Food (5)
Restaurant recommendations and reviews, recipes, ingredient sourcing and other stomach friendly resources.
Being a vegetarian is in some ways commendable, the reduced Carbon footprint for instance. But the downside is - no meat.
Whether you are herbivore or carnivore, fire is dangerous, okay? But the combination of meat and fire, well hats off to the furry and primitive Blumenthal who came up with that one.
Buen Ayre is found at 50 Broadway Market in hackney. It's a small place where they put fire and meat together. It's a little expensive for what it is, but the meat is fantastic. Great slabs of Argentinian beef blushing pink from modesty at how delicious it is. The wine list is good too.
The sort of place a cro magnon man or a gourmet would both be happy. I recommend it.
Food: 8
Service: 8
Ambience: 7
Value: 6
Total = 7.25
Location:E8 4qj
This is a great - if somewhat counterintuitive way to cook a whole fish. I got it from Hugh Fearnley Whatsisface, though it is a very old traditional way to cook a fish.
Ingredients:
1 large (750g to 1kg) line caught wild sea bass
2 garlic cloves
8 bayleaves
500kg rock salt, 500kg fine table salt
1sprig rosemary or lemon thyme
New potatoes
dill, marjoram, black pepper, lime juice.
Place the rock salt into a bowl and add a few table spoons of water, continue to add water until the salt is easy to mold. Then lay a base of salt, slightly larger than the fish in a baking tray, sprinkle black pepper and finely chopped garlic and lay bay leaves and/or lemon thyme on the salt, lay the fish on the salt.
The next time I make this, I am going to try not using only water to bind the salt, but to use lime and lemon juice in water, to see how this affects the flavour.
In the cavity of the fish, put a couple more bay leaves, and also a sprig of rosemary. The thing to note here is that whatever flavours you put in the cavity of the fish will permeate the flesh, so you need to be careful to not overpower the fish, but you can also take advantage of this - you could put a couple of slices of lemon, or garlic, or ginger, but really, the flavour of the fish is good enough to not really augment too much.
You need to tuck the belly of the fish closed, so that the salt doesn't get in and ruin everything.
Now, dampen some table salt in a bowl with a little more rock salt and mound a complete case of salt around the fish, leaving only the head and tail uncovered.
Then put it in the preheated oven at 220C or gas mark 7, for 35 minutes.
As an accompaniment you can boil some new potatoes for 15-17 minutes, and then when they are done, drain the water and add to them some finely chopped dill, marjoram and butter and make a simple salad of torn lettuce leaves and cherry tomatoes, dressed with olive oil and lime juice .
Serve the fish whole in the salt and then crack the hard salt case, peeling away the skin of the fish with the hard salt to reveal the white flesh. You can cleave the fillets from the bone - they should slide away with ease.
The salt case gives the fish a smokey flavour of its own, and of course, you shouldn't add any salt to any other aspect of the dish, though I put a couple of drops of soy on the salad.
You can make a variation of the dressing for the fish, as an option, with the dill, marjoram, olive oil and lime juice and pepper ad maybe a few chopped capers, but it is not really necessary as the fish is cooked properly is delicious unaccompanied.
How sustainable is this dish?
Market - Camden
43 Parkway NW1 7PN
Parkway is a promenade of restaurants, but of them all, this place is a gem, a straightforward, high quality restaurant that serves excellent British food at reasonable prices.
Every time I have eaten here the food has been exemplary. As well as a la carte, they offer a two course lunch menu for £10, the last time I ate lunch there I had a salt beef salad, followed by fillet of Pollack with mash and leeks. The courses are cleverly constructed and expertly prepared, tastes are balanced and merged, and the food cooked, with great skill. I found myself marvelling at half a boiled egg, hardly the most inspiring of ingredients, but the yolk was buttery and soft, and the white, somehow, tender and creamy too. The Pollack skin was crisp, the fillet delicate, the mash creamy and absolutely faultless.
The interior is quite plain and matter of fact, in terms of decor, but there is still a nice enough atmosphere for an evening meal. There is a good selection of wines, also.
Food: 9
Service: 9
Ambience: 7
Value: 8
Total = 8.25
I am on a quest. I can't claim it has the profundity of a search for the Holy Grail or the philosopher's stone, but to my tongue and stomach, it is a quest of far greater importance.
It is the quest for the best sushi in London...
The Japanese food known to us as sushi is to some a strange and unappetising idea.
The idea of munching on raw fish makes their faces scrunch up in disgust, 'raw fish!' they exclaim, 'how frightful!' and then their monocle falls into their sherry.
But the 'fishy' taste that most people associate with our delicious, silvery, gilled aquatic friends, is actually caused by decay - fresh fish does not smell 'fishy'.
'Sushi' actually refers to the sticky vinegared rice that accompanies the variety of seafood.'Sashimi' is the sliced, fresh raw seafood. And Sashimi is served very fresh, and expertly filleted.
There is also Bashimi, which is raw horsemeat, but I can't say that my tongue and stomach want to accompany me on that particular quest.
So, where is the best place to get sushi in the grubby, noisy, glittering city of London?
Morgan M is a restaurant on Liverpool Road, Islington . It offers a high calibre of food, wine and presentation in a pleasant atmosphere. Unfortunately they gave my companion food poisoning.
I wrote to them several times - before and after extensive allergy tests and medical consultation. I can recommend you go, but only to look at the food, as it is beautifully presented, but not to risk eating it.
I wrote again after allergy tests had been completed, which showed it had not been an allergic reaction, but I again received no reply.
My review of it is, therefore as bittersweet as chocolate mousse on the way back up.
The food was splendid to look at, if teetering on the unjustifiably expensive.
Among some delicately imagined dishes, my lamb was actually rather gristly, but there were some nice flourishes in each dish.
Unfortunately my companion became violently ill shortly after eating the seafood cappucino. She (a lifelong pescatarian) has since had extensive allergy testing and we have absolutely ruled out any allergic reaction.
Apart from the food poisoning (which in all fairness there is a small chance may have been caused by something other than this meal) the wine list is good, the service attentive and slightly snobbish, which some people enjoy, the menu inventive and the chef evidently talented.
Explosive vomiting is a small price to pay to enjoy such delights. The bill, on the other hand, won't be.
Food: 1
Service: 1
Ambience: 7
Value: 1
Total = 2.5 out of 10
Below is the email letter I initially sent. To which I received no reply.
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