B.O.B.'s Lobster at The Rising Sun

OK, so the problem with pop-ups and being me is as follows: by the time I get round to (read: pull my bloody finger out) writing about somewhere, it's gone. 

 

So B.O.B.'s Lobster's residency at the Rising Sun has now totally ended.  SORRY.  But I went so I'm going to tell you about it anyway – because I thought it was brillo pads.  Also, it's not totally in vain because (a) they're still running food trucks around the City; and (b) because it was good I reckon they'll be back for more at some point. 

 

First up on the menu were deep fried oysters.  I think we'd had these before in the US – in New Orleans, no less – and been confused by them.  I don’t think we liked them much to be frank.  So I'm not entirely sure why we ordered them here, but boy am I glad we did – very, very good.

Next up in our medley of dishes was shrimp and grits.  Now I am absolutely certain we'd had shrimp and grits before, again in the Deep South on the same road trip, and I can absolutely remember our reaction to them: We thought it was disgusting.  I have no idea why we ordered something we knew we hated.

But boy am I glad we did.  Because this dish was, hands down, one of the best all-round plates of food I have ever, ever had.  I have no idea how they made it that good, but you can be sure they did.  It was served up with a gorgeous hunk of pork belly - fantastic surf and turf.

Last starter was pig cheek soft tacos.  A little bit like Wahaca's now infamous pork pibil.  Sadly, a slight miss - nothing wrong with them, but I could have lived without I'm afraid.

On to the mains - again shared. 

In keeping with the theme of the place, we ordered the two lobster-based signature dishes.

Lobster mac & cheese was fantastic - so wonderfully homely and comforting.  The chef uses lobster bisque to make the sauce, and the mac is strewn with lumps of tail meat - it's just divine.  I could eat endless bowls of that stuff, I really could.

And then the lobster roll. 

This is kinda their core business - the pop-up being born from the ongoing lobster roll and prosecco truck that you'll see about the place at food fairs and markets (including, currently, Borough Market).  So you'd reckon that they'd get it right.  Fortunately, they did - this was absolutely spot on. Like, really, really good.  Perfect chargrilled brioche bun, stuffed to the gunnels with lobster meat, and very little mucking about with mayonnaise or other sauces to distract you.  Top marks.

They were also dishing up cocktails - some classic (ordered to request) and some less so.  Below we have the old fashioned and a mint julep.  They were good, but sadly nothing to write home about and, even more sadly, they were terribly slow to arrive. 

All in, if I was in the habit of giving marks out of 10 for a restaurant (which I am not, and I aint gonna start now) this would score well.  Sure, there were a few snags, but generally we enjoyed ourselves and ate very well.  I hope B.O.B's decide to give the restaurant thing another go before too long - they did it well.

 - GrubsterBoy -

Singapore Chilli Crab, Jumbo Seafood

Visiting Singapore, my friend said that there was one thing I absolutely had to do (food-wise, at least) before I left: eat crab, Singapore style.  We headed down to Jumbo Seafood to give it a whirl.

There is something of an ongoing argument that all Singaporeans appear to be engaged in: which is better, chilli crab or pepper crab.  As there were only two of us it would have been impossible to have both, so we really were forced to make a decision – we could only indulge in one.  Given the option I took the very tough decision and plumped for chilli crab.  It was not a decision I would come to regret.

We accompanied our crab with a couple of other bits and pieces from the menu.

First up (and intended as a starter, although the rather sketchy service meant that it actually arrived after the crab) was dragonfruit and lobster salad.  The combination of the tangy fruit and rich meat was fantastic.  I cannot, however, recommend the lashings of mayonnaise that accompanied the dish.  Also, sadly, the lobster meat was bordering on the sparse…

Still, a seriously beautiful looking dish.

We also ordered up a big dish of peeled oatmeal prawns.  These were fantastic.  No two ways about it.  The prawns are coated in a big helping of panko breadcrumbs and desiccated coconut.  This gave them a sweet, dry, crunchy coating to match the succulent, rich shrimp meat inside.  Astrid warned me off ordering the oatmeal prawns in their shells: if you do so, all the pleasure is lost, as you rip off the crunchy coating to get at the meat inside. 

For double the pleasure, by the way, please let me recommend that you take an oatmeal prawn and give it a big dunk in the crab sauce (if eating chilli crab).  It's amazing. 

However, all this is so much stuff: the star of the show is the crab.

Now, you know you're in for a treat when the staff bring you bibs.  This was one of those times.  In fact, bibbing is absolutely essential – throw all your pretentions and shame out the window, you need the bib.  In fact, you need one of those biohazard suits, because this is going to go everywhere.  It's not like eating lobster in Maine, where you risk flicking a drop of butter on your shirt.  No, you're going to get sauce everywhere.  So bib up. 

They’re also pretty amusing. In fact, it wasn't long before a bit of entertainment at bib wearing just turned to all-out absurdity.

Chilli crab is cooked in a big, hearty red sauce.  The crab is trimmed, chopped and chucked in in pieces, so that it cooks in the sauce.  Presumably the brown meat seeps out of the head to mingle with the sauce, which is a rich tomato, garlic, egg and peanut concoction.  Don’t be put off by the moniker either – whilst there's a definite chilli flavour and a kick of heat, it's really quite mild.

I loved this stuff. Absolutely loved it. I mean, I love crab – and, in fact, most shellfish (and all shellfish with legs). This was a revelation. You see, I'm usually one for banishing sauces. Steak tastes better, for instance, without hiding its flavour behind ground peppercorns and cream. Battered cod is not improved by lathering it in mayonnaise, tarragon and pickles, or drowning it in vinegar, or coating it in sugary tomato paste. Sauces should be, at best, a compliment, not a feature.

But here, however, it is the dish. It is its heart and soul. The sauce is every bit as much a feature as the crab. You're ordering sauce, like one might order soup, and being grateful that it comes with beautifully tasty crab meat at the same time. Because the sauce is flipping brilliant and as much part and parcel of the dish as the crustacean it accompanies.

And Astrid was right.  Crab eating – at least, chilli crab eating – is an essential 'must-do' for any foodie visiting Singapore
 

 - GrubsterBoy -

Jambalaya

Jambalaya is one of those funny dishes that lots of folk in the UK have heard of and very few are confident that they could adequately put into words.  If you think about it, cooking up rice with various kinds of meat, fish and vegetables could run a gamut of options: paella, risotto, pilaf, biryani, kedgeree to name just a few.  It's one of the elephants of modern cooking: I may not be able to describe it, but I'm damn sure I know it when I see it.

This isn't helped by jambalaya being a dish that I can’t say I'm totally familiar with.  My experience of eating jambalaya is, in fact, limited to one occasion: Coop's Place in New Orleans.  The memory still lingers, of a night out being stuffed with a rich and smokey mash-up of rice, smoked sausage, ham and rabbit, washed down with local raspberry Abita Ale.  One of the best meals of my life and a culinary highlight from a long roadtrip with plenty of culinary highlights.  All this was then followed by whiling away the night to the wee small hours in the crowded but intimate Spotted Cat Café, jiving to the tunes of the Jumbo Shrimp Jazz Band.  What a night.

So I confess that I'm coming to this latest experiment a little nervous.  The bar has, after all, been set a touch high...  Still, here we go.

Ingredients:

x4 uncooked chorizo(esque) sausages
250g raw king prawns

x1 large yellow onion
x1 large red fresh chili
x3 sticks of celery
100g okra (I know, I know, this isn’t gumbo so okra doesn’t belong here.  But I bloody love it, so you're all gonna have to learn to live with it...)
x3 sweet peppers (I actually used a couple of packets of Sainsbury's baby sweet peppers, which I think taste flippin' fantastic.)
A few sprigs of thyme
x3 cloves of garlic

500ml chicken stock
x2 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
Tobasco sauce (to taste)
225g American long grain rice

Chopped spring onions (to serve)
Lime wedges (to serve)

1. Chop all the veg up.  Dice the onion into medium size chunks, slice the fresh celery diagonally relatively thinly, chop the chili finely, chop the okra lengthways.  The baby peppers I used are great and are rather aesthetically pleasing if you carefully hollow them out then cut them into rings.  But who has the time for that crap most days?

Well, me, obviously.  Anyway...

2. Meanwhile, get them sausages in the pan.  Give them a prick and cook for 10 minutes or so with a smidgen of olive oil in the pan that you intend to do all the cooking in. 

(Yes, I know there are only three and I said four.  Three wasn't enough, right?  So, basically, you're getting the advantage of my screw-up.  So be grateful, OK?)

You want to cook them until they are not just about cooked, then remove them.  I have my reasons for avoiding overcooking them.  You're just trying to achieve two ends with this stage: Firming up the meat so that they can be skinned and sliced, yet stay whole when they go back in the pot for further cooking.  Secondly, you want to get the oil out so you can cook everything else in it.

3. Add the veg and cook it in the chorizo juices.  Chrush the cloves of garlic into the veg and cook away for 5 to 10 minutes, until the veg is just starting to soften a bit. 

4. Add the rice and the leaves from the thyme sprigs, and stir into the vegetables.  Cook for a couple of minutes on a high-ish heat, stirring the rice to coat it in all the oil left from the sausages.  A bit like you would a risotto.

5. Add the stock, tinned tomatoes and a bloody good few shakes of Tobasco.  This fiery little number comes from Avery Island in Louisiana, so is the perfect accompaniment to any Southern American Creole dish, in my view. 

Turn the heat down and get the dish to a gentle simmer, then cover and set the timer for 12 minutes.  But be sure to give it a stir every so often, though, or it'll stick.

6. Whilst all this is going on, your sausages should have cooled.  Very carefully skin them - the meat will be soft and will want to break up quite a lot.  Don't let that happen, if at all possible.  Once skinned, cut them into discs (again, very carefully - be sure to slice them back and forth, not just try to guillotine them - that won't work out well for you.

Surf and Turf.  Mmmm.

7. Get the lid off and have a good look.  I found that most of the liquid had gone, but not all, and the rice was cooked.  This isn’t ideal; jambalaya's not a soup.  If you have the same issue, whack the heat up to full and cook quickly for a few minutes – you'll find most of the wet cooks off without splitting the rice.

This is the stage you want to throw the prawns and the sausage into the mix.  They only want a couple of minutes to cook, otherwise the prawns will become quite tough and the sausage will break down to nothing.

8. When all is done, serve straight up, piping hot, with spring onion sprinkled on top and lime squeezed all over the shop.  Add more Tobasco too (unless you’re a wimp).

It's a wonderful, warming, comforting dish.  I feel like I ought to be eating it only during the summer, only on particularly muggy, humid, sticky, hot summer days – basically, on days approaching Louisiana's climate.  But the truth is that it’s brilliant in winter too, and as we head into autumn there's a lot worse one could do than scoop down prodigious great quantities of this mish-mash of Creole flavours.

 - GrubsterBoy -