Tayyab’s
On a Thursday night a few weeks ago now, Kerri and I had a wonderful dinner at Tayyab’s with a lot of other London food bloggers. Tayyab’s, which is situated on a random side street in Whitechapel in London’s East End, has become legendary for its excellent yet ridiculously cheap Pakistani food. I have been lucky enough to eat there a number of times either with a few friends or with various interesting groups of people over the past several years. It has been re-invented a few times along the way: Initially, there was Tayyab’s, which was only open during the day, then New Tayyab opened next door as an evening restaurant. Now these two have been joined together to create a bigger restaurant, which is good news for everyone as more people can squeeze in to enjoy the delights of Tayyab’s, although there is still usually a sizeable queue!
The restaurant does not sell alcoholic drinks but you can bring your own along, which makes these sorts of evenings particularly entertaining as well as particularly challenging for anyone determined to bring wine rather than beer to go with the food. The first time I ate at Tayyab’s a number of years ago was also the first time that I remember drinking Alsace wine. Someone had recommended it as a good accompaniment to spicy food (they were completely correct!) and so I had bought a bottle each of Riesling and Gewurztramminer without knowing a lot about either. Into the fridge at work they went to keep them cold, then of course there was an hour on the tube to get there and then an hour of standing outside the pub chatting before dinner. Suffice to say, by the time we got to the restaurant neither bottle was the least bit chilled. I still really enjoyed them both though and it’s a memory that has always stuck with me, which is surprising given that I suspect I drank most of both bottles myself.
Anyway, back to the present. We met up at The Good Samaritan pub, which is just a few minutes walk from the restaurant. This seems to be a ritual. On arriving at Tayyab’s, we were ushered into the VIP room, past the rather long queue of hungry-looking people. The VIP room used to be at the side of the New restaurant, but now that they have been joined together, it is situated in the middle of the larger, joined-together restaurant. There are several large tables in the VIP room and we had two of them for our group: one round table and one larger, long one. I was in the middle of one side of the long one, which made it convenient for shouting at people and asking them what they wanted to eat and then passing on the orders to the waiter.
We had brought along an Alsace riesling for old time’s sake, as well as an experiment – a Californian zinfandel in the hope that the spicy, not-too-tannic fruitiness would go well with the food, particularly the legendary lamb chops. The riesling did go well with chicken and fish dishes, and the zinfandel did go with lamb in various forms, but the bottle that I’d brought was more tannic that I’d planned. Dan, who was sitting next to me (and knows a lot about wine…) also had a bottle of Zinfandel, but his was less tannic which worked better.
The restaurant had been very kind and put on three delicious roast marinated lamb legs for a main course, so we set about ordering starters. Of course, we ordered a fair few of the legendary lamb chops, along with various other grilled starters – seekh kebabs, tandoori chicken, masala fish and probably one or two others that I’ve forgotten. I enjoyed the lamb chops, but they had a heavy dose of chilli that I felt drowned out the other flavours. Everything was really good; generously spiced with great depth of flavour and succulent too – nothing I ate was overcooked.
Then we tucked into the lamb legs, which had been marinated overnight and roasted for three hours (if my memory serves me correctly) and served on top of a bed of delicous rice, the texture of which reminded me of a baked “Hyderabadi” biryani that I’d cooked once and haven’t encountered much since.
We probably didn’t need to order any more based on the amount of food that we already had, but of course we had to in order to taste things. So we ordered some “dry meat” curry, which doesn’t sound that appetising from its name but it is really lovely – marined pieces of lamb cooked in a coriander-heavy spice mix. It isn’t actually dry in the exact sense of the word, but it is just drier than other curries.
We also ordered various other side dishes, amongst them bhindi (okra) and some sublime tinda masala (baby pumpkins).
A deliciously fun evening all round, which ended with us going back to the Good Samaritan and things got a little fuzzy from then on. So thanks to everyone who came along for making it such an excellent event and thanks to Helen for organising.
Typing this has made me hungry even though we had our dinner an hour or so ago!
Roast Pork Loin with Garlic, Rosemary, Anchovies and Lemon Zest
I’ve been thinking a lot about pork ragu lately and decided I would make it this week. The version I’ve put together uses leftover pork so, of course, we needed to cook pork today in order to generate those leftovers.
I picked up the new Jamie Oliver magazine last week and there were a number of interesting pork recipes, Stephen chose this one which was originally based on pork neck fillet which we were unable to find. I think we managed to adapt it reasonably well and the end result was very good, if a little too lemony for my tastes.
We had originally planned to serve this with some tomatoey butter beans but they just wouldn’t cook so instead, we made some gravy out of the stock the pork had roasted in and had that with some vegetables. And garlic. I think there was about a whole bulb in the original recipe which, having roasted for two hours, was sweet and sticky. We couldn’t resist squeezing it all over the pork.
It was difficult not to carry on eating until all the pork was gone but we managed to restrain ourselves so tomorrow, it’s pork ragu as planned.
Lamb Chops and Minted Pea Puree
We spent most of last Saturday cooking for a family lunch the following day and, as a result, neither of us have felt much like cooking recently which is why things have been a bit quiet around here.
After a day of catching up with friends and watching the Grand National, neither of us were particularly in the mood again but I’m really glad we managed to force ourselves into the kitchen as these lamb chops were incredible.
Before we went out, we marinated them in a mixture of oil, lemon juice, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper. A few minutes in the pan and they were done, served with a minted pea puree (a cheats version, just the peas with some water, mint and seasoning) and some sauteed potatoes. We also made some gravy by simply de-glazing the pan with some red wine to capture all the flavourings that were left behind.
We were lucky that we started with some really good meat which would have been tasty enough without the additional aromatics. The oil and salt did a great job of tenderising the meat and the extra flavours turned what would have been a good meal and turn into a great one.
Roast Chicken
Roast chicken is not usually a weekday meal for us, but due to my badly planned shopping trip yesterday, we ended up with a chicken that needed to be used. We debated whether or not to post about it as we’ve posted about roast chicken hundreds of times before, but the point of Dinner Diary is to be a proper diary and to post pretty much everything we cook, so here it is.
The chicken itself wasn’t that tasty, but the roast potatoes were particularly tasty and the gravy was very good too. Also served with leeks (very good), beans (good) and cabbage (okay).
Cabbage Stew
When I was younger, my mum used to cook this on occasion and I loved it, especially topped with a big pile of grated cheese. My mum had written it and several other recipes into a little notebook for me about ten years ago, so as Kerri was out this evening I dug it out and gave it a go. It doesn’t sound very interesting from the title, but I rather like it and it’s a sort of comfort food for me. I know it won’t be on most people’s comfort food list as it’s healthy and lacks some essentials such as sausages and mashed potatoes, but it does it for me. Of course, I generally undo some of the healthy aspects of it by topping it with the aforementioned big pile of grated cheese.
We had most of the ingredients apart from cabbage, so I got one on the way home and got to work. This is the slightly adapted recipe:
Ingredients – serves 2:
1 onion, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed or finely sliced
1 tin of tomatoes (410g)
2 large carrots, grated
half a savoy cabbage, stalky bits removed and shredded
6 baby corn, cut into quarters (my mum used frozen corn kernels so use that instead if you have it)
leaves from a few sprigs of thyme (or any other herb that you have, even just dried mixed herbs)
1 tablespoon tomato puree
big pile of grated cheese (optional)
cooked brown rice for serving
Method:
If you are serving with brown rice then the rice will probably take longer to cook than the rest of this, so put that on first. Heat up a little oil in a saucepan and cook the onion and garlic until the onion is soft but not starting to brown. Add carrots and stir fry for a few minutes. Add the tin of tomatoes and the tomato puree and bring to the boil. Let this simmer for a few minutes and then add the corn and herbs and season with salt and pepper.
Let these cook for a while until the corn is softening, then add the cabbage and stir it in well. If there isn’t enough liquid, add a dash of water. Cover and leave it to cook for a few minutes so that the cabbage is just cooked but still green and retains some texture. If there is a lot of liquid still at this point, add a dash of cornflour mixed in water to thicken it.
Serve on the rice and top with the big pile of grated cheese!
It’s ages since I had this and I’d forgotten and/or hadn’t realised how quick it was to make. It’s fairly simple and not to everyone’s taste, but it is both quick and healthy. Except of course for the cheese. I love the taste of the tomatoes mixing with the other vegetables and the texture of the rice. It’s a little like a proto-vegetable-soup that hasn’t evolved into a soup yet. And there is some left to take to work for lunch too because that recipe serves two and there was just me and I wasn’t that much of a pig this evening.
Cottage Pie with Two Cuts of Beef
This doesn’t really give a good idea of the quantity but this was enough cottage pie to feed 12 people. It seemed like a good option for catering on a large-ish scale but as we don’t have any catering-sized pans, it ended up taking us nearly all day as we carefully browned each batch of meat before leaving the whole lot simmering in two stock pots for four hours.
We used the same recipe as last time but left out the calves liver. We also added some garlic and milk. The result was possibly even richer than last time, most likely from the milk and extra cooking time.
As much as I enjoyed it, I don’t think I’ll be wanting to eat cottage pie for quite some time!
Potted Ham
With the leftover ham from Wednesday’s soup, we made potted ham using this recipe.
My concerns about adding fatty pancetta to the already-fatty pea and ham soup were short lived; this recipe calls for almost an entire packet of butter. I had previously intended on using up the ham with some lentils but, given the choice, the butter won out.
The ham was blitzed in the food processor with the butter, some nutmeg and a generous dollop of Dijon mustard. We left some pieces whole to create a chunky texture that would contrast with the smooth, pate-like combination of the ham and butter. The end result was certainly better than anything lentilly might have been: rich and silky with a background heat from the mustard.
Served with some melba toast, gherkins and some lemon and mustard pickle. A fine lunch for a rainy Saturday.
La Dolce Vita
This afternoon, Stephen and I went along to the trade day of La Dolce Vita at Olympia. While not all about food and wine, there was certainly more than enough of both to keep us both occupied for the afternoon.
We sampled lots of different oil, cheese and cured meats and were particularly impressed with Laverstoke Park Farm who make their own buffalo mozarella in Hampshire. It was one of the best examples of buffalo mozarella we’ve tasted: firm on the outside with a soft and milky centre.
We also tasted an intersting truffle sauce at the San Pietro a Pettine stand that was delicate and creamy with the obvious heady flavour of the truffle remaining in the mouth long after we moved on to the next stand.
While many of the exhibitors were based in Italy and dealt only with large-scale restaurant supply, we also discovered Olio and Farina who run a small chain of deli-shops in the UK. They produce all manner of ingredients on their farm in Tuscany which are sold in their four shops and by mail-order. We couldn’t resist a small, slotted spoon made from the wood of olive trees that is designed for draining olives and anchovies.
At the end of the day, we took part in a cookery class run by Enzo Oliveri, where we made some fried cheese with a group of other visitors. Sadly the camera battery ran out at this point so there’s no photographic evidence of our efforts. We had consumed rather a lot of Prosecco by this point though so perhaps that’s a good thing!
Pea and Ham Soup
When I was small, we ate peas fairly often but I always hated them. In an effort to get rid of them and enjoy the rest of my dinner, I would eat them all first with lots of gravy to disguise the taste. I suppose all those years of intense-pea-eating must have slowly changed my mind because I love them now and have done for a long time.
My dislike of peas was as strong as my love for ham. For the entire duration of my school life, I ate ham sandwiches for lunch almost every day. Occasionally I would have corned beef instead but, four days out of five, it would be ham and that suited me just fine. It still does on lots of days, although nowadays I’ll add mustard and salad.
So, two of my favourite things in one dish meant I’ve been looking forward to cooking this ever since I managed to track down a ham hock. I thought it would be easy but had to go to four different butchers before I found one.
I used Heston’s method but didn’t add the pancetta as he did. I’m sure in the grand scheme of things a little extra pancetta is going to make a huge amount of difference but all those months of winter casseroles and roast dinners are starting to take their toll and even the slightest nod towards healthier eating is very welcome.
I made the stock yesterday which meant all I had to do today was the soup part, which was quick and easy. Even without the ham and extra peas, the soup was delicious: salty from the ham bone and with a very rounded, savoury flavour from the peas. The combination of the two hightened the taste sensation even further; it was still salty and savoury but the ham added an earthy note and the peas popped pleasingly in the mouth lending a further sweetness.
Heston’s recipe served six but we only made three bowls of soup which means we have plenty of ham and stock left over, we’ve already planned something for the leftover ham but the stock will have to wait patiently in the fridge for now.
Mackerel, Lentil and Wild Rice Salad
This evening we wanted something relatively healthy but filling. Kerri found this recipe, which we took some elements from.
Ingredients
100g puy lentils
70g red rice, wild rice or a mixture of both (we used a mixture since that’s what we had)
2 fillets of smoked mackerel (peppered or not; up to you)
2 small carrots or 1 medium to large carrot, grated
1 stick celery, finely chopped
2 inches of cucumber, seeded and finely chopped
Salad leaves for serving (we used gem lettuce but stronger leaves would have been better)
For the dressing (this is half the recipe above, with the oil, honey and garlic reduced even further)
25g capers, rinsed and drained
3 salted anchovy fillets
Juice of 1/2Â lemon
Juice of 1/2 lime
30ml extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp clear honey
1/4 garlic clove
Salt and pepper
Cook the lentils and the rice, then drain and leave to cool. Mix together and add the chopped vegetables. Skin the mackerel and then flake into the salad.Â
For the dressing, put all the ingredients into a food processor and blend until smooth. Mix as much of the dressing into the salad as you want to; keep the rest for drizzling on top afterwards. Serve on top of leaves.
The dressing was really deep and slightly bitter, which went very well with the mackerel and the lentils and rice. The red rice that we used had a wonderfully nutty flavour to it, which we found went well with the mackerel too. This dressing would be really good with a salad that contained bacon or pancetta; we have plans to do something along those lines soon.
