Experiemental Cheese Crackers

What happens when too much water is added to the wrong
dough...
goats cheese / cheddar / parmesan
cumin / herbs / cayenne pepper
... kinda an ok outcome

An everyday salad affair

Bean Painting: Specimens from the Luguminosae Family (2004)
Rachel Pedder-Smith, Kew

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Some good notes on leaf salads (or the way we lately roll by at our place).

Any leaf goes, as long as there are three different types, pushing it as far as 30p iceberg lettuce. Two or three types of herbs is essential, parsely, coriander, dill, mint, tarragon, basil, chives; the more unusual combination, the merrier. A punch of sweet and punch of saltiness by green olives vs raisins, capers vs green peas. Roasted nuts, salted nuts, plain nuts, grated nuts, always a winning good bite. Dressings rich in extra virgin olive oil, with a punch of either tahini, french mustard, cider vinegar, red wine vinegar or lemon. Crushed garlics are beautiful things but in moderation.

For tonight, a basic one:

– 300gr mixed italian herb leaves
– 200gr baby Spinach (chopped finely)
– 50gr parsley (chopped finely)
– 30gr dill (stalks removed)
– 30 gr basil (teared leaves)
– 80gr kalamata olives (finely sliced)
– 50gr almonds (roughly chopped)
– 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
– 2 tsp tahini
– 1 tsp white wine vinegar
– Generous black pepper

To feed  7-9 people along other dishes.

Like water for chocolate (1992)

Life.

Scrambled-deep-yellow pancakes — Wine, blueberry stains on duvet — Red peppers, Tomatoes, Red Wine, Red chillies, Red polish sausage, Red turkish sausage, Red onions, Beetroot, Peppercorns, Curry leaves, fluorescent blood stew — Wild boar loaf and blood canape for three along London bridge — Italian cafe serving wild mushroom ravioli till 9pm in clapton – Free oversize coats, books and food at lower clapton road – Burnt coat broccoli, red chilli, lemon, garlic — Egg yolk dawn swap— Instant couscous, Instant falafel — Lamb, Feta, All spice, Peppercorns, Parsley, Cloves, Virgin Oil, Sea salt, chillies — Tamarind foreign Ratatouille, boiled or braised instead of roasted — Serving sober produce to inebriated friends after midnight since 2011 — Pupil and master vegetable thai on a stockport midnight — Bún thịt nướng with Tofu only for real near the Jeffrey Museum — Sage-perfumed home made hummus — Organic yogurt pot under dinning table — Olive oil, olives on white sheets — Gray pulsing langoustines – Cheese-less pizza at indo, second and third servings, eastern passata — Miso and ginger stuffed aubergines — Don't pass me the pepper just that lime near your elbow — mancunian black scotch egg nostalgia – sambal olek, light soya, groundnut oil, fresh ginger — £0.99 £1.99 £8.49 £14.99 £19.99 — Morrocan, Egyptian, Swedish, French, Danish, English slang — Potatoes simmer in milk, garlic, butter, your phone has two messages — Silver letter knife crushed pinenuts south — Dry roasted nuts as cumin roasted nuts at the george – Charlotta making lasagne with me above the clouds — Zhakazulu

All the posts and life that never made it online.

G U T E N T A G — S C H N I T Z E L

Yum yum this is actually a SMALL Schnitzel at one of Berlin's oldest beergardens called Prater on Kastanienalle in Prenzlauerberg. Out in the courtyard there's room for around a hundred beer drinking Germans, beers is bought from a stall and from another stall you can get wurst and potato salad and various other light meals.
The restaurant which serves excellent traditional German cuisine needs booking most nights.
G O   T H E R E !

Hardcore Vegan !

B R E A D !

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Apparently you can't die without having eaten Tartine's bread. Man! We have to go to San Francisco then!
http://www.tartinebakery.com/

HURRAH FOR KATE & WILLS

10.30 : Cava, Prosecco and Champagne

Roding Road Canapes
–
salmon roll, sausage rolls, brie and red onion jam, D's delights
Recipe to come if you want?

PERNILLE'S MUM'S BREAD

Pernille's mum's bread with 100g semolina + oil and quite a bit
of sea salt on top – makes for a crusty great experience

Pernille's mum's bread with 100g of oats (ad a bit extra water for the oats)
– Extravagantly poured into a bread shape for a fancy touch

Early teen receipe from my friend Pernille's mum (as in I was a teenager). This recipe is A M A Z I N G! I passed it on to my mum, who then started making variation by adding 100g of other flour (see above for two recent variations).

JUST DO IT. 

It is a success every time and it is super easy to make. Here's the recipe:
3/4 of a fresh yeast pack (if you are so unlucky to live in a country where fresh yeast is hard to get a hold of 14g of dried yeast can be used, ad a pinch of sugar to get it going then)
4 dl tepid water
2 tsp of salt
500g flour (as mentioned, can be exchanged with 400g of normal flour and 100g of oats, semolina, rye or... Use a strong white flour it is really worth it as the bread gets alot better than crappy normal white flour)
–
Mix water and yeast in a big bowl till the yeast has dissolved, ad flour and salt and mix with a hand mixer (or if you are the lucky owner of a mixer you can do it in there). As with any bread making the success is in the effort of actually holding the hand mixer for ten minutes so the dough gets a bit bouncy - There's some molecular explanation to this, we don't know exactly why... Don't worry that the dough is quite wet, this is the whole point of this bread. It's Easy: Mix in bowl. Leave. Pour onto baking tray. Leave. Bake. Done.
Now leave the dough to rest under cloth for 1 hour. Then poor it onto a baking tray with baking paper on it (or if it is fancy you can pour it into a bread shape but that just creates more washing up). Now leave it to rest for another 1/2 hour on the baking tray. Sprinkle with oats or flour or oil or nothing, then bake for 1/2 hour in the bottom of the oven at 225º. (if you don't put oil on top it is recommended to sprinkle with water half way through baking as this makes the crust crunchy). Let it cool a bit and then EAT.

S O F I A ' S – R H U B A R B

Perhaps this Rhubarb will shed some stalks
for our afternoon cocktails on Friday...

E5 – T O M A T O E S

a sort of cherry tomatoes

-

more on these later in the summer...

Paul and his green fingers

E5 0DN garden breakfast

Eggs / Sujuk / Spinach

Sujuk may be eaten cooked (when raw, it is very hard and stiff). It is often cut into slices and cooked without additional oil, its own fat being sufficient to fry it. At breakfast, it is used in a way similar to bacon or spam. It is fried in a pan, often with eggs (e.g. as breakfast in Egypt), accompanied by a hot cup of sweet black tea. Sujuk is sometimes cooked with haricot bean or incorporated into pastries at some regions in Turkey. In Bulgaria, raw, sliced sujuk is often served as an appetizer with rakia or other high alcoholic drinks. In Lebanon, cooked sliced sujuk is made into sandwiches with garlic sauce
W I K I P E D I A .

Tampopo (1985)

タンポポ Tanpopo (1984)
Juzo Itami

Possibly the greatest food-cult film, disguised as a romantic comedy.

E5 0DN garden lunch

first summer garden lunch

The easiest baked peppers from my mum's receipes (can feed 4 as a side dish):
-
2 peppers (yellow, red, orange)
2 big ripe tomatoes, finely chopped (half a can of tinned tomatoes can successfully be used in winter times)
2-3 slices of stale bread, finely chopped or put through the blender
1-2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
finely chopped parsley
salt and pepper
olive oil
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Pre-heat oven to 200ºc. Cut the peppers into small boats and place them in an ovenproof dish. Mix the finely chopped tomatoes with garlic (we prefer two cloves...) and parsley, season with salt and pepper (generously) add a slug of olive oil. Spoon in a tablespoon of the tomato mix in each pepper boat. Sprinkle a layer of chopped bread crumbs over each boat and finish with a drizzle of olive oil and salt and pepper.
Bake the peppers for half an hour.
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EAT
-
Hot or Cold

empty plates!

Great meal moments with non-great meal images (I) Circa 2008–2010

The Birdcage — Free supper, Sour Wine, Snimky, Tatiana.

Bow — Such days, 12:30pm, GG

Lower Clapton — First non-vegetarian meal, Adrian & Sara

Evelyn House — No one
makes Sticky Toffee Pudding
like Sarah does.
No-bo-dy
(recipe stolen from Nigel Slater)
-
For the pudding
150g dates, stones removed, chopped
250ml hot water
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
60g butter, softened
60g caster sugar
2 free-range eggs
150g self-raising flour
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For the toffee sauce
200g butter
400g brown sugar
vanilla pod, split
250ml double cream
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Preheat the oven to 180C. Mix the dates, bicarbonate of soda and the water together in a bowl and leave to soak for ten minutes. In a clean bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
(we are lazy and do it with the electrical whisk, you have to keep going until it has almost turned white - a bit of patience is needed) Still stirring the butter mixture, gradually add the eggs, making sure they are well mixed in. Still stirring (yup lots of stirring), gradually add the flour, then add the date mixture. Pour the mixture into a 20cm/8in square cake tin. Place into the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until cooked through
(handy trick: you can stick a match in the cake, if it comes out covered in dough it needs to cook for a bit longer).
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To make the sauce, melt the butter in a thick bottomed pan over a medium heat.
Add the brown sugar, vanilla pod and cream and stir well. Simmer for five minutes.
(In our experience there's N E V E R enough sticky toffee sauce, we are considering making double next time)
To serve, spoon out a portion of the pudding onto a plate and pour over the hot toffee sauce. E A T !

Kingsland Rd — Aftermath Village Fete,
Pre-moving London, Household, Yuri.

Lansdowne Drive — Cake & Death, Sarah

Roding Rd — Sugarless walnut brownies

Roding Rd — D E N M A R K

BN1 — Nothing to declare

Roding Rd — Meal itself erased from memory,
but it appears to be the first ever dinner at Roding Rd.
Memorable

A post like these should to be followed by mores posts like these. And recipes to great meals. With great photos.