A Few Kitchen Favourites

One of my sponsors, Williams Sonoma, has asked me to choose a couple of my favorite products from their line that I find the most useful in my everyday recipes.

Le Creuset has always been a definite favorite of mine. It's versatile and I use it for soups, stews, and roasts. I've had mine for years and with a little care, its really one of the most durable items in my kitchen.

The Kitchen Aid mixing stand is on my wishlist for my birthday so I had to choose this one! I've been getting by with my little hand mixer, but the Kitchen Aid would make whipping up intricate desserts that much easier. I've used it several times in professional kitchens and it really makes a great difference for everyday cooking.

What are some of your favorite products in the kitchen?

The Bet

This week, I managed to get myself into a situation that I now can't extract myself from. Through the medium of Twitter, I have entered into a steak eating competition at Hawksmoor.

How did this happen? @baconchop was inadvertently called a girl. He responded saying he's a man - after all, he eats big steaks. Of course, I said girls eat steak too. It snowballed from there, and now, on the 1st June, at Hawksmoor, we will be going head to head to see who can eat the most.

A battle of the sexes? Or a battle of who is most stubborn?

The rules:

1. Both contestants need to choose their meal

2. Both contestants have to have the same non-steak food and drink

3. Both contestants privately message @hawksmoorlondon their steak target (e.g. 800g bone-in rib). If they fail to eat it all they lose. If they both eat it all the person with the biggest target wins.

4. Hawksmoor will comp the winner’s steak.

5. If both contestants fail to eat their steaks Hawksmoor wins and you pay your whole bill. Hawksmoor laughs at you.

You can go and vote for who you think might win, here. If you're on Twitter, it's been hashtagged as #manvslegs. For now, wish me luck; I hope I don't puke*.

Will Beckett of Hawksmoor has pledged £1 per 100gr of steak consumed, with the total going to the winner's charity of choice, and we've had another Twitterer do the same. Feel free if you fancy it; my charity of choice is NSPCC.

For now, I am busy in training and contemplating what size to order. But for the record, I once ate so much pie I was sick in my sleep.

*Any mid-meal vomiting warrants an immediate disqualification.

Red Onion & Pomegranate Salad

This salad is absurdly simple, but very rewarding. Colourful with jewel-like pomegranate seeds, it is adapted from a Nigella recipe and makes an ideal accompaniment to curries. There's no danger of the dreaded onion breath as the lime juice strips away the harshness, leaving just sweet and sour. It works well stuffed into meat-filled pittas, scooped up with a dab of houmous on a flatbread or just roasted meats; I took it to a barbeque recently and it went down a storm.

Red Onion & Pomegranate Salad

Makes as pictured

2 red onions
2 limes
1 pomegranate
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
A handful of coriander
Salt & pepper

Halve the pomegranate and squeeze the juice into a bowl. Add the juice of the lime. Slice the red onions thinly in half crescents and add to the juice, leaving it for half an hour. Meanwhile, pic the seeds out of the pomegranate. Drain the onion, throw in the pomegranate seeds and the coriander, chopped up. In a non-stick pan, lightly toast the cumin seeds and bash about a bit in a mortar and pestle. Stir this through the onion, salt and pepper to taste and it's ready.

The Florence - Herne Hill

As far as pubs go, it's not often I eat in them, with some exceptions. More often than not, pub menus are littered with Thai green curries sat alongside burgers, lasagne and that pub favourite - fish and chips served disappointingly with pea puree. The Florence, in Herne Hill dahn Saaf East is different though. I first visited when The Meatwagon was cooking up some burgers. A cultish following, much has been said and blogged about their burgers. A hole was cut into the garden fence, the van was parked up, the beer garden packed to the rafters and they sold out of everything by 8pm. For them to have arranged this I figured they must be pretty serious about the food, so a mere two days later, I was back.

At 3pm on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the beer garden was again, packed. Prams everywhere, children toddling around, I wondered why they weren't dumped in the soundproof crèche that had been built three months previously. I'm not a particularly child-friendly person when hungover and seeking recovery down the boozer. Mussels and chips (£8) were perfect; sweet, plump flesh were in a cider, cream and leek sauce. Chips were crispy and salty and the mayonnaise tasted home-made. Just as I was considering picking up the bowl to drink the sauce out of, spoons appeared - "you looked like you were at that crucial sauce slurping stage". Top marks for attentive service.

A few hours later when the kids were wheeled off to bed and the walk to the bar became a bit more wobbly, we had some buttermilk fried chicken served with a coleslaw dip. Juicy and delicious, we scorched our fingers trying to stuff them in our drunken faces. There was no hint of the usual dry or stringy chicken; apparently they use a Thomas Keller reciepe whereby the chicken is brined and then marinated in the buttermilk. It's a winning bar snack.

So, another good reason to live South East. I will be back imminently (and not just because I left my bank card there); great staff, a (slightly amorous) pub dog, and I saw a burgers go past that were double patties. Meaty goodness.

The Florence

131-133 Dulwich Road
London
SE24 0NG

Tel: 020 7326 4987

Burts Chip Factory

As part of our trip to Devon which encompassed Riverford Organic Farm and Barbers 1833 cheesemakers in Somerset, we visited Burts Chip Factory. Now, anyone who knows me also knows that I am a crisp fiend. I considered starting up Salty Snacks Anonymous for some therapy. I once went through a phase of eating a packet of ready salted Hula Hoops every day for three months. In an effort to save some cash I bought a multipack and it was a bad move; I ate 3 packets that day.

It was with some excitement that we entered the factory. Bedecked in full splendour of lab coats, shoe coverers and hairnets, we were shown enormous cartons of potatoes. Throughout the year, Burts use different varieties of potato depending on what's best for the season. I rather liked this idea; a spring-time packet is likely to be a little different to that of one bought in, say, the autumn.

A huge, intimidating vat of bubbling sunflower oil was being stirred carefully to help the crisps cook more evenly. Used oil doesn't just get chucked out - it goes to making dog food. The oil keeps their coats shiny. It's all about recycling here; potato slurry goes to local farmers to feed their cows, and any sub-standard crisps are fed to pigs. I would be a happy pig.

Plucking a hot, freshly fried crisp off the production line was a joy. I had to stop myself from greedily shovelling handfuls into my mouth. Unsalted at this stage, they were pure potato goodness.

The above nifty contraption sorts the crisps, when seasoned, into perfect bag amounts.

I was surprised by how much work goes into making a bag of crisps. The crucial stage is the frying and the oil has to be kept at a constant temperature for even cooking. Ultraviolet technology checks the crisps in case they get stuck together, resulting in a raw starchy middle, and my favourite part was a weight sensor that blew out a blast of air to reject any packets that were too heavy or too light. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least.

We ended the tour by going to the offices for a crisp tasting session. Soon to launch, Burts will be making a Thai sweet chilli flavour, and we were to try three different types, with the favourite flavour to go on the market. We thought long and hard, we munched many crisps and a favourite emerged, the spiciest of the lot.

My crisp addiciton has been reignited.

Nicaragua

It was a holiday of calamities. Firstly Iceland's volcanic ash cloud meant I was stuck in London for 5 days, leaving my backpacking mates twiddling their thumbs, waiting for me. When I finally arrived, we made for Little Corn Island in the Caribbean, a three day journey by bus and boat - you can fly, but this option was far cheaper. Upon arrival to our little paradise island (below), I was bitten by a dog leaving me with a horridly deep leg wound, a trip to the hospital and instruction not to go in the sea for two whole days. I haven't foamed at the mouth yet so I assume I'm safe.

But anyway; what of the food? As you can see, most of my meals had one thing in common. Rice and beans. Gallo pinto. It will be a long time before I would like to eat that combination again.

Huevos Rancheros

Non-descript meat with the saltiest, rubberiest cheese you'll ever taste

Some sort of chicken stew

Thankfully there was some variation on Little Corn Island. Rondon, their local dish, was a coconut-based stew packed with fish, prawns, yucca, potato and carrots. We had to order it two hours in advance to give them time to prepare it. It was lovely; light but creamy and packed with flavour.

Squares of banana cake were sold by kids bearing big tupperware boxes. Squidgy and light, they were extremely moreish. One day, after a wander around the island, we bought a patty each from a man with another tupperware box. Still warm, they were light, crispy and filled with minced meat with a whack of spice and fruitiness that I knew could only come from scotch bonnets. We spent a good portion of the next day trying to find him again, but alas; it was a one-time opportunity.

After a few days sitting around in hammocks and getting pissed on rum we made the mission over to Ometepe, an island in the middle of the enormous Lake Nicaragua. Sleeping on dirty cardboard on an overnight freight boat with six smelly men wasn't the most comfortable way to travel, it was cheap and that was top priority.

The island is dominated by two volcanoes, Madeiras which is dormant, and Concepción (below).

We climbed that bastard. All 1619m of it. It took us 12 hours in total; it was the hardest thing I've done in a long time, and my legs still haven't recovered. It wasn't until the next evening we found out that our 'guide' was actually a drunk and a drug addict, and was arrested for taking us to the crater as it's too dangerous, given it's an active volcano and had erupted 2 weeks previously. Oops.

Other peoples' holiday photos are boring, but the Flickr set of The Death-Hike is HERE in case you're interested.

Intermission

I've gone to Nicaragua. Thanks to the volcanic ash cloud, my trip was delayed by 5 days, but I'm finally on my way. Hooray!

Back in two weeks.