Seafood tapas at Barra de Cañabota

Tapas in Seville

San Sebastian might have become the darling of international foodies with its buzzing Basque pintxo culture, but Andalusia and it’s great capital of Seville are the original home of the tapas cuisine that now spans the globe. I can certainly remember that awkward phase of “British tapas”, “Thai tapas” and “modern tapas” before restaurants thankfully …

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Lechon with liver peppercorn sauce

Review: Donia, Soho

Donia, up on the top floor of Kingly Court, are serving up Philippine food through the filter of London modern high-end small-plate cooking. I find Philippine cuisine hard to pin down. It doesn’t have any of the powerful sweet-salt-hot-sour melange of other SE Asian cuisines, and doesn’t go in heavily on the spices like South …

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Hake and gorgonzola

Review: The Gaff, Bath

Whether the name of this restaurant rhymes with the city it is set in depends on what part of the country you come from. : ) Having not visited Bath properly for a few years it was nice to go back and mooch around for a day. I was struck yet again by what a …

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The Compleat Angler

Review: Sindhu, Marlow

A rambling old Victorian pub-hotel on the banks of the Thames at Marlow called “The Compleat Angler” is an odd venue for modern Indian cooking, but that’s where Sindhu is – one of Atul Kolchar’s growing crop of restaurants in the Thames Valley. We came for a mid-week lunch and we decided on the lunch …

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Pork belly benedict!

Review: The Curious Kitchen, Brixham

If you are ever down in Brixham, I recommend The Curious Kitchen for breakfast, brunch or lunch. And I think they open some evenings too. Brixham is one of those lovely south-west old fishing towns, hidden in a cove with little streets full of narrow houses clambering up steep-sided valleys of woods and fields. The …

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Tapas in SevilleReview: Donia, SohoReview: The Gaff, BathReview: Sindhu, MarlowReview: The Curious Kitchen, Brixham

Review: Le Champignon Sauvage, Cheltenham

Categories:

Fine dining, Michelin, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

12 February 2014

Scallops looking handsome
In my most exhuberant burst of foody behaviour yet, I’ve moved house and am now only ten minutes’ walk away from my nearest two-star Michelin restaurant! Because it’s important to have a good neighbourhood eatery for those Friday nights when you really can’t be bothered to cook, right?

The restaurant in question is Le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham, and although I ate here once many years ago I’d completely forgotten what part of town it was in. So stumbling upon it while looking for my nearest 7-11 for milk was a pleasant surprise. It turns out that my nearest 7-11 is further away than my nearest two-star Michelin restaurant. My priorities are clearly A-okay.

Cheltenham, incidentally, has astonishingly good sunsets. We’ve only been here a couple of months and I’d rate it higher for sunsets than anywhere else we’ve lived and most places we’ve visited. Must be something in the atmosphere. Oh yes, Le Champ…

They’ve redecorated to a more contemporary shade of grey since I visited last, though the restaurant is still essentially a pretty ordinary dining room tucked in a parade of local shops and restaurants. Mind you, I love the eclectic mixture of art on display, obviously personal choices and right up my street. Service was professionally friendly, perhaps I’ve bought into modern fadishness but I’d have liked a bit more interaction. The food’s the thing, though.

That's surely the smartest steak tartare ever plated
My scallops with charred leek and cured pork jowl were very good, small scallops with plenty of colour, wafer-thin pork cured to a spot-on porkiness and the leeks proving that it’s okay to burn your food as long as you meant to. It was good. Maureen’s steak tartare with corned beef was also good, with pickled mushrooms and wasabi cream. Across the table a pigeon pastilla was declared delicious too, as was the lobster.

For main I chose venison, in honour of the miserably wet winter evening going on outside. It was a beautiful piece, dearly tender with a gamey liver taste. Accompanied by pickled blueberries and soft sticks of salsify in milk breadcrumb, I enjoyed the whole plateful but it didn’t quite stir a 2-star “wow!” from me. The lamb with sweetbreads and goat curds was spiffy – I loved the way the goaty curds picked up and emphasised the lamby lamb. We all noticed the absence of starch from pretty much everything on the table other than the tablecloth. This isn’t particular to Le Champignon of course, it just seems that potato accompaniments are persona non gratin in fine dining menus these days. But when the food is this rich a bit of carbohydrate would help.

Dessert with zing. And bergamot!
We definitely saved the best until last. My dessert of bergamot-scented mousse was a vivid retro arrangement of orange and dark brown, as bright and brilliant as it looked. Maureen’s salted chicory root with accompanying chocolate sorbet was dreamy, but the star prize goes to the seared mango with Thai-flavoured sorbet; there was buckets of sweet basil and lemongrass going on in there. This was absolutely splendid.

People rave about Le Champignon Sauvage. I feel like a contrarian, because I just thought it was extremely good. It probably boil down to my own preference; when I go for a 2-star Michelin blowout I like to be startled or at the very least challenged and only the puds here knocked my socks off. But hey, Le Champignon Sauvage is very great cooking, and really excellently priced for the sheer quality.

Taste of the night - Thai sorbet

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In which I go on a cookery course

Categories:

Events and Visits

1 February 2014

Waiting to begin in Leith's cafe
So, for anyone who has tried any of the recipes on this blog I have a confession to make: the last cookery lesson I had was Home Economics at school, where as a twelve-year-old I turned out a thick, misshapen but edible pizza topped with tuna and cheese. Hey, I said edible, not delicious.

And I never cooked again, until the necessities of student penury forced me out of the kebab shop and into Kwik Save (for younger readers, Kwik Save was the Aldi of the 90’s). While packing boxes the other day I came upon a book where I wrote recipes in my student days. Even then I preferred making stuff up to following books. Of course, the first one I flipped to had both mashed potatoes and marmalade in the ingredients list… so I like to think my skills have developed over the years!

Chef Musa takes us through the ingredients
So I was intrigued to find myself at Leith’s Cookery School last weekend, wondering what on earth it was going to be like doing a half-day of “Malaysian Street Food with Norman Musa”. Props to my brother and sister for coming up with such a nifty idea for a birthday present!

Chef Musa is a great guy, self-taught like me, although of course he’s made a career of it whereas I tend to make a mess of it. With busy restaurants in Manchester and York, and a likely opening in London next year, he’s obviously hoping to get Malay cooking standing alongside Thai in the pantheon of imported UK cuisines.

Which it totally should be. I’ve been to Georgetown, Penang, the absolute Mecca of Malaysian food and we basically spent five days trying to eat everything. The Malay flavours are generally dirtier, richer and earthy than the super-clean spices of Thai cookery, but the range is amazing.

Chef Norman Musa at the stove

So, I suppose you think we spent an hour being lectured, watched some demonstrations, then pottered around making a laksa and took a leisurely hour’s lunch to eat it with a chill glass of wine? Not a bit. Within 20 minutes we were cooking up a genuinely excellent peanut sauce following Chef Musa’s demo, and then we just kept on cooking for four hours. Oh, with a five minute break for a drink of water, and chomping down a few satay along the way to keep us going.

Ta-da! Char kuey teow, a Malay street food classic
I knocked out ten neat sticks of satay chicken for the peanut sauce, some deep-fried battered prawn and beanshoot snacks, a mean plate of Char Kuey Teow and ended up with a very satisfying Prawn Laksa. I say satisfying because sticking my nose over the pot I could smell exactly the same smell that came off the bowls of laksa we enjoyed at the hawker stalls on Penang.

To be fair, we did celebrate with a glass of wine at the end.

I’d recommend this particular course to anyone who wants to get some confidence with cooking South-east Asian style. I’ve picked up a very handy bag of tips and techniques from Norman that no amount of making-it-up or reading recipes off the internet would have taught me. And so, yeah, I’d probably recommend a course like this to anyone who wants to get some confidence with any unfamiliar area of cookery.

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One of those hiatus things

Categories:

General Articles

18 January 2014

I haven’t posted a blog in a couple of months now. But I very much haven’t stopped blogging, I’ve just paused. We’ve moved house. As usual, that has involved lots of things going into boxes and coming out of boxes, and lots of other boxes being stacked in one room, then moved to another. There’s lots of paint tins everywhere, and dust sheets and there are many, many trips out in search of curtains and wardrobes and chests of drawers and everything else.

It’s just a priority thing. I haven’t stopped eating, I just haven’t found time to write about it!

So we’re in Cheltenham now. Managed to squeeze in two last lunches at The Green Cafe in Ludlow before we left. I’d eat there every day.

In Cheltenham we’ve tried a half-dozen local restaurants and haven’t yet found our new local favourite. There was a bistro on Suffolk Road where the service was glacial and the pairing of fruit and monkfish a bit of a misfire. A brasserie in Montpelier, beloved of many locals (the only place busy on a Sunday night) but pretty average. Our nearest deli/cafe is a daft. Oh, the coffee is okay… just… and the cinnamon buns are awesome but everything else, from sandwiches and brunches to the goods on offer in the deli, is just terrifically overpriced. They stock my favourite coffee roaster (Grumpy Mule!) but how can they put £6.25 on the label when five minutes walk away the local organic grocer has it for the correct RRP of £4.25?!?

The good folk of Cheltenham seem particularly keen on TripAdvisor, and are so enchanted by the eateries in town that the first two pages of results are pretty much all 5 stars. I was delighted to find that the coffee shop I’d pass on my morning ramble to the train station served such superb coffee! Except they don’t. And I suffered two cups just to make sure. Funnily enough, it might be okay to drink in, but there’s just that irresistable temptation to fill the bloody paper cup up to the brim with hot milk, isn’t there?

There are good things. Purslane is an awesome little seafood restaurant, top class and especially at the prices they’re charging. Prithvi is a jolly good Indian, though it’s stretching somewhat to describe them as modern; ultimately it’s still meat with spicy sauce. Both of these are a fifteen minute walk.

I hope to get back to the blog soon. This isn’t a post, it’s just stream-of-consciousness. But Le Champignon Sauvage is booked for next Saturday, with a chance to redeem themselves after a lacklustre meal we had several years ago, and we’ve got Nathan Outlaw in February!

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Review: Lasan, Birmingham

Categories:

Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

26 October 2013

Lasan
Birmingham is not an easy city to love. The city centre is a soulless jumble of high-end and low-end brand outlets, eatery chains and cheap baguette shops. As though someone has put the word out that folks in Birmingham are fearful of accidentally buying anything independent or original, and everyone has believed them. If there’s such a thing as “second city syndrome” then Birmingham has it, because I’d much rather find myself wandering around Bristol, Bath, Manchester, Portsmouth or York than around Birmingham*.

The odd highlights gleam all the more for it. There’s a spiffy coffee shop, the York Bakery Cafe, and just around the corner the Urban Coffee Co. And on the way into the Jewellery Quarter, an uninspiring district stuffed with hundreds of shops selling bling that would make H Samuel feel rather avant garde, there is Lasan.

Spiffy panipuris with tamarind broth
It’s a calming modern space tucked incongruously away in a bland building down a little side-street, but well worth the finding. This is Indian food served up with thought and originality.

First up we got an amuse of crispy little puri shells filled with a tamarind broth. Awesome bites. Actually, if you have never had panipuri then you should grab the first chance to try them, anywhere you can. The fact that these crisp cups of deliciousness are so hard to find is testament to the stupid artificially restricted menu that most UK Indian restaurants still cleave to. Not so Lasan.

For starters proper we shared a plate of vegetarian starters: crisp pakoras, vividly tasty spinach tikki, cubes of marinated paneer, etc. These were all good, and brightly spiced, though probably not the most refined of the appetisers on offer.

Not your classic curryhouse presentation of a main
Our main courses were a big improvement. I went for the signature Elaichi beef. This was seriously sourced meat; meltingly braised blade, lean yet full-flavoured sirloin, then a bone marrow pakora and some tandoori sweetbreads. The former was a deep-fried snot, the latter were a fantastic way to treat sweetbreads. Best of all was the deep, rich, warmingly spiced cardamom gravy.

Maureen’s dish was a goat biryani, served with daal and raita. This was my favourite ever biryani, lightly buttery rice and goaty pieces of tender goat meat. Needed the raita to provide some moisture, but almost certainly a main I’ll order myself next time.

Pud was a lemon and cardamom posset, notable only for not having enough cardamom scent for my taste. We enjoyed a couple of excellent glasses of wine, unexpectedly good in fact. You’ll be paying around £35 for three courses here without drinks, and although not my favourite ever Indian meal, I think they can probably get away with that for being head-and-shoulders the most forward looking Indian restaurant in Birmingham.

Birmingham doesn't inspire hilarity

* – so if you know of a brilliant little neighbourhood full of cool independent shops, like Manchester’s Northern Quarter or Brighton’s North Laine, please leave me a comment! I’d love to love Birmingham, I work there after all. : )

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Review: The Stagg, Titley

Categories:

Michelin, Pubs, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

13 October 2013

The Stagg, where the local squire comes to eat
Given that we’re going to be leaving the Welsh Marches soon, it felt like time to return to that most historic and significant of pubs, The Stagg at Titley. You’ll know it of course. You don’t? Call yourself a foodie? The Stagg is of course the very first pub in the entire world to have been awarded a Michelin star. In that sense, in this country at least, it stands as the first spot where the venerable Michelin guide stepped down from its pedestal of starched white linen, fifty page wine menus and waiters folding your napkin for you when you pop to the loo.

For my money, even twelve years later, the Stagg is still doing it right. The front room remains unashamedly a bar, where locals eye up arriving diners over the rim of their beer glasses. The two dining rooms at the back are handsomely decorated and furnished with no attempt to strew the place with rural knick-nacks or photos of pheasants and fox hounds. Yeah, this is where the local squire comes for dinner, no doubt.

Beef. And a BONE. Beef and a bone. Caveman food.
Starters are very good. Pig’s head for sir and sweetbreads for milady. The pig’s head is breadcrumbed, and is a chewy, fibrous, porky delight. Served with a little pickled radish on top of a nice sauce gribiche. This comes in a tiny wee flowerpot with edible soil around the radish. Hey, we are deep in the provinces here, “on trend” is bound to be a year or two off the London pace. Maureen’s sweetbreads are excellent, quite rare in the middle, with a liver and walnut coating. It’s a gutsy mouthful, literally.

I can’t resist my first bit of grouse of the season. I get breast and leg, proper tasty, a good little bread sauce with bags of flavour, parsnips and a scrunchy game chip in “giant Hula Hoop” form. Autumn is here! Maureen’s fillet steak isn’t the most melting ever, though it’s nay bad. With a light shallot jus and some good chips on the side. The dish is saved by a smoked and roasted hunk of bone marrow, which does for the fillet steak what Johnny Depp did for Pirates of the Caribbean.

Charming petit fours, flavoursome little chocolate crisps
We finish with puddings. Yes indeedy, for all it has a star the Stagg is a pub and so you don’t have dessert, you most definitely have pudding. Maureen’s bread and butter pud is the proper job, with crunchy caramelised top and gooey beneath. My “Autumn Eton Mess” is a great concoction of plums and figs, hazelnuts, meringue and lots of fresh whipped cream. I’m sure the fruit has been introduced to some booze somewhere.

I grant you we picked the premium mains, but in essence it’s about £34 for three courses before drinks. That’s very high for a pub, but about fair for the quality. The wine list is utterly reasonable as you’d hope in a pub, plenty of bottles under £20 and some really good stuff. Boy, if The Stagg were fifteen minutes closer to Ludlow I’d eat here a lot!

Game, fungi, fruit, nuts and red wine. Autumn!

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