Last weekend I met up with two old friends, Jenny and Grace. Jenny, a (temporarily?) ex-Londoner with a penchant for dinner and cakes (check out her blog here. Natural pastry chef talent ahoy), suggested we went for a decent meal out together, which was more than owed as the last time we had seen each other was a: 18 months previous and b: through the haze of tequila in Edinburgh’s driving sleet.
Having spent a while eavesdropping on London foodie chat, I have already got a comprehensive list of places to visit in future. We decided pretty quickly on Le Cafe Anglais having read lots about it and armed with recommendations from @hollowlegs and @foodieguide, we rocked up on a Sunday night for good eats.
We were whisked up to a very large, open dining room, with lots of light coming through massive leaded windows. I like this. We all got to sit on the pale green leather banquette – I liked that too. Whenever I go out I like to sit on the banquette rather than the chair where there is a choice – I think this comes from fights with my siblings over the years. The Boy always lets me sit on it. I like that too.
Le Cafe Anglais has a huge and mesmerising menu. We were struck with indecision as soon as we were asked for drinks, and tipsy enough to be convinced to order bellinis (Easiest. Sell. Ever.). Having not seen each other for a while we then managed to forget to think about ordering again, until the patient waitress reminded us, also bringing a little dish of fresh radishes. We decided on three hors d’oeuvres between us followed by a main each, tactically leaving space for dessert.
We ordered the much-lauded parmesan custard and anchovy toast, with kipper pate with a boiled egg and rabbit rillettes with picked endive.
The rabbit and kipper were both very tasty, but it was the custard and toast that really shone. The creamy texture and tang of the custard mixed perfectly with the anchovies in the soldiers. We couldn’t get enough of it and it was gone in a flash.
We’d already put through our orders for mains, but it wasn’t long after the hors d’oeuvres were gone that the restaurant manager turned up at the table to ask whether we were in ‘the trade’. Jenny already had a watertight (almost) alibi lined up after visiting the Real Food Festival on trade day, but in the end we explained we had strong interests in dinners, and took a lot of photos. He went on to explain they had had an unknown error (basically, hadn’t put our main order through) and had to cook it. Never mind he said, because he was going to bring us something to help pass the time, and did we like oysters? Yes we said, though Grace wasn’t sure about it, and said she’d rather try something else. I’ll do what I can, he said. Pretty soon we were presented with three extras.
L-R we had mackerel teriyaki with pickled cucumber, deep fried oysters with thai dipping sauce, and octopus with rice and pimienton. They were, again, delicious. The mackerel had a great texture and flavour, though the sauce was possibly too salty for me (I am a bit scared of salt, really). The oysters went fantastically with the sauce, which was fragrant with plenty of fresh holy basil (one of my favourite things), and eating them fritter-stylee was unlike anything I’d tried before. The octopus too was beautifully cooked – which is a rarity as far as I’ve seen.
We were pretty full by this stage – not meaning to eat quite as much before main courses! I’d ordered lamb with tomatoes and pine nuts. It was glorious, really fantastic melt in the mouth meat and as you can see, plenty of it. I loved every bit of it. Jenny had middle pork with lentils which was again very tasty and well cooked, and Grace enjoyed sea bass with hollandaise sauce. We had a great gratin dauphinoise and spring greens with garlic as accompaniments.
By this stage it is fair to say we were fit to burst. However we were impossibly entranced by the Queen of Puddings on the dessert menu. I’d never heard of this, so assumed it to be something just made up by the restaurant. I am a sucker for anything like this on a menu, and had to try it out. We also ordered a pot of Barry’s tea to share with it. As a proper tea whore, I think it’s definitely the right way to finish off a meal.
The Queen of Puddings, as it turns out, is a wonderful jam sponge concoction, topped with meringue. It was delicious. We couldn’t possibly have eaten a single bite more. Our table was cleared to reveal the mess we had made (this was probably all me to be honest, as The Boy will testify), and we polished off the tea before sauntering off into the night, happy.
Oh blimey, the latest Virgin Trains advert is a little bit lovely. Not the one which has garnered a little negative publicity (featuring Branson dressed up as a platform car driver person, complete with tattoo sleeves and blacked out teeth), but the other one, the girl version if you will, following a girl, Becky, as she makes the trip from Euston to Manchester to see her bloke.
Not that it will make me take more Virgin Trains, or pay for the long-awaited non-free wi-fi, or stop in the shop for coffee. I already take enough, thank you very much. As a very regular boyfriend commuter the attraction is simple – seeing my hour’s worth of train-based mindwanderings – preparation, excitement and apprehension – played out on screen. With a tunnel of love and e-v-e-r-y-thing.
EDIT For those of you looking, Becky in the advert is played by Robyn Addison. Apparently she was in the BBC 28 Days Later-esque “Survivors”. So now you know.
My oh my, the big race thing has gotten rather close all of a sudden. Well, I say race. There will be no racing here – mainly just carrying on. I got my timing chip and shirt numbers for the run in the post. It feels incredibly odd to have such items in my possession, things which do not seem to fit into my life just yet.
Things were going well until I got a little ill last week. Not swine flu, but a pretty lame cold combined with rapid-onset-mega-danger hayfever meant I had to stay home for a week or so to preserve my head / sanity. It was right, as I had absolutely no desire to go out and run, which is an urge I’ve become rather used to creeping up on me about 40 hours after my last run.
This is the first of the perhaps unsettling changes I’ve felt recently. I’d often heard runners talk about it and, largely, laughed in the face of such ridiculousness. Here it is however and I am starting to feel that perhaps I should be carrying trainers and a sports bra around with me. Just, you know, in case the urge takes me.
In other trainer-related news, this weekend I went for a rather dubious sounding gait analysis session at Nike Town. Turns out I am what they call a definite overpronator. Fairly shocking to watch on screen, as the leg and foot angles look violently mismatched, and it is obvious to see how I might end up hurting myself carrying on like this. I always thought I looked like an unnatural runner in the horrid gym mirrors (built for comfort, not for speed again) and so it turns out this is why. New shoes on the way!
This evening I ran the furthest so far. 8.5km, no less. Feeling on top of the bloody world – a feeling I’m sure will dissipate once I wake up stiff as a board. One month left, onward…
Filed under: cooking, food | Tags: biscuit, cake, hugh fearnley-whittingstall, sedgemoor cakes
This weekend I made some Sedgemoor Easter Cakes to take to my friend who is recovering from a fairly major operation, and hence needs cheering up and lots of healing nourishment.
Traditionally these goodies are made and given away in threes on Easter Sunday. I hope Jesus doesn’t mind me breaking protocol here. This is a recipe that my mum had kept from the swathes of Easter recipes popping up in the weekend magazines a couple of weeks ago, and when I told her I was intending to bake she made sure I made these, by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
They are more biscuits than cakes, I feel (though I appreciate the difficulties in drawing this line having been involved in a jaffa cakes / biscuits argument more than once), similar to Welsh cakes, but more, er, biscuity. Not unlike shortbread. Spicy bits of loveliness! The cakecuits are very easy to make, though the recipe does make a fairly sticky dough if you use big egg so it can be a little hard to cut. I also adjusted the cooking time as Hugh’s time overcooked them a bit (that, or the supergood oven we have). Overall though, very good indeed.
You will need to procure (for between 15 and 20):
225g plain flour
110g caster sugar (I only use golden, because it is pretty)
110g currants
110g butter, cut into cubes
1 egg, lightly beaten (medium will be just dandy)
2 tbsp brandy
1 tsp vanilla essence (I use extract as I like it more)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp mixed spice
A grating of whole nutmeg
Pinch of salt
To glaze – 75g icing sugar and 2 tbsp milk
First, soak the currants in the brandy and vanilla in a bowl. Sieve the flour, spices and salt together into a mixing bowl, then rub the butter in until it looks like a fine crumble. Stir in the sugar into this vigorously til it’s all nicely mixed. Tip in the soaked currants and any liquid, and add the beaten egg. Mix it all up until it has just come together, then turn out onto a floured worktop and knead it together (be gentle!). When it’s become a round ball of lovely doughiness (won’t be long), put it into the fridge to chill for 15 mins.
Get it out and roll it out on your freshly floured worktop. It should be pretty thick, 0.5cm at the very least, I’d favour the fat side of 0.75 cm. Cut out the cakes using a cookie cutter (about 6cm) – round works best, this stuff doesn’t take too well to shapes (dough is a bit too sticky and the currants have a tendency to fall out of the corners). Put them onto a baking tray covered with paper, and shove em in the oven for 15 mins at 180. (I amended this to 15 at 170 for my superoven. Hugh says 16-20 mins at 180, which I still think is too much).
While they’re cooking, mix up the glaze with icing sugar and milk. Glaze the cakes a little while they are still warm, and add more once they have cooled. Or just sprinkle with sugar. Eat a few immediately, then tie the others into bundles of three, and present them to the people you like a lot.
Filed under: running, things I do | Tags: running, two castles, two castles 10k
So I’ve taken up running on the sly. After many years of declaring myself unfit for purpose (built for comfort, not for speed) I took it up having tried pretty much everything else. Since then I have been incredibly surprised by how much I have a: enjoyed it and b: improved.
I probably should have taken it a little easier, but in a moment of self-congratulatory weakness I was convinced by my director to enter the Two Castles 10k run. It’s a great course – starting in Warwick Castle and finishing in one of my favourite places on earth – Kenilworth Castle (I’m a sucker for a decent ruin). The run is on 7 June, I’m a little scared, but looking forward to it as a bit of a project. Will write updates here.
And no, I’m not going to finish this post with the obligatory-blogger-running-sponsorship-plea, as I don’t believe in the process. However, if you can spare the cash, please do go out and donate some money to your favourite charity.
Filed under: lovely chaotic life
Making a tree is one of the best parts of Easter.
Ours is made from white spraypainted dry twigs, and only the prettiest candy eggs, wooden bunnies and mini toys – all from John Lewis, Paperchase and Jelly Cat.
Easter is also a fantastic excuse to open up the collection of Beanie Babies my sisters and I put together during our childhood, and convince ourselves that we need to keep them (all 500 of them, probably). The hamster is an optional extra here.
Happy Easter, my pretties.
This weekend I visited previously uncharted territory – Todmorden – somewhere in the no-mans-land between Manchester and Leeds, to see a couple of friends of The Boy and I. I am not noted for my ability to thrive in the middle of nowhere, however, as long as there is a decent pub I will remain happy until I have to trudge home through mud and across dry stone walls in the driving sleet. (This did not happen – merely the image the mention of such isolation conjurs up.)
As it turns out, Todmorden is not as small or isolated as I had imagined (Train station! Roads! Hybrid art gallery / beer shop!). It’s also just down the road from the rather nice Hebden Bridge, home to the ridiculously good Stubbing Wharf. The Stubbing Wharf is a pub as it should be, great beer, and fantastic home-cooked food. It makes a mockery of both the Brakes-fed masses pervading the country and also the gastropubs multiplying their prices while they multiply in number.
The food here is fantastic and restores my faith in pub grub. It’s very well priced (for me, spending all my time in London it was positively bargainous – for the local northerners it is ‘expensive but worth it’), wonderfully fresh and also apportioned generously.
I started with a deliciously chunky venison paté, gamey, meaty and beautifully seasoned. I was hungry after a fair amount of some lovely Sauvignon Blanc and started eating before I remembered to take its photo. Anyway. Beautiful. The boys ate perfect haddock goujons.
For main I ordered sausage, leek and mushroom pie. I can honestly say I can’t remember having a better pie. (And, dear reader, before you start chanting I haven’t eaten them all, but I’ve had a few). It was rich but not heavy, creamy and peppery. Wonderful pastry, and set down with a massive plate of rustic (northern) chips and vegetables.
Goodness me, it was great. It’s places like this that fully restore my faith in the Great British Pub and so the Great British Pub Dinner. In one way, it’s a shame that they are at their best in such isolation (no matter how hard I try, I feel I am destined to never be fully satisfied by the many bastardised gastropubs in London), but conversely this is their nature and yet another part of what makes them so good.
There was lots of satisfaction here. Perhaps I should spend more time looking for similar boltholes in the isolated parts of this green and pleasant land. Perhaps I’m not such a city girl after all…?
This Saturday, 28 March, at 8.30pm, WWF’s Earth Hour takes place. People, businesses and landmarks around the world will turn off their lights for sixty minutes in a large-scale demonstration against global warming, and as a call to action to the world’s governments and leaders.
On the night, I will be having a pre-arranged dinner party somewhere in the deepest darkest Pennines with a few others I once spent New Year with in a cottage in Wales. By some sort of wonderful coincidence, on that occasion we ended up having an enforced evening of darkness too, including preparing and eating dinner by candlelight. Romantic and challenging in equal measure, I feel. I am very much looking forward to this, more important and voluntary, re-run.
WWF are looking for one billion people to take part in Earth Hour. Sign up and pledge to go dark on Saturday.
Yet another addition to my life Post Twitter (should I really be measuring my life by such yardsticks? I think not) has been that of the graze box. @utku was the first to alert me to graze.com – a company making their most out of us who like a bit of the healthy stuff, but are also fairly lazy and have trouble deciding what to have for lunch.
You get a flat box delivered to your desk, containing three compartments of snack, designed for you to graze on throughout the day rather than having lunch. Cute. Each of the compartments is interchangeable and depends on how you rate the foods. Fruit (dried and fresh), nuts, seeds and chocolate if you’re lucky. Some of the combinations are inspired (rocky mountain mix of walnuts, dried cranberries and giant dark chocolate buttons anyone?), and all of the stuff is decent quality.
For me, the best bit is the surprise of having someone else put together your food for the day. It costs less than you’d pay for lunch – £3 a go – though if you use this super-magic-code: H7F38K5A – before Sunday 22 March, you can get your first free and second for half price. I get one every Tuesday – don’t think I’d have it more often than that (too much other exciting stuff to eat), but am always pretty happy on graze box day.
I’ve got a new toy. Thanks to the lovely folk at SpinVox (including the inimitable James Whatley) I am now the very proud owner of a SpinVox voicemail account. For the uninitiated, SpinVox voicemail is a rather special service which converts your voicemail to text, then sends it on to you by text message and email. The technology is baffling to my semigeekbrain. But suffice to say for the moment – it is bloody good.
Mr Whatley ran a twitter competition to give away free SpinVox on Monday. I entered:
This is true. (Clearly I’m not going to go into the details of my address, but it is so frequently misspelled I’ve almost given up. My surname, Elvidge, is apparently incomprehensible to anyone I say it to). The judges seemed to like my entry. I won! And did a dance! (I never win anything).
I’ve been playing with SpinVox since it was activated. I am wholly impressed. Is it possible to be in love with tech?
Naturally, given my entry, one of the first things I did was try out my name and address. I’ve become Jessica Rose Elvis for now. I like this. My address was nowhere near correct, but it did in fact note that it was an address. Perhaps my favourite thing about SpinVox is the way it recognises grammar and sense. I spy the right permutation of your / you’re, their / there / they’re, and to / too. Anyone who knows me or has seen me tweet while proofing will back me up here, I detest poor grammar, it can provoke rage in me. (NB: That I have mentioned this is now an assurance for a typo somewhere in this post.)
A few days in and SpinVox has proved its worth many times over. I’ve been alerted to messages by email when I didn’t even realise the phone had rung. I’ve lost the phone and not lost my mind while trying to catch up with things I’ve missed. I’ve survived its temperamental behaviour without resorting to hitting stuff. Most of all, I haven’t had to prepare myself for another voicemail, remembering the sequence of keys to get through, holding a pen and paper in case someone is telling me something important. I expect, sooner or later, I will wonder how I ever managed without it.
