Broad Beans

I love broad beans.
I find them extremely consoling now that the asparagus is over...
Though they're a whole lot more labour intensive.

Tonight, they are mashed into a garlicky, basileous, hazelnutsome "pesto", smothered over cucumber sticks and slathered with sweet chilli sauce.
Super summery :-)



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Burger Monday

Last night, through the sweltering heat and threat (as yet still unfulfilled) of thunderstorms, I dragged husband out to Andrews' Cafe in Holborn for The Burgermat Show, his very first Burger Monday experience...

Last night's burger was brought to us by Fred Smith of the Admiral Codrington, with accompanying burger art placemats curated by the splendid Burgerac.

So...

My Burgermat:



A tasty beerperitif:



Fabulous starter sharing platter. We were told that one in eight of the peppers were lethal, but it wasn't one of the eight we ate.
Gazpacho, taramasalata, padron peppers, pork scratchings with apple sauce and tasty crispy toasty things.




Burger.
Juicy, meaty byrger.
Much cheese, bacon and coleslawy sauce.
V good.
The brioche type bun had a nice level of sweetness and just enough integrity to stop the whole thing disintegrating.
Good chips too!




The obligatory internal "burger shot" (yes, yes - I know...)




And, just to make sure that we really couldn't get up from our seats - the cheesecake...



EXTREME!

I shan't need to eat again for a week.
Which is a convenient length of time, as, a week from now, I shall be returning for more Burger Monday goodness :-)

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And Yesterday

One of my current favourites.

Mango, avocado, spinach and leftover chicken salad...



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Couldn't Be Bothered

...To cook, but didn't want to get takeaway or go hungry, so compromised on this extremely low cook tea...

Pasta with vegetables, garlic and back and white pudding.

Taste of London

We went to Taste on Friday afternoon for the first time in a few years.
As noted by, well, everyone, it really is a bit touristy and expensive now.
We had a pretty good time anyway, though probably will give it a miss in future years.

We ate:

Seared scallops, achari cauliflour puree and stir fried squid from The Cinnamon Club. A very good start to our lunch - lovely spicey sauce and delightfully cooked scallops. Not enough squid, but then I *do* like squid.


A lovely unphotographed Burford Brown Scotch Egg from Quo Vadis - very tasty, but almost our whole day - we queued for AGES and then some incredibly rude woman was incredibly rude to husband and elbowed me in ribs. He doesn't even like scotch eggs (hard to believe we're still married, tbh ;-) )

Iberico Pork and Foie Gras Burger from Opera Tavern - hard to say whether it was as awesome as the hype, but undoubtedly very tasty. The bread was a bit sweet and dry for our taste, with the quite high bread to burger ratio. However, I'm still definitely planning a trip there soon!




Bream Carpaccio from Jun Tanaka at Street Kitchen. Street Kitchen didn't tell you in the brochure what they were cooking, so we chose this a bit blind. Proper tasty - and deliciously fresh and palate cleansing after the extremeness of the burger.




Unexpected standout dish of the day - so called Spicy Duck Popcorn from Club Gascon. Really fantastic - melty confit (I assume) duck legs with lovely spicy sauce and popcorn bits.
Club Gascon wasn't particularly on my List before, but it definitely is now!




Jerk Chicken with Bammy from Collin Brown.
This was ok, but not even close to spicy enough and a little sweet for my liking.
Unbelievably slow service too, despite being distinctly unbusy.




We also ate Stamp and Go with Ackee and Hot Scotch Bonnet Salsa.
I seem to have omitted to photograph it, but was good - lovely slow burn heat.

Squid bits with not quite enough lime from L'Etranger. Husband was quite excited about this while he waited, but found it ultimately a bit disappointing. Still tasty though, I thought.




We also did some pretty good shopping (though inexplicably, NO chilli sauce at all) - most noteably some v good value beers from Laverstoke Park (not made of buffalo, I assume) and some splendid cheap and crazy jars of American Stuff, beautiful yogurts from Norfolk.
And husband happily got very high on samples from Chilli Pepper Pete's (as usual).

All in all - a pretty fun day out!

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Better Than it Looks...

Honestly! Roast chicken with roasted vegetables, a LOT of garlic and courgette and broad bean salad.


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Hotel Awesomeness

Went to a wedding (or, at least, the after-party bit of a wedding) on Friday evening in the North.

This mainly involved many hours of driving up and down busy motorways (though the actual party part was, of course, very nice), but did come with the additional bonus of the Next Morning Hotel Breakfast.

I was evidently much too tired and hungry to manage to photograph the actual food (which was awesome - much black pudding was had by all :-) ), but did capture this gem from the dining room... I think this fireplace painting/sculpture pretty much summed up the decor of the whole place - amazing :-)




I discover that I did immortalise on camera the buffet food from the night before.
Sausage sandwiches and chips.
This is a very fine wedding buffet idea. If you are planning to get married and invite me, please note my approval!



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Location:Sun Street Passage,City of London,United Kingdom

Sunday Lunch at Tendido Cero

Last Sunday, we made the epic trek to West London for some sampling.

Sensibly, we thought it best to line our stomachs, so what better than some tasty lunch-tapas.

*Warning - for the faint hearted - we totally overordered (as is the Way of Tapas). Though, to give us our due, it wasn't entirely our fault. The waiter told us we needed just one more thing...... *

So - here it is!

(Once again, apologies for quality of the photos. If anyone would like to teach me to take good ones/donate me a decent camera, please feel free).

Tasty breads with olive oil. I tried not to eat too much of this, knowing that we had lots of "proper" food coming. It was difficult.

Embutidos Ibericos - Spanish charcuterie (ham, chorizo and lomo) - not much to say here - delicious!

The slightly disturbingly whimsically named Mini Mini Hamburguesa. Actually a wee sardine sandwich. Very very good. Possibly my pick of the dishes.

So pretty that I had to show you again...

First of the hot dishes. Calamari (I know it's slightly different en Espanol, but I can't remember exactly how - in any case, you get the picture) with aioli and a wedge of lime. V nice. Husband's pick of the day, I believe.

Look - suckers! My favourite :-)

The obligatory Croquetas de Jamon. I don't actually like croquetas very much, but these were quite nice - fluffy. Possibly a little extreme for lunchtime. A bit cheesey for my taste, a bit eggy for husband.
Kind of like an inside out Quiche Lorraine...

Inside...

Pollo en Adobo de Pimenton - paprika chicken. Nice, but possibly a little bit uninspiring. Almost certainly one more thing than we needed. Especially after the croquetas.

Abada Asturiana - yum yum and also yum. Absolutely delicious. Tragic that it arrived when we had already eaten So Much. I could eat this every day. Easily.

We also drank a couple of glasses of (not quite so sensible) sherry from the solid, if fairly basic, sherry list.

So - Tendido Cero - we'll definitely go again if we're in the area.

Unless we can get into the sherry laden Capote y Toros (tragically closed on Sundays) across the road, that is :-)

Super Quick Tea

Miso broth with leftover roast beef. Yum :-)



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Super Quick Food

Leftover butternut squash, asparagus puree that I found in the fridge and enoki mushrooms (fried in lamb dripping - oooooh)...
A festival of Using Things Up :-)



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Beefeaters

Mini appetising bone marrow based snackette.




Followed by roast beef, squash roasted in dripping and broad bean and asparagus salad.
And a frightening amount of garlic :-)





Beefs were from the East London Steak Company. Delicious. If we ever finish this lot, I shall be buying from them again.

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Clammy

I wrote (and thought I'd posted) this a couple of days ago, but it seems to have disappeared, so here it is again...

Tagliatelle Vongole aka a dinner that it turns out you can make whilst really quite drunk after having had sherries for lunch and tasted 28 wines at The Sampler...

Garlic and chilli fried in small butter with clams, bubbled in vermouth, lemon zest, parsley and tagliatelle.

Super quick and easy.

AND we didn't burn the place down - yay - GO us.

Salmon

Today I wandered over to Fin and Flounder on Broadway Market, having heard on Twitter that they had some lovely wild British salmon.
They did. It was lovely. It was hard not to buy many many other things too.

Here it is:




Amazing colour, no?
They had farmed salmon in the shop too - it looked lame in comparison.

So - tea today...
Salmon with steamed (and buttery) samphire and broad bean, asparagus and wet garlic salad.
There was supposed to be a lovely photo here - it looked great - super crispy skin and things - but I accidentally mislaid it via instagram - will know better next time.
Ditto the photo of the delicious Coutier Henri III champagne that we drank with it.
Ah well...

Here's my broad bean salad instead...




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Yesterday

More of the same....
Asparagus, duck eggs and chilli/garlic/lemon dressing.


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Asparagus

Duck eggs, asparagus and the end of last Year's chilli jam...


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Decadent Monday Lamb

Not much else to say really :-)



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Normal Food

Which is a good thing.
Not exactly sure why, but due to a variety of things, I suppose, I have been eating like a Pink Piggie for the last week or two...
So it felt nice last night just to eat something normal :-)
Ratatouille and a buttered (truffle buttered, in fact) duck egg.
Yumsville.



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Chicken - Day 3

Chicken salad - leftover roast chicken with mango, avocado, tomatoes, spinach, lime and toasted hazelnuts.
And Riesling.
V v good. Especially given that it only took about 6 minutes to make :-)



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Nose to Tail... Or Something

This was supposed to be pasta with chicken giblet sauce.
I forgot to buy pasta (and was not allowed to make due to stupid exam stuff) and husband mistakenly bought gnocchi, so - gnocchi (and cabbage) with giblet, morel and truffle sauce.
V v good and, as usual, considerably better than it looks :-)



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