Story

Basically, the other night I went out and had a 21 course meal.

That's not a typo.  I actually did.  There were 21 dishes brought to our table, put down, left and removed when we'd eaten them.  21.  Twenty-one.  Seriously.

OK, so some of them were pretty small, I can’t deny that.  Some of them were basically bitesize.  Others less so.  But there were (I don’t know if I've mentioned this) TWENTY ONE OF THEM.

And they were all bloody brilliant. 

Basically, we spent the evening at Story, Tom Sellers's restaurant set in a converted public lavatory near Tower Bridge. 

Before tucking in – indeed, before ordering – we kicked off with a round of Vespers.  Good start.

Then the first 'course' came.  Which was odd, because we hadn’t ordered anything.  In fact, I tried at this point to order, and they said no.  You have to wait until you've had the appetisers before you order.

1. Crispy cod skin, cod roe mousse, botanicals and carrot tops.  A snack, it was fishy (to be expected) but also sweet and fragrant (presumably the botanicals) and smelled more of fish than the taste. 

2. Nasturium flower stuffed with oyster cream and breadcrumbs.

Who thinks of this shit, really?  My granny used to have a phrase: "life's too short to stuff a mushroom".  I'm sure it is.  But if so, it's definitely too short to stuff a flower.  But thank God they have.  Because this is 100% over-the-top incredible.  First, taste wise it's damned clever – sweet, almost buttery oyster cream, salty breadcrumbs, peppery nasturtium.  Second – and the really standout point – texture.  I don’t think of texture too often – who has the time? – but it's important, and I know that now because of this dish.  The flower petals are soft and velveteen.  The crumbs are hard and crunchy.  The mousse is smooth.  I'm basically in love.

3. The signature 'Storeo': two squid ink biscuits, sandwiching smoked eel mouse and dusted with vinegar powder.  Another triumph.  Smokey eel offset beautifully by slightly sweet biscuit.  Delicate and lovely.  Eat in one, though, otherwise you end up with a disaster of shards all over your plate.

4. Roasted razor clam, champagne snow and barley grains, decorated with a forage flower.

5. Rabbit sandwich with tarragon crème, topped with carrots cured in bergamot.  What is a sandwich?  Who knows – that's too long of a philosophical point for just now.  All I know is that this is not really a sandwich.  But I don't care, because it's yums. 

6. Sticky barbequed chicken skewer wrapped with wild leek and served with an umami sauce dipping sauce.  Nice.  Not a highlight, but nice.  Perfectly cooked.

Oh look, a nice candle has been put on our table.  Isn’t that nice?

7. English cherry tomato stuffed with avocado and raw tuna served on a shiso leaf.  The shiso leaf adds absolutely nothing at all, I only mention it because I now know what it is and want to show off. 

8. English asparagus with English caviar.  I have to say that I have only really been aware of English asparagus – I think?  Do I cheek where my asparagus comes from? It seems highly seasonal so I assume Kent (where everything seems to grow).  As for caviar – either this isn’t caviar (it isn’t) or it isn’t English (I assume it is) because beluga whales simply don’t live round these parts.

9. Beetroot, raspberry snow and sheep yoghurt, decorated with a pickled rose petal.  Seriously amazingly brilliant.  This remained GrusbterGirl's favourite dish all round.  Which is a bit awkward because we are STILL IN THE APPETISERS BIT.  I am half tempted to agree with her, though, to be honest.  Because this was truly incredible.

NOW you order, by the way.  And there's basically two options: big or massive – six courses or ten courses.  We had already decided on ten courses (my 30th birthday...) and just went for it.  Without prejudicing the awesomeness of what followed, I will say this: it was a bit of an error.  Whilst everything was good (even the worst thing must still be fairly described as good) it was just too much, too long.  But that's it, folks: my only gripe of this post.

10. The first course (ha!) is described as 'bread and dripping', which sounds a bit old fashioned.  It was, but not in the way one might think.

You remember that candle that I said arrived at our table?  It wasn't because it was getting dark out.  No.  it was a tallow candle.  Made out of beef dripping.  This then melts into a beautiful sludge that you dip your bread in.  GENIUS.  I'll bet that when Heston read about that he kicked himself for not think of it.  Hard.

The bread itself comes in a beautiful soft leather satchel – like the plates, glasses, cutlery, everything here is designed to have a tactile, interactive feel.

It's also served up with a veal tongue salsa.  This is an incredible accompaniment to the dripping – it's meaty, which is a natural bedfellow of fatty, as well as vinegary and sharp, which is the perfect foil to the grease. 

11. Onion, apple and Old Tom. 

I totally did not know what to expect.  It wasn't this – onion cooked three ways: onion compote on the bottom on which grilled and charred cups of onion sit, each holding a roasted baby onion.  Then they pour over a beautiful hot apply and gin (Old Tom gin, to be precise – see what I did there?!) consommé.  Now, I'm actually not wild about onions – at least not on their own – but holy cow, Batman.  This. Is. It. 

Old Tom Gin is a brand product these days, but it used to be a style of gin – sweeter than London, dryer than Jenever, it was the tipple of choice for alkies of the 1700s – a bit like a olden days Buckfast...  It's making some of a resurgence now. Also, by the end of the dish I was pretty pissed, which is always a bonus.

12. Scallops, cucumber and dill ash. Decorated with nasturtium leaves and flowers – the bitterness and pepperiness of which work well together.  My only criticism is the cucumber balls – not wise, I came very close to flicking a few down GrubsterGirl's top in my attempt to skewer them.

13. Heritage potato, turnip and coal.  Topped with a wee English asparagus head.

So... This is embarrassing.  I knew when I set up a food blog it would happen at some point.  I would have to admit my dark secret. 

I don’t like potatoes.  And I hate mashed potato.

Sorry, I just don't.  There, I've said it.  That's me.  So don’t go round this blog looking for potato recipes – they're boring, taste of fluff, and the world could get by just fine without them.

So I wasn't especially looking forward to this course.  But holy hell it was good.  Like, I have no idea what went into it, but that was just jaw-achingly delicious.  You see, if all mash was like that, I'd eat it.

14. Crab and wild leeks, with green peas.  Love crab.  Wasn't disappointed.  Had to be told not to lick the plate.

15. Foraged wild greens and langoustine. 

OK, so this came to our table first.  Lawrence the Langoustine was alive too.  If you don’t like that sort of thing then... well, I don’t know what to say.  Don’t eat this thing, I guess. 

Five minutes later, the basket (or rather its entire contents) is transformed to this:

It was lovely – and as fresh as you can get, too – wild, foraged greens, picked that afternoon and changing day-to-day (plate-to-plate, even), served up with a fresh, grilled langoustine.  I love this kind of a crustacean, and it wasn't a disappointment.  Lawrence didn’t die in vain – au contraire, he made me very happy in his final moment. 

The dish was served with a clam consommé which – like the apple-gin consommé above (see 11).  Again, this was a fantastic addition.  It was light but nevertheless full of flavour – of shellfish and the sea and (just a little) bit sweet – which was a wonderful balance to the bitterness of the wild greens.

16. Lamb threeway.  Roast loin, belly ballotine and head rillettes.  The 'main course', if you like.  Decorated with little garlic flowers which (at the time of eating) were absolutely in season - a beautiful waft of garlic added to the dish.

We got offered cheese at this stage.  LOLZ!  No, really, someone honestly thought that I'd want to eat mountains of solidified milk fat IN ADDITION to the twenty-one other things I was eating.  I have never been known to refuse cheese in my life – but I didn’t hesitate this time.

Ah, pudding time.  Just what the doctor ordered.  Actually, I'm certain he didn’t order this...

17. Foie gras crème brule with English pears. 

Now, if you'd told me in advance that I was going to have foie gras crème brule, I would have said – Michelin or no Michelin, that's going too far.  Certainly when it's being served up, unabashedly, as a pudding.

Of course, it wasn't.  On the contrary, it only just went far enough.  Because I could have eaten ten plates of that.  It was one of those dishes that's just so well, done, so well balanced, that it makes me stop and think 'now, why can’t I think of this?'.

The pear was another threeway: frozen (why-oh-why?), in gel form (OK…) and pickled (The best, obviously.  Sweet and sharp and spicy all at the same time. Yes yes yes.) all of which, in their own way, matched the supreme richness of the liver.

Oh, and there was something else. A rapeseed sweet.  Casual.

Basically, I reckon this was a tiny sugar blister filled with rapeseed oil.  AS YOU DO.  Totally unnecessary, but in exactly the same way that foie gras itself is totally unnecessary – it's brilliant because it's over indulgent and because it tastes amazeballs. 

18. All the lemons: Lemon snow, lemon compote, lemon parfait, lemon dust with white chocolate parfait and crisp.  Brilliant.  No words.  A pre-pudding palate cleanser that deserves to be a dish in its own right – deserves to be a dish writ large, all over the menu.

19. Hay, prunes and milk.

Nearly there, friends.  You've done well to get this far.  So had we, trust me.  This was actually milk, milk ice cream (sprinkled with what I assume is hay), poached prune and puffed wheat.  GrubsterGirl wasn't keen, and I could have taken it or left it.  It was quite a clever take on pudding – both in its playful nature (like kid's cereal in a posh restaurant) and in being an almost savoury desert – but it didn’t blow me away.  I reckon if I were given it in any other situation I'd probably think it was very nice, but surrounded by 20 other fantastic dishes it was always going to suffer a little by comparison.

20. Final course, and the only one with nuts - which GrubsterGirl can’t eat.  They're actually fantastic about allergies – which is impressive given the vast quantities of different dishes they have to prepare (and remember, the menu changes constantly).  So they gave her raspberry sorbet and chocolate soil instead.

I had almond and dill – almond ice cream and candied ground almonds with dill sauce and dill snow.  Lots of people aren’t crazy about dill.  I'm one of them.  All I can say is don’t let that put you off.  Because it turns out that the combination of dill and almonds, pluss a little sugar, is magic.

21. OH NO WAIT THERE'S MORE.  Chocolate covered marshmallow puds.  With a little biscuit base.  Actually, I basically can’t remember these – I'd eaten way too many different things to notice / care.  Bit of a shame to leave it there, but there you go.

To be honest, if I was asked to invest two-million quid so that a relatively unheard of 26 year old could set up a poncy restaurant with loads of courses and not many covers south of the river in a disused bog, I'd probably laugh.  Then I'd tell the person asking to piss off.  But that's exactly why I have to work for a living and not sit around on yachts quaffing champagne and remarking on what a fantastic financial investor I was.  Because what Sellars has set up in Story is pure, unadulterated genius.  It's one of those restaurants I am going to keep coming back to, in my mind, for years to come.  Sure, it wasn't cheap - by a long chalk - I don’t know if this is the Michelin star effect (oh, did I not say, it's go one of those? Frankly, you might have figured it out – they serve dill snow, accompany dishes with coal and make table decorations out of cow fat).  Nor was it speedy – it took us nearly FOUR HOURS to have dinner – which is a mite too long, alas.  But I already want to go again.  Really want to go back.  In fact, I wanted to go again before I'd got out of the taxi home.  It's just that bloody good. 

- GrubsterBoy -

Hawksmoor

Hawksmoor is flipping brilliant. 

 

If you haven’t heard that before, hear it now: Hawksmoor is flipping brilliant.

 

I don’t believe you can’t have heard that before, though.  Seriously, this has become one of London's hottest restaurants.  So much so that they've open four branches and a bar, floated on the money markets and opened a kith-and-kin mini-variation, Foxlow, aimed at providing the same quality for a wider audience.  You always, always have to book in advance – forget walk-ups, even on quiet nights these days.  And they can do all that not because I say that they're flipping brilliant, but because everyone says that they're flipping brilliant.

 

So when it came to picking a birthday dinner venue for GrubsterGirl, I could think of little better than a big, indulgent, slap-up meal at our favourite place in town: Hawksmoor Seven Dials. 

 

Opening proceedings were the starters.  For me, it was brown shrimp on toast.  Beautifully sautéed in melted butter and herbs, set on a light sourdough slice, these rocked my world.  I have had potted shrimp cold more times that I can recall, and loved them each time.  But I have never before had brown shrimp on toast warm.  This immeasurably improves them, bringing the flavour out completely and bringing the taste of the sea to life. 

 

GrubsterGirl tucked into her lobster cocktail, a big silver goblet of chopped lobster tail and Thousand Island dressing.  The key here is to get the dressing right.  Too often it's so rich that it completely masks the lobster (or shrimp, as is more common).  Here no such mistake was made.  Here it only enhanced the dish.

For mains we tucked into glorious, trick fillet steaks.  We've shared the chateaubriand on previous visits but sadly that was not to be this time – the smallest on offer came in at 950g, a cut of steak we once shared with GrubsterMummy and GrubsterDaddy and still couldn’t finish between the four of us.

 

Hawksmoor grills its steaks over charcoal and the proof is in the eating, as it were.  It's a true revelation – go to anywhere else that pan sears them and you'll instantly see the difference.  Good as they are, the charcoal roasting really adds a depth of smoky flavour that, I'm sorry, you simply cannot get from a skillet, no matter how hot you get it. 

Hawksmoor also get a lot more right beside the steaks.  I've already told you about the starts and how good they were.  But there's also the side dishes.  We had triple cooked chips (thank you, by the way, Heston for giving us these – you're a genius), although you can opt instead for fatter chips cooked in beef dripping.  Actually.  On the side we added a delectable stilton hollandaise – not to pour over the beef but to use as a dipping sauce for the chips.  If you're not into that (and you should be) then the homemade ketchup's pretty damn good too.

 

We also had bone marrow – a bargain at the price, and a beautiful addition to the steak – I recommend smearing it on like you might smear mustard or horseradish.  We also had beautiful creamed spinach. 

 

 

For pudding... Well, we were pretty done by this stage.  Proper stuffed.

 

But still we managed to cram in a couple of scoops of ice cream or sorbet – in my case blackberry, in GG's case salted caramel and popcorn.  Also, by way of celebratory treat, with coffee the staff were kind enough to give us some of their salted caramel rolos (literally to die for) with coffee.

 

 

Oh, and  I nearly forgot – cocktails.  Bloody marvellous.  I often think that a huge cocktail list in a restaurant is a bad sign – it usually suggests a desire to charge a fortune for the drinks without giving much thought to them or the food.  Hawkmoor bucks that trend entirely - here the drinks are works of art in themselves and clearly as important to the folks that run the show as the food is.  Sadly, the signature Hawksmoor Fizz has vanished from the menus, but can often be made to order by the super friendly staff.  They also mix what I am certain is the best old fashioned in London – don’t just take my word for it (and have it with rye, not bourbon – trust me on that at least). 

 

 

Price wise, it's spenny – almost painfully so.  But every mouthful, ever sip, was totally worth every single last penny.  If I'm going to splurge – and I am, I love food, why else would I write this blog – then I want it to be good.  And Hawksmoor is.  Bloody good.

 

 - GrubsterBoy -

Quick Chilli Con Carne

Last weekend, over a big dinner en famille, I was (quite rightly) criticised for being a thoroughly impractical chef.  It's true, in a sense: I only tend to cook things that take flippin' ages.  My chilli con carne, for example, (one of my very, very favourite meals) takes approximately six to eight hours on a good day.  Longer if I'm being serious and cooking it overnight.  Another staple, sausage pasta sauce, takes at least a couple of hours.  All well and good – and I think that there are real, untapped flavours and textures that are lost without the joys of slow cooking – but hopeless for a quick supper on a Monday night.

 

Which is why I am bringing you quick chilli con carne.  It's based on my a slowly refined recipe I've developed over the years, but with a view to throwing it together when you get home from work.  And it is possible to do that with this recipe. 

 

I tend to eat this with rice or flat bread, depending on mood and/or whether I can be bothered to boil a pan of water.  To serve: Tobasco sauce, sour cream and an avocado salsa.  Guacamole works just as well, but you always have to wait for the avocadoes to ripen (even when they're marked 'ripe and ready to eat' – the biggest lie since "the cheque's in the post") which would totally undermine the quick, unplanned idea behind this dish / post.

 

Ingredients:

 

For the chilli –
500g beef mince
1.5 medium onions
3-4 cloves of garlic
2 tsps oregano (You can buy Mexican oregano from Cool Chile which is infinitely better.  I was out, however, and the regular stuff is fine.)
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsps smoked paprika
0.5 tsp turmeric
2 fresh red chillies
500ml tomato pasata
1-2 tsps cocoa powder
1-2 tsps soft brown sugar or molasses
Chilli pepper sauce (See my note on chilli sauces.)
2 sweet green peppers
1 can of beans (Kidney is traditional, but I prefer black eyed beans for being a touch crunchier.)

 

For the salsa -
2 avocados, as ripe as you can find
The other half of the onion (that you didn’t use for the chilli)
2-4 cherry tomatoes
Handful of fresh coriander
Half the juice of a lime
Chilli sauce (Green, if you can find it.)

 

To serve
Sour cream / crème fraiche

 

 

1. Start by chopping the one and a half of onions and garlic small and getting them on the heat in a little oil.  You'll want to use a big, heavy bottomed saucepan – this is a great one-pot dish, by the way, which saves a bit on cooking.  Keep the heat nice and low to soften the onions without burning the garlic. 

 

2. Add the beef and brown it, making sure to crumble it as it goes in and break it down a little in the browning process.  You want it in crumbs. 

 

Right now it'll look (and smell) pretty unappetising.  My friend Ben, who is domestically challenged, recently said to me: "Isn’t chilli just Bolognese with kidney beans and chilli flakes?"  No.  Silly boy.  Sure, it's mince and onions and tomato, but it’s also a whole heap more.  Basically, it starts the same – sure – but that's just the base.  To that you're adding a spice palate and developing a wholly different dish.  Ben's question is basically like looking at the ingredients for Toad in the Hole and saying: "Isn't that just a sponge cake with sausages in it?"

 

 

Essentially, my point is this: You're developing the base into a Mexican-y flavour adventure.  So add whatever you think appropriate.  So fear not that it doesn’t look / smell like chilli yet – it's not.  But you're about to make it chilli.

 

3.  Add the oregano, cumin, turmeric and paprika.  This last item got left out of the ingredients team photo by accident and so deserves its own picture.  It's absolutely the daddy and deserves respect.  It's Spanish stuff which comes in two varieties: hot and sweet.  Use hot.     

 

 

If you want it hot hot, now's the time to add 0.5 to 1 tsps crushed dried chillies, or alternatively soak and add a whole dried chilli like a chipotle. 

 

Leave it for a bit to cook, toasting the spices nicely.  You see?  Already it's beginning to look like a chilli.

 

 

4. Add the pasata, fresh chillies, cocoa and sugar.  You can also add coffee if you like – a shot of espresso goes down well if you have a machine handy.  Another thing you can try is a cinnamon stick or two.  

 

Add chilli sauce at this stage – the quantity will all depend on how strong the sauce you're using is, so kinda add to taste.  Do it slowly, though: it's hard to correct an overly strong chilli.  I also lobbed in a couple of teaspoons of Trees Can't Dance's amazing chipotle paste, to give it a smoky touch as well.

 

 

5. Bring the whole mix to a gentle simmer.  Now's the waiting time: it needs about 20 mins minimum to simmer away.  In an ideal world, this is where the slow cooking bit would come it – you'd add stock / other liquid, and leave it in a low oven overnight.  But you don’t have time for that, so get it going to let the beef soften and the flavours infuse.

 

 

6. Whilst it's doing that, make the salsa.  Peel the avo's and chop them finely – about the same size you'd chop tomatoes for a regular salsa.  Chop the tomatoes and the onion mega finely.  Roughly chop the coriander. 

 

 

7. Put the salsa ingredients into a bowl and stir vigorously.  Season well with salt and pepper, add a

few dashes of chilli sauce and some of the lime juice.  Stir again, vigorously, and taste.  Repeat the seasoning until it tastes the way you like it.  Cover and leave in the fridge until the chilli's ready.

 

 

8. Returning to the chilli, after it's had about 20 mins or so, it should have reduced right down and gone an even deeper red.  You can keep it going like this as long as you like, just be sure to top up with water / beef or vegetable stock from time-to-time, to stop it becoming too thick. 

 

 

9. Chop the green peppers into chunks – about 1cm squared.  Open the beans and rinse under the cold tap.  Throw both into the pot and give them 10 mins, really just to heat up.  If you're doing rice, you probably want it to go in the pan now. 

 

 

Once the peppers and beans have had their time, you're done and ready to serve.  Basically, it's just a trick of sticking everything in a bowl and handing out forks.  Also serve with chilli sauce on the side – different people like things at different strengths, so I always aim (with varying degrees of success) to produce a relatively mild chilli then let people spice it up with sauces of different flavours.

 

 

And to drink?  Don’t be silly, there's really only two options: Mexican beer (Corona, Pacifico or Modelo, perhaps?) with a wedge of lime in it, or a big, strong, salty margarita.

 

 - GrubsterBoy -

Caravan

I was initially rather vexed that I had to go to an out-of-hours meeting in King's Cross.  To be fair, it's not exactly far away, but it is in the opposite direction to home from my place of work, and I'm never keen to get further away from home after work has ended.  However, when GrubsterGirl noted that King's Cross was also the home of Caravan, a popular small plates joint, I was somewhat appeased. 

Sadly, there was no table available when we arrived.  Not to be deterred, GrubsterGirl and I got stuck into drinks at the bar.  The bar staff were amongst the friendliest, warmest barkeep I have ever met.  Not New York friendly, which can be grating and almost intimidating, but genuinely nice.  They even found stools for us.

 

I had a pumpkin sour – basically a whiskey sour with roast pumpkin purée introduced – which was heavenly.  GrubsterGirl treated herself to a bramble cocktail, with actual jam mixed in.  Similarly aces.

Given that we were told that we would have a forty five minute wait, we opted to open proceedings early with a curried onion, yoghurt and coriander flatbread.  When it arrived it was epic.

But soon – far, far sooner than the threatened 45 minutes – we were shown to our tables.  Now, Caravan is part of the modern trend of feeding people through a series of small dishes, rather than settling for the traditional starter-main-pudding effect.  What that meant was that GG and I were able to order away to our heart's content.  Which we did.

 

One of the great things about this place is how you can, seriously, have a half dozen meals in one sitting.  For example, our opening two dishes were seaweed an marinated tofu, a delicious Japanese style dish to practice our chopstick skills on...

...and then scallop ceviche, served with grapefruit, ginger, spicy popcorn, mint and raw beansprouts (to add a bit of crunch).  This was fiery as hell but absolutely top drawer. 

The dishes by now were flowing thick and fast.  Next out came the best meatballs I have ever had in the whole world, big, thick juicy cannonballs of lamb flavoured with North African spices and apricots and set in a beautiful red sauce. 

We had a quinoa salad as well, which was decent if a little unexciting.  Nevertheless, the addition of toasted pumpkin seeds was inspired, adding bit to an otherwise slightly mushy dish.  It was also wonderfully more-ish. 

Then there was the squid, which was to die for.  Served with romesco and a massive smear of its own ink, it was properly yummy and not even the slightest bit rubbery. 

The restaurant is housed in the old grain store.  The whole area is undergoing a massive, Docklands-esque facelift that I am sure will create a buzzing and vibrant community behind the recently revamped station.  The building has been properly revitalised, including an awesome illuminated water feature out front.

The venue itself is sports the ultra-trendy industrial chic look, with massively high ceilings.  Usually, the combination of these factors strikes fear into me, as nine times out of ten it means that the room is going to be fearsomely loud.  Fortunately, this was not such a case. 

 

Caravan adds to its surroundings with cute little touches as well – whether that's the clipboard menu or the bag of flour queue number.  Classy joint, love it.

 - GrubsterBoy -