Very busy.

Busy eating, obviously.

Here’s a recap with absolutely no worthwhile information but lots of quality food porn from Germany to Glasgow to London to LA to  a secret little garden party in the country.

We’ll start with the phenomenal brunch platters in Berlin, which should be available at all brunching locales around the world.

Same goes for the street markets with fabulous bread and pretzels…

beautifully constructed goat cheese balls with honey and dijon and pink peppercorns…

and not to be forgotten, an enormous hungry Pac-Man masquerading as an orange juice stand.

From Berlin, we travel back in time to an early summer visit to the south of France, complete with trips to the famous weekend markets of Sarlat, famous for foie gras…

and of course, cheese. No visit to France would be complete without serious cheese gorging. And if you get really lucky (by which I mean live through a near-death experience of renting a charming little cottage directly under a gargantuan cliff in imminent danger of falling so your village gets evacuated and your rental agent pulls some strings to have you moved to an honest-to-God baron’s house with a pool, tennis court and caretakers) then you can eat your market cheese in the ‘outdoor lunching’ area below rather than the ‘outdoor dinner’ area.

Apparently, barons must have a different locale for each dining experience, accurately calibrated for the particular time of day and position of sun and attractiveness of view. Speaking of barons, the Rambling Restaurant crew served a feast fit for kings at the Secret Garden Party based on a medieval menu of choches, pottage, and and buttered wortes on trenchers.

Our kings and queens gnawed through a pit-roasted wild boar, encased for hours in a hole with hot rocks and cabbage thanks to the hard work and strong arms of people like Nick, Alice, Sid…

and displayed here by the lovely Liane.

The following picture epitomizes every surreal, magical, dirty, glittery, messy, bizarre, dancey, amazing  moment of this secret party in the countryside.

IreneBean and I also got to enjoy some pop-up coffee perfection at Penny University, the short-term cafe creation of everyone’s favourite world barista champion, Gwilym, and the folks making the magic at Square Mile.

Sipping our way through their coffee tasting menu was like being fed mysterious potions expertly crafted by a mad scientist with bubbles and burners and tubes and quite possibly a magic wand.  Bean is also quite sure we were sitting next to Kiera Knightley.

I got to spend more time with the fam in LA for my cousin Evelyn’s wedding. We tore our way through some of the best restaurants in LA thanks to Yelp! and my friend Marc’s spot-on recommendations (he also makes a mean New England Crab Roll with homemade potato chips).  We had some spectacular dishes at Animal including oxtail poutine, foie gras on a biscuit with maple sausage gravy, ‘buffalo style’ pigs tails, marrow bone with chimichurri, lamb sweetbreads, and the beautiful barbecue pork belly brioche sliders as shown in all their orgasm-inducing glory by Kel.

A close-up to see these melt-in-your-mouth things of beauty in all their magical perfection, along with some kickass slide-off-the-bone ribs.

And some amazing speck and sunnyside up egg breakfast pizza, stuffed into my mouth along with wild boar bacon, some mystifyingly good golden crunchy fried potatoes and mushroom eggs benedict with fennel pollen hollandaise, consumed with big brother and food enjoyment enabler Andy.

Lest you think my summer’s been all baron’s houses, feasts for kings, and secret laboratories, we’ll end with some exciting shots of the most magnificent destination of them all….the SCOTTISH CHIPPIE. Home of chips, cheese and gravy (aka disco chips). That little blob of brown nastiness at the bottom just makes it all more delicious.

How can something so horrifying taste so good? And then, after you’ve eaten a whole box, taste so bad? It only gets better when placed on top of one of Scotland’s greatest treasures…the deep fried and battered pizza. Oh, the glory of pizza crunch.

Forget houses of aristocracy and secret parties and coffee contraptions. That’s magic, right there.

I always wish I had access to a table large enough to seat 20 of my best friends around it for an epic dinner party. I still haven’t managed to acquire such a table or a room large enough to put it in, but I got a taste of what it might be like at a great event last night called the Hub Feast.  It’s a potluck and a dinner party,  a chance to meet great people and talk about all sorts of cool food things, and an opportunity to make an unnecessary amount of insanely indulgent peanut butter cream cheese-frosted cupcakes.  What more could you ask for?

The event took place at one of the Hubs:  a network of beautifully designed office/event/social spaces for members and their guests to work, meet, connect,  innovate, and more, located as close as Islington (the first one) and as far as Bombay and Sao Paulo. I’ve visited the gorgeous wood-beamed and exposed brick-walled Hub King’s Cross a few times to meet with our friends at Hide & Seek and so was excited to return for one of their monthly community feasts, described as follows:

The programme of Feasts for 2010 is well under way now and this month, we’ll be looking at Guerilla Food. Across London, there are people running underground restaurants, growing things in weird and wonderful places, cooking in unpredictable locations and using food in ways previously not explored. If you want to meet these people and find out a bit more about what they’re up to, we invite you to come along.

As always, you can expect to sit next to people who love food, cooking it, talking about it and most of all, eating it. So bring both an open mind and a dish to share to eat with people that love all things food. An informal evening with a very loose agenda, we hope to create a feast where conversation about food, life, love and everything in between, can flow freely.

We’ve been chatting with the lovely Hub folks including Holly, Alex, Lucy, and Eleanor about doing some events, so they invited us down to chat about Rambling Restaurant and underground supper clubs and all things delicious and exciting.  It all sounded like  pretty much like my ideal evening, so Sarah, foodrambler and I baked up a storm of lemon curd meringue roulades and several batches of the most insanely deliciously orgasmic Banana Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting.

A quick aside on these cupcakes: I’d recommend you don’t click that recipe. In all seriousness…it will haunt your dreams. The banana cupcakes are very good; the peanut butter cream cheese frosting will bring you to your knees in pure tastebud joy.  The sublime happiness is only slightly marred by the guilty knowledge that the peanut butter (fat) plus cream cheese (fat) plus salted butter (fat) plus icing sugar in this frosting  is probably at work hardening your arteries as soon as the  cupcake crosses your lips and the smile crosses your face.  However,  keep in mind that all this tasty fat and sugar are calories that humans are genetically hardwired to love. This means it is not my fault when I eat gargantuan mounds of the frosting piped onto cupcakes (dangerous), slathered onto apples (healthy!), spread onto bananas (still good!), licked off of several kitchen tools (not so much) and then, finally, by the unabashedly deliberate spoonful.  I guarantee you will do the same. Blame biology.

But back to the feasting – it was a lovely evening of meeting, chatting, and of course, lots of eating. We went around the table and introduced ourselves so everyone got to see who was there and their cool projects and organizations and affiliations. I had great conversations about cooking and food spaces with Holly from Food Stuff and talked sustainable food development with some great people from Forum for the Future and saw but didn’t get enough time to chat with Chris from the Real Bread Campaign.  Meanwhile I ate fresh bread, hummous, spicy ginger carrot beetroot salad, Spanish omelette, flapjacks, apple crumble, spinach and strawberry salad, couscous, roasted vegetables, and so much more.  One of my favorite dishes was an amazing wait-a-minute-this-is-vegan?-you-must-be-joking leek pie made by a really nice guy named Alessio, whom I tackled after dinner to express my delight in his dish and ask his secret. Apparently, it’s soy cream. Don’t worry, it’s not actually a secret.

It was a wonderful occasion to meet a lot of creative, friendly, interesting people, all equally in love with food and cooking and community and eating.  I’m excited for the next one.  You can come along too, but only if you promise to take home some cupcakes so I don’t have to.  I still have some leftover frosting in the fridge and it is calling to me to come eat it with a big spoon…

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/04/29/community-feasting-and-the-best-cupcake-frosting-you-may-ever-put-in-your-mouth/feed/ 3 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/04/29/a-night-of-moulin-rouge-at-the-rambling-restaurant/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/04/29/a-night-of-moulin-rouge-at-the-rambling-restaurant/#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:43:16 +0000 mei http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=3229

Welcome to the Moulin Rouge Ramble, a dimly lit den of cabaret, cake  & corsets that popped up on Great Windmill Street a few weeks ago.  Hosted by the amazing word-of-mouth agency 1000heads, decorated by the creative visionary Ali O’Malley, and captured on film by the fantastically talented Mark, it was quite the evening to remember…as long as you didn’t down too many absinthe cocktails.

Come check out Mark’s amazing photos of our ephemeral Parisian creation filled with candlelit erotic poetry, beef bourguignon,  fishnet stockings and freeflowing champagne…

I tell you no lies when I mention the freeflowing champagne, generously supplied by the astonishingly accommodating, friendly, and up-for-anything folks at 1000heads.  Lined up in the soaring foyer of their Soho office building were dozens of champagne flutes, ready to welcome our diners who had solved mysterious clues of translation and location to turn up cabaret-clad in front of the Windmill Club for a night of adventure.

More meals should involve top hats and feathers.

All that week, we’d cooked and cleaned and baked and transported and decorated, up to the very last minute. Below, we add last-minute touches while the dancers practice their burlesque routines.

Thankfully, our dedicated team had everything looking spectacular by the time everyone arrived.

The Rambling Restaurant was lucky to have the most dedicated and gorgeous team of corseted and feathered servers from 1000heads, including the wonderful Lauren, Lisa, Donna, Gemma, Nicola, Sam, and even more who pitched in to hang curtains, wash dishes, move tables and boxes and abandon their desk and office space to our bizarre activities.  Below, Lauren and Lisa begin to take the cornichons and carrot salad out to be served with crusty baguettes & butter and foodrambler‘s delicious pork rillettes.

The large flatscreen television gives away our boardroom-as-kitchen, from which we served and stewed our three course meal.

Here foodrambler and I spoon up slow-cooked beef stew with parsley cream sauce. While I loved the earthy combination of wine and spices in the bourguignon, it doesn’t make for the prettiest presentation.  That was one of the many lessons we learned while serving 140 eaters over 2 nights, as well as very important ones on keeping food hot and timely for people.  Just as foodrambler flambéed about 25  saucepans of beef that made her kitchen erupt in flames, we jumped straight into the fire for this dining challenge and learned a lot about what worked and what didn’t as we went along that will be valuable for future events.  Most useful information learned: how to rock a corset-apron combination.  So much wisdom gained over this experience.

Back in the satin-draped dining room, people showed off their masks and moustaches…

and displayed their amazing handmade Moulin Rouge themed hats (well done Ailbhe)…

and talked and ate and admired the decorations…

…and participated in a fancy dress competition led by the deliciously scandalous poet Abi Palmer…

…and even found love at the Moulin Rouge.

But mostly, I think, they drank….

and drank…

…and drank.

We certainly contributed by handing out a very strong absinthe cocktail that we called the Drunken Fairy, but is generally known as Death In The Afternoon. Judging by the feedback from some aching heads the next day, it’s pretty apparent why.

I acknowledge I had quite a strong hand with the absinthe from Liqueurs de France …

but it’s much more fun to blame it all on Nicola the Green Fairy.

Some of my favorite photos of the evenings are of the favorite people I met, including the shot of this laughing lady…

and this adorable photo of our sexy dancers, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bangs. I only wish I had been hardcore enough to go out dancing with them till 6am like some impressive people I know.

Even if you don’t go clubbing with dancers in fishnets, you at least need to fit in a photo shoot in front of the Windmill Club.

Before our late night marathon dancing and cleaning sessions, we ended with a very sticky Moulin Rouge Velvet cake. I loved foodrambler’s chocolate fishnet stockings, threatening to slide off the tilting cake into a pool of buttery frosting madness.  I cut the red velvet cake into shocking scarlet slices that looked insane but tasted damn good.

And of course, everything tastes better with birthday candles.

Thanks a million to everyone involved. For more on the event, check out blog posts by foodrambler and 1000heads.

All photos copyright by Mark, except the last one from 1000heads.

Imagine a world where your bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich comes in one surprising multitextured bite of  Essence of BLT. Where Death of Elvis is a completely bizarre and completely delectable mouthful of  solid yet somehow softly melting banana, peanut butter, nutella and jam.  Where the cheese never seems to end and where the wine flows like the water dripping from the ceiling…

It sounds like Wonderland, but don’t be fooled by the 7 foot tall cross-dressing Alice in spectacularly tall heels opening the door. It’s 99, a pop-up restaurant run by friends Whetham and Dave, who have combined their impressive and inventive artistic, hosting, and culinary talents to create a spectacular and stomach-busting evening of performance, gastronomy and often a topsy-turvy combination of the two.

I was honored to be invited along to help out in the kitchen on the final night of 99′s first run. Donning pristine chef’s whites in the kitchen of their Victorian mansion in Hackney, I joined chefs Dave and Hugo to whip, dip, bread,  layer, chop, and see the magic happen behind the scenes.

I sailed into the kitchen late in the afternoon with much of the prep and difficult work already done so I jumped straight in  helping to prepare some venison scotch eggs. Dave had already made a venison sausage mixture and soft-boiled eggs and my job was to dip and encase in bread crumbs, dip and encase. All the better to deep fry with. Mmm. I’m quite excited to make these on my own sometime soon.

Here’s a glimpse of Hugo’s pop art plated version, with a shockingly green wild garlic sauce, sliced radishes, and some sort of tasty mayonnaise.

And now sliced open to reveal the precisely timed, perfectly joyfully oozy soft-boiled egg within…

I also did a bit of whipping. Specifically, I beat some cream into shape and talked some sense into some egg whites as well for a gorgeous layered syllabub of rhubarb essence, ginger biscuit, chocolate shavings, and other colorful delights.  A saucy dessert combined with a saucy faced waiter, post-Alice costume change.

Some amazing dishes I had absolutely nothing to do with – the aforementioned Essence of BLT, made up of a stack of secret ingredients in all sorts of flavors and textures.  I’ll give you a hint: there was lots of bacon fat involved. The pictures just don’t do this surprising mouthful justice, so we’ll move onto the third dish (after the BLT amuse bouche and the meal-in-itself Scotch egg)  the sweetcorn veloute with chorizo foam: a steaming hot shot of creaminess with a rich meaty plop of chorizo infusion on top.

Lest you think the diners were anywhere close to done, up next came the squid ink risotto made from a deep reddish and minerally seafood stock, stirred lovingly by Hugo…

…and served up with a smile by a mysterious man clad in pink and green.

He wasn’t the only one waiter in a fabulous outfit – I enjoyed chatting with the stunningly talented costumier Nicholas Immaculate in pink puffs and pads and pleats below.

Things got a little unexpected with the next dish: a cold celery sorbet topped with a spritz of walnut foam. Being a bit of a celery detester, I figured I wouldn’t particularly like a cold mouthful of celery flavor, but tried it anyway out of curiousity. Verdict: icy cold celery is only marginally better than regular terrible celery. But even my least favorite vegetable is improved with a blanket of walnut foam and a pretty tile to rest upon.

As if everyone wasn’t already stuffed full of food, then came…the main course. I’m not even kidding. Smoked breast of pigeon, a square of sinfully rich celeriac dauphinoise, and black salt-sprinkled, butter-bathed baby turnips with a stripe of red wine reduction and an accompanying squeeze of garlic sauce.

The twenty-odd diners all seemed ecstatically happy, although I’m surprised they could even move out of their chairs. I didn’t take this picture, but I think it captures the general celebratory atmosphere of the 99 dining room, deluged with a gastronomic tidal wave. 

Of course, this epicurean adventure (with matched wines!) wouldn’t be complete without sweets. And not just one, or two, but THREE desserts were to be had, including the lovely layered syllabubs from the beginning and the homemade Jaffa cakes below.

And then came the insanely addictive little morsels of mini heart attacks on a plate – Dave’s Death of Elvis creation featuring an unidentified powder that isn’t an illegal addictive substance but might as well be.  Here he is holding a tray of his dangerous weapons of culinary delight, a single bite of structurally composed banana, nutella, peanut butter, and jam. I do honestly think he might have been trying to kill everyone with the gluttonous orgy of food.

Because then…then came the cheese. Not just any cheese. A theatrically displayed, rope-and-pulley-raised, antique cupboard-housed, ceremonially lowered array of Neal’s Yard masterpieces including some of the most enormous hunks of Colston Bassett Stilton, Montgomery Cheddar, Stichelton, and Waterloo I’ve ever seen outside a cheese shop.  One might call these cheeses the pride of Britain and rightly so.

Somehow the diners remained upright and chatting rather than bursting at the seams. I’m not quite sure how, given the mammoth proportions of food served at 99 that evening. And in fact, something did in fact burst at the seams – the kitchen ceiling at about 3am in the morning, due to a bit of a watery incident from earlier in the day. Thank god it didn’t happen during service. But I do think it’s only appropriate, and yes it has to be said – it’s one of the few home-cooked meals I’ve ever eaten that actually deserved to bring the house down. Congrats Dave, Whetham, and Hugo on a job well done.

For more information, visit the 99delights website.

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/04/15/almost-99-bottles-of-wine-on-the-wall-and-nearly-99-courses-to-follow/feed/ 3 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/03/06/doesnt-everyone-spend-saturday-and-sunday-nights-in-the-kitchen-the-deadpan-entree-smackdown/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/03/06/doesnt-everyone-spend-saturday-and-sunday-nights-in-the-kitchen-the-deadpan-entree-smackdown/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:29:08 +0000 irene http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=2790 We on the Deadpan/Ithaca FamilyStyles Team – you know, that ruggedly good-looking bunch – always love a little bit of competition. You can usually find us going to war with Bananagrams, settling Catan with all the imperial zeal of Cortez or Columbus himself, or quizzing each other on random yet seemingly important information (think real-life Sporcle): name as many pokemon as you can! List the members of the nightshade family! Extoll the virtues of kosher salt! You get the idea.

So, it was only natural that when it came down to figuring out an entree for our first Deadpan event, we decided to compete for it, with a facebook event, scorecards, and of course, hours upon hours in the kitchen. Once again taking advantage of Hilary’s generosity and five-burner Electrolux stove, we went to work.

I’d say each one of us totally and completely brought it. Pictures and results after the jump!

Daniel started the evening off strong with an oxtail and beef tongue stew done two ways (!). The first incarnation was served hot with baby spinach and horseradish mash, adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsall’s Meat cookbook.

The mash was delightful, and the meat extremely tender, having cooked in red wine for upwards of four hours. The second incarnation was served cold, in jelly form, with baby spinach on a bit of toast – we served an adaptation of this dish as an amuse bouche for Deadpan’s opening events:

The next contender, Amin, wowed us with a recipe adapted from Charlie Trotter’s latest. You may have seen it on the table, sampled it yourself, and subsequently wondered why on earth anyone would ever eat unwhipped goat cheese. This salad featured wilted arugula, walnuts, wine-braised figs, whipped goat cheese with shallots, brined and panfried chicken, and arugula and spinach puree:

And a close-up, to better tantalize you with:

Next, Irene put together a dish featuring the unfailingly good Momofuku fried chicken with octo-vinaigrette, miso-butter whipped potatoes and an impromptu slaw. You may be wondering, “isn’t there bacon in this dish? Could Irene really have served anything without some form of pork included?” The answers, of course, are yes, and no (respectively). The slaw, made up of green and red cabbage and tart granny smith apples, also included bacon, which added a subtle but hearty and obscenely fatty touch.

Here’s the whole dish together:

Finally, Max showcased both his skills and endurance with his sauerbraten dish. A German-style spice-marinated pot roast, sauerbraten is extremely flavorful and tender. This tasty friend was paired with traditional bacon and red-wine braised red cabbage and pan-fried spaetzl (dumplings):

Need just one more peek? Okay:

After much wine, food, and general delight, the four of us got down to business with our scorecards. The winner, as many of you know, was Amin’s delicious chicken and arugula salad, which proved a hit at our opening events, but Daniel, Max and Irene came close. Maybe we’ll see them make a comeback at our next entree smackdown. In the meantime, look out for some recipes from this and other Deadpan events, and our newest menu developments!

Let’s talk about the menu. Since we’re new at this whole restaurant thing, we haven’t really figured out how to simultaneously serve a secret supper and photodocument it, so bear with us on the pictures!

We started with a red wine oxtail and beef tongue stew, served as chilled, jelly hemispheres, with a layer of homemade Momofuku pickles on a toasted baguette round.

Probably the most challenging dish of the evening, our tongue-and-tail amuse bouche was cast in a mold designed and cut by Amin. Pretty cool, huh? We value the use of all parts of the animals we eat, and wanted our guests to do the same. To our surprise and delight, nobody tried to escape the event while we described this dish, and everyone cleaned their plate! On a side note, those pickles are so addictive and delicious – definitely at the top of my these-are-so-easy-to-make-i’ll-never-buy-them-again list.

For our starter, we served the dish that has been our pride, joy, and near-undoing for the last several months: pork belly with butternut squash polenta. Cured for two days in a mix of brown sugar, sea salt, cinnamon, cloves, star anise and black pepper, and then braised for upwards of three hours in a pot of chicken stock and Delirium Tremens (famed as the best beer in the world), this local pork from Autumn’s Harvest Farm is tender, buttery, and melts in your mouth. The butternut squash polenta is cooked on the stovetop and then baked (or is it fried?) on cast iron with a lot of butter. We made our sauce out of a reduction of the braising liquid and some Cornell Orchards cider. This isn’t actually the pork belly we served, but an earlier incarnation that looks mostly alike:

We also served some cider mulled with the same spice mix that we cured the belly with. Still with us, even through the bad flash photography? Our other three dishes, after the jump…

Our third dish was a palate cleanser: quenelles (a.k.a. football shaped lumps, originally and traditionally made of meats or fish, but now just any mushy substance) of fresh grape sorbet. We seeded, peeled, and pureed the grapes, then added lemon juice and simple syrup, and stirred in crushed dry ice. Voila! Sorbet. Pretty cool. Sadly, no pictures this time around, but we’ll do a recipe post soon enough!

Our main was a wilted arugula salad with walnuts and figs, surrounded by brined, pan-fried chicken breast, graced by a quenelle of goat cheese whipped with shallots. I’m never eating normal, non-whipped, no-shallot goat cheese again.

That green puree you see is a mixture of spinach and arugula, and has a wonderful, tangy bite. Did we competitively squeezee-bottle it into our mouths in the kitchen after the dinner was over? Maybe. Here’s a closeup of the entree.

Finally, we served a dessert of chocolate torte over crisp madeleine biscuit with chocolate ganache, raspberry coulis, and earl grey-infused whipped cream. Best at room temperature, torte is flourless and crazy-rich. The photos speak for themselves.

All in all, it was a beautiful two nights. Our guests were gracious and generous, we didn’t have any major disasters in the kitchen, we didn’t break any dishes, and dinner-table conversation didn’t lull once (lulz). Thank you to everyone who joined us. Here are some final action shots!

Irene, interrupted while considering a bed of very green and flavorful arugula while trying to pretend she’s not drinking a milkshake during dinner preparations.

Daniel and Amin, straining cider through a cheesecloth.

Max, performing some classic gesticulations while describing a dish.

Daniel, laughing at the sheer volume of dishes to be done.

Can’t wait for the next event!

Hilarious. Say hello to the squirty cream and a slice of sweet potato pie.  But wait, dessert first? Nothing wrong with that, but let’s rewind a bit to cover this Southern-inspired feast from the beginning. Sadly, I failed to take photos of the slices of warm cornbread with chunks of sweet corn and a dusting of paprika. You’ll just have to imagine them stacked in cute little baskets and served with pretty rounds of colorful green, red, and yellow jalapeno-chile butter.

Next up, shared ramekins of creamy mac & cheese with a crunchy cheddar and ciabatta breadcrumb topping, served up baked, browned, and bubbling.

The main course was a stomach stuffing plate of pulled pork with homemade barbecue sauce on freshly baked rolls, dirty rice (made satisfyingly, mouthwateringly dirty with chicken livers sauteed in the trinity of green pepper, celery, and onion), and a light lemony cole slaw.

We had an extreme overabundance of pulled pork, which is never a bad thing, although this picture’s a bit extreme. WARNING: GRATUITOUS PULLED PORK PICTURE AHEAD.

I had fun playing mad scientist with all the spices and condiments in foodrambler’s kitchen to make the sauce.  Despite doing my best to write down the ingredients as I sprinkled, stirred, splashed and tasted, I completely failed to get a coherent recipe on paper.  If you don’t care about measurements or timing, here’s sort of what it looked like:

An Extremely Inexact Barbecue Sauce Recipe

What You Need:

2 onions
2 cloves garlic
2 jalapenos
splash of vegetable oil
2 cans chopped tomatoes
maybe a 1 and 1/2 cup of cider vinegar
about a 1/2 cup of honey
maybe 1/2 cup of brown sugar
a few tablespoons english mustard
a looooooong squirt of ketchup
a splash of orange juice
a few shakes of chili flakes
some sprinkles of paprika
white pepper
black pepper
salt
umm…I’m forgetting stuff…oh well.

What You Do:

1. Saute onions, garlic, jalapenos in the oil until soft.

2.   Chuck in everything else.  Let it cook and reduce and thicken a bit. Play around with it. Taste, taste, taste. Add more of whatever if necessary.

3. Pour over your shredded and pulled pork and let simmer on the stove even more until tender as hell. Yum.

After this major carb load of cornbread, macaroni, rolls and rice along with a heaping scoop of pulled pork, most of our guests were suffering from serious Southern food coma. Which meant it was time to pull out our two intense sugar bomb desserts.

Option 1:  Sweet Potato Pie with a florette of Squirty Cream and a gentle snowfall of nutmeg.

Option Two: A delectably tacky and addictively delicious Pineapple Upside-Down Cake with canned pineapple and glace cherries from the twisted genius mind of Sara.

Just like my imaginary Southern grandma used to make.  I can just imagine her whipping out this beauty as we sip sweet tea (with generous shots of bourbon) in the gazebo under the magnolia trees and gossip about the neighbors.  Syrupy, sticky sweet and superb.

And in case you’re wondering, that plate was licked clean before you could say ‘Oh Grandma, I couldn’t possibly eat another bite.’

Hooray! It’s time for another Rambling Restaurant Singles Night featuring an aphrodisiac dinner, so you know things are bound to get hot.  Particularly when you have five people in a veryverycozy kitchen and have fresh bread baking in the oven, a giant vat of soup bubbling on the stove, and ten large pork loins popping and fizzing boiling oil all over the place.

Really. Hot. Temperatures. Luckily, there was also a dining room full of really hot people (yes yes, as in extremely attractive) all mixing and mingling on the other side of the curtain.  To get their taste buds primed and hearts racing, we served four courses featuring ingredients thought to have aphrodisiac qualities.  Of course, both dessert courses featured what is inarguably the most guaranteed aphrodisiac of them all – a large quantity of alcohol. Which is how we started the night as well, with glasses of passionfruit, raspberry and rosebud fizz.

Each cocktail came with a little tag marked with a suit denoting where to sit for your first table, along with some silly icebreaker questions inside to spark conversation or incite passionate debate.  Our eleven brave men and eleven brave women scattered amongst four tables to wait for these shiny happy braids of dough…

…to toast to perfection into these lovely browned plaits with a soft and fluffy white interior.

Ripped into chunks wafting thin trails of steam, these rolls dipped and dived  into large bowls of rich and creamy Jerusalem Artichoke soup, garnished with a swirl of hazelnut pesto, a flourish of extra virgin olive oil and a twist of crushed black pepper.  My apologies for the blinding glare of reflective soup.

While soup was seductively sipped, Michelle and I played with the searing loins. Seriously, that joke kept us entertained throughout the entire dinner service. She and Sarah had busted their asses stuffing and assembling the pork loins over the last few hours and the marscarpone, sage, asparagus, and pancetta – filled rolls were works of art.

Take the pork loin, pound it furiously, and lay it out on a flat surface. Line up your fresh ingredients in a narrow strip lengthwise about two inches in from the edge.

Roll the flattened loin into a narrow tube, keeping the pile of ingredients towards the center, and secure with an array of torturesome looking toothpicks.

And then…ta-da! A beautiful, colorful, and flavorful cross-section of meat, vegetable, and cheese. It’s like all your  essential dietary needs in one satisfying bite.

Sear the loins (don’t be restrained here – make it hot and fiery!) for a minute or so on each side until lightly browned, then wack them into the oven until your desired level of doneness.

We served the pretty little meat spirals (prettier in person, I promise) with gravy, roasted potatoes, and a wilted spinach and toasted pine nut salad with a red wine-honey-english mustard dressing.

Following the main course, it was time for more table switching, more new friends, and of course, more food.  For dessert, we served a fantastic find of Sarah’s called a St. Valentine’s Syllabub – an old school English pudding, popular from the 16th-19th century, consisting of heavy cream, lemon, brandy, white wine, sugar, and…some other stuff.  Since the cream required a lot of arm action to whip and solidify, I handed the bowl over to the lone male in the kitchen and instructed him to ‘beat it until you get a bulky whiteness.’

Uh. Oops. Sexual innuendo so thick you could scoop it with a spoon.  And layer it with toasted almonds, juicy red raspberries, and top it with a tuile biscuit heart (in my defense, ‘bulky whiteness’ is exactly what you’re aiming for in the recipe. I did not make that up).

Such adorable tuile hearts, just the right consistency to break or crush or stomp into pieces, as foodrambler said. However, we should also remember that hearts can jiggle and wiggle, bewitch and bewilder, and they can most certainly intoxicate.  Especially when served as a Glow-In-The-Heart Gin & Tonic Jelly, as molded by the fabulously inventive jellymonger duo of Bompas & Parr.

Under normal light, it’s an architecturally impressive jello mold that packs the wallop of  a silky smooth G&T in one cool and condensed mouthful. Way classier than a cherry red gelatinous mess of jello shot in a Dixie cup.

But it gets so much cooler. Just add blacklight and it glows! It’s like magic! Especially after ingesting many spoonfuls of gin-soaked jello!

We gave one to each table to share and then split another one behind the scenes. And then another. By then, things were starting to get a bit hazy.

Which meant, time to head off to the pub!  A Rambling Restaurant Singles Night would never be complete without a proper visit to the pub.  At which point this story must end. Can’t give away any secrets! You’ll just have to come along next time…

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/02/16/a-rambling-aphrodisiac-dinner-complete-with-searing-loins-and-gin-tonic-jelly/feed/ 6 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/01/28/salt-pepper-and-reckless-abandon-a-lovely-evening-at-a-brand-new-underground-london-restaurant/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/01/28/salt-pepper-and-reckless-abandon-a-lovely-evening-at-a-brand-new-underground-london-restaurant/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:16:33 +0000 mei http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=2688

Salt, pepper, and reckless abandon? Sounds just like my kind of evening.

The adorable setting above, complete with handmade British napkin, comes courtesy of Lex of LexEat, the kitchen mistress of a brand new London underground restaurant. I love underground restaurants/ secret suppers because you never know what you’re going to get. It’s a bit of the surprising and unexpected from the culinary and creative mind of someone who cares enough to prepare a whole meal, or rather, a whole dining experience for you and your new friends for the evening.  This secret supper from a few weeks ago was a secret supper done right, an excellent meal with great company and all sorts of additional little touches to make a fantastic evening.

A perfect example is this lovely little plate below. Not only is it pretty, but it’s accompanied by an charmingly handwritten menu and even more importantly, topped with homemade orange pepper tortelli.

Casual yet well-designed, carefully thought out yet seemingly effortless – that’s pretty much how the whole night went.  We sat next to some great people and chatted food, games, and travel over multiple bottles of wine.

What else did we eat? I’ll let the tablecloth (tablepaper?) tell you.

Yum. I can certainly take on an organic roast loin of lamb with reckless abandon. Here’s what it looked like, in some romantic (i.e. overly dark) lighting.

Classic, well-executed, and mighty tasty. But the real excitement came after even more wine and discussion, when the desserts came out. Yes, that’s dessertS as in plural: first, a Chinese soup spoon of lemongrass coconut sorbet which you can see below alongside my individually patterned cloth napkin (I’ll be honest, I was sad I didn’t get the pirate one, but I was quite impressed by the effort all the same).

You can tell by the state of the tablepaper that I did some splopping during the evening. And then, an assiette of desserts:  a bite of fudgy chocolate brownie, a square of luscious lemon tart, and best of all, a fantastic rosewater Turkish Delight cheesecake topped with pomegranate candy floss.

I felt like some poor fuzzy Jim Henson creation or Sesame Street character was shaved from head to toe for this tray of pale pink explosions.

But fret not, my dear muppet friend.  The loss of your fluffy pastel pelt was not in vain. The pomegranate threads dissolved in a sugary sweetness on a cushion of rosewater creaminess in an unusual and highly addictive combination.

The beautiful apartment, an open multi-level loft with criss-crossing M.C. Escher staircases in an old brick school building, was an ideal setting for a long, wine-soaked dinner. From the upstairs loft, a photo of our table complete with a well-timed embrace.

Fantastic decor – colorful posters from the London Transport Museum that I now plan to purchase, an old-fashioned record player spinning in the corner, shelves of well-designed and highly covetable objects, windowsills filled with interior flower boxes, vintage ladders stacked with cookbooks and plants  – it was so lovely I hated to leave.  But alas, the night finally ended and we all poured out the door.

Thanks to Lex and our fabulous, funny, warm and welcoming waitress and co-hostess Yohanna for a wonderful night. If you have any muppet fur left over, send it my way…

At the last Rambling Restaurant of 2009, we served a trio of richly colored dips – chickpea hummous, beetroot hummous, and carrot cumin dip. So pretty in pink.

For maximum dippability, we prepared straight-out-of-a-hot-oven-and-onto-the-grill flatbreads. Take Moro flatbread recipe (recipe below), multiply by 15 (eek!) and you have a lot of steaming hot fresh bread  in your future. Also a lot of rolling pin action. Stop whining, it’s good for the arm muscles.

I know making your own bread for a meal sounds thoroughly unrealistic, but this pita-like bread only needs about 20 minutes to sit. This means you can take about five minutes to make the dough, let it sit while you chop vegetables or prepare something else, and have WOW-YOU’RE-AMAZING homemade bread to accompany your meal. Even if it’s only yourself you’re impressing, it’s totally worth it. Especially when you fold it over and stuff it with sauteed spinach and halloumi cheese and roasted eggplant and other such delights.

We followed up the onslaught of foldable starch and pretty bowls of mush with a Turmeric Lime Chili Chicken over a Roasted Eggplant, Pomegranate Seed, Scallion, Parsley, Mint, Tomato Fattoush with a dollop of Cumin Yogurt Sauce. It’s a lot of ingredients that somehow all work in symbiotic grace to produce a happy mouthful of amazing.

But a discussion of odd-sounding ingredients that don’t really seem like they’d work together but actually will blow your mind would not be complete without Chef foodrambler‘s dessert: Orange Blossom Almond Polenta Cake with Coriander Syrup.  You might not think you like coriander, but I DARE you not to like this cake. I like this cake so much I am actually going to make it right now for a Christmas Eve Day Brunch.  I also like you enough to show you this pretty picture which does no justice to the rich, moist, exotically sweet and just a touch of spicy cake perfection.

Garnish with a twist of orange, a sprig of cilantro, and a spoonful of honeyed syrup with dots of coriander seeds.  Staring at this picture makes me very happy that this cake is only several hours in my future.  For those of you gluten-free people out there (sis Irene Bean is testing out a potential gluten allergy),  this cake is made with polenta and not flour. Woohoo!

Now go find yourself some cake too. Happy holidays!

Moro Flatbread

What You Need:

1 cup flour
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp dried yeast
a bit less than 1/2 a cup lukewarm water
1 tbsp olive oil

NOTE: this amount makes about four small-plate size flatbreads, enough for one very very hungry carb fiend like me, or two normal people. Multiply appropriately depending on your eating party’s level of carbophilia.

What You Do:

1. Mix the flour and salt in a big bowl and activate the yeast in the water, if necessary.

2. Slowly pour the water and yeast into the flour and incorporate by hand. Once all the liquid has been mixed in, punch the dough around for a few minutes. If it’s too sticky, add a bit more flour. Add the oil and keep kneading until you have a single ball of dough with a relatively smooth texture and a bit shiny with oil.

3. Let sit, covered with a damp tea towel, for about 20 minutes.

4. Pull off small balls, larger than a golf ball but smaller than a tennis ball, and roll them out to your desired thickness onto a sturdy floured surface. A good rolling pin is handy here, but floured wine bottles work just as well.  We decided to go super-thin at Rambling Restaurant, but I like the thick and fluffy kind too.

5. Once the dough has been rolled out, you can either put them on a lightly floured baking tray or a lightly oiled pan. At RR, we decided to do both – stick it in a hot oven until they puff up and lose their wet doughy sheen, then finish off on a griddle pan for some tasty brownedness. Either way is delicious.

6.  Cook until puffy, browned, and yearning to jump into your mouth. Dip in something tasty and pat yourself on the back for having produced your very own homemade bread. That is, if your hands aren’t busy tearing apart your creation and stuffing it in your mouth.

like you enough to leave you with a picture so you can start drooling yourself.