A Recipe Believe It Or Not

It's National Sausage Week so I wanted to cook up some bangers to celebrate I had some Waitrose pork, leek and chive sausages in the freezer that I needed to use up and while I don't mind the odd sausage, barbecued and shiny with oil, more so if it comes from a charity sausage sizzle, I just don't get the fuss. But I love using sausages for meatballs, squeezing the meat out of the skins for instant little balls of deliciousness. They only need the quickest roll in damp hands and are already seasoned so they make the perfect mid-week supper (can you tell I work in food in the UK? It's all about 'mid-week suppers'). Italian sausages make great spaghetti and meatballs or in lasagne instead of ragu. The pork, leek and chive sausages would have been lovely in a noodle soup, but try this spaghetti:

For 3-4 servings, squeeze the meat from about 7 sausages into small balls (roll with damp hands) and drop into a pan coated with a good lug of olive oil. Brown all over, then add 2 sliced garlic cloes and a shake of dried chilli flakes. Cook for 5 minutes, then pour in a cup of chicken stock and bring to a simmer. Continue cooking for 10 minutes, or until the liquid has almost evaporated. If you love frozen peas like I do, then drop in a handful. Add cooked spaghetti, a handful of parsley and a good grating of Parmesan. Serve!

And This

Gold

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I am cooking again. Flicking through food blogs and the plethora of food magazines I subscribe to (but could probably get free from work). Last night, calves' liver from South Kensington farmer's market, flash fried, with polenta and braised onions. Brownies. Today, Nigel Slater's plum cake.

I emerged from the post-Ibiza blues, finally. Stopped holiday-smoking. It's no party. But you get there. Thank gawd.

London is cold but I made myself go out on Saturday night with a new friend. Once out, it was not so cold, with overhead heaters at Cafe Boheme. Cute shepherd-like waiter. The clubs were hugely disappointing.

My hair is chin-length short, something I have wanted to do for many winters but talk myself out. So I had a good-hair-day, walked in to Mr Toppers on Goodge St. 'Me Gustas Tu' was playing and so it was meant to be. The boy who cut my hair was an Asian Marc, so it really was meant to be.

Will be coming home for Christmas and I'm so excited!

Morocco Photos

You want photos? Stories to come.

Prague

Going to Prague for 3 days for Jo's birthday. Yay!

(I know I promised updates - what can I say. Busy at work, snail-slow internet at home, I'll get back to it, trust me!)

Happiness Is...

There are times when living here is as unordinary as a passing breeze - that is, it's fairly undistinguishable. Other times, like last night, you catch yourself in the moment and it's happiness. 9.30pm, Thursday night, and you're at a tiny bar with an old school friend, who you weren't friends with at school but have become friends with on the other side of the world, and on comes a poppet of a singer and her cute accompaniment belting out a contrast of show tunes - Frank Sinatra meets Nirvana, Shaggy does Shirley Bassey - it's hilarious and the singing is great and we dance and drink Laos beer. In a tiny underground bar in the middle of London. And get a rickshaw to the last Tube home.

Today the sun's come out. It might not be summer - it's far from summer - but these occassional moments make life in London sparkle.

Itching The Travel Bug

Gorgeous riads booked: check
Wondering if Ryanair will again pretend our cabin size baggage isn't really cabin size and must check them in at the bargain rate of £32: check
Biography of Churchill borrowed from library: check
Looking forward to five days in a country I've always, always wanted to visit: check

Off to Morocco with Andrew, back on Monday. Promise to update blog - promise!

London

Londoners are basking in a wonderfully warm start to the week with temperatures soaring to 26 degrees in part of the city.
Companies are coming to terms with a wave of sudden sickies as staff choose to sneakily cash in on the summer sun. But chances are they’ll be back behind their desk by Tuesday, when clouds again appear across the country and stay for the rest of the week.
The Met Office said...“Cold and drizzle will start to come across from the west late in the day and will cover the country for much of the week.
“My advice would be to get the sun today while you can.”

Me bloody too.

Paris

We took the Eurostar to Paris (FYI the only way to go) and under the first warm rays in weeks I showed her my Marais and instantly she loved it, and it made me so happy. We ate steak tartare and fois gras with Cotes du Rhone at my old favourite, Les Philosophes, and she let me smoke. We walk around Ile Saint-Louis, no, you stroll around Ile Saint-Louis, with the familiar taste of Berthillon ice-cream. The Picasso museum which is not as good as the first time I went (they are undergoing renovations). I love speaking French again. It makes me want to stop at the Sorbonne and spend a month studying. Or maybe Rome, because when I look at the playlist for Pavarotti on our last day, I want to speak that language. Something inside me feels an affinity with Italy and I can’t waste that…

We had dinner at Le Souffle, the restaurant I thought had to be a novelty but with so many good reviews decided to give it a go, and to go all the way and try the menu tout souffle. It was so much fun! Three courses of voluminous souffles, first cheese, then with morilles, then dark chocolate with white chocolate sauce. You’ve never seen anything so pretty. The wine was delicious and the service cheeky. It’s a quaint, popular restaurant and a must to try. The only downside is after so many souffles, and so many eggs, you don’t want to go near any of the delicious quiches in boulangeres around town, even though they would make perfect picnic food for our last day, when I take mum to the Jardin du Luxembourg, and Paris is hot and the sky is blue, and the flowers are bright and we roll up our trousers and sit on the chairs with our heads back and it’s so, so good. Summer in Paris. Instead, we have a typical lunch at a café on the Rue du Rennes, near where I stayed five years ago, which feels so long ago, and yet also heart-thumpingly fresh. We waste time looking for a dress I don’t need around Galleries Lafayette, and it’s so hot we can only go back to Ile Saint-Louis, for another two scoops of Berthillon ice-cream (cherry, milk chocolate with hazelnuts), overlooking the river, with couples sunbaking and neither of us want to go home.

In between, we eat buttery pastries with coffee for breakfast, and go to the Musee d’Orsay for something like four hours. Our legs and feet hurt in more ways we can describe, yet we see the bright Van Goghs and Monets and the pretty Degas ballerina sculpture and I remember how much I love Gauguin. We see it all and walk through Saint Germain des Pres and queue up at Laduree because I think macarons are Paris-in-a-dessert and we eat pistachio eclairs in the shade of the church, watching pigeons try and mate. We even walk home, because I have promised that on this trip there shall be falafel, from L’as du falafel, and the previous night they are closed, so they must be open tonight, but they are not, and we can’t work out why. In the Marais, on a Sunday night, tired and hungry, and wanting fish. I suggest Bofinger, never having been but it suits our requirements. We end up having a surprisingly good and cheap meal of oysters and fish with choucroutte (I didn’t think it could work, it did) and crème brulee.

We slept to the sound of light traffic on Rue du Rivoli, to sponge up all the senses of Paris.

The Most Wonderful Visit

It was so good to have mum over. We did and saw so much, and as friends.

We went to the Tate Modern and were disappointed with the collections (except the Russian propaganda room and the Seydou Keita room). Our first weekend had to include a trip to Borough Markets, and squeezing through the crowds we snacked on plump oysters and eclairs and proper fish and chips, which they were - golden and crunchy with hand-cut chips dunked in real mushy peas. (Sitting on the floor, which we'll never forget). The surprise was long gone but I'd been looking forward to taking mum to Covent Garden for Romeo and Juliet since I managed the nab the last decent tickets weeks before. It was so beautiful and we were hugely impressed. The prima ballerina was spectacular. I feel like I was dragged to ballet and opera as a young 'un and thought I wouldn't enjoy it, that is was more for mum; the opposite, I was swept away with the performance and music. We had such a good time that we went back the next day for a free lunchtime recital with a brilliant young soprana, and then in the evening for Tosca. I had tears streaming down my face. On her last day, we went to the Royal Banqueting Hall in Whitehall (on Horse Guard St *wink*) for a performance of Pavarotti's most famous arias which was a lot of fun. And today, I'm sitting here listening to Pavarotti and Callas and Puccini with CDs from the library. Thank you mum for showing me how beautiful this music is x

We saw the Sex and the City movie. Went to the National Gallery and ogled the Seurats and Ingres'. The V&A. We'd planned a long weekend in Paris and I was able to work two days together, so had five days in a row off and wondered where to go. To Islington to check on getting a Russian visa which wasn't to be but instead had a truly delicious lunch at Ottolenghi. Florence was an option. But we decided to go to Latvia.

Back!

From a visit to London Zoo

There is so much to catch up on that I feel put off in starting. The reason for my blogging absence is the visit of mum, who came to stay for a month and left on Tuesday. We only finally got internet last week as well, so I look forward to getting back into the swing of blogging and flickring and catching up on your blogs.

Mum and I had a truly wonderful time. We did and saw so much. Went to Paris and even Latvia, which turned out to be the most incredible experience.

I have to run off to a black tie awards night for work so enjoy some photos in the meantime.

Paris
Latvia

Ok

I only started my new job this week, after big company politics yada yada postposted the kick-off date. Knowing the power of google (even more so, now) please understand the slight ambiguity, but my new job is Senior Producer for the food site of a Big TV Network. So my job is about the web and food, which makes it my Ideal Job. My particular position is commercially slanted so I will be focusing on the commercial direction of the site, as well as some editorial, and will have my own project on one of the big cooking shows coming out later this year, which is very exciting. For the moment, I am job sharing so my position is part-time for two months, but there is a lot of work so I hope this will increase and become full time permanent.

The people are really nice and pro-active, I will be learning what I've wanted to in this area, and will be a great challenge.

Taking The Edge Off

I came home to an empty house, with intentions of watching The Big Game (Man U v Chelsea) at a pub, although secretly knowing I wouldn't. I took the edge off the day with a longneck of Peroni, and made my favourite homecooked dish in the world, mushroom pasta. It isn't a fast supper, but you'll be rewarded with slowly sauteeing the onion and garlic, and then again with the chopped field mushrooms, maybe half an hour all up. A good dollop of thick, yellow Guernsey cream, thyme, generous seasoning. Zest a little lemon - this is essential - it transforms the awkward, grey sauce into something special, and grate Parmiggiano before the first forkful.

I make enough for lunch tomorrow, again, secretly knowing it won't last that long, and eat it up with Ronaldo's goal, then Lampard's.

Update: Brilliant game!

Eat

1. Whole Foods will be the end of me. Stopping in for, I'm not sure what really, I find a Simon Weaver Cotswold brie that I had wanted to try. It's mild and clean-tasting, but no hints of lush spring grass I had hoped.
2. At the Marylebone farmer's market on Sunday, there is not too much of everything, except friendly sellers, delicious chargrilled lamb rolls with homemade tomato sauce, good-looking yuppies and cheap vegies. Along with crunchy Red Pippin apples - the name is enough to buy them - a garlicky goat's cheese and new season asparagus, I nab two bags of field mushrooms the size of saucers for the price of one, and that evening make stuffed mushrooms. Onions sauteed gently, then mixed with chopped mushroom stems, breadcrumbs, thyme and parmesan, and topped with a disc of chevre, in which I press in a sprig of thyme to make it look pretty. Roasted. Unbelievably delicious.
3. After the markets, I stop into Waitrose, because there isn't one too near us, and I do love Waitrose. They have Charentais melons, for quite a bit cheaper than Whole Foods, and I really want to see how fragrant and sweet they are. Tonight, with slices of organic prosciutto di Parma from WF, some of the best I've ever had, just when I was 'getting over' prosciutto. Light and delicate, with bright orange sweet fruit, washed down with sparkling Grolsch. I'm happy.

Roast Chicken, And My Story

I've always wanted to roast a chicken, but few things were as daunting. I was sure it would turn out dry, flavourless, a waste of a poor chicken. And some things - most things? - I just don't want to get wrong. Either the most delicious roast chicken, or nothing.

But it was time to try. Finding Roast Chicken, And Other Stories in the library confirmed it, and after devouring a million recipes and techniques, a 1.3kg free-range corn-fed chicken was brought home. I knew how I wanted to do it: rubbed all over with my favourite butter, Lescure flecked with Atlantic sea salt (eat it like you would cheese, a sliver over oat cakes, divine), seasoned and sprinkled with thyme leaves, and stuffed with half a lemon, many unpeeled garlic cloves and more sprigs of thyme. Into the oven breast side down, and halfway through, flipped over and baby Jersey Royal potatoes tucked beside it. The warm roasting smell in the house was very distracting. The chicken came out the colour of nut brittle, and I squeezed out the soft garlic and smoothed it into the juices. I then realised I had no idea how to carve a chicken, but managed to evenly slice away a few succelent pieces. Because yes, the chicken was juicy and delicious! The famed potatoes were as nutty and creamy as I'd hoped, even better smothered with the garlicky gravy (which was too good the next day, hardened and spread over brown bread like butter with some cold chicken). Woo hoo, I can roast a chicken!

Afternoon

This is one photo taken from the last few weeks that I actually like, more than like. I love the shapes, the colours, the simplicity of a sunny afternoon in our garden.

Basta

I should've been Italian; all I seem to eat, or want to eat, is pasta, pasta, pasta. Here, cute elbows of macaroni with reduced tomato and onion sauce and sauteed zucchinis.

A Trip To The Library

The Last Few Days

Thursday
I've been taking the bus as much as I can, even if it takes 10 times longer than the Tube. I love sitting on the top for the best view around town. Popped down to Oxford Street to buy a bag from Mexx and crossed through Selfridges in a what-the-hell moment. Was struck dumb.struck by the fluro Marc Jacobs bags at the Oxford St entrance. I walked past them, backtracked, fell in love, touched their velvety grey insides. Fluro and grey. It's silly and necessary all in one, and I've never felt this way about a bag before.

Friday
Not wanting to take this glorious 25 degree weather for granted, we took the bus down to Brighton for the day. It had been blue skies all week but greyed over on Friday; no matter, we had a lovely day. Walked down the pier, through the little streets, had a nice lunch at one of the many Italian cafes. We really wanted fish and chips but equally didn't want to be ripped off as tourists coming to Brighton for beach and fish and chips, and Fat Leo's 2 courses for £5.95 was hard to beat. An icecream afterwards. The sun did come out an hour before the bus back, and we dipped our toes in the icey sea. I want to come back and jump in.

We are addicted to Peep Show. It's literally the best comedy ever. Must find previous seasons. We don't feel bad about staying in on Friday nights if this is the reward. Tell her I love her is the funniest thing we've ever heard.

Saturday

Drinks at Knightsbridge with lovely M and J, then drinks at trendy The Waterway at Little Venice. Very cool on the canal. Canals in London? Yes! Beautiful hot weather in London? Yes! Spotted my first Bill actor? Yes.

Sunday

Sunbaking by the Thames down the road from us. It's still a little weird stripping down to your bikini when you're in a park, but when in London...Everyone is picnicking and drinking jugs of Pimms and listening to the red-faced Irishman sing sea shanties. Delightful.

We come back and sit in the garden, with white zinfandel spritzers and the DJ's music coming from the laptop. Next door, a gentleman in white trousers and a checked blazer plays with his cute giggly grand-daughter. His English is extremely posh and the exchanges are hilarious:

"I won't pick that up for you again! No, I shan't. I shan't pick that up for you again!"

"Tell me which sentence is more grammatically correct?" (she is about two years old, mind).

"Your dolly has no hair. Why, she's Baldy-locks!"

Springtime

It's hot. Yesterday my reaction was, I should get to the beach today. Except there is no beach to get to. So, the park instead, with rolled up trousers like everybody. But the feeling of hot sun on skin, and a perfect blue sky, after months of cold - priceless.

We had a wonderful weekend. Saturday to Notting Hill market, although we'll be keeping to our Ladbroke Grove end from now on, except for the German hotdog stand halfway down for the most delicious, juicy chicken burgers. Sunday was the Brick Lane area, for more market browsing and sooo-good Polish smoked sausage hotdogs, with Indian snacks on the way home. London is a picnicers paradise.

The weather is warm, the days are long and we love sitting in our little garden with a bottle of sauv blanc and nibbles. I'm dreaming of Ibiza sometime over the summer - it has to happen. And I'm hungry for Italy, although different places pull me on different moods. I miss Palermo, I want Rome, and I remember last year in Tuscany, on the back of S's motorbike, lunch of silky pasta near Montepulciano, the cold water and hot skin at the seaside.

Pinch *ouch Pinch *ouch

I got my ideal job. As in, my ideal job. Being superstitious I won't say anything until I start, and that's next week, but I'm still pinching myself.


We celebrated on Monday at the local gastropub. There seems to be a gastropub in every neighbourhood and I'm not sure if the gastronomic means anything but the ubiquitous hamburgers, fish and chips and jacket potatoes that all pubs serve, delicious as they can be. The Havelock Tavern is a quiet pub (ie, they could do with a little background music) and was full on the Monday night. The food is simple but well done. My plump salmon, smoked haddock and leek fishcake was served with a perfect spring salad of rocket, fresh peas and shallots. Dani's chicken, chorizo and mushroom casserole was tender and scrummy. Sadly our shared cheese plate was supermarket-basic.

***

Yesterday I went to Whole Foods in Kensington. It was some kind of hell, as in I couldn't decide if I loved this temple to expensive, opulent good food or hated how much of it there was. It's the size of a department store, where you can hand-pick your eggs (hen, quail, duck, ostrich) and by the shimmering fish counter you can pour yourself a chioce of four different seafood soups to eat with cute wooden eco sustainable carbon-neutral spoons. That is if the dozen soups upstairs aren't enough. After about an hour I had to leave and buy a pair of shoes to recouperate (beige, patent, Zara, mid-heel).

Sunday's Roast Is Wednesday's Stew

Messy and utterly delicious.

The lamb rump we bought at the Real Food Festival never made it to the oven. There was ideal-j0b-getting-celebrating and it-didn't-defrost-in-time-so-we-had-a-takeaway-curry. So last night we sliced it, like butter, in big dices, quickly seared it in the wok, then threw in two chopped beefheart tomatoes, smashed garlic, lots of rosemary leaves, and 1.5 cups of merlot, to almost cover the meat. The laziest of simmers, lid on, for 1.5 hours. Then chopped carrots and potatoes for another half an hour. Soft lamb, a delicious, golden sauce. Easy.

Questions For Locals*

1. What is the deal with Cafe Rouge? Are they any good?

2. Where can you get a good, reasonably priced manicure in London, preferably centre/west?

* and by locals, I still mean you Rali

Real Food Festival

I had been looking forward to the Real Food Festival for months, and was so relieved that we moved in yesterday so I could hoard what I hoped would be many goodies home.

I hoped right: the festival was absolutely amazing, a veritable feast. Kath, Andrew, Susan, you would have died and gone to foodie heaven.

The Real Food Festival is all about quality food, direct from the farmers. The food might be organic, free-range, humanely reared, concerned with sustainable farming, and talking to the farmers today, these were people who understood and cared about those labels instead of just slapping them on the packet. They were bubbly, enthusiastic, invited us out to visit the farms, to pick our own cherries, coming up with great ways of getting their produce from the farms to bobos like me in the city. It was extremely impressive, and extremely delicious.

As any food festival goer knows, first in, best fed. So we were there at 10am, getting woozy on sampling all the morsels we could. There was cheese, meat, cheese, cakes, oils, chutnies, cheese, salamies, juices, wine, ok, everything. And then some. It was huge, and took us over three hours to cover every delicious stall.

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Oysters are my favourite food in the world. After the World Cup in 2006 I went to Cancale in Brittany, home of what many say are the world's best oysters, just to try them. And I was satisfied in concluding that Sydney rock and Pacific beat them hands down. Today, there were a handful of oyster sellers and I sampled oysters from three different farms, and was blown away. I'm sorry Sydney, but the oysters I had today (details to come, I have an evening of brochure sorting ahead of me) were magnificent. The luminous pale grey bulbs were the taste of the sea. I can't describe them any better. They were faultless. Stunning.

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The prices were really good and I bought up big: melting mozzarella di buffalo, blushing beefcheek tomatoes, butter flecked with salt crystals, a scotch egg from Heston Blumenthal's pig supplier, pots of crab, pork and Stilton sausages, and a salt marsh rump of lamb for a proper Sunday roast tomorrow.

See more of the photos at my flickr photoset.

Home Sweet Home

Moving was painless. We love Hammersmith. I'm sure there are nicer parts of London - certainly everyone (from north London) tells us so; but it has everything we want and we feel instantly at home. Our little corner reminds me that London really is a city of villages. Around the block, we have a nook of little shops, a fish and chipper (with falafel and kebabs), dusty chemist and a cute-looking Italian restaurant. We are down the road from the White City development, which at the end of the year will be the biggest shopping centre in Europe. In the meantime, there are busy shops and supermarkets left, right and centre. And our street is pretty, tweeting with birds and lined with beautiful pale pink blossoms.

Locals: can anyone recommend broadband/wireless internet? It looks like our run of free wireless has come to an end :-(

Moving Day

We're moving to our place in Hammersmith tomorrow, and hopefully we'll be able to leech internet so I can show you around.

In the meantime, enjoy Fee, the Hungarian puli dog, aka the best thing I've ever seen, jumping in a competition in Germany.

What's Going On

With my beloved Richard Quest?

Another Favourite Ad

Watch till the end.

There's Something I Kinda Like About This

In a 'modern art' kind of way. Burger King is introducing the £85 burger.

St George's Day

We had to celebrate St George's Day with British food. I decreed it so. It was only halfway through our search for a suitable pub that I realised we should be finding a curry joint, tucking into a tikka masala while working out who George was and if dragons really exist? Too many pubs had the ubiquitous nachos and jacket potatoes. However word on the street, or Time Out, pointed us in the direction of the Princess Louise in Holborn, down the road from us. The restaurant upstairs could have done with some tunes but had a nice, loungey feel decked out with portraits of Princess Louise. Who was Princess Louise? Not sure, but there was plenty of British on the menu. Tick.

Lancashire hot pot for Dani didn't have enough lamb but was still tasty, and my beef suet pudding was delicious, both served with mustard mash and vegies. Mmm, suet. Served with a Smith's wheat beer. Cheers, England!

Just One More Time

Catching Up

What do two girls who are desperately looking for work in London do? We live in Bloomsbury and drink delicious coffee. We meet new friends for outrageous times. We walk along the Thames. We eat fish and chips and bangers and mash. We go to the gym and do Julia classes (pilates, yoga) and Dani classes (body pump, spin). On Saturday we walk down to Covent Garden and then The National Gallery. It is such a wonderful gallery and I'm thrilled with the beautiful works of art, Seurat, Ingres, luscious mangoes from Gauguin. The building inside is stunning - large round ornate ceilings filled with perfect light. I can't wait to go back again and again, and you can here, because the galleries are free and it's so important.

I will talk work another time. Hopefully we move in to our new place on Friday. I say 'hopefully' because the agents are degenerates.

I love it here.

London In The (Almost) Summer Time

I had a million names for this new blog...Pants Off? (Rali, wouldn't that have been the best? Alas taken). Tales Of A Hard Man? And one particularly cheesy one, Eat Pret Love (geddit?).

But it's London in the (almost) summer time and a line from one of my favourite RHCP songs stuck in my head,

Summer time to talk and swear
Later maybe we could share some air
I'll take you to the movies there
We could walk through Leicester Square

And hopefully I'll still be here when it will be,

Time to say hello to snow on the Thames

I'm ready to write and take photos again, so thanks for joining me at this new blog.