Another Food Blog

Awana is a Malaysian restaurant in Chelsea. I went there for my birthday the other day. I started with a spicy (as hell, in a delicious way) soup which contained unusual clusters of mini fungi (pictured). The soup really was lovely. I followed it with a noodle dish.

Lovely flavours, can’t fault it. The wine was good too and the price was very reasonable (using a toptable discount).

However, the service was a bit off and when I asked the reception desk if I could have some soap (the lavatory had run out) the man behind it said ‘has it been stolen again? Why do you guys keep stealing the soap?’. Now… I know what he meant, clearly ‘you guys’ are the customers, and we’re all the same, and we’re all thieves… it struck a slightly discordant note which added to the wine waitress saying as she took our order ‘just a bottle of wine then?’ Yes… Just a bottle… thats where I usually start for a dinner for two!

The Sampler is great, located in South Kensington. Where else can you have small glass of a 1970 Rioja?

The sample has vacuum sealed wine dispensers, with everything from £4 a glass Montrachet through to £50 a glass Margaux. I spent a pleasant hour in there drinking things I wouldn’t normally get the opportunity to, a relatively pricey if satisfying experience.

When I was in America recently I popped over to Paris for a spot of dinner with Chad and his girlfriend Missy – her account of the dinner, with plenty of food-porn-pictures can be read here.

The Ashby Inn is in Paris, Va – just over an hour’s drive from DC and in the heart of Virginia wine-land.

We ordered cocktails and amuse bouche to kick off with, I selected a tanqueray 10 martini and some cured ham while we leisurely wrestled with our menu choices.

I plumped for the brussel sprout starter which was really phenomenal and included some ingredients I had never seen before, It was deliciously fresh. The sprouts were uncooked with the leaves removed and separated like a mini iceberg lettuce. I followed the sprouts with slow cooked (sous-vide for 3 days apparently!) lamb, which was melt in the mouth. The desert was a slight disappointment, but without dairy this is the story of my life *dramatic sigh*.

The wine really was a knock-out – the 2008 Linden claret. I tried to find the wine in a store but alas time ran out before I had to run to the airport.

The meal, thanks to American value more than the exchange rate, cost much less than I would have expected to pay in London, although the custom to tip at the 20% mark closed that gap somewhat.

This was simple! First because I didn’t make it, my girlfriend did, and second because it was really simple.

Tarte de Santiago – perhaps the only Spanish desert worth eating. A simple cake made out of ground almonds and eggs.

The top of the pie is usually decorated with powdered sugar, masked by an imprint of the Saint James cross (cruz de Santiago) which gives the pastry its name. However this one lacked the cross.

I’m unsure of the details, and there are more complex recipes involving cream and a filling. However this one was about 250 grams of ground almonds, 200 grams of sugar, zest of a lemon, touch of cinnamon and 5 eggs. I think it lacked a pinch of salt. But otherwise delicious. 30mins in the oven and BAM. Cake. Simples.

Summer turned up just in time for the end of summer and I prepared a picnic on the grass outside.

Simple lettuce tacitos. Romaine lettuce forms a sorta wrap or taco. Into each taco I placed some cherry tomatoes, anya potatoes (microwaved for 4 minutes and placed in cold water to form instant cold boiled potatoes) and anchovies – fresh in a provencal dressing. Eating is with the hands, the leaf forms a mini canoe that sails down the gullet, washed down with the ever amicable Makutu Bay a frequent memeber of the 1/2 price and delicious from Sainsbury’s club.

The sun did the rest of the work, and a little post lunch iced tequila aided digestion.

To combat the intense London heatwave I picked up a tub of ice cold (back of the fridge) fruit juice before I plunged into the hellish bowls of the earth at Green Park tube. I also managed to position myself at the front of the carriage (car for my American friends) with the window open to blow cool refreshing tunnel air over me as the train swept through the soot covered tunnels.

I felt rather smug as people sweated around me giving my ice cold beverage jealous looks. To keep myself at the right temperature I drank the whole litre on my 15 minute journey and turned up nice and fresh for my meeting. Wherever the girl standing opposite me was going – she turned up with mascara streaming down her face as if she’d been crying all day.

Perhaps one day the London Underground will have the new-fangled air-conditioning invention and fruit juice sales will plummet.

Farmers market sausages which I cooked in the oven on top of a dish full of roughly chopped peppers, onions and mushrooms.

The new idea was the dairy-free mash. This time I boiled the potatoes in just enough water to which I added a chicken stock cube, thyme, garlic and rosemary. I slowly simmered the potatoes for almost an hour before turning the pan off and leaving them to continue cooking in the hot water. I then used a spoon to remove the large chunks of potato into another pot where I mashed the potato before adding stock to the mixture until it was just moist enough, I then added a few of the soft garlic cloves and mashed them in.

The potatoes had really taken on the flavours of the herbs and chicken stock, I added a grating of black pepper and some salt. The result was really very good.

Abokado is a chain of fast, fresh and healthy food. It is bloody fantastic. They do amazing wraps, (both tortilla and rice and seaweed sushi style wraps), excellent tubs of hot noodle soups and delicious sushi trays such as the one I picked. The wraps are sold in singles, unlike most places which will sell you a pair, the advantage of this is that I think three is about right, other places you’re stuck with a two or four situation. Also you can mix and match one california roll wrap with a teriyaki chicken one.

The price is right. It’s in the ball park of tesco (horrible) sushi, the above platter was £5.99 and tasted brilliantly fresh and has touches that supermarket sushi could only dream of. I could wax lyrical about Abokado all day, but instead I think I’ll just pop into lunch and eat some.

I had not come across this wine before but bought it as part of a mixed case of 6 from Majestic (you have to buy 6 bottles and I prefer to get an assortment rather than 6 of the same).

It’s a fairly classic Spanish Rioja from a good year and essentially did what it said on the bottle. I can’t remember how much it cost, but none of the bottles I bought exceeded £14, so it’s probably somewhere in that region. It made a change from some of the other wines which I know much better and enjoy more often.

Like many spanish wines it had a soft, round and complex flavour at a fraction of the price of a similar burgundy or bordeaux.

To accompany a bottle of the fantastic Viña Ardanza Rioja Reserva 2001 I prepared a spanish meal.

Tortilla with baguette, cured ham and pan tomate. I’ve written numerous blogs on tortilla production, ham essentially makes itself (take it out of the packet) and pan tomate is made by grating a tomato (the skin will remain in your hand, don’t try and include it) and adding some oil and garlic before spreading on baguette.

The wine is absolutely thrilling. Essentially a spanish take on a Burgundy style wine. It is floral and complex and absolutely balanced. Enjoyable glass after glass.