Another Food Blog

It’s quite some time since I was there, but a visiting friend suggested it as a lunch rendezvous.  It’s as good as ever.  We began with Bohigas brut cava while we deliberated, then I ordered char-grilled salmon steak with teriyaki sauce and seafood tempura, including prawns, scallops and squid.  My visiting friend mistakenly conveyed this as yasai tempura, or lightly battered vegetables, but we solved the mix-up by having that as well and sharing stuff.  Yes, this was definitely a good lunch, and the good news is that their twin across the courtyard is to reopen soon.

This was a Chilean Casablanca Valley pinot noir at 13.5 percent, and was agreeably good.  I found myself wondering if the Chileans are planning to take on the New Zealanders with quality pinot noirs?  I saw some tasting notes on this that suggested the flavour of tulips.  Since I don’t eat all that many tulips, I find it hard to judge, but others speak of “plums, coffee, stewed raspberries with a blackberry finish.”  Yes to plums, coffee and blackberries, and to the soft tannins.  This is quite a classy wine, though a trifle on the sweet side until it’s been left to breathe for a while to bring out its more complex undertones.

I used leftover seafood which included king prawns, squid, scallops, mussels, smoked haddock pieces, cod pieces and mackerel pieces.  I cooked these lightly in half a pint of fish stock from a cube, then added tomato paste from a jar of Sainsbury’s basics pasta sauce.  I put a few squeezes of tomato purée in with it, plus some mixed herbs, black pepper and cayenne pepper.  It went into a lidded casserole dish with new potatoes, red peppers onions and garlic, and had about 25 minutes in the oven before I served it.  It was hot, spicy, and totally delicious.

The only unusual feature was that I had the poached salmon hot, but with a cold salad.  It was not done for any other reason than that I didn’t have time to let the salmon cool.  I microwaved it wrapped in film for about a minute, then served it with a salad made using leaves from the lettuce heart plus all my other usual things.

The other slightly different feature was the compote. I made it with apples, lots of blueberries and brambles, but this time I put the apples in late so that I could take everything off the heat while the apples still had a noticeable bite on them.  I served it chilled with crème fraiche, and found it intriguingly different in texture.  I drank a glass of vintage cava with the meal.

There were three of us for dinner in the East India Club.  One feature of the club is that it usually has plenty of young people around.  There is a special J7 membership for youngsters from Britain’s leading schools.  The Club offers 7 years of membership, usually from 18 to 25 for a total cost of £200.  Given this, many young people join, and it gives the club a much younger look than other clubs.  We saw several teenagers in their best suits having dinner or drinks with friends.

I began with the mushroom and stilton.  It was a large field mushroom with flakes of cheese on top, and sitting in a creamy stilton sauce.  It was stunning, but needed an extra roll to mop up the delicious sauce.  We all went for the roast of the day, which was Orkney beef with Yorkshire pudding  It was nicely cooked and very tender.  If it erred on the bland side of taste, the horseradish sauce helped redress the balance.  We drank the luxuriously smooth Club claret.

Wanting to eat fairly quickly ahead of an event in Oxford, we popped into Ask in George Street.  The first two items I ordered were unavailable, so I settled for the Terrina Mediterranea.  It is described as a “hearty casserole of chicken breast and king prawns, baked in a rich tomato sauce with butter beans, black olives, red peppers, garlic, pine nuts and raisins, with a dash of white wine and herbs.”  It is served with bread and salad, and was actually fairly good, I thought.  I drank a glass of Montepulciano d”Abruzzo with it, and thought I’d had a pretty enjoyable meal.

Following my unfortunate encounter with Sainsbury’s ‘Basics’ sausages, I felt like some real ones.  Lunching at the Old Monk’s Exchange in Strutton Ground, next door to the pub where the Goon Show cast used to hang out, I chose the sausages and mash.  They were good pork sausages, which I assisted with a liberal helping of sharp English mustard.  I didn’t eat much of the mashed potato, though.  What wine with them?  I chose an Otterbrook Mill shiraz from Southeastern Australia at 13.5 percent, and loved it.  It went perfectly with the food.

The red neon lights and the decorative dragon above the front portico attracted us.  The trolleys which marked their all-day dim sum now stop at 6pm, but after that there is a laminated menu with pictures of the various dumpling dishes you might want to order.  We went for steamed dumplings with minced pork and peanuts, sharks fin dumplings, scallop dumplings, plus deep fried squid cake and spring rolls.  A variety of dips came, but the chilli oil worked brilliantly with the squid cake.  We drank the ever dependable Kleine Zalze South African chenin blanc.