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.

Pancakes! Baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Happy Pancake Day!

Pancakes are pure genius.  Want something sweet?  Have a pancake.  Want something savoury and stodgy and comfort foody?  Have a pancake.  Want something savoury and posh and delicate?  Have a pancake.  Want something spicy?  Have an Indian pancake.  Is there anywhere in the world that hasn't developed its own type of pancake?

Anyway.  My lovely husband loves pancakes like all sane human beings but has plans for the evening so we decided to have pancakes the night before.  Which is perfect because it means that I can write and schedule a post to go up on Pancake Day itself which is pretty cunning.

I used Nigel Slater's recipe for the pancakes themselves and stuffed them with a somewhat random mixture of things that I had in the kitchen:  fried four chopped onions, added some mushrooms and garlic, seasoned with salt and pepper and added in some grated cheddar and chopped parsley at the end, after taking it off the heat.

onion, garlic, mushroom, parsley and cheddar pancake filling

Then, made the pancakes.  I love doing things like this on the hob - watching the butter foam, having to speedily swirl the mixture, having to flip them over.  It's all great fun!

Pancake

Pancake

As each pancake was done, I put in the batter for the next and while that was cooking, I'd fill the cooked pancake with the mixture and put in a baking dish.  I went for folding the pancakes into quarters.  Mostly because that fit well into the baking dish I had - you could do it in any number of ways.

the first of many

starting to fill up!

Nigel Slater suggested adding a knob of butter to each pancake before it went in the oven but that seemed a touch unhealthy after all the butter that went into the pan to grease the pancakes so I just went for topping with grated parmesan.  Because obviously that is totally healthy.  Baked at 200 degrees C for about 10 minutes to heat through again and melt the parmesan on top.  Nigel Slater suggests baking filled savoury pancakes for 30 minutes but that would have been waaaay too long for these, they were perfectly done after 10.

Mmmmm.  These were lovely.  I love pancakes.  Not just for Pancake Day but nevertheless Pancake Day is an excellent excuse for a few!

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Gelato in London - Black Vanilla, Greenwich

So, continuing my quest for gelato in London, we went to Black Vanilla in Greenwich yesterday.  It was very very good.

I had some apple sorbet that was basically the best apple sorbet that I have ever had and I have eaten a lot of apple sorbet.  It was just such a perfect texture, no iciness at all, just completely smooth.  The lemon meringue ice-cream that I had with it was not quite as nice - for my taste not nearly lemony enough - but perhaps it wasn't a great combination with a nicely sour apple sorbet.

My lovely husband had peanut butter and jam ice-cream which I thought was really interesting - I had kind of expected them to go for making the jam quite sweet and fruity and then have the peanut butter as the salty counterpart but, actually, they went for the peanut butter as quite sweet and the jam as the sour counterpart which was unexpectedly really nice.  I hate peanut butter and jam as a sandwich combination so it was quite impressive that I liked the ice-cream!  He also had the apple pie ice-cream which was also very nice.

Mmmmm.  Definitely going back.

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

I've been enjoying Sally Butcher's book Veggiestan which we have out from the library at the moment and am - as regular readers will doubtless be aware - rather easily persuaded into trying any recipe that involves fried aubergines.

There are two things, though, that really irritate me about the book: 

• firstly, that it is randomly patronising at times "if you don't have a lid, you can improvise one with foil", really?  really?! thank you so much for that tip, it's changed my culinary life, I would not at all have figured that out under my own steam... ; and
• secondly, as knowledgeable as the author seems to be about Middle Eastern food, she seems to be almost entirely unaware of its connections to Indian food.  For instance, she has a whole page on how drinking a salty, yoghurty drink is uniquely Iranian, *cough* salted lassi *cough*. Gujarati and Afghani food, especially, have a lot in common.  I learned a while back that there's strong historical evidence that my sub-caste (Lohana) are from Afghanistan originally, which I sometimes ponder when making recipes like this one which clearly are extremely Indian in flavours.

Basically, you fry some aubergines:

Frying aubergine slices

Frying aubergine slices

Add tomatoes, onions, chilli, coriander and tumeric and simmer for about 30 minutes, adding water if you need it:

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander and
chilli

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander and
chilli

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander
and chilli after 30 minutes of simmering

Layer it in a dish with the yoghurty sauce (yoghurt, lemon juice, garlic and mint - basically raita *cough* Sally Butcher..) and serve either hot or at room temperature.  Both myself and the lovely spouse thought it tasted even better the next day.

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

Pizza - leek/roquefort and sundried tomato/aubergine/mozzarella

Leek and Roquefort pizza

A few years ago, my lovely husband acquired a pizza dough recipe from an Italian friend of his (Guisceppe - I don't suppose you're reading but, if you are, we love you and your pizza recipe!), and we've used it regularly ever since.  It produces perfect (Italian-style, thin crust) pizza every time. 

I reproduce it below as given to us as, frankly, his directions are a lot more precise than mine.

Aubergine, sundried tomato and mozzarella pizza

Usually, we slightly ruin the purity of the recipe by piling it high with all kinds of things.  Oh, we have onions, let's put those on, look we've got half a jar of olives left over from caponata, we'll pile those on, oooh but we have that bit of gorgonzola..  etc, etc.  Our pizzas are usually half pizzas, half mountains.  Anyway. 

This time we decided - for no particular reason - that we'd try to be a bit more focussed and so we we went for one pizza with white sauce, leek and roquefort and one with tomato sauce, sundried tomatoes/aubergines/mozzarella.  We fried up the leeks before putting them on the pizza and roasted the aubergine slices.

They were Good.  

Leek and Roquefort pizza

Sundried tomato, aubergine and mozzarella pizza

Pizza dough

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

I've been working late a lot recently and so my lovely husband has been taking on more of the cooking.  The other day he made a particularly lovely pasta dish involving roasted garlic, creme fraiche, mushrooms, mangetout and spaghetti.  Mmmm.

To make it, he first of all roasted the garlic, which takes around an hour so worth bearing that in mind if you're really hungry!

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

There are a number of ways to roast garlic but he went for the method described here (the bottom of the page, "roasting garlic for cooking purposes") which seemed to produce some pretty tasty roasted garlic. 

Then, he fried up the vegetables - an onion, a selection of mushrooms and some mangetout (though, really, any vegetables would work) - added a good slug of white wine, cooked for a while longer to let that reduce, stirred in the creme fraiche, left it to heat through, then added the roasted garlic and the spaghetti. 

 

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

We decided to pack up the left overs for lunches during the week but, if you wanted to, I bet it would make for a lovely frittata di spaghetti.  That's the Italian way of using up left over spaghetti which - like much Italian cooking - is straightforward but very very good.  All you do is grease a pan (olive oil/butter/as you wish), put the spaghetti in it, crack a couple of eggs in (more if you have loads of left over spaghetti, obviously) and then cook.  Particularly good with a little cheese on top. 

More ice-cream adventures in London - ChinChin Labs, Camden

So, as I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of nice ice-cream, particularly Italian-style ice-cream.  I went, recently (while feeling a little bad for going anywhere other than Gelupo) to the Chin Chin Labs for liquid nitrogen ice-cream.  To be completely honest, I  expected it to be a bit of a gimmick. And, it was - there were silly outfits and a sales patter about the chemical process, etc.  But it was also extremely good ice-cream, some of the best I've ever tasted.  I had ginger wine sorbet with bits of ginger biscuit in it which was amazing - somehow, it didn't just taste of ginger, it tasted of ginger wine.  Mmmmm.  My lovely husband had cinnamon french toast ice cream which they make by infusing milk with cinnamon french toast.  So good.  So so good.

Tsaizika - coiled aubergine and feta filo pastry

Tsaizika - cooked

So, as mentioned before, I like to take cookbooks out of the library to test them out before adding them to my (rather too large) cookbook collection.  The other week, I took out Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking by Paola Gavin.  I took it out because it had so many unusual recipes - mostly variations on better known themes - but still.  I like cookbooks with unusual recipes.




I recently tried out my first recipe from her book - for tsaizika which I've never had before but she tells me is a Sephardic Jewish speciality from Greece.  Essentially, what this is is coiled filo pastry with a filling made from burnt aubergine pulp, feta and eggs.   Mmmmm.  In the MightyAubergine household, it generated a certain amount of hilarity:

My lovely husband:  Wow, that looks...  yoni-esque

Me:  How rude!  I'm going to put that in my blog!

MLH:  Oh, come on, you were thinking it too!

Me:  No, I wasn't!

MLH:  I bet you are now!

Me:  Ye-es.  Can't wait to.. tuck in.

Anyway.

Burnt aubergines, feta, eggs, and parmesan filling

Essentially, the filling consists of:  pulp from two burnt aubergines, 150g of feta, 2 eggs, 100g Kefalotyri (or parmesan if you have none) mashed together and seasoned with salt, black pepper and nutmeg. 

Cheat - burnt aubergines in a jar

I am pretty good at doing the burnt aubergine thing but it is time consuming and so I tend to cheat and use jars of burnt aubergine which are available from my local Turkish supermarket.  (Photo to the left.) They have the advantage of also working out quite a lot cheaper.  If you have no local Turkish supermarket or just prefer to do these things yourself, Ottolenghi's description of how to do that bit is pretty good and can be found here. 

You then roll the filling up in tubes of filo pastry (around 3 cm thick) and coil them up like a Danish pastry on an oiled baking sheet.  When you're done coiling up one roll, you do another roll and add that to the existing one to enlarge the coil.  And so on and so forth until you've run out of..  something.  I ran out of filling first.  You then bake for 180 degrees for about 30 mins or until the top is golden brown.

Tsaizika - all coiled up with the oven to go

Tsaizika - all coiled up with the oven to go

The process of coiling was..  a little messy and it decidedly did not look very artistic.  There was a certain amount of spillage as not all of the tubes held together very well.  I overlapped the next tube when that happened and kept it all quite tightly coiled and, actually, the end result was no spillage at all.  I left it to stand for a couple of minutes before cutting into it but, although I fully expected it to explode a bit, the filling was the perfect consistency - moist but non-explosive.  

Tsaizika - cooked

Tsaizika - cooked

Tsaizika - cooked - non explosive filling!

The dish was lovely - one of the most interesting things I've cooked recently.  Though, I did think it could usea different texture in the filling - the feta and the aubergine are both quite similar in that sense - perhaps olives?  or sun-dried tomatoes?  or pine nuts? I also wondered just how important all this coiling business was..  I mean, it was kind of fun but I might be inclined next time just to make it as a pie.  Or as savoury baklava.  Hmmm.  

I have been slightly spoiled by beautiful food photography in most of the cookbooks that I own and I really missed photographs/illustrations when doing this recipe - my lovely husband and I had to debate exactly how to coil the pastry using a rolled up piece of kitchen towel - but, actually, the directions that Paola Gavin gives (at least in this recipe, I have yet to try anything else in the book) were clear enough that I coped just fine.

Shak (curry) innovation - paneer, potatoes, broccoli and red pepper

I am not usually very innovative in my shak combinations.  I tend towards the traditional combinations that I was taught.  For example, I usually cook paneer with either spinach or peas (not both together).  But, for some reason, the other day, I decided to branch out and go for a new combination:  paneer, potatoes, broccoli and red pepper. 



The different textures made it quite interesting but, if I made it again, I think I'd ditch the red pepper as I don't think it added much. Method of cooking as per the usual shak recipe but with the paneer and potatoes fried together for around 15-20 minutes before the rest of the vegetables added.  Used half a tin of chopped tomatoes right near the end (no earlier to avoid making the paneer soggy) because my lovely husband loves tomatoes but you could definitely skip them.

Paneer and potatoes frying

Paneer and potatoes frying

 

Restaurant review - The Vaults, Cambridge

Much though I love my home town, Cambridge, it has never seemed to have as many good restaurants as it should do.  Or perhaps during my formative years, I just never had the money to eat at them.  Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised recently to have a lovely dinner at The Vaults.

We had the dinner menu which suggests that you have 2-3 dishes each and share.  I had the twice cooked eggs and half of the goats cheese toast and the mushrooms with stilton.  The mushrooms with stilton were delicious - I spent half my time thinking "mmmmm" and half thinking "I must figure out how to replicate this at home" (I have an idea of how to - will post when I try out my idea).  The goats cheese was pretty tasty, though came in rather small portions.  The twice cooked eggs were a good idea but rather underseasoned - I'm not sure they were salted at all and, in my view, eggs really need at least a little salt - so a bit disappointing.  Though, really, I enjoyed the mushrooms so much that I wasn't that disappointed.

In general, the only real quibble I had with the food was that the portion sizes seemed a little arbitrary - the meat dishes that my husband ordered came in much larger portions than the vegetarian dishes.  Fortunately for marital harmony, the mushrooms came in a reasonable portion size so we weren't reduced to the indignity of squabbling over the last bit of stiltony sauce.

I rather wanted some gelato to finish (as previously mentioned, I love gelato) but, sadly, they'd run out of every single flavour.  I attempted instead to order some pomegranate dessert wine but they'd also run out of that.  So, poor me, I ended up with a rather lovely espresso martini to round off the meal.

Despite having had five dishes and bread to share, a glass of wine each, a pudding for my husband and an espresso martini for me, the bill came to around £60 which I thought was damn good value.

Overall:  definitely the nicest meal out I've had in Cambridge.  I will return. 

Restaurant review - The Gate, Islington

For many years, my favourite vegetarian restaurant in London has been The Gate in Hammersmith because of its wonderfully creative and inventive food.  Far too many vegetarian restaurants are of the lentils and wheatgrass shots variety and so it's fantastic when one isn't.  I've never had a bad meal at The Gate, the only two bad things that I have to say about it are:  it's in Hammersmith (which isn't very convenient for me); and it's not got the best atmosphere, the tables are all crammed in and it looks a bit like a cafeteria.  One time that my lovely husband and I went, we were so close to another couple that it was deeply uncomfortable - they sat in silence glaring at one another for the whole meal except, at one point, one of them said to the other "I didn't think this was how we'd be spending our anniversary."  Ow.  Offputting.  Hard to carry on a cheery conversation about three inches from them. 

Anyway.  I was, therefore, thrilled when I heard that they were opening a new restaurant in Islington - Islington is much more convenient for me and, also, I figured that they might fix the problem of the tables being too crammed in together.  While, obviously, Islington is indeed more convenient for me, unfortunately seemingly they couldn't resist the temptation of cramming a few more tables in so you are still quite close to other diners when you eat, much more so than in most restaurants.  The atmosphere is a bit nicer though, less opressively white and cafeteria like.

We went during their first week of being open so perhaps this is just teething problems but the service was somewhat erratic - the first waiter we had showed us to our table and then left us without menus for about ten minutes before I caught the eye of a different waiter who seemed rather confused that we had no menus.  After that, the service was lightning fast, to be honest, a bit too fast.  I realise I'm sounding a bit like Goldilocks here but I promise you, I'm not really particularly picky about service.  I just quite like there to be a break of some sort between courses - our mains arrived literally just as I was finishing the last mouthful of the starter which was fine this time as we were both quite hungry anyway but I do, in general, prefer my meals out to last longer than an hour.  I think, next time, I might be inclined to wait until we've eaten starters before ordering mains.

Still, the main reason why I went was the food, which was - as per the Hammersmith restaurant - lovely.  As well as the usual things, they have mezze so we went for 3 mezze for £10 as a shared starter - I loved the artichoke tempura and the couscous fritters (particularly the sauce they came with), but the mushroom pate wasn't that exciting.  The portion sizes were a little on the small size - worked fine as a shared starter for two people who wanted to leave room for their mains but I'd avoid ordering some as a meal in themselves, unless you have a very small appetite.  The main courses were terrific - I had the corn cake which was beautifully put together, lots of different flavours, just the way I like my flavours, my lovely husband had the couscous encrusted aubergine which was also very nice.  Next time, I want to try the risotto cake with lots of mushrooms.  We were too full for pudding, another one for next time.

Garlic fried potatoes

Ta da!

My life is pretty good so I don't have many problems.  There are, however, two that I have been wrestling with for a little while:  my lovely husband doesn't much like potatoes but I do; and what the right side dish for Ottolenghi's stuffed onions is.


The answer to both of these questions seems to be garlic fried potatoes.  I've been messing around with these for a while and I think I now have it right.  What I do is: 

Frying potatoes

• take eight or nine new potatoes
• slice them up roughly into quarters or thirds depending on the size of them
• heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan
• fry the potatoes for about 10 minutes - until they start to give out some juice
• then crush 4-5 cloves of garlic in

Almost at the garlic stage

• continue to fry until they go crispy and golden brown on the outside (this stage usually takes another 20 minutes)
• add salt and black pepper a couple of minutes before I take them off the heat

And then eat!  I suspect that frying them in butter might make them tastier but, for health reasons, I prefer not to.  A word of warning:  these are really quite garlicky!  

cookbook review: Rachel Allen's Bake

I love taking cookbooks out of the library because it gives me a chance to test them out before committing to buying them. I'm glad I took this one out before buying it because it didn't really work for me.   I took it out to try the peanut butter and white chocolate blondie recipe as my lovely husband loves baked goods, peanut butter and white chocolate, so it sounded like a winner all round. 

Peanut butter and white chocolate blondie

They were nice but they weren't nearly squidgy enough to be called "blondies" which I think of as the white chocolate equivalent of brownies - they were more like cake - and the cooking instructions were rather unclear.   They didn't need anything like as much time as the recipe suggested but we were a bit indecisive about when to take them out because the instructions were so vague, "almost firm in the centre" isn't - in my view - desperately helpful.

I also tried the soda bread recipe.  One of our friends invited us over for dinner a while back and made soda bread and I was filled with envy watching her do it by eye (also she added garlic to it which was yummy) that I've been meaning to try soda bread ever since.  It's fun to make and pretty quick and easy.  I think I'll be making it again. 

Soda bread with coriander

But probably using live yogurt instead of buttermilk, as suggested by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall as I usually have that on hand, and maybe rye flour as I have some to use up.  Am also quite tempted to make it in scone form with black pepper and cheddar cheese.  Mmm.  Anyway, I wasn't wildly impressed with Rachel Allen's recipe.

Despite saying in the blurb, that this is made every day in her kitchen, the recipe tells you that you need somewhere between 350 and 425 ml of buttermilk.  

Soda bread with coriander

This is quite unhelpful for a few reasons.  Firstly, if you don't have actual buttermilk but are doing the lemon juice in normal milk thing, do you make 350ml and then make extra if you need it?  Or do you make 425ml and potentially waste some of it (I hate wasting food)?  Also, if you make this everyday, surely you can be a bit more precise here!



As someone who'd never made soda bread before, I wasn't entirely sure what the dough should look like so I wound up (I think) making the dough too liquidy due to the lack of direction on the amount of buttermilk necessary.

The bread itself actually turned out ok, though, I think it could have been better with less buttermilk.  I put coriander in it (she suggests that you can put in rosemary, sage, thyme, chives, parsley or lemon balm but coriander was what I had on hand) and it was really nice and fragrant. 

I'm not a terribly confident baker, though, so perhaps that's why the book wasn't a good fit for me.

Lebanese food Friday

It's my lovely husband's day to cook on Fridays, and he decided to try Foul Mudammas from this recipe, halloumi (Asda sell chilli halloumi which is awesome), hummus (that I prepared earlier in the week) and pitta. 

 Due to a slight lack of clarity in the recipe, he didn't add the cooking water from the beans which meant that it was a bit more solid than intended but still lovely.  I am always amazed at the amount of flavour you can get from lemon juice, parsley, olive oil, salt and black pepper.

Foul Mudammas

Foul Mudammas

Mmmm, halloumi!

Mmmm, halloumi!

Kosheri and spicy tomato sauce - Ottolenghi recipe

One of my favourite Gujarati dishes is "kitchari" - split mung beans (other split lentils work too) and pudding rice cooked up together with a dollop of ghee (or butter) and a bit of salt.  My nanima (maternal grandmother) particularly likes it with tomato curry (garlicky, lemony, slightly sweet, lovely - next time I make it, I will attempt to write it up as a recipe, but it's something I very much do by eye) and sev (crispy gram flour vermicelli noodles).

Mmm, tomatoes

When my lovely husband gave me Ottlenghi:  the cookbook, one of the recipes that caught my eye was the one for kosheri and spicy tomato sauce as it sounded pretty similar.  So, the other day, that's what I cooked.  The full recipe can be found in various places online, e.g. here but I don't want to plagiarise it by writing it all out.

Vermicelli noodles looking funny

It was a strange experience, eating it, because it is indeed very similar to kichari and tomato curry, but subtly different.  The Ottlenghil tomato sauce was much tangier due, I think, to the cider vinegar - to be honest, I think I slightly prefer the sweeter, more lemony, Gujarati version of this but it was nice as a change.  The kosheri was a much more interesting texture than kitchari, I particularly liked the addition of fried onions, but, really, I think the two dishes mostly just serve different roles:  kitchari is a bland, comfort-type food, I sometimes eat left over kitchari for breakfast because it is a bit like porridge; kosheri is more interesting, you could eat it on its own for lunch.

Mmmm, tomatoes..

Even the worm in the rock dreams of fresh herbs!

Overall verdict:  how far wrong can you go with tomatoes, lentils, butter-fried vermicelli noodles, and fresh herbs?

Kosheri

On the recipe itself..  I love Ottolenghi and, as usual, the recipe was incredibly precise - I always want to ask him, "does it really matter if I fry this for 7 minutes instead of 6?  REALLY?" and, as usual, if you follow it, you will end up with delicious food (which isn't always the case with cookbooks).

But, this time, I thought the ordering of the recipe was peculiar.  It suggests you make things in a sequence that would make the whole process take well over an hour when, if you read the recipe through completely, you can reorder it to make it much faster.  In particular, I think it's bizarre that you get to the end of cooking the tomato sauce, then the kosheri and - only then - does he tell you to fry a couple of onions for 20 minutes.  I didn't actually mind that much because I did read the whole recipe through and reorder it but, if I were hungry and got to the onion instruction, I'd have been Quite Annoyed.