Red Velvet Cake

If there’s one thing I cannot understand, it’s why I am so helplessly attracted to red velvet cake.

One of America’s more exhibitionist cakes, its tacky contrast of bright red sponge and snowy white icing should in theory put me off. What’s that saying about all fur coat and no knickers? But there’s something about the way the sponge looks so moist and heavy crumbed, and the way that frosting crowns it so dreamily that makes me want to give in every time I see one. And the fact that it’s red, far from making me recoil, is for some bizarre reason a real selling point.

Interestingly, there’s no official explanation for why the red food colouring is added. Some say it comes from when cocoa was unprocessed and would react with the vinegar and buttermilk in the recipe and turn red. Others say it was because beetroot was used instead of sugar to sweeten it during the Great Depression, and sure enough, you still find some recipes using beetroot today – although it’s more to keep the cake moist now, than to actually sweeten it.

It’s not the most laidback of cakes to make. It involves egg separating, multiple bowls and folding-in in batches, but the results are pretty spectacular. Not for nothing is it called red velvet. The cake almost melts away in your mouth – it’s moist, giving and ever so slightly tangy from the buttermilk, and it combines so perfectly with the cream cheese. My mouth is watering just writing about it.

Of course, you will find strewn about the internet some fake recipes that are really just lily-livered chocolate cakes dyed red, but these completely miss the point. You shouldn’t be able to decide whether a red velvet cake is vanilla or chocolate flavoured. It should have a texture like no Victoria sponge could achieve, and should create a bit of a gasp when you present it to the table. Our red velvet cake recipe took a few goes to achieve perfection, but it was worth the effort. So if the baking urge overtakes you this weekend, I can think of few better things to whisk up.

For more baking recipes, click here.

Want to critique Taste of London? Then read on…

So, to continue in the restaurant critic vein, an email landed in my inbox today about Toptable’s latest venture with Taste of London. They’re offering one lucky foodie the chance to officially review every restaurant at Taste of London, for free. There are 40 restaurants at Taste of London. That one lucky foodie had better be very hungry.

 I think this is a pretty amazing prize, and one guaranteed to appeal to the almost slavish fanaticism with which food enthusiasts can talk about restaurants. Ask your gastro-friend (every circle has one), about the last meal they had out and you’ll rarely get just a couple of sentences. Everyone who likes food, it seems, is a born restaurant critic.

And before I’m lambasted for completely contradicting myself after my last article, I should point out that I think constructive restaurant reviews are always useful, as long as they’re not some excuse for an over-inflated ego to flap about. I’m also very much in favour of getting ‘ordinary Joe’ in to review the restaurants at Taste. Who knows, they could end up being the next Mr Coren.

So if you feel like this is your time to shine, click here to go to Toptable’s entry page. All you need to do is review a restaurant of your choice and send it off. The winner will be judged, and then they’d better start stomach stretching. It’s going to be a marathon, not a sprint…

To review or not to…

After reading a damning review in the Times of Jason Atherton’s new venture last week, I was left wondering what purpose is served by a bad restaurant review.

Certainly they’re funny, as long as they’re well written. It gives us a delicious sense of schadenfreude, as we shudder to think about the poor chef whose livelihood is about to go up the spout because someone didn’t like their steak. But are they really fair?

In English lessons we were told that no opinion was ever wrong, because literature was subjective to the reader. One man’s Hardy is another man’s Jilly Cooper. Surely the same thing can be said about food?

Admittedly, it’s unlikely that anyone is going to argue that bad service, or a cold main course, or a forty minute wait for a cocktail is ever acceptable. But when restaurant reviewers begin to criticise the dishes, is when I begin to question the point of the review.

So what if you don’t think that vanilla salt goes with a chocolate pudding? Or if you don’t like the size of the sharing plates. Evidently someone did, which is why they’re on the menu, and who knows, maybe quite a lot of other people like it too. It’s hardly fair for one person’s taste, simply because it’s put into print, to influence the number of people that it can.

And chefs, like everyone else, are subject to human error. Imagine you had a bad day at work, and somebody wrote a double page spread about how hopeless you’d been. And since reviews are mostly about new openings, imagine that this was your second week in a new job. It’s not really on, is it? Surely it’s far better to say nothing at all?

Of course I’m not suggesting that if restaurants serve sub-standard food, or have waitresses who look at you like you might possibly be leperous they should be allowed to get away with it, I simply think that people should be able to form their own opinions.

So, in the spirit of that, I welcome yours.

Saturday lunch Provençal-style

There’s an overwhelming rightness to the way the French approach all things culinary. Particularly their lunches. Having just spent the most idyllic of weeks in the countryside of Provence, I have once again renewed my conviction that they’re just, well, better than us. And rather than moping around wishing I was back there as I eat my sad-looking sandwich, I’ve decided that I’m going to bring a little bit of Provence back to Clapham. I’m going to start doing Saturday lunches.

And I’m not talking the British version of a lunch – all starched tablecloth, vegetable side dishes and two puddings. I mean long, lazy, relaxed lunches, eaten in the shade of the garden, and probably extended through until tea time.

What I love about these meals is their simplicity. There will probably only be one or two things that have actually been cooked – the rest will just be thoughtful purchases from what looked good at the market. A huge bunch of peppery radishes, served with sea salt and proper butter to smear onto them is a good place to start. A couple of delicious cured hams, or a saucisson, plonked on the table with a knife for people to help themselves to. Some ripe vine tomatoes, dressed with a fruity extra virgin oil, and a bowl of bitter frisee salad, tossed through with some crispy lardons if you’re feeling energetic, and dressed with lemon juice, black pepper and oil. And of course, a cheese. For me it’s an Epoisses so ripe it runs away from the table, paired with freshly baked crusty baguette. Divine.

For the centrepiece of a lunch table, you can’t go wrong with a big tart, and this onion and goat’s cheese tart recipe is one of my absolute favourites. As long as you give the onions time to properly soften and caramelise, you will end up with the most gorgeously deep flavour, perfectly offset by crumbly pastry (please, please use all-butter, think of what the French would say), and ripe, tangy goat’s cheese.

Or, if you’re feeling seasonal, this asparagus and olive tart is so simple, and won’t leave you feeling over-indulged.

And for pudding, I can’t think of many things I like better than cake. Not a Victoria sponge or a dense chocolate cake, those are better suited to the tea table. Outdoor lunches require something nutty, something with fruit, something along the lines of this beauty. It’s heavenly served with thick, honeyed natural yogurt, or a big dollop of crème fraiche.

Who says we can’t be as fabulous as the French?!

Royal Wedding Watch

I’m sorry, I know you’re probably all a bit sick of it, but I’m going to talk about the royal wedding. For all my huffing and puffing as we get email after email pushing products with increasingly tenuous links to the happy couple, I can’t help but feel a little bit patriotic when I see all the bunting up everywhere. And I’m not going to lie, I’ve become slightly obsessed with the Daily Mail’s Royal Wedding page.

Sadly, well not sadly, very smugly, I’ll be in France on the day itself, and having been informed there’s no TV where we’re going, I will be holing up in a bar somewhere to watch the momentous occasion. But for those who are staying in Grande Bretagne, even if you’re not enamoured with Miss Middleton, the extra day’s holiday is undoubtedly an excuse for eating and drinking at otherwise inappropriate times of the day. So what shall you all be feasting on?

Well, surely Pimm’s has to factor into the equation somewhere. Not being a fan of sickly sweet drinks I always make mine with half and half lemonade and ginger beer, with an extra tot of gin. I’m sure the Queen Mother would have approved. At a recent work celebration I also added a load of fresh passion fruit to it, which went down extraordinarily well.

And as for food, I might argue that a royal wedding party without sausage rolls is no party at all. Have a crack at making your own, they’re so easy and seriously a lot better than anything bought. And in a nod to the royal lifestyle, these caviar and brioche fingers would also be rather appropriate. If you’re near a Waitrose, look out for a faux-caviar called Arenkha – it’s made by spherifying smoked herring (don’t ask) so it’s totally sustainable, very tasty, and a teeny tiny fraction of the price of the real stuff. Royalty for the middle classes, if you will. A bit like our future queen.

And to finish off, what could be more British than a sherry trifle?! If you really can’t face the thought, though, ditch the custard and sponge and try a slightly more updated version with crushed meringues, fresh raspberries and elderflower syllabub. A large splash of dessert wine in there finishes it off perfectly.

And how will I be celebrating? Well,  without a street party or a Union Jack in sight, I’ll be wishing Kate and William well in the true French style – with a large vat of rosé and several dozen oysters. Vive l’amour!

For more Royal Wedding foodie ideas, click here

Dusting off the barbie

Outside our office with its over-enthusiastic air conditioning, the sun is shining and the air is warm.  It appears that summer has come early to our shores, once again filling me with self-loathing questions about why I didn’t moisturise more, why I didn’t shop for spring when the sales were on, and why God in His wisdom chose to make me both ghostly pale, and allergic to fake tan. Summer dresses are out, plasters poke out of new sandals, businessmen sweat in their winter suits. England, like Martha and the Vandellas, loves a heatwave.

Mournful thoughts about my blindingly white legs aside, the warm weather is prompting very pleasant musings about al fresco cookery. We are blessed with a garden at the new flat and have inherited a slightly rickety looking barbecue from the previous owners – I’m thinking this weekend might be the time to christen it.

I love barbecues, not least because it’s one of the few times I get to sit back and let the menfolk sweat over the cooking. My job is over when the salads and marinades are done, and I always find it amusing to watch the way men gather around a pit of smoking charcoal, prodding sausages and looking at each other knowingly. But what will I cook on my barbie? Sorry, what will I prepare and leave someone else to cook.

Well, it might be beer can chicken. A South African dish, it consists of emptying (drinking) half the contents of a can of lager, then sitting a chicken upright on the can, and cooking it on the barbie with the lid down for an hour or so. The beer steams into the chicken’s flesh and the results are tender, fragrant and delicious. Or maybe we’ll cook sirloin steaks and I’ll make these flavoured butters to go with them. Flavouring butter is a great idea for a topping – you can put pretty much whatever you want in, and it’s way less hassle than making a sauce last minute.

As for salads, you can see by my last post how I feel about these. I love this Middle Eastern salad, a sort of bastardisation of a Lebanese fattoush and a Morroccan tabbouleh, but it works for me. Just add the pitta last minute so it doesn’t go too soggy. Another favourite is this summer greens salad, with mini roasted new potatoes through it and lots of the new season’s beans. Perfect with char-grilled prawns.

And my barbie tip du jour – try layering yours with dry sticks and hardy herbs like rosemary or thyme, the smoke from the wood and herbs really gets into the meat giving it an extra dimension to the charred flavour. It makes me think of holidays in the south of France. I’m off to get the rosé in the fridge!

 

A gourmet garden at Taste of London

I got terribly excited recently when I got the info through about this year’s Taste of London restaurant festival. A highlight of my June for the last few years, I love going along for an evening of gastronomic excess, trying out all the dishes from restaurants I can’t usually afford to eat at.

Being professionally greedy, I also enjoy meeting and talking to the producers who showcase their food and drinks – it makes my job a whole lot easier to have everything in one place. If you’ve never been before I’d definitely check it out, even last year when the rain was tipping down (ah the glorious British summertime), there was a great atmosphere of ‘we’re going to eat everything anyway’. A sort of Blitz-spirit of gluttony, if you will.

This year they’re launching their Secret Garden – a seriously exclusive hidden enclave where key holders will be treated to demonstrations, masterclasses and Q&As with some of the best UK chefs, including Michel Roux Jr and Theo Randall. It’s also playing host to the Laverstoke Park Farm British Barbecue Championships where 18 of the UK’s biggest chefs will be tossing sausages to try and impress a panel of fancy food critics. I might be cheeky and suggest some of our barbecue recipes…

To be able to enter the Secret Garden you need to a. be super quick and b. click here. Personally I will be begging, borrowing or stealing to get my hands on a key. See you in there!

Go to the Taste of London website here.

 

The Art of Dressing (salads, that is)

My flatmate doesn’t get salad dressings. Great cook though he is, he just can’t be bothered with them. He’ll julienne peppers to within a (quarter) inch of their lives, but when it comes to dressing them, he looks a little helplessly towards the storecupboard until I invariably take over.

I’m pretty sure this inability stems not from a lack of talent, but from a lack of interest. After all, whisking up a salad dressing isn’t exactly the most glamorous of tasks in the kitchen. There’s no flambéing or elaborate pastry-work needed. But I still don’t understand the reticence. For me, salad dressings are probably the most important component of a salad – a collection of simple, unassuming ingredients that can transform even the most depressing lettuce leaf into something memorable and delicious.

A mustard sharp vinaigrette on a little gem lettuce, a salted lemon and dill infusion with cucumber, the honeyed sweetness of balsamic and wholegrain on a ripe tomato – if food’s success is reliant on its balance of flavour, then these combinations are right up there. And the beauty of a well-made dressing is that it also balances the rest of the meal. A slow-cooked pork belly, melting and rich might leave you feeling over-indulged, but add a sharp, bitter salad to it and suddenly the flavours come together.

Like everything with cooking, there are some rules you have to adhere to, in order to achieve success. The first holds true for everything – always season it! I am never without Maldon, but any good sea salt will do, and just a small pinch will lift your dressing hugely.

The basic ratio I use for vinaigrettes (ie, vinegar, mustard and oil) is equal quantities of vinegar and mustard, and about 2-3 times as much oil, then sugar or honey to taste. Always mix the vinegar and mustard together well with the sweetener before slowly whisking in the oil – this will give you that gorgeously thick emulsion you’re aiming for.

And the wonderful things about salad dressings is that you can pretty much make them out of anything. Some of my favourites include:

• A classic French vinaigrette, made with Dijon mustard, white wine vinegar, sugar and oil (not extra virgin). Add finely chopped shallots to this and you’re pretty near perfection.
• Natural yogurt mixed with a couple of tsps of harissa, chopped mint and lemon. Works brilliantly with salads to go with middle Eastern dishes
• A Vietnamese dressing with fish sauce, fresh lime and rice vinegar. The quantities are pretty specific, so click here.
• Balsamic, wholegrain mustard, honey and extra virgin olive oil. This is my go to for all Italian dishes, and is an absolute winner with basil.

So tonight, don’t reach for that sacrilegious bottle of ready-made stuff in the back of your fridge, get your oils and vinegars out and whip up a saucy frenzy. It may not be Blumenthal, but that doesn’t mean it’s not brilliant.

Click here for more salad ideas.

A hidden gem – Dinner at Chez Manny

If there’s one thing London doesn’t lack, it’s restaurants. Everywhere you look there’s another one, from the fine-dining luxury of Mayfair to the spit and sawdust pie shops of the East End, you never have to go far for a meal. This is marvellous in a multicultural, rich-heritage-of-culinary-history sort of way, but it does make it rather hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Talk to any Londoner about eating out and I’ll bet they come up with the same response: ‘We want a good, neighbourhood restaurant, where the food is great and you don’t have to book months in advance.’ I’m no exception to this, and as a South-West Londoner, was eager to accept an invitation to eat at Chez Manny, a French brasserie on Battersea High St.

Owned and and run by Manny himself, with new head chef Jean Yves Guiomar in the kitchen, the place has a relaxed and convivial atmosphere, compounded by the welcome you get from Manny the minute you walk in the door. Exuding Gallic bonhomie, he showed us to our seats as if we were old friends. The décor of the restaurant is simple, clean and modern, but with subtle enough lighting that it doesn’t feel stark. The front side is entirely floor to ceiling glass, which we were told opens up completely in the summer, extending the restaurant onto the cobbled stones of the High St. Very continental.

The menu is one you would expect in a back-street brasserie in Paris. French classics such as snails and duck confit sit with more seasonal specials like wild garlic soup, and everything sounds uncomplicated, and above all, appetising. I kicked off with a homemade terrine, with my friend Will opting for the more robust tartiflette. (I’ll confess I made him order this. Being an ex-chalet girl I’m a massive tartiflette snob and I wanted to see how it would fare…) It fared very well indeed, creamy and cheesy with just the right amount of seasoning. My terrine was also delicious, flecked with pistachio and finer cut than many, which made it all the easier to pile onto some of the best bread I’ve had in ages.

For our main courses I opted for sole meuniere, while, in a somewhat foolhardy error of judgement, Will went for cassoulet, a gut-bustingly filling mixture of Toulouse sausage, confit duck and pork, slow-cooked with haricot beans and topped with toasted breadcrumbs. A traditional French peasant dish, this example was near faultless, although following a tartiflette the sheer quantity (not to mention variety of meat) caused something of a problem, and Will was forced to concede defeat half-way in.

My sole was wonderful, with the right balance between butter and lemon and the fish just flaking and not flabby or overcooked. It was accompanied by glazed carrots and sautéed potatoes, which I found a little heavy – I would have preferred a salad  – but their presentation is definitely more authentic. An iced raspberry parfait for pudding was the perfect palate cleanser after the buttery sole, and despite the groans of over-indulgence, Will still managed to polish off an exemplary crème brulee without too much trouble.

Our meal was washed down with an excellent Languedoc white, with a complexity of flavour that belied the very reasonable price tag. In fact, the wine list in general was great, and Manny is definitely the only Frenchman I’ve met to recommend a new world wine to me!

We came away full, sleepy and definitely a bit heavier, but above all content, and slightly smug in the knowledge that we had indeed found a neighbourhood gem. I will be returning to Chez Manny in the very near future.

Chez Manny , 145-149 Battersea High St, SW11 3JS

020 7223 4040

Readers will receive a 20% discount on their bill if they quote ‘woman&home’ when booking between Sunday to Thursday.

A taste of the exotic

While clearing out my kitchen cupboards in preparation for the big move, I came across a jar of marinated anchovies I brought back from San Sebastian last year. They’re not normal anchovies, they’re sharp sweet, tangy, deeply savoury, melt on your tongue anchovies. One mouthful will transport you instantly to a summer in the Mediterranean, to cool crisp white wine and long lunches under the trees.

It seems rather extraordinary that such an innocuous little fish can do all this, but it really, really can. This is confirmed by the fact that this jar I’ve been saving for a special occasion hasn’t been opened yet  – because no occasion has been special enough. That bottle of vintage Sauternes from my cellar  – that got drunk a few months ago. That case of fantastic wine I’d been collecting was sloshed about at new year, the World’s Best Chocolate was devoured one Friday night. But nothing has induced me to open those anchovies. Bizarre, you might think, but I’m sure you all have something similar tucked away in your kitchen cupboards.

My trip to San Sebastian last year was a week of the most divine gluttony I could have wished for. We gorged ourselves for five days straight, trying everything we could get our hands on, being constantly amazed by the quality of the food we were served. They make rather a fuss of the anchovy over there, to the extent that there’s a whole pintxo (that’s tapas in Basque) bar dedicated to them. They even put them with foie gras (amazing – seriously.) Over the few days I was in San Sebastian I ate more anchovies than anything else, and with each new dish they seemed to get more and more delicious.

This small jar of marinated anchovies brings back every lovely memory I have of that holiday, in all its sun-soaked, greedy glory. And you just can’t get them here. Waitrose do a pretty good version in their deli range, but they’re not quite the same. And I can’t read the ingredients on my jar to recreate them because, well, have you ever tried to read Basque?

I think one of the reasons I’m so reticent to open my jar is that I’m a little scared they won’t taste as good as I remember. We all know that food tastes better according to setting, and I can’t help but worry that even the world’s best anchovies can’t surmount the dreariness of Clapham in January. And I couldn’t bear for my lovely memories to be shattered like that. I’m sure we’ve all done the same – come back from France laden with tins of pâté and dried mushrooms, or smuggled chorizo through customs on the way back from Spain, only to find that after we’ve made a huge fuss about serving it to guests, everyone is mildly disappointed. Perhaps holiday food is best left on holiday.

So for now, my jar of anchovies remains airtight and is coming with me to the new flat. And who knows, maybe on a balmy London summer’s eve I’ll crack them open, and serve them with pickled Spanish peppers, good sourdough and a bottle of ice-cold white, and everything will be as it should. Or maybe I’ll end up sticking them on toast, all alone after a day in the kitchen when I just don’t fancy anything else. Either way, I know they’ll be enjoyed!