Polpo, Soho

As I rushed hurriedly down Dean Street in Soho, I suddenly remembered that Beak Street, where Polpo is located, is off Carnaby Street, a good 5 minutes brisk pace away. I was in entirely the wrong area. I burst into the restaurant, late and slightly sweating, and took my seat next to my friend at the bar.

Polpo is a Venetian baraco or wine bar, serving small plates of Italian food. I first heard about it on Twitter, and having heard some good things in the preview nights before it opened, I was looking forward to going. The menu is divided into cicchetti & crostini, breads, meat, fish, vegetables and desserts. We picked a few of these along with a 1/4 litre bottle of a robust red, and settled back. On only its second day of being open, the place was pretty full and had a great buzz to it. Exposed brickwork made the place feel homely, while my friend admired the stressed effect the paintwork had one one wall. Soon our order of arancini (risotto balls), salt cod on polenta, and fig, mint and proscuitto crostini arrived.

The salt cod on polenta was surprisingly but not unpleasantly cold. Arancini, piping hot were gorgeous and creamy, without a hint of stodge. The fig's natural sweetness was perfectly balanced with the saltiness of the proscuitto. I was starting to fall in love with the place.

Next up, a dramatically dark dish of cuttlefish cooked in its own ink with gremolata arrived. This was rich and tasted of the sea, the tender meat was lifted by the gremolata. I fretted over the colour of my teeth.

Mussels and clams were garlicky and buttery. I'd have preferred a couple more clams, but the mussels were plump and meaty. At this point we realised some bread would be good to mop up all the juices. A pizzetta bianco turned up and it was crisp, flaky and utterly gorgeous. We didn't end up dipping the bread but scarfed it, unadulterated.

We had one last dish to come, slow roasted duck with green peppercorns and black olives. The barman told us the dishes come out as and when they're ready, but nevertheless we waited for some time. We were offered some complimentary bread, which was another delicious pizzetta bianco. Finally, our duck dish turned up.

The meat was cooked to tenderness, and the tomato sauce given a little kick from the heat of the green peppercorns. The cherry tomatoes were juicy and bursting with flavour. By the time we'd finished, we'd been there for a good hour and a half. I had well and truly fallen in love with the place. I sprinted back to work, full and happy, excited about the prospect of telling all my friends about it. I can't wait to return to try out more of the menu, perhaps in the evening when I can take my time over it.

Lunch for two with wine and service came to £50.

Polpo

41 Beak Street,
London, W1F 9SB

Tel: 020 7734 4479

Goodbye, Summer

Alas, summer is over. Gone are the days of sunshine beating on your brow, the smell of cut grass tickling your nostrils, skipping to work in short skirts and flip flops. This, of course, being London means that we had maybe a couple of weeks of this weather, but one must grateful for what we did get.

Last weekend saw blue skies, wispy clouds and the sun peeked out; like summer's wave goodbye to us. I do love autumn and all the rich shades of colour it brings, but waking up and getting home while it's dark depresses me. Which is why when I woke up on Sunday and flung the blinds back to be greeted by sunshine, I hauled my housemate's ass out of bed, frog-marched her down to Sainsburys, and got all the goods for what might be our last barbeque of the year.

As there was just the two of us, I thought the best way to go would be a big hunk of meat and a couple of salads. 800gr of bone-in Aberdeen Angus rib was purchased, along with some leaves and knobbly new potatoes to make up our lunch. As a little starter, I steamed up some white asparagus, part of a birthday hamper I received from my mates. This was simply dressed with a healthy glob of butter and a generous grinding of salt. A fruity Pimms cocktail kept us company while we waited for the coals to do its thing.

The steak was left out at room temperature, and half an hour before it was slapped on the barbeque, I lightly dusted both sides with salt. Now, some people say not to salt meat until the very last moment otherwise it draws the juices out, but I seem to recall Dos Hermanos recommending this on Twitter. We tried it at a previous barbeque and it worked beautifully so I shouted "to hell with convention!" (as the housemate looked on, alarmed) and it got a good salting.

A mere 5 - 7 minutes on each side on a properly flaming grill, and it was left to rest on a chopping board. I batted wasps away while the housemate squealed. I paced up and down the balcony. We all know the importance of resting meat, but this was maddening. To console myself I got stuck into the potato salad with gusto. Finally, a good 15 minutes had passed and I refused to wait any longer. The steak was sliced, revealing a deliciously ruby red core, and served onto our plates. Floppy curly lettuce leaves were lightly dressed with heady truffle oil, also from aforementioned hamper, and a barbequed, buttered portabella mushroom completed the plate. We munched in near silence, aside from the odd "mmooh myff god this is good" and "uuugghhhhh is there more? Chomp chomp".

I couldn't have asked for a better farewell-to-summer barbeque. When finished, we pushed our plates away, lay back and had a proper mid-afternoon snooze, safe in the knowledge that our corn on the cob were steaming away under the lid of the barbeque in their leaves, ready for us to slather with more butter and eat once we arose from our little siesta.

Sweet Chilli Jam

This year, given that we have a sizeable baclony, I decided to try and grow my own vegetables. I bought a mains-heated propagator, planted some seeds, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. A few months later after getting my hands dirty in transporting seedlings into pots, long finger-sized cayenne chillis started appearing. Little round green cherry tomatoes popped up and ripened to a golden yellow. Most recently, bulbous aubergines have popped out of the purple flowers, making me squeal with excitement. Sadly the courgette plant withered and died a slow death. Nevertheless, I was a pleased plant mother.


As I have about 7 or 8 chilli plants, I have had an abundant crop. They haven't all turned red at once and I worried if they would at all. Slowly but surely, they did. A batch of them have been drying on the windowsill as their withered bodies would make great curry pastes but I didn't want to put these, that I picked this morning, in the fridge or freezer to use as and when; I felt they should take a more centre stage. I had a recipe for sweet chilli sauce saved up, which I thought would be the perfect way to use these, especially as it keeps for a good 2 or 3 months. I also threw in some fresh green peppercorns I had in a lovely hamper my friends put together for me as a birthday present which made it look really pretty.

Sweet Chilli Jam

10 or 11 cayenne chillis (use milder ones if you don't want it too spicy)
2 cloves of garlic
2" piece of ginger
200gr jam sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp fish sauce
220ml cider vinegar
110ml water
1 1/2 tbsp arrowroot powder, slackened with water
A few fresh green peppercorns (optional)

Chop and deseed the chillies (I did half deseeded, half not as I like it hot). Finely mince the garlic and the ginger. Throw this minus the arrowroot in a food processor and blitz to a paste. This also works in a mortar and pestle (I don't have a food processor). Add the whole lot to a saucepan and simmer for 20 - 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the slackened arrowroot to thicken the mixture. Sterilize an airtight jar and add the jam to the jar. Leave to cool completely, then put the lid on.

I've just had a taste of the jam and it is super hot, tangy and sweet at the same time. Just how I like it. If you have less of a palate for spicy foods, use less hot chillis or reduce the number of chillis you use or it might make you cry. This would go really well with spring rolls, squid, to dip wedges in... all sorts really.

More South East Love - Le Querce

Last night I managed to cross off another restaurant on my ever-growing 'must try' list. This was Le Querce, an Italian restaurant just two stops away from me in Honor Oak Park. Ben from London Food & Drink wrote a great review on it recently which got it on the list in the first place, so when a friend of mine suggested we visit, I was game. It didn't bother him that he's been three times in the last two weeks.

Approaching the restaurant, you may be forgiven for not giving it a second glace. Inside, the decor is basic but homely and I liked the giant bulb of garlic that decorated our table. We were given slightly tatty menus which were quite short, and our charming waitress reeled off a list of starters, pizzas and mains from the specials board. While supping on a Sardinian lager that I forget the name of, I found it really difficult to choose. I knew I wanted a pasta dish, but there were many dishes I also wanted too so that in the end it took me a good 10 or 15 minutes to finally make my mind up. I had a rather exasperated companion.

My (rather poorly photographed) starter arrived , ravioli with ricotta and sage butter. The pasta was stuffed with greens and creamy cheese, and the butter sauce was rich with a subtle hint of sage and grated Parmesan on top. I never usually order pasta in restaurants as there are usually more interesting options, but I was really glad I did here. The home-made pasta was silky and perfectly cooked, and the well seasoned filling was delicious. I could have easily polished off a bucket of this. We were given some lovely fresh loose-crumbed bread to accompany it and I mopped up any remaining sage butter greedily. We were off to a good start.

Calves liver with baby onions, sage & spinach

For my main, I went for the double sage option and had the calves liver, cooked medium served with baby onions, sage and spinach. I've only had calves liver once before at Locanda Locatelli and the portion was so enormous that it turned out to be a bit of a struggle. I can happily report this wasn't the case here; the slices of liver were buttery on the inside and the portion size just right. I would have liked a few more of the caramelised baby onions though, as their sweetness went really well with the liver. Again, this was greedily mopped up with some more bread.

Being such a rich dish, by this time I was pretty stuffed. However, the ice creams are something of a speciality at Le Querce. The long list of ice creams or sorbets includes onion or garlic ice cream, pear & Pernod sorbet, apple & black pepper ice cream. We went for a scoop of chilli ice cream, a scoop of aubergine and a scoop of the strawberry and balsamic sorbet. The aubergine ice cream, greyish in colour didn't taste of much but the chilli was really surprising. It was almond flavoured, and once the cold ice cream got warmer in the mouth, you got a real chilli kick. The strawberry balsamic was also delicious and really moreish. While we were chatting to the owner about how the chilli ice cream is made, he told us that he thought the most successful sorbet is the strawberry, chilli and blue curaco and presented us with a scoop of it; he was right, of course, and this combined our two favourite flavours.

The bill in total came to £75 including a bottle of Prosecco and a couple of beers, which I thought was really good value given the quality of the cooking and the service - the waiting staff were all really friendly and personable. Whilst I wouldn't recommend you hike across London to visit if you lived in, say North West London, it's a great neighbourhood restaurant for us South East dwellers and somewhere I'll definitely return.

Le Querce

66 Brockley Rise,

London SE23 1LN

Tel: 020 86903761

Paul A. Young

I have to admit, when I was invited to a bloggers' tasting at Paul A. Young in Islington, I was hesitant. I'm not a huge fan of chocolate, and I can usually take it or leave it as I prefer salty snacks. In the end, I decided to go as I figured that if anyone could change my mind, this was the man to do so as his chocolate is so highly regarded.

The shop is small, decorated in purple and it smelled deliciously of warm chocolate. After a quick lesson on how to taste chocolate (minimal chewing, some deep breathing, letting it melt on the tongue), we cracked on with the tasting. We tasted chocolate of different cocoa percentages from three main chocolate producers; Valrhona, Amedei and Michel Cluizel. Interestingly, I learned that cocoa butter is the most epensive ingredient in chocolate making. Also, chocolate from beans grown on the Ivory Coast have a slight hint of coconut about it, whereas Madagascan chocolate is more fruity. The more fermented the cocoa beans are, the more sour tang you get from tasting it.


The first chocolate to kick us off was one of my favourites; 40% Valrhona Jivara milk chocolate. It was wonderfully rich with hints of caramel and had a slight malty flavour to it. On the other end of the spectrum, I physically recoiled and screwed my face up on tasting the 100% manjari pate Madagascan Valrhona; it was over-whelmingly strong (as one might expect from 100%) but also sour to the point of bitter. Other attendees liked it though. Another favourite of mine was the 75% Amedei 9, made from cocoa beans from 9 different plantations. This had a velvet-like mouthfeel, and the smoky yet balanced flavours lingered pleasantly.

By this point, I had realised that Paul is an extremely passionate man, and puts a lot of thought into his chocolates. He refuses to use any machinery, tempering his chocolate on marble instead and all the chocolates he makes are made using high-quality ingredients. There are no hydrogenated fats used (...don't get him started on palm oil...) nor glucose syrups. The truffles he makes, each and every one by hand, will only last 7 days. You've got to really admire someone who goes to all that trouble, when others get away with using machines.

At the end of the evening, Paul gave us some of his truffles to try. We started off with this seasonal truffle, port & Stilton. He had wanted to just use Stilton, but discovered that the mould growing on the cheese tended to make the truffles explode, and had to add port to prevent this from happening. It was no great loss to add the port, as I felt they went very well together. I really enjoyed this, it was startling and made you sit up and pay attention. Next, we had one of Paul's award-winning sea-salted caramels. After my first bite into it, I fell in love. It was stunning. I wanted to be alone with it. Lastly, a Marmite truffle was scoffed up easily too. I had expected it's innards to be thick and viscous, but they were pleasantly light. As a Marmite lover, this went down all too easily.

After a quick tour round the kitchen, we were on our way, armed with a goody bag. I stepped into the night with a glow about me and a bounce in my step; glad to have discovered something that I had previously thought lost to me.

Paul A. Young

33 Camden Passage
Islington
London
N1 8EA

Tel/Fax: 020 7424 5750

Onion, Anchovy & Spinach Quiche

One of my most favourite pasta dishes is onion and anchovy spaghetti. It's so beautifully simple; onions, sweated down until almost a mush for 45 minutes, and then milk-soaked tinned anchovy fillets added until broken down and emulsified with a little of the milk to make a sauce. A liberal handful of parsley and lots of black pepper complete the dish. It's extremely moreish and I eat it at least once every two weeks.

In a fit of experimentation, I thought that this would be quite fitting for a quiche filling, as anchovy goes well with eggs (as I've recently discovered with soft boiled eggs and anchovy soliders). My fridge was teeming with vibrant green, sturdy and leafy bundles of spinach I'd picked up from the market; none of this shrinking, watery stuff so this also went in. For my first attempt at quiche, I thought it was a really good effort. The filling wasn't overly eggy and was baked until just set so it stayed soft and creamy. The subtle anchovy flavour was complimented with the iron-rich spinach and the sweet onions.

Onion, Anchovy & Spinach Quiche

Serves 6

For the filling:

3 large white onions, sliced finely
6 anchovy fillets
A large handful of choppedflat leaf parsley
2 generous handfuls of spinach
2 eggs
285ml double cream
Plenty of black pepper
Parmesan (optional)

For the pastry:

280gr plain flour
140gr very cold butter, cut into cubes

Heat some oil in a non stick frying pan and add the onions. Fry on a low eat, stirring occasionally until they become very soft. This will take about half an hour - 45 minutes. Chop the anchovies up and add to the onions, frying them until they dissolve a little. Then add the spinach andfry until wilted. There shouldn't be too much moisture in the pan. Set to one side.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celcius. To make the pastry, tip the flour and butter into a bowl, then rub together with your fingertips until completely mixed and crumbly. Add 8 tbsp cold water, then bring everything together with your hands until just combined. Roll into a ball, dust a work surface and a rolling pin with flour and roll out to about 5cm bigger than your quiche case (mine was 25cm). Pick it up by rolling it over the rolling pin and lay into your case. Using a ball of scrap pastry, gently push the pastry into the grooves of the tin. Prick the base with a fork, then lay a greaseproof sheet of paper over it and fill with baking beans. Blind bake for at least 25 - 30 minutes.

Next, whisk the eggs and cream together and then add to the onion mixture and the parsley. Add a touch of salt and lots of black pepper and mix together thoroughly. Add this to the quiche case, top with some grated Parmesan, and bake for 20 - 25 minutes until golden and set. Leave to cool in the case, trim the edges of the pastry and eat warm or cold - I preferred it warm.

Macmillan Coffee Morning

A good friend of mine works for Macmillan Cancer Support, and she asked me if I fancied getting involved in a campaign of theirs, called Macmillan Coffee Morning. The idea is to either bake or buy some cakes, invite your friends over or bring them to work, have a coffee, eat some cake and make a small donation to Macmillan. The official date for this is Friday 25th September, but you can really do it whenever you like. I agreed to do it with some trepidation; after all, I'm not much of a baker. Nevertheless, I thought this would be a good learning curve, and all for a good cause too.

I picked Saturday 12th September to host the coffee morning at my flat. As I was inviting friends from all over London, I didn't want to choose a Sunday as more likely than not, there would be transport issues. With this in mind, I took the Friday previous to it off work, and a friend and I set about baking some cakes.

As we started baking, we realised that perhaps 4 cakes wouldn't be enough for 16 or so people. I wanted to have a decent variety of cakes even if it did mean leftovers, so we added another two to the list. The trusted blueberry cake got jazzed up with using raspberries as well in the mix. Next up, seeing as it was a coffee theme, we decided upon a Irish coffee meringue roulade, taken from Rachel Allen's 'Bake'. The coffee-scented meringue was made on the Friday, with the boozy filling of whiskey, coffee and whipped cream rolled into it last minute on the Saturday.

It looks like a bit of a car crash - or some sort of ancient rock, but interestingly it was the first one to get scoffed up. Probably the booze.

Other favourites were this pear and almond cake. I had the recipe saved on my laptop for a while, but I have no idea where it's from. If anyone knows, then let me know and I'll credit them.

Pear and almond cake

Serves 6

175g unsalted butter, softened
125g caster sugar, plus 1 tbsp
3 pears, firm but not too hard, peeled, cored and quartered - we used William pears
2 eggs
75g ground almonds
75g self-raising flour

Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/gas mark 3. Grease a 20cm diameter, springform cake tin and line the base with baking parchment.

Put a frying pan over a medium heat and add 25g of the butter. When it's sizzling, add a tablespoon of sugar and stir until it dissolves. Add the pear quarters and fry in the buttery caramel for five to 10 minutes, until they start to brown and soften (the time taken will vary greatly, depending on how ripe the pears are). Put to one side to cool a little.

Put the remaining butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and cream together until light and fluffy. Beat in the two eggs, one at a time. Tip the ground almonds into the cake batter, then sift in the self-raising flour and fold in gently. Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin. Arrange the pieces of pear on top of the cake. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until a skewer pushed into the centre comes out clean. Place the tin on a wire rack to cool. Serve warm or cold.

Lemon drizzle cake was given a bit of a makeover with the addition of poppy seeds, and it was nice and tangy. On holiday earlier this year, two of my friends made a Victoria sponge with orange cream which worked beautifully, so we modified this one so taking inspiration from that by sandwiching it with lemon curd and cream whipped with orange zest to give it a fruity twist. Lastly, a flourless chocolate cake was fudgy, rich and dense. Given it was the only chocolate on offer, I was surprised that it was the least popular. Perhaps something to do with our dusting of icing sugar, which was a bit of a botch job as we'd added too much and then had to brush some off.

No party is complete without some sausage rolls, and these were expertly made by Helen using puff pastry. To 10 sausages-worth of meat we added the zest of a lemon, a hefty pinch or two of chilli, and a handful of finely chopped parsley, which gave them a kick and a lift. Brushed with egg, these were deicious warm out of the oven and were all eaten. Similarly, we made some Parmesan straws and some anchovy straws, also out of puff pastry. These were pretty simple to make but were so delicious - how could they not be, with all that umami. The anchovy ones were my favourite and delivered a mouth-watering, salty hit.

While we were baking on Friday, I had a last minute panic that there wouldn't be enough savoury food so, having a look through the fridge, decided to do a Stilton, spinach and roasted red pepper quiche. Rather rustic-looking, as I snapped off the pastry sides rather impatiently but this, served cold, also went down extremely well and there wasn't a scrap left.

When it came to Saturday morning, I was racked with nerves. I'd asked people to come round at 2pm, but there was still so much to do - like sandwiching the sponge together, decorating the chocolate cake, rolling the meringue. Not to mention tidying the flat and making it all look presentable. I ran into a couple of hitches; the coffee mugs promised to me and the actual coffee itself failed to materialise. I had a little panic, and then as I was basking out in the morning sun, I had a brainwave. It was too hot for coffee - I'd make iced Irish coffees instead. My blender does have an ice-crushing mode, after all. Another thing that failed for us was when we tried to make pork scratchings with sheets of pig skin bought from Morrisons, specifically for this purpose. It just didn't work out under the grill or shallow fried, and we were too scared to deep fry it. So it went in the freezer. If anyone has any suggestions of what to do with about half a kilo of pork skin, let me know.

We nervously watched the clock and put the finishing touches on to everything and everyone started to arrive. Our 6.5 hours worth of baking, stressing out and general hard work paid off; we had a fantastic day in the sunshine of my balcony, eating cake and between us we managed to raise £175 (including donations of two friends who couldn't make it).

I would really recommend doing a coffee morning yourself. We all had a great time catching up, and it gave us an excuse to binge on cake all in the name of charity. Of course, you don't need to go to as much trouble; you can buy the cakes, or get each friend to bring a cake, whatever really. Do let me know if you do a coffee morning of your own; leave me a comment or email me.

A full Flickr set is here and if you do your own Coffee Morning, please take photos, upload them to Flickr and add them to this group so we can all have a nose at the lovely cakes you've baked or bought. A couple of people have asked me where to donate if they wanted to, so I have set up a Just Giving page, here.

So now, a thank you to all my lovely friends who turned up and donated generously. In particular, a huge thank you to Helen for being my baking buddy for a marathon 7 hours, and without which I'd be a nervous, under-prepared wreck. Given that I've never hosted a party of this size, it was invaluable having her there. Another thank you goes to Gin & Crumpets for lending me cake stands and cake slices.

Finally, a big thank-you-I-love-you to the good people at Kitchenaid. They contacted me and donated me The Beast to help us out with our baking; without it our cakes would have been miserable shadows of what they were.