06/09/2010 · 7:44 pm

Supper club revisitations

It has been 2 months since my first foray into the world of the underground restaurant. It all started with a trip to the Fernandez and Leluu Supper Club. I wrote a gushing account of the experience here. Kim and I have been dying to return and decided to invite a few friends who we knew would love it as much as we had…after all it’s good to share right??

I felt strangely at home walking into Simon and Uyen’s gorgeous eclectic flat…

After a pleasant spell in the garden with a glass of wine we settled down at our tables for an epic Vietnamese feast…

We started with Banh cuon (delicate, thin sheets of rice noodle served cold) with pork belly…

then prawn and squid paste on sugar cane…

it was so light and fragrantly tasty and the sugar cane added a whole new dimension of flavour when chewed (chewing the cane was recommended I wasn’t just being a heathen).

The next course was BBQ spare ribs and a chicken salad…

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better we were served Bun Bo Hue, a beef broth with noodles that was just bursting with flavour…

But in my opinion the best savoury dish had truly been saved until last…the most mouth-wateringly tender lemongrass beef wrapped in vine leaves, served with a spicy peanut dipping sauce. My photo really doesn’t do it justice but you’ll just have to take my word for it…I didn’t want it to end…

However, all good things must come to an end and we finished off the perfect meal with a dainty tea cup full of zingy, coconut sorbet…

The real beauty of Simon and Uyen’s food is that it’s so fresh and full of taste! I’m in complete awe of how they manage to shoehorn so much flavour into what are in essence fairly uncomplicated dishes. It’s honest food, the kind of food that you can’t hide behind. I can say, hand on heart, that I would choose a meal at the Fernandez and Leluu Supper Club over the showy foams and emulsions offered in eateries like the Dorchester or L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon any day of the week.

Thank you Simon and Uyen! 

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05/09/2010 · 9:01 am

Your mission if you choose to accept it…

If you’re an Afternoon Tease follower you may recall that a couple of months ago, I attended an Iron Cupcake competition as an ‘eater’. It really inspired me and I was all set to enter the next competition as a ‘baker’. However, I never got the chance because the whole competition was cancelled thanks to some greedy rule breaking meanies who were stashing cupcakes in tupperware and taking them home!

You may wonder why I’m dredging this up? well…my 30th birthday is looming and instead of moping around and lamenting my disappearing youth, I am planning a big party to celebrate it. My plan is to have an evening filled with all the things I love best…food, music, drink, friends, family and of course…cakes, oh and a healthy dose of competition to top it all off!

I’ve decided that one shouldn’t make one’s own birthday cake so I’m throwing down the gauntlet to all party goers with…

Catchy eh?

There are 3 simple rules. All entries must be…

  • Either a cake or batch of cupcakes
  • Homemade (no buying in from the Hummingbird Bakery!)
  • Delivered to the party venue by 8pm at the latest.

All cakes will be judged on 2 main criteria: appearance and taste. All party attendees will get a chance to taste and vote and the voice of the masses will be taken into consideration but the final decision will be lie with the core judging team…me and my Mum!

So, let The Afternoon Tease’s Birthday Cake Bake Off (TATBCBO for short) preparation commence! May the best baker win!

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Quote

cake is just sexy bread

The Great British Bake Off episode 1

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03/09/2010 · 7:25 pm
25/08/2010 · 8:15 pm

rain rain go away…

It may be the end of August but in my book Summer shouldn’t be over yet and yet the rain just won’t go away! It’s been a miserable day, I trudged home under a miniscule, ineffectual umbrella with soggy pump-clad feet, which is enough to put anyone in a bad mood. But…I decided all should not be lost…I cracked open a beer, donned some warm socks and my apron, put on my new Andreya Triana album and started comfort baking…surely the answer to everything!?

In my eyes Chocolate Brownie’s are the ultimate choice in comfort baking. I decided to laugh in the face of danger and mix it up a bit though…so these weren’t any normal bog standard brownies…they were chocolate brownies with pears and brazil nuts. I had the saying…’if something ain’t broke don’t fix it’ ringing in my ears but I decided not to err on the side of caution and take a risk. I used 70% dark chocolate and ripe, ready to eat conference pears…

I only cooked the brownies for 30 minutes and they were cooked to perfection…

You couldn’t exactly taste the pear but it definitely added to the texture and sweetness. They are exceedingly moist and have that sticky brownie-like consistency without being cloying. 

Check this out for a bit of food porn to chase the wet weather blues away…

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24/08/2010 · 6:39 pm

A mammoth batch of melting moments

Last Friday my friend Hannah enlisted my help in baking enough biscuits to feed 40-50 people, for a charity afternoon tea that her Mum was hosting at the weekend. To me, a Friday night spent baking is near on perfect…made even more so when combined with a gin and tonic or two!

Han sourced a recipe for melting moments. I’d never made them before and was slightly confused by the fact that they didn’t have any eggs in them…just butter, sugar, flour and strangely enough…cornflour, which apparently is what makes them ‘melt in your mouth’. They were very easy to make but were very very fragile (note to self…not a good idea to make melting moments whilst drinking gin and tonic). We were a bit generous when forming our balls and I think we could have made them a bit smaller but other than that they turned out perfectly…

The idea is to let them cool slightly but not entirely before covering them in icing sugar, this ensures they are coated well…

The biscuits are shortbread-like but a lot less dense and they literally melt away as soon as they are in your mouth…it’s magic!

We baked 4 batches in the end with Top Gun on the telly in the background…the perfect accompaniment!

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15/08/2010 · 11:14 am

Brunch at Jo’s Cafe

After a few busy weekends of festival craziness, music and drinking I was really looking forward to spending some time at home in London. During a visit to the pub with friends on Thursday night I hatched a plan to host a brunch on Saturday and started inviting everyone to the first ever mass brunch at Jo’s Cafe (otherwise known as my humble abode in Finsbury Park). Despite the fact that my house is in the middle of being redecorated I managed to gather together enough soft furnishings to fashion seating for my 9 guests (10 if you include Maggie May the most gorgeous Cockapoo puppy in North London)…

My friend Reika even brought me a gorgeous home-made sign…

A gathering of my friends usually involves a tipple of some sort so I though I should start off proceedings with bloody mary’s made simply with ice, vodka, tabasco, Lea and Perrins, wedges of lemon, tomato juice, fresh ground black pepper and finished off with a stick of celery…

Once everyone arrived I served a refreshing fruit salad of nectarine, raspberry, cherry, pear, blueberry, mango and sweet sultana grapes…

I layered it with Greek style yoghurt and topped it with a nut and dried fruit mix and a drizzle of honey. Han our resident wine expert brought along some divine champagne, which was the perfect accompaniment…

We weren’t in any particular rush, so I started preparing the main event in a leisurely fashion by grilling whole flat mushrooms, sprinkled with olive oil, salt and pepper. I then grilled some sourdough style bread drizzled with olive oil and topped it with a mix of freshly chopped tomatoes, crushed garlic and a dash of olive oil before grilling it some more, this was the base of my brunch. Then came the assembling…I layered some prosciutto onto the bread, then the grilled mushroom, followed by creamy scrambled eggs and served avocado and rocket on the side…

It was a bit of a military operation but I was in my element and loved every minute of it. This is what brunch for 10 looks like…

For a veggie option we replaced the prosciutto with some slices of Morbier cheese, which apparently worked very well. The addition of the tomato and garlic mixture tothe grilled bread added a really nice level of taste and texture. 

There were lots of yummy sounds going on and I even got 3 cheers for my efforts so I think I can say, with shocking immodesty, that the first brunch at Jo’s Cafe was a great success!

I even got to give my favourite teapot it’s first outing…

I love a lazy brunch…yesterday’s started at 2pm and finished a mere 8 hours later…I think it may have been the first of many to take place at Jo’s Cafe…

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05/08/2010 · 8:50 pm

Essential festival packing….

Tomorrow morning I’m heading off to the Big Chill Festival. Despite this being my 5th year of attendance, the annual ritual of packing far too much and jaunting off to a field in the middle of rural Herefordshire still hasn’t lost it’s excitement! Earlier today I wrote a Facebook status about the fact that I’ve stocked up with 2 litres of booze, tonic water, limes, bin bags, wet wipes, wellies, a selection of hats and a big fur coat and asking…’what more could you want for the perfect festival experience!?’ the answer, of course…home baked goodies to sustain the (possibly) soggy campers!

The logistics of carrying these baked goods was at the forefront of my mind so cupcakes or anything too fragile were instantly ruled out. I decided the flatter the cake the better and googled ‘tray bakes’. Waitrose came up trumps with what I have now deemed to be perfect festival fodder…

Plum tray bake with a cheesecake ripple

200g tub cream cheese

1tsp vanilla extract

3tbsp caster sugar

4 medium eggs

175g unsalted butter, softened

175g dark muscovado sugar

200g self-raising flour

400g ripe plums, halved, stoned and roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Grease and line a 28cm x 18cm  shallow baking tray making sure that the paper comes up higher than the rim of the tin.

Beat the cream cheese, vanilla extract, caster sugar and one of the eggs together until smooth.

In another bowl beat together the remaining eggs, butter, muscovado sugar and flour.

Now comes the assembling part…spread half the creamed flour mixture onto the base of the lined tray, dollop half the cream cheese mixture on top and swirl it around to create a marbled effect. Scatter over half of the plums. Then spread over the remaining flour mixture and dot with the last of the cream cheese mixture before topping with the plums.

Bake for 40/45 minutes until risen and firm to the touch. Leave to cool in the tin before cutting into approx 10 pieces (I need mine to stretch to 14 so that I don’t leave any of my friends wanting!).

This photo makes it look a bit overcooked but inside it looks just right…

The smell coming from the oven as it was baking was mouthwateringly divine…if this cake lasts until tomorrow without being devoured by either me or my housemates it’ll be a pure miracle!

And then there’s the issue of whether it can survive being packed into tupperware to endure a long car journey and whether it’ll still be edible after being dragged along on a trolley on the trek from the car park to the campsite! By which point I will probably be hungry enough to eat my own arm and will most definitely have earned myself a slice!

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01/08/2010 · 5:04 pm

A trip to the Haberdashery

I feel like I’ve been neglecting my blog a bit recently but I’ve been terribly busy sunning myself on the Dalamation coast in Croatia, eating amazing seafood, drinking copious amounts of strong Croatian coffee and doing a fantastic job of pickling my liver! It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it!

I’ve only been back in London for a few days but have already been having brunch withdrawal symptoms. My friend Mark recently moved down the road to Crouch End and has been trying to coax me over the hill to visit him ever since. He finally succeeded by telling me about a cafe called The Haberdashery. I checked out their website and menu I didn’t need any more convincing…

The Haberdashery advertises itself as an eatery and coffee house that sells old vinyls. It’s a really cute place with a great atmosphere. It retains a really light and airy feel even though the walls and shelves are filled with cool little trinkets, crockery and original artwork.

There’s also a lovely garden out the back…

where we started our Haberdashery experience…on a picnic bench in a sunny corner soaking up the rays…

We arrived just as the breakfast menu was finishing and the daytime menu was starting. It was such a gorgeous sounding menu that it wasn’t any great hardship…

We started off by ordering coffee to assist us in our decision making…an americano for me with the milk served in a little tea pot..

and a bowl of flat white for Mark…

I ordered a salad of parma ham, grapefruit, avocado, toasted pinenuts and parmesan shavings on a bed of baby spinach leaves, which was served with a rustic olive bread pot…

If I’m honest, the main reason for choosing a salad wasn’t for it’s health benefits but for the accompanying rustic bread pot, which I’d spotted on entering the cafe and fallen in love with!…

Mark had the halloumi sandwich served with rocket and olive jam on rosemary bread…

The food was nothing short of amazing – so fresh and tasty! and although we were both pretty full we decided that it’d be rude not to sample a cake for pudding. We moved to a table inside the cafe for a change of scenery and to soak up the atmosphere and were faced with an array of very tempting cakes…

muffins and pastries…

and a very difficult decision to make.

We ordered another round of decision making coffees and after suffering a severe bout of bowl envy after our first round I ordered an americano in a bowl…

I thought I should put into context just how enormous this bowl of coffee was…

It required two handed lifting and actually sent me into a complete caffeine spin out, which was heightened by the sugar rush that we got from the yummy blackberry crumble cake that we eventually chose…

Everything about The Haberdashery was spot on, the food was amazing, the coffee excellent, it was the right amount of quirky without trying too hard and the staff were very friendly and accomodating!

I highly highly recommend a trip to The Haberdashery…get on your bikes and brave Crouch Hill…a real treat awaits!

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18/07/2010 · 7:26 pm

The Dolly Parton of cupcakes

These are the Dolly Parton of cupcakes, artificially coloured, unashamedly vulgar and absolutely irresistible. (Xanthe Clay, Telegraph, 23 May 2008)

A while back, my work colleague, Dawn, asked me to make her some cakes to share with our whole department in celebration of her 50th birthday. I’m sure it’s obvious how much I love baking, but I love it even more when there’s a special occasion involved. I’ve been gagging to test out the red velvet cupcake recipe in the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook for ages and as the red velvet cake originates from the USA (where Dawn hails from) I thought this was the perfect opportunity. I also, only yesterday, had my first taste of an original Hummingbird red velvet cake and not just any old red velvet cake, this one measured a whopping 13 x 18 inches and had been lovingly ordered, personalised and transported from London to the middle of rural Huntingdonshire for my friend Marks 30th birthday! Once I’d tasted it I realised there was definitely no going back…

The recipe calls for 20ml of Dr Oetker red food colouring but I couldn’t get hold of any so I used concentrated food colouring gel, bought from Lakeland and it seems to have worked just as well…

I wasn’t having much luck today and discovered that my local supermarket doesn’t stock buttermilk either so I decided to substitute it with creme fraiche.

I made 4 batches of cupcakes, 46 cupcakes in total, one of which had to be tested by my resident guinea pig…Sal, my housemate, who actually went so far as to say that he thought they were the best cupcakes I’d made…ever! Praise indeed!

They truly are the Dolly Parton of the cupcake world and I love them! I just hope Dawn does too. That’s if I can get them to work in one piece…it’s going to be no mean feat single-handedly transporting 45 cupcakes through London on public transport…eek!


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15/07/2010 · 7:58 pm

Homegrown

Earlier this year I joined a group of people at work who were interested in starting a staff vegetable garden. We were all complete horticultural novices and although we had a lot of enthusiasm and all the best intentions I wondered whether we’d actually manage to produce anything edible. We secured some funding through the Capital Growth campaign and were given a small derelict corner of the University campus to transform. We started out buying some raised beds made of old pallets and planted seedlings which we’d started growing on our windowsills at home but it didn’t look very promising at this stage…

Slowly but surely, with a watering rota in place, we managed to cultivate a little leafy oasis of veggie goodness…

I’ve become completely obsessed with the garden. It’s become a little haven of relaxation for me. I’ve even been known to pop in at the weekend to do a spot of watering. In my opinion it’s worth every second of time and ounce of effort expended when the fruits of your labour start to magically sprout out of nowhere…

Today, whilst pottering around the garden with the hose I discovered our first fully grown courgette…it was just calling out to be taken home and savoured…

I pondered all the way home on the bus how to cook it so as to retain it’s freshness and flavour and decided that a quick griddling would be the best bet. So together with some red pepper, griddle it I did…

It didn’t need long at all and in the blink of an eye I was sitting down to relish my first homegrown courgette of the season, which I served with king prawns in a chilli and coriander dressing…yum…

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