Pass The Dustbin On The Left Hand Side

I have just opened my post. Most of it was the usual CDs (looking good for Dolorean, The Sounds, LeCube and, um, The Wurzels), but one was a nice chunky one from a publishing house. So I ripped it open and found this.

I can't really describe how disappointed I was. A book about Billy Joel? Really? Why would anyone in the world want to read a book about the person who managed to write and record Uptown Girl, a song so awful that even Westlife managed to improve upon it?

This is heading straight for the FOR SALE pile. Unless there's some secret Friends Of Billy out there?

The Slippery Slope

Scrap told his first actual lie this evening. We began tea time with a bit of a row as he tried to carry his plate of tea (chicken and pea rice) into the lounge so he could eat while watching Shaun the Sheep. Firstly, he shouldn't be eating his tea in front of telly and also how much mess was he going to make? In the end, he sat at the table and I left him to it rather than watch him or try and force forkfuls in. He came to me quite a while later and said that he had eaten it all up. In fact he said 'All gone. Yummy in my tummy. Now I have pudding?' And I told him how well he'd done and gave him a slice of chocolate tart. Only as I was clearing up did I see all of his rice in the bin. He tricked me very deliberately. 'Yummy in my tummy.....'

Courgettes roasted with bacon

Courgettes are pretty bland but they are lovely when roasted with full-flavours like lemon and rosemary. I made these yesterday to go with our roast lamb and they were good. Heat a little olive oil in a shallow, non-stick baking sheet. Cut some courgettes into chunks then snip over 4 - 5 rashers good British streaky bacon. Roast in a hot oven for 20 minutes or so until starting to soften and catch a bit of brown. In the meantime, pop a garlic clove, the rind of a lemon, some fresh mint and rosemary and some coarse salt in a mini chopper and blitz until fine. Toss with the courgettes and give a good grind of black pepper and return to the oven for 10 - 15 minutes. I'm thinking now that a little handful of Parmesan might have been nice blitzed into the herb mix. Next time.

Hollandaise Sauce

I was working last week on an ad campaign using spring vegetables and came home on Friday with a car full of asparagus and courgettes. The asparagus were fantastic as they came from London’s best grocer, Panzers, in St John’s Wood. They were too nice to stick on the side of the leg of lamb I was making, yes, I was making, for Mother’s Day lunch for Robert’s parents so I decided to go classical and make asparagus with Hollandaise as a starter. I used Delia Smith’s liquidiser method as it won’t split as home-made Hollandaise often does, but you need a rubber spatular if you don’t want to lose three quarters of it to the blender. Mine was a bit thick so I let it down with a splash of hot water from the kettle.

2 large egg yolks
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
100g butter
salt and freshly milled black pepper

Begin by placing the egg yolks in a small bowl and season them with a pinch of salt and pepper. Then place them in a food processor or blender and blend them thoroughly for about 1 minute. After that, heat the lemon juice and white wine vinegar in a small saucepan until the mixture starts to bubble and simmer. Switch the processor or blender on again and pour the hot liquid on to the egg yolks in a slow, steady stream. After that, switch the processor or blender off.

Now, using the same saucepan, melt the butter over a gentle heat, being very careful not to let it brown. When the butter is foaming, switch the processor or blender on once more and pour in the butter in a thin, slow, steady trickle; the slower you add it the better. (If it helps you to use a jug and not pour from the saucepan, warm a jug with boiling water, discard the boiling water and then pour the butter mixture into that first.) When all the butter has been incorporated, wipe around the sides of the processor bowl or blender with a spatula to incorporate all the sauce, then give the sauce one more quick burst and you should end up with a lovely, smooth, thick, buttery sauce.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

I made this chocolate cake for JJ’s baby shower yesterday. She’s gone wheat-free and lovely David Herbert has this recipe in his Perfect cookbook. I was hung-over (thanks Heidi) and found it hard to concentrate but it came out very well, all things considered – these sorts of cake are meant to sink a little in the middle, ok. I decided to make a quick frosting to pour over the cake to give it some shine but flipping Scrap stuck a finger and thumb into as it was sitting out to set which didn’t help.

Anyway, we had a really great afternoon (thanks Lol) and I may make this cake again in double for Scrap’s birthday cake as his best-friend is gluten-free but then there’s always the problem of children and nuts. Anyone know a flourless, nutless chocolate cake that tastes wonderful?

250g dark chocolate, broken
165g caster sugar
150g unsalted butter
2 tbsp strong black coffee
125g ground almonds
5 eggs, separated
For the frosting
150ml double cream
knob of butter
100g dark chocolate, broken

Preheat the oven to 180C/ gas 4. Grease a 23cm non-stick spring form cake tin and line the base with baking paper.

Gently melt the chocolate, sugar and butter, stirring occasionally until smooth.

Transfer to a large bowl, and beat in the ground almonds and egg yolks.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until they form medium-firm peaks. Stir a third of the whites into the chocolate mixture to slacken it then gently fold through the remaining whites.

Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 45 minutes until the cake feels firm to the touch but is still a little soft in the centre.

Allow to cool in the tin, it will sink a little. David dusts his with icing sugar but it you want frosting, bring the cream and butter to the boil in a small pan. Add the chocolate and leave to melt. Stir to mix well then pour over the cake and leave to set.

London's Finest: Rebato's

There are few - if any - things better in the world than having a night off from "childcare" (trans: watching TV while crunching pumpkin seeds) and actually go out of the house to eat something that only adults like.

Last night, we did this in Rebato's the finest place in London to actually go out and eat something only adults like. But why is it so good? Well, here are the facts:

1. It's on South Lambeth Road, possibly the greatest stretch of culinary wotsit in south London.
2. It is the one Spanish island in a brilliant sea of Portuguese fooderies. Like our old, old favourite, Bar Estrela.
3. The front bar is dark and tiled and lined with bull-fighting posters, old photographs and framed newspapers. There is not a hi-chair or a children's menu in sight.
4. The bar itself is long and highly polished wood. As soon as you sit at it a nice man pours you a cold dry sherry and offers you interesting things to eat.
5. Within minutes you are surrounded by said interesting things and a glass of fresh red wine appears at your elbow.
6. Everybody looks happy and unhurried and planning on drinking a little more than they normally would but not worrying about it too much.
7. The food - we had the croquettes, the stuffed chillies, the hot chorizo, the squid, the octopus and incredibly salty (and delicious) bread - arrives with amazing speed and is cleared away with a smile as soon as you merely catch someone's eye.
8. You cannot have a bad time in Rebato's. It is impossible.
9. But you might forget to take a picture. Which is why this plate of Pate de Negra comes from a bar Silvana and I ate in in Madrid about four years ago. Oh yes.

Anyway, we still got home in time to go to bed before 10. Well, there's no need to go mad, is there.

New Music Friday: Summer Special

Groove Armada: Paris (Columbia, 2007)

EDIT: Link removed.

This track is just so good and you need it so much that I couldn't stop myself posting it...

Anyway, that's Candi Staton on "vocals". And that piano's a bit nice, isn't it? This is precisely the sort of record that makes the idea of the summer being just around the corner even more exciting than it already is.

Enjoy!

Sunday Bunch

Billy has just invited me to DJ at this. Well, he knows as well as I do that me "DJing" involves playing ancient breakbeat and folk records that bear no relation to each other at all while swaying slightly and smoking too much.

And that's it. No dancing - or any real flicker of interest from anyone other than me - is involved.

The fact that the very lovely Memory Band and - oh! - Alela Diane are appearing had no impact on my decision making whatsoever.

Brindisa

Myriam's visiting from Switzerland (for a Dolly Parton concert at the weekend) so we met up at Borough Market last night. I was early but at just 6 o'clock Brindisa was already completely packed. I put my name down for the next table of four (an hour and a half!) and went off to The George with my newspaper to wait for the others. I really like having a drink on my own while waiting, just one – that half hour of absolute peace.
Anyway, Brindisa was very nice but I don’t think worth the eventual two hours we waited or the £110 bill. Very nice but not spectacular, the £9 ham plate was miniscule and the spinach tortilla was straight from the fridge. But we had a lovely night and the Padron peppers, cava and sherry and the waiters were all great. Definitely want to go to Spain for our holiday soon and in the meantime need more trips to South Lambeth Road for Estrella and Rebato's

An Agreeable Day Out With The Bees

The Bees: Love In The Harbour (Virgin, 2007)

I went to the Isle Of Wight yesterday with The Bees. They were excellent fellows, Bee-man Paul even picked us up in Portsmouth - in his Lexus, no less - and drove us all the way to Ventnor. Which, I'm pleased to say, is about the nicest place on earth.

The picture above was taken while we had lunch - scampi, naturally - on the terrace of the very marvelous Spyglass Inn. We wore t-shirts and had to hide a bit from the sun. Yes in March. Amazing.



Later we went to their house which is up the hill from the bay. That's it above. It is pretty much every man's dream house. BBQ and football in the garden. Records, DVDs and exotic tobacco in the front room. Enormously well equipped recording studio in the basement. That's Warren Bee coming out of the door, but you can ignore the bloke on the phone to the right - that's not a Bee, that's their press officer, Coyne-O. He texted me later to tell me how he and the photographer had missed the last ferry. I assume this is because the band took them to this fantastic little pub called The Lobster (& Something) which is directly across the road from their gaff.

I, more sensibly, went home in time to catch not only the catamanran back to Portsmouth, but also the below. Bye bye Bees. Thank you for having me.

Non Grazia

Is it just me or has Grazia Magazine gone really quite rubbish? Me and Heidi used to talk about its contents every week, but no longer.

First off, 3 weeks out of 4, Posh (yawn) is on the cover. The sensational titles are always a let-down - this week "Kate:friends fear she's killing herself - ok, that means she's still going out with Doherty then. "Stars in Crisis!" - Billie Piper cries (and...) Courtney Cox rows with her husband (please!...) The "10 Hot Stories Eveyone is Talking About" section always used to be my favouite but this week the hot stories include "Can Castaway save reality TV?" and "Blimey! Now it's IT Tights" I didn't read it so I don't know what IT tights are, sorry.

Shame on you Grazia. I'm going to start reading Closer. And Nuts. And Word.

Pasta with meatballs

Scrap had a whirlwind social today. We’ve just said goodbye to his best friend Sami and his little brother Milo who along with Scrap ate three mouthfuls of supper then jumped like crazy on the tiny trampoline until bath time (now!).

Earlier today, Scrap had his old NCT mates John and Henry round for play and lunch. All kids like pasta and most like meatballs so I thought this was a safe bet and good for making ahead of time. I think meatballs need a smooth sauce, so if you’re using cans of tomatoes, whiz them with a hand blender first.

Plenty for 3 mums and 4 small children
2 x 400g can plum tomatoes, whizzed or 800g jar passata
2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
bunch fresh flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
6 fresh sage leaves
1 thick slice of white bread, crusts on
500 g lean organic minced beef
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp fennel seeds
2 sweet potatoes, diced or 1 very small butternut squash, diced
500g pasta shapes (I like to mix them up a bit)
250g mozzarella, diced

Pour the tomatoes into a pan with 300ml water and heat gently.

Place the garlic, parsley and sage in a food processor and tear in the white bread. Whizz until the bread breaks into crumbs then add the beef and whiz again until the mince is quite smooth. Add the egg, seeds and a pinch of salt and mix well.

Roll the mixture into cherry sized balls, dropping them into the tomato sauce as they’re ready. Partially cover and bubble gently for an hour or so. Add the sweet potato or squash and cook for a further 30 minutes until the veg is tender.

Cook the pasta, return to the pan and mix in the sauce and mozzarella. Serve as is or tip into a heatproof dish, drizzle with a little olive oil and pop into preheated oven until a bit crusty on top. Offer chilli flakes and grated Parmesan to grown-ups.

Celebrity Look-A-Likes

Some nice pictures of Joni Mitchell have just surfaced on a Canadian new website. One of them looks kind of familiar.

Unfortunate Album Titles

Dolores O'Riordan from The Cranberries - literally, one of the least good bands in the entire history of fairly dreadful bands - is preparing to release her first solo album.

It's called Are You Listening?.

I have a one word review in mind. If you'd like to have a go, write your own in the comments section below. There's a prize - no, really! - for the best one.

Rye Hotel? I say no, no, no

When we got woken up at 6am this morning, the sun was already shining so brightly that we all had a quick bowl of cornflakes, pulled on our wellies and headed out to Dulwich Woods. It was fantastically muddy and we came back filthy and rosy-cheeked. We stripped off in front of the washing machine and Scrap went straight back to bed for an hour and a half while we read the papers and listened to the radio. Did you hear Andy Kershaw on Desert Island Discs? I really loved him. And all of his record choices. It's repeated on Friday at 9am, if you missed him.

Then we went to the Rye Hotel to meet our friends Liz and Steve and their two girls Lily and Ollie. Really, we wanted to go to the Herne Tavern which I've heard very good things about but when Liz called to book on Monday, it was already fully-booked for today! It must be good. Which to be honest, is more than can be said for the Rye Hotel. It was very far from good in fact it was very poor. To start with the whole garden was fenced off because the grass was being treated. Yes, on a Sunday afternoon. So we sat under the gloomy marquee beside a gas heater even though it was a brilliantly sunny day outside. The house wine was rough. The food was shocking. Where do I start? We all had the Sunday lunch roast chicken. You know, I think I'm quite easy to please but they obviously roasted off a ton of chicken leg portions at 10 in the morning, so by the time we got them, they were dry and flabby-skinned. The potatoes had definitely not been roasted from fresh, in fact I'd put money on them coming from a bag in the freezer, they were hard on the inside and soggy and greasy on the outside. The veg was limp and very greasy and the whole thing was cold. It was bad and it cost us £45 per couple. Waste of money, waste of calories, waste of all our time. We were so fed up we decided to get out as quickly as we could and went in search of cake.

The only place I know that actually serves proper home-made cake is Petitout on Choumert Road. We all sat outside in the sunshine, chose from three different types of fresh, light and buttery cake and had great milky, frothy coffees. On the way to the little park down the road for a game of footie, the kids each got a new book from the Review book shop on the corner, Scrap chose Igor, The Bird Who Couldn't Sing by Satoshi Kitamura and Liz and I went nuts and bought a dress each in Fenton Walsh. We all went home skint but happy. Rye Hotel? No, no, no!

Mirch Marsala

We've just been out and had the best lunch ever. We were in Tooting this morning visiting a friend at St George's and thought we might go for an Indian lunch. We were recommended Mirch Masala and the food was exceptional. The place is not smart and the staff are not particularly friendly or all that helpful but the food is very fresh and very well cooked. With tonight's chilli (so going to end up in the freezer) in mind, I wanted to eat vegetarian but in the end we shared poppadoms, a couple of grilled meat starters followed by a lamb curry (Karahi Methi Gosht) which was tender and beautifully spiced, chana daal, rice and naan. Scrap scoffed a pistachio kulfi and with soft drinks, the bill came to just £20.70. You really should go.

Before we left we were offered a bowl of pan, the mixture of seeds and tiny aniseed sweets that aid digestion. Scrap went crazy for it and held a tight handful all the way up the street so we ended up buying a bag ourselves from one of the grocery stores. Our particular mix contained sesame seeds, sugared fennel seeds, roasted fennel seeds, split coriander seeds and flavourings (oops) six E-number colours (yikes) and mouth freshner(!!!!)

Red-hot black bean chilli

Half way through the cooking time

Serves 4
200g dried black beans or cannellini beans
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 large red onion, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
2 – 6 hot chillies, chopped
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp smoked paprika
600g braising or stewing steak, diced
400g can chopped tomatoes
300ml chicken stock
1 square of dark chocolate (I used a chunk of Green & Blacks Maya Gold which is a bit orangey and it was brill)
soured cream or large handful grated mature Cheddar

1 Soak the beans overnight in cold water. Drain, put into a pan with cold water, (don’t add salt or it will make the beans tough) bring to the boil and cook hard for 15 minutes then drain.

2 Heat the oil in a large pan and cook the onion, celery and garlic for 5 minutes until softened. Add the chillies, cumin seeds and paprika and cook for a minute more.

3 Stir in the beans, steak, tomatoes and stock. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer very gently for 3 hours. Stir in the chocolate, season then spoon into bowls and top with a dollop of soured cream or some grated cheese.

Peckham Market

Robert and I have been out on alternate nights every night this week so we've hardly seen each other but we always, always stay in on a Saturday night. I'm looking forward to it.

My eye was drawn to the colourful chillies on a market stall on Rye Lane this morning while on my way to queue in the post office for a few hours. I bought a large handful of each and a bag of dried black beans and plan to make us a real blow-your-head-off chilli for our tea tomorrow. A bowlful each in front of the tv. I've just put 200g of the beans to soak in a large bowl of water and will come back and write the recipe tomorrow.

Hello Old Thing, Hello New Thing

The Trees: Streets Of Derry (CBS, 1970)
The eagle eyed among you will have spotted that The Trees are another bunch of hairies in need of a good wash and a proper job. However, they did make some nice tunes, one of the nicest of which is Derry. Yes, it's vintage psych-tinged UK folk rock. Well, I need to get all this stuff out of the way before I start on the nu-country (clue: there is no nu country coming). Basically, if you don't like this, you won't like The Trees. This is taken from a forthcoming SonyBMG 2CD reissue set that doesn't appear to exist on the intranot yet. Sorry!


Plan B: Couldn't Get Along (featuring Thom Yorke) (Pet Cemetery, 2007)

Plan B is bloody great. In fact, he is so great that he's nicked this entire track from Thom Yorke - the world's most tedious man - and actually made it exciting. This is taken from Paint It Blacker, a collection of all the versions of tracks he couldn't clear for his very marvellous album. As this is a self-produced bootleg anyway my conscience is entirely clear about posting it. Ask me nicely and I might whack up Mama Loves A Crackhead too. Never have Hall & Oates sounded so good...

Enjoy!

London: Literally, Quite Nice To Look At 2

You see, that's quite nice to look at, isn't it? Not as nice to look as the large glass of cold booze I'm going to have when I get home, but still quite nice.








It's probably best we don't about talk that *points down*