Tuesday 19 March 2013

Lobio - kidney beans in plum sauce

lobio - kidney beans in plum sauce
There are many delightful things about Georgian cuisine - the most obvious being khachapuri which I've posted about before.  My second favourite Georgian dish is lobio - kidney beans in plum sauce.  I tried making this a while back, using an attractively straightforward recipe involving plum jam.  It was nice but not like the lobio that you get in a good Georgian restaurant.

So, when I took Claudia Roden's "The Book of Jewish Food" out from the library, one of the first recipes to catch my eye was the one she gives for lobio.  It was amazing.  I think I demolished about 10% of it in the kitchen while supposedly cooking other stuff to go with but actually, mostly, just sneaking bits of lobio.

Mmmm - Lobio
One of the things that's interesting to me about it is that it doesn't really taste of plums.  I am not a huge fan of fruit in savoury food but that doesn't matter for this because what it adds to the flavour is not fruity/sweetness but sourness/depth/something.  

It's actually remarkably straightforward to make as well - definitely something that the Mighty Aubergine household will be returning to.  A warning - like all of the recipes in this book, it makes lots, not that that is a particular problem..

Essentially, you steam a pound of plums until they're soft, then peel and stone them (this is probably the most annoying aspect of the whole recipe), add to a bunch of coriander and whiz in the food processor with some garlic (about 4-5 cloves), chilli powder (about a tea spoon), some lemon juice (to taste but roughly half a lemon's worth).  And of course a bit of salt to taste.

Whizzing plums and coriander


Lobio sauce - post whizzing
And then you add to 500g of cooked kidney beans (either tinned or dried - I prefer the latter but mostly, if I'm honest, because I'm cheap rather than because of some incredible difference that I can perceive in the flavour) and voila - lobio!


Lobio 
You can serve it warm or at room temperature - either is good.  Obviously, it's best eaten with khachapuri but, let's face it, what isn't best eaten with khachapuri?  But you could if - for whatever reason, you don't want to make khachapuri - eat it with bread, rice, or couscous or as part of a general mezze selection.  I am tempted to experiment with using the plum sauce to go with other things...
Lobio

Sunday 17 March 2013

Restaurant review - The Yellow House, Canada Water

Like Cafe Amisha, The Yellow House is one of the restaurants that we frequent when we are tired and don't want to cook. Which means that I always forget how nice it is.

We went the other day and had fondue to start which was interesting - I am more used to fondue as a main meal.  For my tastes, the fondue was a little too boozy,the booze slightly overwhelmed the cheese which was a shame because the texture was perfect.

The pizzas that we had to follow were perfect, though - crust nice and thin and flavoursome.  One of the things that I particularly like about The Yellow House is its selection of small sweet things.  As regular readers will have noticed, I don't have that much of a sweet tooth but every now and then I fancy something sweet at the end of a meal.  Restaurant puddings are usually too much for me but a couple of chocolate truffles or pieces of fudge are perfect.  The handmade chocolate truffles at The Yellow House are absolutely amazing, some of the best chocolate that I've ever had, I think mostly because of how freshly made they are.

Saturday 9 March 2013

Restaurant review - Prix Fixe, Soho

Looking for a nice but inexpensive place to grab a pre-show meal in Soho, we chanced upon Prix Fixe where the two-course set menu before 7pm is a bargain at £13.90 (no, I don't know how they came up with that figure, either.)

The set menu has six vegetarian main courses (counting the main course salads and omelette), all of which sound lovely - no tame mushroom risotto here.  I went for the grilled aubergine, roast pepper and goats cheese roulade to start - which was perfectly cooked, lovely blend of flavours and just the right amount of food for a starter, enough to whet your appetite but not so much that you don't want your main.  Because I'm a sucker for savoury pancakes, I went for the zucchini & dill pancakes as a main which were really good.  I pretty much always love pancakes but these were particularly well done - it's easy for savoury pancakes to be dry or overwhelmed by sauce but these were perfect, lovely crispy on top, and an interesting texture to the lentil and salsify sauce.

All in all, it was great.  I will definitely be back next time I am in search of a pre or post theatre meal in Soho.

Wednesday 6 March 2013

Vegetarian etiquette dilemmas - the first in an occasional series

I was reminded the other day of a vegetarian etiquette dilemma that I have experienced.

The situation:  you're the only vegetarian in a group of friends dining at a restaurant.  The restaurant is the sort where it is common/typical to order a number of dishes for the group to share - think Indian, Chinese, tapas, Mexican, Lebanese, that sort of thing.  What do you do?

What I usually do is say, when we're all at the perusing of menus stage, that I'm vegetarian (or, if everyone knows that, to remind people), that I'm happy to share if everyone else is happy to order a reasonable number of vegetarian dishes so that I can have enough to eat but that, if the group as a whole would like to order lots and lots of meat, then I'll just get a vegetarian main course for myself.

Most of the time, what happens is that my friends say that that's fine and we order - depending on the place - usually around a half to three quarters vegetarian food, my friends all assume that I will (as I do) eat more than my "fair" share of the vegetarian dishes and, in exchange, they get my "share" of the meat to split between them.

However, I did have one bad experience, of going out to eat and doing this and having the other members of the group making passive aggressive comments about how they hadn't had a chance to try [insert name of vegetarian dishes that I had more than my "fair" share of and finished (NB - not that I did so without leaving the final pieces on the table for quite some time, giving ample opportunity for others to take them instead) ] which I found quite difficult.  Particularly because I kind of wanted to explain - "but we're splitting the bill evenly and I don't think that's particularly fair if I have had significantly less food than you" - but couldn't really do so because the comments weren't quite direct enough that I could tackle them without sounding extremely defensive.  I also sort of of felt like it was pretty obvious that I would be eating more than 1/number of people at the table's worth of the vegetarian stuff.   Basically because everyone else clearly felt that that wasn't sufficient for them because they had ordered meat dishes to supplement.  So why would it be enough for me?  However, I had forgotten that so many people suffer from the assumption that vegetarians are mysteriously able to survive on half the food that omnivores eat.  Vegetarianism, not just about leaving out the meat and eating what's left on the plate, people.  /End digression

This made me wonder whether I might be better advised to add to my opening spiel - "and, incidentally, I am assuming that you're ok with having my share of the meat in exchange for me having more than 1/number of people at the table's worth of the vegetarian food?" - though that seems tremendously awkward.

What would you /do you do?

Saturday 2 March 2013

Restaurant review - Avenue, St James, London

Recently, my lovely husband and I took advantage of the Evening Standard's Dine offer (now closed) and visited Avenue.  I picked it mostly because it is close to where I work (Victoria) and I have yet to really find a restaurant that I love near work which I feel is a bit of a shame.

As regular readers will know,  I am (greedily) mostly all about the food in a restaurant.  If a restaurant serves food that I love, as long as there aren't rodents visible and and the staff don't spit in my face, I will pretty much be happy to go back there.

That said, the service at Avenue was so good that even I noticed!  The waitstaff had it pitched absolutely perfectly - they were always prompt, they anticipated when you'd want more water, when you'd want to order dessert, etc, etc.  And they had ridiculously good attention to detail - e.g. we were sat at a long row of tables for two that were fairly close together and they seated groups as far as possible spaced out along the row, to avoid you having to be unnecessarily close to another party.  The waiter also won my heart by filling my hankering for ginger tea after the meal by getting the bar staff to add some chopped fresh ginger to some green tea.

The attention to detail carried through to the food too - for example, my pumpkin risotto was elevated from standard vegetarian risotto fare by the toasted hazelnuts on top that gave it a much more interesting texture.

The only complaint from me was that the puddings (very nice - banana sticky toffee puddings) weren't really anywhere near hot when they appeared, which was a bit of a pity.

I think it may be just a touch too expensive (£15-£20 for a main course) for me to want to go there regularly for the a la carte menu but I think I could definitely be tempted back for the set menu or the pre/post theatre deals that they have.