LONDON PRODUCE SHOW

Last week saw the launch of a new event in London - The London Produce Show set up home in the Grosvenor House Hotel for 3 days, filled with fruit and vegetable producers from all over the world. The lovely ladies organising the event invited me down, via amazing boxes of fruit and veggies that arrived at my house, to the opening cocktail evening and the show the following day.

The first I knew about the show was when Liz got in touch via Twitter to ask if I'd like to come and if yes, what my postal address was. This was followed by a box waiting on my doorstep, that contained a bottle of rum, a cocktail shaker, dragon fruit, grapefruit, limes, mint and lychees. I made a dragon fruit and lychee mojito, which was just like a super healthy fresh fruit juice (with added rum!)

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SIMPLE SUMMER SALAD

This is a really quick and straightforward salad that I made for dinner a few nights ago. It was so well received on social media (and at home!) that I wanted to share the recipe for it here. Other than making some mayo, it's really just a case of boiling the veg - all of which can be done in the same pan. Mayonnaise might seem like it's going to be complicated to make, but honestly, once you've made it once and realised how easy it is, you'll make it over and over again. I've posted a recipe for mayo here before, but actually make it slightly differently when I'm using it as a dressing rather than a dip, so the recipe below is adjusted for this. 

Makes enough for 2 people as a main course, or 4 if served as a side

300g new potatoes, scrubbed and cut into chunks the same size as the smallest potato
125g asparagus
250g frozen peas
1 or 2 avocados
1 tbsp nonpareille capers
1 free-range egg yolk
1 heaped tsp English mustard
Squeeze of lemon juice
1 tsp cider vinegar
40ml rapeseed oil
40ml sunflower oil
Zest of 1 lemon
Pepper

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CITY BARGE CHISWICK

A couple of weeks ago an email from The Handbook landed in my inbox that stopped me in my tracks - a pub within half an hour's walk of our house was about to reopen having been closed for a major refurb, which included adding a kitchen to the venue. I'd never heard of The Barge in Chiswick before, but was intrigued, as we live a little bit in no man's land  where pubs are concerned (in between Chiswick and Acton there's a lack of good pubs) so was excited to find out about The Barge. I popped down last Tuesday for a drink, and met the manager, who invited me back, with the boy, for some food. Even on a rainy Tuesday post-bank holiday it was busy in there, so we decided to go down on Friday night and try out the new menu.

Luckily by Friday the rain had stopped so we had a lovely walk through Chiswick's house and tree-lined roads until we got to the river. We were early so sat outside, right on the towpath, enjoying a drink and some people (and dog) watching.

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EASY SEEDY CHEESE BISCUITS

I'll admit now that this one of the simpler recipes I've posted up here. But it's a winner - these versatile and delicious savoury biscuits are easy to make and the flavours can be adjusted to your liking, in order to suit what you're serving with them. The biscuits keep for at least a week in an airtight container so can be made ahead, or they can be served up almost straight away - leaving them for just an hour after they've come out of the oven before eating.

Although this recipe is as simple as they get, you do need to make sure you've got the right flour. I use Sainsburys seeded wholemeal flour, but if you can't get this, you can use just wholemeal flour, or a mixture of wholemeal flour, sunflower seeds, oats, pumpkin seed and linseed (which is what the premixed flour is made from).

Makes about 40-50 biscuits

250g seeded wholemeal flour
60g salted butter
10g olive oil (you can use 70g of butter and no oil if you prefer)
Teaspoon sea salt
5 tbsp water
Herbs and spices - for my last batch I used cumin and fennel seed, but you can use dried herbs such as rosemary, thyme or sage depending on the final taste you want

Preheat the oven to 175C.

Tip the flour into a large mixing bowl. Chop the butter into small cubes and add to the flour. Add the olive oil. Rub the butter and oil into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the salt and spices/herbs at this point. In the last batch I made I used a level teaspoon of fennel seed and the same of cumin seeds, with a tiny pinch of ground cumin, as these flavours worked well with the spiced tomato chutney I served with my cheese course. 

Next add the water, bit by bit, mixing each time. I add 2 tablespoons to start then a tablespoon at a time until it's all incorporated into the mix.  Don't over work the dough as the biscuits will be chewy if you do, just mix it enough that all the ingredients are bound together.

Lightly flour a large surface and tip your dough out. Roll the rolling pin in the floured surface and start rolling out your dough. You want it to end up as thin as possible - although it may break a little around the larger seeds, don't worry about this, just roll it out as much as you can. I use a heart shaped cutter to make my biscuits but you can use whatever you have, and if you don't have any cutters, just use a knife to make squares or rectangles. Lay a sheet of greaseproof paper on a baking tray and put the cut out biscuits onto this. You'll probably need to do 3-4 batches, but you can cook 2 batches at the same time if you have 2 baking trays.

Cook the biscuits at 175C for 15 minutes. At this point check how they are doing - lift one up and tap the bottom. If it's hard, then they're done, if it's a little damp/soft then put them back in the oven for another 5 minutes.

Sprinkle the biscuits with sea salt and leave to cool before transferring to an airtight container. Eat with cheese, chutneys, pates or whatever you like! And once you realise how easy they are to make, you won't want shop bought biscuits again!

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CHARLOTTE'S W4 - A NEW FAVOURITE

It's not often that I'm blown away by a restaurant, as in really, truly, happily shocked at the whole experience. But that's exactly what happened on Sunday evening when we decided on a very last minute trip to Charlotte's restaurant on Turnham Green terrace. I hadn't been before, but it's been on my radar for a while - I do all my food shopping along Turnham Green terrace (apart from a trip round the corner to Wyndham House butchers) and so I've seen Charlotte's a few times when I've walked past. I've followed them on Twitter for a while and always been intrigued, but have also always felt I need to go more central to find London's really good restaurants - how wrong I was!

We called Charlotte's at 8.45pm on Sunday to see if they could squeeze us in, and were told of course they could, despite normally taking last orders at 9pm, they would wait for us to get there (from Hammersmith). We arrived just after 9 and were greeted by THE friendliest, most helpful waiters and waitresses I've ever come across. They showed us to a table for 2 at the back of the restaurant, under the huge glass skylight that let in the last of the weekend's sunshine. We settled down with the menu, and ordered a "New girlfriend" cocktail for me, which was a delicious combo of Simpsmith vodka, elderflower cordial, rhubarb puree and pink grapefruit, that was actually very similar to the rhubarb and elderflower cocktail I'd served the night before at my pop up! The boy tucked in to a tangy Somerset-made wheat beer, which was really flavoursome but still had that more delicate flavour that comes from wheat beer.

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CHISOU, CHISWICK

A few weeks ago I was invited to a Japanese restaurant that's hidden down a passageway in Chiswick. Chisou have 3 branches -  Mayfair, Knightsbridge and the Chiswick branch we went to. I was invited to write a review of the restaurant, as they struggle to let people know where they are, as they're not visible from Chiswick High Street.

 

Chisou is a Japanese restaurant, with dark wood interiors and little cubby booth tables to hide away in. We were sitting in one of these cubbies and it made for a lovely, intimate dinner, although it was so dark in there that my photos didn't turn out so good!

 

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MAY & JUNE A LITTLE LUSCIOUSNESS POP UPS!

I've got some more pop up dates in the diary! And tickets are still available for both.

I had a hugely successful pop up last Saturday, that my guests loved. It was such a fun evening, and I think (hope) that every went home with full tummies and smiles on their faces after a four course feast of seasonal produce (and lots of wine!). This is a little snapshot of the evening at my house:

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FINCA CORTESIN w QUINTESSENTIALLY TRAVEL

I may have mentioned before, that the end of our Spanish holiday was spent at a 5* hotel, which was part of a bundle of goodies I'd won. What actually happened was about 8 months ago I signed up to receive Quintessentially Travel's newletter. I forgot all about it, until a few months later when I received this in my inbox:

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ON TO CADIZ...

After our 4 days in Seville recently, we hired a car to drive down to Cadiz, where the sun came out, and shone on us for 3 days. We had booked another Airbnb apartment, which was somehow even better than the one in Seville. It was 2 minutes walk to the beach and located on a gorgeous palm lined street, full of cafes and bars. Our Airbnb hosts (they own the flat rather than live there) even went off with the boy to help find a space for the car and when we left they offered us a free night there next time we visit! This was the view from the front door of the flat: 

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EATING IN SEVILLE

A couple of weeks ago the boy and I took ourselves off to Andalucia for a well earned break. In fact, I had won a weekend at a 5* hotel near Estepona back in Autumn last year, via Quintessentially Travel, so had booked another 7 days on top of that via AirBnb, firstly in Seville then on to Cadiz, before the weekend at the hotel. More on both the hotel and Cadiz in my next few posts, but here I want to tell you about Seville.

I spent a year living in Seville in 2004. I have wonderful memories of lots of good food, interesting tapas bars and great places to drink. Although structurally Seville hasn't changed too much (apart from the addition of trams and tubes!) pretty much everything else seems to have been replaced or upgraded. Yes, there were still a few places I knew and recognised, but the food scene in particular, seems to have taken off in a big way. Gone are many of the small, traditional tapas bars, having been replaced by fusion restaurants, sushi bars and all sorts I would've never expected to see in Seville. 

We set off, armed with various emails and blog links that recommended places to eat, and print offs from Lizzie's blog, Hollow Legs, including her really helpful spreadsheet she compiled from a Seville/Cadiz visit, ready to go. However, on arriving in Seville, I began to realise just how much has changed, even since Lizzie's visit 2 years ago. We hung on to all recommendations, and visited a few of them, but were thrilled to bump into an old acquantance of the boy's and mine, the very talented grafitti artist Seleka, who now runs the wonderful DeLimbo gallery in the centre of Seville, and had a whole load of recommendations of the newest and best places we should go to eat.

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WHO INSPIRES ME

I've been wanting to write this post for a while, I just wasn't sure when the right time was or quite how to write it. But now is the time to write a little something about a woman who inspired me, and still does. Of course, many people inspire me, from my family and friends, to those running the marathon today and raising so much money for good causes, to people who are successful in what they are doing. But this is a post about my Granny.

My beautiful maternal granny passed away unexpectedly at the end of last year. Just the day before, she had been with my parents and she was talking about my latest blog post to them. We had recently got her an iPad and she'd saved my blog on her favourites to read whenever I posted something new. And for that reason I kept writing my blog, I knew she was reading it and that inspired me to keep going, even when it may have felt like no one else was reading it!

My Granny always treated me like a princess. She encouraged and helped me do the things I wanted to do when I was growing up, and I although I never really got to cook for her (apart from helping my mum out when she came to eat at theirs) I do have funny and fond memories of food and her, and my Grandpa, who was a very keen and successful vegetable grower. I'll never forget the time my younger brother and I were having lunch with Granny - we were presented with various salads to help ourselves to, and then she put something on the table I'd never seen before. It was a clear moulded jelly with a curled pink thing inside. I nervously asked what it was, and Granny said "tongue" like it was as normal as saying bacon.... When Ned turned to me and stuck his tongue out I lost my appetite for that meal!! We also used to giggle about the slightly past their best tins of food in the back of the larder at Granny's house, always trying to find something even older! But really Granny was a good cook - she believed in cooking from scratch and using produce sourced locally and ethically, including cooking (a lot) with pheasant from their farm's shoot during the season. And I'll always remember the mulberry birthday cake made with mulberries from Granny and Grandpa's mulberry trees for one of my birthdays when I was younger. The day that my Granny died she had ripped out the recipes from that day's Times newspaper, and was cooking one of the chicken dishes when she sat down and never stood up again. I've managed to track down the recipes - they printed 6 chicken recipes that day, so we are not entirely sure which one it was she was cooking, but I think it was this one - John Torode's coq au vin, so I thought it would be nice to share it with you. I've made it too, and it's a really nice dish.

Serves 4

1 chicken, jointed
50g butter
12 small shallots
100g pancetta cubes
2 garlic cloves
40ml red wine
100g button mushrooms
Handful parsley
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Season the chicken pieces generously. Melt the butter in a heavy bottom saucepan (that has a lid). Add half the pancetta and half the shallots, and fry for a few minutes over a medium heat. Add the chicken pieces and fry until browned. When everything is browned add the garlic, fry for 1 minute then add the red wine. Bring to the boil, then cover with the lid and put in the oven for 1 hour 15 minutes.

After the chicken has been in for an hour, heat a knob of butter and add the rest of the shallots with a little water. Cook off the water, then add the remaining pancetta and all of the button mushrooms. Fry until golden, then add to the coq au vin.

Serve scattered with parsley, with mashed potato.

And lastly, I couldn't write this blog without including these wonderful photos I found of Granny recently - seems she's always been good with a knife!!

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MY NEXT POP UP - 26th APRIL

Another month, another pop up! I thought I should let you know about my next pop up restaurant, as there are still tickets available, but they do start to sell out around now.

I've got a bumper Spring menu, full of some of my favourite produce for my pop up on Saturday 26th April. The event is at our lovely house in West London, and starts at 7.30pm, and is kind of similar to a dinner party - a large table filled with guests, eating my four course menu, and having a great time. I've had guests from age 11 up to 60+ in the past, from all walks of life, and from all over the world. You can come with a group of friends, in a pair, or on your own, and it's bring your own booze, so you can bring a bottle or 2 of your favourite. I also serve either a welcome cocktail, pudding wine or port to go with the cheese, and there's homemade soft drinks for anyone who wants.

Every component of the food I serve is made from scratch, in my kitchen, with as much as possible being British, seasonal ingredients.

The menu for 26th April is:

 

Hand picked Dorset crab, homemade mayonnaise, remoulade, crusty white bread

 

Slow cooked shoulder of Spring lamb, savoy cabbage, Jersey royal new potatoes, with watercress and wild garlic salsa verde

 

Lemon posset with rhubarb compote and vanilla shortbread biscuits

 

Somerset cheeseboard, tomato chutney and herby salted crackers

 

Coffee/herbal tea served with sticky chocolate balls

If you'd like to come but can't eat or don't like something on the menu, that's fine - when you book there's a comments section where you can mention this. I don't think I've yet done a pop up where I haven't done at least 2 different main courses to cater for everyone's needs.

To find out what my previous guests have thought of the evenings you can see reviews of my last event here or a review written by another of my guests here.

Tickets for my pop up on 26th April are £30 each and can be bought via Grub Club.

And here's a couple of pics of the food my from the last event (although I always forget to take proper photos!)

Crusty white bread:

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