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!

Beautiful Thing #1: The view of the River Tyne, including the Tyne Bridge and the Millenium Bridge, from the Viewing Box of the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.

And the reverse view of the BALTIC, an old flour mill, from the Millenium Bridge. If you happen to be anywhere near Newcastle, go see Damien Hirst’s fascinating exhibition Pharmacy and marvel at the view.

Beautiful Thing #2: The plum tart from the charming and brand new six-week-old BUEE Cafe and Bistro at Side Cinema.  I actually didn’t eat it; we went for the pecan pie and the raspberry cheesecake baked by the chef-husband of the proprietor-wife instead – more on that in a bit – but it’s a thing of beauty all the same.

Beautiful Thing #3: The goat cheese and roasted vegetable pizzaiola from Cafe Royal, a gem of a cafe amidst the shops of the city centre featuring artisanal bread from their own bakery.

So much to see in Newcastle and so much to eat! Let’s take a closer look at our two exciting foodie finds…

I say it all the time – one of my favorite things about traveling is the opportunity to search out unique or local or independent or just plain good places to eat.  Sometimes it requires Googling or Yelp searches or asking locals for recommendations or wandering around in hungry desperation.  Other times you just get lucky.  Chris and I arrived in Newcastle mid-morning, dropped off our bags at the hotel, headed up to what seemed like the busiest area full of high street shops and chain stores and shopping malls, bypassed a few Prets and Subways and McDonalds, and then just got lucky.

Any time I stumble onto a place with an award-winning bread display like this, I consider myself in luck.

I wish I had written down some of the surprising and unusual flavors – I recall a loaf with lemon and one with raisins and something else intriguing – but more so, I wish I had bought a loaf (or five) to bring home with me.

Since I didn’t have an army or family to feed, I got only the veggie pizzaiola, piled high with roasted peppers, eggplant, squash, caramelized onions, and even a large slice of fennel, as well as the most enormous slice of goat cheese topped with a twist of black pepper. I almost thought it might be too much goat cheese for me to eat at once. Obviously, it wasn’t. Who am I kidding sometimes?

The cafe was bright and airy, adorned with stacks of jewel-toned jam and jelly jars, sugar-sprinkled pastries, and shelves of cute ceramics I would like to own, including an adorable mug that says ’silly sausage.’ I am having severe non-buyer’s regret at the moment.

After a fast and furious day and night and following day of game designing and game running, we celebrated with a walk around the city, venturing over the Tyne to the BALTIC and back over the Millennium Bridge. I dragged Chris back to BUEE Cafe, which we had noticed just around the corner from our hotel.  Having passed by what seemed like an endless supply of nearly identical chain restaurants, I was drawn by the cozy and casual vibe of the small storefront despite the fluorescent gleam of the kebab shop-style refrigerated display.

The menu left us with some difficult choices. Cumberland sausage and mash or pork belly? Gnocchi with basil sauce or Northumbrian steak? We decided to start with potatoes and raclette. Crispy potatoes smothered in a blanket of good cheese will never fail.

I ended up going for the coq au vin with mushrooms, roasted vegetables, and bacon and also ended up eating some of Chris’s excellent steak with onions in red wine sauce.

I loved the illustrations of Newcastle on the walls, the old school ceiling fixtures, the local beer, the charming waitress,  and the effusively friendly Canadian owner. We didn’t get to meet her husband, but we did get to meet his raspberry cheesecake and his pecan praline tart. Enough of an introduction for me to think we could be great friends.  I also loved my cute and comfy window seat in the corner.

If you happen to find yourself in Newcastle any time soon, go to the BALTIC, the cafe, and the bistro.  And buy me a silly sausage mug.  And while you’re at it, a loaf of bread. And a slice of plum tart. Pretty please?

Cafe Royal
8 Nelson Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 5AW
+44 (0191) 231 3000

Cafe-Bistro Buee
1-3 Side
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 3JE, UK
+44 (0191) 231 4080

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.’

Most Fast-Food Per Person and Other Food Facts [Daily Yonder] – some cool maps of eating habits across the U.S.

How Eating Grass-Fed Beef Could Help Fight Climate Change [TIME] – that’s as self-explanatory a title as you can get.

Behind the Organic Pasture Rule at the USDA [Chewswise]  – a blog by the author of Organic, Inc.

The Great Grocery Smackdown [The Atlantic] – on buying organic at…Walmart? Plus a blind cookoff between Walmart and Whole Foods. Some interesting results…

The Spotless Garden [New York Times]  – a great article about backyard and basement aquaponics systems and the ‘otherworldly yields’ from this type of growing.   ‘It is either a glimpse into the future of food growing or a very strange hobby — possibly both.’

More photos and cool stuff here. All credits to NYTimes.

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/2010/02/16/food-events-around-london-tea-parties-pizza-parties-and-wine-parties/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/02/16/food-events-around-london-tea-parties-pizza-parties-and-wine-parties/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:25:51 +0000 mei http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=2776 I love parties. I’m in the process of planning a big family joint birthday party for my mom, sister and dad that may or may not involve an entire roast pig. Who doesn’t love a good party?  Obviously, the best parties include copious amounts of food and alcohol. At many London parties and events of the last month or so, my alcohol consumption has drastically outweighed the food consumption.  Often, my memories of the event can get a bit fuzzy. Luckily, I took pictures.

Here’s a photo from the Bibendum wine event at the stunning Saatchi Gallery. Can you spot the foodrambler?

Amidst approximately 149803454 bottles of wine spread over something like 10 galleries on 4 floors were all sorts of cool installations by local designers:

Equally alcoholic was the fabulous Yelp’s Burst Birthday, a surprise-filled soiree in an old metalworks building complete with a grassy garden tea party room filled with tea cups of gin and teapots of tonic amidst tiered trays of sugar-stacked snacks.  I’m still dreaming about the plate below of melty chocolatey caramelly Millionaire’s Squares…

The room was carpeted in real grass (hand laid by our dedicated friend Lizzie!) and populated by a small community of garden gnomes, one of whom came home with me at the end of the night. Chris and I named him Chomsky. We’re nerds.

The Yelp party also featured a real tube-car-as-a-bar slinging free cocktails and bunch of market-style food stalls, including fantabulous frozen yogurt, a sort of bizarre spiralled potato chip on a stick, and my most favoritest roast hog people.

Last up, I got a chance to taste the new Pizza Express menu by Francesco Mazzei, the chef from an award-winning London restaurant called L’Anima that I’m hoping to go to someday.  Shockingly, I’d never had Pizza Express before – it’s a very popular chain in the UK – but I was quite impressed with what I tasted of the new dishes.  I liked the spicy Calabrese pizza the best – a thin and crispy crust, fior di latte mozzarella, watercress in basil pesto, a few more chilies and peppers, and most importantly, nduja sausage.  Anything with nduja on it is a friend of mine.

Mmmm…looking at pictures never fails to make me hungry. I’ll take a spicy pizza, a few Millionaire’s Squares, a bottle of that rich and chocolatey Malbec, and a teacup of G&T.  It’s 2am.  Bibendum, Yelp and Pizza Express, do you deliver?

Because I’ve self-medicated with an assortment of pharmaceuticals and can’t really read anything, I opened my Google Reader for the first time in about 6 months to look at all the pretty pictures.  Oooh, pretty pictures.  I will share some of them with you now.

First off, a great photo from a great article called Northeast China Branches Out In Flushing in the New York Times.

Wait a minute. Those are sticky-sweet caramel sugar strands stretching off chunks of deep-fried sweet potato? And that’s Chinese food? Holy crap. My world is rocking right now and it’s not just me overdosing on cold meds.  Perhaps my deep-frying obsession is coded deep within my DNA.  Irene Bean sent this article to me at about the exact moment the drool hit the keyboard upon reading it myself.  Go read about the cuisine of the Dongbei (literally ‘East North’) region and look at the slideshow: I promise you’ll do some serious drooling yourself.

Next, up: Boston Creme Pies from Design*Sponge

Ooooooooooooohmyyyygod.  Despite being proudly Boston born and bred, I’ve never really liked Boston creme pies.  But seeing this photo made me want to scoop up that cheeky little cake and smooosh it into my mouth in one bite.  Look at how mini it is!  It would totally fit.  Design*sponge is one of my favorite design blogs and their foodie/recipe series  ‘in the kitchen with’ has some of the most gorgeous food styling I’ve ever seen, along with some great recipes.  My camera whimpers a little in shame every time I look at the photos.  But my heart sings a bit with joy at the beauty of it all, so I do my best to temper the rising bile of inadequacy. I mean, really…how has a messy, half-eaten plate of radishes ever looked so good?

This spectacularly beautiful radish explosion is better described as a Spicy Heirloom Radish Salad and the recipe can be found  ‘In The Kitchen With’ Penny De Los Santos.

My last photo (because I reeeeeallly needed to go to bed like 3 hours ago, but I am not up of my own volition. Damn the batter in my head!) is from Slice: America’s Favorite Pizza Weblog, which is part of the jolly, fat, and friendly Serious Eats family.  If I manage to stay up to date with my Reader, it will probably be due to the daily dose of deliciousness  from Serious Eats.

Scrolling through the several hundred posts I missed over the past few months, my eyes starting to glaze over, my brain beginning to succumb to the dripping ooze of fry batter, I was shocked out of my stupor by the following photo:

Hey! I know that pizza! I know that pizza damn well, and glancing at this photo again has me tempted to book a flight to New Haven, Connecticut as we speak. Rather, as I type. And I’ll be honest with you, I’m not a huge fan of Connecticut. But seriously, Sally’s Apizza is some of the best pizza you’ll ever have.  It’s absolutely orgasmically good.  It’s also the home to one of my favorite food stories…

Assuming you have a generally adequate level of vision and sense of  spatial reasoning, I think you get an idea from the above photo how large the ‘Large’ pizza at Sally’s is.  16 slices!  It’s about the size of a small stovetop,  a mid-size bath mat, two normal ‘Large’ pizzas, or perhaps a very big catskin rug if your cat were one of those hilariously overweight cats whose pictures make me laugh on a regular basis.  Regardless, the Larges should more aptly be called Enormously Huges, and then the Large pizzas from every other pizza institution would not suffer the intense shame of comparison.

I went to Sally’s with four girlfriends – Rachel, Lex, Olivia, and Helen, all champion eaters and all wanting a different kind of pizza. I wanted to try the classic White Clam, Rachel swore by the Eggplant Parmesan, Lex refused to leave without the Mixed Hot Peppers No Mozz, and Helen preferred the Pepperoni and Onion. So of course, after waiting in line for almost two hours, we decided to get all four. In Large. For five girls. We had so much pizza, they had to bring over another table to put it on.  The guys at the table next to us started heckling – like straight-up shit talking – but we shut them up when we took down approximately 3.15 of them and had just enough to divide for leftovers the way we intended. It was one of the most satisfying eating experiences of my life – mostly because the pizza is unquestionably amazing and we waited two hours for it, but also seeing the grudging looks of respect in the eyes of those dudes.

Or maybe it was horror. I might have been too high on tomato sauce to know the difference.

Oh, and then Lex ordered another one to take home.  Seriously people, it’s that good.

Also…you’d think if I could ingest almost 16 slices of pizza, I’d be able to ingest enough Tylenol PM aka Lemsip Max All Night Cold & Flu Tablets to knock myself out  for the night, wouldn’t you?

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/02/15/weekly-link-roundup-the-food-porn-version/feed/ 9 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/02/10/growing-spaces-in-unusual-places-londons-urban-agriculture-and-a-super-mini-garden/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/02/10/growing-spaces-in-unusual-places-londons-urban-agriculture-and-a-super-mini-garden/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:48:06 +0000 mei http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=2853

Seems like everyone is talking about urban agriculture these days, with innovative new ideas ranging from tiny little crowd-funded SF city farms to fantasy skyscraper-high vertical farms.  From pundits to policymakers,  foodies to farmers to futurists, a lot of people are starting to think about urban food production for the sake of local economies, the environment, community resources, jobs creation, urban design, potential food security issues. and many more reasons.  I’ve been reading this really interesting report by the London Assembly called Cultivating the Capital: Food Growing and the Planning System in London (big PDF here) about working with city planners to increase the growing potential of the city.

Nerdy, I know.  In case you don’t want to read the 93 pages yourself (almost half of it is just appendices!), the report looks at the current situation of urban food producers, the barriers they face in growing and getting their products to market, and potential innovative solutions.  It also analyzes the city land that could be used for food production and encourages the use of  unconventional growing spaces, from rooftops to parks to housing developments.  And in terms of specific action, the report recommends that the Mayor of London promote and support policy and planning to increase Greater London’s food production and distribution channels.  They’ve got lots of important reasons to back up their suggestions:

‘There is a good case to be made that commercial agriculture is one of the best and most productive land uses in the Green Belt [an undeveloped area around London, set aside primarily for agriculture, forestry and outdoor leisure, but mostly not actively farmed]. The benefits include: opportunities for local job creation, skills development,  regeneration, preservation and management of green space, potential for waste management, providing healthy locally produced food and so reducing food packaging and food miles and the potential for improving food security.’

One of the big points is how much unused space there is within London that could be directed towards food production. The UK has these small plots called allotments that are available to the public for gardening/farming, but there are also swaths of unused industrial land and vacant building sites that could be improved visually and put to good use by developing for small-scale agriculture.   And it can get really small.  The report says, ‘Almost any site, irrespective of size, location or soil conditions can be used for food growing operations by making use of raised beds, skips and builders’ bags filled with good quality soil.’  Why not use green roofs or land along highways or railways or unused office land?

And it doesn’t even have to be a profit-making food-growing enterpise – it’s just fantastic to be able to produce any of your own food. And then you can get reaaaaally small. Because it doesn’t really get any tinier  in terms of space and literal lack of land than living on a houseboat (shoutout to my friend Olivia living on a houseboat in Alaska right now). And yet, this creative houseboater has developed an innovative way to grow tomatoes in a space smaller than that occupied by our forlorn and all-too-neglected barbecue grill.

I always talk about how much I’d like to grow my own food (despite my propensity towards immediately and invariably killing every single plant I’ve ever owned, including the cacti).  But I always live in the middle of cities and never seem to have enough space or enough land.  Yet these boaters have taken a very unexpected site and turned it into a mini growing area.  How sweet would it be to go pick tomatoes off your roof while enjoying this view of City Road Basin along Regent’s canal?

And looking back towards my hood…

A bit of inspiration for those of us who support the idea of more local food production. Until I get my act together to actually plant something, I’ll continue to buy vegetables from my local CSA veg box (and a shoutout to Growing Communities for being mentioned as one of the best programs in the report!), but I’m glad that other people are doing lots of growing in unexpected places.

Someday, I’ll be able to walk outside and pick what I want for dinner. Someday, someday…

The whole flourless chocolate torte thing started for us with Daniel Barbolobew’s birthday. We had espresso in the first incarnation of this absurd dessert, but eventually cut it out, adding instead raspberry coulis underneath and chocolate ganache on top. Here’s another peek:

Another project we took on last semester was the celebrated and scrumptious pork belly. Lots of people think of stomach – tripe, really – when they hear us talk about pork belly. No, no, no, no. Don’t get crazy. All we’re talking about is the cut of meat – the tummy, not the stomach – from which the holy grail of meat and fat and tasty (BACON) comes.

Uncured, dry-cured, beer-braised, cider-braised, torched, roasted, we did it all. The only really important part is that we braised it for three hours. (The reason we know that’s important is that we failed to do it twice, and with terrible, chewy, tough, no-fun results). Here’s a look at the belly before curing: shiny, fatty, and, if you have good spatial reasoning, obviously identical to bacon.

And here’s a shot of the pork belly, after curing, browning, and a little bit of braising.

Next, as we all know, we love Julia Child (but not that whiny Julie!) and so when we came home from the farmer’s market with a dozen fresh eggs, it was obvious to us that we needed to learn to poach them. This is one recipe I’m definitely posting. There seems to be a few different groups of people when it comes to poached eggs – those who’ve loved them forever and ate them all the time as kids, those who have never had them, those who hate them because they don’t understand the beauty of runny yolk, and those, who, like me, have recently become completely obsessed. It doesn’t hurt that Daniel is an egg-poaching pro.

Look at those wispy sheets of delicious egg white. Daniel and JC (you know which one) have so much in common. I think that’s why I like him so much. Anyway, poached eggs are also great because you can eat them in any number of ways: with traditional breakfast food, smooshed into a mini pita, next to your standard meat and potatoes, or on a salad with a plop of caramelized onions and some hollandaise sauce. Who invented this shit: take an egg, and then cover it with more egg – but not the whole egg, just the best, fattiest, most disgustingly tasty part – and mix that egg with butter. Crazy.

Finally, I won’t rehash all the gory details of our deer killing/butchering/eating experience (but you can: here!), but let me tell you: venison is awesome. We made bourguignon, curry, stirfry, but more often than not, just panfried little bits of steak (or, alternatively, heaven) and ate them with our fingers. To save you all that nonsense, here’s a rather unattractive pictures of the most attractive thing we’ve done with that animal so far: balsamic glazed frenched rack of ribs. Check it:

That concludes our review of the fall semester. Already, the spring has been extremely fruitful (or, to be more accurate, meatful), so look out for a recap of our Deadpan Entree Smackdown, and our first Deadpan event!