Slow Food Kitchen

Ferran Adria’s Book Launch At Google London

Posted on 05. Oct, 2011 by London Food Blogger.

A few days ago, I was invited to the Google London HQ to sample some dishes from Ferran Adria’s new cookbook, The Family Meal. For a foodie is also a bit of a geek, this was heaven. Lunch was really chaotic as we were in one of their many staff canteens and had to join the massive queue for food. The Google Canteen was a really apt place for the lunch since the new cook book is derived from recipes from the El Bulli staff canteen.

A nice bonus after lunch, Niamh from @EatLikeAGirl and I had an exclusive interview with Ferran via his interpreter. He had been doing back to back talks and interviews for 15 hours a day for a few days and he was still very happy to chat to us about his book, why he wrote it, the future and what plans he had next. You can watch the interview below.  (There is another version of this video with a different view on Niamh’s blog)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK1TBJX0eh0

Google holds talks at their offices as part of their “Author At ” series and on this occassion they invited the esteemed chef to be their guest. The talk was open to Google employees and some invited guests and was held in yet another Google Canteen in another building.

Having Ferran speak at Google was a stroke of genius as the man is not only a very talented chef but he is a creative genius who has embraced technology and wants to explore ways to use technology to further experiment and push the boundaries with food.

There are several (quite shaky) videos of his talk and the first one is here:

In Part 2 of the videos, Ferran talks about the evolution of culinary creativity and how El Bulli encourages this and is responsible for up to 80% of creativity in the last year.

Book Review of The Family Meal by Ferran Adria

The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria

Firstly, this massive cookbook is not about molecular gastronomy and more about simple home cooking. Ferran despairs that even though there are more food programmes and food blogs now, there aren’t more people are not cooking at home. He wants to simplify cooking and to encourage more people to cook, so this book wil be a good guide to beginner cooks and advanced cooks will learn a few new tricks and recipes too.

The recipes in the book are the recipes that have been created and thoroughly tested in the El Bulli Kitchens for the daily staff meals for the 75 staff who worked there. The whole El Bulli team used to sit down for a family meal at 6pm every day and they spent as much time and effort in preparing this meal.

The team had produced detailed production sheets for each of the meals with a list of proven procedures that ensure that each meal is cooked in exactly the same way.

Included in The Family Meal cook book are a list of basic kitchen equipment you will need to a list of the basic ingredients that you should keep in your kitchen. Sections of the book cover “How to cook meat” to “How to cook eggs”. The rest if the book is organised into 31 three course menus with dishes that show culinary inspiration from not just Spanish but Italian, Japanese and other cuisines too.

All the recipes are aimed at the average person who make less than €1,500 a month. The claims are that each meal can be made in 45 minutes for less than €3 per head. I really like the fact that there are step by step pictures to accompany each recipe.

An average 3 course men look like this:

• Chickpeas with spinach and eggs
• Glazed teriyaki pork belly
• Sweet potato with honey and cream

When we spoke to Ferran, he said that the recipes in this book has been written for 2 people up to 75 people as he wanted this to be easy for the people who will tend to buy a takeaway instead of cooking. He said that most cookbooks write recipes for 4 people but most average households have 2 people.

The book has step by step recipes on making simple sauces like tomato sauce, barbecue sauce to romesco sauce. It also has a very  handy section on making stock, nice to see it including all the basics which are assumed knowledge in other cook books.

You might need a little bit of cooking experience for some of the recipes but most of them are quite easy to do without too many cheffy touches, no tricky molecular gastronomy cooking techniques required.

This book would be a great addition to anyone who likes to cook as a reference for making basic sauces to cooking the more adventurous recipes like the Watermolon with menthol sweets.

You can buy The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria on Amazon.

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Grazing Asia Supper Club a Photo Essay

Posted on 30. Sep, 2011 by London Food Blogger.

Seared Tuna with Yuzu Ponzu & Sesame Dressing

Sneaking a quick bite in between service

Joe check out the vat of laksa soup

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Sushi in the City at Feng Sushi

Posted on 26. Sep, 2011 by London Food Blogger.

The South Bank is usually a hive of activity on evenings and weekends when special events are happening. For such a busy place, there aren’t many great places to eat as most the places around there are all of the chain variety.

However, some chains are better than others. One of these that offer a consistent quality of food is Feng Sushi at the Royal Festival Hall.

The decor is generically modern and very spacious with a choice of low tables or high stools. I love the large cherry blossom graphic on one wall, giving the only hint that this was a Japanese Restaurant.

The menu is quite extensive for a chain restaurant with a nice selection of cold and hot dishes. It is nice to see that all the fish served here are from sutainable sources. This led to them taking Unagi off the menu as they could not find a sustainable source for this in the UK.

The Sushi selection was quite extensive and well made but I like my sushi rice with more seasoning, which I understand is a regional Japanese thing. It was nice to see brown rice sushi as an alternative on the menu too.

Soft Shell Crab Roll

Seaweed Salad

Rock Shrimp Tempura

The rock shrimp tempura did not have the typical tempura batter, it was a bit thicker and crispier but tasty nonetheless.

We had to try one of the seasonal dishes that were on offer and we chose the Handpicked Devon Crab Donburi which is a bowl of rice topped with crab. There was no discernible flavour in the rice, save for the few slices of pickles and no dressing of any sort, rendering this dish quite bland.

Crab Donburi

One of the few vegetable dishes besides the vegetarian sushi and a few tofu dishes was the Vegetarian Tempura. Perfectly light batter and crisp fresh vegetables was a real winner.

To finish we shared a dish of Black Sesame, Green Tea and Sweet Chestnut Ice Cream.

Black Sesame, Green Tea and Sweet Chestnut Ice Cream.

The service at Feng Sushi was friendly, attentive and competent, they kept my green tea cup regularly refilled. This is one of the better meals to be had around the Royal Festival Hall and I like the way that the menu is designed so that you can have just a quick bite or a more substantial meal.

If you work nearby, you can also order Sushi to takeaway via their website www.fengsushi.co.uk

SlowFoodKitchen was invited to review Feng Sushi.

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Strawberry Yoghurt Ice Cream with Cuisinart Ice Cream Deluxe

Posted on 23. Sep, 2011 by London Food Blogger.

My new new thing all this summer was making ice cream, with lots of summer fruits and experimenting with other strange flavours. One of the favourite recipes was making Strawberry Ice Cream. The first time I made it was such a lovely surprise as it produces a delightful pink coloured concoction and it was really quick to make too.

This Strawberry Ice Cream recipe is very simple and doesn’t require you to make a custard before hand. I have made it lighter by substituting some of the double cream with fat free yoghurt.

For this recipe, I used my new Cuisinart Ice Cream Deluxe Ice Cream Machine which has a 2 litre capacity. The recipe is enough to make about 1 litre which is enough for about 4 servings. Cuisinart makes the best Kitchen Appliances like their amazing Food Processor which we saw recently at the Food Bloggers Connect Conference.

Before you can use this Ice Cream Machine, you need to freeze the bowl and this takes about 12 hours. When the liquid in the bowl is frozen solid, it will then take about 20 minutes to make the ice cream.

The machine is very simple to use with only one setting. You need to set the machine up with the bowl in place with the lid firmly and turn on the ice cream machine before you pour the ice cream mixture in. If you don’t the mixture might freeze and this will prevent the mixing arm to move around. You will know when the ice cream is ready when you hear the machine change speed, it will sound like it is slowing down.

You can buy Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker
from Amazon.

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Sunday Lunch at The Plough Clapham, Battersea Actually

Posted on 14. Sep, 2011 by London Food Blogger.

There is always excitement and buzz when something new appears in an area. On this stretch of St John’s Hill, the area is seeing an influx of new restaurants with the opening of The Plough Clapham and Ben’s Canteen recently.The Plough is yet another Youngs pub who seem to be dominating this corner of South West London.

On a recent weekend, we decided to have Sunday lunch here and it was their first Sunday of service. When entering The Plough, you might be confused into thinking that you are entering a restaurant rather than a pub as there is a greeter at the door. Strange.

The place is really spacious with high ceilings and bright pink velvet chesterfields in the front window, great for lounging on while having a Manhattan or two. It’s that kind of place.

The dining area seems larger than bar area which probably highlights the ambitions of the management. Tables are well spaced out so you don’t feel like you are shoe horned into a corner of pub as an after thought. It wasn’t completely full but there was a nice buzz and a mixed clientele of families with kids and people rolling in for a hangover cure.

Menus offer the regular pub fare with daily specials on a blackboard near the kitchen. The kitchen is open to the dining area via a large hatch and there seemed to be a lot more staff in there than servers in the front of house.

We had the Roast Beef with all the trimmings.The serving was enormous, the beef was flavoursome but slightly overdone, the goose fat roast potatoes were fab but the leek and vegetable concoction was practically raw.

Being their first week, we didn’t expect perfection. I guess the kitchen is still finding their feet. The management dealt with our comments about the food really well, taking the drinks off the bill and came to apologise too. Very professional.

We didn’t stay for pudding this time but will be back again soon to try out the other offerings on the menu like the intriguingly named Parrot Wings. The Plough is a great addition to this area which sorely needed casual dining room.

Our lunch came to about £25 for two without drinks.

The Plough Clapham

89 St. John’s Hill,London, SW11 1SY

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Moon Cakes, Lanterns at the Moon Festival

Posted on 12. Sep, 2011 by London Food Blogger.

The beautiful Moon Goddess waits patiently for this day every year to be reunited with her mortal lover on Earth. Thousands of  years ago, a forbidden love affair was formed between the immortal and her mortal lover, a cow herd, on earth. When they were discovered, the Gods banished the Moon Goddess to the Moon and forbade her to contact her lover. The villagers who witnessed this love story were so moved to help them that they baked mooncakes with hidden love messages to help the lovers communicate.

To this day, the Moon Festival is still celebrated by Chinese Communities the world over and if you look closely at the moon on this night, you might see the Moon Goddess too. (There are many other version of the myths about the Moon Festival that have evolved over the last 4000 years and this is the version that I heard growing up.)

The Moon Festival is also popularly known as the Mid Autumn Festival and it falls on the 15th day of the 8th Month of the Lunar Calendar and this year. This is the second most important festival after Chinese New Year and Chinese communities around the world celebrate it by having a big family meal, lighting coloured lanterns, letting off fireworks and eating mooncakes.

Super Hero Lantern

In London, you will see the lanterns festooned across Gerrard Street and restaurants packed with families celebrating this festival. In Asia, all the children will get paper lanterns shaped to the likeness of today’s superheroes which they will parade around the neighbourhood with their friends. A bit like Trick or Treating at Halloween without the costumes. Meanwhile, the grown ups will sip tea and eat mooncakes while admiring the moon.

Mooncakes and the varieties

Mooncakes are usually made with a thin pastry crust that is shaped around a mould and filled with a sweetened filling.  Chinese ones are usually made round and have messages stamped on the crust. A well made crust is usually really thin and is usually made with lard.

This year, I was sent a moon cake from Singapore from the Szechuan Village restaurant which was filled with lotus seed paste and 2 salted egg yolks. The texture was  a bit too soft and it was lacking in one of the main ingredients, melon seeds. Good enough but not great. Was trying to get the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong to send me some of their award winning ones but they insisted they wouldn’t travel well in the post.

Every year, the mooncake manufacturers try to outdo each other with ever more outrageous flavours. They all look and taste really weird like Durian Snow Skin Mooncake (which has a tasteless white outer skin and durian flavoured filling) , strawberry, orange, green tea, pandan and chocolate. I still prefer the traditional ones with either lotus seed filling or red bean filling.

In London you can buy locally made mooncakes at the Far East Bakery on Gerrard Street. They are the only people who make their own. All the supermarkets in Chinatown sell imported ones, mainly from Hong Kong or you can buy them online from our friends at Wai Yee Hong. (Tip: Most the shops in Chinatown sell them at a discount the day after the Moon Festival. )

Besides mooncakes, we have other special foods for the Moon Festival like these strange looking water chestnuts shaped like a horn, called Ling Kok also known as Bull’s Horn in English. This is boiled and then cracked open to eat the starchy filling. It doesn’t taste of much but has some sort of traditional significance which has been lost.

Ling Kok or Bull's Horn

Learn more on the Mid Autumn Festival here.

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Banana Tree Soho Hot Eats

Posted on 07. Sep, 2011 by London Food Blogger.

Walking around Soho looking for a quick casual meal might stump you as there are so many choices of new restaurants with cuisine ranging from Indian wraps to Venetian Cichetti to Asian street food.  A welcome new addition offering Indochinese Cuisine is opening on Wardour Street this week, Banana Tree Soho.

Banana Tree Soho is part of a a chain of Casual Dining Asian restaurants around London and this newest outpost in Soho has just opened on Wardour Street.  This chain is run by William, an ex architect turned restauranter, and his lovely wife Anne. In the last 20 years, they have steadily turned this chain into a very popular Asian restaurant with high ratings on sites like Urbanspoon.

The new Banana Tree Soho has an industrial decor, with exposed ducting and bare brick walls, studded with a few Asian accents including the large Asian Hat shaped pendant lamps which were custom made for the space.

Seating is either on the raised communal benches or tables around the dining space. Noise reverberates off the hard surfaces, creating a vibrant buzz.

Banana Tree Soho’s Indochinese Menu

The menu of this branch differs from the other branches where they have incorporated more Indochinese dishes, basically giving them more of a leeway to add more flavours and dishes from around Indochina, South East Asia and surrounding countries. It was also a pleasant surprise to see that instead of simple one plate dishes, there are a lot of dishes you can order to share Asian family style.

At the pre opening trial run, we sampled a range of dishes from their new extensive menu. As we were quite a large group with a few kids in tow, we ordered dishes to share.

Chicken Stuffed Money Bags

Kajang Satay

Double Cooked Crispy Pork

The achar or spicy pickled vegetables  were quite superb and the belly pork was crispy with a hint of 5 spice.  I would definitely order these pickles as a side dish and even take some home if they can bottle it.

Crispy Soya Filo Roll

For mains, we ordered a variety of dishes to share, family style. You can opt for individual one dish meals or just a noodle dish if you wanted a different option.

The Legendary Rendang

After 19 years, they have reintroduced Beef Rendang onto the menu after finding a method to perfect this dish. The rendang is cooked to their well tested recipe after vigorous testing the many ways to cook this dish, resulting in a consistent quality that does that inhibit the flavour. The meat was tender, spicing was balanced but a bit too light on the chilli for my taste.

String Tied Braised Pork Belly with Green Coconut Juice

This was deliciously soft melting pork belly, perfect with a bowl of rice and some of their chilli sauce that is on every table. The flavour was reminiscent of something my grandma would make at home.

Tamarind Crispy Fish

My favourite dish, crispy fried fish with a spicy tamarind sauce, what’s not to like about this.

Grilled Blackened Chilli Pork

Seafood Curry

This dish was laden with seafood in a thick coconut curry, with a heavy curry leaf flavour.

We had a some papaya salad, stir fried greens and the grilled aubergine to accompany these dishes. For drinks, there is an array of freshly squeezed juices, a wide wine selection and an eclectic cocktail menu, don’t miss the Dirty Thai Guy cocktail.

In summary, you could have a lovely family style Asian meal or a quick bowl of Yin Yang Laksa or Fried Rice (Nasi Goreng). The flavours are authentic and have not been dumbed down too much and you will be ensured of a great meal at a really decent price. Starters start at about £3 and the mains are around £6,  a full meal with drinks will work out less than £20, which for the West End is a real deal.

Slow Food Kitchen was a guest at the pre launch evening at Banana Tree Soho.

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A Stylish Evening at The Cuckoo Club

Posted on 29. Aug, 2011 by London Food Blogger.

Ever wondered how to get onto the guest lists of the top members only clubs in London? Here is an idea, book a table for dinner and you won’t have to suffer the indignity of being selected from the queue.

The Cuckoo Club on Swallow Street has been a fashionable venue for a long time in its previous incarnations and today is one of the coolest clubs in town.

On the ground floor of the club, there is a restaurant which has been described as a destination restaurant where head chef Chris Cooper an alumni of the Modern Pantry has designed a modern European menu. The bar is manned by world class mixologist with an innovative cocktail menu.

We were recently invited to a dinner here where we got to sample their inventive menu. Eating in a club where the light is so low is a bit disorientating as you can’t see what is on your plate. The photos were taken without flash where possible. The decor is that of a formal dining room but bathed in this violet light, creating a louche feel.  The service was attentive enough considering we were the only diners there that night.

The starter and main dishes were competent enough but not all were a success. The chocolate dessert was a strange combination of different flavours and textures that didn’t work together.

Charred King Crab with coriander, spiced mango and salt baked pineapple

Chargrilled Aged Fillet, bacon, summer vegetables, haricot beans and red wine jus

Sweet potato fries

Chocolate and sea salt crumble

We were entertained by couple of guys singing Latin American tunes on the stage behind us and some of party took turns on stage and the dj booth as it was still not that busy.

The best part of the evening was when the party adjourned to the club downstairs which was starting to fill up.

Cured tuna marinated in lemon and basil

Meals are about £40 per head excluding drinks.

Slow Food Kitchen was a guest at the Cuckoo Club.

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Kabuto Noodles – Posh Pot Noodles

Posted on 28. Aug, 2011 by London Food Blogger.

Being stuck in boarding school and starving was a regular event in my school days. We were always shipped off to school with our stash of instant noodles, biscuits and chocolate as the mums were always afraid we would be underfed. Another girl in my dorm used to have a massive cake sent to her weekly and we pooled our resources and had regular midnight feasts, ala Mallory Towers, resulting in my putting on 20 lbs in my first term.

One of the few things we could get buy in the school tuck shop and the local corner shop were Pot Noodles.  We must have been really desperate as having a Pot Noodle was such a treat.

Fast forward a few years, Crispin Busk of Kabuto Noodles has just introduced a range of posh Pot Noodles which is nothing like the Pot Noodles that we had to endure at school. He was inspired by the steaming bowls of noodles that are staples in the East and noodles bars in London. This range was developed with no additives or preservatives, freeze-dried herbs and spices for extrafreshness, and good quality egg noodles wtih low levels of fat.

These noodles are really quick to prepare, ready in 4 minutes and comes in 4 flavours : Chicken Ramen, Beef Pho and Miso Ramen.

I tried them recently and found that they were quite a substantial portion. The egg noodles are not the broken up variety like that found in Pot Noodles, but full long strand and a good texture.

Instead of eating them out of the plastic pot that they come in, I put mine in a bowl and add some leafy green veg to make it a more balanced meal. My favourites was the Miso Ramen flavour. You can add meat or any other veg to this to your own liking.

Perfect for a quick and tasty meal. Kabuto Noodles are available in Waitrose.

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Spicy Nduja Palmier Bites – My recipe

Posted on 16. Aug, 2011 by London Food Blogger.

Do you know the feeling like you have won the lottery when you discover an amazing new ingredient? There is this unrational thrill that a  foodie gets when finding and loving a fab tasting new ingredient and my newest one is nduja, which I tasted here.

An email popped into my inbox inviting me to participate in a recipe competition using nduja, I of course agreed. Then came the dilemma, what to cook with it. I had a really busy week and about a day to think of something, get ingredients and to cook it and take some nice photos. The competition is stiff as the other food bloggers involved are great cooks and they all have serious DSLR cameras to take amazing photos with.

What is Nduja ?

Nduja is a spicy spreadable salami from Spilinga in Calabria and it is made of different parts of the pig with about 40% fat, sweet pepper and hot Calabrian pepper. The meat is ground and with spices and some salt and is stuffed into natural casing. This is then smoked for about a week and then left to dry for a few weeks.

The Calabrians like to eat nduja just spread on bread, with fusilli, in a tomato sauce, added to bean stews or soups. My inventive friends on twitter suggested these other ways, spread on top of a burger, and rubbing it on chicken for roasting.

Nduja melts when you heat it up so it is often used in pasta sauces, adding a bit of a spicy kick and the melted pig fat making everything taste extra delicious.

If you don’t fancy cooking with nduja yourself, you can always head over to the best Italian Restaurant in the City, L’Anima as Francesco is from Calabria and he serves a pasta dish with nduja.

Food Unearthed Recipe Challenge

For the challenge, I wanted to deviate from the traditional ways of using nduja and find a way of enjoying this without too much fuss.  So I decided to make these delectable melt in your mouth spicy nduja palmiers with a hidden explosion of flavour.  These canapes are really quick and easy to make and is an alternative to how nduja is traditionally used.

The competition is open for voting on Facebook , do have a look and please vote. Thanks.

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