Part Two in a Series on London's Best Roast Lunches...

My friend Katie and I headed south over the weekend to say goodbye to yet another Aussie heading home after making loads of money in IT. I wish I had studied IT.

I dislike going to award winning pubs and the White Horse in Parsons Green is the biggest winner of them all. I am not trying to be snobby; I just know that when a pub wins a “best in London” prize the posh masses will be there in a flash. And considering the White Horse is in the clientele are going to be even better heeled than normal. And I wasn’t wrong…

It was busy. Extremely busy. So busy that by 2pm they had run out of Sunday roast. So I can only go on what my fellow diners said – good quality meat, good veggies but not really enough on the plate to justify how much it cost. If I wasn’t going to have the roast I was going to have the fish and chips. But it had sold out. Third time lucky and I managed to get my order in for one of the last two pies.

It was a variation on the normal pub steak and Guinness combo, being a steak and Artois Bock pie served with my choice of chips, new potatoes or mash. I am happy to try out any drink suggestions so to accompany my pie I had a half pint of Artois Bock beer – very strong. So strong that when I asked for a pint the waiter and my friends stared at me – my friends because they know I get as tiddly as a grandmother and her Sunday sherry on a regular pint let along a pint of super-strength lager. The waiter gently suggested a half pint and I agreed.

The meal arrived and I was rather disappointed. All that was on the plate was a big mound of mash and a pie. The mash and the pie could have been the best mash and pie in the world but for £10 I think it is inexcusable not to add some greenery, at least some peas and carrots. Ah, for that I needed to order a side salad for £5. Grrrrrrrr!

The pie was good, big chunks of steak in gravy less bitter than it would be in a Guinness version. The pastry was really lovely and buttery and rather delicious. The mash was a bit too stodgy though, I found it hard to get through even half of what I was given. As I said above, a bit of shrubbery on the plate would have been good, it would break things up a bit. The beer was excellent and helped a little to cut through the heaviness, and for such a high alcohol content didn’t taste at all heavy. The White Horse has a massive range of lagers and ales on tap plus special guest beers that change regularly.

I was tempted by dessert but couldn’t afford it after the pie. My friends had cherry beer with chocolate cake. Interesting, but I will stick to coffee!

Whilst eating this meal my friends and I had great fun watching the natives. One tosser in head to toe designer gear was having great fun flying a remote-controlled plane into the traffic, nearly causing two accidents. Oh, how we laughed when a BMW ran over and crushed it and didn’t stop…

I’d go to the White Horse again for a pint some evening because of the range and because it’s a lovely, warm pub inside. But I think I will keep searching in my quest for the perfect Sunday roast lunch…

Eggs Benedict at Cecconi's

I have being doing some work with a restaurant in Mayfair called Cecconi's and I was there this morning doing some training when they offered me breakfast.

I don't usually eat breakfast as it feels like admitting that I am actually awake and productive in the morning, and that's a lie. However there are occaisons when breakfast can be taken and that is usually when staying in a decent hotel. I can't say I often go out for breakfast and breakfast meeting to me seems pure sadism.

On the rare occaison of a hotel breakfast I will invariably have eggs benedict. It's not a fancy or clever mixture of ingredients. Indeed eggs, bacon and a muffin seems almost fantastically dull. But then comes the Hollandaise and everything is simply surperb.

I am clearly a simple man as it made me very happy indeed, their orange juice was the best I've had in ages and they have simply the very best Earl Grey I've tasted. It is called Red Baron Earl Grey and is produced by the East India Tea House of London. I think you can buy retail packs of it at Harvey Nichols. If you like tea you MUST go and try this. Stunning.

Chorizo and Cannellini Bean Stew Thingy

Given that this is supposed to be a blog about food, I thought it was currently a bit light on recipes. So, I give you a recipe for this kind of chorizo and cannellini bean effort that I slung together the other weekend - more as a side dish than anything else, to accompany some big old chilli (Nigella Lawson's recipe from Feast, which I'll probably write about another time).

Anyway, it's a good week or so later and none of the brave chaps that dined on said have died yet (touch wood... dammit. Something wooden? Anything?... Door frame. Phew.).

Please also note, Jim will probably hate this, but my measurements are rather freestyle - so apologies if that bothers you.

Things you might need:
- A glug of olive oil
- A couple of chopped rashers of bacon (I used smoked streaky, mmm... fatty)
- A bay leaf
- Chopped rosemary (about a tbsp)
- Chopped thyme (ditto)
- 2 chopped cloves of garlic.
- Paprika (about a tbsp) - use any kind you like.
- A medium-sized onion, chopped.
- About a glass of red wine (more if you're feeling all Keith Floyd).
- 1 400g tin of chopped (organic ideally) tomatoes. British tomatoes are, sadly, pants.
- 1 400g tin of Cannellini beans, again preferably organic (hippies rejoice), drained, rinsed.
- About 8 inches of chorizo (insert obvious smutty joke, if appropriate) sliced into lozenges just less than a centimetre thick.
- Salt (of the Maldon Sea variety if you must), pepper (freshly-ground) and some nice fresh chopped parsley if you've got any handy. (NOT garnish. Bah.)

So, oil into a nice heavy-bottomed saucepan on medium heat, let it warm up and then in with the bacon and bay leaf for 2 minutes or so. Then in with Mr. Onion and stir a bit while the onion softens for 3 or 4 minutes. The idea is to get the bacon to brown and the onions to start to colour. If anything looks like it might go black or burn - turn down the gas. Duh.

In with the garlic, rosemary and thyme, and, once it smells all yummy, in with the wine and let it reduce down for a couple of minutes. Then add the tomatoes (out of the tin preferably) and their juice, plus the paprika (ooh, pretty colour).

Turn the heat down, pop a lid on and let it cook out for 4 or 5 minutes - by this time it should be looking pretty stewy. Lid off, and throw in the chorizo and beans. Season to taste, and pour in about a quarter of a pint of water, or more wine if you are already drunk.

Let this simmer for 5 minutes or more, basically until you are happy with the consistency, and (I stress, this is NOT garnish) stir in the parsley. Yes. All right. I realise it makes it look pretty too - but it's there for flavour. Honest.

That amount will serve two real human beings as a main course with some form of accompaniment, or as a side dish will do about six human beings, or four hundred and seven "cookbook people" who seem to be able to substist on three crumbs and thin air.

That is all.

(P.S. This is very loosely based on a stew featured in Mens Health magazine October 2005 - but I think mine tastes better. Well, I would - wouldn't I.)

Coffee and a Croissant

You can class this as a mini rant if you like, but it is certainly not intended to be that. Not sure what it is really, so I suppose you can make your own mind up.

My point is this: why is it so flaming hard and expensive to get a decent espresso and, pushing out the boat a little perhaps, a pastry?

To illustrate my point, I refer you to the two following examples:

Example one, otherwise known as "Oh for crying out loud".

So, it's quarter past stupid in the morning and the walk into work has not been kind. You got up late, haven't eaten, barely showered, and there is more than a sneaking suspicion that the pants you are wearing may not actually be yours. And if they are, then they are certainly on backwards.

Having finally convinced both of your eyes to open at the same time and accept the concept of daylight, you approach the office without having uttered a word to anyone, other than the unrecognisable expletives that you may have tried to fire at the scooter that did all it could to splatter you across the road.

In the next ten minutes, you will be expected to speak to another real human being, and possibly respond in a meaningful way to, God forbid, a client.

The only way you stand more than a snowball's chance in Hell of getting away with it is to get a double espresso and something sweet into your cake-hole before your brain thinks better of it and shuts down on a more permanent basis.

So, holding firmly onto what is clearly your last hope, you heave your sorry frame into a cafe, and after a few seconds of concentration, the red mist clears and you mutter "Double-espresso-an'-a-cwassant-please" at the charming Eastern European barista. (Not a stereotype, or generalisation, but what actually happened today).

"Three pounds" she replies. Come again? Three English pounds, is that? Lordy Trousers - but no. Suck it up Stevie, this is going to save your life. But no. No. No and thrice no, it is not. The coffee is over-extracted, and manages to be both watery and burnt. The croissant is at best elderly, and at worst tough enough to kick the 'you know what' out of me and nick my wallet - not that there's anything in it now having surrendered my life savings in exchange for some industrial-grade poly-filler masquerading as breakfast.

So, demoralised, I enter the office, and proceed to make mistake after mistake. Granted this is probably because I'm a moron, rather than because I've eaten some slightly iffy patisserie, but it can't have helped.


Now, if you are still reading (and frankly, I'd be surprised), consider example two, or "Genius" as I believe I shall subtitle it:

Saturday morning (yes, I know, I didn't know there was one either) climb out of bed. Gently negotiating your tongue from the top of your mouth with a toothbrush, it becomes apparent that perhaps an ale or two may have been consumed the previous evening. Oh dear. Checking your phone messages, you discover that the reason you set your alarm (on repeat) was to get you up to go meet your parents who are coming into town to meet you. Early. Oh dear, oh dear.

Still, all ideas of washing and underpants thrust to the back of your mind, you can just about make it if you leave now. Just remember to keep breathing and maybe the walk will help clear your head, or at the very least stem the incessant waves of nausea. Apparently it doesn't. We have a potential emergency here.

However, as fate would have it, your rendez-vous point will take you past Borough Market. You step in, hoping that the beer fairy has been kind enough to leave you even a small amount of change to buy a... oh. Wait. A pound ten. Sod and bother. But NO. SAVED. Monmouth does take out double espresso for 60 pence, and a fresh croissant - fresh I tell you - is but 50. SAINTS BE PRAISED!! There is now every chance that you may live until at least midday.

SO - my question is this:

Why in the name of God can't someone open a decent, reasonably priced coffee shop anywhere near my flaming office?? Huh? I mean, there's an 'Apostrophe' nearish, but it's pricey, and I'm afraid I'll leave with armfuls of cakes as I am quite simply WEAK.

Sorry - but I hope you see my point. Rant over.

Ode to Fish Sauce

(Another one from Dani)

I’ve gotten into the habit recently of reading up on ingredients that really interest me so I can better understand how they work to make dishes taste great. I am not as fanatical as some people I know who can tell you the chemical breakdown of everything. I love reading about Heston Blumenthal’s ideas but I can only understand half of what he’s on about. I haven’t studied science since I was 15 and the science I do know is from archaeology at university – carbon dating isn’t that useful in cooking, no matter how much you’ve burnt your toast in the morning.

Mainly the things I’ve been looking at are ingredients not much used over here but common in kitchens back home in Australia because of our fondness for South East Asian cuisine. Fish sauce is more widely used over here than, say, ketjap manis (Indonesian soy sauce) and sambal olek (Indonesian chilli sauce). I make regular expeditions to Chinatown for these ingredients. I’ll share my musings on those condiments in another entry but for now I’ll bore you with my ponderings on fish sauce…

Ode to Fish Sauce

This is how much I love fish sauce: I’ve visited a factory making it and I still adore it. Fish sauce is made by fermenting really small fish in salt for a very long time. As you can imagine fish sauce factories smell really bad.

Fish sauce is like MSG – makes stuff taste great and found in just about anything in Thailand (see further reading notes). Fish sauce is used a lot like soy sauce in other Asian cuisines or salt in Western cuisines. It’s the cornerstone of Thai food and widely used in the rest of South East Asia. The Thai word for fish sauce is nam plagh or “fish water”.

It’s normally made from small, schooling saltwater fish, similar to anchovies, found in the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand. Fish sauce can be made from freshwater fish but having travelled around Thailand I wouldn’t recommend eating anything out of the rivers which are badly polluted by agriculture and sewage run-off.

Despite the fact everything is going to be turned into a stomach-turning rotting mess within a few days freshness is very important in making great fish sauce. The fish go straight from the boat to be rinsed and drained and mixed with sea salt in large earthenware jars lined with salt. The jar is topped off with a thick layer of salt and covered with a woven mat to stop the fish floating out. These are then left in the sun for up to a year to rot. Every now and again the jars are uncovered and exposed to direct sunlight, helping the fish to turn into fluid. I am not a scientist so I won’t explain the process here as I am bound to stuff it up. But I understand that exposing the rotting fish to sunlight periodically helps turn the resulting liquid a clear, reddish brown colour and a fragrant aroma. I mean fragrant too – fish sauce smells lovely, like the sea, and erm, fish.

After around a year the liquid is removed from the jars and any sediment are strained out with a clean cloth. The fish sauce is decanted into clean jars and allowed to air out; helping get rid of those stronger fish odours. It’s then bottled and there you have it, nam plagh.

This is the proper fish sauce, the best you can get, the extra virgin olive oil of fish water. Lesser grades of fish sauce are made by adding salt water to cover the fish remains and allowed to rot for just 2-3 months. Making natural, top-grade fish sauce is pretty time intensive – making it on a large scale requires big bucks. Therefore there are some fish sauces made from a process of hydrolysis in which some kind of enzyme or acid is added to hasten fermentation, while others are made by diluting natural or hydrolyzed fish sauce with salt water flavored and colored with sugar, caramel and MSG. To make sure you are using top quality fish sauce you should look for liquid that is a clear reddish brown color, a bit like sherry, with no sediment. If it’s dark or muddy brown it’s a lower grade or not naturally fermented. Good fish sauce adds flavour to your meal, but it shouldn’t make everything taste like fish. This is my favourite use for fish sauce – a simple, versatile dipping sauce which can also be used as a sauce for stir-fries and marinating meat. It’s called nuoc cham in Vietnamese. I recently used it when making roll-your-own Vietnamese spring rolls. You need to make it about an hour before serving.

I am bad at measuring things out precisely but this is how I do it:

¼ cup fish sauce
Juice of one small lime
Two crushed cloves of garlic
½ tsp sambal olek or a small amount of finely chopped red chilies to taste.

Mix together in a small bowl and serve.

(Nice little link to an article on MSG if you're interested: “If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn't everyone in Asia have a headache?”)

Preem, Brick Lane

So, it's Friday evening, you've just left work and you fancy a curry. Having deftly avoided being roped into drinks with work, and roundly ignored your boss's final exhortations to actually achieve something in the course of your afternoon, you stride manfully (or indeed, womanfully) into the night.

But where to go? Um... well. Brick Lane presumably? I guess - I mean that's like curry central, right? Surely.

Surely, indeed.

At this point I could try to tell you precisely how many curry houses there are on Brick Lane, but me and counting have never really seen eye to eye, so I'm just going to go with 'lots'. I've been to a few of them now - granted not always in a suitably sober state for proper objective analysis - but the one I tend to choose when I can still see and form cogent sentences is Preem. Here are some of the reasons for which I like it:

1 - They don't try to lure you in with offers of discount nosh. They don't have to. Their food is genuinely tasty, in my humble opinion, so I guess there is no need for them to get involved in all that Ibiza-esque touting.

2- I really enjoy the food. I am a bit of a Lamb Dopiaza fan (please, let's not get into a discussion about authenticity of curry dishes. It's beyond that now. I don't care if it doesn't taste like it does in India - it's comfort food. I want a 'British curry'. Feel free to disagree.) and they do a nice tasty one. Tastier than some of the others I've had on that road. Hence my backing - for what little it's worth. Their Sag Aloo (spinach and potato thingy) is pretty yummy too.

3- Prompt, friendly, unassuming service. I know I don't know what some of the words mean, and that my pronunciation is rubbish - but that doesn't seem to bother them. I'm well aware that I may come across as an ignorant fool, but the waiters (there weren't any waitresses) didn't make me feel like that.

4- It's probably pricier than the other places, but I'd rather pay a little bit more and feel happier about what I'm eating. Possibly some weird old psychological thingy, and I'm being duped - but that's my paranoia again.

Part One in a Series on London’s Best Roast Lunches

This review is brought to you by an Australian friend of mine, named Dani. I hope you enjoy it. (ed. Stevie, who is quite obviously not an Australian girl)

I am an Australian girl on a mission. A quest for the best Sunday roast lunch in London, just like Mum used to make. Actually, my mum cooked rubbish roast lunches, really dry and with Yorkshire puddings like hockey pucks and definitely nothing to remember so perhaps that’s not the best yardstick. However, we did have Anne, a family friend and a Pom who taught my little sister Emma, now a chef, and me, a keen amateur, what roast lunches should really taste like.

Brisbane, the city I grew up in, is not a place noted for roast lunches, normally because it’s just too bloody hot to be stuffing around with stuffing and hot potatoes. Sunday lunch is normally salads and seafood or that most Aussie of meals, a barbeque. But every now and again Anne braved the elements to cook us the roast lunches I measure all roast lunches against. The lamb or beef was moist, flavoursome and perfectly cooked. She made the most delicious gravy from scratch. Mountains of golden potatoes, pumpkin and sprouts. Peas fresh from the pod. And best of all, big, fluffy Yorkshire puddings.

Fast forward ten years and I’m living in London, having completely fallen in love with this city and its occupants. I’ve fallen even more deeply in love with its pubs. And these pubs usually serve Sunday lunches. Over the past few months I’ve been visiting different pubs to sample their Sunday lunches and cure any residual hangover headache. I’ve had some good meals and some rubbish meals that I wouldn’t serve to my little brother. If you don’t have to go home to your mum’s for Sunday lunch then the Prince is a jolly good option to fatten yourself up for the week ahead.

The Prince is located on Kynaston Road, just off Church Street in Stoke Newington. Stoke Newington was recently named in the Observer as the best place to raise children in the UK. Thankfully not too many of these children are in the Prince on a Sunday afternoon.

They have a policy of serving roasts made from England’s finest rare breeds and I can highly recommend ordering the mixed roast of beef, lamb and pork. The slabs are thick and marbled with fat, a characteristic of traditional breeds. I love fat in my roast meats. It’s what gives the meat its rich flavour and me my big tummy. The veggies served with the roasts vary from season to season – I’ve had a wonderful cabbage and bacon dish in the past, but on this occasion I had fresh beans which were perfectly cooked and lovely fluffy roast potatoes. The Yorkshire pudding is massive, the size of my fist, and straight out of the oven. Freshness is the key here. I’ve come in here once at the 12pm opening and the horseradish sauce served was still hot from being made by the chef just moments earlier.

The only drawback is that the meal is a good £2-3 more expensive than the other pubs in the area and the servings not as large. However I prefer to sacrifice quantity for quality in my food. The service is usually great, though on busy Sundays a bit slow. However, the fact that it’s busy means a high turnover, so no nasty roast meat that’s been in the oven most of the day.

The Prince has a great wine and beer list, plus a great range of vegetarian meals including one of the best nut roasts I’ve ever eaten. Not that I’ve eaten many since becoming a dedicated carnivore after a sad brush with vegetarianism at university. They serve great hamburgers as well, with freshly made beef patties. But I am on a mission to find the best roast, not the best burger. If anyone has a suggestion on where to find one that is even better than the Prince's then I am up for the challenge!

Book Review: "The Pedant in the Kitchen" - Julian Barnes

I find cook books immensely frustrating. Things never quite turn out how they are promised. Julian Barnes and I are very similar in that regard with the notable exception that he can explain how in an amusing and enlightening way.

There are no recipes in the book, however his appraisals of several notable cookbooks led me to relegate a couple to the bottom shelf and then go out and buy a few more. Of the ones he recommends I have found a sense of harmony with.

If you find terms like a handful (I have very large hands, I suspect too large) useless, or that cooking times never, ever, ever match the one in the book then reading this is rather like letting someone vent your spleen for you.

I loved it, and recommend it highly.