José

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On the eve of the opening of José Pizarro’s eponymous new space, the man himself was good enough to throw open the doors to a bustling crowd and invite us down to sample the wares.

I think everyone has already described the space as ‘cosy’ – and that’s as much down to the service and the atmosphere as the bijou size of the place. It seats seventeen covers apparently, and the house speciality is small sharing plates. We guzzled gazpacho (given that I’m not a huge tomato fan, this even took me by surprise) and tussled over tortilla, accompanied by a great Cava and a Fino – will have to go back and study the lists properly. What a chore, eh?

With his strong focus on both the sherry selection and daily market specials, José has created a spot that you could pop into over and over again – just to make sure you’re not missing out, of course. We loved the hake with aioli, the croquettas, the manchego – and it went on and on. Plenty of justification for visiting again in the very near future.

Thank you to the gorgeous Hannah at Nourish for inviting us.

José, 104 Bermondsey Street, London, SE1 3UB

Open:  Mon-Fri 12:00-22:30; Sat 10:00-22:30; Sun 10:00-18:00

T: 020 7403 4902 (no reservations)

#BloggersBBQ at the Ship, Wandworth

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10

What: Food blogger meet-up

When: Tuesday 17th May, 7.30, for food at 8:00pm

Where: The Ship, 41 Jews Row, Wandsworth, SW18 1TB, @shipwandsworth

Cost: £25 pp to include canapés on arrival, platters of starters and mains from The Ship’s barbeque menu and a selection of summer desserts. Wine and sponsored beverages will also be included in the price.

Menu:

~ To Start ~
Smoked Fish Platter with Chili Squid, Chorizo, Pea and Fennel Salad and Oysters
~ Miniature Mains ~
Sliders with Bacon and Cheese in a Homemade Bun
Cocktail Sausages, Mustard Mayonnaise Dip
Butterflied Lamb leg, Rosemary and Chilli Jam
Trimmed Dingley Dale Pork Ribs, Smoky Coca-Cola Sauce
Prawn Skewers
Falafels, Homemade Sweet Chili Dip
Platters of Mixed Salad, Beetroot and Goat’s Cheese, Fries, Coleslaw and Nicoise Salad
~ Desserts ~
Summer Fruit Eton Mess
Hot Fruit Sundae

How to book: fill in this form and say you’re interested in the Ship meet-up.  The £25 will be payable in cash only please on the night.  You’ll get an email to confirm that you’re on the list.

Transport: Overground to Wandsworth Town train station. Exit the station and turn left. At the busy roundabout, cross towards McDonalds. Jews Row is behind between the Mercedes garage and bus depot, on the riverside.  Buses 44, 28, 295 and C3 pass nearby, or East Putney and Parson’s Green are 20-30 minutes’ walk away.

Thanks to the Ship for accommodating us again. They’re reserving the area between the outside bar (which will be open) and the river, which is covered in case of less than summery weather, and has heaters and fairy lights.  If it’s anything like the Christmas lunch, it should be a cracking evening!

Quick “Granola”

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Weekend breakfasts are a big thing around here. However, trying to lose some weight – possibly gained through pancake eating on a recent trip to the US – means that breakfasts now need to involve a lot more fruit and a lot less bacon. Bah.

Almost made muffins this weekend, but even that seemed like a lot of effort. We had the ingredients for porridge, but no desire for it. A quick google for ‘quick granola‘, something else I’ve been craving since our recent trip, resulted in this. I also received some Kerrygold Honey Spread recently which I wanted to try.  As an Irish ex-pat, well, Kerrygold is butter in our house. Apparently this stuff is lower-fat than butter – yes, I know that’s all relative – but it has enough sweetness to lift the granola too. Of course, butter and honey, or agave, would work well too.  No, it’s possibly not the healthiest option in the world. But it meant I ate a lot more fruit than I would had alongside a bacon sandwich.

Ingredients

  • 40g butter or honey spread
  • 2 tbsp dried cranberries
  • 2 tbsp sesame seeds
  • 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds
  • 1 cup jumbo oats
  • 1 apple
  • 3 tbsp organic low-fat yoghurt
  • fresh fruit to garnish
  • cinnamon, to taste

Method

  1. Peel and roughly chop the apple into a bowl, and spoon over the yoghurt to stop the apple from browning and pop it in the fridge.
  2. Melt the Kerrygold spread in a heavy frying pan, then add the oats, pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds and coat well.
  3. Stir in the cranberries, then turn the mixture out on to a lined baking tray to cool for a few minutes.  Sprinkle with cinnamon (and perhaps some crunchy light brown sugar). If you’re doing the butter and honey route, you could pop the tray in a very low oven to let it crisp up even more.
  4. Assemble the ‘quick granola’ on top of the apple and yoghurt, and add whatever other fresh fruits you’ve got to hand.


Jamie Oliver: Fifteen London and Recipease

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10

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had the pleasure of running into some of the very wonderful Jamie Oliver crew.  A couple of weeks ago we gathered at Fifteen, lured by the promise of what turned out to be, frankly, the finest Hot Cross Buns known to man.

There they are in all their sticky glossy gloriousness. We had the privilege of sitting with the lovely Kenny, master baker at Fifteen who’d also made delicious candy-coloured rhubarb and ginger jam which we piled on high, before I proceeded to pillage the vast brunch menu, and order….

Yeah. The fruit plate and the porridge. I was obviously having some sort of healthy epiphany (short-lived, natch) but it was actually very good and here’s where I think Fifteen scores very highly – it does a proper brunch. By that I mean there are decent Bloody Marys – ok, not unlimited but let’s not run before we can walk here –  and a wide range of food options from sweet to savoury with the traditional hangover cures in the middle. I did slightly wish I’d followed Louis‘ example and had the eggy brioche though because actually, I think anything coming out of Kenny’s kitchen is going to be superbly good and just having his sourdough bread toasted and spread with jam and salty butter all morning would have been an absolute treat.  We lingered through to almost lunchtime – we’ll go again and it would be great if the breakfast was served longer at the weekend. For weekdays, they have free wifi too….

I lived around the corner from Fifteen when it first opened and Jamie Oliver started spreading his mission about getting ‘hard to reach’ young people into professional kitchens and training them to be fully qualified.  It’s hard to believe that that was ten years ago.  Now the empire spans Cornwall and Amsterdam too. Jamie’s passion for cooking, and equally food education is legendary. Recipease is another part of his mission.

Uyen and I went down to take a knife skills class (apparently the most popular class they run at the Clapham Junction location). The rather brilliant Annegrete, a professional chef who used to work at Fifteen, put us through our paces for the two hour class.  This was after having a good mosey around the very well curated selection of homewares and merchandise in the shop – you really could drop serious cash here.  The classes are reasonably priced – £30 for ours including cooking our own lunch, and a glass of wine thrown in, plus you get 10% off in the shop afterwards.

What were the most important things I took away from the class? Well, apart from how to prepare prawns properly which was a bit of a bonus, there was the following:

  • how to properly and efficiently sharpen knives – dull equals dangerous
  • move the hands and the blade, keep the food steady
  • make sure the food is stable and set in place
  • place a damp kitchen towel under your board to keep it stable
  • how to rock chop, tap chop and cross chop safely (no slap chop necessary here thank you)

Some on Twitter asked how basic the class was.  Well, the skills are basic but I think a lot of us who consider ourselves competent in the kitchen are probably not as fast or indeed as efficient as we could be in terms of knife skills.  We all thought we’d progressed pretty far during the class and then Annegrete proudly told we’d done well, and with six months’ practice, we’d be great. Gulp.

Being able to cook is such a fundamental life skill but where do most of us pick up the basics? Well, probably at home, if we’re lucky, or we pick up things from books, blogs and TV. I did suffer through a couple of years of home economics in secondary school but I can guarantee they never let us near anything useful like knives. In Jamie’s Dream School currently showing on Channel 4, he seems to be doing his own, more useful take on home ec – i.e. here’s how to chop properly – so that you can cook a meal that’s faster and cheaper than a take away. That’s real home economics to me. Bless Jamie. Long may his mission continue.  (Watch his chopping demo here)

The Trattoria at Fifteen London is open for breakfast and brunch 7:30am to 11:00am Monday to Saturday, and 8:00am to 11:00am Sunday.

Recipease, Clapham Junction, Battersea, 48-50 St Johns Road, SW11 1PR

Thank you to the fabulous Hannah Norris at Nourish and the crew at Recipease for inviting me.

Golden Biscuiteer Bunnies

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I had an idea to make some biscuits to welcome in the Year of the Rabbit – well, mostly I just wanted to make biscuits.  Bake something. Partially because I find baking particularly conducive to ‘thinking time’ where my mind wanders off and it’s a great stress-busting exercise as well as being productive.  Not forgetting the fact I also have a ridiculously sweet tooth. However, baking generally tends to be easier, and less stressful, when you haven’t forgotten to buy eggs.

The Biscuiteers book came to the rescue with an eggless recipe for Treacle Spice Cookies which I tinkered with to make these golden bunnies.  I was so excited when I bought this book – not for the gloriously embellished slices of sugar themselves, more for the comprehensive range of base biscuit recipes (10 in total) because many doughs simply don’t hold up to rolling and cutting. The book itself is more of an artist’s primer in some ways with lots of technique and decoration ideas, and you’ll have to like sugar. Or pretty food. But as usual with Kyle Cathie, it’s beautifully photographed and designed.  It probably wouldn’t be the most used cook book on your shelf but hey, just take it down occasionally and look at the pictures.

Ingredients

  • 200g plain flour
  • ½ tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp ginger
  • 25g Golden caster sugar
  • 25g light brown sugar
  • 100g butter, unsalted (not softened)
  • hefty pinch of sea salt
  • 50g Golden Syrup

Method

  1. Sift flour, baking powder and spices together and then mix in the sugars.
  2. Rub the butter in with your fingers as if you were making scone, until it’s like breadcrumbs.
  3. Make a well in the centre of the incorporated mixture and add in the Golden Syrup and combine to an evenly-coloured dough.
  4. Divide into two pieces, shape as discs and chill for at least 30 minutes.
  5. Preheat the oven to 170c/350F/Gas Mark 4 when the dough is chilling, then cook for 14-18 minutes.

These keep remarkably well. I was going to make a lemon cream filling – but none of them survived long enough to be sandwiched.

The Biscuiteers Book of Iced Biscuits by Harriet Hastings and Sarah Moore is published by Kyle Cathie, ISBN 978 1 85626 941 4.

Charley Bigham’s “Ready Meals” and Berry Bros & Rudd Wines

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I was seduced by the notion of Berry Bros & Rudd wines, plus the fact that the lovely WineSleuth would be matching those wines to Charlie Bigham’s food when accepting an invitation to what became hashtagged #Bighamsup – or Bigham’s Supper in Bermondsey.  When I realised that Charley Bigham – pictured above – makes “ready meals”, I admit I slightly rolled my eyeballs and thought to myself (again) ”Read the invitation more carefully next time.”

:: Green Thai Chicken Curry ::

:: Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni ::

:: Fish Pie ::

Denise had chosen a fantastic selection, and we debated the matching dish by dish.  We concluded that neither the 2009 Gewurtztraminer or the Rioja Blanco were right for the punchy spice of the Thai Green Chicken Curry, but brought back the Au Bon Climat Wild Boy Chardonnay we’d tasted with the Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni, which was much more successful. So, to our surprise, was the food. The fish pie boasts chunks of salmon the size of your thumb, the Cannelloni is velvety smooth comfort food and the promsing spicy, peanut smell of the Indonesian Chicken Satay wafts gently up to you before  your fork gets anywhere near it.

One of the difficulties that Bigham’s encounters is that ready meals have a pretty poor reputation. Their products are currently stocked in Waitrose and via Ocado which boded well, but I shop there and had never heard of them – or thought I hadn’t. We don’t tend to click on that category on Ocado or wander down that aisle. Maybe I’m a bit of a food snob – and I like to cook, obviously – but what really put me off is that ready meals are generally rubbish. Let’s be honest here.  Whenever I’m desperate enough to resort to one, it almost always ends up in the bin in favour of toast or cereal.  It was only when we talked to George and Charlie and ramekins came up in discussions that I suddenly said “We’ve had your pies before.”

Casting my mind back to an utterly miserable day in November, I’d wandered into Waitrose in Marylebone and on the first aisle, spotted some pies and a lasagne that were on sale. After a rubbish day I just wanted something to put in the oven (the boy may have whispered lasagne too – and then I’m just a sucker for nice ramekins frankly. Sigh) The lasagne comes in a wooden tray like a Camembert box and was… really rather good? Tasted quite… what’s the word? Homemade. That’s what it tasted like.  The Chicken and Mushroom Pie was so moreish I seem to remember us arguing over who’d have the second one.  I didn’t find the packaging memorable at all which was why I hadn’t made the connection.  They need to brand their ramekins because I’ve kept and reused them which would have cemented their brand into my mind.

I loved the dishes we had on Tuesday, including their remarkably good Fish Pie. It’s certainly good enough to serve to guests, the kind of ‘I know you love me enough to not expect my kitchen to smell of fish for days just to make you a fish pie’ type of friends.  I’ve since tried some more dishes at home (Breton Chicken good, not so keen on the Catalan Chicken) and the various pies are in the freezer for the weekend. Charlie Bigham’s meals are a genuinely good alternative to cooking totally from scratch, particularly the oven dishes, when you’re pushed for time or just can’t be bothered. Comforting food made from good quality ingredients. The kind of thing you’d expect to make at home, really.

#bloggersxmaslunch at the Ship, Wandsworth

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10

The idea behind a Christmas get-together for food bloggers came about after a slightly drunken night (ok, a rather drunken) night at an event hosted by Uyen.  We got to see lots of blogger pals there very briefly, as these things generally run, and thought it might be fun to have a lunch to round off the year.

The first place I thought of, and the first place I called, was The Ship in Wandsworth.  It’s not exactly local to me but from their tweets and knowing a little of them, I was pretty confident that the Ship ‘get’ bloggers. I reckoned they’d be game, wouldn’t be scared of curious diners arriving bearing DSLRs and bottomless stomachs, and would put up their “A game” to boot.

It’s always nice to be right.  Getting there and seeing that the hashtag #bloggersxmaslunch was on the menu amused me no end.

When I first rang Oisin, the manager of the Ship. he wasn’t in the least phased at the thought of 30 bloggers (I was a little wide-eyed every time I’d check in with the lovely Luiz LondonFoodie, my co-conspirator, and find it had grown again, and again, until the list numbered almost 50!), and immediately put together a varied and rich menu which he sent to me within twenty-four hours. Oh, and he mentioned that he could probably get Robin  Knapp and Sarah Joll from Cockburn and Campbell to sponsor some wine. He thoughtfully suggested that £3 of the £25 menu price could be donated to the Variety Club. We pre-ordered to streamline service on the day, hoping to have cleared the restaurant by 2:30 to allow them to do a second sitting. It was the last Sunday before Christmas so it was bound to be busy (I did wonder what the single non-blogger table in the restaurant made of us!) What actually happened was that the last of us bowled out of there about in the early evening, after finishing eating then sitting down with the brilliant staff to chew the conversational fat for a while, so that they might have a vague chance of doing it all again for dinner.

Because I took so few, horrendously bad photos, blogging about this lunch had disgracefully slipped my mind until I read this post about service this week. It just served to remind me how brilliant all of the staff at the Ship were, particularly Oisin and Emma. While they got us seated, with complimentary pints of London Porter and Bloody Marys in our hands, through serving up five courses of inspired fare with matched wines, to sitting around chatting with us afterwards. Such a fun afternoon, and I know we’ll be back – particularly in the summer. If you’re organising an event and want a great, relaxed setting, I’d highly recommend them.

And rather than bore you with some blurry shots of the beef and the amuse bouche (and the dessert wine – oh that orange muscat!) I’ll direct you some of the great write-ups instead; LondonFoodie, CookSister, From Chopsticks to Steakknives. A fab afternoon, got to meet some lovely new people though as ever, not enough time to chat!  Given the interest that #bloggersxmaslunch inspired on Twitter, there may well be some similar events this  year (do let me know if you’d be keen to descend as part of the next posse).  I’m off to come up with a list of establishments to approach!