Actually, I'm not and nor did I eat a donoughnut for this post. And the whole 'ich bin ein Berliner' meaning I am a jelly donoughnut is an urban legend.
Anyway, I did got to the Zeigeist in Vauxhall for dinner recently. It's all part of Schwester's learning Deutsch intensive course. Eat German, hopefully speak German.
They were out of my favourite dish Kartoffelkuchen mit Apfelmuss (potato cakes with apple sauce) but which they call Rievkooche. Rievkooche must be the Plattdeutsch (low German) name for the same dish (ooh, I have learned something!).
I ended up having a Weiner Schnitzel which was very good but then it's not hard to mess up.
There's a very good selection of beers and a fair selection of wine. I love German food so we might well cook something else traditional. My text book has a few ideas so watch this space!
Monday 14 December 2009
Thursday 10 December 2009
The world is still my oyster
I'm still on an oyster kick and apparently there's even truth in the old adage that oysters are milky around full moons.
I had some last Friday, very near the full moon and they were milky.
Amazing! I had thought it was something of an old wives tale.
(Sorry we've been away recently, both boy and schwester are very busy at the moment.)
I had some last Friday, very near the full moon and they were milky.
Amazing! I had thought it was something of an old wives tale.
(Sorry we've been away recently, both boy and schwester are very busy at the moment.)
Monday 9 November 2009
The world is your oyster
I spent the weekend in lovely Norfolk and ate oysters at the Hoste Arms in Burnham Market, which is something of a tradition.
They were the best oysters I've ever eaten. Giant in comparison to the ones you get out of season and so fresh and sweet. They are the taste emodiment of the smell of the sea. Heaven.
What caused me to write this up (apart from wanting to relive the moment) was that I finally realised what the oysters are best in months with r in their name rule was all about. List all the months without r in - May, June, July and August. All the months with r in - September, October, November, December, January, February, March and April. Ooooooh right, it's the cold months! Or as my friend CharlyMouse puts it - all the months with r in make you go brrrrrrrr with cold.
They were the best oysters I've ever eaten. Giant in comparison to the ones you get out of season and so fresh and sweet. They are the taste emodiment of the smell of the sea. Heaven.
What caused me to write this up (apart from wanting to relive the moment) was that I finally realised what the oysters are best in months with r in their name rule was all about. List all the months without r in - May, June, July and August. All the months with r in - September, October, November, December, January, February, March and April. Ooooooh right, it's the cold months! Or as my friend CharlyMouse puts it - all the months with r in make you go brrrrrrrr with cold.
Friday 23 October 2009
Yalla Yalla-do
Yalla Yalla is a new Libanese restaurant and cafe that's opened up near Schwester's work. She's been meaning to try it for ages but it's probably a good thing she's waited until now because otherwise she's already be a dress size larger.
It is excellent. She had a halloumi wrap for lunch with an orange blossom lemonade. It was streets ahead of the halloumi wrap she'd eaten from a local sandwich bar recently and was very well priced. All the food is made freshly and it makes all the difference. You can really taste it. Cheap halloumi is nasty and not even the best chef can hide it but this wrap was a delight. Every mouthful was a pleasure. It was a flat bread wrap with fresh salad and olives and was well worth the £3.50 asking price. Even the meat wraps were only £4.00 which for something so tasty is a very good deal!
The only downside was the slightly slow service but that appeared to be the result of an infortuitously timed lunch break. Schwester will definitely be going back and hopefully in the evening as there's a proper menu to sample.
She also may be back to sample some of their delicious looking cakes... individual fig tart anyone?
It is excellent. She had a halloumi wrap for lunch with an orange blossom lemonade. It was streets ahead of the halloumi wrap she'd eaten from a local sandwich bar recently and was very well priced. All the food is made freshly and it makes all the difference. You can really taste it. Cheap halloumi is nasty and not even the best chef can hide it but this wrap was a delight. Every mouthful was a pleasure. It was a flat bread wrap with fresh salad and olives and was well worth the £3.50 asking price. Even the meat wraps were only £4.00 which for something so tasty is a very good deal!
The only downside was the slightly slow service but that appeared to be the result of an infortuitously timed lunch break. Schwester will definitely be going back and hopefully in the evening as there's a proper menu to sample.
She also may be back to sample some of their delicious looking cakes... individual fig tart anyone?
What a saucy tart!
Boy couldn't fit in a Voyages session this week so it was left to Schwester to wave the flag for exploratory eating.
She trudged off to Vauxhall on a slightly hungover Sunday where she cured any possible illness by indulging in some awesome Portuguese custard tarts at the lovely Cafe Madeira with CM. Cafe Madeira is part of a small family run business that specialises in Portuguese food.
Not only was their coffee excellent - CM's black coffee came with lovely thick crema on the top - but the custard tarts were amazing. Schwester had two (they are small!) and would highly, highly recommend them. They were the perfect consistency - the custard was set but not firm, the pastry was still crisp but not hard. They were perfect reminders of why custard tarts are popular and how far the real deal is from those nasty, blanched things you find in the supermarket.
The only downside to all this is that Schwester's discovered there's an outlet very near her flat that sells them which means she can access them whenever she wants...
She trudged off to Vauxhall on a slightly hungover Sunday where she cured any possible illness by indulging in some awesome Portuguese custard tarts at the lovely Cafe Madeira with CM. Cafe Madeira is part of a small family run business that specialises in Portuguese food.
Not only was their coffee excellent - CM's black coffee came with lovely thick crema on the top - but the custard tarts were amazing. Schwester had two (they are small!) and would highly, highly recommend them. They were the perfect consistency - the custard was set but not firm, the pastry was still crisp but not hard. They were perfect reminders of why custard tarts are popular and how far the real deal is from those nasty, blanched things you find in the supermarket.
The only downside to all this is that Schwester's discovered there's an outlet very near her flat that sells them which means she can access them whenever she wants...
Wontons!
This week we've gone for wontons as we were looking for something to make from the Far East. We've done the Middle East (Kurdish), the Caribbean (Jerk Chicken), Africa (Eriterean) and so we were looking for something quite different.
We've had stews and grilled meats a lot so far so this was an opportunity to try something quite different. We wanted to start with something easy so we picked Wontons and followed the recipe on Not Quite Nigella. It's a great food blog and the recipe is her mum's. I have no idea how authentic it is but they tasted great.
They were surprisingly easy to make. The filling is mixed up pretty quickly and then the wontons themselves are quick to make. Both the traditional dumpling shaped wontons and the frilled crescent circle styles worked out easily.
We found it hard to boil them but they worked really well steamed. We'd recommend using a steamer with a fair amount of space (we don't have one of those lovely bamboo ones that would probably make this a lot easier) and also possibly lining the base with greasproof paper. They stuck to the steamer if we weren't careful.
They also froze well (we interspersed the wontons with layers of greasproof paper) and were defrosted by Boy to deep fry (his deep fryer is his new pride and joy. I'm sure he's going to turn up at a State Fair soon frying unbelieveable things.) They came out really well but weren't quite as healthy, obviously!
Schwester's flatmate suggested that we list the places we locate our ingredients. Being Londeners it's a lot easier for us than many people but it's still useful to have tips.
For this recipe Schwester located most of the ingredients in China Town. My favourite supermarket there is New Loon Moon, 9 Gerrard Street. It sells a range of products that cover most of the Far East. There are plenty more supermarkets in the vicinity though so if you can't find it in China Town, chances are you won't! My flatmate also recommends a Chinese supermarket 'at the bottom of Queensway' which apparently sells more unusual Asian vegetables.
All in all, a successful cooking! I'm looking forward to using up the wonton pastry :)
We've had stews and grilled meats a lot so far so this was an opportunity to try something quite different. We wanted to start with something easy so we picked Wontons and followed the recipe on Not Quite Nigella. It's a great food blog and the recipe is her mum's. I have no idea how authentic it is but they tasted great.
They were surprisingly easy to make. The filling is mixed up pretty quickly and then the wontons themselves are quick to make. Both the traditional dumpling shaped wontons and the frilled crescent circle styles worked out easily.
We found it hard to boil them but they worked really well steamed. We'd recommend using a steamer with a fair amount of space (we don't have one of those lovely bamboo ones that would probably make this a lot easier) and also possibly lining the base with greasproof paper. They stuck to the steamer if we weren't careful.
They also froze well (we interspersed the wontons with layers of greasproof paper) and were defrosted by Boy to deep fry (his deep fryer is his new pride and joy. I'm sure he's going to turn up at a State Fair soon frying unbelieveable things.) They came out really well but weren't quite as healthy, obviously!Schwester's flatmate suggested that we list the places we locate our ingredients. Being Londeners it's a lot easier for us than many people but it's still useful to have tips.
For this recipe Schwester located most of the ingredients in China Town. My favourite supermarket there is New Loon Moon, 9 Gerrard Street. It sells a range of products that cover most of the Far East. There are plenty more supermarkets in the vicinity though so if you can't find it in China Town, chances are you won't! My flatmate also recommends a Chinese supermarket 'at the bottom of Queensway' which apparently sells more unusual Asian vegetables.
All in all, a successful cooking! I'm looking forward to using up the wonton pastry :)
Eriterean and the origins of Voyages
To our great relief Eriterean food turned out to be as exciting and interesting as we'd hoped. We'd been desparate to try it for ages (in fact, the Eriteran restaurants scattered about South London were the inspiration for this blog) and it's promptly catapoulted itself to one of Boy & Schwester's favourite cuisines.
We ate at Adulis on the Brixton Road which we'd highly recommend. We went with AJ & UG and shared the combination platter. We got a huge tray, covered with injera, the flatbread made of fermented rice and wheat flour, with 8 different vegetable and meat dishes on top. We're going to try to remember what they all were but it varies every time you go so it wouldn't be much help anyway.
What we can say was that it was all very good - the Adulis Special lamb dish was great, really flavoursome and fresh. The Dorho (chicken stew) was good, very spicy and unusually had a hard boiled egg in it. We also had a fish dish called Assa Tibsi which is Red Sea Grouper marinated in hot pepper sauce and fried in olive oil that was very tasty. It was one of the lighter dishes we ate. The vegetable dishes were equally exciting - we had the spinach, the alicha (a curry dish with carrots, green beans and cabbage) and the timtmo, a lentil dish. The cuisine reminds me of a sort of combination of middle Eastern, north African and Indian. It's no wonder Schwester likes it, since that's a combination of her favourites.
You eat without cutlery and use injera to scoop up mouthfuls of food. On it's own injera is a little sour but eaten with the other dishes it was a wonderful balance to the spice of the food.
We also drank Eriteran honey wine, which was lovely but an acquired taste. It's made of honey (sorry to state the obvious) and has a distinctive smokey flavour from being fermented in barrels which have been smoked using Geso twigs. We followed the meal with coffee which in Eriteria comes with a great ceremony. The beans are roasted in a pan in front of you so the smell is amazing. They are then taken away to be made into coffee and in the meantime a large bowl of popped kernels (pop corn to you and I) is brought out. The coffee then returns in a great coffee pot (see the picture) which has a horse hair filter at the top. You are then poured very small cups of coffee while frankincense burns as you drink.
We paid £20 each for our meal which included a tip. It was well worth it and is probably one of the best value meals we've eaten in a long time. We'd recommend Eriteran food at the drop of a hat and are looking forward to going to other Eriteran restaurants to start comparing them.
We ate at Adulis on the Brixton Road which we'd highly recommend. We went with AJ & UG and shared the combination platter. We got a huge tray, covered with injera, the flatbread made of fermented rice and wheat flour, with 8 different vegetable and meat dishes on top. We're going to try to remember what they all were but it varies every time you go so it wouldn't be much help anyway.
What we can say was that it was all very good - the Adulis Special lamb dish was great, really flavoursome and fresh. The Dorho (chicken stew) was good, very spicy and unusually had a hard boiled egg in it. We also had a fish dish called Assa Tibsi which is Red Sea Grouper marinated in hot pepper sauce and fried in olive oil that was very tasty. It was one of the lighter dishes we ate. The vegetable dishes were equally exciting - we had the spinach, the alicha (a curry dish with carrots, green beans and cabbage) and the timtmo, a lentil dish. The cuisine reminds me of a sort of combination of middle Eastern, north African and Indian. It's no wonder Schwester likes it, since that's a combination of her favourites.
You eat without cutlery and use injera to scoop up mouthfuls of food. On it's own injera is a little sour but eaten with the other dishes it was a wonderful balance to the spice of the food.
We also drank Eriteran honey wine, which was lovely but an acquired taste. It's made of honey (sorry to state the obvious) and has a distinctive smokey flavour from being fermented in barrels which have been smoked using Geso twigs. We followed the meal with coffee which in Eriteria comes with a great ceremony. The beans are roasted in a pan in front of you so the smell is amazing. They are then taken away to be made into coffee and in the meantime a large bowl of popped kernels (pop corn to you and I) is brought out. The coffee then returns in a great coffee pot (see the picture) which has a horse hair filter at the top. You are then poured very small cups of coffee while frankincense burns as you drink.
We paid £20 each for our meal which included a tip. It was well worth it and is probably one of the best value meals we've eaten in a long time. We'd recommend Eriteran food at the drop of a hat and are looking forward to going to other Eriteran restaurants to start comparing them.
Tuesday 13 October 2009
Jerk-ing around
Tonight Boy & Schwester went all Carribean cooking jerk chicken, sweet potatoes, okra and mango salsa. Mother had bought us a Scotch Bonnet chilli at her local farmer's market and it was an easy step to jerk chicken from there.
For the jerk chicken we used a recipe on Diana's Kitchen website that was from 'The Sugar Reef Carribean Cookbook' by Devra Dedeaux. A lot of spices went into the marinade and there were a few quite unusual ingredients such as soya sauce but it turned out wonderfully.
It was very quick to mix up and the chicken thighs we used (we tend to prefer them to chicken breast in most dishes) came out really well. Being September and living in a flat it was impossible to barbecue them so we just blackened them under the grill which worked out fine.
The Scotch Bonnet added a really unusual spiciness. Boy tried it raw (he's braver than I am) and reported that it does live up to it's reputation as being very hot. In the dish though, it came out perfectly. They are more warm than spicy. It's very different to eating a hot curry. The warmth in your mouth is further forward, on the tip of the tongue rather than scorching down one's throat.
The mango salsa we made was just an amalgmation of various recipe suggestions online. We used one large ripe mango, three spring onions, half a bunch of corriander and mint and the juice of one lime. Yummy stuff!
Sorry it's a fuzzy picture!
All in all, we were very impressed with jerk chicken. Schwester's planning to try the jerk chicken restaurants on Wardour Street in the near future. Amy Winehouse was spotted eating at one once which given she clearly doesn't eat must be a good sign! She'll let you know if it compares well to their own offerings.
For the jerk chicken we used a recipe on Diana's Kitchen website that was from 'The Sugar Reef Carribean Cookbook' by Devra Dedeaux. A lot of spices went into the marinade and there were a few quite unusual ingredients such as soya sauce but it turned out wonderfully.
It was very quick to mix up and the chicken thighs we used (we tend to prefer them to chicken breast in most dishes) came out really well. Being September and living in a flat it was impossible to barbecue them so we just blackened them under the grill which worked out fine.The Scotch Bonnet added a really unusual spiciness. Boy tried it raw (he's braver than I am) and reported that it does live up to it's reputation as being very hot. In the dish though, it came out perfectly. They are more warm than spicy. It's very different to eating a hot curry. The warmth in your mouth is further forward, on the tip of the tongue rather than scorching down one's throat.
The mango salsa we made was just an amalgmation of various recipe suggestions online. We used one large ripe mango, three spring onions, half a bunch of corriander and mint and the juice of one lime. Yummy stuff!
Sorry it's a fuzzy picture!All in all, we were very impressed with jerk chicken. Schwester's planning to try the jerk chicken restaurants on Wardour Street in the near future. Amy Winehouse was spotted eating at one once which given she clearly doesn't eat must be a good sign! She'll let you know if it compares well to their own offerings.
Tuesday 29 September 2009
Julie and Julia
I saw Julie and Julia last night with my lovely flatmate. It's a perfect Sunday afternoon type of film. Gentle and comforting, like soup on a winter's evening.
It inspired me to cook more complicated things, high on the list is beurre blanc which sounds absolutely yummy. I've probably eaten it before without realising it but now I want to make it. Since it requires large amounts of butter I might have to save it for a special occasion. I'm trying to eat well at the moment and invariably when I cook something I like I end up eating it repeatedly until I'm tired of it. I have to make a conscious effort to forget how easy it is to make lemon curd.
I want to be a better cook, not just someone who can follow recipes. Does that make sense? It got me all heated up to do something like cook all of Delia's recipes or Elizabeth David's when I realised A. that's already been done and B. I'm already writing a food blog. One should be enough.
So, being extremely excited about Adulis, the Eriterian restaurant I am going to tonight, will have to do!
http://www.julieandjulia.com/
It inspired me to cook more complicated things, high on the list is beurre blanc which sounds absolutely yummy. I've probably eaten it before without realising it but now I want to make it. Since it requires large amounts of butter I might have to save it for a special occasion. I'm trying to eat well at the moment and invariably when I cook something I like I end up eating it repeatedly until I'm tired of it. I have to make a conscious effort to forget how easy it is to make lemon curd.
I want to be a better cook, not just someone who can follow recipes. Does that make sense? It got me all heated up to do something like cook all of Delia's recipes or Elizabeth David's when I realised A. that's already been done and B. I'm already writing a food blog. One should be enough.
So, being extremely excited about Adulis, the Eriterian restaurant I am going to tonight, will have to do!
http://www.julieandjulia.com/
Monday 7 September 2009
Kurds out of the whey!
Hanams, Edinburgh – Kurdish.
A little further off the beaten track for us than usual but an excellent place to start. We needed a quick meal before heading to the Edinburgh Tattoo and were pleasantly surprised by how good our meal was.
We only ate main courses but they were excellent. Sister had a vegetarian couscous dish composed with apricots, sultanas, yellow split peas and spices in a sweet and sour sauce which was very good: subtly flavoured and delicate yet filling enough to satisfy.
Boy had a Gosht Barzaow Kebab – chunks of lamb in a traditional naan-style flatbread. It was a far cry from other kebabs we’d experienced before – the lamb tasted slightly smoky and was expertly seasoned without being overpowering.
Other diners all expressed pleasure with their choices. Standard items like Falafel and Baba Ganush were very well done. Unusual items we hadn’t tried before really caught our eye; in particular the lamb Tashreeb (lamb shank in a tomato, pepper and onion casserole.)
The service and ambience were excellent, despite being an alcohol free restaurant! The décor was fun too. Our favourite was the woven rug in a very Sadaam-palace style of a young cowboy and his horse…
Welcome
To first time readers and seasoned regulars it's a pleasure to introduce ourselves.
We are a Brother and Sister team dedicated to tracking down the tastiest delights and sampling them at peril to our waistlines.
We will leave no stone unturned in our search for culinary experiences out of our usual eating remit. Everyone has tried Chinese and Indian but have you ever tried Bolivian or Eritrean? We'll brave uncharted waters, exploring deep into areas outside Zone 1 to find unique islands of culinary excellence. We'll work out what to order off the menu and what offal is in Portuguese (intestino, for those who want to know).
If you have, let us know of places to go and we will review them if we can. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. We have a small hitlist of places to visit already, but we'd like it to be longer; so get in touch.
We will be posting reviews, pictures and recipes from our travels, so check back soon!
We are a Brother and Sister team dedicated to tracking down the tastiest delights and sampling them at peril to our waistlines.
We will leave no stone unturned in our search for culinary experiences out of our usual eating remit. Everyone has tried Chinese and Indian but have you ever tried Bolivian or Eritrean? We'll brave uncharted waters, exploring deep into areas outside Zone 1 to find unique islands of culinary excellence. We'll work out what to order off the menu and what offal is in Portuguese (intestino, for those who want to know).
If you have, let us know of places to go and we will review them if we can. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. We have a small hitlist of places to visit already, but we'd like it to be longer; so get in touch.
We will be posting reviews, pictures and recipes from our travels, so check back soon!
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