Soho Food Feast

I'm so full I can't move. The impossible has happened. I thought I could just go on eating and eating, like a Labrador, but I honestly can't eat another thing.

This sorry state of affairs has come about as a result of spending the afternoon at Soho Food Feast. The Food Feast was set up to support Soho Parish Primary School, and was held this afternoon in the grounds of St Anne's Church on Wardour Street. The day was phenomenal. There were stalls from pretty much every great restaurant in Soho and beyond -  Blueprint Cafe, Arbutus, The Ivy Polpo and St John, to name just a few.

The venue for the foodie goodness. 

We purchased our food tokens (every small dish or bowl was £2 a pop) and plunged in. First stop was Tapas Brindisa for a plate of yummy iberico ham, and to try some salmorejo, which is a bit like gazpacho, but thicker and without red peppers or cucumber:

Salmorejo at the front of the shot, ham at the back. 

Me stuffing my face with iberico ham - first time round. 

Later on, we went back for seconds of that ham - so good!

Next door to Tapas Brindisa was Polpo and Polpetto. I've eaten in Polpo before and loved it, and the dishes they had on offer today were up to their usual high quality. Little bowls of dressed seafood with olives, and my favourite, chicken liver pate on crostini, with taleggio and asparagus, and cocktail olives and anchovies on the side:

Moving on, we found the Blueprint Cafe stall with, I think, Jeremy Lee in attendance. Have a look at the photo below and see if it is him (sorry Jeremy, if you're reading this!). They were serving up middle white pork, with beans and mint in a french style dressing. It's going to get very boring if I keep saying everything was amazing, but I'm afraid that everything WAS, and this was no exception:

Do you know this man?! 

Pork and beans - delish. 

What next? Pigs head of course. Served up by the guys who run Arbutus, Wild Honey and Le Deux Salons. Just the right amount, served hot, and unctuous and full of flavour:

Pigs Head 

Anthony Demetre cooking pigs head. 

Off next to scoff some oysters from the Wright brothers stall - natives from Kent, despite there not being a R in the month  - is that an old wives' tale? Lovely people, lovely food:

The Wright Brothers stall

Scoffing oysters

Then we discovered a queue. And quite a long queue. But we found out what it was for and joined it immediately. MeatWagon - hurrah! The chance to try the burgers that everyone's been raving about without having to go to Peckham Rye! No offence Peckham-ites, but it's quite a bit out of my way. And lo, we discovered what all the fuss was about:

The MeatWagoners get cooking

Nearly ready...

Almost done....

Happily being scoffed by my friend Louisa. 

These babies are good. Patties of meat, ever so slightly rare, in a sweetish (brioche?) bun, with pickles, cheese, mustard and ketchup. Worth the wait and very moreish.

And what of dessert? Oh yes, there was that too, these beautiful cherry chocolate cakes were from The Union. I must now confess that I took a photo because they looked so pretty, but I couldn't eat one because I was too full after all the above.

Still room for ice cream though (always room for ice cream), at the Gelupo stall:

Pistachio and Ricotta and Sour Cherry Gelato

The nice man at the Gelupo stall.

All in all, this was a fabulous afternoon for a good cause. It gave everyone the chance to try a dish or two from some of the capital's best restaurants at a great price in a friendly atmosphere,  and the sun was shining. Three cheers to the organisers and I hope all those who participated now have their feet up and are having a well earned drink - you deserve it.

How I set about becoming the next Sarah Burton (or not).

At the beginning of May, I started a dress making course. My rationale was that I love clothes, why not learn to make my own? In my head, this was going to be so simple, and before I knew it, I was going to be the next Sarah Burton. Reality kicked in with a thump - this stuff is fiddly to start off with, particularly on a Monday night after a day at work.

Six weeks in, I now know what a bobbin is, I only have to ask once at the start of each class how to thread the needle through both top and bottom on the swish sewing machines and, mainly thanks to the extraordinary patience of the lovely teacher, I have the beginnings of what now resembles a dress.

I confess, I chose the material before the dress, but wait until you see the material, it's so pretty, you'll totally understand my reasoning. I will also own up to buying the pattern because not only did it say 'Tres Facile/Very Easy', it also had that iconic word 'Vogue' on it (I know, I know, I'm a marketeers dream). So, this is my pattern, and I'm making the mustard yellow dress - not in that material - to the left of the picture.

I'm making the dress in the most beautiful sage green material (it looks grey in the photos but it's a very pale green), with different coloured shoes printed all over it. £10 a metre in John Lewis and I fell in love with it the second I saw it:

As aforementioned, the teacher on the course has the patience of a saint, which means that as things stand, I now have a front of dress, complete with darts and gather:

And I now have the back of a dress, also darted and gathered, and ready for the zip to be sewn in:

I've really taken to the class now, although big name designers have nothing to fear! It's ever so relaxing to sit round a table after work and stitch and sew and chat and learn. I'll post the final result, hopefully me wearing the dress,  in a couple of weeks time, when the class finishes.

Summer Solstice

A rare night in and a chance to sit outside and enjoy a glass of champagne to celebrate the solstice (any excuse) and to cook some lovely food. This delightful little number is a bastardisation of a recipe in Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries - one of my all time favourite cookbooks. It's bulgar wheat, as much chopped parsley and chopped mint as you can shake a stick at, a whole deseeded chopped red chilli, two sliced mangoes and 400g of cooked peeled prawns mixed together and dressed and mixed again with olive oil and lime juice. Delish, and only takes 10 minutes.

Cheers!

Tonight's dinner. 

The Posh Lunch Club heads to Quaglino's.

It's all go at the moment isn't it?! This afternoon, the posh lunch club went to Quaglino's for lobster and chips. It's a hard life. The restaurant is offering a half lobster and chips for £15 a head, which is a great way to do posh on the cheap.

I am of the impression that it's quite hard to do lobster and chips badly. Quaglino's do it rather well, lobster cooked perfectly, chips crunchy on the outside, soft in the middle, not much more I can say. The service was not as attentive as it could have been - three asks for the non alcoholic cocktail for my pregnant friend, and two requests for salt (that obsession of mine), before they arrived at the table.

My pud, treacle tart, wasn't brilliant either, nowhere near treacly enough, almost crumble-like in texture. Very odd. My friend's pavlova, which I think you will agree is desperately photogenic, scored much higher on the yum scale.

Treacle tart. With clotted cream - NOT an egg. 

Overall, my thoughts are as follows: go and have the £15 lobster lunch and the rather lovely Chateau de Poyet Muscadet. Take your own salt, but don't blame me if the Met Police take a keen interest in the bag of white crystals you're carrying around. And don't stay for pudding - head to one of the fabulous Soho gelateria instead (I highly recommend Gelupo). 

Back to Taste of London.

The guys who do the PR for Estrella Damm, the lager from Barcelona, very kindly invited me to the Taste of London Festival last night. I know what you're thinking - corporate sell out - and I'm well aware that they wanted me to blog favourably about their product. And I'm going to, but only because it was good, I can assure you that had it been awful, I'd have said so.

We rocked up in the pouring rain to the main event in Regent's Park, smiles fixed and brollies at the ready. We located the Estrella Damm tent and were given free beer. And not just me, everyone in there was trying the beer for free. If you're going to Taste, swing by the Estrella tent, it's under cover (a god send) and there's FREE beer! In addition to the beer, there's some excellent tapas as well. I've blogged before about the new Inedit beer from el Bulli/Damm brewery (before they contacted me - I promise) and it appears that Damm are doing a big push in the UK, promoting beer as something to be served with tapas rather than wine. They're doing this in conjunction with tapas chefs, some of who were trained at the 'World's Best Restaurant', including the rather hot Spanish chef Omar Allibhoy (El Pirata Detapas; Tapas Revolution), who was in attendance, saying hi to the punters and overseeing the tapas.

Hot chef, tasty tapas!

I love tapas (OK I love food in general)  and the first dish we were given didn't disappoint. . Endives and Valdeon cheese foam worked really well, the blandness of the endive and the shape of the leaf a perfect match, and scoop, for the salty strong blue cheese foam.

Estrella and Endive with Valdeon foam.

We were then handed packets of what we both thought were salted chocolate  - wrong! This was actually morcilla de burgos, black pudding, dried and sliced very thinly and salted with big crystals of salt (another one of my favourite things). I think a wine would have struggled with the flavour, but the beer worked well, particularly with the dryness of the black pudding.

After waxing lyrical about this, we were then given a plate of what was my favourite tapa on offer, slow roasted, falling apart sweet peppers on bread topped off with anchovies, another of my favourite things, probably because they're usually quite salty - my doctor wrings his hands at my salt obsession.

Looking at this picture, I want to eat this again - NOW. God, this was good, the bread soaked with the juices of the peppers cooked in olive oil  and the anchovies counteracting the sweetness of the peppers. I don't usually make tapas or small plates at home, but I'm definitely going to try to recreate this one, probably shortly after blogging this.

After this, we ventured out of the tent into the pouring rain to investigate the rest of the rest of the festival. We bought £30 worth of 'crowns' - the currency of the festival- and believe me, they don't go far. I had oysters at the Chapel Down stand, really good, but no indication of where they'd come from, which would have been good to know:

Oysters and Chapel Down

I have to confess at this point that we didn't really need any more food for the time being, so we 'investigated' the drinks tents, primarily driven by the need to get under cover. We had Welsh cocktails (both my parents are Welsh) and although I was aware that Wales produces a great whisky at Penderyn, I had no idea that it also produces gin and vodka - who knew?!

Welsh vodka. 

Mixing up some great Welsh cocktails

My boy on cocktail holding duty.

Cocktails Cymraeg - and rather tasty they are too. 

We then headed off to do some wine tasting - by now not terribly bothered by the rain - and secreted ourselves in the wine tent with some cheery Brits and some thoroughly fed up French and Italians. We discovered the lovely wines of the Loire with Amanda's Wines and her French husband. How could he not be French with a moustache like that:

Then we hit the wine jackpot - Prosecco tasting. Prosecco has a bit of a reputation as a poor man's champagne, but it's totally different and I'd much rather drink a good Prosecco than a bad champagne. We had seven sip tastings, five 'normal' Prosecco and two rose Prosecco (apparently illegal in Italy!) and then a glass of our favourite. Trying to remember which was our favourite at the end was a little taxing, but we really liked the DOC, even though the Prosecco Riccardo DOCG won the Taste of Summer Wine at the Festival's food awards this year. Here are the UK seller (in the fetching yellow jumper - very knowledgeable) and the son of the producer (Italian, totally fed up with the British weather) with said award:

So, what are my overall thoughts? I'm very grateful to Estrella Damm's UK PR company for inviting me to the festival and I think the idea of promoting beer as the drink of choice with tapas is a good one. I also think it's eminently sensible to promote drinking beer with food, as opposed to just going to the pub and necking pint after pint. I'd have liked to have seen Inedit, the el Bulli beer in a wine sized bottle, making an appearance - maybe next year? I know other bloggers have commented on how expensive the festival is, and I'm inclined to agree, but overall if you're into your food and want a taster of what London's restaurants are offering, then go along. Just prepare your wallet in advance, as well as your stomach.

Hot Gossip from the Royal Enclosure.

My very posh friend - Cambridge, old school Gentleman's Club, top hat serviced on his day off - has texted me from the Royal Enclosure at Ascot to say that he has just been helping Princess Eugenie adjust her bra. My first thought was 'what an odd thing to ask a male stranger to do', but at least it seems royal princesses are just like the rest of us after an afternoon knocking back the champagne in Granny's tent. I wonder if anyone managed to pap it and if so, will he be touted as her latest flame in tomorrows papers? You heard it here first. 

As an aside, today's 'what I'd wear if I were there' is below. High Street rather than High End fashion, but still rather lovely nonetheless. And a big hurrah to all the ladies at Waterloo this morning who looked so effortlessly chic and very excited, despite the rain. 

Royal Ascot - what I'd wear if I were there*

* and had, by now, run up an enormous credit card bill.

I have a confession to make. This Vivienne Westwood dress, being the 'cheapest' of the dresses I've chosen for Royal Ascot, and at £320 I use the term loosely, is now sitting in my 'to purchase' basket on Net-a-Porter.com. I'm wrestling with whether or not to buy it. Several people have said "do you need it?", which totally misses the point. But it is the cost of a week's European holiday, so I think it may have to stay in the basket online, tempting me.

Tomorrow's outfit for the final day of Royal Ascot won't pose this dilemma as it will entirely constructed from the High Street. Check back tomorrow to see what it is and whether I managed to resist temptation.

Royal Ascot - what I'd wear if I were ther, Ladies Day*

* and still had an unlimited clothes budget

Ladies Day calls for something a bit special, a bit (OK, a lot) look at me. I think this Hussein Chalayan dress fits the bill perfectly, it's demure with sleeves for the Royal Enclosure, but yet fabulously on trend with its fuchsia lined cape. An enormous hat is practically compulsory and comes courtesy of Philip Treacy. I've tried to stop the outfit being too matchy matchy, by adding a black Miu Miu bag and some black-but-not-boring Brian Atwood shoes. Ad of course, a good umbrella is essential. I'm in love that dress and liking this fantasy fashion game more and more. Shall I turn it into a reality?.........

Taste of London Preview

"Would you like to come to a party at the Laurent Perrier Secret Garden" said a friend. "It's the opening night of Taste London" - uh, YES PLEASE! So last night, we headed off in the drizzle to Regent's Park for the preview night of Taste London.

There was lashings of Laurent Perrier, mojitos a-go-go, some yummy food from Street Kitchen and an amazing hog roast. Celebs included Alex James, A A Gill, Jeremy Clarkson, Gary Rhodes, Ian Wright, Jay Rayner, and Michael Gambon, which led to excited cries of 'Dumbledore' from our group - poor man.The only thing not making a guest appearance was the sunshine, which would have made the evening. But stiffer upper lip and all that, we battled on.

The food was marvellous (as you would expect) - black bream with coleslaw, rocket and beetroot from Street Kitchen and that wonderful hog roast in a big floury bap. The staff at the event were lovely and did I mention the drinks kept on coming? All in all a rather top night. My only complaints, no, not complaints, suggestions, for making it better, would be as follows: 1) Guests greeted on arrival with a glass of champagne rather than having to go to the bar for the first drink. 2) More food stalls - this was the Taste preview after all and only two stalls seemed a bit mean. 3) Access to the main area to have a look around at all the other stalls. Gosh, I'm fussy. My pictures are below, and if you're going over the next few days, enjoy. And take an umbrella.

Me at the entrance to the Secret Garden.



My friend Duncan samples the black bream from the Street Kitchen.

The amazing spit roasted pork in a bun and soaker upper of Laurent Perrier.

The lovely guys at Street Kitchen

Street Kitchen - yummy black bream.

Sampling the Laurent Perrier

That bream up close. With watercress, coleslaw and beetroot.

Mojito - entering danger zone!

Friend of a friend with Ian Wright.

Lovely lady in a beautiful dress (Laura Ashley - wow!)

Party goers!

Me and Duncan - slightly worse for wear.