Wahaca, Soho, London, UK

I remember watching Thomasina Miers winning Masterchef many years ago, before the programme developed its comedy edge. She was super-keen on promoting Mexican food, and has done a sterling job since then by opening the Wahaca group of restaurants across London. My knowledge of Mexican food remains limited, but Wahaca has been on my list of central London places to visit for absolutely ages. I am obviously on a roll, as after my recent Dishoom success I followed up by making it to Wahaca a couple of weeks ago.
The Soho branch was absolutely packed when we visited on a weekday evening, but we only had a short wait before we were shown to a table. The Male Companion Person and I shared a main course and range of side dishes, so managed to taste a good range of the fish and vegetarian bits of the menu.

Fish tacos were essentially slightly exotic fishfinger sandwiches, which is no bad thing. If our substantial food order hadn't obscured the bottles, I probably would have added some hot sauce to spice these up a little though. The seasonal squid special, which though flavourful and non-chewy, could have done with something lighter than the thick breadcrumb coating they came in.

We also ordered a big green salad, fried sweet potatoes, and some frijoles. So basically quite a lot of food for two people. I particularly loved the warm frijoles topped with cheese, which was rich and exceptionally moreish (not something you can often say about mashed beans).

I got a bit over-excited at the thought of churros, so we had some of those too. This was the other thing I really loved- fried donuts with a dark chocolate sauce. If they had provided a spoon I would have scooped that sauce more directly into my face too.

So I really liked Wahaca. For me the stand-out dishes were the frijoles and the churros, but everything else tasted fresh and was more than pleasant. The restaurant had a nice buzzy atmosphere, and a special mention has to go to our server-person Maciej (I think); he was obviously looking after several large groups as well as us but was still friendly, efficient and helpful, and did not laugh at me when I completely messed up using the card terminal. Wahaca also seems very reasonably priced for central London, as all the above food, a couple of beers, and a non-alcoholic drink was about £35 (without service). I would happily visit Wahaca again, and well done to Tommi Miers for getting her mini-food empire off the ground too.

Wahaca Soho
80 Wardour Street
Soho
London W1F OTF

Elizabeth Shaw chocolate

I have always found it hard to say no to chocolate in any form, so when a nice person from Elizabeth Shaw asked if I'd like to try some of their chocolate I responded in the affirmative. I also thought it would be a good chance to try out something completely new to me. In fact, it turned out that I had eaten some Elizabeth Shaw chocolate previously as they make some very acceptable amaretto flavour chocolate straws (or flutes as they seem to call them) that I enjoyed (a.k.a. scoffed a lot of) last year.

The company have now expanded their established range of mint chocolate crisps and added some new flavours which include caramel, honeycomb, butterscotch and a darker chocolate with cocoa nibs. These come in a number of selection boxes and also in bar form. I have to say that I couldn't tell much difference between the butterscotch, honeycomb, and caramel flavours as they all contained bits of honeycomb in them. But they were also very nice, and as the 'crisps' were actually bite-sized discs they did a good job of filling the need for a hit of sweetness after dinner. The cocoa nibs were not embedded in the darkest of chocolate, but it was still pretty decent. And I'm all in favour of not limiting mint chocolate to the Christmas holidays, so enjoyed those too.

So overall, I quite liked these chocolates. They haven't got the funkiest of brand names, but the actual product is pretty good with a few novel twists.

Elizabeth Shaw Chocolates
I rate them: 7.5/10
Cost: From around £2.00 for a bar.


Thanks to Elizabeth Shaw who sent me my chocolate for free and gratis.

Veggie sausage rolls with caramelised onion

I do love a nice picnic, and it looks the weather for them has finally arrived- huzzah! Sausage rolls are a stalwart of al fresco dining, but despite being a non-meat eater I don't like to miss out on anything savoury covered in pastry. So I made these fake sausage rolls with Quorn sausages, lots of red onion, and a good quality ready-made all butter puff pastry. As I've said before, pretty much all meat 'substitutes' like Quorn, soya chunks or textured vegetable protein, don't really taste of much but do add a vaguely meat-like texture to food. So you basically need to ensure that whatever else goes in with meat substitute has enough flavour to carry the entire dish. So for my fake sausage rolls, I added generous amounts of slow cooked caramelised red onion to each one.

Recipe (enough for 12 small sausage rolls):

240g Quorn sausages (I used these new ones they've brought out which come in packs of 4, and they do seem a tad more flavourful than the regular ones)
Around 200g of a good quality ready-rolled all butter puff pastry (I used Tesco finest, but of course you can make your own if you're so inclined)
2 medium red onions (finely sliced)
2 or 3 sprigs of fresh thyme
1 clove of garlic (finely sliced)
A little salt and pepper to season
A couple of table spoons of olive oil
A little flour to stop the pastry sticking to your board
A little milk to seal and glaze the pastry

Fry the sliced red onions with the thyme over a very gentle heat in a little oil, until they are completely soft and unctuous. This will take at least 20minutes. Add a bit of salt and pepper and the garlic, take out the thyme twigs, and cook slowly for another 5minutes or so. When they are done, take the pan off the heat and allow the onions to cool down a bit. In the meantime, cut each sausage into three pieces. I fried these a bit before I used them but in retrospect that was completely unnecessary, so I won't bother again. When the onions have stopped being piping hot, lay out the pastry on a lightly floured board, place a piece of sausage on it, and add a generous amount of the onion. Make sure you have enough pastry to go round the filling, then cut it, wrap the pastry round and use a bit of milk to glue the two ends together. You can either make each sausage roll individually, or wrap an entire row and trim them afterwards. When you've wrapped all the rolls, put them join-side down on a lightly oiled baking tray and glaze the top of the pastry with milk.
Bake for around 15-20minutes at gas mark 6, or until the sausage rolls are a golden brown. These were great warm straight out of the oven, with a bit of salad and some devilled eggs for an indoor veggie picnic (aka lunch). But now that summer is here I will definitely be making them again (ideally before it starts raining).

Plate Lickers Supperclub, Cambridge, UK

I remember first reading about supperclubs and underground restaurants on the rather excellent blog by Ms MarmiteLover (aka Kerstin). Since then, Kerstin has become a doyenne of the scene and supperclubs have been popping up all over the place. I've unfortunately yet to make it to Kerstin's in London, so I was rather glad when I found out that I could get a taste of the supperclub experience on my doorstep in Cambridge- yay! The Plate Lickers supperclub is run by Miss Igs and The Afternoon Tease, or Ivana and Jo as they are otherwise known. I went along to their second event, which had a vaguely middle eastern theme.

Our secret location turned out to be a church, so I had the unique experience of dining below stained glass and next to some pews. After a welcome drink, we started off with some hummous and an aubergine dip with a hefty garlic kick. This was followed by a chilled, green gazpacho which included some sort of pesto element that made it rich but still refreshing.

Next up was my (vegetarian) main course of courgette and feta fritters, with green beans (dressed with hazelnuts and orange), and cous cous. I've tried to make courgette fritters before, but ended up with some bland discs of stodge. These fritters were delicious though, and I think the generous use of feta was probably why.

A mint tea and orange blossom sorbet followed, though this was probably my least favourite part of the meal. It was a bit sweet for my taste, but I generally don't get on well with seriously icy things anyway due to my teeth being quite feeble and sensitive. Pudding arrived soon afterwards, Baked peaches were stuffed with a sweet nut mix, reminiscent of those hot, sugared nuts (ahem) that you sometimes find people selling in little cones, and were served with a piece of almond and polenta cake. And though we were all rather full by this point I cleaned my plate, which I believe made me the 'winner' of pudding amongst my friends, (I can get quite competitive when it comes to puddings).

Overall, this was a great meal which I thoroughly enjoyed. Supperclubs are obviously very different from conventional restaurants. There are no extensive menus with a range of choices, no surprises about the cost (there was a suggested donation of £30 per person), and no pressure to vacate your table. What you do get is the chance to meet some interesting people in an unusual venue, with some tasty food. I went with friends, but we also had plenty of other interesting folk at our table with lots of general chat, so I would have been quite happy to have gone on my own too. The Plate Lickers girls are obviously enthusiastic cooks, who have invested a lot more than many regular restaurateurs in this venture, as as well as cooking, they are also serving, and (presumably) doing the washing up afterwards too.So props to Jo and Ivana for hosting a fab evening, and here's to many more!

Mushrooms stuffed with scallops

I came up with this dish the other day after randomly seeing a man cooking some of those little queen scallops on Countryfile (my Sunday television viewing is of the non-challenging variety). And having made Ottolenghi's stuffed mushrooms quite recently, I thought that I'd try and add some elements from that recipe too. Cheese and seafood is a bit of a contentious combination, but I thought that the mild, milkiness of Taleggio cheese went really well with both the mushroom base and the scallop filling. I served these mushrooms with some steamed broccoli and braised fennel. And though I was bit concerned that this wasn't going to be enough for dinner it actually was, with quite a small tub of queen scallops stretching to a dinner for two.

Recipe (enough for two):

4 large field mushrooms

3 medium spring onions, sliced

1 clove of garlic, chopped

Around 160g of queen scallops 

Light sprinkling of dried basil or 1tsp of freshly chopped basil leaves

1 tblsp double cream

Salt and pepper to season

Around 200g Taleggio cheese

A few tblsp olive oil

Remove the stalks from the mushrooms, chop them up quite finely, and put to one side. Heat a frying pan with a few tablespoons of olive oil and gently fry the four whole mushrooms until they are cooked through. This should take around 10minutes, but will depend on how large the mushrooms are. Once cooked, take the mushrooms out, and add a bit more oil. Gently fry the spring onions, mushroom stalks, and herbs. Once they've softened, increase the heat a bit, and add in the scallops and garlic. Cook for a few more minutes, season with salt and pepper and then take off the heat. Stir in the cream to bring everything together in a sort of sauce. Next, slice up the Taleggio, spoon the scallop mix into the mushrooms, and top with the cheese. You might not need all the cheese, but it's nice to be generous with it, so try and make sure all of the top of the mushrooms are covered. 

Put the mushrooms under a hot grill for around 5minutes, until the cheese is melted and bubbling on top. Serve with some vegetables for a pretty speedy supper, while wondering if this might be the first Countryfile-Ottolenghi recipe mash-up.

Cooking from Ottolenghi's Plenty

Although I eat in a meat-free manner, I'm not a proper vegetarian as I'm rather keen on fishfingers (as well as fish and chips). But I still often eat completely vegetarian meals, so am always keen on finding new things to put in them. I'd heard quite a bit about Yotam Ottolenghi, and in fact cooked his black pepper tofu recipe last year. So I was quite excited when some lovely friends bought me his vegetarian cookbook, Plenty, and I've recently tried out a few recipes from it.

Firstly, some sweet potato cakes. The recipe, which initially appeared in Yotam's Guardian column, can be found here and rather unusually I don't think I changed anything about it at all. The recipe is pretty straightforward, as it's basically just mashed potato with some added seasonings, but I did like the idea of steaming the potato (presumably to avoid it getting water-logged through boiling). The cooked cakes were very flavourful, with an excellent combination of sweetness from the potato, and chilli and spring onion savoury-ness. I definitely had to cook these longer than the recommended six minutes though, and they were also a lot less robust than they looked, which made flipping them over a bit tricky. But the end product was worth the careful prodding, and they went very well with the garlicky yoghurt sauce that's suggested accompany them.

Next up were mushrooms stuffed with Taleggio cheese. This recipe is essentially the same as this one which appeared in the Guardian, but Plenty swaps the fennel for a small onion and a stick of celery and also adds a little taragon to the stuffing too. The mix also contains some sun-dried tomatoes, which I've generally found to be little chewy bullets of bitterness, but either they've really improved in quality or else cooking them for a while really does transform them. I made a minor adjustment, which was using the smaller portobellini mushrooms rather than portobello ones, as I prefer these. Again, this is quite a simple and straightforward recipe but used ingredients that I wouldn't think to put together. And for me Taleggio cheese was a new discovery too, as I've somehow never tried it before.

So overall I thought Plenty was an excellent book. I'd not read Ottolenghi's Guardian column, so these recipes were all pretty new to me. I liked the organisation into chapters on different vegetables, and though many of the recipes aren't the quickest to prepare they all seemed quite original and interesting. I have a list of additional dishes from the book that I'd like to make and, unusually for me, I might well stick to the recipe.

Dishoom, London, UK

One of the slightly annoying things about not being based in London is that I hear of lots of great sounding places opening there, but it takes me an age to get round to going to them. To be fair I'm only a 45-ish minute train ride away from Zone 1, but the idea of travelling down just to get some lunch seems a little over the top even for me. So when a good friend suggested a catch up in the big smoke, I immediately thought of where we could go to eat (as well as being delighted I'd be seeing her soon obviously).

I heard a lot about Dishoom and their 'Bombay cafe' concept, when it first opened. The idea immediately appealed, I added it to my list of places to go, and a mere twenty-two months later I've finally made it! I've only been to Bombay once but the interior of Dishoom did seem quite evocative of some of the small restaurants we went to (mainly because of the ceiling fans and loose cabling). The menu is mainly made up of lots of smaller savoury dishes, which I quite like as it makes it easier to taste a range of things, as well as lots of types of chai and lassi.

I ordered a tikka paneer, which came nicely charred (rather than burnt) and skate cheeks koliwada. I hadn't even realised that skate had cheeks, let alone that they were edible, so I was quite keen to try these. What arrived was a generous portion of fishy nuggets in a properly spicy coating, and an accompanying tamarind dip. I really liked the heat and spices in this dish, which didn't overwhelm the fish at all. And it worked really well with the coriander chutney that was provided too. To balance out the protein, I also had a fresh and zingy 'slaw and a roomali roti which was soft and pliant, just as I had hoped it would be.

To finish things off, we ordered a couple of malai kulfis, (which came on sticks). The kulfi was rich and creamy, with a hint of cardamon, and the perfect size for fulfilling a pudding craving. All of this along with some soft drinks, a lassi, and a paneer roll for my friend only came to around £40 (including service). I think this would be excellent value anywhere, but especially so in central London.

So overall, Dishoom really lived up to expectations for me and I would be very happy to go back again. It offers a few interesting and different dishes, the chance to eat Indian food in a slightly more casual setting, a nice atmosphere, and some of the nicest kulfi I've had for ages. My only minor gripe was that a combination of Indian-style piped music and a packed room, meant that it was quite loud and a bit difficult to hear what the staff, and indeed my friend, were saying. However, I guess it did contribute to an authentic Bombay atmosphere, and as I have started complaining about pensions and the weather, it may also indicate that I am getting a bit old.


Dishoom
12 Upper St Martin's Lane
London WC2H 9FB