Guardian Food Moment #2: Gathering Quinoa Storm

Continuing the theme of The Guardian's sometimes self-parodying headlines is this old chestnut - an oldie, sure, but a goodie.  Many thanks to my old friend Ben Judge (@benjudge23) for bringing it to my attention, via Twitter.

Al-Desko Dining: Coco di Mama

I love pasta.  Like actually love it.  And nowhere does it better for lunch than Coco di Mama. 

 

Let's start with the bag.  What?! (I hear you cry.)  No, seriously, there's a point to be made here.  Even the bag – even the paper carrier that you cart your lunch back to your desk in –looks great, like it just fell out of some high-end fashionista boutique in Milan.  Like someone's spent time styling it, making sure that it captures some glorious Roman Holiday feel.  If ever a bag could be anthropomorphised, it would be this one.  And it would be strutting its way down the Via della Conciliazione, wearing obscenely big designer sunglasses and the latest Italian printed silks. 

Open it up, and it doesn’t get any worse at all.  The theme continues, reiterating the point that this is something special.  This isn't microwaved lasagne or a pot noodle (I actually saw someone eating one of those at their desk the other day – classy); this is proper pasta. 

Why is this important?  Well, I'll tell you why.  It shows that someone, somewhere, cares.  Actually cares.  Cares not just about making a quick buck but about making your meal an experience.  And, hell, if I'm gonna be forced to eat lunch at my desk most days, I want the odd experience from time to time to get me through those days.

 

The sauce options are many and legion, from staples (like Bolognese) to extraordinaries (like Bloody Mary, with actual vodka), as well as 'naked pasta' – pasta tossed with olive oil and chunky ingredients.  I went for garden pesto, a medley of parmesan, pine nuts and basil.  It's frickin' amazeballs.  Seriously, this stuff is good – you wouldn’t think it, given that it’s basically just mashed herb, but it is good.  Seriously good.  Seriously this-is-what-every-bloody-Italian-restaurant-should-be-serving good.  It makes you swear off that dry, overpowering, mouldgreen gunge that comes in jars in the supermarket. 

A friend of mine said, of Coco di Mama's pesto pasta: "It makes me slightly cross, because they're charging you seven quid for what must cost them about seventy pence to throw together.  But then I don’t mind – and keep going back every day to get it – because it just tastes so bloody good."

 

It's also worth noting that the pasta is bronze press pasta, a method of making pasta that's slightly more antiquated, more old-fashioned and thus expensive, but which leaves the pasta with a slightly rougher texture.  I could go on about this method's pros and cons, its history, the technical process it involves, but... All you need to know is this: It makes more sauce stick.  Which is, invariably, a good thing.

Today's pasta style was... Well, I can’t remember the name, so let's call it 'squiggles'.  Great for holding sauce, and it's also got terrific bite.

 

All in all, an expensive but fantastically satisfying desk lunch.

 

 - GrubsterBoy -

Guardian Food Moments #1: Raw Vegan Avocado Chocolate Mousse

I want to start by saying this: I love The Guardian very much.  It is my go-to newspaper.  Despite its frequent corrections (hey, at least does correct itself) and its occaisionally hilarious outbursts, its a newspaper that I feel has real integrity.

But sometimes, it is just a parody of itself.  And no more so when it tries to do food. 

Shakshuka

Shakshuka is not something I've ever heard of.  In fact, I don’t think I would have heard of it now had it not been for my friend's boss moaning about hers.  Apparently, she had made one, stuck a picture on Instagram, and them been disheartened that it looked unappealing. 

 

For the record, I checked out the picture, by the way, and thought it looked aces.  But, then again, it's basically eggs poached in a rich, spicy sauce – so what is there not to like?

 

It's very similar to Jamie's heuvos rancehros recipe – which I shall attempt again soon and enlighten you all with – but with a more Mediterranean / North African / Middle Eastern vibe.  It's a seriously scrummy brunch idea – there can be few greater treats than eggs and sauce on a lazy Sunday morning – but also works wonderfully as a supper treat.  Accompaniment-wise, it needs little more than a hunk of crusty bread, or some unleavened thing (as we did) to keep it happy – otherwise, it's a dish in itself.

 

This recipe is largely purloined from Yotam Ottolenghi, who seems to have forgone his usual style of listing 2,000 hard-to-source ingredients for otherwise simple dishes. 

 

Ingredients:

 

x4 free-range eggs (Go for top quality – I know it's expensive, but it's also worth it – the eggs have got to be the star of the show in this dish.)

½tsp cumin seeds
x2 small yellow onions (Or one large one, whatevs.)
x3 sweet peppers – yellow and red (I used my favourite things: the long, pointy peppers that I think taste amazeballs.  As they're a little insubstantial, I threw an extra one in for luck.)
x1 fresh red chilli
x3 sprigs of thyme
Small bunch of coriander
Small bunch of flat leaf parsley
2tsp muscovado sugar
x2 bay leaves
x6 ripe, good quality, tomatoes
Pinch of saffron

 

To serve:

Feta cheese
Chopped coriander

 

 

1. Slice the onions.  You'll need them ready for step 3.  Also, I recommend taking this opportunity to slice up the peppers into long, thin strips, finely chop the chillies, and chop up the tomatoes into big chunks.  Chop the parsley and coriander too.

 

 

2. Dry roast the cumin seeds over e medium-high heat in a large, flat skillet – you'll need one with a lid.  Give them one to two minutes, no more, and stop them if they start turning black.

 

3. Add some oil to the pan and chuck in the onions, dropping the heat a bit so that they don’t brown too much.

 

 

4. Once the onions have softened a bit, chuck in the peppers, chilli, parsley, coriander, bay leaves and sugar.  Keeping the heat high, cook until the peppers have softened and are starting to take on some colour.

 

 

5. Throw in the tomatoes and saffron.  Season well.

 

 

6. Keep it cooking for a bit, reducing the heat down so that toms collapse and leave you with a thick, unctuous sauce.  If needs be, add water from time to time – but it small quantities – to keep the sauce liquid.  Remember that you have to cook the eggs in this – so you want it like a tomato pasta sauce.

 

 

7. Once ready, turn the heat down so that the sauce is at barely a simmer.  Hollow out four little wells in the liquid, and (as quickly as you can, so that they cook all at the same time) crack each egg into its own well.  Put the lid on and leave for 8 minutes or so – lifting the lid at the end to check that they’re done.  What you want is for the white to be fully cooked, but the yolks still lovely and molten. 

 

 

8. Serve immediately – don’t waste any time, as these puppies will keep on cooking in that hot sauce.  Crumble feta over the top and sprinkle on some chopped coriander.  Dunk bread and enjoy.

 

 

 - GrubsterBoy -

Steak and stout pie

There's a storm brewin'.

Actually, it's already been and gone, and as the picture below shows, caused absolute CHAOS to the streets of London.

Still, whilst it's wet and cold and blowy and autumnal, we'll carry on the theme of warming, comfort food.  Last week it was toad in the hole.  This week, it's steak and stout pie.  Perfect for when it's belting it down outside and you want to wrap yourself up in a blanket and watch endless repeats of old crap on telly.

This is also a really easy recipe that requires (a) no flour dredging (there's a cheat later that avoids this) and (b) no browning of the meat, both of which take ages and are a faff to do.  Fortunately, the absence of both these elements doesn’t seem to compromise the pie one bit.

A word to the wise, however: this massively benefits from being allowed to cool down and sit in the fridge overnight.  It also takes an unreasonably long time to cook.  So plan ahead.

Ingredients:

1.2kg cow (Kinda up to you what you put in – brisket, stewing steak, ox cheek, shin, whatever you like.  I used plain old casserole steak.)

500ml stout (I used Guinness.  I reckon you could use any ale, however, or even red wine.)

200g button chestnut mushrooms

x3 onions

x2 carrots

x2 sticks of celery

x3 cloves of garlic

x4 sprigs of rosemary

2tsp grainy mustard

2tbsp plain flour

x1 stock cube (Or, better still, 500ml fresh cow stock.  Up to you – but you will need the additional liquid, as I learnt...)

Ready-rolled puff pastry (Because life's too short to make your own pie crusts.  Genuinely.)

x1 free-range egg

1. Start by chopping all your veg.  No, actually, start by pre-heating the oven to 190°C.  Now get chopping. 

None of needs to be finely chopped, just into decent suitably pie-sized lumps.  I reckon a little smaller than the cow chunks will be.  The mushrooms I quartered, because they shrink a bit and I like big lumps of mushroom with this dish.  You can mix your carrots, mushrooms and celery sticks together, but keep the onions ghettoised.  Same goes for the garlic (slice this) and the rosemary (separate the leaves and chop finely).

2. Sweat the onions for 10 mins or so in a bloody great big cast iron pan.  Or whatever you'd normally make a stew in.  Keep going until them onions are nice and soft, but not browned.  A low heat should do the trick.

3. Turn the heat right up and thrown in the carrots, 'shrooms and celery, giving everything an almighty stir and season liberally with pepper and less liberally with salt (remember: you're adding a stock cube and/or stock to this, which is quite salty in itself, so go easy on the salt at this stage – you can always adjust later). 

Cook for a few minutes.  Or not.  Whatever.

4. Chuck in the steak, garlic and rosemary and cook for a bit, so that the meat is beginning to colour.  This shouldn’t take long. 

5. When you're happy, add the stout.  It'll fizz up like crazy, but fear not: it'll settle down before long. 

Add the mustard, sprinkle the flour in, and crumble the stock cube in now, if you're using it.   Boil a kettle and top up with boiling water so that the meat's covered – it you're using beef stock, warm it and add it now instead of the hot water – but again, only so that the meat's covered. 

6. Give it an almighty great stir, stick a lid on the pot and bung it in the oven for about an hour.  By the way, you might find that the four clumps up into rather unappealling, gluely lumps.  Fret not - these will magically disappear in the cooking, somehow.

7. Get it out, give it another stir, and have a look.  First, there should be lots of mucky brown crap stuck to the sides.  Good.  This is the flavour, so do your best to scrape it off with a spoon and reintroduce it to its friends in the stew.  Second, check the moisture levels.  I found that mine dried out quite quickly, which isn’t a problem – it just means you need to keep adding more liquid – kettle water will do it, honestly.  Cover it again and get it back in the oven to give it another hour.

8. Lather, rinse, repeat.  Well, get out, scrape, stir, check moisture levels.  Also, try a bit of the beef now – see how tender it is.  It should be fall-apart-in-your-mouth soft, not chewy.  Mine took three hours altogether, and could perhaps have done with a touch more.  From here on in I recommend testing it every 30-40 minutes – adding more water each time if it’s looking a little dry.  As for dryness, well, you know what the inside of a pie looks like, right?

9. Once it's done, leave it to cool and stick in the fridge overnight.  Apart from the fact that this'll let all the lovely flavours marinate and mix better, it'll also mean that the filling is cool when you want to make your pie, which will make life a lot, lot easier.  Get it out before making the pie, though, so that the filling is at room temperature when you stick the lid on.

10. Doing the lid is easy, because I told you to get ready rolled puff pastry.  If you want to make your own pastry, go and read someone else's blog – like someone who knows how to bake (I am a terrible baker).  I have tried handmade puff pastry and I have tried Sainsbury's pastry puff, and whilst I recognise that there is a difference and that the handmade stuff is better, I simply cannot be bothered with it – simply because the difference is so minor.

Unroll your pastry and stick the pie dish on it upside down.  Trace a line around the dish, leaving about a centimetre of overhang.  Like this. 

Keep the scraps, too – you'll need them.

11. Fill the dish up with filling and gravy, until it's about a half centimetre from the top. Pop the lid on and pinch all the way around the edges to make sure the lid stays in place.  Carve a little cross in the middle to let the steam out. 

Also, decorate it – that's what the pastry scraps are for.  I was a bit rushed, so it was just leaves.  But it's bad luck not to decorate it.  The tradition comes from big, old houses (think Downton Abbey) where they would have a weekly baking day, making all manner of pies.  To ensure that there was no confusion, and that the lord of the manor was not accidently served kidney and trotter pasty when he was expecting a mouthful of apple and bramble pudding, savoury pies were decorated whilst sweet pies were just sprinkled with sugar.  Preserve the tradition and stick a blooming leaf on there.

The crust needs to be egged.  So break an egg into a glass or cup, beat it up with a fork, and use a pasrty brush to paint it all.  All of it, not just bits.  It'll only turn nice and shiny where it's been painted, so get in all the nooks and crannies.  Also, top tip: paint the lid then put the decorations on - it'll help them stick down. 

12. Pie in oven, please.  It'll take 30 mins, no more – just check that your pastry looks crispy and golden. 

So, basically, it goes in like this...

...and comes out like this.

Serve it up with peas, or your favourite winter veg.  Draw the curtains, get the fire going, turn on some ancient, Sunday afternoon TV film, pour yourself a glass of something red and dark, and tuck in.  See, the weather's not so bad now, is it?

 - GrubsterBoy -

Il Laboratorio del Gelato

Last week I wrote a piece about the phenomenon that is Katz's Deli.  However, it's not really fair to tell you about how awesome Katz's is without making reference to their equally awesome (but very different) neighbour: Il Laboratorio del Gelato. 

 

 

It's incredible.  Simply incredible. 

 

More and more ice cream shops – or gelateria, as they ought properly be known – are popping up, in London, New York, Paris and beyond.  In Argentina, earlier in the year, we noticed that they're big business now – always have been, sure, but now all the more so.  In Cuba, they're huge – simply part of the fabric of an otherwise simple life.  Even in the rain and cold of autumnal London you're likely to find a queue outside the inimitable Scoop in Covent Garden.  Even Borough Market now has one, trading six days a week.

So what makes Il Laboratorio so special?  Simple: It's the sheer choice. 

 

 

With 275 (and counting) flavours, you're bound to find something you'll want.  In fact, finding something you want won’t be the problem; finding something you don’t want will be.

 

I settled for a combo of Guinness (Yes, that's right, Irish stout ice cream.  What's your question?) and malt (which was basically just a scoop of the inside of Malteasers – heaven). GrubsterGirl had thyme and basil. 

 

And they were all fantastic.  Not just good, fantastic.

 

 

So, if you're going to Katz's (which I cannot recommend enough) then please, please, save a little bit of room.  Just a little.  Or crank open the door to that spare pudding stomach we all know you have.  Because you just have to drop into the unassuming little shop next door for a couple of scoops of the Italian stuff.

 -GrubsterBoy -

Courgette Carbonara

Courgettes were in season relatively recently, and GrubsterGirl's mummy grows them by the bucketload.  It's absolutely fantastic eating food that you've seen grown from seed in someone's garden – it's natural, fresh, exciting.  Really.

It's also free, and we tend to get rather a lot of it.  Not that there's anything wrong with that – I like lots of free food. 

This is a good way of eating them – and it's really bloody easy, so a good one to throw together after a long, dull day at work.

Ingredients:

x2 courgettes, decently sized  (turns out we didn’t get quite as many this year as we were anticipating...)
x4 rashers of back bacon
50 ml single cream
25g fresh parmesan (or a small handful, once grated, is probably an easier way to work this one out)
2 large eggs
Bunch of thyme
Black peppercorns 
Pasta (rigatoni for me, but penne would work just as well)

1. Top and tail and slice your courgettes (or zucchini if you're going to get all American on me) lengthways, then slice further into diagonal half-moons.  Keep'em nice and chunky – they should soften up when cooked.  Slice the bacon into chunky stips.  This is a chunky dish, so fear not. 

2. Separate the egg yolks from the whites.  Stick the whites in a bowl in the fridge to make meringues another day – you won’t be needing them here.  Add the parmesan cheese so that it looks a bit like a beard, to keep yourself entertained.

Labour the point unnecessarily.

Add the cream as well, and mix it all up into a nice creamy sauce. 

4. Get out your biggest frying pan, lug in some olive oil and fry the bacon until it's cooked and just starting to turn a little brown.  Turn the heat up all the way to the top and add the white wine - cooking it until it's reduced to a sticky residue.  Then throw your courgettes in there. 

Add the thyme.  Smash up the black pepper in a pestle and mortar and chuck that in too.  You want to add quite a bit of pepper – enough to give it a fiery kick.  I actually used long pepper, which is an ancient and extremely aromatic pepper, which you should track down if you can.  It has a sweet, musky perfume to the flavour that really adds something to the dish.

Long pepper comes in gucci little catkins, and I used a couple for this dish.  It was the first time I'd tried them out, so was a touch nervous, but you could go for a third if you wanted something with real punch.  Just be wary of drowing out the other flavours.

5. Get the pasta on now.  When it's done, the courgettes should be pretty soft.  If they look like they're getting soft too soon, you can always turn the heat right down – or even off – and reheat at the crucial moment. 

6. When the pasta's cooked, drain it and add it to the frying pan, reserving a mug-full of the cooking water if you can.  Work quickly now, and turn off the heat under the courgettes.  Toss the pasta into the courgettes so nicely combined and the pasta is covered in the cooking fats.  Then add the creamy sauce and a splash of the cooking water, and stir stir stir.  Don’t whatever you do, turn the heat back on – if you do you'll end up with scrambled egg pasta, which is not especially nice.  Add more of the cooking water if you think it needs it – it'll give it a smooth, shiny texture.

Serve immediately with grated parmesan (if you like).  Don’t muck about – this is not a dish that is improved by being tepid. 

 - GrubsterBoy -