dessert: Fig, pistachio and almond tart, with thyme infused creme anglaise. Loved the subtle sweetness from the figs and nuts. Earthy and beautiful.

 

 

A shockingly generous cheese and chutney platter to close.

 

 

Two thumbs up for sassy Sabrina and her dedicated team of volunteers and sponsors, who raised £3,200 for Action Against Hunger UK by the end of the evening.

 

 

After dinner, a raffle of donated gifts. I won a bar of Original Beans chocolate bar. Wahey! Let's see if I get to try any of it before choco-fiend Babs wallops it all...

 

 

The effort also proved to be a great supper club launch pad for Sabrina herself. She's just launched Sabrina's Kitchen, and in November and December will be hosting a series of Persian, Spanish, Arabesque and Pan-Asian suppers with ferdiefoodlab's Simon Fernandez (who was also one of the chefs at French Laundrette) at Toynbee Hall in East London.

If all of the above was the result of a joke, I can't wait to see what happens when Sabrina gets serious.

 

Click on the logo below to keep track of Sabrina's Kitchen's upcoming events.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences. Unless otherwise mentioned, I attend events as a paying guest.

 

The Chancery Restaurant
9 Cursitor St
London EC4A 1LL
United Kingdom
+44 20 7831 4000

Beef Cartel at Maltby Street

 

Roundabout the start of August, there were these mysterious Twitter murmurings from young farmer / butcher / St John Bread and Wine chef Niall Davidson. Something about a 2-night beef themed pop-up at Gergovie Wines in the Maltby St enclave. The tweeting was fleeting, but there were so many keywords packed into those 140 characters for me that I felt like a colossal red neon sign had dive-bombed off the roof of a Las Vegas resort onto my head (or maybe my belly).

So I tap-danced on my keyboard, badgered Niall for more details, waited waited waited (turns out I can hold my breath longer than I think), arranged for a deposit, and counted down the remaining 22 days.

Meantime Niall waxed lyrical about the headline act. He was looking for a "mythical beast" raised for flavour rather than commercial yield. After much scouting he had sighted his divine bovine: A 3 1/2 year old heifer raised by Iain and Helen MacKay on the Isle of Mull, off the West Coast of Scotland. Raised on a couple of thousand acres of hills with native grasses free of synthetic fertilisers, and finished in the summer on a fertile strip rolling from the hills down to the beach. (Did the beast have a GPS tracking chip for the viewing I wonder...)

Bits of the 1 animal would be used over 2 evenings, with a mix of raw, offal and BBQ dishes.

Talk like that counts as erotic literature for some. And I suspect the rest of this post is going to end up reading a bit like a fetish event rather than a dinner. So watch out for your colleagues, kids and vegetarian friends, eh.

7 September. D-Day. We follow the intoxicating scent of white hot charcoal and rendering beef fat to a mini Argentinean-style parrilla outside Raef Hodgson's Wine Bar underneath the Maltby St railway arches. Once inside the cosy cave-like exposed brick environs, the display on the bar counter leaves no room for confusion about what the focus of the evening is going to be. I spot a few chefs, and a few more hurly burly men of the meat trade. No lace and feathers then. This is going to be hardcore.

 

 

And so we get right into it. Raw beef slivers, raw bone marrow, and deep fried potato. Niall deliberately served the beef as is -- he complains that in a traditional beef tartare all the capers and seasonings drown out the fundamental beef flavour. I get the point but I think I'd still prefer at least a generous sprinkle of sea salt flakes.

Raw bone marrow was a first for me, and tasted like a meaty unsalted butter. It's one thing to first roast the bones so that you can crack them and scoop and drip out the goopy marrow. It's quite another operation to crack raw bones to escavate the stuff, apparently.

The potatoes were a work of art. They look like deep fried pork lard cubes. But if I understand it right, they are paper-thin potato slices, compressed, cut up, and deep fried as little stacks...I'm going to guess in beef fat.

Obsession in the buff. This is what it looks like.

 

 

Next, a selection from the grill -- forerib, and shortrib (I prefer its sexier Spanish name, Asado de tira). So so so delicious in Argentina. So hard to find in London, for some mysterious reason. Around the table, eyes start rolling into the back of heads in pleasure.

 

 

Beef heart, slow cooked for 2 days then pan-fried. With tomatoes, pickled elderberries and a touch of fresh horseradish. A few other foodies might tell you that they found the evening to be awe inspiring or game changing. As much as I adore steak, for me this is the dish that raised the beef scene in London to a whole new level that night. The deep sweetness and flirty acidity of the tomatoes and elderberries were a fabulous yin to the the yang of the great muscle of beef. I ate this very slowly, just to try to prolong the moment for as long as I could.

 

 

Intermission. Niall pimps the beef a little more. He reckons nowadays beef either tastes creamy (raised and finished on cow-stomach-ulcer-inducing corn), or of not much at all (raised or finished on commercial silage). The beef we're having tonight, however, tastes probably like what beef tasted like 800 years ago -- its fat built up from the energy trapped in the grasses of high summer.

He may be hawking the stuff to a paying crowd, but geez, doesn't he look like a young man in love?

 

 

I wonder if I'd be allowed to attend future events if I start calling this new King of the Beef Fetish, Mr Hugh Heifer.

 

 

Back to the meat. I think this is a plate of shoulder, with a distinctly different (deeper, a bit muskier) flavour compared to the less-exercised rib cuts. The fat is incredibly flavourful. We eat it all, much to the disgust of one of our table companions who "doesn't eat much beef" but clearly loves her boyfriend enough to bring him to an evening such as this for his birthday.

 

 

I call this... the T-Boner. Nuff said.

 

 

There's also a little platter of diced up picanha (rump cap) that goes around the table like unholy communion. It went all too quickly, so no photo.

To finish, a lovely lemon sorbet from The Ice Cream Union, located a few arches down the stretch. I've peered at the wares by the 2 Argentinean brothers a couple of times enroute to a cheese toastie and raclette at Kappacasein, but haven't yet made a proper stop. I'll need to correct this this weekend, methinks!

 

 

The only "beef" we had about the evening was that portions were a bit too sensible. Possibly due a very bad habit of usually leaving a steak dinner over-full and clammy with the meat sweats, but a much loved habit nonetheless. We know this outcome is probably better for us. But still.

Other than that, all I can say is thank you to Niall, Raef and team for a divine bovine evening. Sounds like the pop-up format was a first for Niall, so it'll be interesting to see what he does next if anything. Perhaps you'll join me in trying to corralle him into doing more Beef Cartel events?

 

Beef Cartel at Maltby Street ran for 2 nights starting 7 September. Tickets were £45 each, inclusive of a glass of sparkling wine. Raef ran a cash wine bar alongside.

 

Gergovie Wines
40 Maltby St
London SE13PA
United Kingdom 

 

Click on the logo below to keep track of Beef Cartel's upcoming events.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences. Unless otherwise mentioned, I attend events as a paying guest.

Young Turks Ocakbasi in Peckham

Above: Be still my beating (lamb's) heart...

 

Last night was another stellar night by Young Turks James Lowe and Isaac McHale and their front of house compatriots The Clove Club. This time, the lads took over Frank's Cafe and Campari Bar on the 10th floor of a parking lot in Peckham. Finding our way up to the roof was a slightly surreal Bladerunner-esque experience, complete with a gang of langourous bicycle-polo players silently weaving about on the 6th floor. I half wondered if they were yet another art installation, like the others scattered about the concrete space that smelled of both chlorine and pee.

The inspiration for cusine for the evening was old school Turkish ocakbasi / grill. The approach was decidedly Young Turks (go here, here and here and you'll get the idea); and the weather MOST decidedly old school British.

So the tarp was slightly leaky, and our bums were slightly damp, and apparently the chefs were going a bit bonkers because they only had 1 pair of tongs to share between them. But if you have a negroni or a rose sangria in hand, and folks like the madcap Lizzie, Euwen and Jessica to banter with, you'd be delightfully distracted as well.

And then there was the food.

Chefs James and Isaac are eager to start their own restaurants soon. And while I've been looking forward to that day for a while, last night was the first time I was consciously annoyed that these restaurants don't yet exist. C'mon, gents, hurry the hell up already. Where do I go to get a regular fix of this stuff?!

 

To start, soft, warm and flavourful rye bread with aubergine and smoked cod's roe purees. We were this close to nicking extra bread from latecomers' tables.

 

 

Cured pork fat and cobnuts. Just... stunning. Apparently there were a few fusspots health nuts seated nearby, who thought this dish was downright disgusting. We vultured their abandoned plate with delight. Thanks for the swipe-and-share Lizzie!

 

 

Buttermilk fried chicken thigh nuggets and pine salt. Our end of the table was missing 1 nugget, but when the extras came we were very tempted to chuck our bowl off the side of the building and claim that no nuggets had yet come at all.

 

 

Radishes with black sesame and gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste) mayonnaise. Be sure to eat the leaves et al!

 

 

Fennel, nasturtium, cucumber and mackeral dressing. Lovely, light and balanced.

 

 

Grilled onion, redcurrent and pickled elderberries. A Young Turks take on an old Turkish dish of onions with pomegranate molasses.

 

 

Not the best photo, but there was physical violence afoot if I didn't snap these chicken skin and mead skewers any faster!

 

 

I realise now I didn't manage to get a photo of the grilled leaks with XO sauce. I do remember they were damn tasty, though I think they could stand to be charred a bit more.

And now to the meats. Here's lamb's heart in flat bread, sheep's yoghurt and anchovy. It occured to me that up till now I'd only eaten chicken hearts. These sliced lamb hearts had a lovely spiced spongy bite. Gorgeous. Each of us got a section of roll. I would've been happy to eat a whole roll by myself!

 

 

BBQ pork belly, molasses and fennel blossom. Soft, silken, smoky, sweet, savoury. In between slow considered mouthfuls I looked bemusedly at one of my dining companions and confessed, "I'm sorry. I know you're saying something to me. But I can't actually hear anything you're saying."

 

 

And the much-discussed-during-the-week handmade grouse sausages, with damson and bread sauce. I'd never had grouse before, and over the last week various folks were poo-poohing it because of its gamey taste. As far as these sausages went, anyway, grouse to me tasted like pork. It can't be a bad thing for something to taste like pork, can it? I sure as heck could stand to eat more than 1 of these sausages at one go. I reckon it's time to try some grouse on the bone.

 

 

Dessert: Mulberry jelly (foraged from South London, so the gossip goes), raspberries and hazelnut mousse. Absolutely delightful. And quite colour coordinated with our red tarp and brown benches dining room for the evening. Thanks for being my hand model EuWen!

 

 

To finish, the traditional £2 round of Poire Williams being shopped around by The Clove Club's ever charming Daniel.

As always, a toast to the Young Turks and The Clove Clubs. I guess I'll have to skulk around the Turkish grills of Dalston and Stoke Newington until their next gig...

 

 

The Young Turks Ocakbasi at Frank's ends tonight (24 August) at £26 per person. Drinks are available at Frank's open cash-only bar. Stay tuned to the Young Turks and The Clove Club for updates on their next gigs ...

 

Click on the logo below to keep track of Young Turks' upcoming events.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences. Unless otherwise mentioned, I attend events as a paying guest.

Happy Singapore National Day from the Plusixfive Crew

This one's for those who came before us, who made our kooky food-mad little island nation what it is today. And for those blazing new trails in Singapore, and Singaporeans hacking new paths far from home, going up against money, steel and the sometimes seemingly unstoppable wave of middle class routines and comforts, shaping the heart of what Singapore could be tomorrow.

This one's also for all you people out there who are in the food service industry for a living. After pulling our first lunch AND dinner double shift at Goz's Plusixfive supperclub this past Sunday, all I can say is... y'all NUTS. Much respect.

And thanks Goz for not taking a photo of me passed out on his couch between shifts, phone still in hand, mid tweet. Or so I think...

Most of all, thanks to those of you who came along to celebrate Singapore's National Day at Plusixfive. Feed you again soon, hopefully!

 

Tempted? Curious? Come along for one of our Singapore suppers sometime. Email plusixfive@gmail.com to get on the mailing list, and be first in line to get the deets on new dates.

 

Click on the logo below to keep track of Plusixfive's upcoming events.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, and run marketing and bookings for Plusixfive.

Bargain Bliss at St John Bread & Wine

Above: Smoked fish mash with duck egg on toast. Golden.

 

I might as well tell you. Babs and I spent our house downpayment gallavanting around the world for 15 months. And now we're trying to finance our foodie startup without external investment. And pay the rent without going back to full time jobs (so we can spend time on said start up).

The result? We're lucky, and doing ok. I love where we live. I'm quickly cementing my status as a fashion disaster, but it won't kill me. Most interestingly, we're probably eating better now than we ever did on full time paychecks. Working at home means I get to cook a lot more from scratch, and a combination of a tighter budget and unrelenting foodie standards means that the quality on anything we eat now has to at least match, if not outpace the pound we spend on it.

A recent week-long visit from Dan & Mei -- 2 very dear and foodie friends from Singapore -- was a great way to crystallise my current value-for-money London Eats list.

First stop when they showed up? St John Bread and Wine, the Spitalfields little sister restaurant to Fergus Henderson's HQ St John in Farringdon.

On this particular Sunday the 4 of us ate like kings (or maybe just very posh peasants) for ~£20 per person, which got us great produce, a regularly season-refreshed menu, and clean and simple though not at all simplistic flavours. Which upholds a long-loved belief that you don't gotta be fancy to be classy.

 

Globe artichoke with dip. The St John empire is known for what they call honest food. Maybe sometimes more honest than we can easily handle! I realised I'd never eaten an artichoke whole before. It took us a while to figure out what to do with this baby here. We got there in the end. (I won't ruin it for you, and maybe we actually muppeted it up, who knows...)

 

 

Peas and ticklemore, a kind of goat's cheese. A self-confessed borrow from former head chef James Lowe. Tis the season for fresh peas, and Mei realised she'd only ever had them frozen. She was hooked. We ate peas fresh for the rest of the week whenever we could. She even brought 2kg home to Singapore with her!

 

 

Devilled rabbit kidneys on toast. Utterly superb. Like fat savoury jellybeans for grownups.

 

 

Sweetbreads. I really like it that these were cooked through and firm. I confess to being a bit squeamish about the squishier medium rare treatment more loved by other more hardcore offal veterans.

 

 

Pig's head stew. Sooooooo comforting. Hopefully it's a mainstay on the menu now that it's forecast to rain every day for the next 2 months!

 

 

Sprats with horseradish. Be sure to crunch down on them, head, tail, et al!

 

 

Also from the fish list but from a previous meal Babs and I had there: Bright red crayfish, and sardines with salsa verde. A lovely memory of sunnier days in London.

 

 

Ah yes. And now to the highlight of this particular Sunday afternoon. The smoked fish mash with duck egg on toast. That yolk is Nigella-style borderline obscene!

 

 

I fully expected it to explode and leak everwhere upon first touch. But tadah! The clever clogs in the kitchen slow cooked the egg, so instead you get a velvety eggy custard to go on top of the velvety smoked fish mash. This is exactly my point. You don't always need to spend a fortune to enjoy luxury.

 

And now to desserts. Once again, a flashback to a meal we had during the slightly earlier days of plotting the startup: Lemon sorbet with a shot of vodka (sometimes they also do apple sorbet with vodka. Be still my beating heart!); and chocolate pudding with prunes.

 

 

The notorious Eccles cake (kinda like a very dense raisin scone) with Lancashire cheese. Lovely for those who prefer a more savoury dessert. My mate Goz who runs the Plusixfive Singapore Supperclub claims this combination made him react rather rudely when he first tried it. (Rude is good, the fashionable kids tell me!)

 

 

And to make sure we finish on a high (and it's a tough one with this post). Little St John incarnations of heaven on earth: Madeleines fresh from the oven. Feathery light, gently sweet, eggy, toasty.... they really should call these Maddenings.

 

 

Many thanks to chefs Lee Tiernan and Lillie O'Brien, their kitchen teams, and the always charming Daniel at front of house for supplying so much bliss at such a bargain. We'll be back. Often.

 

St John Bread and Wine
94-96 Commercial Street
London E1 6LZ
United Kingdom
+44 20 3301 8069

 

This Little Pig Day Piggy Went to the Kitchen

Previously... on This Little Pig Day Piggy...

The Farm

The Butchery

 

And now for the long overdue 3rd and final chapter to this little porcine trilogy -- an afternoon in the kitchen. A potluck of ideas and recipes on what to do with pork, the results of which were to be shared with everyone at dinner. Here are some of the delicious results.

 

 

I ended up with pork chops to play with. Butcher Jim's recommendation was to deep fry them. How could I possibly disagree with the man? I improvised, and didn't think much of it. But Dingley Dell boss Mark Hayward went around the tables at dinner asking who made them because he was rather taken with them! *Beam*

So I thought I'd share with you what I did. Pardon the complete lack of proportions!

 

 

The spice rub:

Sea salt flakes
Cracked black pepper
Paprika
Runny honey
A touch of spicy English mustard

Make a small bowl of the rub, enough to thinly coat however many pork chops you have, such that they look like this...

If possible let the chops sit with the spice rub for a few hours.

 

 

The batter:

1 can (330ml) lager or light golden ale
1.5 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp salt

Pour the beer into a large bowl. Sift the flour and salt into the beer. Whisk until the batter is light and frothy. Set aside.

 

Right. Get a big pan and drizzle in some sunflower or vegetable or rapseseed oil. Let the oil get hot, then put in as many chops as the pan will fit. Do this in batches if needed. Fry for about 7 minutes each side. A little less if your chops are thinner, a little more if they are thicker. Check by sticking a sharp knife into the chop. The meat should be white and opaque rather than pink and seeping pink juice.

 

 

When all the chops are done being pan fried, pour in about an inch of oil and let it heap up till it starts to smoke.

Dredge the chops 1 by 1 in the batter quickly, then place in the pan until the batter is golden brown, probably about 30 seconds for each side. Don't do many chops at a time at this stage. You don't want the temperature of the oil to drop significantly.

That's it! Serve up, chow down.

A final thanks to the Edwards brothers, butchers Jim and Wayne, Rachel and Donald for organising and fellow participants for making it such a fun and memorable day!

 

A Drip Feed Education About Coffee

Above: A Japanese vacuum coffee maker

 

I've been a caffiene fiend (caffiend?) for almost half my life now. But until I visited Yahava KoffeeWorks in Margaret River, Australia, in April this year, I never had or took the opportunity to do an extensive side-by-side coffee tasting to tease out the subtleties between different beans and different roasts.

I'm not sure when coffee started to become a visibly artisan business or what triggered its upswell. But certainly in Australia, Singapore and the UK at least, new generation caffiends are approaching coffee with tasting notes that sound like more like wines or cheeses, and brewing ceremonies I would more likely associate with traditional Chinese tea.

 

Above: A coffee tasting session at Yahava at Margaret River comes complete with a spittoon, much like the hundreds of vineyard cellars surrounding it

 

My knowledge about coffee vocabulary and technicalities is very much still fetal. Kudos to the Papa Palheta guys in Singapore for showing plenty of patience and good humour when trying to nudge me onwards about the subtleties between brews when Babs and I popped in for a donation-only tasting at their Bukit Timah HQ in April. There I was saying, I basically like 2 types of coffee: For business, a very strong black expresso to slap me awake and shave the fuzz off my brain in the morning. And for leisure, a gentler but tasty cheap old school Singapore coffeeshop "kopi", roasted with corn and butter and filtered through an overused sock et al. With ice and condensed milk, if I'm feeling particularly relaxed.

Who knows what they said behind my back after, but points for not batting an eyelid or wrinkling their nose at me to my face. They passed the snobby connoisseur arse test.

 

Above: Papa Palheta in Singapore. Amazingly chilled out and lovely laid back folks despite all the coffee they must ingest all day.

 

So when the folks at Union Hand Roasted Coffee invited me to their Taste of London festival booth for a talk and tasting last month, I jumped at the chance to drip feed my coffee education a little more.

Union Roasted is owned and run by Jeremy Torz and Steven Macatonia, who work directly with coffee growers around the world on sustainable terms. They're so serious about quality over quantity that if they find a farmer with a tiny lot of beans they really like (say 8 sacks, nowhere near traditional commercial scale), they'd rather just buy the lot and price it accordingly for scarcity, rather than push the farmer to scale up and risk diluting the quality of his produce.

So goes the story for our first tasting of the day, La Esperanza, Geisha microlot from Colombia, priced at £65.20 / kg. Probably the most expensive coffee I've ever had. Brewed very gently in a Japanese vacuum coffee maker, the Geisha is indeed light, flowery and fragrant. Much like a Patron tequila -- better for sipping rather than knocking back.

 

Above: Jeremy primes the Geisha in a Japanese vacuum coffee maker

 

Next up we watch Tom brew a very fashionable version of filter coffee. These are the moves that remind me so much of traditional Chinese tea cermonies. I'd love to get the Union guys and Pei Wang of Teanamu together, and watch a dance of caffeine kungfu moves ensue.

 

 

Just a different perspective shot at Papa Palheta to show the water-in, coffee-out magic. Their preferred brewing method for 1-cup brews, they say.

 

 

The last coffee toy demonstration for the day is the very intrguing aeropress, which looks like a giant syringe. Plastic and lightweight, it works well as a travel coffee kit (if you're the kind that neeeeeds to travel with your personal stash of coffee). Your caffeine kungfu moves better be practised, however, as even the best of them have been known to accidentally press a whole mess of coffee and grounds all over their hotel bathroom counter and floor! (Not that this is deterring Babs of course, who thanks to my reporting notes and photos is now in the market for one.)

If I remember right, the brew we tried with the aeropress was the Gajah mountain from Sumatra. If you've ever noticed that Sumatran blends taste particularly earthy or even a bit peaty, well Jeremy found out why by going right to the source. Not so much to do with the plant varietal or terroir as it turns out, but rather because most Indonesians store their harvested beans in giant piles, husks and all, unsunned. In sheds. In the equatorial heat and humidity. Which means a good amount of fermentation occurs before the beans get shipped off to their buyers!

I wonder if this means that Sumatran beans are best suited for making expresso martinis. Hmmmm....

 

 

Thanks for helping my drip-feed coffee education along, Jeremy, Tom and Gail. There's a ton more to learn, I realise. But given how engaging and patient the coffee connoisseurs I've met so far have been, I could stand to keep going for a bit!

Also, kudos to the City Caphe team. Their Union Vietnamese iced coffee is the best I've had in London so far, the lovely bitter of the coffee sweetened but not smothered. Exactly what slapped me awake and got me off my arse to finally write this post!

 

Yahava KoffeeWorks Margaret River
Corner of Bussell Hwy & Rosa Brook Road
Margaret River
WA 6285 Australia
+61 8 9757 2900

Papa Palheta
140 Bukit Timah Road
Singapore 229840
+65 9799 0420

Union Hand Roasted Coffee
7a South Crescent,
London E16 4TL
United Kingdom
+44 20 7474 8990

Whoa, Timeout. We're in Timeout?!

 

Holy crapola! Goz's Singapore supperclub +(65) Plusixfive gets mentioned in TimeOut London this week. On page 26, below Dishoom and Polpo and next to Restaurants in Residence (Well there goes the neighbourhood, they must be thinking!). Thanks very much to future Plusixfive guest diner Tanya for giving us the heads up. You totally made our day.

I'm still in shock. When I took up the role of heading up marketing, reservations management and front of house for Goz's supperclub -- besides to let Goz concentrate on the food while the supperclub was just starting out -- it was very much so that I could learn about all the aches and pains related to organising and marketing food events, stuff I really wanted to know inside out for the food startup Babs and I are building. I'm learning a ton, as I had hoped. But this! This is beyond gravy!

Mostly, though, I think this is the universe telling Goz and me that feeding nice people totally badass ox cheek rendang and braised duck and pork belly mui choi, and making sure they have a fun evening, is a good thing to do, and we that should keep doing it for at least a while more.

So we will.

So come get some. We got some fun stuff coming up in August. Email plusixfive@gmail.com to get on our mailing list, and we'll make sure you get the deets first.

As we say back home in Singapore, "Eh, donch say ne'er chio you har."

Young Turks and The Clove Club at Canary Wharf

 

This past weekend supperclub collaborators The Clove Club and the Young Turks opened the first week of the month-long Restaurants in Residence dinner party in a disused and soon to be demolished office building in the heart of Canary Wharf. The Clove Club + Young Turks dinners sit 80 diners a night, for £45 for a 4-course dinner. A cash bar is on site.

Service went for the most part so smoothly that you'd be hardpressed to guess straight off that the week leading up to opening night involved a herculean effort in setting up a kitchen from scratch. Complete with chefs fidgeting in vans in the loading bay of equipment companies waiting for insurance offices to open because having the insurance documents in hand was the only way to take delivery of equipment (breathe!); other equipment getting routed to the wrong location; cajoling farmers to deliver (sometimes the wrong) produce to Canary Wharf, and hauling a car full of organic apple wood to BBQ the beef dish of the evening on a little grill on a little terrace.

Hilarious (to me anyway) heart stopping madness. All for the love of food and a good time. And you wonder why I regularly try to drag my best foodie friends to these dinners. Well not that they need much dragging, which is why I love them!

After drinks on the terrace, a few bonus pre-starter starters:

Very sweet sugar snap peas, straight from the pod.

 

 

Cucumber spears with "Indian salt". I'm going to guess... salt, sugar, tumeric powder and crushed mustard seeds. Hopefully one of the chefs will correct me if needed! Such a subtle look, such a big revelation in taste.

 

 

Buttermilk fried chicken nuggets. Seriously, they could sell this spear by spear on street corners like vials of premium cocaine.

 

 

The first official starter: Tomatoes, goat's milk and wild marjoram. Incredibly pretty, and full of flavour unlike the anaemic, mealy varieties usually found in supermarkets. Hurrah for tomato season!

 

 

Lemon sole, wild fennel and elderflower, and mushrooms. Very simple and solid flavours, but hats off to doing 60 portions of fish in one evening in a makeshift kitchen!

 

 

Angus rib, grilled onions and land cress, with a celeriac and Kernel Brewery porter sauce. Gorgeous, especially with the very apparent smokiness of apple wood. Soooooooo goooooooood that fellow diner "Hollow Legs / The Incinerator" Jas later went to the kitchen the end of the evening and smiled her sweet sweet smile to try her luck and see if there were any leftovers!

Apparently the guest chef in charge of the beef dish was Dave Pynt, an alum of that Basque nirvana of fire and smoke that is Extebarri. I wonder what magic he would spin if given one of those supermarket disposable BBQs... Bet he could teach my Singapore supperclub running mate Goz a few tricks...

 

 

A brief interlude before dessert. We head back out onto the terrace for some photos in and of the sunset. Here are my beeyoootiful girlies!

 

 

I see the lads made a few calls to sort out the weather as well. Good work.

 

 

The dessert of loganberries, ewe's milk yoghurt and beremeal cake didn't evoke much of a reaction when read on the menu. Probably cos I'd never tasted any of the individual ingredients before.

But tasting it blew my head off. The loganberries from Kent had that fabulous but not sickly sweetness that can only come from the platonic ideal of what fruits at their prime taste like. The yoghurt was lovely and creamy but without that sometimes overpowering goaty smell of goat's milk. And the beremeal cake -- a ancient grain produced commercially only in the Scottish islands of Orkney where Chef Isaac McHale grew up -- provided great body to the dish.

What a stunner.

When saying hi to the team in the kitchen afterwards, and spying trays upon trays of the loganberries about, it took all my affection for them and even more willpower to not quickly organise a stickup and make off like a loganberry loony.

 

 

A last little dessert with coffee and tea: Sunflower praline ice-cream sandwiches in a (if I heard correctly) beremeal brioche. No photo unfortunately, as they were melting too fast due to a failed freezer! They looked like slider-size burgers, but sweet instead of savoury. Cute.

In summary, the food was at first glance simple and solid, but saw stellar execution with great spikes of extraordinary flavour due to great produce used. The service from The Clove Club gents was warm and personable as always. To nitpick, the team could've pushed the envelope a touch given the Canary Wharf location, with more creative names for the dining tables. Legal? The Boardroom? IT? Procurement? C'mon you guys, a bit "MEH", without any of the Ricky Gervais so-truthfully-banal-and-painful-it's-funny-but-I-can't-breathe-cos-it-hurts redemption.

How about naming the tables after spectacular financial crashes? How much cooler would it be to sit at a table named "South Sea Bubble" or "Black Monday" or "Ninja Home Loans" or even "Lehman" or "Bear Stearns"?

Like I said, a nitpick. Outside of that, thanks as always to the Young Turks and The Clove Club for a fabulous evening out.

The Clove Club + Young Turks dinner continues to run at Canary Wharf through all this week till 3 July. If interested, book your tickets here.

 

Click on the logo below to keep track of Young Turks' upcoming events.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences. Unless otherwise mentioned, I attend events as a paying guest.

Dinner by Chef James Lowe

Above: Chef James Lowe searing mackeral

 

A couple of weekends back I had different groups of foodie friends visiting London at the same time. As part of taking my mates round to my favourite eats around the city, I asked Chef James Lowe if he would make an omakase (Chef's choice) dinner for 11 of us at £40 per person, on a BYOB basis. He graciously agreed. Sidenote: It's amazing how many time you can squeeze the world "pleeeeease" into an email.

James Lowe is an alum of The Fat Duck and was most recently the head chef at St John Bread and Wine. While hunting for his own restaurant site, he and The Ledbury development chef Isaac McHale have teamed up to form the Young Turks, cooking at supperclubs and pop ups around London (and soon abroad), with a commitment to small local producers, a fresh approach to British cooking and a spirit of collaboration rather than secrecy. On the side, James goes on quite a bit about his belief in good food at accessible prices. All philosophies I can get behind. But what of the food itself? After having attended their Burger Monday and Loft Project events, my gut is in full agreement with my head.

We started the evening with some baby veggies from Chegworth Valley. Babs is quite a fan of the airy anchovy cream foam dip. (Thanks to James also for foraging for the flowers. Nice rustic touch.)

 

 

Green strawberries, fried cheese bits, raw almonds and I think... rocket. Very light and green.

 

 

Tis the season to gorge on freshly picked sugarsnap peas. We'd been eating them all week around town any time we saw them on the menu. Here they're paired with wild pea shoots and flowers and ticklemore, a kind of goat's cheese. The wild pea here was possibly a bit too freshly foraged -- one of our diners found a live caterpillar amid the leaves (well the gorging season isn't just for humans, is it). It was hard to gauge the reaction at the table. One the one hand there were murmurings afterwards about why wasn't the plate immediately cleared. On the other hand, the diners (mostly Chinese) immediately started a surprisingly long conversation about what insects each of us had eaten, on purpose, while traveling in China. Also, these same diners were shockingly keen to nibble on some moss right off the surface of a tree that had been sawed off by a foraging chef dinner guest!

 

 

Next up: Cured mackeral, seared, with tomatoes. Simple, but yum.

 

 

The last 2 savory dishes were the superstars of the night. Here we have raw beef rib (look at that marbling!) made into a tartare with elderberry capers, wild watercress and oyster emulsion. Warning: it tends to be explosive on one's brains and senses when eaten for the first time.

 

 

But this next dish amazingly managed to outdo the last, and was my favourite dish of the evening. Very gently cooked wild sea trout, with sea beet and mussels in mussel muddle and broth. My friends and I were talking about this dish for days afterwards. The sea beet (also known as wild spinach) tasted like the essence of green and felt like silk. I need to get more. The mussels were really sweet and that sea trout! I'm still struggling to describe it. It looks like sashimi, but the oh so gentle cooking means that it has none of the stringiness or fibre of sashimi, but neither does it flake off in dry chunks of a larger fish. Incredibly delicate in the mouth, both in flavour and texture. Still not happy with this description, though. I need to eat this again and work on my words, clearly!

 

 

Finally, for dessert, goats curd ice-cream with luscious strawberries and powdered berries. A light twist to the very British strawberries and cream.

 

 

Many thanks are in order: To the chef for a lovely dinner, his delightful sous chef for the evening Rory Sheehan, on loan from James Knappett and Marcus Wareing (a young talent to watch, clearly!), and also my fabulous foodie friends, who were game to come along to a dinner where none of us knew what was going to be served beforehand.

If you're keen to taste James Lowe and Isaac Machale's work for yourself, the Young Turks and their front of house partners The Clove Club will be tearing up Canary Wharf for a week starting tomorrow (Saturday 25 June) as part of the month-long Restaurants in Residence pop up. Go!

Lunch by Chefs Janice Wong and Peter Gordon at #SGTakeout London

Above: Chef Janice Wong of 2am Dessert Bar in Singapore, and Chef Peter Gordon of The Providores and Kopapa in London

 

A couple of Fridays ago I was invited by the Singapore Tourism Board to attend a lunch cheffed by Janice Wong who runs 2am Dessert Bar in Singapore (previous writeups on her work here and here) and Peter Gordon who heads up The Providores and Kopapa in London.

They were the opening act for the Singapore Takeout global tour, where a shipping container refitted as a mobile show kitchen visits 9 cities over the span of a year, and chefs from Singapore (sometimes teaming up with an in-city chef) showcase dishes inspired by Singapore flavours. The lunch today was going to be mostly the same dishes being served to the public all weekend, but plated on actual plates rather than disposable Takeout takeout bowls. (See what I did there?)

I am generally sceptical about fusion food, taking quite seriously the advice that a Thai restauranteur once gave me, that "fusion food is confusion food". But sceptical is different from complete religious disbelief. Sometimes unexpected combinations produce delightful, cuisine-changing reactions and developments. So why deny oneself those opportunities? Food-mad folks, of all people, must live by the code that the proof is in the pudding, surely.

So here I was, on this rainy Friday lunctime, waiting for the chef demonstration to begin. Snacking on Janice's chilli chocolate coral mousse, apparently inspired by the old Mayan practice of combining cacao, honey and chili as medicine. Very pleasant indeed. I'm not a fan of super airy mousses. This one had sufficient structure and heft without being heavy. With of course that tinge of heat from the chilli.

 

 

For the demonstration, Janice and her sous chef Cathy demystify the process of "printing" onto edible parchments. If I remember right, it involves

• Printing words or a photo of choice with edible ink onto a transfer sheet (remember those iron-on t-shirt designs of the 80s?)
• Adding pectin to a flavoured puree of choice and then spreading it very thinly onto a silicone tray
• Putting on the transfer sheets, so that the heat from the puree will transfer the ink onto the sheet
• Letting things cool, scraping the sheets off the tray, then gingerly peeling off the transfer sheet

It's a cool party trick, and could be a fun wedding favour if you're into that kind of thing. Not really my style, even though it's probably the most painless way of eating one's words.

 

 

And now to lunch. Both chefs were going to do 3 courses each.

As a pre-appetiser, we get a taste of Janice's laksa mac & cheese. That is, your usual 4 cheese sauce, spiked with Prima laksa paste. My eyebrows jumped with scepticism, but once in the mouth, this totally worked. It was like a mini Singaporean David Chang moment.

 

 

Appetiser: Yu-sheng (raw fish) salad reimagined with tuna tartare, mandarin orange emulsion, and foraged herbs and flowers. Very light and fresh. For me it would never replace the traditional yu-sheng dish at Chinese New Year, an altogether more rustic, messy affair. But quite a fun off-season experiment.

 

 

Main: Laksa infused dumplings with noodles. Not very visible here, but the dumplings looked like the mini cat-ear variety. Very comforting on a rainy day. I could go for a big bowl of this.

 

 

Dessert: "Popcorn" with caramel, yuzu parfait and passionfruit sorbet. Popcorn with caramel totally works, obviously. Janice had said this was very much inspired by snacks in her youth, and I know exactly the one she means, having ingested way too much of it growing up myself. The light mellow acidity of the yuzu did a great job of balancing out the sweetness in the dish, but the too-tart passionfruit sorbet pushed it too gruffly over the edge. Has potential if it could be brought back from the brink. Why apologise for the fundamental taste of popcorn?

 

 

Petit fours: "Toffee pudding" made with gula melaka (palm sugar), squidged onto a dollop of kaya (coconut and egg jam) custard. The combination of sweet and sweet was too much for me personally. I'm trying to persuade my mate Goz who runs the London-based Singapore supperclub Plusixfive to do a different twist on this -- keeping the kaya custard, but subbing in a buttery, slightly bitter coffee cake. The tastes of a old school Singapore breakfast in one bite, essentially. We'll see how that goes, eh.

 

 

And now to Peter Gordon's showcase for the day.

Appetiser: A reimagined oyster omelette. This omelette was stuffed with crab meat, and garnished with mango sauce, deep fried shallots and coriander on top, with the oyster naked on the side. New Zealander Peter Gordon is said to have spent a respectable amount of time travelling around South East Asia, learning about its flavours through research and osmosis. This dish made me think, "yeah, this guy gets it". Possibly my favourite dish of the whole event, though involving crab and oyster gives it a very unfair advantage!

 

 

Main: Roasted pork belly cubes on steamed white rice with a pineapple sauce. Interesting in theory. But the pork belly was a little too dry, and there wasn't enough gravy on the rice to make up for that dry mouthful. Pleasant, but didn't get me in the gut.

 

 

Dessert: Almond milk with flaked almonds, strawberries and I lost track of what else. Peter Gordon's take on bo-bo cha-cha, so I heard. Not a dance from the 50s, but rather a Singapore dessert of diced sweet potato and yams and chewy tapioca flour shapes cooked in coconut milk. It was in a pretty glass, but this dish struck me as a prime example of fusion food being confusion food. There was just way too much going on. Plus (admittedly unfair) the very smell of almond milk or cream makes me retch, so I had to push this over to Goz right after the first mouthful.

 

 

Overall, the lunch was the fun result of a series of professional culinary experiments. Some dishes sparked lightbulbs that I reckon a few food bloggers including myself will want to go develop further in our own kitchens. Others were pretty "meh" and were best left in the slushpile. But that fun of finding out is the point, I reckon.

If you happen to be in Paris next week, Singapore Takeout hits the streets of gay Paree 30 June - 2 July at the Hippodrome Auteuil. The event will be cheffed by Andre Chiang of Restaurant Andre and Chef Sven Chartier from Restaurant Saturne. Stay updated via the Singapore Eats Facebook page and register here for the Paris tasting sessions!

Hanging Out with Team #SGTakeout London

Above: Singapore's 2am Dessert Bar chef owner Janice Wong, with her wooden tray of snacks

 

Feeding the 5,000 with 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread is a miracle. But cooking for a 1,000 in a foreign land where you don't have a familiar network of suppliers and kitchen, with only 2 of your trusted lieutenants from home, has got to count as a wee bit superhuman too, no?

A little context. My little food mad country Singapore has launched a Singapore Takeout campaign, which involves shipping a mobile kitchen container around the world over the next year. It stops for a few days in 9 cities, and a different chef from Singapore helms it in each city to showcase dishes inspired by Singapore flavours.

London Southbank is the first stop -- cos we be a bloody happening foodie city, innit -- and the chef in residence is Janice Wong, who owns and runs the very avant garde 2am Dessert Bar in Singapore's Holland Village. She and London guest star chef Peter Gordon (Providores, Kopapa) will be handing out free samples of fusiony dishes such as Lemongrass infused Laksa Dumplings with Noodles, Sweet Salty Popcorn Yuzu with Caramel, and Chilli Chocolate Corals with Homemade Peanut Butter and Honeycomb.

Through a lovely twist in foodie fate, I spent some time with Janice and her #SGTakeout team this week. Starting with a very serious shopping trip in Chinatown on the weekend. For quality control, Janice wanted to shop for as many of her ingredients herself. It was quite the amusing afternoon of 4 little Asian girls (ok except me, I'm not so little) hauling around crate upon crate of mandarin oranges, drums of cooking oil, and enough sacks of premium cocoa powder to give one a hernia. Some items simply had to be ordered in advance, however, so I didn't get to see what 20kg of lemongrass looks like. But a young chef from the South of France in the catering kitchen apparently did. For a whole 3 hours. As he stood there chopping them all.

A few days later I was signed up to be kitchen photographer (and inevitably an extra pair of kitchen hands) at a private dinner Janice was cheffing. It's a different menu from what will be served at #SG Takeout this weekend, but I thought it'd be a good opportunity to give you some indication of the creativity, discipline and care that goes into Janice's work. (Word on the street was that she dumped 15 litres of coconut milk this week, because she didn't deem the quality of it good enough for you good folks). Hopefully it'll entice you to drop by the Singapore Takeout container on Southbank today (Friday 10 June) or tomorrow to try her food and maybe sneak a peek at her chef demonstration. More details at the end of the post.

 

Detail on the plank of snacks: White chocolate pretzels, compressed watermelon with blue cheese cream, shards of dried mango and dressed up crackers sit on a garden of edible (chesnut and chocolate) soil.

 

 

The Garden "Yu Sheng": Janice's take on a raw fish salad traditionally eaten during Chinese New Year. The herbs are largely foraged from the beaches of Copenhagen, as Janice spent a week with the NOMA lab and foraging team just before coming to London.

 

 

Curry Chicken: Chinese "lap cheong", fragrant rice. My key source of amusement from this dish was that I never thought I would ever see chicken curry being plated with tweezers.

 

 

Beef: A perfectly seasoned and cooked steak with mushroom veloute, bok choy, 2 flavours of potato, and a smudge of (wait for it) salted egg custard. There was also a slowcooked strawberry in the mix. I didn't try it with the steak but it sure tasted amazing when Janice shoved one in my mouth!

 

 

Blood orange snowball: With lemon curd, mandarin orange and laced with condensed milk.

 

 

Basil white chocolate: With textures of passionfruit. I dunno how the hell she did it, but she got her favourite poem by Thoreau imprinted on little basil and passionfruit parchments.

 

 

Chocolate Coral: With textures of caramel.

 

 

And petit fours to go with coffee and tea: Chocolate and peanut butter pops; and toffee cake with kaya custard.

 

 

Intrigued? Want to see more?

 

 

Head down to London’s South Bank, The Riverside Walkway (by Gabriel’s Wharf), South Bank, London SE1 9PP

Public Tastings:
Friday 10 June 2011: 5.30pm – 7.45pm
Saturday 11 June 2011: 12.15pm – 3pm, or 5.30pm to 7.45pm

Admission is FREE, with 2 complimentary sample dishes from the menu.

For more updates on the Singapore Takeout event, follow @YourSingaporeUK on Twitter for the London leg, and also the Singapore Eats Facebook Page. For those not in London, here are dates for when Singapore Takeout hits Delhi, Dubai, Hong Kong, Moscow, New York, Paris, Shanghai and Sydney.

 

Above: Janice at the Singapore launch of Singapore Takeout back in April. See you there, dumpling!

Plusixfive: The Making Of

Above: Goz's menu plan for the debut supperclub

 

What fun, and what an utter thrill. I won't say too much more about Plusixfive's debut dinner, except that we couldn't have asked for a better group of opening night guests. As for how the evening went, better you read the writeups and see the photos from the evening's guests, compiled at the end of this post, than have me blabber on.

I just wanted to share some glances from the afternoon's final prep session.

 

 

It was pretty calm in Goz's characterful flat when I got there. The tables had already been set, and all the major dishes had been cooked and prepped.

All except the surprise appetiser, kuih pie tee, a thin and crispy pastry tart shell filled with a spicy, sweet mixture of thinly sliced vegetables and prawns. A dish much loved by the Straits Chinese.

 

 

To make these delicate crispy batter shells from scratch is a heartbreaking, backbreaking, treacherous art, prone to breaking and burning and chipping and deflating at all points along the way. I couldn't believe Goz was going to attempt this at his very first supperclub. Ok who am I kidding, of course I can believe Goz would this for his first supperclub. The topic had been brought up in conversation with one of the evening's diners, and had become a point of bonding. There was no way Goz was not going to make kuih pie tee, really.

Goz's kuih pie tee recipe on the day was from Cooking for the President by Wee Eng Hwa, a recently-published monumental body of work that took 2 decades to compile, covering Singapore's culinary history and the stories of Ms Wee's own storied family. (I need to write more about this book in a separate post.) I reckon the book will serve Goz well for many supperclubs to come.

 

The key step to master (it seems to me) is coaxing the batter shell off the mould without breaking it. A question of minute timing and exacting technique.

 

Goz finds his groove.

 

 

And then we wait.

 

 

But not for long.

The buzzer sounds. People are early. In fact, the latest guests arrive bang on time. These people really want their Singapore food!

And so it begins.

 

Here's what they saw / ate / said:

Cinnamon and Truffle

Hollow Legs

Tamarind and Thyme

Gastronomy Domine

A Rather Unusual Chinaman

gourmet traveller

Khanna Commune

The Cork News

Life Beyond the Viewfinder

 

Click on the logo below to keep track of Plusixfive's upcoming events.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences, and I run marketing and bookings for Plusixfive.

Suffolk UK: This Little Pig Day Piggy Went to the Butcher

Previously... on This Little Pig Day Piggy...

 

 

So after we oohed and aahed over Dingley Dell's adorable little piglets, we headed over to the demonstration kitchen to learn about pig / pork anatomy. The very knowledgeable and very humourous veteran butchers Jim and Wayne from Suffolk Meat Traders -- where Dingley Dell's Hayward brothers send all their pigs for processing after slaughter -- took us through the breaking down of an entire pig carcass.

 

 

Completely separate from Jim and Wayne's masterful and educational butchery demonstration, I was slightly disappointed that we didn't get to witness the slaughter of a pig after all, as was originally planned. For me personally it would be an important part of a full field-to-fork day. As a meat eater I find it sobering to at least occasionally confront the death of an animal. It helps with the process of learning to respect the whole animal and not waste any of it. A future occasion, perhaps.

We learned a TON that afternoon, but the lesson that stuck with me most is that if you buy a whole pig's head, it costs £2 per kg. If you buy the currently very fashionable pigs cheeks on their own however, you pay £12 a kg! Crazy, no? Esp when pig ears and snout sausage and tongue and brain make such tasty snacks. This little Pig Day Piggy smells some foodie arbitrage to be had!

Oh yes. The other big soundbite of the day for me was that the UK exports A LOTTA neglected pork bits to the Chinese-populated bits of Asia. Heads, trotters, offals, tails. All Eastward ho. The far-reaching Fergus Henderson empire calls that kind of philosophy Nose To Tail eating. We from that part part of the world call it... uh... eating.

Not that he needs it, but Wayne says he needs a hand (hur hur hur....).

 

 

And so he enlists a couple of very lovely afternoon apprentices.

 

 

Given the nose-to-tail learning agenda for the day, we also had a go at making morcilla, or Spanish blood sausage. They weren't pies, but they sure brought out the Sweeney Todds in some of us!

 

 

Jim loads up the morcilla mix in the sausage filler while Wayne readies the sausage skins...

 

 

Various volunteers get involved. The inevitable potty jokes ensue.

 

 

Like I said. Inevitable.

 

Wayne teaches my buddy Jas the intriciate art of braiding sausages into recognisable links.

 

 

Look at her go! Look at that avuncular pride! Jas creates such even-sized links so deftly on her first shot that Jim hands her his business card and pretty much offers her a job!

 

 

To close, a couple of Dali / Hirst / Gaga moments from the afternoon. Next up: This Little Pig Day Piggy Goes to the Kitchen!

 

Suffolk UK: This Little Pig Day Piggy Went to The Farm

 

This past Saturday (14 May) I had the great pleasure of joining a food-rabid group of about 20, to trek out to Suffolk's Deben Valley to be a part of Pig Day at Dingley Dell Farm, run by brothers Mark and Paul Hayward.

The original idea was get a guided tour of a pig farm, watch / participate in the slaughter of a pig, spend the afternoon using it nose to tail to make various pork delicacies, and then sit down together to partake of said pig. No doubt influenced by Pork Camp held outside of Berlin, as documented by Simon Majumdar in The Independent and his blog Dos Hermanos. This time however, the event organisers were Catalan cuisine doyen Rachel McCormack and wine merchant Donald Edwards and of course the Hayward brothers. We paid a relatively small sum of £50 for the full day of festivities, because the Hayward brothers -- more used to conducting farm tours for restaurant chefs and corporate buyers -- were using the day and us as guinea pigs to get feedback on how such a day might work if they started organising full-day experiences for the retail public.

After having documented Babs taking apart a goat in Kenya and a chicken in Birmingham (yes I still need to write that post) It was one of those invitations I couldn't possibly decline. With so many farms and meat processing facilities absolutely adamant about being hidden from the public eye nowadays, I was glad to come across a business this willing to be transparent, and looked forward to meeting its owners and learning more about what goes into and around the pigs that make their way to some very swish restaurants around London.

So on this crisp and sunny morning, after a 1 1/2 hour drive (thanks for driving Dom!) from London we found our merry crew of 4 to be first at the farm. We were fortified with tea, coffee and delectable hog roast sandwiches while the others trickled in. Win! Then we all piled into the piggy wagon to be hauled around the farm by tractor. The pigs get transported the same way apparently, but it didn't smell like it!

 

 

We managed to get up close and personal with the piggies at various life stages, from newborn piglets, to pregnant sows, as well as pigs being held in pre-sendoff-to-the-slaughterhouse pens.

Warning: A few horrendously cute photos of piglets to follow. If you love pork, but are one of those silly people who think eating cute animals is wrong, something might just have to give. And while you're at it, perhaps you could tell me what animals are deemed ugly enough by your animal-beauty-pageant judgy self to eat?!

This litter was born sometime in the last 24 hours before we showed up. A sow can give birth to anything from 2 to 20 piglets at a go. I'm told the ideal number is 11 because that's how many teats she has.

 

 

This one looks like it's having a nice dream, no?

 

 

Here are the piglets at about 5 weeks, I think. Still nursing, but very active. At this point they start to get very social, mobbing up with their mates across litters to hang out.

 

 

They're much rompy and gallopy than I thought they would be, chasing each other around, playing hide and seek in a nearby hedge. This level of activity is in fact a big dilemma that ethical farmers face. Free-range pork or organic pork sounds great, but both of those labels mean much higher land and food costs (especially if the pigs are running around endlessly burning off the food they eat). Are we consumers willing to pay a 30-50% premium on the pork we buy? Even with a visible amount of space and the pigs looking fairly relaxed -- I've read that in industrial farms pigs get so squished and stressed out their teeth get sawed off so they don't chew each other's tails off -- Dingley Dell is not technically a free range or organic farm. As prices stand, the big supermarket chains have already been known to sell fresh meat at a loss, just to lure in customers to buy their higher-margin items (read: processed food and non edibles). Mark Hayward reckons that he would lose his restaurant customers if he upgraded his farm to free-range status.

What do you reckon? How would your wallet vote?

 

 

Next we're shown the partially covered tents where the newly weaned pigs live. They're as curious about us as we are about them, but very skittish. They inch forward ever so slowly, but one sudden move by anyone in the group sends them pelting off as a swarm, like a panicky school of fish when you go scubadiving.

 

 

Here's Mark with one of the pregnant sows, to give you a perspective of how big they get. Mark is knowledgeable, pragmatic, and clearly loves his animals. And ever so good natured and patient with us piggy paparazzi!

 

 

Time to let the ladies get on with their naps, and move on to the butchery and cookery part of the day. Watch this space.

 

Introducing Plusixfive, A Singapore Supperclub in London

Above: Testing a few Plusixfive dishes. Gozgozgoz (left in the top photo, in pink shirt) makes a mighty fine achar (pickles) and satay from scratch. But hey, don't take my word for it. Try it for yourselves.

 

After months of plotting, recipe tasting and testing, cajoling and calendar tetris, I am absolutely delighted to invite you to the debut dinner of +(65) / Plusixfive, London's first Singapore-themed supperclub.

(At least I think it's the first. I'd really like to believe that if there were already one in town I'd have sniffed out the sambal belacan by now...)

Plusixfive is a labour of love and culinary madness birthed by my dear friend and fellow food geek Gozgozgoz. Goz is apparently known by the Ginger Pig guys down at Borough Market by name and by the weirdness of his requests. When he couldn't find a platter large enough for his Chinese New Year yu sheng (raw fish prosperity salad) he turned his entire dining table into a platter by shrink wrapping it. You get the idea.

Goz and I bond over our shared anxiety to learn the quickly disappearing arts of making our Singapore heritage dishes and snacks from scratch, like bak kwa, kway pie tee, and ang chow to name a few. I've been told that when Goz and I get deep into a natter, only 20% of our food-nerd babble is understandable to nice normal people. So it's my pleasure and honour to help Goz out with his new endeavour at front of house, and possibly with some kitchen-monkeying if needed.

And did I mention that he makes a bloody marvelous braised duck?

But hell, don't take my word for it. Come see and eat for yourselves LAH.

 

What's cooking?: Goz will confirm the menu closer to the date, but he's currently thinking ox cheek rendang, lor ahrk (Teochew braised duck) and sambal stingray (skate), among others. We'll be serving dinner family style at 1 table.

When: Sunday 29 May dinner (don't worry, Monday's a bank holiday!)

Where: Goz's flat in Islington

Suggested donation: £25 per person, BYOB

More details about +(65) / Plusixfive here and May 29's dinner here.

If you'd like to join us, please get in touch and let me know how many spaces you would like, and if you have any food allergies. Email plusixfive@gmail.com

We look forward to hosting you!

Steamboat-ing Around The World

Above: See that goofball smile? That's my happy-cuz-I'm-steamboating face. Friends might tell you I look like that a lot. Fair cop. Really good friends will be able to tell the subtle differences between my various goofball happy-cuz-I'm- <insert other food activity> faces.

 

Why does the phrase "in the soup" mean that you're in trouble?

For me, being in the soup -- of hotpot or steamboat or nabe or shabu shabu or Chinese fondue (whatever you call it where you are) -- is the best way for me to transcend the muck of any internal trouble I'm feeling. It's like a jacuzzi for the soul.

Maybe the savoury hot broth helps to melt away internal emotional blockages. Maybe the community warmth and fuzziness of a table full of people cooking, chatting, laughing and eating around a steaming cauldron on a chilly evening (or even steamy tropical heat, really) softens emotional bristly-ness.

Maybe just to gaze upon the annual Soh family epic steamboat spread during Chinese New Year (below) is enough to make me cackle any crankiness away.

 

 

I can't imagine I'm the lone believer in the magical restorative abilities of steamboat. Why else would it have popped up in so many nooks and crannies of this big wide world during our 15 months on the road? And sometimes in the most unlikely of corners?

Okay, so maybe it has something to do with the unstoppable sprawl of commodity-hungry, infrastructure-building savvy Chinese diaspora around the world, and steamboat being the perfect product to pitch to homesick overseas Chinese communities. But why let facts get in the way of a good story, eh.

So how unlikely are these unlikely steamboat satellites?

Well. How about Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania, for a start?

At Beautiful China (Mhasibu House, NBAA, Bibititi Mohamed Rd; +255 22 215 0548), a steamboat feast was quite the treat after volunteering on a farm in rural western Kenya without electricity or running water.

We didn't order the extent of this feast (below) on purpose. Really! This is what we got after calling ahead just to say we wanted hotpot. The table next to us had the same amount of food. Except their table had 8 people, vs our 2. Still, we made more progress than I care to admit...

Thanks so much to G*Star for sending us this lead.

 

 

Another unlikely steamboat satellite was amid the blazing deserts of Abu Dhabi in the UAE.

Far from the glitzy resorts and shopping malls, Qian Zhou Hotpot (Nadja Street, Al Markaziyah West; +971 2 674 5677) is a hidden soupy oasis, with good quality broth, fresh and authentic produce, and an impressive array of dipping sauces for you to use individually or to create a DIY-custom blend. Again, this was a lovely recharge of something familiar and comforting after a month of stuffing our faces with delectable but heavier meats, rices and mezzes of Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

Thanks so much to Louise and Herbert for hunting down this location for us and taking us there and treating us to boot!

 

Above: See? There's that goofy smile again

 

Asia is no surprise territory for steamboat. Or so I thought.

In Hanoi, Vietnam, I was utterly delighted by Kichi-Kichi Hotpot (1A Tang Bat Ho, Hai Bà Tru'ng) because it combined hotpot AND a kaiten aka sushi-style conveyor belt. Which means you can slurp away and watch a world (of temptations) go by. Be still my beating heart.

Your fixed fee of under £10 gets you unlimited access to soup stock and anything on the belt. Drinks and premium food items for your cauldron are extra. I found the basic belt spread to be pretty satisfactory, frankly.

Food aside, I ate at Kichi-Kichi with very mixed feelings. Circa 2007 I had a pipe dream to launch this exact restaurant concept in London. So I was very frustrated to see that someone else got to it first, but elated to see that the concept is obviously viable -- the place was packed to the gills when we were there and Kichi-Kichi apparently has quite a few other outlets around Hanoi.

Big props to Our Man in Vietnam Steve Jackson, through whom I found Kichi-Kichi.

 

 

While in Kyoto, Japan, our merry Solihull crew of 6 spent an evening sampling sumo-style steamboat (say it 6 times swiftly!) at Tian Shan Sumo (3, 4, Yamatooji, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto-shi, Kyoto Hakatacho, 605-0805; +81 75-561-7378).

Be prepared to pay between £40-50 per person, but you will be stuffed silly by the end of the evening with impeccable produce and service.

 

 

While waiting for your streaky meat to scald, sip on some sake or beer and pick your object of sumo-star aspiration from the posters plastered to the walls.

Shoutout to Team Dom!

 

 

You have a choice of letting the waitstaff fuss over you, or you can get involved yourself. Our mate Chris reckons the experience is enhanced by you making "shabooooo shaboooo" sound effects as your swish around your paper-thin beef slices in the soup.

 

 

And then there are the steamboat soirees money just can't buy.

Like the one on Wednesdays at the Chinese food resto-canteen at Google HQ in Mountain View, California USA. If you don't work at Google you can't pay money to eat here, but if you've got a friend at Google who likes you enough, you eat for free!

The range of steamboat dishes here was understandably more limited and basic compared to a commercial steamboat restaurant, but because Google works hard to source canteen food ingredients from local farmers, the freshness of the meats and vegetables were top notch.

Many thanks to Gus and Basil (and Larry and Sergei) for a very special steamboat lunch, complete with a view of some hyper-geeky meeting rooms!)

 

 

Love also always trumps money at the steamboat soirees hosted by your fabulous friends and their families. So to the Hans, Foxy Foong and "Hollow Legs" Jas and her ever-patient Dom, much much much love.

 

 

So once Babs and I settled back into London town after the big gallavant, it was no stretch to believe that steamboat would be a fabulous way to get together with a few London foodbloggers and get to know our London foodie community a little better.

Little Lamb (72 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 6NA; +44 20 7287 8078) in Chinatown is a humble non-descript looking outfit, but when I was homesick for Singapore this past Chinese New Year and feeling in a bit of a funk about work, this Mary had a Little Lamb, and damn it saved my life! (Kudos to reviews by Meemalee and Tamarind and Thyme, whose reviews inspired me to go.)

You can order ala carte, or you and your mates can go for the £20 pax set meal, where each person gets to pick 5 generously-sized dishes.

I was sceptical about the blue swimmer crabs on my first visit, but tried them on my second. They turned out to be surprisingly fresh and meaty, keeping some bite rather than disintigrating into powdery mush after cooking in the broth.

 

 

The varied marbling on the beef, pork and lamb slices are a work of art.

 

 

Bubble bubble, toil and trouble begone!

 

 

The meat skewers are also definitely worth a try -- lots of tantalising chili pepper and cumin spicing.

 

 

And now to close, shoutouts to the very sporting food blogger folks who ventured out for a steamy good time despite it being a ludicruously sunshiny day in London! Thank God for Gelupo afterwards.

Here's Aaron of The Grubworm and Su-Lin of Tamarind and Thyme, one a very fast-learning steamboat acolyte, the other a veteran!

 

 

My homegirls Eunice of Heaven in a Wild Flower, and Rachel of The Pleasure Monger, both looking fresh as flowers as usual despite steamboating up a storm!

 

 

And last but not least here are the very bubbly Kay of From Chopstix 2 Steaknives and Kavey of Kavey Eats, momentarily in intense concentration!

 

 

Remember folks, when life gets you in the soup, the get in the soup gooooooood, get all souped up and then get back in the game. Better yet, have a few friends along. The killer combination of broth and brethren will surely pick you right up and set you off steaming ahead again. Wherever in the world you might be.

So tell me, where's your favourite hotpot haven in the world?

London: Young Turks At The Loft

 

If you have not yet heard of the Young Turks -- James Lowe (St Johns Bread and Wine; Fat Duck), Isaac McHale (The Ledbury; Tom Aikens), and Ben Greeno (Momofuko; Noma; Sat Bains) -- you have now. And if you do some news trawling, you will probably hear that they are London's next big dining scene thing.

I see your "flavour of next month", and I raise you a "They're going to rock British food to the next level". My bet is that they're going to do so by calling a few bluffs many of us London diners have until now put up with:

• A fabulous meal has to cost a fortune
• A chef needs a few secrets and be an asshole to get ahead
• Customers want what they want, when they want, and will never trust the chef to choose for them

It's early in the game for them still, so any skepticism out there is understandable. But having now tasted 2 of their collaborative events (my first being their opening Burger Monday act for Young and Foodish) and tried grub ala Greeno, I've decided that I'd rather be wrong betting on these lads than be wrong not betting on them.

My 2nd Young Turks evening was last week at The Loft Project run by Viajante chef Nuno Mendes. The supper club space to end all supper club spaces in Dalston hosts a rotation of up and coming chefs.

 

 

This past week the Young Turks were in da house with a £60 six course tasting menu with wine pairing, with front of house being supported by their mates Dan and Chris.

 

 

The boys were also supported in the kitchen by comrades looking for plating practice.

A rather softspoken but smiley Nicholas painstakingly sculpts us some canapes:

 

 

Gem lettuce, curd and anchovy. A mouthful of creamy uber savouriness, kept refreshing by its crispy green canvas.

 

 

Smoked cod's roe, oats and kohlrabi. You've heard of jumbo rolled oats, yes? These ones were rolled into cardboard-thick sheet crisps. The cod roe had been moussed, and the kohlrabi was evidently diced by elves.

 

 

And now, if you'll indulge me, a triptych tribute to fat. Middle white fat and cured lop. Home-cured by James Lowe, for... 3 months? 4 months? 14 months? Did I hear right? The number kept climbing. Some people have wine cellars. I'm starting to think he's got a fat cellar, with an array of lardy vintages.

 

 

Drink pairings for the evening (or at least the wines) were paired by Jade Koch of HG Wines. The evening opened with a delightful rhubarb prosecco fizz.

 

 

A luxuriant runny-yolked duck egg, with snails and ramson (aka wild garlic). I've loved eating snails since I was a kid but I'd never had them in an English cuisine setting until now. The French usually drown them in a very garlicky butter, so I thought using wild garlic here was a very clever and refined riff. And especially entertaining because the liquidised wild garlic looked like the snail's slime trail. What are little boys made of, eh.

Wine pairing: A 2010 Chateau de Roquefort "Petit Sale".

 

 

There is a lovely bit in a recent interview of James Lowe by Eating East where he says he got to a certain point of his career at St John Bread and Wine where nose-to-tail boss Fergus Henderson felt some of his dishes were getting "a bit racy" -- a prompt for James that it was time to strike out on his own and make a push for his own style.

I am convinced that the raw beef rib with oyster mousse and chickweed is one of those "racy" dishes.

 

 

I mean, bloody hell, raw beef and oysters? It already sounds like sex on a plate.

And then you taste it.

 

 

And then it's worth clarifying that by sex on a plate I mean the rough, messy kind, with a backstory full of exquisite tension, twists and turns, where the walk of shame the next morning a very heady cocktail of afterglow and a mild gnawing guilt and a half conscious smirk at the surreal-ness of it all.

The dish made me blush, is what I'm saying.

And now it might make James blush too.

I realise all conversations with James from now on may be a bit awkward. I'll risk it, as long as I get the message across that he needs to keep making this dish, at his future gigs and in his future eventually world famous restaurant. Because I reckon all the world could do with this endorphin rush. Possibly even the vegetarians and vegans. No? Oh all right. I respect your principles. More for me then.

Wine pairing: A 2008 Vignobles Guillaume Pinot Noir

****

Here's Isaac prepping some very beautiful beetroot, to be combined with goats milk granita and pickled elderberries.

 

 

The end result was subtle, beautiful and delicate, a wonderful yin to the raw beef and oyster's yang. Why can't vegetarian restaurants put forward more dishes like that, celebrating the vegetable, rather than forcing the vegetable into the mould of a meat substitute that will never meet the mark?

Wine pairing: A 2009 Domaine Gerard Metz "Eldelzwicker".

 

 

Next up, another dish that sounded great on paper and tasted even better in real life: Jersey Royal potatoes, with monks beard and crab.

 

 

The intense sweet-saltiness of the sea in the crab, the slightly crunchy seaweed and the bisque damn near knocked me off my chair. I'm not usually the biggest fan of potatoes, but here it was an integral part of... not a deconstructed, but rather, a yet-to-be-constructed chowder for the gods. It was lick-the-bowl-clean good. I've long loved seaweeds of different kinds in Japanese and Chinese cuisine, and absolutely loved the taste of same-day harvested seaweed in Zanzibar, so I'm really hoping the guys find more ways to incorporate fresh seaweed into future dishes.

Wine pairing: A 2010 Pierre Cros Minervois Blanc

 

The last dish before dessert was "Chicken, rye, hop shoots and green onions". Except for the roast chicken leg at Le Cafe Anglais, I never order the chicken dish in a Western restaurant, because it's almost always an unimaginative, horribly bland, over dry breast.

Even at home, even when we buy properly raised chickeny-tasting chickens from the farmers markets, I usually end up shredding and salting the breast meat to bulk up a brothy soup, rather than eat it on its own.

But tonight The Young Turks reclaimed chicken breast and put it on back on the high cuisine map. It was moist and had a beautiful flavour, served with a very unusual but oddly comforting rye porridge studded with carrots, mushrooms and other savoury bits.

There was debate about whether there were too many things going on with this dish. Mostly I think there was too much talking going on while I was trying to focus on making this dish last longer.

Wine pairing: A 2010 Domaine Boudau "Le Clos"

 

 

We couldn't quite identify the hop shoots in the dish, and most of us had never seen it before in its original form, so Isaac brought out their ziploc stash and we all had a good ol' inhale. It was spring on a string.

 

 

For dessert: chocolate malt ice-cream and cascara jelly. Cascara is the dried skin and pulp from the coffee berry, and tastes curiously like tea. Again, there was some debate about the appropriateness of pairing jelly and ice-cream. I've now been educated that it's a traditional dessert pairing from many British childhoods. *Shrug* I didn't grow up here, so it's lost on me I think. Personally I don't like mixing my ice-creams with much. Malt makes the short list. Jelly does not.

 

 

I forget the details of what went into the biscuits that went with coffee and tea, but I think it involved oats, orange and thyme?

 

 

I'll close out with a toast (of Imperial Brown Stout from my very own neighbourhood Kernel Brewery).

 

 

To the Young Turks and their bitchin kitchen team, thank you for an utterly fabulous night. It's a real delight to be part of this very early phase of your grand adventure. Yes I trust there is so much more to come, and that it will be grand and then some.

To Dan and Chris, thank you for taking such good care of us and I look forward to coming to one of your gigs soon.

It's always worth saying -- thanks to all of you for being so patient with me and my camera getting underfoot!

Finally to the many sparks in the room -- Momma McHale, Simon, Shanaz, Xiaohan, Frieda, Miguel, Jade of Bocca di Lupo and Chef Rachel of Spuntino, it was lovely to meet you / break bread with you. I look forward to seeing you all again soon!

 

Click on the logo below to keep track of Young Turks' upcoming events.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences. Unless otherwise mentioned, I attend events as a paying guest.

Essex, UK: Supper Clubbing at Food Urchin's

 

It's 7pm on a Saturday as our train doors slide open. A couple are propping up their rather crumply, either very ill, or very drunk, lady friend between them.

At 7pm.

Welcome to Essex.

I look up, and face a ludicrously bright yellow orb. Not Dan's head -- don't be rude! It's a full moon. A supermoon. A howling good omen for the at-home debut of the Food Urchin's supperclub.

I'd been following both Danny Kingston's very humourous Food Urchin blog (I particularly love the posts about his grandmother) as well as London's mushrooming supperclub scene from afar during our 15 months of backpacking. Now that I'm back in London, I have a long list of London foodies and supperclubs I'd love to meet, try, and get properly acquainted with. I figured my first proper supperclub foray in the UK might as well be with the guy who was game enough to randomly meet me for lunch near work one day, and generous enough to show me his falafel haunt at Whitecross market -- the best falafel I've had in a while.

And so on this lovely spring evening, Babs, our startup partner Evie and I find ourself in the good hands of the Food Urchins -- Danny the chef, and his two lovely helpers, wife Hollie and sister Tori. Here's Mrs Food Urchin slicing up some ludicruously pro looking homemade bread.

 

 

They cleared out their front room to seat a table of 6 and a table of 3. The kitchen's in the back, which has another alcove that sits another table of 7 (I think). We got the table of 3, which was less social that I had hoped for, but it's our own silly fault for getting lost and showing up late. Next time I'll specifically request to be seated at a "meet some stranger foodies" table though. The lovely Kavey of Kavey Eats was in da house, however, and it was nice to chat with her again and eavesdrop on some of her funny stories (sorry Kavey but I'd already been in deep business discussions with Babs and Evie all afternoon and we were all hungry for a diversion!)

 

 

Another shot of the lovely bread before we get into the food proper.

 

 

Starters: Grilled mackeral with spring onions, potato, shreds of wild garlic and a very nutty calcot sauce. I love mackeral, so this was an easy sell for me. The calcot sauce in particular I thought was sophisticated enough to rival a good restaurant's offer.

 

 

Mains: A citrus chicken stew that embodied spring, with its light lemony taste and gorgeously sweet and fresh peas and broadbeans and herbs. We had mixed reactions to this one. Babs was a fan. Evie I think felt it wasn't yet spring (i.e. warm) enough for her to really get into this spring dish. I really liked the taste of the stew but for whatever reason pictured it sitting better as a sunshiny lunch dish especially if I was home sick and trying to perk myself up, rather than for a Saturday night dinner. Funny, that. I'm always happy to eat dinner leftovers for breakfast -- sometimes to Bab's odd looks -- but I have a harder time eating breakfast or what I consider to be lunch fare later in the day.

(Note: All the photos in the rest of this post were taken by Babs)

 

 

Palette cleanser: Blood orange and rosemary jelly. Very clah-ssy. Very very yum.

 

 

Dessert: A choice of rhubarb and stem ginger crumble, or double chocolate cheesecake. OBVIOUSLY we were going to go for both (thanks Dan for indulging!). The rhubarb -- stems kept intact rather than blended -- had a good tart bite. But what really stole the show for me was the double chocolate cheesecake. Rich, not too sweet, and a hint of savoury in the base. HOO-WAH!

 

 

Kind Mr Kingston offered to drive us back to the train station for our return to London town, but we insisted on walking -- mostly because the very generous portions meant that we really needed a 15 minute waddle in the fresh air and moonlight to make sure that the meal settled evenly into the crevices of our guts.

I hope this supperclub continues. And that supperclubs at large continue. Well executed food at reasonable prices is one thing. What really leaves you giddy and giggly at the end of the night is the sense of community. After dinner Kavey sold a few posh chocolate easter eggs to raise funds for Japan quake victims, and I swapped a jar of homemade rhubarb sambal (recipe to come) for a clump of Dan's wild garlic, pulled from his garden, bulbs, roots, soil, a few earthworms et al. Edible "sand" and "soil" by the likes of Fat Duck and Noma respectively might be considered better than the real thing, but hey, sometimes there's something to be said for the real thing.

 

Click on the logo below to keep track of Food Urchin Supperclub's upcoming events.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences. Unless otherwise stated, I attend events as a paying guest.

Daytrip to Rye Scallop Week

 

This past Saturday my dear fellow foodie friend Melf had valiantly sheep-dogged 8 of us seafood fiends to check out the scallop festival in Rye on the East Sussex Coast.

Judging from the festival's website it didn't sound like there was going to be much fun and rowdy boardwalk activity like there tends to be at Whitstable's oyster festival in the summer. I suppose an English February doesn't lend much support to that kind of thing. Still, the mere prospect of scarfing sweet scallops freshly caught from local waters during their fattest time of year at non-London prices was enough to get 8 of us onto a 9.30am train to Ashford International, and then a replacement bus service to Rye after.

 

Above: I think Shobs is looking away because at this point I am ranting (too loudly) for the 5th time in 20 minutes that all of the UK's best seafood stocks gets sold overseas, leaving those who live here with lower quality AND expensive seafood. Rye, for example, sells 80% of its scallop haul to the French across the channel!

 

To make ourselves feel like we were not complete piggies, we got the obligatory sightseeing bit of the day done and out of the way first.

Here's our group amid the flying buttresses of the 900 year old Parish church of St Mary for proof. In the sodding wet no less.

 

Photo by Colin Yau

 

I love going down to the docks in any fishing town, to see the catch of the day in its rawest form. Here at Market Fisheries down by Simmons Quay, I watch (for the first time, it's occured to me) freshly caught scallops getting shucked.

 

 

As if I wasn't indignant enough about the situation of seafood in the UK, I almost tear up when the fishmonger tells me that he throws away the scallop frills.

"The fish will eat it. In the old days we would eat this," he tells me. "Asian people still do. It can be lovely pickled."

No shit. I bet the same marinade I use for Asian blood cockles would work a treat. Or a ceviche mix.

Note to self: I need to find a fishmonger who will sell me a bucket o unwanted scallop frills.

In the meantime, it's time to come out of the cold, and pint-up in a pub.

The pub at the Ypres Castle Inn -- like everywhere else in Rye this week, are offering a scallop-themed food menu. We can't resist nibbling on a couple of starters with our pints, even though lunch is an hour away.

The group take communion-size nibbles at these grilled scallops and crevette...

 

 

... and a plate of of scallop and parma pate; scallop, leek and creamy mash pie and a grilled scallop on mashed peas.

Really lovely fresh flavour across the board. Scallop pate and scallop bits in a pie were novel items for me. But being the indulgence that it is -- scallops were £20-23 per kg in Rye and that's half the price of London -- I find it difficult to give up that very primal pleasure of sinking your teeth into the sweet juicy cushion of a whole scallop.

 

 

Snacks and mulled cider done, and appetites still far from ruined, we trooped over to lunch at The Ship Inn.

I was highly amused by the kitschy "fatty of the world" that greets you as you enter the upstairs dining area.

 

 

Many of us start off with a shot of scallop gazpacho, garnished with a smoked prawn. I spot parsley, lime, onion, chili, tomato and.... tomatillo, my American foodie friend Si insists. A tasty sipper, but I feel like the delicate flavour of the scallop got bullied into oblivion by the thick gazpacho and also the briny smokiness of the prawn. Which in and of itself was very good, but hey it's not smoked prawn week, is it.

 

 

The scallop "tempura" was disappointing. As you can see, that's fish and chips rather than tempura batter. Again, for something as delicate as a scallop, this choice of batter blanketed the star of the show. Actual tempura batter would've been a much more subtle canvas. The sushi rice just tasted weird. Mushy and over vinegared. Overall, amateurish fusion gone wrong.

 

 

The scallops with squid ink pasta and chorizo looked great on the menu, and looked great on the plate. Unfortunately it all went wrong once you put it in your mouth. The grilled scallops on their own were lovely. But the rest of it tasted like bland, flat and watery, missing any real encounter with olive oil, garlic and salt.

The best thing about the dish was the chorizo, lamented Melf.

 

 

Those who opted for the scallops with cress salad with bacon, black pudding and mashed peas fared better. Each ingredient held its own, the mashed peas was lovely and fresh and light, and the addition of black pudding for me has come to signify a charming British take on surf and turf. (FYI, black pudding with raw oyster is a killer combination as well. Just sayin.)

 

 

We did another loop of the town on foot, and picked up scallops and other briny treats to take home to London with us. Without any boardwalk fanfare, we figured we were done for the day. But heck, since we're waiting for the train, might as well have a spot of tea at Fletcher's House.

People had an assortment of (very scrummy) scones and cakes, but I ordered what everyone else secretly wanted but were too embarrassed to order after lunch -- crab sandwiches!

The crab was fresh rather than tinned, at least. They had the odd bit of shell in the mix to prove it. But a touch watery, rather than firm and meaty specimens I've had elsewhere. Still, something to be had by the sea rather than in the bowels of the city.

 

 

Now dark, we trundled off back to London, entertained by one another's company (I hope) but not overly impressed with the festival. Maybe to do it properly you have to stay the night at one of the town's B&Bs and book into a posh tasting dinner and a daytime cooking class. Maybe next year. In the meantime, we were kept busy scheming about what to do with our kilo bags of scallops in our respective kitchens...

 

Ypres Castle Inn
Gun Gardens
Rye TN31 7HH
United Kingdom
+44 1797 233 248

The Ship Inn
Strand Quay
Rye TN31 7DB
United Kingdom
+44 1797 222 233

Fletcher's House
2 Lion Street
Rye TN31 7LB
United Kingdom
+44 1797 222 227

London: Burger Monday with Young & Foodish and The Young Turks

Say ahhhhh.....

 

It's Monday. But instead of the Monday blues, on this particular evening I'm wired with a Monday buzz. Because me and mah homies are at our first Burger Monday.

Well. Just a wee representation of my homies. Mostly because the ridiculously popular event sold faster than I could fight through the excruciatingly frustrating Paypal interface to book my spots.

Breathe. Happy thoughts. Hamburger thoughts.

Burger Monday is an eat and meet party, hosted by Daniel Young of Young and Foodish. As I understand it, he usually organises a sizeable reservation at the best burger and pizza establishments in London, and sometimes New York. His guests / customers enjoy the fruits of his foodie research, and maybe make a few friends in the process.

This year he's tweaking his format -- bringing top chefs and purveyors to a laid back location, to test the gourmet limits of these well known and well loved fast food items.

Starting with a bang, last Monday (24 Jan) his line up at Andrews Restaurant on Grays Inn Road consisted of The Young Turks: Ben Greeno (Tudor Road; alum of NOMA and Sat Bains); James Lowe (St Johns Bread and Wine; alum of Fat Duck); and Isaac McHale (alum of The Ledbury and Tom Aikens). Supplying the beef for the evening -- a private reserve blend of 100% Perthshire Black Angus -- was Darragh O'Shea of O'Shea's Butchers.

 

 

The diner is buzzing when we get there, and it's not from the flourescent lights!

 

 

The effervescent Mr Young is the one in the red shirt. As you can see from the abundance of cameras pointed at food, I am in good food geek company for the evening.

 

 

Here's Ben Greeno plating up the starter: "Lox on Toast" -- house-cured salmon, pumpernickel bread, pickled kohlrabi and a smudge of horseradishy mousse.

 

 

I'm a confessed fan of Ben Greeno's raw mackeral starter, and am delighted that I can now add salmon to that list.

 

 

Maybe it's just me, but the proximity of Marmite and candy bars somehow just brought the elegance of the finished lox dish into sharper focus.

 

 

Given there were 4 generous slices, I ate 2 slices sashimi style and with the other 2 made myself a little open-face sandwich.

Note to self: Get more kohlrabi onto the dinner table. I'd first started eating these in earnest while in Bangalore and then Hanoi last year, and missed them after Babs and I left Asia. But given kohlrabi means "German turnip", they've got to be findable not too far from London, no?

 

 

At this point I would like to officially say a big thank you to the event's waitstaff. Whom despite very cosy quarters and very hungry diners and very heavy plates were infinitely patient with me while I got underfoot around the counter, trying to get some kitchen action shots.

 

 

Here's James Lowe salting the burgers and manning the grill. I'm guessing he used coarse salt while shaping the patties as well -- they had brilliant little pockets of extra savouriness, which had me puzzling for a few minutes about whether they had added bone marrow or minced bacon into the blend.

 

 

Dress with lettuce, onion shavings, a very light ketchup, mayo and homemade pickles, and hold together with a pillowy toasted bap.

I love it that the burger can barely fit in the frame.

 

 

If I've observed right, the burgers are grilled to just under medium rare, then the ogleshield cheese is slapped on, the the cheesed up patties are put in the oven for some top-down melty-magic heat. Clever. Combining melty cheese and a still medium rare burger is always a bit tricky for me if I'm grilling outside. If the heat has worked its way upwards through the patty to melt the cheese, it usually means it's not as pink as I would like inside. Some burger purists might consider using an indoor oven cheating, but hell! Melty ogleshield on a pretty pink patty is definitely a case of the ends justifying the means.

Put it all together and it's a gorgeous and soon very primal messy work of art.

 

 

And the fries! I didn't get a good photo of them, but they were very golden and very crispy. Triplecooked in beef fat, I'm guessing?

The dessert for the evening is "hot chocolate sundae" -- affrogato al cioccolato. If Mickey D's hot fudge sundae had a posh boarding school plum-in-the-mouth cousin, I think this would be it. Its sweet notes are much more smooth and subtle. The garish chemical sugars of the fast food rendition tastes like how Mimi from the Drew Carey show looks, by comparison.

 

 

I'm really regretting now not holding back a few fries to dip into the the ice-cream -- the way i used to eat them at Mickey D's as a teenager. Don't knock it till you try it!

To summarise, all 3 dishes and the wine (a 2009 Santa Cristina from Tuscany) were soooooooperb. I am immensely curious to see how Daniel Young and his future collaborators are going to top this burger.

If there's anything that would take the evening to the next level for me, however, it would be to do a milkshake pairing with the burger (very much missed this evening). There's no reason these milkshakes have to be PG-version only, mind you. I'd love for some young pastry chef genius to come up with alternatives to a very memorable Jack Daniels & peanut butter milkshake from Cape Town's Royale Eatery.

Last but not least, a bonus to the delicious evening was to finally meet and chat with a few London food bloggers I'd been reading for some time. Dino of The Epicurean, Eu Wen of A Rather Unusual Chinaman, Niamh of Eat Like a Girl, Chris of Cheese and Biscuits, twas a real pleasure, and I hope to see you all again soon!

See Young and Foodish for future events. And thank you for putting together such a fun evening!
This particular Burger Monday cost £35 per head, at

Andrews
160 Grays Inn Road
London WC1X 8ED
United Kingdom

 

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Edible Experiences. Unless otherwise stated, I attend events as a paying guest.