Ugh photoshop is such an uphill struggle when there's no-one around to show you the ropes. I will not be disheartened though. It'll be easier next time. I can comfort myself remembering this delicious post-Christmas breakfast.
Before leaving Lancaster, my dad forced a pandoro on us.
Every year he goes to Aldi and stockpiles. Forgetting there are only four of us, and there's a limit to how much rich bready product we can consume. He wanted to give us one pandoro and one panettone, but luckily there was no room in our bags for two.
Shoo picks the pandoro up, looks it over, turns it upside down: "Uoh, this weighs a kilo!!"
We get it home. "It's hiyouge" - Yvonne, our flatmate, exclaims.
Folks, they're meant for Italian extended families! Three generations at one table, undefeated by Christmas lunch! Back in the day when still had those massive gatherings, this wouldn't have lasted one sitting.
We are still munching through it two weeks into January. We don't linger on the source of its longevity. Either the ton of sugar that must be in it, or some artificial nasties. Finally, Saturday comes, and I decide to the remaining half in the french toast manner. An egg, a little milk, dip, butter frothing in the pan, fry. Serve Shoo's with jam. Mine with banana.
If you're familiar with pandoro, you'll know that it's a a great castle of a bread, enriched with eggs and butter, with a feathery, spongy texture. Its crust- better say outer layer, it's so soft and moist - has a taste between toast and toffee. The dough is a fluffy, feathery yellow pillow. There's always a packet of vanilla icing sugar that you get to open and sprinkle on yourself, to give it that snow-capped effect.
French-toast a slice and the kitchen is filled with wafts of caramel, and when you take a bite you find the egg-and-milk has toned down the sweetness to something quite appropriate to a late Saturday morning.
An honourable death for a king among breads.
Thursday, 22 January 2009
Lazy, Thrifty, Tasty
Thursday, 8 January 2009
Cafe Society #1: Nude Espresso
We have lots to thank Australasia for. Addictive soap operas. Diminutive pop-stars originating from said soap operas. Caustic humour. Anzac biscuits. Good hairdressers (in my personal experience).
Londoners have plenty of reason to be thankful for their coffee culture too.
For some time the 'flat white' - a strong white coffee, with a head of foam smoother and denser than a cappuccino - has been served up in the eponymous cafe on Berwick Street in Soho (along with some really good cookies, if memory serves).
Sacred is another 'Southern Hemisphere' establishment touted enthusiastically by Time Out. I haven't checked it out yet.
Now Nude Espresso has arrived to satisfy East-End desires for lovingly-made hot drinks, Antipodean style.
Clean, graphic furniture and an almost monochrome look inside are surprisingly warm - thanks to flashes of pillarbox red, and a pretty fairy-light tree.
A straight black and a latte were rich and satisfying and well-dressed in a retro little brown cup and Duralex glass.
Nude Espresso
26 Hanbury Street, London
Nearest Tube - Liverpool Street Station
Distance covered - 1.1 miles from home, sweet Whitechapel home
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
Oyster Surprise
Shoo happened upon Waitrose today, then happened upon the fish counter, which happened to be selling 6 oysters for £2.35. It was all too much for a boy from the seaside to resist, and he surprised me with them this evening.
No fair, it's his birthday tomorrow; I'm supposed to be treating him! I got over that pretty quickly though - I can't even rememember if I've ever had fresh oysters before so I was pretty excited!
Shoo cooked them the way a friend from Miyazaki, in Southern Japan, showed him: steamed in a pan with a little salt and some sake. We had some sake left over from New Year, so it all worked out perfectly.
They were delicious. Really plump and fresh and flavoursome, they only needed a little bit of lime to set them off. There was a bit more sake left to wash them down. So much for January being a puritanical month.
All Gone!Saturday, 3 January 2009
Pizza al Volo [Speedy Pizza]
Have you noticed the posts getting more frequent? This is me waking up from my Christmas hibernation. A bit like school holidays, where you leave all your homework to the last weekend... Of course in this case it's the most pleasurable kind of homework. Dreaming of food. Researching food. Consulting about the food with people I'm fond of. Cooking the food for people I'm fond of. Photographing the food. Eating the food with aforementioned people. Revisiting the whole happy process in writing.
But I'm obviously still high-school age at heart, which is why I'm catching up on that last stage now. How disappointing that I'm just getting into the swing of it with just one day left.
Tonight's dinner was a split second decision influenced by a) the extreme cold walking around Spitalfields and back home, which required something hot, satisfying and comforting; and b) the remembrance of an great meal whipped up by my friends Bel, Lucy and Katey just before Christmas. Pizza from scratch.
People often assume that having grown up in an Italian household I must have feasted on fresh-baked pizza all the time, and must know a bit about how to make a good one. It's not really the case. Pizzas just don't form part of my repertoire. Between the Sardinian, Milanese and North-Eastern Italian influences at home, I ate plenty of traditional food lovingly and freshly prepared, but I'm pretty certain the only pizza that passed my lips (infrequently) was from a restaurant. I put it down to Italian purism about food. If you don't have a wood-burning oven in your house and you're no expert at chucking dough around, better to buy in. Let the pros handle it and tuck into the real thin and crispy thing without getting your hands dirty.
Fortunately, I am only a purist when it suits me; furthermore, I believe that when it comes to bread-based-products any amateur home-cooked effort is still bound to taste much nicer than the average (English) store-bought or take-away stodge. And Bel, Lucy and Katey proved to me just how easy it is two weeks ago.
I'm obsessed with potato on pizza, so there were wafer-thin slices on top of our anchovy and olive attempt. Shoo made one with pancetta and slivers of onion and courgette. There's still dough for two in the fridge.
The dough recipe is a Jamie Oliver special, quantity halved.
Friday, 2 January 2009
Let's Start All Over Again
Happy New Year! Has it started well for you all? How did you see it in? I had a laid-back kind of evening; lots of food, lots of drink, some bad TV and watching fireworks from the balcony.
Shoo was set on making soba to be washed down with the sake that we bought from the Japan Centre earlier in the day. In Japan, toshikoshi soba (年越し蕎麦 - "year-end soba" or "year-bridging soba") is the fare of choice on the 31st. It consists of soba in a hot in a broth, with some garnishes according to taste. Shoo and I both prefer the cold variety of soba, that is dipped into a small bowl of chilled savoury broth called tsuyu (つゆ) as you eat, so that is what we had.
Shoo improvised the tsuyu; he soaked a few dried shiitake in boiling water, removed the mushrooms (to use in a different recipe), added a small amount of dashi granules, cooking (rice) wine, salt, sugar, shoyu, mirin, whilst heating gently for a few minutes. The tsuyu then went into a bowl and into the fridge for a few hours to chill really well.
The soba noodles are cooked in plenty of boiling water (with no salt added), and cooked for 4-5 minutes. I think they taste best when cooked al dente, just like pasta. Rinse with cold water when just cooked; you can then sprinkle some shredded nori on top as a garnish. And I like to mix a really good dose of wasabi into the tsuyu before I start dipping.
For your reference there is a recipe for the hot version here (with lots more detail about New Year in Japan too, if you're curious).
In borrowing this Japanese new year's tradition, I put aside an Italian one that used to mark new year when I was a child: lentils. Superstition has it that they bring you money in the year to come. Come to think of it, this is one year when I maybe should have made a point of serving them up. I wonder if eating them on the 3rd is too late?
