Cauliflower Cheese Soup
We’re going out for dinner this evening but won’t be eating until quite late so soup for lunch seemed like a good idea, as well as keeping us full all afternoon, it was also a chance for me to redeem myself after Tuesday’s soup failure (gritty lentils and too much cream meant the whole lot went into the bin).
A friend recently made this Nigel Slater dish and said it was lovely; not wanting to risk another disaster, I stuck faithfully to the recipe and it worked out reasonably well although I think I probably used too much water as the whole thing was a bit dilute and was better after some reducing. I think I might actually prefer it without the mustard too - we have a particularly vinegary wholegrain at the moment which was a little too much against the sweetness of the cauliflower.
So, a better attempt than last time but still not perfect. I foresee a lot of soup in coming weeks until I get this right.
50 g butter
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1 large or 2 small cauliflower, broken into florets
2 bay leaves
1 large potato, peeled and cubed
4 tablespoons creme fraiche
1 heaped tablespoon seed mustard
200 g punchy farmhouse cheddar, grated
2 thick slices of bread, cut into 1 cm cubes
50 g butter
Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the onion and fry until soft, then add the garlic and fry another minute. Meanwhile, boil the cauliflower florets for six to eight minutes, until almost tender. Add the cauliflower and its cooking water to the onion, along with the bay leaves and potato. Bring to the boil and add salt. Simmer for fifteen minutes.
Remove from the heat, fish out the bay leaves and puree the soup. Pour back into the pan. Stir in the creme fraiche, mustard and a grinding of black pepper. Bring back to the boil. Fry the bread cubes in the butter until golden.
Ladle the soup into deep warm bowls, stir in the cheese, taste – add salt, pepper or mustard as you wish – and scatter with croutons.
And the Winner Is…
The winner of the Little Break to Lille competition courtesy of Eurostar is Sarah for her hairy duck story (we asked the PR company to decide on the winner). Congratulations Sarah and thank you to everyone who shared their amusing and, at time, horrifying stories! We’ll leave you with Sarah’s tale:
The worst ever food experience I’ve had whilst travelling was when I was in Hong Kong with my family…
Me and my family absolutely LOVE chinese food and so going to to Hong Kong we were really excited about enjoying a good ol’ slap up meal in the country of origin, the home to chinese food – surely it’s going to be amazing right!? Or so we thought…
We went out to dinner and ordered a 5 course extravaganza. None of the dishes they made were like anything you’d order back in England so we just gambled and hoped for the best! A few courses came out and we couldn’t really eat much if it as they tasted odd, but we didnt mind so much as we thought “at least we’ll have enough room for the duck and pancakes!†Our favourite! They started to bring out all the trimmings – cucumber, spring onion, plum sauce, pancakes. At this point we’re starving and very excited. They brought out the duck, put it down on the table and literally our jaws all dropped. We looked at eachother, confused and quite horrifed. We were all looking at a plate full of pieces of skin, cut neatly into 2″ squares. There was no meat – just the skin, and each piece had duck hair sticking out of it. As you can imagine, we didn’t fancy wrapping pieces of hairy duck skin into our pancakes so we left and headed straight to McDonalds! In fact, the whole 5 days we were there, we sneaked McDonalds into our hotel room every night as we couldn’t bare the food!
Cheese Masterclass at Le Bouchon Breton
It’s taken me a while to get round to making this post as I suffered from quite a severe cheese hangover the day after attending the class at Le Bouchon Breton. I should point out that this had absolutely nothing to do with the fabulous cheese I ate during the class but everything to do with the fact that I’m very fond of cheese and find it very difficult to know when to stop eating the stuff.
Much like the oyster masterclass I attended, the cheese class began with a glass of Champagne and a chat with the Fromellier Jean Claude Ali Cherif. He explained that the cheese served in the restaurant changes every week depending on what is in season and focuses on a specific region each time. This week, we would be looking at cheese from the Champagne region which is at it’s best from July-October; my visit at the end of September was therefore very good timing.
Traditionally, cheese was always served with red wine. The thinking on this has however been changing for some time and Jean Claude, like many others, believes that most (85%, to be precise) cheese is best served with white wine. Rose can also work particularly with herbed cheese. Consequently, most of the wine we drank was white which suited me as although I’m learning to like red wine, I prefer white and agree that it’s a better match with cheese.
Officially, there are 450 French cheeses but according to Jean Claude, it’s generally accepted that the real figure is closer to 1000. We had a selection of 12 to taste that evening starting with a Jean de Brie that was matched with a sparkling rose Champagne. This was probably my favourite and was a great wine match too. The cheese was incredibly ripe and had a smooth, creamy texture not unlike goats cheese but without the dry, chalky finish that I dislike. Jean Claude explained that in order to taste the match at it’s best, you should sip your wine, taste your cheese and then sip your wine again and, having done this, I noticed a real hit of grassiness in the cheese that was only faintly apparent before tasting the wine.
The second cheese of the evening was a L’Ervy Fermier au Lait cru which was served with a Petit Chablis. This was another really good match, I loved both the cheese and the wine and together they were very much a winning combination. The cheese was very ripe, almost running in the centre and had a fairly sharp top-note to it. This was backed up by a vegetal and almost meaty flavour with a peppery note around the edges and a very pleasing mouth feel.
We kept the same wine and moved on to a Le Bouchon d’Armance. I enjoyed the cheese but the wine match didn’t sit so comfortably for me, I felt it was slightly too acidic for the sweet, nutty cheese.
Same wine again but this time a cow’s cheese: Le St Jacque. This was beautifully presented and looked like something from a chocolate box. More subtle in flavour with just a hint of nuttiness and vaguely reminiscent of cauliflower, it worked well the Petit Chablis and reminded me of a stronger, more fully-flavoured Camembert.
Next up was a Le Paillou affine au Chablis – the affine translates as washed so: washed with Chablis. This was served with a non-vintage Champagne and had a strong, smoky aroma and flavour that was balanced very well by the slight sweetness of the wine. I’ve written ‘bacon’ in my notes which regular readers will know is a flavour I love so it’s clear that I enjoyed this cheese immensely.
The next cheese was my least favourite of the evening: a L’Exploratuer. It was very sweet and tasted faintly of roses but had a harsh, bitter edge to it too. The texture reminded me of cheap butter: oily and overly rich in it’s mouth feel. I enjoyed the Domaine de la Chalotterie though, a very good rose.
The Le Bleu Cendre au Lait de Chevre was described by Jean Claude as a mild Roquefort, the rest of the guests described it as “evil looking”. My notes are short on this, probably because I’m not a huge fan of blue cheese but I did note that it had a good acidity and a long finish. I’m pretty sure I was talking about the cheese here and not the wine (matched with the rose I mentioned above) but you’d be forgiven for being confused by my use of wine terminology: it was getting late by this point and I was running out of adjectives!
At this point we moved on to red wine, a Marsannay paired with a St Simeon cheese. This was a pasteurised cheese and was incredibly ripe, overly-so in Jean Claude’s opinion although I enjoyed it. This cheese had really complex flavour levels with an oaky, woody centre and a slight bitterness on the rind and was a good match for the medium bodied red wine.
We moved back to the rose Champagne at this point and tasted a Le Langre. This had a definite note of sulphur to it and was described by Jean Claude as both “aggressive” and “sharp”. It was very drying on the palate and was the first of a series of quite challenging cheeses.
We followed this with a Soumaintrain that was matched with a Banyuls red wine. Described as smelling of wet caves, there was a definite mouldy aroma to this cheee which dissipated slightly as it warmed up and developed into something nutty and complex.
The penultimate cheese was a Cendre de Champagne matched with a port. This was a difficult one to categorise as it seemed to go back and forth between salty and sweet with a hint of ash. There was a definite note of ammonia on the nose that lingered for a long time and came through in the taste, a difficult aroma and flavour to process and not a favourite of all the cheeses.
Lastly, a Veritable Fontainebleau served with a Muscat. The cheese had an unusual texture, reminiscent of cottage cheese which actually worked well with the sweet Muscat but was a little too unusual for me to enjoy at the end of the evening, especially when compared to some of the others that I had really enjoyed.
Looking back through my notes, it’s obvious that the last four or five cheeses were more unusual than most of us had tasted before and required a little work to understand and enjoy. For me, this was one of the real highlights of the class and it was a great opportunity to taste something specialist that I’m unlikely to find in my local supermarket or even speciality cheese shop.
Jean Claude is incredibly knowledgeable on the subject of cheese and the informal approach adopted at Le Bouchon Breton is one that works well: nobody felt uncomfortable saying they didn’t like a particular variety and we were encouraged to talk about the flavours we could taste without feeling we were being judged or tested. It was also interesting to talk to some new people with a shared interest, there was a real mix of attendees ranging from couples to a small group on an office night out. With the festive season fast approaching, it would make for a really different and enjoyable alternative to the traditional Christmas party.
My advice however would be to try and exercise some restraint when it comes to how much you eat! Both Jean Claude and Joann (who ran the oyster class and accompanied Jean Claude on the cheese class) are incredibly passionate about what they do and generous with their measures. They will keeping adding cheese to your plate and filling up your glass which is no bad thing as you certainly don’t leave feeling hungry or thirsty but, if your self-control is as lacking as mine, you may find yourself with a bit of a headache and a cheese mouth the next morning!
The classes fall on the last Tuesday and Wednesday of the month and run throughout 2009 and 2010 with a break in December 2009 for the Christmas holidays. The classes will start at 6pm and cost £50 per person.
Jean Claude is also hosting a Fromellier dinner, which is to be held on the evening of the 23rd of December 2009 from 7.30pm. Dinner will cost £100 per head and include four courses with a glass of wine paired with each course and a glass of Champagne on arrival.
To book, contact reservations at Le Bouchon Breton on 08000 191 704.
Le Bouchon Breton
8 Horner Square,
Old Spitalfields Market,
London E1 6EW
You can see the full set of pictures here.
Bacon, Lentil and Cabbage Soup
After not having much luck with soup yesterday, we decided to try again today. As we are both going out relatively early this evening, we had the soup for lunch. It worked out a lot better this time, despite being a made up recipe. In fact I’m going to add the recipe to the post in case we want to make it again.
Ingredients:
1 medium to large onion
1 stick celery
1 medium carrot
1 large clove garlic
1 bay leaf
1 sprig thyme
1 tin tomatoes (400g) or equivalent amount of passata
1 litre vegetable stock
125g puy lentils / lentilles vertes (very rough estimate as I just poured in what I thought looked right)
8 rashers of bacon (we used a “black” sweet cure bacon for this and it worked very well indeed)
5 or 6 cabbage leaves
olive oil
salt and pepper
Finely chop the onion, celery and carrot. Add a little oil to a large saucepan, heat it up to a medium heat and then add the onion, celery and carrot, letting them fry for a few minutes. Crush or finely chop the garlic and add that too, then add the bay leaf and thyme and season with salt and pepper. Give it all a good stir, then turn down the heat and put the lid onto the saucepan to allow it all to sweat for about ten minutes.
When the vegetables are softened but not colouring, add the lentils, tomatoes and vegetable stock. I pureed the tomatoes before adding them, but if you don’t want to do that then you can break them up with a spoon once they are in the pot, or just use passata. Let this simmer until the lentils are cooked, adding some more water or stock if the liquid level drops too far.
While the soup is simmering, cut the bacon into strips. Fry these in a frying pan. When they are done to your favourite level of crispiness / burntness, put them onto a plate on a piece of kitchen paper for the oil to drain off. Press another piece of kitchen paper onto the top of them to blot off more oil.
When the lentils are done, de-stalk the cabbage leaves and finely shred them, then add them to the soup. You might need to add a little water if there isn’t enough liquid to cover the cabbage leaves. Add most of the fried bacon too, just reserving a little for decoration. Put the lid back onto the saucepan and simmer for about 5 minutes until the cabbage is cooked but still nice and green.
Serve, sprinkled with the reserved bacon pieces, and eat with some buttered toast. Delicious.
As I mentioned above, the bacon that we used was a sweet cure bacon, which worked very well in this recipe. We used it because it was what we had, but it was brilliant; the sweetness combined well with the tomatoes and the earthiness of the lentils. This could be made more wintry by adding a dash of wine to it and a few other adjustments. It could also be made vegetarian by adding fried mushrooms instead of bacon.
Pasta with Anchovy Sauce
Tonight’s dinner was supposed to be Spicy Lentil Soup with Savoy Cabbage and Bacon but it went wrong, so wrong that when I tried to rescue it, I just made things worse and it had to go in the bin.
There wasn’t a Plan B until I remembered this Nigella recipe (originally by Anna del Conte) that’s been on my To Cook list for ages and I was reminded about recently by Lizzie.
We didn’t have any white onions left though (they went into the failed soup) so made do with red which worked OK but I suspect made quite a difference to the finished dish. We left out the sugar too and added a squeeze of lemon juice instead, we also used eight anchovies for the two of us. I’d like to try this again with white onion because this version was pretty good. As for the soup, it has potential so I may attempt it again next week.
Slightly amended recipe below.
Pasta with Anchovies and Onions
1 large onion
1 clove garlic
Olive oil, for frying
8 anchovy fillets
15g butter
Tiniest pinch ground cloves
1 tablespoon water
50ml full-fat milk
Pasta
Flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Squeeze of lemon juice
Finely chop the onions and garlic.
Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and cook the very finely chopped onion and garlic over a low heat until soft – about 10 minutes.
Chop the anchovies finely. Add them to the onions, stirring until they begin to ‘melt’, then stir in the butter and the pinch of ground cloves, followed by a tablespoonful of water and when all is combined, gradually stir in the milk. When this has come together as a purée, take the pan off the heat.
Cook the pasta and mix with the sauce, add the parsley and a squeeze of lemon.
Bubble and Squeak
After last night’s roast pork, we found ourselves with various left overs, including roast potatoes, cabbage, runner beans and some of the pork itself. Kerri was rather excited at the prospect of making bubble and squeak which is a favourite of hers, so we kept all the leftovers and set about making it this evening. We steamed an extra potato and some more cabbage because it didn’t look like we had quite enough.
Kerri started by chopping up the leftover roast potatoes into little bits, then adding the new steamed potato, giving them a bit of a rough mash with a fork and then added the chopped up cabbage and beans. This all went into a frying pan and was fried, turning now and then, until it was nicely browned and a little crispy. It didn’t turn out quite as crispy as Kerri wanted, probably because we had added the steamed potato, but it definitely tasted good.
Kerri ate hers with cold roast pork and I ate mine with some reheated roast pork and some left over gravy, which I was assured by Kerri was not done when eating bubble and squeak, but I enjoyed it.
L’Artisan du Chocolat
If we were going to be anywhere in Kent on a nice sunny Saturday afternoon then it would be a safe bet that nine times out of ten we would find ourselves driving down to the seaside or somewhere scenic rather than an industrial estate in Ashford, as we did a week ago. However, there was a very good reason for this otherwise crazy-sounding journey: chocolate. And not just any chocolate, but the particularly fine chocolate of L’Artisan du Chocolat.
We were there to go on a tour of their production facility / atelier and do a bit of chocolate tasting. Arriving a little early, we were led into the tasting room by Anne where we waited for a short while and browsed the catalogue while waiting for other people to arrive. Once everyone who had booked the tour had arrived (there were just under a dozen or so of us), Gerard arrived and gave us a short history of the company while telling us about the atelier tour upon which we were about to embark.
As we were entering a food production facility, we had to dress for the part. Which meant a hair net, overcoat and shoe covers. All very attractive and stylish – they’ll be on the catwalks of the world next year without a doubt.
The first area that we entered was, appropriately enough, the area that ingredients first enter when they arrive. Shelves were stacked high with dry ingredients ranging from the usual bulk sugar, milk powder, etc, to more interesting additions such as rose petals and dried cherries. Organic ingredients are stored to one side. The large walk-in fridge contains ingredients such as cream that needs to be kept cold. Particularly interesting is the small separate fridge compartment where the Marc de Champagne for Champagne truffles is stored, along with Chapel Down English sparkling wine for the truffles that are made from it. When ingredients arrive, they are all inspected and carefully checked for quality and contamination before being allowed into the facility, where they are each marked with a lot number for full traceability.
All very interesting, but all very warehouse. Into a kitchen area next, and we are getting closer to the heart of the operation. Gerard starts opening cupboards and producing strange and wonderful ingredients to show to us. The first was raw sea salt imported from France. We tasted a few crystals and it really did taste of the sea rather than just salt; it includes sea minerals and flavours that just don’t exist in refined salt. This is of course the salt that goes into their acclaimed salted liquid caramels. Next in the curious list of ingredients were sun dried limes. They look like tiny melons and when broken open they reveal blackened remnants of lime which doesn’t look very appetising but tastes really interesting, with a fermented citric acidity coming through and lasting on the tongue for a long time. Also black cardamom, which is larger than the usual green cardamom used in cooking and smells really smoky, almost like a peaty whisky.
From there into the production facility itself. Walking through the door we were met with three tables covered in jasmine scented ganache resting before being used as interiors for truffles. Gerard took us to a table in the centre of the room and started opening containers, taking out some cocoa butter and cocoa powder. Most companies use these two ingredients, he explains, to make their chocolate – a large company will extract them both from the cocoa beans and sell them in bulk for other people to make their chocolate from. At L’Artisan du Chocolat, they use whole cocoa beans themselves, so don’t need to use the separate ingredients. It is interesting to have a look at them though; especially the cocoa butter which is a very strange substance. It is a very stable fat, and tasting it, it doesn’t taste like a lot and has a curiously waxy mouthfeel due to its melting point being slightly under body temperature.
These properties of cocoa butter make it ideal for use in cosmetics and in fact it has become the most valuable component of the cocoa bean. This led to the chocolate industry discovering a way of making chocolate cheaper: extract the cocoa butter, sell it off to the cosmetics industry and then replace its role in chocolate-making with cheaper (and unfortunately less tasty) vegetable fats. No such dubious practices here at L’Artisan du Chocolat though; in fact as I mentioned above, they use the whole cocoa bean rather than separating it into cocoa powder and cocoa butter anyway.
Next up, we taste some cocoa mass which is what you get if you press the cocoa beans yourself and don’t separate them into cocoa and cocoa powder. It is unsweetened and comes across as being bitter, but you can certainly taste the fact that it would turn into chocolate with a bit of refinement and sugar. That was cocoa mass from one particular variety of cocoa plant grown in Brazil, which is what gives it that particular taste. Then we tasted another, which was from a different variety grown in Java. The Brazilian one was coarsely ground and also had a smoky flavour to it, whereas the Javan one was more finely ground and tasted a little sweeter with fruity notes to it.
From this we went on to taste chocolate bars made from refined chocolate from various sources.
Gerard explained how chocolate is conched, which means that it is mixed over a long period of time to soften it and remove the bitter flavours without having to add anything extra to it. These bars actually tasted like chocolate, but between the four of them there was still a range of flavours, textures and characters depending on where the cocoa beans had been grown. It does give you an insight into the variations that exist in natural products; in the world of wine we celebrate the differences between different varieties grown in different regions of the world, but with chocolate we usually end up buying over-processed, mass-produced chocolate from large corporations that lose the individuality of the chocolate itself. Of course when you are running an artisan operation like this, you can keep each of these individual chocolate characters and pair them with different fillings and flavourings that match them well rather than using homogenised, mass-produced chocolate.
Next, into a room containing a number of machines and moulds. Chocolate needs to be tempered before being used in moulds, etc, which means bringing it down to one degree above its solidification temperature slowly to prevent the fat separating from the rest of it. Then it can be used in moulds to create all manner of shapes and creations.
While Gerard was explaining all of this to us and showing us various moulds including hearts and a rather large chicken, Anne was at the other end of the room, patiently coating hundreds of dried cherries in chocolate. These would then go down a conveyor belt to dry and then join their friends in a box. After that, a quick visit to the walk-in fridge and freezer, then past all the packaging waiting to be filled with delicious chocolate creations:
And then back into the room in which we had started, and time to taste some of these creations. We tasted a number of different chocolate truffles from their range, including the brilliant salted liquid caramels. Gerard ran us quickly through a history of the company – they have been in operation for 10 years, and three years ago they moved to this larger facility to help them increase their production and provide more scope for developing new products. When they started out, he was working in a single room producing wonderfully crafted chocolates – Gordon Ramsay started serving his chocolates in 1999 and he started making tobacco chocolates for Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck in 2000. Now that others have started copying their famous salted caramels, they have been coming out with a few new flavoured twists on the theme to keep ahead of the game. They now have a few shops across London – in Chelsea, Notting Hill and in Selfridge’s too.
I was really impressed by the tour and the in-depth explanations that Gerard gave us about every step of the production process. His passion for and knowledge about everything chocolate-related shows through at every point and although they have moved into a larger production facility and employ staff there,
everything still has the impression of being hand made, with a heavy emphasis on using fresh ingredients and experimentation.
Tours cost £35 per person (we didn’t pay for ours though) and are on certain Saturdays
Web site: http://www.artisanduchocolat.com
Chocolate tour and tasting details
Roast Pork
We had an early dinner of roast pork today, with a garlic, bay and sage rub, sage and onion stuffing, crackling and roast potatoes. Roast pork is one of our favourites and it’s been a while since we had it, it was lovely but next time I think we’ll try a larger, bone-in leg as this dried out a little.
Oyster Masterclass
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by the PR company behind Le Bouchon Breton is Spitalfields and asked if I wanted to attend their latest oyster masterclass; we would be tasting a selection of 10 oysters from France, England, Scotland and the Channel Islands, all paired with a selection of Champagne and fine wine.
I like oysters but tend to stick to Whitstable native oysters, simply because it’s usually in Whitstable that I tend to eat them. I didn’t even know there were 10 varieties so clearly I needed to attend the class to enhance my understanding.
On arrival I was greeted with a glass of Champagne and a trolley full of oysters, I could see the 10 different types but it was difficult to tell the difference between them at this stage. Once I started to taste, it became clear that the complexities of flavour and texture varied hugely between the different varieties.
Before the tasting began, we were introduced to our ‘machine’, the implement we would be using to open our oysters throughout the evening and then take home with us. It was much like an ordinary oyster shucker but it had an extra lever that was used for cracking the shell of the oyster to facilitate easier opening. I felt a bit of a fraud using the ‘machine’ (it reminded me of those hinged, children’s chopsticks), but I was glad to have it since it did make the opening much easier and given that I’m somewhat accident prone, it probably saved me a trip to A&E.
There were about of us at the tasting, seated at tables in the restaurant arranged in a U shape with our oyster maestro Yoann Truwant in the middle demonstrating the shucking and explaining the difference between them. He also talked us through how oysters are grown, which are considered to be the best and how to eat them.
Grown – all oysters are farmed. This is important for the shape, the packaging and the transport. They are turned at least 150 times during their lifetime and generally live to be 2.5-3 years old (Pacific) or 6 years old (native). 85% of the oysters eaten in Europe are from Japan or Canada. The other 15% are the native. The native are twice the price of the Pacific oysters, due to their longer growing time.
The best oysters in the world are considered to be French Fin de Claire and the Special de Claire. Yoann didn’t go into much detail about why these were the best but they weren’t my favourite of those we tasted. Incredibly salty and strongly flavoured with an almost flabby texture, they didn’t come close to the native oysters I’m used to and that we tasted later on.
How to eat them? Not with the shallot vinegar that they’re so often served with. It’s best to dip bread into this in between tasting/eating as it will dilute the saltiness and help your palate to re-adjust to a normal, saline level. The first oysters we tried were accompanied by a glass of Champagne, a classic combination but not the best. The Champagne was slightly too acidic to let the full flavour of the oyster shine and the Muscadet we drank next worked much better. The Poilly Fume worked well too, especially with the sweeter, native oysters.
Aside from the native oysters from Au Pied D’Cheval and Loch Ryan that I liked the best, (due to their perfect balance between saltiness and sweetness, their long finish and the hint of Marmite/olive-like unami), I also really enjoyed the Jersey oysters. They had a very clean taste and a meaty texture with a full flavour and a more subtle hit of saltiness.
At the end of the session, Yoann demonstrated how to cook oysters and serve them with a cream and spinach sauce. At the same time, the chefs in the kitchen were busy replicating the dish for us to sample with a glass of Entres deux Mer. These were very good, the breadcrumbs adding a pleasing texture contrast to the silky, meaty oysters and hit of aniseed from the Pernod they were cooked in.
As the evening drew to a close, I spent some time talking to the other ‘students’ about what we had learnt and their reasons for attending. Many of them were local, loved the restaurant and were keen to come back again; some simply loved oysters and wanted to learn more and others mentioned that they were bored of eating out and wanted to experience something different.
It certainly was a different kind of dining experience: an interesting opportunity to learn more about the food you’re eating and be involved in a more sociable and interactive way of eating in a restaurant. I came away with a much better understanding of ‘bivalve molluscs’ and how to eat them which can only be a good thing.
Future classes will run on the following dates:
Friday 30 October 2009 from 6.30pm
Friday 27 November 2009 from 6.30pm
Friday 29 January 2010 from 6.30pm
Friday 26 February 2010 from 6.30pm
Friday 26 March 2010 from 6.30pm
Classes cost £60. To book, contact reservations at Le Bouchon Breton on 08000 191 704.
Le Bouchon Breton
8 Horner Square,
Old Spitalfields Market,
London
E1 6EW
You can see the full set of pictures here.
Nigel Slater’s Thai-inspired Soup
I don’t like this time of year very much. Summer is my favourite season and, when it comes to an end, the prospect of short evenings and dark, cold days fills me with a sense of dread. I do however enjoy winter cooking and the change in the television schedule: just now there is a plethora of food TV to enjoy and I’m not fussy about what I watch, sucking it all up and moaning endlessly about the rubishness of some of it, much to Stephen’s amusement.
Last night, I settled down for a marathon of food viewing, starting with Nigel Slater and his Simple Suppers programme. Of all the shows I’m currently moaning about, this is the worst. I like Nigel Slater’s writing and enjoy his columns in the Saturday Guardian and the Observer but I find watching him on television almost unbearable. The endless repetition (which I know is more to do with the editing that the man himself) of this week’s theme (last night was ‘food that grows together, goes together’, I got it the first time and didn’t need to hear another three times), the over-stylised, Sunday-Supplement style shots of his kitchen, garden and notebook and the generally uncomfortable and at times, wooden posture makes me cringe and shout at the TV.
Still I watch and while I don’t always feel inspired by the ‘recipes’ shown (bubble and squeak and tomato sauce for pasta being just two that most people watching a cookery show will most likely know how to cook already, won’t they?), every now and again something stands out and I feel vindicated for tuning in. Last night, it was this soup. I questioned the use of turmeric in a Thai-style dish but, in fairness, this was only Thai-inspired so I was happy to overlook that and leave it out when it came to cooking it myself. We made a few other changes too: homemade fish stock in place of vegetable, some lime leaves added near the end of the cooking time and a squeeze of lime juice to lift the flavours just before serving.
And the verdict? It was good, very good in fact and something I think we’ll definitely cook again. It didn’t quite hit the hot, sour, salty, sweet notes that Thai dishes are renowned for but the original recipe was only supposed to be Thai-inspired and, I think it did a pretty good job of being just that.
