Another Food Blog

Circumstances took me in quick succession to two of London’s very fashionable restaurants. I had dinner at the Wolseley, and lunch at the Ivy. Both have an agreeable décor, and both a lively buzz of in-crowd enjoyment. Both are quite pricey, too, but with a very high standard of food and service.

At the Wolseley I started with their seared scallops, excellently done with an accompaniment of risotto nero which seemed to have creamed spinach and rice in it, and maybe cuttlefish ink. Delicious. Then Wiener Holstein, the breaded veal fillet with egg and anchovies. The French beans I ordered with it were satisfyingly firm. Pretty well everything was as it should have been.

At the Ivy I began with their beetroot salad, goat’s cheese and roasted walnuts. I was surprised to see orange beetroot along with the usual dark maroon stuff, never having seen it before. Good, though. My main course was a salmon fishcake on sautéed spinach and with sorrel sauce. As with the Wolseley, I couldn’t fault any of it.

So which of the two rivals did I prefer? Fans of each claim that the other “has been going down recently,” but I found them just about equally good. Both, I think, deserve their high reputation and popularity.

I often include onions, peppers and mushrooms in a quiche, but this one was different. I pre-cooked the pastry for 12 minutes to make it crisper, then put into it grated mozzarella cheese, fried bacon, and chopped plum tomatoes from a can. I whisked an egg with half a mug of hot goat’s milk and some creamed spinach, poured it over the filling, and baked it in a hot oven for a further 40 minutes. I ate it with steamed white cabbage, and thought it came out rather well – a mixture of quite sharp tastes, a bacon, cheese and tomato quiche. There was just a little pastry left after I had lined the quiche dish, so I made a solitary mince pie alongside it, and ate it afterwards. Nice.

An extra course was needed in a hurry. I used a packet of Mediterranean tomato soup with half a pint of boiling water. Then I tarted it up with the liquid from a tin of plum tomatoes, plus one of the tomatoes chopped up, plus some basil and black pepper. The rest of the plum tomatoes are saved for a quiche or a pizza. The soup was pretty good, tangy taste of tomato and all. And it fed two people ahead of the main course.

Actually it was the night after Jan 25th, but I did serve haggis. I decided that mashed potatoes and turnips are somewhat dull and unappetizing, so my haggis was served with boiled new potatoes, and stir-fried vegetables – peppers, mushrooms, courgettes and purple onion. They were sweet and delicious. Onto the haggis I poured a tot of malt whisky to keep it moist and nice. I had no bagpiper to announce the entry of the haggis (difficult at home), but I did recite the bard’s tribute to the “great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race.” I think my favourite stanza is

“His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An’ cut ye up wi’ ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!”

It was a fitting tribute to Scotland’s premier poet. Now I must organize a feast to commemorate Scotland’s second poet, William Topaz McGonagall…