A Crab Hand…

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Some of my happiest childhood memories involve trying to avoid the pincers of crabs, both on long lazy fishing trips in Norway with a bit of string and some bait and a beloved plastic toy one that I used to attack my Sindy dolls with when playing Killer Sea Creatures of an afternoon. However, I don’t have any great memories of cooking or eating crabs apart from burning myself on a soft shell number at Little Lamb last year, so when a crustacean caught my eye in Brixton Village at the weekend, I decided I had to rectify that and kill my own dinner for the first time.
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A taste of home?

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The Christmas I discovered duck…

I have read a lot in the past few months about culinary heritage, from articles about the attempts to save English apples to the eternal debate about food and class and discussions of regionalism in British food. I find this fascinating, but also wonder how much a lot of people can relate to this wider food heritage? Is it not the case that most people’s relationship with food is much more influenced by their immediate surroundings with the wider social aspects playing a less obvious role?

I grew up in a house engaged in food. My parents cooked almost everything from scratch, partly because that’s what they grew up on and partly because it was much cheaper and in 1980s Belfast where we didn’t didn’t have any national supermarket chains or McDonalds, it was pretty much the norm. My parents did have a slightly crunchy streak, making their own yoghurt and whipping up vats of dahl, but mainly we ate a mixture of traditional British and Irish dishes and slightly unusually for the time, real pasta (not the tinned stuff), rice and other meals influenced by my parents’ interest in travel. We ate well, but weren’t strangers to a fry or chips. Fussiness was not tolerated, although I was allowed to indulge in a teenage dalliance with vegetarianism. I spent a lot of time in kitchens as a child, watching people cook, both at home and at my granny’s farmhouse where a Esse cooker provided constant warmth and a never ending stream of excellent baked goods. Yet until I was nineteen, I couldn’t cook. In fact I could barely make toast and I couldn’t care less.

I had rebelled in my late teens, craving lurid foods from packets and cereals so sweet just looking at the box caused dental erosion. I was just about to leave home and unashamedly I was feeding myself a diet that a five year old would baulk at. Something needed to happen to stop me leaving my entire food heritage behind and hailing Pot Noodles as haute cuisine. And it did. It was an odd salvation, but one that would shepherd me back toward the path my parents had put me on. I discovered Ainsley Harriott.

Laid low by serious ill health, I watched a lot of daytime TV and the jewel in the crown of afternoon scheduling in the late 90s was Ready Steady Cook. It almost always featured Britain’s most exuberant cook and slowly and awakened an interest in cooking. I learned more about the technical side of making food than any Home Economics class had shown me and slowly but surely, it piqued my interest and I moved from sofa to kitchen. I’d like to tell you Ainsley’s easy inexpensive dishes were the motivation, but I think it was just as much as an urge to get away from his endless bellowing. I began cooking simple things, mainly pasta and couscous based, while I gained confidence in prepping ingredients and understanding timings. I’m sure there were some gastronomic horrors that my poor mother ate to be supportive, but I’ve blocked those memories out.

By the time I went to university, clutching the first ever cookbook I bought, a copy of Nigella’s How to Eat, I was pretty confident in the kitchen and unlike my flatmates who relied heavily on processed meals and parcels from home, I cooked everything from scratch, including making my own yeast free bread. Broke, bored and marooned on an out of town campus at night, I re-lived a childhood cooking interest and made apple crumble almost nightly for something to do, resulting in block wide ‘crumble offs’ and custard making competitions. Moving to London and starting a job in fashion stunted my fledgling interest in food slightly, living off Ryvita and cream cheese most of the time, but when money and parties were thin on the ground, happy to partake of ‘Goulash Night’ and slightly obsessive onion ring making with my housemates. I did also construct a (now sadly lost and much missed) recipe book of Vogue recipes, food article cuttings and Lindsey Bareham‘s brilliant after work recipes from the Evening Standard.

But it wasn’t til I moved into my current flat about five years ago that I really started to challenge myself culinararily. Living on a very restricted budget led me away from the trendier world of the celebrity cooks to a certain extent and back toward the skills and loves my parents instilled in me from an early age. I still rarely buy anything ready made (unless I can’t do it myself) and I am a demon with leftovers. Somewhere my granny’s love of baking has come back to me and I still whip everything up in her mixing bowl. The confidence and independence these skills offer me is worth its weight in gold (and the money it saves me) and I find it hard to believe that I didn’t pay more attention when I was younger, although thank god, I’ve got my mum’s potato salad recipe to hand!

I’m still very much developing as a cook. I’m a little bit nervous of doughs, pastries, batters and things involving yeast. My childhood love of oddly bland things such as Marie biscuits has never left me and despite being a food lover, I could happily eat plain brown rice, Ryvita and porridge five times a week. I’m not very cheffy in my presentation and Mister North is much more adventurous with his techniques and ingredients. My favourite childhood comfort food dish is still mince and potatoes, preferably cooked by my mum. But I’m enjoying following a path that my childhood set me on where I’ll try just about anything once, even if it also involves rather a lot of baking fails along with a revived love of lentils.

What about you? Who shaped your foodie path? Have you bucked childhood trends and tastes? Do the people around you influence your food feelings or do the TV chefs have more sway these days? Are bloggers your new inspiration? And have you ever successfully re-created those things other people cooked for to show you their love?

Salt n’ sweet ice cream

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Despite the legendary pronouncement as a child in a huff that I don’t like Italian gelato, I do like a decent ice cream once in a while and since Marine Ices is a right trek from my house and i haven’t made it to Gelupo yet, I have always fancied the notion of having an ice cream maker.

So when I discovered that John Lewis have a new model out for a mere £35 that comes well recommended by Which? I couldn’t resist. While waiting for it to arrive, I browsed several recipes for ice cream and compiled a list of ones to try. I also put out a batcall for other people’s favourites on Twitter and the hands down mentioned-a-million-times winner was this David Lebovitz recipe for salted caramel butter ice cream. Luckily my machine turned up sooner than expected and I had time to freeze the bowl for 24 hours prior to a friend coming for dinner during the week.

On the day, I rather tredipidiously making the recipe. Lizzie over at Hollow Legs found it tricky and since I’d spent the weekend burning sugar like it’s a superpower, I felt this might go off piste if I wasn’t careful. I decided to concentrate on the cooking carefully, so I don’t have any photos of the various stages, just the end product. The original recipe page has some though if you find that helpful.

I started off making the caramel brittle that would be used to add bite and intensity to the ice cream. This is basically sugar melted til golden brown and bubbling, infused with some Maldon sea salt and then spread out on a baking tray as thin as possible til hardened. It was surprisingly quick and easy, although since the sugar is hotter than the sun, you do need to pay attention while doing it.

Feeling positive that the first step had gone well, I started making the actual custard. More caramel was created in the same way as the brittle, but once bubbling, it come off the heat and has butter mixed in and then cream to make a gorgeous creamy toffee sauce. It was all going well, and I hoped that adding the egg yolks wouldn’t cause a problem. By following the advice to add some warm sauce to the yolks to heat them gently and then add that to the main body of the caramel sauce, preventing any tricky splitting or curdling. It then thickened very slightly and in no time I had the whole custard cooling in the fridge for three or so hours. Even if the ice cream was a disaster from here on in, I was pleased with my custard making powers!

Later on, once the custard was cooled and everything else for dinner was complete, I got the machine out and ready to go. It’s super simple to assemble and a few moments later, it was churning away with no real effort and only a low rumble of noise. I might not want to be in the same room as it while it does its thing, but if you had to you could without yelling or losing your mind. I gave it exactly 30 minutes to churn, adding the now shattered caramel brittle in five minutes before the end. Rich and icy, it looked gorgeous and would have have been lovely as it was with a sort of soft scoop finish. But as I wasn’t ready for it, I popped it in a covered bowl in the freezer for another two or so hours.

After all my nerves about the caramel, the custard and the machine, I was overjoyed to see that it had set beautifully. Just like real ice cream in fact! I left it to sit in the fridge for about five minutes to make it easier to scoop and reminded myself I must get a proper gadget for serving in the future. Because if all the ice cream I make is going to be as good as this, I’m going to be using the scoop a lot…

This was just heavenly. Very very creamy, decadently rich and utterly heavenly. The slight tang of salt stopped it being too sweet and the little nuggets of crunchy caramel both challenge and delight the tastebuds as you go. It went down well with my dinner guest and we both emptied our bowl quite quickly. It’s so rich though that much as we would have liked, we just couldn’t have managed another portion. It will keep well in the freezer and make a delightful treat after any meal (or before a meal or as evidenced at lunchtime today, instead of a meal.)

Don’t hesitate to try this very grown up ice cream, even if it means having to splash out on the ice cream maker first. You won’t regret it!

Yellowman meets yellow butter…

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Having invited some friends to Sunday brunch, I wasn’t quite sure what to make. Combining two meals into one raises the stakes somewhat and a rubbery fried egg and some cold toast wouldn’t cut it. So I googled brunch ideas and the clear winner was this Bill Granger recipe for ricotta pancakes with honeycomb butter. Soft fluffy pancakes with sweet crunchy butter sounded just the ticket and offered the perfect opportunity to educate my English and American guests about proper yellowman instead of this honeycomb malarkey…

Yellowman is the Irish name for this aerated sugar creation you probably know as the middle of a Crunchie bar or possibly as cinder toffee. It is famed throughout Ireland and particularly associated in the North with the famous Auld Lammas Fair in Ballycastle around the end of August. Paper cones or pokes of yellowman were served at the fair, traditionally accompanied with the famous dulse or dried seaweed. Perhaps an Irish precursor of the salted caramel trend we all know and love now, I found this combo utterly revolting as a child. Dulse had the texture of shoe leather dipped in salt and I could never understand why people brought it back from Ballycastle for us. I already hadn’t been on holiday, why punish me further? I might feel differently these days though.

I loved yellow man though with its sticky rough crunchy feel and glorious sunny colour reminiscent of late summer sunshine and long weekends before school started again. Skipping the side dish of dulse and adding it into butter sounded like improving on something already pretty perfect. Filled with the warm glow of childhood memory and refined sugar, I decided I would live dangerously and make my own yellowman for this recipe as I remember people making it when I was a child and saying how easy it was.

Seeking Irish expertise, (and soundtracking the event with the tones of Jamaica’s finest and appropriately named reggae artist Yellowman) I decided to follow Niamh’s recipe at Eat Like a Girl especially as she omits the butter some recipes use. I’m nervous enough round molten sugar without potentially burning butter to boot. Warned to use a deep pan, I got the Le Cresuet out and started melting. Unfortunately because I am incapable of reading recipes correctly at the moment, I used 200 ml of golden syrup instead of 200g so may have had too much in the mixture, which is why when my trusty thermometer said the mixture had reached the magic 150°C or hard crack stage, the whole thing had gone from an alluring golden amber to burnt umber. I bunged the bicarb in anyway and was unprepared for how much it foamed up. Unsure whether I was meant to stir (ie: put my hand near boiling sugar that is exploding) my hesitation meant there was yellowman mix all over the cooker and even belated stirring didn’t help that much. I poured the remaining mix into a lined tray and set about scraping the sugar off the cooker. I certainly know why the Scots call it puff candy…

Sampling a bit left on the pan, I established that the sugar had gone from sickly sweet to acidic and overcooked. I decided to start again, using the correct amount of golden syrup this time. Thinking this is where I’d gone wrong, I followed the recipe exactly otherwise, again going for the hard crack stage and ending up again with darker looking sugar than I’d have liked. I added the bicarb, stirring like a dervish and although it puffed up like a more alluring indoor firework, the yellowman still didn’t look sunshine yellow. In fact eagle eyed readers will have noted that it is in fact that the kind of burnished hue usually only seen on a contestant on Snog Marry Avoid. It also had the same acrid tang of burned sugar as the previous batch.

Having run out of refined sugar products to ruin and acutely aware I was spending my Saturday night in a fog of sticky smelling smoke, I gave up at this point and turned my attention to washing up both sugar caked pots I’d used, realising I should have taken the mix of the heat before it got to the hard crack stage and see if that helped. I also discovered when ruining another recipe later in the week, that I am reading the thermometer wrong! So please don’t be scared to try this recipe unless like me you paid no attention in science class and can’t read a thermometer.*

I then went out the next morning and bought a four pack of Crunchies, denuding them of chocolate with a sharp knife and then mashing them into some softened (and thinking back to the dulse, salted) butter before shaping into a roll and chilling for a couple of hours in the fridge.

Once the guests arrived, I turned my attention to the pancakes. Despite the seemingly complicated two step batter, these are incredibly easy to make and quicker than a regular batter as they don’t need to sit. Spoonfuls of the thick yet light batter went into a hot pan and puffed up beautifully as they turned golden brown. Served up alongside some crisp streaky bacon, these little pancakes were pretty perfect as they were. But adding in the butter took them to a whole new level.

Flecked with shimmering jewels of honeycomb, the butter added a soft yet crunchy, sweet yet not sickly layer of deliciousness to the pancakes. Combining the best of the world of the whipped style butter and syrup the Americans serve with pancakes, you no longer have to choose between the two toppings, but enhance them by creating the best butter in the world. The crunch worked perfectly with the soft pancakes and the sweetness took the bacon up a notch too. There were no pancakes left and only a scraping of the butter once we’d all finished, even though we also had light crumbly corn muffins and a slightly spiced berry compote on our plates too.

Once my guests had left, I finished off the butter on the leftover muffins and reminded myself that it was so good, it had been worth all the fluffy faffing with sugar and syrup the night before. I will be trying making yellowman again instead of trimming a million Crunchie bars, so that I can make an entire block of the butter and then eat it with a spoon. Or make the best toast in the world. Don’t make the pancakes without it. It’s so worth the extra effort!

*I’d also like to thank Niamh who took time out to see if she could help me sort my problem with the yellowman despite me slightly slandering her poor recipe’s good name. I feel very reassured now.

Wahaca

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Since the authenticity of Mexican food in London seems to be a hot topic amongst food bloggers, I’ve heard a lot about Wahaca and since it has opened a new branch in Wardour Street and I’ve recently sampled the food at their competitor Lupita, how could I say no when Mister North suggested eating there this week?

We arrived about six o’clock, absolutely starving and in no mood to queue. Luckily we were early enough to beat the dinner rush and found ourselves seated almost immediately by a very friendly waitress. On first glance the menu was so immense I could hardly focus on it to start choosing and was happy to have Mister North take charge and order two Modelo Especial and some scratchings and guacamole to take the edge of our hunger and help us focus.

The scratchings describe themselves as lighter and healthier and they look quite different to our pork scratchings in their pillowy vastness. They were delicious, somewhat like a porky flavoured Crackerbread (trust me, this is an excellent thing) and they scooped up the guacamole nicely. I found the guacamole enjoyable at the time, but can’t remember anything about it now.

Sure that our eyes weren’t bigger than our bellies, we ordered heartily, choosing the Wahaca selection for two as a way to sample as many dishes as possible as it includes tacos, quesadillas, taquitos and tostadas. We also went for the special of queso fundido, unable to resist the combination of mushrooms and cheese, and added in some of our five a day with the sweet potato and the spicy slaw on the side.

Plates started arriving almost immediately and while it was nice to have to wait too long, it seemed a tad canteen-esque to me. Everything was pretty much tepid apart from the bubbling cheese of the queso fundido, but it all looked fresh and appealing and I was keen to get stuck in, if I could decide where to start?

Figuring that pork never goes amiss, we both went for the pork pibil tacos first. These were incredibly rich with soft, pulled style pork and were very tasty, but something about the flakiness of the meat didn’t really appeal to me, feeling a bit claggy in my mouth. The incredibly tasty softness of the black beans on the tostadas were the perfect counterbalance for me and I was more than happy to have the second one of these, leaving the pork pibil to Mister North. In fact the black beans were so good on the tostadas, I heaped some of the extra side portion onto them and bemoaned the fact I cannot get pulses to taste this good at home.

The queso fundido had cooled down enough to prevent taking the top of the roof of our mouths and was well worth waiting for. I am a recent convert to mushrooms and these made me very happy about that. Juicy and tasty with a nice tang from the cheese, I had to be careful not to shovel the entire dishful onto my warm tortilla and leave Mister North without any. The last scraps of this one were hotly contested, but I’m pleased to say my big brother let me scrape the bowl clean…

We also made short work of the nicely spiced sweet potato, with Mister North dipping into the hot mango sauce and devouring the chipotle dip while I didn’t dare risk it as I don’t really like particularly spicy food. I did adore the spicy slaw though and thought the green rice was great. I am always impressed when side dishes are as good if not better than the main dishes and I thought Wahaca was great for this, especially since so many of these dishes are meat free.

I was slightly disappointed by the seasonal vegetable tacos. The veg selection just felt a bit like tinned veggies, thanks to the sweetcorn, with some highly unseasonal cubes of tomato and a bit of lettuce to bulk it out. They weren’t particularly flavoursome and were a direct contrast to all the other tasty meat free offerings. I much preferred the huitlacoche quesadilla with its mushroom infused flavour and almost buttery filling.

We finished up with the taquitos and these were an excellent end to meal. Fried til crispy but filled with soft creamy chicken, these were my favourite of any of the meat dishes we had. Small and perfectly formed, despite being very full, I could have happily had a second taquito, possibly even a third. Despite our waitress warning us that we had probably ordered too much, we cleared all the plates bar about one mouthful of the rice and decided we could make room to try the mango sorbet, along with another beer.

The place was absolutely hiving at this point with a queue nearly to the door and even thought we only ordered one sorbet between us, there was no sense of being rushed or coaxed into ordering anything more to keep our spot. The sorbet arrived quickly with two spoons and we tucked in. It was deliciously mango-y and a lovely refreshing end to the meal, and although quite a large portion, it seemed expensive to me. Probably because secretly I wanted churros, but couldn’t have fitted them in!

Our bill came to just over £50, including 4 beers at £4 each, which I thought was pretty good value aside from the vegetable tacos and the sorbet. I liked Wahaca. The food was pretty good, the service was excellent, but I didn’t get a huge sense of atmosphere from the place, pretty as it was. I’d go back for the black beans, taquitos and the queso fundido*, but I’d prefer it to feel a little bit less like a chain next time. Maybe Wednesday isn’t the best night to try them or maybe I need to get over my dislike of tequila?

* And I am totally sold on the idea of the matchbooks of chilli seeds to grow at home!