Viewing entries tagged
vegetarian
It’s suffused with herbs and umami spring onions, and laced with tongue-tingling sour barberries, sharp and salty feta, and warming toasted walnuts which add necessary texture. I add chilli, too, which means that every bite is an avalanche of flavour.
Kuku is high in protein, and basically carb-free (if that’s your thing), and really filling, too. I’ve adapted this one from a more traditional Persian recipe (where this dish originates).
What could be better than a mattress of focaccia painted with glistening peppery olive oil, the occasional crunch of salt crystals, and a soft, pillowy interior that creates an insatiable appetite for more?
Almost nothing, apart from simply another version of a focaccia – this time with a layer of succulent grapes folded into the centre of the dough. Grapes, which burst in your mouth as you bite through the focaccia.
It’s perhaps even more beautiful than the OG focaccia, and tastes sublime on its own, or paired with pecorino and a glass of Vin Santo.
Epic apple pie: the pastry is golden and flakey, and the apple filling a medley of tart, tangy and sweet. There’s a hint of autumnal spice (without it being overpowering), and it’s topped, not with more pastry, but a brown butter cinnamon crumble that adds moreish crunch.
It’s the perfect cake for vegans and non-vegans alike: no weird gums or chemicals or frogspawn-y aquafaba, and it doesn't even need them. It’s moist, sticky and absurdly moreish. It can stand proudly beside any egg-containing cake, and win over any vegan cake-hating sceptic. When I say it’s easy to make, I mean it is exceptionally easy. It can be whipped up in under 10 minutes and, if you're making mini loaves, it bakes within 10 minutes too.
I don’t understand why there’s a “season” for pumpkin spice themed dishes when delicious pumpkin puree is available (from a can) all year round. In honour of this recent discovery, I decided to make these cookies. I was influenced by a recipe on Bon Appetitwhich incorporated pumpkin and various spices into a cookie. However - I was very disappointed by the result: the cookies were mean and thin, with root canal problem-inducing sweetness, overly egg-y, and totally lacking in the promised pumpkin flavour.
So, I made my own to tick the 3 commandments of cookies:
- Chewy
- Molten
- Thick
I radically amped up the amount of pumpkin, and reduced the sugar. I also added both white and milk chocolate, so that, upon baking, they caramelized, creating a sophisticated toffee flavour. The added crunch and maple-flavour of the pecans add some complexity, too.
NB If you would like a more savoury cookie, you could switch the milk and white chocolate for dark chocolate. And if you’d like to have a supply of cookies for emergencies, you can freeze the scoops of uncooked cookie dough and bake them when desired.
150 unsalted butter, softened
80g light brown sugar
70g caster sugar
1 egg
40g pumpkin puree
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp cinnamon
1 ½ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp mixed spice
220g plain flour
heaped ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
100g white chocolate + 30 g white chocolate for topping (I use buttons but you can chop up a bar or use chips instead)
50g milk chocolate, roughly chopped
50g chopped pecans, + 20g for topping
2 large baking trays, lined with baking parchment
1) Put the unsalted butter, light brown sugar and caster sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer, fitted with the paddle, and beat until light and fluffy (about 5 minutes). If doing by hand, beat ingredients together with a spoon. Add the egg, pumpkin puree and vanilla extract, and beat until full combined.
2) Add the spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, mixed spice), flour, baking powder and salt to the wet ingredients, and very gently fold together until almost combined, leaving some flour still visible. Add the chopped milk chocolate, white chocolate and pecans, and very gently fold them into the cookie dough until combined.
3) Cover the bowl and refrigerate for minimum 1 hour and up to 24 hours (until you’re ready to bake the cookies).
4) Preheat the oven to 180°C. Then. either using an ice cream scoop, or a tablespoon, scoop the cookie dough into 40g dollops. I weigh each one to make sure they cook evenly, but if you can’t be bothered just estimate. Roll each into a sphere between your palms to ensure that they bake into near-perfect rounds. Place on the tray leaving about 4cm between each so that they have room to spread when they bake. Then, into each sphere, press a piece of white chocolate and a piece of pecan.
5) Place in oven to bake for 7-10 minutes, or until they are golden at the edges but still soft to the touch. Once they are removed from the oven, they will continue to cook on the baking tray so leave them to sit for a couple of minutes. Serve warm if you can’t wait, or keep them for up to 4 days in an airtight container. You can also freeze them in an airtight container for up to 3 months.
These chocolate brownie and peanut butter cookies are not hard to make, but they’re so good I wouldn’t recommend wasting them on frenemies.
This is basically a brioche without the effort – all you do is mix everything together, knead a little bit (great for taking out tension), punch it (great for relieving stress), let it rise, then bake and devour.
I am reluctant to call them custard creams as they are everything traditional ones are not. Instead of being brittle and flavourless, the biscuit is light, vanilla-scented, and so tender it almost dissolves on your tongue. And the filling is smooth, and generous, with a subtle lemon tang to add astringent relief.
This the perfect non-picnic picnic cake. It’s light with a cloudy vanilla sponge, and laced with fresh cherries which burst in your mouth and whose astringency perfectly cut through the smooth rich vanilla-cream. I keep the cherries fresh and unadulterated so as to keep the cake not too sweet, with a hint of cherry jam just to counter too much acidity.
I wanted chocolate. I wanted peanuts. I wanted caramel. And so came together three revered ingredients to make this simple but deeply luscious dessert. I admit to a glimmer of inspiration from the Season 11 contestant of RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant, the drag queen with the moniker Silky Nutmeg Ganache. But apart from that, I attribute this recipe to greed.
This is my favourite meal and has been since I was three – the precocious (and pretentious, no doubt) answer to my friends’ parents’ question as to my favourite food. Apart from the fact that there really isn’t anything fancy about it, it’s crazily simple to make. Despite being pastry-based and with a molten bed of mozzarella, it is very light, and perfect for a gathering.
It throws 5:2, Keto, raw food, Mediterranean and intermittent fasting out of the window. If you’re disillusioned with all those malware-laden pop up adverts on illegal streaming sites that you secretly clicked on promising flat belly magic trick, let me right that for you.
All those Instagram/YouTube stars chronicling the secrets to peachy bums, thigh gaps, hotdog legs and concave stomachs have been holding back their industry secrets. It’s not food groups that need to be cut out, but letters. All the foods (and often drinks) that stand in the way of a lean, rippling bikini bod have something in common: biscuits, cookies, bread, chocolate, cake, bagels, beer, cocktails, champagne, and brownies. Yes. That’s right – you’ve wasted money and/or time logging on to My Fitness Pal, consulting dieticians, and calorie counting when I have just given you the secret to fat loss. Cut out the Bs and Cs and you are on your way to fitfluencer stardom.
Turns out feasting on gulab jamun, breakfast, lunch and dinner dosas, curry upon curry, daily afternoon tea and even straight up jaggery does that to you. This drastic increase from two to five months’ gestation in the space of two weeks, plus a stomach of steel allowing evasion of the revolting bug that had churned up the rest of my family’s insides, meant that a new diet and regime was mandatory. And when my dad commits to something, he is an all-or-nothing person. And let me tell you, cutting out B and C foods is far easier than you might think. In fact, it’s practically seamless. Don’t worry about cheat meals or relapses because this is a diet that works perfectly with whatever lifestyle you were already leading.
He heroically turned down the molten chocolate brownies that I brought into work. He didn’t even respond to me when the exotic perfume of these thick, soft and chewy spice cookies wafted round the house (commendable).
His resolve has been so strong that cookies are now banned from our house, as are bagels, biscuits, chocolate and brownies.
My dad has had five of these spice ookies today and he’s still fully committed to the diet - and so can you. Just like that one calorie that gets left floating in the can when you have diet coke, so all the muffin-top inducing calories are left behind when the B and C’s are seamlessly spliced from your favourite treat.
There’s no freezing, chilling or resting meaning that they can go from flour packet to final product-in–mouth in about half an hour (pausing en route for some of that dough). I know cookies can be a very subjective, personal and emotional topic, but these are undeniably the top tier: slightly crisp on the outside and soft thic(cc)k and chewy. If you fear that the batch may disappear before you get a look in, feel free to double it – the results will be the same. They can also be stored in an airtight container in a freezer for up to three months which is ideal if you want to whip them out for unexpected occasions (emergencies).
220g white spelt flour (or plain white flour, if you prefer)
2 ½ tsp baking powder
60g caster sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 ½ tsp baking soda
100g unsalted butter, at room temperature, roughly cut into cubes
100g golden syrup
20g treacle
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp mixed spice
large baking tray lined with baking parchment
1) Preheat oven to 160°C.
2) If using a food processor (super quick), pour in all the dry ingredients and whizz to combine. Then add in the butter and pulse until the mixture becomes like damp sand. If making by hand, in a large bowl stir together dry ingredients. Then add in the butter and rub into the dry mixture with your fingertips until it reaches a damp sand-like consistency.
3) In a small pan over a low heat, pour in the syrup and treacle, and stir until combined and warm. Pour into the sand-like mixture, and pulse until it just about comes together into a dough, taking care not to over mix. If making by hand, pour the treacle into the sand-like mixture, and stir together until it forms a dough.
4) Make the cookies by breaking off pieces of the dough with your hands and rolling them into a sphere. I make each one 35g to ensure that they bake consistently. Then space the spheres on a baking tray at least 5cm apart. Place in the preheated oven to bake for 8-12 minutes until golden but soft to the touch. They will continue to bake once removed from the oven so taking them out slightly underdone ensures that they have a chewy centre.
5) Allow to cool before eating (they will be too friable when straight out of the oven), then devour. Once cool, they can be kept in a sealed airtight box in a freezer for up to 3 months.
This bread is the love child of a brioche and stollen. The dough is soft, buttery and ridiculously moreish. And the filling is like that marzipan core of stollen except less overpoweringly almondy, lighter and less tooth-achingly sweet (which means you can have more of it, of course). One of my many intolerances is not gluten, nuts or dairy but overpromising. If the title promises a filling, I want that filling, and I want it in abundance. If it says caramel, I want luscious rivers of it; if it’s olives on a pizza, I want at least one for every 2cm squared (NB I am disappointed by this every time - unless I make it myself). And, if it is a frangipane bread, I demand every mouthful to be molten with frangipane.
So, in response, this bread will not fail to meet expectations: not only a show stopper in appearance, it is also ambrosial. I had to make this several times in order to photograph it before it was inhaled by surrounding friends/family.
If you want to have plain bread, just leave out the frangipane and follow the instructions below. Similarly, if you’re feeling experimental add another filling in place of the frangipanes - think Nutella, marmalade, fruit conserve…
For the bread
30g fresh yeast (or 15g dry yeast)
100g caster sugar
250ml lukewarm milk (normal or any non-dairy alternative)
2 large eggs, beaten
1 tsp salt
700g white spelt flour (or plain wheat) + more for kneading
100g unsalted butter, at room temperature
For the frangipane
180g caster sugar
150g unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 eggs
½ tsp salt
250g ground almonds
1 ½ tsp almond extract
2 large baking sheets lined with baking parchment
1) In the bowl of an electric mixer (or large mixing bowl), cream together fresh yeast and caster sugar until the sugar begins to dissolve and turns the yeast liquid. If using dry yeast, add it into the milk first and allow to sit for five minutes before continuing with step 2.
2) Pour in lukewarm milk, 3/4 of the beaten eggs (i.e. 1 ½ eggs, keeping the other half aside to paint the bread) and salt, and whisk together. Whisk in 100g grams of the flour to begin to incorporate air.
3) Add the remaining flour into the mixture and mix together. Once combined, either using a mixer fitted with the dough hook, or on a heavily floured surface knead the dough for about 5 minutes until it is smooth and bounces back when pressed with your thumb. Temperature and humidity can affect the dough texture so you may need to add a touch more flour if it is truly unworkable, though try to keep it to a minimum as too much will make the bread tough and the dough difficult to roll out. I find that using the dough hook initially until combined and then kneading by hand for the last stretch particularly effective.
4) Place in a large oiled bowl in a warm spot and cover with a cloth or clingfilm to allow to rise until doubled in size (about 45 minutes to an hour).
5) At this point, if you wish to make the bread without the frangipane, proceed to step 7a
6) To make the frangipane, beat together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. You can do this by hand or in a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat in the eggs (don’t worry if it looks slightly curdled at this point), then stir in salt, ground almonds and almond extract. It should be a smooth almondy paste.
7) Once the dough has risen, punch back down, turn it onto a heavily floured surface
a. For bread without filling: divide dough into two (to make two loaves). Shape as desired, but if you favour a plaited loaf, as I do, taking one of the dough halves, divide it into three or four pieces (depending on whether you prefer a three- way or four-way plait.) Roll each piece into a long, even strand of about 3cm in diameter. Then pinch the ends together and plait as normal. When you reach the end of the plait, pinch the strands together and tuck under. Repeat for the second loaf, place on a baking tray and cover. Leave to rise for about half an hour.
b. For bread laced with frangipane: place the dough on a large, flat, heavily floured surface and roll it to a rectangle of about 60 x 30cm and about ¾ cm thick. Tip the frangipane mixture into the centre of the dough, and spread it out evenly with a spatula right up to the edges. Then, from the long side, roll the dough to make a long tight coil. Finish with the seal at the base of the roll. Then slice the roll into two (in order to make two loaves). Take one long roll and holding the knife directly above the roll, with the blade parallel to the length of the roll, bisect it running the knife through the centre along the its length. Once split, with the open halves separate, pinch them at the top and then cross one over the other repeatedly in a kind of two string plait. Pinch at the end and tuck it under then place on baking tray. Repeat with the other half.
8) Cover both breads with a cloth, and allow to rise in a warm place for 45 minutes. Preheat the oven to 200 °C.
9) With the remaining beaten egg, brush the tops of the breads. Place the breads in the oven to bake for 10 minutes. Then reduce the oven temperature to 180 °C and allow to bake for a further 10-15 minutes. Ovens can be temperamental, so check every 5-10 minutes to ensure that the bread doesn’t burn. If it looks like it is beginning to catch, cover with aluminium foil and continue to bake. Remove from the oven when the outside is a deep golden colour. Place on a cooling rack and allow to reach room temperature, then devour. Best eaten on day of baking, but the bread can be frozen in a sealed air tight container for up to 3 months.
In fact, it was definitely more of a crash landing, and I’m feeling overwhelmed by a concoction of delight and disorientation.
I’ve had two weeks of hilarity and salacious tales: from White Russian parties in Maryland to rooftop partying with firemen in NYC, from hazy, mead-imbued late-night encounters with ex-jailbirds to flouncing around in cemeteries for photoshoots. I’ve met more people and fans of the Baebes’ music (and it has been an honour) in the last week than in the last year, from women with heaving bosoms in skull-coated corsets to a South Dakotan ranger who discovered a dinosaur on his territory, from cage fighters Instagram influencers to wiccans.
But even the stretches of time were filled: from learning how to do the electric slide (an achievement for someone who can perform a semblance of a dance only to hip hop music), playing airplane with other band members (the childhood favourite of lifting someone into the air with your feet), to hours of ‘I Spy With My Third Eye’.
hand sown leather wallets, chocolates, cases of homemade mead, hand-crafted wooden lanterns inlaid with silver, pumpkin bog wine (yes, that’s its official name) and goblets straight out of Game of Thrones. I’ve also signed an interesting range of specimens including various body parts, guitars and recorders, Gandalf-style staffs and animal-bone drinking horns.
I’ve had ecstatic highs of my own (performing to over a thousand people in the middle of forest glades, and exhausted hysterical laughter set off by the merest glimmer of a joke) and extreme lows, where the adrenalin temporarily stopped, energy levels buckled and desolation took hold.
The restaurant selection in NYC is almost infinite. The highlights this time round included the following:
The Pool, one of NYC’s finest fish restaurants. While I am not a huge seafood eater and am largely vegetarian, the branzino was the best I have ever eaten – delicate and tender without need for any fancy sauces or dressings. The room is elegant and slightly imposing and the service impeccable (apart from the moment when I collided with a waiter en route to the bathroom and he succeeded in pouring champagne directly down my chest).
Barrio Chino: my favourite Lower East Side Mexican haunt. It used to be a hidden secret, without website and only noticeable in passing if you were in the know. It has now become a bit more open about its existence, but the quality has not diminished. Go for the extensive range of margaritas (from chili to berry to tamarind – the list goes on). The tacos are also delicious, but the show stoppers are the enchiladas – suffused with flavour and fresh herbs and oozing with molten queso – this is the only place I will eat them. The ambience is also electric. I went on a Tuesday evening and it was packed and totally abuzz.
The Butcher’s Daughter– I got caught in the tail end of Hurricane Florence and had to battle through headache-inducing heavy rain to get here. It was worth it. This vegetarian NYC and LA hotshot has a sublime selection of fresh and wholesome, zingy, protein-rich salads. I had the self-professed” Best Kale Salad” and added some veggie chicken into the kale, red cabbage, green apple, jalapeno, red onion, mint, turmeric and cashew mix.
Dean & Deluca– In some ways I am sad that their plans to open a branch in London fell through and that they have settled for selling a minor selection of products at Selfridges. In other ways I am not, because if they had opened here I would probably have moved in and would now be rolling around due to gorging upon their selection of salads and endless array of artisanal snacks. Every time I walked past the crisp white exterior in NYC, I felt its magnetism drawing me in. Mostly I managed to restrict myself to buying a selection of salads. All are excellent, but the highlights were the General Tso cauliflower – battered, deep-fried and coated in a moreish, sticky sweet, umami sauce - and the sriracha-soaked tofu. The soups there are as good as many you would enjoy in a high-end restaurant.
The most radical of trends that emerged was the “substance on a stick” that prevailed as a dining option in the Maryland Renaissance Festival. The good folk of the festival clearly thought they were on to a good thing with this particular serving contrivance and didn’t feel the need for variation. Options included the following (see pictures for evidence): white chocolate-coated key lime pie on a stick, dark chocolate-immersed cheesecake on a stick, sausage on a stick, chocolate-covered peanut butter pie on a stick, and macaroni cheese on a stick. The lattermost culinary innovation was my favourite - a praiseworthy feat of science, concocted to adhere strictly to the theme. Even the choice meat option, turkey leg, was by its very nature “on a stick” – the Neanderthal look of gnawing the dull red flesh from the bone worked well with those who were dressed in animal horns and fur (of which there were many).
it may only have been two weeks away but it feels weird to have to pronounce the “t” in water again (rather than a “d”) to make my request understood, to ask directions for the “loo”, not restroom, to not be in a tour bus laughing hysterically with eight other wickedly funny band (coven) members, to not feeling the daily adrenaline rush of performing and experiencing post-gig tequila-fueled highs, to not dancing to old school hip hop tunes in hotel rooms until 3am, and to reverting to cutlery after becoming accustomed to sticks.
If I told you that a vegan, refined sugar-free, protein-rich, wheat-free, ancient-grain (and if you so desire, gluten-free) cookie existed, you’d think it was the stuff of myth and legend or, alternatively, something so disgusting that it couldn’t be deemed edible.
Well, it does exist.
After an overindulgent stay in NYC, I made these for my birthday. They aren’t overpoweringly sweet, and they aren’t going to be equivalent to the 500 calories a pop thick, fudgy cookies you see in bakeries. However, they are delicious in their own right, soft and just sweet enough. Plus, being vaguely healthy automatically entitles one to devour 5x the quantity. In fact, for a snack to be officially deemed a source of protein, it needs to contain 6g protein. Well, 3 of these cookies contain just that.
They are extremely quick to conjure up and would be good for that weak-point, late afternoon slump when you crave something sweet, and delicious, too, paired with a (vegan) ice cream for dessert, or even with a wedge of stilton and a dollop of pear compote if you’re going down the non-vegan route. If you want a slightly more savoury option, substitute the dates with figs as in the photos.
Ingredients (makes 20 medium cookies)
160g pitted medjool dates, roughly chopped (about 10) (if you want a more savoury cookie, substitute dates with figs, as per the photos)
4 tbsp orange juice
4 tbsp water
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp finely grated orange zest
80g smooth peanut butter
200g spelt flour (or gluten free flour)
½ tsp mixed spice
¼ tsp salt
baking tray lined with baking parchment
4-5cm round cookie cutter
Method
1) Pre-heat oven to 180°C
2) Place the chopped dates, orange juice, water, vanilla extract and orange zest in a small pan over a medium/high heat and allow to come to a boil. Stir continuously for about 4/5 minutes until all the liquid has evaporated and the dates have turned into a thick, sticky pulp.
3) Place the date mixture together with the peanut butter in a blender and pulse until smooth. Pour in the spelt flour, mixed spice, and salt and pulse until it comes together to form a slightly sticky dough.
4) Lightly flour a board and roll out the dough to a 0.5cm thickness. Stamp out cookies with the cutter and place on the baking tray. Bake in the oven for 7-10 minutes until firm and slightly golden. Allow to cool, then devour.
NB. Photos are all my own as the food was not photogenic
Let’s start with the positives – there are only three, and they’re rather brief at that:
1) The waiter was charming, easy going and knowledgeable.
2) So buttery it almost made my tongue translucent, yet so sweet and light I could have eaten five of them, the kubaneh bread was sublime.
3) I’m mainly a vegetarian and rarely eat lamb, but the fact that the minced beef and lamb dish (shakshukit) was palatable, and even rather moreish, signifies a success.
I wish that I could keep the list going. From online reviews to food-obsessed friends, all I had heard about Palomar was a stream of praise. So, I thought I would emerge from the restaurant blasting Palomar’s praises to everyone to whom I spoke. I wanted to have found a mini-haven in the heart of London where I could gorge on the full-flavoured abundance of the Middle East.
I did not.
Stop reading now if you don’t want your opinion tainted. If you are curious, read on.
We squeezed our way past the tight and chaotic bar area, to be seated in the farthermost corner. Dark, wooden, and Spartan, it felt like an old-fashioned train carriage.
Aside from the kubaneh and shakshukit, we ordered an array of dishes, starting with baba ganoush, and “spicy experience”, from the menu section titled “Rip and Dip”. “Pinch and Scrape” would be more fitting. The baba ganoush was delivered: we were presented with a shallow, hamster –sized plate-let (ie a disk) of the meanest little scraping of mashed aubergine. They must be using tweezers in the kitchen, as it was adorned with just three pomegranate seeds, as if they were in fear of our being trapped, like Persephone, in the Underworld.
The so-called spicy experience promised a roller-coaster of excitement and exotic warmth. What arrived was a confusing, tiny saucer of some possibly shop-bought harissa that had been unceremoniously tipped onto the plate, with a few pickled chillies, also suspiciously jar-emanating, and some charred chilli husks. Why confusing? Because there was no reason behind it: no vehicle to carry the diner off into the realms of a capsaicin extravaganza. If it were meant to be a condiment, surely it should have been signposted as such, not presented as a starter? Needless to say, it was quickly abandoned.
We ordered pitta breads. I expected them to be the large, puffed up, hot pillows that you receive, on the house, at Maroush. Instead, they were seemingly imported from the film “Downsizing”, with a diameter barely extending to that of my palm, and £1.50 apiece.
At this point all the scrapings and scraps and stalks had begun to merge into a sludge on our plates. Like an inverse of the Twits we had only been provided with miniature side plates - as if by changing the proportions of the crockery we would be tricked into believing that the food portions were lavish and abundant. When the waiter showed no sign of refreshing our plates we asked for a change. A new set of the Lilliputian side plates arrived – without the doll’s house-sized cutlery that would have been appropriate. We asked for regular-sized dining plates, only to be told that “since the tables are so small they usually only give side plates”.
I understand all restaurants are businesses, running tight margins. However, it is no good thing when a restaurant becomes so transparently business-like that you can see the pound signs twinkling in their eyes. Tables so small that you need to shrink the portions and plate size in order to squeeze in more people, and thereby maximize margins on your dishes, makes for neither a comfortable nor an enjoyable experience. Added to that, Palomar is meant to be Israeli–influenced. Aside from the fact that the menu seems to have taken us on a rocky ride from England, to Italy, to the Middle East, they missed several key characteristics of Middle Eastern cuisine: generosity, colour, robustly-flavoured abundance and freshness.
The artichokes arrived: three measly, wan halves sitting on an ill-defined scrape of grey puree. These were followed by a tiny sauce boat containing the mushroom polenta. Polenta can be made delicious, but this dish was incomplete. It lacked crunch to counteract the slushy baby-food texture, the sloppy mushrooms providing no relief. Nor was there any astringency or freshness to counteract the starchy palidness.
The climax was reached with the sea bass, supposedly josperized with herb salad, candied lemons and pine nuts. I am lazy and not very caveman like (when dining) and prefer not to have to fight my way through bones and skins to eat my food, especially in an ill-lit environment. I ordered this on the waiter’s promise of it being “boned”. It arrived splayed, frowning, Tiresias -eyed. The first few mouthfuls were enjoyable, succulent and tender. I helped myself to more. The next mouthful came with a sharp gift of bones. I plucked them out, and persevered. However, my next attempt at a mouthful was thwarted permanently – it was raw.
The waitress was fair and professional, removing the fish and a number of other items from our bill. However, if you’re looking for a Middle-Eastern influenced feast, I would bypass Palomar and head straight to Ottolenghi, Nopi, or either of the Honey & Co. branches.
Food: 3/10
Ambience: 4/10
Service: 9/10
Loos: N/A
Nowadays we have the fired-up drama, programmes that are lurid, sweary, and sweaty: Iron Chef, Hell’s Kitchen, the straw-haired, backward-sunglass wearing entity that is Guy Fieri. I still find myself sucked into the carefully contrived vortex of dramatics, where someone burns their hand off or the climax is a grotesquely-sized burger oozing with cellulite-whispering cheese.
But I have an enduring appreciation for the most simple of concepts that were the foundation for many of today’s cooking programmes: green peppers, red tomato; Ainsley Harriet, metre long streams of oil with one arm tucked behind his back; clotted nests of finely spun sugar; dishes named with achingly tenuous puns. Sometimes I long for those days of Ready Steady Cook in its original format. Particularly captivating was the down to earth “quickie bag” challenge: a handful of seasonal ingredients, an on-the-spot declaration of the dish to be conjured up, followed by a frenzied 10 minutes to make good on the promise.
It was raw, unedited, unscripted and exposed – a rare combination these days. And that challenge which has now mutated into the MasterChef mystery box challenge is one that I try to set myself every time the contents of the fridge begin to look pitiful. One man’s debris can be another’s feast. All it requires is a little creativity and imagination (unless your fridge stocks only alcohol, like that of several people I know…).
This soup is so simple that it could almost have been formulated from one of these challenges. The ingredients are few, but their freshness and the way they are only lightly cooked, enhances the flavours. In the UK, we have been starved of spring, but this soup will help compensate in its exuberant and zingy viridity.
Although they are to be enjoyed alongside the soup, the Parmesan spelt crackers featured in the photos are by no means a sideshow, and I shall follow up with the recipe for them. They are frighteningly addictive – I unwittingly crunched through half a batch in one hour.
NB: this can be made vegan by substituting olive oil for butter.
Ingredients (serves 4)
50g butter (substitute with 3 tablespoons olive oil if making vegan)
1 large potato, scrubbed but not peeled, and diced
3 cloves garlic
4 sticks celery, roughly chopped
30g sugar
Large sprig fresh thyme
100ml white wine
1 litre vegetable stock. (I use Marigold, which is also available as vegan recipe)
500g frozen peas
20g fresh mint, leaves stripped from stalks
100g fresh baby spinach leaves, washed
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground black pepper
Method
1. Melt butter over medium heat, or gently heat the olive oil
2. Add potato, garlic, celery, sugar, thyme and pinch salt and pepper, and sweat together for about 10 minutes or until the potato is soft, stirring from time to time
3. Add the wine, and cook until the liquid has reduced by roughly one third
4. Add the stock, and bring the mixture to the boil. Keep boiling for 4 minutes
5. Remove the thyme, add the mint leaves, spinach and peas to the boiling mixture, and remove the pot from the heat immediately
6. Blitz in the liquidizer. Adjust the seasoning, and serve warm.
A trip to Toronto when I was seven years’ old is anchored for me by one thing: not the CN tower, or Niagara Falls or my cousin’s wedding, but a visit to the farmers’ market, and in particular, a potentially life-changing stall. A tall, russet-cheeked man was in command, his floured apron stretched taught over his protuberant belly.
And on his table lay not the garish, sprinkle- speckled swirls that would have drawn a normal child. Instead, tray after tray of rubbly slabs of oat and date crumble bars were arrayed.
The date layer of the bars was jaw-clenchingly sticky, and thick – not like the mean, shop-bought equivalent. The oaty outer layers were both crunchy and then soft, golden and not overly sweet, allowing the natural date sweetness to shine through.
. For the last seventeen years I’ve been raiding bakeries and markets, seeking to relive the experience, but the date and oat crumble bars always disappoint – too saccharine, too solid, too floury. In between raids, I’ve been working on my own: these are the closest I have come to Toronto’s best kept secret. I added the crushed amaretti to give them a little twist. Feel free to leave the sugar out of the crumble if your palate is adjusted to the less-sweet.
It’s incredibly hard to resist them when they emerge from the oven golden and crisp, but I think they taste even better when they have cooled and the flavours are more distinct (or maybe try them both ways, just to be sure…).
NB. They can be made gluten-free by substituting gluten-free flour for spelt.
Ingredients
Date filling
400g medjool dates, pitted & roughly chopped (about 20)
3 tbsp fresh orange juice
120ml water
2 tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp mixed spice
½ tsp finely grated orange zest
Crumble
250g oats
120g butter
100g wholemeal spelt flour
50g dry amaretti biscuits
40g light brown muscovado sugar
¼ tsp mixed spice
½ tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt
A square 20cm baking tin (or tin of equivalent area), lined with baking parchment, with sides and base fully covered.
Method
1) Preheat oven to 180°C
2) Place all ingredients for the date filling in a pot and place on a medium heat. Stir as the mixture begins to simmer. After about 5 minutes, when the dates have broken down into more of a paste and all the water has evaporated, remove from the heat and set aside.
3) Pour all the crumble ingredients into a blender and pulse until the mixture still has some texture and is slightly coarser than sand.
4) Pour 2/3 of the crumble mixture into the base of the tin, and, with your fingers or the back of a spoon, press the mixture down evenly across the base of the tin until firm and compact. Pour the date filling over and spread evenly across the base. Then pour over the remaining crumble mixture and press down until even and as compact as possible.
5) Place in oven to bake for 15-20 minutes until golden and firm to the touch.
6) Slice and allow to cool before devouring. Keeps well in an air tight container in fridge for up to 5 days, or in freezer for 2 months (also tastes delicious when frozen).
If they had stayed for a little longer, they might have realised that the story I was telling was one of salaciousness, survival of 6.3 Richter scale earthquakes, 800 years of in-breeding in hidden Tuscan villages, and scandal. Alas, they missed out. All three couples came, perched for 10 minutes or so, before murmuring into the waiter’s ear something which meant that they then proceeded to shuffle across the crisp white and mustard-toned restaurant to somewhere where they could engage in their own (much more dull) tales. Admittedly, at the age of ten my teacher did declare that I was a foghorn, but in this situation it was not the decibels that were the issue, but rather the proximity of the tables.
I don’t know whether it’s part of the Australian vibe, or whether the blinding whiteness of the restaurant has some sort of narcotic effect. Whichever it is, the waiters just seemed very lax. At the back of both upstairs and downstairs dining areas there are, at an initial glance, what appear to be bars. But as the meal progressed, and I winked, waved and stared until my eyes my eyes began to water at waiters in the hope of catching their attention, I realised their hidden purpose: they are the restaurant version of the bird watcher’s hide - a camouflaged refuge where under the guise of polishing glasses the staff can spectate and judge the gorging and imbibing. Eventually, I managed to snare a waitress before she shuffled behind the hide.
As an obsessive fan of MasterChef Australia (I refuse to watch the British version), I was rather excited by the promise of an Australian-Pan-Pacific menu, and plumped for the Thai chicken salad: fresh, crisp and crunchy to the point where I could feel my jaw muscles ache the next day. It was definitely palatable, albeit lacking that sweet sticky, spice-kicked tang that the word “Thai” promises. My dining companion enjoyed what was apparently smashed avocado, charred tomato, feta and grilled sourdough, but which was hard to make out under the crisp kale shroud.
Our meal ended at the two dishes. We felt rather abandoned by the waiters, who did not even try to maximise spend-per-cover by offering us dessert or drinks menus. Their tactic must have worked to some bizarre extent as I returned to the restaurant some weeks later, mainly out of curiosity: spiced halloumi with falafel, preserved lemon, and pickle salad for me. Crunchy and tender in all the right places, bitter, zesty, sharp and sweet, it was a success. For dessert, a delicate twist on the pavlova - a soft set lemony curd, berries and basil infused cream - in no way satisfying, but refreshing all the same.
So, in summary, my experience of Dickie Fitz was crowd-shy waiters, not outstandingly innovative yet refreshing, clean, tasty food, and (squashed together) tables that are actually bookable for brunch, an increasing rarity these days.
Food: 7/10
Service 4/10
Vibe: 8/10
Loos: 6/10
Suitable for: brunch, celebrations, actually being able to book a table, vegetarians
This is the cinnamon apple crumble pie 2.0. Tried, tested, and enhanced...
Soft, crunchy, crumbly, fresh, sweet, and on the cusp of sour – the Gail’s Bakery apple crumble cake is what I crave. It’s the ultimate winter treat, although I gaze longingly through the bakery window at them year-round.
I bought the Gail’s Artisan Bakery Cookbook a few months ago in the hope that they had divulged the secret of their signature apple crumble cake. They hadn’t.
As a result I’ve just had to develop my own recipe – more wholesome, with more cinnamon and less sugar, I’ve heard they may even be superior…
Ingredients
(Makes 15)
Pastry
320g (11.3 oz) wholegrain spelt flour
110g (3.9oz) icing sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp salt
165g (5.8oz) butter, roughly chopped into cubes
1 large egg, beaten
Apple Filling
700 (1lb 5oz) grams of peeled, cored and coarsely grated Bramley apples (about 3 large apples)
70g (2.5oz) caster sugar
Crumble topping
80g (2.8oz) wholegrain spelt flour
45g (1.6oz) oats
45g (1.6oz) caster sugar
50g (1.7oz) butter
2 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
15 hole muffin/cupcake tin, greased (usually they come in 12s, in which case you will need 2 x muffin trays
Method
Pastry
Apple Filling
Crumble
Assembly
