January 2014 Favourites List

Hello everyone!

I am feeling rather sorry for myself. I caught a cold over the weekend, which has been incubating and growing in virulence to the point where today I was just feeling too bad to go into work. I should be more philosophical about these things, after all, if you work in a university, you are in very warm buildings with lots of warm bodies and germs are going to be transmitted between students and tutors. But I'm finding it difficult. I have so many things I'm meant to get done, and I have zero strength and vim to do them. 

So I won't be writing a long introduction to my carefully curated treats for the month of January. I'd just like to remind everyone who is in the middle of Winter like us folk in the UK to wrap up warm. And to keep your hands clean. Cold virus bugs can survive on door handles and the like for 24 hours. So keep your hands clean, please sneeze into a tissue and cough with your hand covering your mouth.

My cousin Barnali shared her cold remedy recipe with me, so I thought I'd post it here for anyone similarly suffering:

Boil a pot of water of 4 quarts (About 4.54 litres)

With:

10-12 garlic pods

4 lemons halved (wax free)

Honey (amount to suit your taste)

Reduce water to half.

Strain and let it work its magic.

This month's pictures are from the Hundertwasser Haus in Vienna, a crazy, kookily creative block of flats remodelled by visionary artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000) who loved colour and despised straight lines and flat floors. 

You can find out more about his life here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedensreich_Hundertwasser and the website devoted to his art and architecture is here: http://www.hundertwasser.com/

I'm off to make me some hot lemon......

Blogs Worth Following:

British home cooking with a New World twist: http://insideabritishmumskitchen.blogspot.co.uk/

Chef Ashish Bhatia's wonderful writings about Indian cuisine: http://ashishbhatia3.wordpress.com/

Lots of ideas and inspiration for vegetarians and vegans: http://veganrecipesonline.wordpress.com/

Recipes:

Roasted cauliflower, chickpea and quinoa salad with jalapeno lime dressing:  http://www.mydarlinglemonthyme.com/2013/08/roasted-cauliflower-chickpea-quinoa.html

Recipes with booze: Green Apple Guinness Melt Recipe, Beer Beef Stew Recipe and Tamarind And Dark Beer-Glazed Wings: http://gizmodo.com/5991940/3-beer+based-recipes-for-the-boozy-chef

Braised beef and port hotpot: http://www.thebritishmenu.com/braised-beef-and-port-hotpot/

Ottolenghi does lentils: Crushed puy lentils with tahini and cumin with flatbreads and Puy lentils with mushrooms and preserved lemon ragout: www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/03/lentil-recipes-yotam-ottolenghi

Heston Blumenthal's Macaroni Cheese: http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/chefs/heston-blumenthal/macaroni-cheese-recipe

Creamy and indulgent dal for chilly Winter nights: http://www.archanaskitchen.com/indian-recipes/dals-kadhis-and-currys/1493-green-moong-dal-makhani

Cute little ricotta and spinach dumplings! How to make Malfatti:  www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/24/italian-malfatti-recipe

Japanese Panko breadcrumbs are crispy deliciousness, so how about beery panko onion rings? MMMM! http://www.getmecooking.com/recipe/crispy-panko-beer-batter-onion-rings

Black chick peas are nuttier and pleasantly chewier than their pale counterparts, here is a recipe for a curry using them: http://www.archanaskitchen.com/indian-recipes/dals-kadhis-and-currys/438-kala-desi-chana-sabzi

Articles/Know How:

For foodies wanting more bang for their buck, the 10 best value places to eat in the UK: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/19/10-best-value-restaurants-britain

Wines for miserably cold grey weather? Sounds wonderful! http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/04/wines-for-the-winter-blues

Know your pasta shapes and what to match them with: http://www.williams-sonoma.com/pages/pasta-primer.html

It would, of course, be better if we got all our vitamins and minerals from our food and drink. But being realistic, I know I don't. This is a helpful and informative guide to vitamins and supplements. http://www.goop.com/journal/do/267/a-vitamin-supplement-cheat-sheet

Books:

Songs That Saved Your Life 

Film:

Despicable Me

TV:

Sherlock, Season 3 (BBC, 2013)

Suits, Season 2

Music:

The Penelopes - Never Live Another Yesterday

David Bowie - The Next Day

The Pastels - Slow Summits

Thai style salad with stewed beef

Thai salads are spicy, fresh tasting and glorious. They are vibrant, colourful and full of flavour. Seared beef is a common Thai salad ingredient. We love to have a hot, fiery, fresh tasting seared beef salad every now and then. Other than the preparation of the salad ingredients, is a swift and easy weekday supper. 

But every now and then you crave something a little different. As we are still in the middle of Winter, we've been enjoying lots of casseroles, curries and stews with slow cooked and tender meat. So we got to thinking, what would a Thai salad be like with a slow cooked and tender beef instead of quickly seared?

This dish was the result of our experimentation. Much of the credit goes to Him Indoors, my stalwart life partner and joint head chef. I don't profess to say that this dish is authentic. Hence the "Thai style" moniker. It is an imagining of a Thai salad with a few twists. The first being the slow cooked beef. The second being the dressing, which although it includes a number of classic Thai ingredients, would be highly unlikely to include Oyster Sauce. It was chosen as it so beautifully complements beef.

This recipe will require overnight marinading. So please note that there are definite stages to this recipe. Stage one is the marinading overnight, so you need to plan ahead. Then there is the second stage, the stewing, which will take a fair amount of time. Then the third is preparing the salad and dressing. You will need to plan when you want to make this dish accordingly.

Hopefully you will like this new recipe. Please get in touch with your impressions, thoughts and feedback in the comments below.

Happy cooking and happy eating!

Thai style salad with stewed beef

Serves 2

Ingredients:

350g sirloin steak cut into 1" (2.5cm) cubes

For the beef marinade:

1 stick lemongrass, peeled and very finely sliced

50ml fish sauce

For the beef stew:

1 stick lemongrass, peeled and cut into chunks of 1" (2.5cm)

1 birds eye chilli, chopped

1 400ml can coconut milk

For the salad:

8 cherry tomatoes, halved

1 yellow pepper cut into slices/chunks

a handful of fresh coriander leaves, chopped roughly

a handful of fresh mint leaves, chopped roughly

1 to 2 Thai shallots, sliced finely

For the dressing:

1 lime, juiced

1 birds eye chilli, chopped finely (deseeded if you don't like your food too hot)

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tbsp fish sauce

1 1/2 tbsp oyster sauce

1 1/2 tbsp palm sugar, crushed/ground

Method:

Prepare your beef by cutting to size and then marinading overnight with the fish sauce and lemongrass in the fridge in a non-metallic container. A plastic sealable container would be perfect.

The next day, drain away the marinade and discard the first stick of lemongrass. Put in a saucepan with the second stick of lemongrass, the chilli and the contents of the can of coconut milk. 

Put on the hob and cook on a simmer for 40 minutes. 

Drain away the coconut milk and pick out the lemongrass. 

Prepare your dressing, ensuring it is thoroughly mixed. The oyster sauce and palm sugar will be difficult to mix. Either whisk up or put in a jar and shake vigourously. Leave for 10 minutes or so for the flavours to combine.

Assemble the salad, by mixing up the tomatoes, red onion, peppers and herbs, piling the beef on top and then dressing.

Enjoy immediately before the herbs get soggy.

Chotto Matte, a fascinating fusion

Life gets busy and complicated without you even knowing it. Before you know it, it has been months since you saw your best friend. A whole ruddy term has gone by in a whirl of seminars, lectures, marking, and learning objectives. You feel terrible; guilty and fearful that your friend will be distant, cold and unforgiving. Should you make that call, should you try to arrange a get together? 

Of course you should! What a silly set of thoughts! 

After a busy and stressful first term, I realised that I hadn't seen my best friend Chris since the Summer. Thankfully, he is a forgiving and faithful soul who didn't rebuff my request to get together. Proof to everyone, that whoever it is you've been out of the loop with, get it sorted out! Make the call! Get a date in the diary. And don't let it happen again.

So, we met up, for a long and leisurely lunch. Where would we go? After a little bit of aimless wandering, we decided to visit Chotto Matte. Situated in Frith Street, Soho, it's right in the heart of the West End. It describes itself as serving food which is a fusion of Peruvian and Japanese cuisines, based on a cultural tradition over a century old.

The ground floor of the restaurant is dimly lit, with a lovely wrap-around graffiti mural, protected from grubby hands by a perspex screen. The comic book art, stylish and beautifully rendered.

The menu is not simple, as the dishes are categorised not as "starters" and "mains", but according to the type, eg "sushi", "chicharronia", and "anticucheria". The idea being you go from small cold dishes to the hot, more spicy dishes and that you round off with sushi.

So whilst we perused the menu, we had a bowl of the Padron peppers. At £4.50 they were pricey for the portion size, but the combination of sea salt and miso made them moreish with a little moist sweetness.

We studied the menu whilst watching the staff prepare sushi in the open kitchen....

Seafood ceviche (£7.50)
Prawn, scallop, sea bass, sweet potato, Peruvian corn, coriander, chive oil, citrus sauce

Wonderfully balanced with sharp citrus and a counterbalancing sweetness, this was a taste explosion. Somewhat small portion, but lovingly presented. The chive oil, whilst being a very small part of the dish made itself known without being a big bully. What is the difference between regular sweetcorn and Peruvian? The Peruvian is much lighter in colour, super crunchy and humungous! I've never seen kernels as huge!


Calabacín a la parrilla (a vegetarian dish) (£4.95) 
Courgette, pickled shallots, beetroot crisps, chilli bean sauce

Our next dish was one of delicately grilled courgettes with a mass of slightly crispy but not dry beetroot shavings. A very pleasant dish to pick at, with the sauce and pickle providing effective accent flavours.

Pescaditos (£7.50)
Whitebait, mussels, squid, prawn, corn sand, jalapeño sauce

"Seafood tempura with a Peruvian twist" is what this dish said to me. By and large this was fluffy batter, crispy on the outside with yielding and tasty seafood morsels on the inside. The squid, whitebait, and prawns were a hit with us. However, the mussels were dry and a little chewy. The sauce was well judged, complementing the seafood and not spicy for the sake of it. It was quite mild, given that it was made from jalapeños. My other issue with this dish is the corn sand. It added no flavour and ended up clinging to the pieces of seafood, ultimately ending up in the sauce. Hence getting towards the end of our dish, the sauce was growing thick and claggy. Please ditch the corn sand. Or serve with a larger, deeper bowl with more sauce in it. 

Camarón de tigre (£11.95) 
Prawn, semi-dry orange, Peruvian chilli

Chargrilled prawns with tangy orange and chilli. We tried to suck as much prawn meat as we could from the tails of the little blighters! Tasty little morsels, which get a big thumbs up from us.

Conchas aji Salsa (£11.95) 
Scallops, quinoa and blackberry chilli salsa 

The scallops were just cooked, exactly how I like them. There was a gravy in which the small, but effective amount of quinoa was thoroughly coated. Overall the flavours and textures came together in an unexpected, original and highly tasty manner. It was a shame to have only 3 scallops between two of us, but we managed to share out the dish equitably.

Chicha Morada Crumble (£7.00)

This was a sort of "deconstructed" crumble. What I mean is that it wasn't baked as a proper crumble, with fruity base and topping. The biscuity crunchy "crumble" was lightly baked before being liberally sprinkled over the stewed fruit, which was sweet with slight sour tang. Pleasant and comforting, if nothing special. It was good, but lacked "wow" factor. 

Salted caramel chocolate fondant (£7.50)

Orange compote, vanilla ice cream

As soon as Chris' dessert arrived, I felt the pang of Pudding Envy. Chris had definitely made the better choice, lovely as my dessert was. The fondant was just spongy on the outside, and when he cut it with his spoon, all the glorious chocolately goo came out in a leisurely ooze. It tasted rich, indulgent and wonderful...

The ladies lunching on the table watched the oozy splendour and both immediately pointed to their waitress, declaring "We'll have what he's having!".

This is a restaurant which treads the line of being trendy, a little different, but with low key and polite service very well. We had a great lunch, and were not remotely rushed. We were allowed to natter, and given our space. Very nice indeed.

Snigdha and Chris paid for their lunch with their trusty debit cards.