A Week in Devon
We spent last week in Devon, staying near Totnes which Wikipedia describes in the following way “It has a sizeable alternative and “New Age” community, and is known as a place where one can live a bohemian lifestyle.†While I’m not sure bohemian is exactly the right way to describe us, we certainly enjoyed a week that was very different to the weeks we usually experience in London.
Along with 13 of our friends, we stayed in a large house to take part in the annual Superstars tournament, based on the popular eighties television show. We spent the week playing tennis, darts, pool, table tennis, croquet, kubb, giant Jenga, swimming and of course, eating.
Totnes has a huge amount of good, local produce to choose from and we were spoilt for choice when it came to meat, cheese and fish: some hundred mackerel were caught by the group who went off fishing for the day, some of those were dispatched elsewhere but plenty were barbecued or turned into sushi.
Luckily, most of us are interested in food and the cooking of it and we took it in turns to cook for the group each night. Stephen and I cooked our favourite slow roast shoulder of lamb which is perfect for a large group and can easily be left in a low oven while the serious business of competing in the petanque competition took place.
We ate some brilliant local pork, steak and sausages too, as well as a wonderful rabbit casserole cooked with plenty of local cider. Last year, I think I managed to photograph every meal but this year I’ve missed a few. Apologies to our friends who were hoping to see their culinary creations live on the internets but we were clearly too busy enjoying ouselves.
Little Chef, Popham
We spent last week in Devon and, on the way there, made a small detour to the Little Chef in Popham. I can’t remember if I’ve ever eaten at a Little Chef before, when I was small we always used to go to the Happy Eater (which I loved for it’s badges and lollipops) if we were on the way to somewhere but, having watched the Heston Blummenthal programme last year in which he attempted to re-brand the ailing chain, we thought we’d give it a go.
It wasn’t too bad actually. My scampi was a huge portion but well cooked without too much batter and fresh, crunchy fries. Stephen’s beef suet pudding had lots of meat in it which he said had a decent flavour but he wasn’t a fan of the mushy pea gravy which looked pretty unpleasant to me. The salad that accompanied my scampi (the only sign of anything remotely healthy on the entire menu) was limp and old and the mashed potatoes were tasteless and over-processed. We definitely ordered better than the table next to us though who had opted for the hamburgers which were of the rubbery, hockey-puck variety.
Just like on the TV show, the service was comically bad with lots of sour faces and people shuffling around miserably just like on the TV show. The restaurant itself was really showing the signs of wear and tear and was in desperate need of cleaning but it didn’t look like anyone was particularly inclined to do so. I don’t think I’d bother to go back but it was better than the McDonald’s or Burger King you usually find at a service station.
Slow Simmered Bean Soup with Mint and Pasilla Chile
This was good, really good but that’s all I can remember about it. One of the problems with food blogging (for me at least) is that often, once I’ve committed my thoughts and feelings about a dish to the page and hit submit is that I tend to forget the finer details, safe in the knowledge that I can refer back to the post. That only works if I write the post soon after I’ve eaten the dish and of course I didn’t with this and my brain is a little tired from all the summer holiday fun I’ve been having.
I can remember is that the combination of coriander and mint was unusual and a little challenging to begin with but really good after the first couple of mouthfuls. It tasted pretty good without the mint too so if that’s not your thing then you can skip it and still end up with a tasty bowl of soup. The chilli oil was brilliant and lifted the already-good soup into something brilliant. I think this would work with lots of different dishes, particularly soups but also just added to fish or chicken.
Slow Simmered Bean Soup with Mint and Pasilla Chile
Serves Two
1 cup beans
2 cups chicken stock
2 garlic cloves
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 tin tomatoes
2 dried chillies (I used ancho, the book specified pasilla), stemmed and seeded
Olive oil
1/2 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon oregano
Salt
Handful coriander, chopped
Handful mint, chopped
Cheese, to garnish
Simmer the beans in the chicken stock for an hour or until cooked.
While the beans are simmering, roast the garlic in a dry pan, turning occasionally until blackened and soft – about 15 minutes. Once cool, remove the skins and finely chop.
Fry the onions until medium brown and soft – about 7 minutes.
Add the garlic, onion and tomatoes to the beans and simmer for about 30 minutes until the beans have softened right down.
While the soup is simmering, cut the chillies into 1/8 inch slices. Heat the oil over a medium heat, add chillies and the oregano and stir for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and add the vinegar, 1.5 tablespoons of water and a little salt. Leave to stand for half an hour, stirring occasionally.
Just before serving, add some water to the beans to bring the soup to the consistency of a medium-thick bean soup. Stir in the coriander and mint, tast and season with salt. Ladle into bowls, top with the chilli oil and cheese and then serve.
This is based on the recipe in Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen but I didn’t follow all his measurements exactly and I used tinned tomatoes instead of fresh.
Stir-Fried Chicken
We went to Brussels for the Bank Holiday weekend (post to follow) and, on our return, resolved to eat healthily to rid our bodies of all the Belgian beer, mussels and chocolate we ate while we were away. Some kind of stir fried chicken is what we usually opt for when we want something that is light, full of vegetables but still filling. Not the most original choice but it works for us. We vary the sauce ingredients depending on whether we’re in the mood for something Chinese or Thai, this one had a Thai tilt to it, close to this recipe.
A Weekend In Brussels
This post is hideously overdue and one of the reasons we got so far behind. Since we were away from home, it’s mostly a post about restaurants and I hate writing about restaurants. I like eating in them but I find it hard to know what to say about food if I haven’t cooked it myself.
It was a spur-of-the-moment trip, booked just a few days before we left for the bank holiday weekend trip so we hadn’t had much time to read up on the city’s culinary opportunities. We spent most of the Eurostar journey from St Pancras reading the guide book and panicking that we’d be forced to survive on beer and chocolate all weekend since we’d been so lax in booking restaurants.
We slept late on the first morning and missed breakfast so when we finally left our hotel, it was that weird time of day where we were too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. We got round this by eating croissants and drinking coffee in a small bar until lunch service opened. I opted for the club sandwich which isn’t typically Belgian at all but was what I fancied and Stephen went for the more traditional carbonnade of beef. Except my club sandwich came with egg which I don’t like so we had to swap. This definitely worked in my favour since the beef was was beautifully tender and fell apart at the slightest nudge of the fork. The flavour of the beer was obvious but not over-powering and while I probably wouldn’t have served this with chips, they were very good chips and worked well at sucking up any leftover sauce. Luckily for Stephen, the portion was huge so he got to eat the dish he had ordered as well as my unwanted sandwich.
We had booked to go on a beer tasting tour in the afternoon and, despite my huge lunch, by the time we arrived at the third bar, I was very glad to see that food was included. The food in question was pottekeis, a traditional Belgian cheese served with a heavy sourdough bread. Pottekeis is a soft cheese made from fromage de Bruxelles (a cow’s milk cheese) and fromage blanc which is a little like cream cheese. It’s said to smell very strongly although I didn’t notice it and is mixed with spring onions. I liked it, it’s not something I could eat a lot of since it has a mouth-drying texture to it and is very tangy but it was interesting to try and worked well with the sweeter Belgian beers.
That night, we ate at Belga Queen which was just down the road from our hotel and on the site of an old bank; the room itself retains many of the original features and is vast with high ceilings and ornate flooring. The food is modern-Belgian in style and uses beer in many of the dishes. I can’t remember what I ordered originally but it wasn’t available so I opted for lobster ravioli instead which was very good. The pasta was well made and there was plenty of lobster meat in a delicate, creamy sauce. Stephen wasn’t so enamoured by his rabbit rilletes, they were largely tasteless and there wasn’t enough bread.
I didn’t particularly enjoy my main course of rack of lamb. The portion was so big and the plate so over-crowded that it was difficult to eat, not helped by the fact that it hadn’t been trimmed very well. The sauce that was well-made and tasty to begin with quickly turned into a congealed mess and, while it worked well with the lamb, it didn’t work with oily beans at all. There were some roasted vegetables on the plate too in another, different sauce which just added to the confusion. The lamb itself was good and I enjoyed the mustard crust but again, another flavour too many.
Stephen’s sole meuniere was much better with a decent sauce and just the right amount of fish. The fries seemed a little out of place to me but they were well cooked nonetheless.
The service was mostly okay but we did feel hurried towards the end so left without ordering dessert, not that I would have had room for any given the huge portion of lamb.
So the next day we weren’t all that hungry and just grabbed some more croissants which we ate while making our way to the markets. We were hoping to find interesting things to take home from the food market but they were largely populated with fruit and vegetable stalls. Lunch was salad from an organic cafe in the centre of town.
Dinner on the Sunday night was much better since we were lucky enough to get a table at Le Pre Sale. This was the place that stood out the most to me in the guide book but there was a note to say we would need to book three weeks in advance. The concierge at the hotel said he didn’t think bookings were necessary at all, particularly not on a Sunday and that we should just turn up for a table. We arrived a few minutes after they opened at 7 and they were almost full. They managed to squeeze us in but told us we had to be out in an hour. Not a long, leisurely dinner then but we were happy to have been seated and knew what we wanted to order anyway: mussels.
There were other things on the menu, mostly fish but also some meat dishes. Most people were there for the same reason as us though and pot after pot of mussels cooked with various different orders streamed out of the kitchen. We got a bit worried when people who had arrive after us were served first but finally ours arrived: a kilo of mussels cooked in white wine for Stephen and the same for me with the addition of cream and garlic.
To say these were the best mussels we’ve ever eaten wouldn’t be an understatement but then it’s not something either of us are experts in. What we did notice, from our table right by the kitchen, was that the mussels were cooked for a lot longer than any recipe we’ve ever seen. Probably about 20 minutes instead of just until the shells are opened. This had the benefit of allowing plenty of flavour to penetrate the shell and didn’t affect the texture of the fish at all. A kilo of mussels is a generous serving but we managed it, along with the ubiquitous but very good fries. We didn’t need the allotted hour in the end but were glad to have it since the restaurant itself was a lovely place to be and full of locals that made for interesting people-watching conversation. It was all quite functional and the service was swift but, in contrast to the previous evening, was much more pleasant and enjoyable.
We had a full day on Monday but, as per the previous day, we weren’t very hungry and lunch was a quick sandwich eaten in a random cafe while we escaped the rain in St Giles and Ixelles. When we arrived at the station to catch our train back to London, I realised that despite being surrounded by waffles all weekend, I hadn’t eaten one. We had some time to spare so found a cafe and I ordered one with chocolate sauce. I liked the waffle itself but the chocolate was far too sweet. Perhaps I should have had cream too, to dilute it a bit.
And that was it, apart from some reasonable Eurostar food and plenty of complementary Champagne on the journey back to London (due to the lateness of our booking meaning that we could only get a “Leisure Select” seat on the way back).
Belga Queen
Rue Fossé aux Loups 32
1000 BRUSSELS
Le Pre Sale
Vlaamsesteenweg 20
1000 Brussel, Belgium
More pictures can be seen here.
Pea and Prawn Risotto
I really wanted to make pea and prawn pasta this evening because I liked the way it alliterated but, when it came to it, risotto was a much better idea. The barbecued octopus we cooked earlier in the summer generated rather a lot of leftover stock which has been waiting patiently in the freezer until we came up with something to do with it. The obvious answer was risotto and, being short on both time and imagination at the moment, obvious was about all we could cope with.
Obvious it may have been but it certainly wasn’t ordinary. When we’ve cooked fishy risottos before, we’ve mostly used chicken or vegetable stock which work pretty well, especially if they are fresh, but this homemade stock added so much flavour that we didn’t really need the prawns. They did add another texture to the dish though and lifted the colour from a sludgy brown to something more interesting. And, well, they taste good too.
Stephen cooked this while I was on my way home from work and he tells me that he found an unlabelled bag of what he thought was risotto rice in the cupboard which he added to the dregs of risotto rice that were in the correctly labelled risotto rice jar. On cooking the rice, he believes this was actually paella rice which meant that the finished dish didn’t have quite the same sticky, gluttinous texture that risotto is all about. I’m not entirely sure I believe him since jarring and labelling afore-mentioned jars are one of my favourite past-times (I know, evenings with me are a blast) and I can’t believe I would have overlooked this but he might have been right about the texture. I can’t be sure though since I was far too busy inventorying the store-cupboard to pay much attention to what I was eating.
Leftover Pork Wraps
We knew we were going to have leftover pork so planned ahead to make pork wraps. Unfortunately, we had a small domestic emergency while cooking and had to down tools for a while to deal with it. This left us both a bit flustered and meant we forgot to add the lettuce and cheese to the final dish resulting in rather puny looking wraps and a less than brilliant photograph. We realised as soon as we started eating that something was missing and things improved immeasurably as soon as these vital ingredients were added.
Continuing the theme, the broad bean salsa was supposed to be broad bean and corn salsa but it was far too late to cook the corn by the time we remembered it so they’re still hanging out in the fridge. We did remember the guacamole though which was good because otherwise they’d be partying with the corn cobs.
Despite not being quite what we intended, the wraps worked out really well, largely due to the excellent chilli sauce Stephen made. The pork was reheated gently in the sauce which did a good job of protecting the meat from becoming too dry and added plenty of sweet, smoky flavour.
This is definitely one for the make-again-soon list, domestic emergencies allowing.
Chilli Sauce
3 dried arbol chillies
1 clove garlic
Small tin tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
Splash red wine
Splash red wine vinegar
Salt
Soak the chillies in water until rehydrated, drain and reserve the water.
Add the chillies, the water and all other ingredients to a food processer and blitz until smooth.
Heat the chilli mixture in a pan, add the pork and reheat until cooked through.
Roast Loin of Pork with Rosemary Potatoes
We went to Tendido Cuatro for dinner on Friday night (camera battery was flat so no pictures) and, although the last time we went we vowed to return for the paella, we ended up eating tapas again. The couple on the table next to us had the paella though and it looked and smelt brilliant so we will definitely be going back soon.
Although we tried to branch out this time and try some new dishes, we ended up eating a lot of similar things to last time as we had enjoyed them so much (the lamb chops with padron peppers were as good as last time, the tuna was still amazing but the jamon was still sliced a bit too thickly). We did order the steak and rosemary potatoes this time though and while the steak wasn’t particularly interesting, the rosemary potatoes were brilliant. Tiny, perfectly round little potatoes that were full of intense rosemary flavour.
Wanting something lighter to eat today following yesterday’s flavour overload, we decided to roast a loin of pork and attempt similar potatoes ourselves. We didn’t know how they were cooked but they seemed similar to boulangere or fondant potatoes so we attempted something in-between the two. We used whole and halved new potatoes, so they were not as small as the ones that we had on Friday night. They also didn’t absorb so much rosemary flavour when cooked in chicken stock with rosemary in it – we’re thinking that they probably doused them in rosemary butter to give them that flavour.
Either way, they were still tasty, as were the broad beans and peas cooked with mint and annointed with lemon. The pork itself was simply roasted, then the crackling removed and roasted on its own at a higher temperature for a bit longer to crisp it up, which worked very well. Very crunchy crackling. The pork itself was tasty but not particularly adventurous as we hadn’t added much in the way of flavourings to it, but it went well with the potatoes, peas, beans and gravy.
All in all, a satisfying Sunday meal and it gives us some left over pork to try something with tomorrow.
Yam Talay and Khmer Chicken Samla with Coconut Milk
Thai food used to appear in our kitchen very regularly since we both love the hot, sour, salty, sweet combination and Stephen is obsessed with buying catering sized bags of chillies and shallots and pounding them up in the mortar and pestle. Our local Thai supermarket has closed down and while it’s easy to find the staples like ginger and lemongrass in the supermarket, the more unusual things like galangal and lime leaves can be harder to source.
Coupled with that, the complex dishes that we enjoy the most take time to prepare and cook. The ingredients need to be peeled and chopped and pounded to a paste before being fried slowly to release the flavours and then cooked with meat or fish and coconut milk for a long time so that everything comes together in a cohesive way. Time isn’t something we’ve had a lot of recently and when we have had it, there have been other things needing attention that we’ve had to prioritise over spending whole afternoons in the kitchen. Luckily for us, yesterday wasn’t one of those days which meant we had time to gather our ingredients and make two Thai dishes for dinner.
We started with a seafood salad that was a great way to awaken our taste buds and prepare us for the main course. Despite the long ingredient list, this was very simple to put together but the quality of the fish was important. It seemed a little wasteful or extravagant to boil the scallops and then drown them in lots of aromatics and they did lose some of their flavour but they worked brilliantly as little sponges sucking up all the flavour from the lime juice and fish sauce. The prawns, cooked in their shells, retained their sweetness and added a firmer texture while the squid, although good, mostly bulked everything out.
While we were eating, the khmer chicken samla was simmering away on the hob ready for us to eat once we’d finished with our starters. This is a dish we’ve cooked a couple of times before and is one of the first Thai dishes I really enjoyed; Stephen’s sister cooked it for us years ago and then bought us the book as a gift. Consequently, it holds happy memories for me as the dish that really introduced me to one of my favourite cuisines and is the one I crave most often when thinking about Thai food.
There’s no messing about with this, there are 10 cloves of garlic in there, the same amount of lemongrass and two tablespoons of shrimp paste – the really stinky stuff that you have to fry and can still smell days later even though you’ve scrubbed your entire kitchen. Four dried chillies mean it’s hot and it’s spicy with a huge amount of flavour going on but it’s also perfectly balanced and fragrant. Just don’t get stuck into the Gruner Veltliner like we did and leave it to cook down too long because there’s a fine line between punchy and over-reduced. We were just about okay but had we started on the Riesling too then we would have been in trouble.
Yam Talay (from the Blue Elephant Cookbook)
Serves Two
4 cloves garlic, peeled
2 large red chillies
2 bird’s eye chillies
Seafood (we used four prawns, four scallops and one squid)
1/2 tsp sugar
5 tbsps fish sauce
5 tbsps lime juice (original recipe states lemon juice)
2 stems lemongrass, finely sliced
4 kaffir lime leaves, finely sliced
Half a red onion, finely sliced
2 spring onions, finely sliced
8cm carrot, cut into julienne
10 mint leaves
6 stems coriander leaves, chopped
Lettuce leaves
Pound the garlic into a paste with the chillies.
Bring a pan of water to the boil and add the seafood, boil for one minute.
Drain the seafood and put into a bowl. Mix in the chilli and garlic paste, sugar, fish sauce and lemon juice.
Add the remaining ingredients, toss together and then serve on top of the lettuce leaves.
Mexican Fish Fajitas with Broad Bean Salsa
I can’t remember how we came up with the idea, but we decided to try making fish fajitas and see how they turned out. We have made chicken or beef fajitas many times but never tried anything like that with fish. Kerri was back late from work, so that meant I had some time to potter around the kitchen and try various things. One of those things ended up being broad bean salsa.
The fish was a whole whiting which I rubbed with chilli powder, ground cumin, salt, lime juice and oil and stuffed with coriander leaves before roasting in the oven. I also made pretty standard guacamole using our usual sort of recipe. Then the broad bean “salsa” which was an experiment that turned out rather well:
broad beans (however many seems appropriate)
half a red chilli, finely chopped
half a red onion, finely chopped
lime juice
olive oil
salt and pepper
Pod the broad beans, then boil them until just done, wait for them to cool and skin them. Skinning them can take a while (especially after you’ve probably spent ages podding them!) but does make them nice and green instead of greyish and makes them a lot nicer to eat without the slightly tough skin. Then simply mix the broad beans with the chilli and onion, adding enough lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper until it is well balanced and flavourful. Taste as you go a lot of course.
We also roasted some sliced red pepper and red onion. So it wasn’t a real fajita where everything is stir fried quickly – we roasted everything in the oven – but the end result was similar. We flaked the fish off the bone once it had cooked and made up the wraps with the fish, some roasted vegetables, guacamole and some of the broad bean salsa.
The texture of the fish worked very well, softer obviously than chicken or beef and a lot easier to eat. The flavour of it was good too, with the taste of the rub coming through well and combining well with the guacamole and roasted vegetables. The broad bean salsa was a very successful experiment and we’ll probably try a few more variations on that theme before the season is over.
