'Twas the night before payday

..... and I had not a penny in my bank account. How, how do I always do this? I got home ravenous and had to raid the freezer and the cupboards to make an impromptu dinner, based on whatever was available. I didn't even have a bloody onion in the house. Fortunately, we always have loads of garlic. So, out of the freezer came the chicken livers and the frozen half tin of chopped tomatoes and into the frying pan went some olive oil and an abundance of chopped garlic.

"Ewwwwww" say several people when I mention chicken livers. But cooked properly they are divine, meaty, tender, full of flavour and very cheap - even an organic pack will only set you back around £2. 

So the garlic is happily softening away, filling the flat with that delicious smell. Into the pan go the frozen chopped tomatoes, some tomato puree, a large slug of red wine - yes, we have wine in the house, but no onions, typical - and plenty of salt and pepper. I also added some ready prepared chopped chilli, which we always seem to have in a jar in the fridge.  Let it bubble and then turn down and leave on a low heat. Put some pasta, that other store cupboard staple, on to cook, plenty of water plenty of salt. 

While the pasta is cooking away, chop the chicken livers into small pieces. (I sent the vegetarian who currently resides with me out of the kitchen at this point). Fry them until the outsides are brown over a high heat - about 2-3 minutes tops. Then add them to the tomato sauce and leave on the lowest heat. You only want the chicken livers to cook ever so slightly more, they should be still pink in the middle. Taste the sauce and see if it needs more seasoning. AT the last minute, throw in half a can of cooked canellini beans, or whatever beans you have in the house. 

Once the pasta has finished cooking, stir the sauce into it and serve. Simple, cheap and tasty. And I made enough for lunch the following day - proper austerity measures! Picture below: 

Fusili alla fegato

Welcome 2012 - doing what makes me happy.

Well, London welcomed in its Olympic Year in true style, those fireworks were just wonderful.

Picture courtesy of the Sunday Mirror! 

And now 2012 is upon us. Whilst we look forward, we also look back at the year that was. Those stories that make the news headlines always seem to contain tragedy - the earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan (and the subsequent tsunami in the latter); the Norwegian massacre; the London riots; the eurozone crisis. But 2011 also brought many good news stories - the Royal Wedding of William and Kate; the clean up campaign that followed London's riots; fledgling democracies in the Middle East

For me, 2011 was personally tumultuous, as I decided to end my long term (8 year) live in relationship. It's the main reason as to why I've been neglecting my blog for sometime. For anyone going through the same thing, keep your head held high, it's painful and horrid, but it will get better - that tired old cliche about time being a great healer really is true. The love and support of friends and family has also been incredible, and I salute you all.

So 2012 is the year I please myself. It's when I travel where I want to go, eat out where I want to eat, sleep with whomever I please and generally enjoy myself. It's the year that I take off on the round the world trip I've wanted to do since I was about 18, visiting 14 countries over 5 and half months. I will also be (trying to) concentrate more on my blog, documenting great food, fashion and what makes London such a wonderful place to live in - while I'm still here (I leave in October)!

Thank you to everyone who read my posts in 2011 and I hope you continue to do so in 2012. I wish you good health and every happiness.

Coq of the City

Take one very sunny Friday. Add a top notch City restaurant with great views. Mix in a £25 for three courses set menu. And there you have a recipe for a perfect Friday lunchtime while the boss is away.

Last Friday we escaped the office and headed to Coq D'Argent in the City http://www.coqdargent.co.uk/.  We had booked the extremely good value three courses for £25 set menu (available at weekends, which appear to include a Friday in the City), as we are sadly not in possession of an expense account. We were shown to our table with its great views over to the Monument and the Shard. We ordered a Kir and settled in to peruse the rather lovely menu - certainly one of the best set menus I have seen this year.

I ordered the snails to start. I've never really been a big fan since the time when I was in Normandy aged 8 years old and my mother told my brother (then 5) and I that they were mushrooms and that we should just eat them. My brother chose the moment the entire restaurant of chic French people went silent to shout 'uuurrgggh, they're snails'. He's always had impeccable timing. So, I've steered clear of snails, but have never really been a fussy eater and have always been a fan of the philosophy 'if you fall off the bike, get back on it'. Snails it was then:

They were beautiful. Fat old shells, meaty molluscs inside and drenched in garlicky, herby butter - perfectly mopped up with the never ending bread you are offered.

The main course was venison with a crust of pistachio and cocoa nibs, served with mash and baby vegetables:

The venison was perfectly cooked, still pink (I love that when you order meat in a French restaurant they serve it how it should be done as opposed to how the customer wants it done, which is so often overcooked) and very tender. The pistachio and cocoa nib crust was perfect, the slight bitterness of the chocolate balancing the rich gamey sweetness of the meat. As you can see from the picture, the accompaniments were not too much, which meant that we could go on to the dessert course - hurrah!

As a slight aside, Coq D'Argent has recently won the Louis Roederer Wine List of the Year 2011. I was given the wine list to make a choice - gulp - and was a bit freaked out by both the size of the selection and some of the prices. Note to people - at the back of the wine list is a very reasonable and very lovely selection of wines, from which we had a very nice bottle of Argentinian Malbec for £35.

So, we ordered the red wine, and we still had most of the bottle left - therefore our third course had to be cheese. Five different cheese, served at room temperature (so often not the case and one of my pet hates to be eating fridge-cold cheese), we lingered and finished the bottle while stuffing ourselves full of the well thought out selection of cheese, which included one of my favourites, the Normandy Livarot. The cheese was a £4 supplement, but as the whole menu still worked out at less than £30 a head, it was excellent value.

I can't recommend the £25 set menu here enough. It's such a treat to be able to enjoy this restaurant without paying through the nose, for those of us not lucky enough to be able to entertain clients!  And the fact that they don't compromise on quality with their set menu is as it should be, not the bonus we have come to almost expect from such deals. Choose a sunny day when you can escape for a couple of hours and go and enjoy.

Yesterday, I had lunch for the first time with a fellow food blogger who writes the excellent http://itrustcowsmorethanchemists.blogspot.com.  Dayna had suggested that we go to Elliot's in Borough Market and a quick check of the menu on their website http://www.elliotscafe.com/ reminded me of how good she is at knowing the latest fabulous places to go to. 

The omens were good - Marina O'Loughlin had reviewed Elliot's for that morning's Metro, raved about it and given it four stars. We got there expecting it to be heaving, but only had to wait a couple of minutes to be seated. It's a lovely little building on Stoney Street, with natural light coming in from the huge skylight at the back and a big sharing table at the front of the restaurant. 

We ordered a bottle of Prosecco and settled in to peruse the menu. I have it in front of me now, and just reading it is making me salivate. We decided to order two or three starters and share them, mainly because I am greedy and wanted oysters, as well as a more 'substantial' starter dish. The oysters were enormous, sweet and fresh and tasting of the sea. My only quibble was that as well as the traditional shallot and red wine vinegar to accompany them, there was a very odd teriyaki style sauce with them, best avoided. Other than that, they were superb: 

We observed hundreds of plates of shoestring fries with aloli coming out of the kitchen and decided that we were going to get ourselves some of those. Messy as hell to eat, but temptingly moreish, just grab a handful dip in the gorgeous, heavily garlicked aioli, ignoring the fries that scatter across the table in your wake: 

The third starter dish we chose was soppressata with spiced cherries. Wonderful finely sliced Italian salami with pickled spiced cherries that I thought we may come to blows over: 

Having lingered gloriously over our starters, the delightful waitress asked if we were ready for our main courses. Bring them on we said! Dayna had a beautifully poached piece of plaice, with the roe still in it. Cooked to perfection so it was ever so slightly opaque, it fell off the bone and was light and lovely.

 

It was accompanied by a fennel, tarragon and radicchio salad, which looked beautiful, but I'm ashamed to say I did not try it (I know, I know, schoolgirl error) because I was busy stuffing my face with my lamb cutlets and kidney, served with green bean and anchovy salad. And, as an added bonus, there was more of that wonderful aioli on the plate - hurrah! 

 

Because I am a complete glutton, I was a bit concerned that this would not be enough food for me, especially owing to the lack of carbohydrates on the plate, but I needn't have worried. The lamb cutlets were fat, pink and tender and the kidney was that perfect, slightly sharp tangy antidote to the sweetness of the cutlet meat. The green bean and anchovy salad was perfectly dressed, with sweet onions and mint included in the tangle - divine! 

We were too stuffed  to even think about pudding, so we paid the very reasonable bill and sauntered out into the Borough Market sunshine. I now see it as my duty to go back so I can try the desserts and report back. It'll be no great hardship. 

Front Row at Fashion Week

Saturday evening at Somerset House. Torrential rain. Ridiculous bondage shoes that making traversing over cobbles nigh on impossible. But such petty things as walking matter little when I am front row at London Fashion Week for the John Rocha collection. It's crazy busy, as all pre-shows are, with everyone bustling around, the photographers assembling at the end of the catwalk,  and everyone eyeing each other wondering who's who and who's sitting where. The the lights dim, the audience hushes and the models emerge in their amazing creations.

Simple white dress and head piece

Black feather dress



John Rocha leads out his models at the end of the show.



The clothes are simple and stunning in either black or white with no hint of colour, the fabrics they're made of do the talking for them. Feathers, chiffon and subtle layering make the clothes sit so lightly on the body, lending the models and ethereal air which is heightened by the sculptures they wear on their heads, which seem like wings.

The collection is beautiful and eminently wearable, with full flattering skirts and high necklines continuing the ladylike theme that's starting to dominate this season. The work that goes into designing and making these clothes is simply incredible - the cut, fit and finish of the material all combining to sit and drape elegantly on the body as per the designer's wish.

John Rocha isn't mentioned a lot in the 'best of the week' articles written as Fashion Week draws to a close, the journalists preferring to concentrate on other big names such as Vivienne Westwood and Burberry. But someone I met at Fashion Week said that he often goes into the store when John Rocha's new collections come in and spends a couple of hours just looking at and touching the clothes. It may sound mad, but after seeing this collection, I totally get it.

Spain - tapas extravangza and a wild wedding!

Continuing my gastro tour of Europe, we flew to Spain a fortnight ago for a friend's wedding. It was so good, and we partied so hard that it's taken nearly a fortnight for me to get back to normal and start blogging.

We landed in Seville and saw the (very impressive) cathedral before heading off into the blazing sunshine on a hunt for tapas. Because the heat had addled our brains, we couldn't find Las Teresas, the tapas bar we wanted to eat at,  so made the foolish error of eating in the main tourist area - on the Plaza Virgen de los Reyes, at a tapas bar called El Giradillo. Big mistake. The food was OK-ish (not good enough in a city renowned for its tapas), but the service was dreadful. We left having paid the (incorrect) bill and went exploring to see if we could better our first Sevillian tapas experience.

And we did. We found the beautiful Plaza de la Alianza, and within in the tapas bar that (I think) was called the Cafe Alianza. The first of several rounds of tinto de verano was ordered - 'safer' than sangria as it doesn't contain brandy - and we asked for jamon, boqurones and were recommended the pigs cheek by the waitress. All were fabulous and a very pleasant hour was spent drinking in the pleasant surroundings, happily munching on tapas, knocking back the tinto de verano and saying hi to the passing priests.

Tim showing off the tinto di verano and jamon.

Jamon

Pigs cheek



Boquerones

 Then we headed off to Arcos de la Frontera more more eating and drinking and a pre-wedding fiesta. On Friday night in the village of Arcos, the locals in conjunction with the church organise a procession of the Virgin Mary, the town's patron saint. All the wedding guests holed up in a tapas bar to watch the procession go past.

The statue is borne along by 30 young men.



And here she is close up.

 During the fiesta, we drank an awful lot of this:

Tinto de verano

And gorged ourselves on plenty of this:

Manchego cheese, prawns, jamon, chorizo.

And then the day of the wedding arrived and the bride and groom both looked utterly gorgeous:

Mr and Mrs Argent

As did several of the guests, particularly Tim in his beautiful pistachio trousers (with me):

We were fed amazingly well on a variety of tapas, which I was too busy getting stuck into to photograph, but I did manage to take some pictures of the wedding dinner:

Beautiful place sitting and liking the four wine glasses!

The evening dinner took place in an olive grove, which was simply beautiful:

And the food was wonderful:

Salmorejo - like gazpacho, but better.



More pork!



Lemon tart pie with summer fruits.

Following dinner we partied long and hard into the night, culminating in a 5am skinny dip. Fortunately, there are no photos of this - none that I'd care to share anyway!

So, thank you to Mr and Mrs Argent for inviting us to their wonderful wedding. You guys know how to throw one hell of a party.

Weekend of Gluttony - Part Two.

It's the Saturday morning after the Friday night of copious Italian food and wine. It's sunny, my head hurts a little, and I have to get on a horse. My friend Amy tells me the best cure for a hangover is a horse ride and you know what, she's right. But I would add to that, the best cure for a hangover is a horse ride, half a bottle of Bollinger (once safely dismounted of course) and lunch at Petersham Nurseries.

This is not, contrary to what you may think, a typical Saturday for me. We are riding, and drinking Bollinger at lunchtime and eating at Petersham because it is my friend Vicky's birthday, and we managed to score a table for lunch a month ago. And we are not disappointed by what we find.

The beautiful setting of Petersham Nurseries Cafe.

We start with an aperitif of Petersham rose syrup and rose petal Prosecco. Not too sweet, and with crystallised rose petals which we are delighted to find that you can eat, this makes the perfect pre-wine accompaniment to perusing the menu.

Petersham Rose Syrup and Rose Petal Prosecco

We then move onto the starters and I have the first of many outstanding dishes, courgette flowers with Sairas Ricotta, Borage and mint and basil dressing:

Rod Liddle wrote in this week's Sunday Times Style magazine that he would stab anyone with a fork if they tried to share some of his food in a restaurant, and if they offered him some of theirs. Fortunately, we are sharers and are trying each others food. Birthday girl makes the best call on the starters menu and has salad of tomatoes, nectarine, mozzarella, San Daniele and basil oil. This sounds so simple, but the ingredients are so perfect, so fresh and come together so brilliantly, that although my courgette flowers are very good, I have minor sulk that I didn't order this instead:

Pretty much without fail, I always choose the most expensive dish from the main courses. It's a running joke in my family. Today is no exception, with the salt baked Cornish turbot, potatoes, broad beans, spinach and mayonnaise at £35.50. It is eye wateringly expensively, but very much worth it, soft tasty fish, beautiful, fresh broad beans, new potatoes and an incredibly light mayonnaise:

And the birthday girl has the scallops, roasted red pepper rocket and marjoram salmoriglio, which are also fabulous:

 Rosé in the sunshine at Petersham Nurseries. In the background you can just see our waitress - helpful, funny, friendly and polite, is there anything not lovely about this place!:

Dessert next and we opt to share a summer pudding; the slice is so vast that I dream they have a huge summer pudding in the kitchen. Needless to say, it's faultless:

We end with cheese - the wrong way round I feel - it should always be cheese first then pudding - but it's what the birthday girl wants and I can't argue with someone whose birthday it is. And it's actually a really nice end to the meal, served with a glass of chilled red wine. The cheese is Pecorino Canestrato from Sardinia, with honey:

The birthday girl on the left and me on the right:

We have a little post lunch stroll around the nurseries in the blazing sunshine.

And I cool my wine hot feet in the fountain:

We overhear a customer saying it's a shame that it's more about the restaurant than the nurseries now. I'm afraid I have to disagree - the fact that the food is sourced locally, using vegetables and plants from the nursery where possible, means that both the nurseries and the restaurant compliment each other. And the draw of the restaurant, means that they've got a willing and captive audience to shop for plants post lunch.   This place really deserves its recently acquired Michelin Star and the food being cooked is of such a high standard and in such a beautiful location that it's a strong contestor for Lunch of the Year 2011.