Family Styles » rambling restaurant

Once Upon A Rambling Time in the Enchanted Fairytale Forest of Bumpkin…

mei — Tue, 31 May 2011 09:57:11 +0000

Welcome friends, to the mysterious enchanted forest of Bumpkin, where last week the Rambling Restaurant transformed a skyhigh attic dining room for a fabulous fairytale feast. As one of the Three Little Pigs, let me welcome you into the lush and glittering Rambling Fairytale…

The whole event was a fantastic collaboration between so many talented people – Sarah demonstrating her chef skills in the kitchen along with the versatile and knowledgable Bumpkin staff, Abi aka the Little Red Riding Hood and I doing the serving with the help of Ali and Billy behind the bar, the gorgeous decor creations of Miss Ali O’Malley (previously of Moulin Rouge fame), and a participatory cabaret full of wit, wonder, and wows led by Lucy from The Little Show Off as the very Wicked Stepmother, Matt the contact juggler, and Simon who dazzled the crowd as the surprise secret ingredient. Although not one of the listed performers, the man behind these lovely photos, our photographer Martin – had our diners shaking with laughter at his spectacular poetic rendition of Hansel and Gretel.

I’ll let the wise and wonderful words of the Wicked Stepmother take you through the evening….

Ladies and gents and woodland creatures alike,

Taste-buds be upstanding, for here comes a delight.

Let me tell you a tale of how this food came about

Food miles are important, I’m sure you won’t doubt.

We sent three little pigs to ramble for goods

To the marshes they went, deep down in the woods.

Watercress and sorrel they found in the bog

And snuffled for beetroot – such a clever little hog.

All totally fresh, organic is so en vogue

Bundles of fennel quite simply cost loads.

A delightful soup we made from their haul

But it wasn’t enough, we wanted some more.

Diners, listen up - What I’m about to reveal

Is not for the faint hearted, in fact you might… squeal!

The chef you see has a furry long nose

And grandma’s dress, with canines that glow

We looked at the pigs and back at the chef

Soup wasn’t enough, as I’ve already said

The salad looked fresh and bursting with life

But it needs something salty…Chef sharpened his knife

I don’t need to tell you what happened next

Certain celebrity chefs taught us butchery at best

Now don’t huff and puff, or feel at all blue

They lived a free-range life I can assure you

But lets be honest, swines are so great

And those three little pigs look fab on your plate!

I was the only little pig to make it out unscathed – but I might consider sacrificing myself to be a part of Sarah’s delicious fennel, beetroot and broad bean salad with parsley pork croutons. Looking uber-professional in her fresh chef’s whites, this kitchen wizardress outdid herself with this springtime salad and a delicious sorrel and watercress soup with walnut bread for the veggies in the house.

Next up came a few fun table exercises involving group poetry writing and then the delicious themed main course, as explained below…

So here comes your main, a treat I have no doubt

But like before there’s a story worth shouting about

To the oceans blue is our main stop

Where a fight is breaking out between a Pollack and a cock-le

Some little Mermaid has caused a rift

Between a happy crustacean and a cheeky young fish

The cockle was courting our half lady broad

Drinks on the rocks and evening’s below board

One day in a bar, Mr Pollock swam by

And with his charming ways caught our mermaids eye

Cockle being snappy, was immediately peeved

To see his lady blush behind the seaweed

“Oi Pollock” shouted cockle, who’d had a few drinks

“This mermaid is mine whatever you think”

“I think not” said Pollock, who’d also had a few

“There’s love in her eyes, but not when she looks at you”

And that was it, the brawling had begun

Quite a spectator sport – songs, they were sung…

‘What do we do with a drunken cockle…’, we all sang….

Poseidon got annoyed with their raucous display

And shook up the sea, for which they did pay

Sea boulders did fall, landing atop of our friends

A sudden and drunken but welcome fishy end

Our mermaid got free, but rather than feel down

Was glad to be single so went out on the town

And that well known rift is what inspired this platter

So eat up and drink lots…it’s time to get fatter!!

And so the fairytale diners tucked into Pollock with Drunken Cockle Sauce with Jersey Royals and Samphire as well as Rosemary, Parmesan and Mozzarella Polenta Fritters with Summer Vegetables. Delicious.

But of course a fairytale feast cannot end without something luscious and indulgent…

So folks, it’s that time for a sweet delight

And your final course of the night

Before we get fruity and the cabaret winds up

Which, just so you know, includes all of you lot

Lets welcome the pud made by special guest chefs

Seven of them in fact, I bet you can guess

Mirror mirror on the wall…

Who’s the finest pudding chefs of them all?

Sleepy took care of the chocolate cos the caffeine is good for his brain

Grumpy took things out on the pastry cos Snow White got on his nerves once again

Dopey did his best with the cream despite the cow’s kick to his face

Bashful found he had a lovely pair and a fetish for tights made from lace

Doc provided the apples, a non-poisonous variety I’m assured

And of course the brandy came from Happy – his constant smile we applaud

The pepper I’m afraid was an accident which we had no choice to include

Cos Sneezy walked past the pepper pot and sprayed it all over the food

So thank you, thank you to all the seven dwarves

Despite not reaching the work top

The pudding is nearly perfect

Apart from some of Sneezy’s fresh snot

And thus we dined on Chocolate Pepper Pear Tart with Apple Brandy Cream…

And then came the cabaret! There was wild (and participatory!) burlesque dancing and a capella singing…

oohs and ahs for the contact juggling with a magically lit crystal ball…

and poetry reading from performers and diners alike and more, a glorious mishmash of surprises and delight all coordinated byThe Little Showoff.

There was much applause, laughter, and merriment thanks to the talented performers and maybe also thanks to the inventive and addictive fairytale themed cocktails poured by Ali and Billy behind the bar. But maybe it was just the magic of the evening…after all, you never know what can happen in fairytales…

Thanks to all the amazing people who helped make this such a fabulous two nights….all the chefs, performers, decorators, barmen, diners, princesses, swashbucklers, fairies, and the rest of you….we can’t wait to do it again!

A Magical Summer of Food Porn: The Photo Album

mei — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:01:52 +0000

Did you miss me? I know, it’s been a while since any posting has been done. I’ve been busy.

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.

Community Feasting and the Best Cupcake Frosting You May Ever Put In Your Mouth

mei — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:39:38 +0000

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…

A Night of Moulin Rouge at the Rambling Restaurant

mei — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:43:16 +0000

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.

Rambling Restaurant at the Market Estate Project

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:35:14 +0000

We’ve cooked in old train depots and darkened car parks and city centre squats and sprawling warehouses. Last week, Rambling Restaurant added a soon-to-be demolished 1960′s North London housing estate to the list of odd and unusual venues, swooping in just ahead of the wrecking balls. In the amazing Market Estate Project, artists from around the world took over empty flats to create imaginative, engaging, thought-provoking and awe-inducing installations ranging from short films to death-defying performance art to covering entire apartments in building plans or blue plastic. We were honored to be a part of the day by cooking up all sorts of meals and snacks for people involved with the project.

Sarah and foodrambler conjured up massive pots of beef rendang and aubergine and sweet potato coconut curry with rice and creamy cool banana chutney to fill up the many volunteers before their very very cold outdoor shifts.

Once people began trickling in, we Rambling Restaurateurs turned our attention to making canapes for visitors and staff and lucky wanderers. Homemade chickpea and beetroot hummus on crackers, carrot and cumin dip on crispbreads, mini onion quiches, and Michelle’s famous fried-on-the-spot fish and chips.

In between dishing up cute little newspaper cones and assembling sandwiches for staff sustenance, we found some time to explore the incredible and inspiring works of art. Like an entire flat – bedroom, living room, bathroom, balcony and all – transformed into an enormous blue plastic balloon:

And another apartment entirely papered over, top to bottom, in building plans:

More art photos and some thoroughly inauthentic banh mi sandwiches after the jump…

There were beautiful murals and graffiti art and random creations to be found around every corner and down each hallway.

One of the most shocking and unexpectedly beautiful sights of the day was this performance piece by the lovely Tom Geoghegan, who hung suspended and completely immobilized off one of the estate towers for several hours in the freezing cold.

Looking up at him earlier in the day, we had wondered if he was real or some sort of hanging dummy. Turns out Tom is very much human and very much susceptible to high winds when hanging many many feet off the ground. I really enjoyed learning a bit about his various projects over stacks of bastardized chorizo banh mi sandwiches.

The most whimsically joyful flat award goes to this pink balloon-filled kitchen, where Sarah, Antonio, Marc and I stopped in for a cuppa tea and a chocolate biscuit or two.

I’d like to fill an entire apartment up to the ceiling with balloons or maybe rubber exercise balls so you have to squeeeeeeze through, like a grossly enlarged Chuck-E-Cheese ball pit.

It was exhilarating and exciting and inspiring to run around an empty housing estate late at night and imagine all the lives lived within the walls now covered in blue plastic and spray paint. RIP Market Estate: from birth in 1967…

…to burial in 2010.

A Southern Spread at Rambling Restaurant: Pulled Pork, Pineapple Upside-Down Cake and Squirty Cream!

mei — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:21:24 +0000

With an American-themed meal at our last Rambling Restaurant, we just had to do a dessert featuring the never-ending source of birthday party fun for all ages: shakeable whipped cream in a sleek metal canister. They have it over here in the UK, except they call it…squirty cream. I thought that it might be just an affectionate nickname, but nope. It even says so on the packaging.

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.’

Option 1: Sweet Potato Pie with a florette of Squirty Cream.

A Rambling Aphrodisiac Dinner, Complete With Searing Loins and Gin & Tonic Jelly

mei — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:11:16 +0000

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…

Playtime With Boiling Oil: Experimenting With Deep Fried Mars Bars And More

mei — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:12:33 +0000

I should be kept far away from deep frying machines.

Don’t get me wrong – I love a crunchy, golden, batter-encrusted item as much as the next arterial disease-scorning glutton. The problem is, I never know when to stop. I’ll start off with a perfectly reasonable goal, like 15 or 20 deep fried Mars bars. But by the end of the evening, everything that is fit for human consumption and hasn’t been tied down has gotten thrown in the boiling oil and things are just getting out of hand.

: hello my little deep fat fryer friend.

Lest that look of horror on your face prevent you from reading further, let me inform you that I didn’t consume all those crispy, glistening, gooey-with-hot-caramel-and-melted-chocolate deep fried candies on my own. Foodrambler and I made the deep fried Mars bars for Burns Night at Rambling Restaurant, a Scottish culinary extravaganza starring our homemade haggis (so not as disgusting as you might think…eventually). In case you’re wondering, deep fried Mars bars are a genuine Scottish delicacy according to Wikipedia. To enhance the Scottishness of the dish, foodrambler had the inspired idea to batter the chocolate logs in another Scottish delicacy: the violently (and controversially) orange-colored soft drink known as Irn-Bru.

I thought that was a genius idea, until I tasted Irn-Bru. It boasts the gloriously saccaharine taste of Red Bull, the vaguely citrusy overtones of dishwashing detergent/washing up liquid and the unpleasantly chemical reminder of cough medicine or assorted cleaning product. However, it’s the 3rd best-selling soft drink in the UK behind Coke and Pepsi, so someone somewhere is drinking it and it just may be Sarah, our third woman in the kitchen on Burns Night. Apparently, the exact recipe for this magic brew is known only by the chairman of the company and one other person, and they are not allowed to fly on the same plane. Hilarious.

We decided to give it a fair chance in a Deep Fried Mars Bar Batter Taste Test. In the name of culinary exploration, the Irn-Bru would face off against a beer batter (Carlsberg, if you’re curious) and a traditional milk batter. We found a classic batter recipe (details below) and tried several variations with each of the liquids.

This bubbly mess is what you get when you add Irn-Bru to a bowl of flour, cornstarch, and baking soda. Warning: this activity will lead to you scraping a floury gluey mess off all your countertops for the next week.

: From left to right – mars bars battered in beer, Irn-Bru, milk

After tasting way too many little bits of deep fried candy, we settled on the classic milk batter as the best. The artficial aftertaste of the Irn-Bru came through too much in the batter and the beer tasted slightly sour and too thin, but the milk batter was thick, rich and indulgent. The beer batter could be great for savory items, and I’d be interested in trying other liquids, but for a sweet dessert dish the milk batter was perfect.

Of course we had to try deep frying some battered haggis balls too. That sounds like a really bad insult.

Get out of my sight, you battered haggis ball.

After playing around with the various batters, the deep fried haggis balls and the haggis-stuffed deep fried English muffin, not to mention three other preparations of haggis, the scent of batter grease was making us feel seriously ill. We put away the deep fryer until the actual Burns Night, which is when we broke out the big guns to deep fry half a Mars Bar for each of our 20-odd guests to be served with a hefty dollop of cranachan. Cranachan is a light and highly alcoholic Scottish dessert involving whipped cream, honey, raspberries, toasted oatmeal, and a serious splash of whiskey.

And here’s why I should stay away from deep fat fryers. Once the oil is boiling, bowls of batter are within reach, and there are edible items within the vicinity, I can’t stop myself from tossing things in. We started with a second round of Mars bars, because they were there. Then I peered through the fridge and found a block of cheddar cheese. Cut into pinky finger-sized slices and dipped in batter, these tongue-scorching oozy and cheesy mouthfuls were a beautiful bit of batter-encased delight. Good idea.

Deep frying a spoonful of creamy cranachan? Bad idea. Actually, I think the deep-fried cream has potential to be delicious (like tempura-fried ice cream…mmm) but the whisky-soaked cranachan traces in the greasy batter remnants was just nauseating.

Pouring the remaining batter straight into the increasingly gross oil in an attempt at funnel cake? Even worse idea. Straight up fried dough is amazing, but not when the oil has already been used to fry several dozen chocolate and caramel bars, a block of cheddar cheese, a Scotch-infused spoonful of cream, and several small household pets. Kidding about the pets though – the cat really didn’t like being dipped in batter and couldn’t fit in the deep fryer anyway.

Kidding. I don’t have a cat….anymore.

I just can't quit you.

In case you want to have your own deep frying adventures, here’s a very easy recipe for batter:

Deep Fried Mars Bar (And Anything Else Fryable Within Reach) Batter

What You Need:

1 cup flour

1/2 cup cornstarch or cornflour

pinch of baking soda or bicarbonate of soda

milk (or beer or Irn-Bru or liquid of choice)

What You Do:

It’s pretty simple. Mix the powdered ingredients. Whisk in the liquid until it approaches the consistency of a light pancake batter. Dip delicious or random or curious items into the batter and carefully place into the boiling oil. Let cool, place in mouth, repeat.

Just make sure you know when to stop.

Adventures in Haggis Making: Sheep Innards, Beef Kidney Fat, and Fun with a Deep Fryer

mei — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:34:37 +0000

: A handful of haggis

When I was told we’d be celebrating our Rambling Restaurant Burns Night with poetry, whiskey, and homemade haggis stabbing, my thoughts went like this:

1. Awesome! I’ve always wanted to try haggis.

2. By the way, what’s Burns Night?

3. And while I’m asking…what, exactly, is haggis?

4. A sheep heart, lung, and liver minced and mixed with oatmeal and onions and stuffed inside a sheep stomach? We are definitely going to need that whiskey.

Haggis, to most ignorant Americans like myself, is one of those iconic Scottish associations like kilts, bagpipes, and Mel Gibson covered in blue facepaint and exuding a throaty roar for ‘FREEEEDOOOM!’ We might have heard of it but almost certainly wouldn’t be able to say what it’s made of, only that it has something to do with terrifying animal parts and probably shouldn’t ever be consumed until after seven shots of Scotch.

Well, let me set the record straight on two fronts.

1. As much as you may love William Wallace in a skirt, kilts weren’t invented for another three centuries (one of the many twists of truth contributing to Braveheart being second on a list of ‘most historically inaccurate’ movies ever made).

2. Haggis is, shockingly, absolutely delicious.

However, it took quite a long time and a lot of work to get it to that point. And I’ll be honest, there was a fair amount of grimacing, gagging, nose-holding, and are-we-really-serving-this-to-paying-customers?-questioning along the way. It all started with my haggis-making partner-in-crime, foodrambler, hunting in vain and then finally securing three lamb’s plucks – the windpipe, heart, lungs and liver – for our haggis adventure. Following this recipe from the Guardian by Tim Hayward, she began the adventure the previous evening by cutting out the windpipes (blecch), boiling the plucks for several hours then leaving them to cool overnight in the murky cooking liquid.

A rubbery white sheep heart above and a massive chunk of liver below. Not exactly the most appetizing start to a meal, is it? Don’t worry though, there is deliciousness to come…

Once out of the liquid and cut into cross-sections, the lungs were smooth and vaguely spongy while the heart was uncomfortably pink and muscly looking.

Being the intrepid culinary explorers/deluded masochists we are, we sliced off minute pieces of the heart, lung, and liver to taste them in all their unadulterated glory. I’m sure you’re not surprised, but this turned out NOT to be a good idea. Offal is generally not the most appetizing of foods when you haven’t added any additional seasoning or flavor. Then add in the fact that the innards were ice cold and straight out of a disturbingly sewage-colored meat bath and both of us ended up jumping up and down and squealing in disgust at the musty lumps of chilled sheep innards in our mouths.

Lesson learned, we returned to the daunting task at hand. Dicing six onions was the easy part. Next, we tossed the heart and lung into the food processor and pulsed it gently into a fine mince.

Next, we grated the liver in the food processor to avoid the pasty textured chunks from turning into pate. Here’s a photo from foodrambler’s haggis post of me working the magimix on the meat.

I think the expression on my face is veering between skepticism, bemusement, horror and disgust. Note how I am as far as humanly possible away from the food processor in a vain attempt to avoid directly inhaling the stench of chopped lamb bits. Below, the pungent strands of sheep liver.

All the dicing, slicing, and mincing of the heart, livers, and lungs began to fill the kitchen with a distinctly unpleasant smell. The thought crossed both our minds simultaneously: this smells exactly like cat food. Then the uncomfortable realization came to us…in fact, this is what cats eat. We are literally making cat food.

As you can see, it looked like cat food too. But just when we couldn’t really hold our noses much longer, we started mixing in the onions lying underneath the offal mince and all of a sudden, the smell changed. The sharp onion scent cut into the decaying meaty odor and the mixture somehow became warm and almost familiar, like the rich wafting steam of a slow-cooked stew. The transition was aided by the inclusion of a generous amount of salt, white pepper, sage, thyme, and mace (the outer layer of nutmeg) for a layered and wintry hint of spices.

The general smell of the kitchen was further enhanced by the comforting aroma of toasted oatmeal, both of the rolled and Irish steel cut variety, which we wacked into the oven until lightly browned and then added to the pot.

But haggis wouldn’t be complete without one last element of grossness and that came in the form of eight boxes of shredded dried suet.

I had to look up ‘suet‘ on wikipedia to even find it in the grocery store – in case you’re wondering, it’s the raw fat that surrounds beef kidneys. It looks like rodent turds made of candle wax.

Once we’d added a few ladlefuls of the sheep pluck stock to moisten and plunged our hands deep into the pot to mix, the haggis was smelling remarkably good and ready to be cooked.

Except, unfortunately, due to a stolen sheep stomach incident at Selfridge’s as well as a mail-order mishap with a backup ox bung (the attractively named last yard of a cow’s large intestine) we had nothing to stuff our haggis into.

Forced to experiment, we came up with a bunch of alternate showcases for our haggis:

1. Steamed in the oven by surrounding scoops in a layer of plastic wrap and then aluminum foil.

2. Oven roasted

3. Pan-fried

4. Formed into balls, dipped into batter, and deep fried. Having just acquired a deep fat fryer for Rambling Restaurant, you can expect to see a lot of deep fried items making an appearance on this blog. Right up until my first heart attack.

5. Finally, after playing around a bit in a game of What Tastes Good Deep Fried? (Answer: EVERYTHING!) the ultimate haggis preparation came to us in a simultaneous bizarre great-minds-think-alike moment.

I present to you – Haggis. Stuffed into an English muffin. And deep fried.

It’s a Boston creme donut gone wrong or maybe so right – a rich, warm, meaty inside surrounded by a crunchy, oily, golden exterior. It was shockingly, decadently delicious, but I couldn’t eat more than two bites without feeling my arteries harden in protest.

The verdict of the haggis cooking comparison? Steamed was unanimously voted the best, as it allowed the oatmeal to cook, soften, and become infused with the intense meaty flavors of the offal. The roasted was okay, the pan-fried was too dry and crunchy with bits of oatmeal, and the deep-fried options were delicious but way too over the top for a meal ending with deep fried Mars bars. Instructions for that coming up soon…

All in all, haggis making was an entertaining, educational, at times both delicious and disgusting experience. Along with the traditional accompaniments of neeps (mashed swede, or rutabaga), tatties (potatoes) and cranachan (a Scottish dessert of whipped cream, honey, whiskey, raspberries and toasted oatmeal), my understanding of Scottish culinary brilliance has increased by leaps and bounds over the past few weeks. Add in a real Scot reading Burns’ Address To A Haggis followed by a stabbing…and the haggis experience is complete.

Sugar and Spice is Nice at the Rambling Restaurant

mei — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:55:56 +0000

Bright colors are nice too.

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.