Jerk Cook Out, Brockwell Park

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I have just returned from the outdoor food event of the year and one of the best reasons to live in South London: The Annual Jerk Cook Out. This feast of Carribbean food has outgrown its previous home at the Horniman Museum and is now hosted at Brockwell Park in Brixton, making it much easier to lure some hungry friends along to get stuck in!

We arrived just after one o’clock and things were building up nicely, but weren’t too packed. A quick saunter round eyeing up the offerings later and we joined the burgeoning queue at the Tasty Jerk Ltd stall. The busiest of all the stalls, we were also drawn by the magnificient jerk spit roast lamb out front and phalanx of jerk drums along the side of the stall. This was serious business.

The queue moved quickly and we just had time to decide on a jerk pork and jerk chicken, plus a helping of the lamb which I have never seen offered before. We got some rice and peas on the side of the pork too as it looked particularly moist and delicious. The pork and chicken was with us in a trice, but we did have wait about five minutes extra for the lamb, while the queue for the stall expanded rapidly.

Finally clutching our well filled plates, we found a spot to sample them and realised how worth the wait it had been. The pork was glorious. Stained as pink on the edges from peppers and sugar as char siu, it was soft and succulent enough to cut through with the rather flimsy plastic fork we were given. Tangy with chilli and deliciously charred and chewy from the barbeque, we loved it.

Jerk pork with rice and peas

The chicken was equally good. Cooked on the bone and roughly chopped into pieces there was a good mix between white and dark meat. It sparkled with the fruitiness of scotch bonnets and our lips tingled in no time, especially when we scooped up some of the homemade chilli sauce on the side.

Jerk chicken

But the star of the stall was the jerk lamb. We’d managed to get pretty much the first serving (thanks to E and S for waiting it out!) off the spit roast and our thickly carved slices were a good proportion of crispy skin and juicy, still slightly pink meat. The skin was rich with fat, musky allspice and sweet chillis, melding beautifully with the luscious meat, dripping sweet juice down our hands as we feasted on slice after slice of the lamb. Not only is this the best jerk I’ve ever eaten, it’s some of the best lamb I’ve ever eaten. I would definitely venture all the way to South Norwood any day of the week for this, especially at the bargain price of £5 per plate without sides!

Lovely lamb...

With empty plates in front of us and a mountain of wet wipes to show how hands on we’d been, we moved on before the the ever growing queue for Tasty Jerk Ltd trampled us. Another wander between the stalls led us in search of jerk ribs, but watching them grown cold and unappealing as we queued put us off. We contemplated trying something totally different with a refreshing shaved ice, but our eyes were caught by a stall advertising jerk brie…

Utterly intrigued, especially by the cute little V for vegetarian beside it, we just had to try it. And since we were getting it, we thought we might as well get some festival and fried plaintain as well to add some carbs to our feast! And we are glad we did! Partly to see how one jerks cheese and partly because it was actually delicious!

Festival of carbs!

Goo-on then!

The sweet creamy brie went very well with the spicy jerk breadcrumbs it was wrapped in before being deep fried. The cheese was gorgeously gooey and molten inside and if it wasn’t so rich, I could have eaten another one! But I wanted to leave room for the delicious festival, which if you haven’t had it, is like a less sweet version of a doughnut. Carbs finished we strolled round checking out the rest of the stalls, debating whether to go back to Tasty Jerk Ltd, but being scared off by how big it had got! Feeling more than replete and with still tingling lips, we decided to avoid the increasing crowds and head home before it all got too stressful for one’s digestion!

I’ve already put next year’s Cook Out in my diary already and will be there bright and early next year to make sure I’m first in line again for that jerk lamb. I’ll also remember to bring something to sit on and a few beers to go with it!

Etta’s Seafood Kitchen, Brixton

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Times are a-changing for the 1930s covered market in Brixton formerly known as Granville Arcade. Newly listed to prevent demolition, it has been re-named Brixton Village and is taking on a new lease of life thanks to a mixture of recently opened vintage stores, galleries and pop-up shops and the long established fishmongers and butchery stalls and stores selling food and goods from all over the world. Accompanying these retail outlets are some wonderful places to eat and drink, both new and old…

One of the newer arrivals is Etta’s Seafood Kitchen on 6th Avenue. Immediately welcoming with its purple and pink frontage and tables outside, you step inside to a low key environment with a hotch-potch of tables and some good music playing. The menu is simple, but effective, listing a variety of mains, starters and a great kids’ selection along with fresh juices and sides.

Short and sweet

Etta’s offers a mix of fresh and cooked seafood with both a traditional and Carribean feel with a reasonably priced oyster plate, fish curries or a seafood linguine all sounding enticing. However since M and I had already sneaked a quick slice of pizza at The Agile Rabbit we weren’t just as hungry as we might have been for pasta or rice, and decided to go for a mussel pot each and a portion of the crab fritters to share. Our choice was also influenced by the excellent prices with the mussel pot costing a fiver…

Our drinks arrived quickly and my mango and guava juice was tasty, but I was massively distracted though by the crab fritters coming to the table in style. Freshly fried billowing pillows of golden crabbiness on a lovely rectangular plate and an egg cup of sweet chilli sauce, these looked sensational. And they tasted as good as they looked. Light crunchy outers with soft sweet crab filled middles spiked with fresh chilli and coriander in the batter, they were extremely moreish. I skipped the sweet chilli sauce as I’m not a big fan of it, but the fritters had excellent flavours on their own. We were also impressed by the size of the portion for a mere £3.50.

Crab fritters

The mussels appeared at the table steaming hot and promptly and were again a good sized portion. I love mussels, but find that quite often these days they lack much flavour apart from a brineyness so I was trepidatious. No need, these little babies were sweet and tasty with a gorgeous cooking liquor infused with a hint of curry, fresh coriander and lots of garlic. We abandoned much semblance of table manners and devoured our mountain of mussels with our hands. Despite the finger bowl provided, we created a pile of napkins as tall as that of the mussel shells…

One partly eaten portion of mussels…

We didn’t have a single unopened mussel between us and they were beautifully clean and grit free apart from one solitary barnacle that confirmed these weren’t frozen and thawed bi-valves, but fabulously fresh specimens from a market that specialises in fish! We cleared our plates with gusto and my only complaint was that there was nothing to soak up the cooking juices. I managed to resist the urge to drink them out of the dish and sat back feeling very satisfied.

The cafe around us was a good level of busy for a Tuesday lunchtime with the outside tables playing host to several people just calling in for a quick plate of fresh oysters, as well as those tucking into the lovely looking linguine on their lunchbreak. We didn’t feel rushed to eat and leave, but I can imagine it is a fight to get a table here on a Saturday lunchtime!

Our bill came to a mere £16.50 between two for two mains, a shared starter and drinks. All the food is freshly prepared by Etta herself who chatted away to us as we paid, telling us how her kids help out with the cooking and waiting and that all the ingredients are super-fresh and from the local market where possible. Our mussels though (and much of the fish and seafood) came from Billingsgate rather than the local fishmongers which is fine by me as they were such good quality!

Our lunch genuinely felt like sitting in someone’s kitchen for good food and good feelings, but without any sense of it being contrived or cute. This is good home cooking with a serious does of Brixton charm and style. I love seafood and am tickled pink to discover somewhere close to home to indulge my cravings without taking out a mortgage to pay for it. I can’t wait to go back and try the fish curry and the linguine next…in fact, i’ll even skip the pizza to make sure I can do them justice!

Edamame Bean Dip

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Magic beans...

I am a big fan of frozen vegetables. Cheap, long lasting and extremely handy, I usually keep several varieties to hand. But when frozen peas and sweetcorn get a bit bland, I reach for the somewhat trendier frozen soyabeans or edamame from Bird’s Eye to add some Eastern promise to dishes such as fried rice. I love their nutty moreish taste and texture.

So when I espied a little pot of edamame bean dip with chili and lemongrass in Marks and Spencer a few months ago, I couldn’t help snapping it up to try it. It was delicious sweet and nutty with a warming kick, but unsurprisingly it was a tiny pot for the price and laden with oil. I wondered if I could make my own slightly less fatty version.

Back home I got out the soybeans, a nice juicy lemon and some Cap Bon harissa and the blender and pondered what I could do to make this a soft smooth dip that would yield to a toasted pitta or a crisp tortilla chip…and surprisingly my mind turned to cottage cheese!

Here's one I made earlier...

Personally I find cottage cheese on its own to be offensively bland and extremely unappealing, but for this it seemed just right. Low in fat, soft, creamy and easy to blend without an overpowering flavour of its own it would make the perfect base with the soybeans.

Since I was feeling casual in my creation, I didn’t really use any precise measurements. About a quarter of the bag of soybeans were boiled and drained, before going into the blender with the juice of a lemon, a big squirt of harissa, some salt and pepper and about 3 or 4 dessert spoons of cottage cheese. This created the perfect consistency for dipping and spreading with just enough of a chili kick.

Dip-tastic!

I served this for as a surprisingly filling lunch on some Ryvita. The high protein content of the beans makes this tasty and filling without being heavy. It was also just too tempting not to scrape the bowl of the blender clean with a few salted tortilla chips…

Cheap, quick and pretty healthy, this dip has become a bit of a lunchtime favourite already. It stores well in a tupperware pot and is really really good with a  few flatbreads and some fresh tomatoes from the garden if anyone calls unexpectedly and needs a snack. It’s also achieved the impossible and rendered cottage cheese delicious!

How does your garden grow?

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The long cold winter seems like just a memory here in London (apologies to our  less lucky Northern readers!) and my little garden has been responding well to the fabulous warm sunny weather we been having since late June with things starting to crop abundantly… Read more

Royal China, Queensway

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I seem to have got out of the way of meeting friends for tea and cake once a week and developed an obsession with Asian food and jasmine tea instead. After whetting my appetite at Pacific Plaza the other week, I’ve been craving dim sum daily. Eventually I gave in to these urges and went to visit the highly esteemed Royal China on Queensway for some of the best dumplings in town. Read more