Moroccan Afternoon Tea

The lovely thing about leaving the continent for a while is that all your friends want to see you before you depart. I have spent a lovely couple of weeks grabbing drinks with girlfriends, cooking for old school friends, having supper cooked for me and sipping a fragrant glass of Moroccan Mint tea with a newly wed.

I spend a lot of time around Bond St in London- an area convenient for friends located both north and south of the river - and often visit Carluccios for coffee on their communal table. Last night, disaster struck as it was closed for refurbishment. Strolling past Levant - a place I have walked past a million times - my newly hitched friend suggested we go for tea there, so we tiptoed down the lantern lit stairs for Moroccan Mint tea.

Transported to an opulent Marrakesh-i atmosphere, my mint tea arrived and was poured from the great height needed to oxygenate the mint leaf flavou. I am not sure if that is actually why it is poured in such a way - but that is what I recall from our induction to mint tea in the High Atlas Mountains. Its appears that Mint Tea is actually the Moroccan equivalent to Cream Tea, as a towering cake stand was swiftly delivered to our table. Each level contained something different - cream cheese stuffed apricots, shell on pistachios, baklava and my favourite - a pile of Turkish delight!

The real treat about this was that I could eat all but one of the treats... and there was as much mint tea as I could drink. So, for an alternative afternoon tea - head to Morocco.

Rocking GF Pancakes

*Last year was my first attempt at a gluten free Shrove Tuesday - making stacks and stacks of buckwheat American style pancakes. This year I wanted to make slightly smaller quantity of a lighter, more delicate crepe and threw together rather successful recipe.

I was planning to use my standard Doves Organic GF flour - but I had run out and didn't plan to replace it with moving to India. But, brilliantly, I had a selection of flours leftover from the bread making, resulting in a light, lacy pancake - and my wheat eating friend was none the wiser.

Gluten Free Pancake Recipes

Ingredients:
50g buckwheat flour
25g rice flour

25g corn flour

2 eggs

pinch of sugar

250ml milk

25g melted butter, plus extra for greasing the pan

Method:
Sift all the flours into a large bowl
Mix in the eggs and a 2-3 tablespoons of milk into a paste
Mix in the rest of the milk and sugar into a thin batter
Pour in the melted butter and whisk by hand for a couple of minutes
Leave to stand for at least 1 hour

Heat a large non-stick frying pan to a medium temperature
Melt a smudge butter in the pan (to help with browning and flavour if you are using a non-stick pan)
Pour in enough batter to cover the base of the frying pan with a thin layer - a lacy edge is fine - and leave to cook for 1-2mins.
Depending on how daring you are feeling flip over the pancake to cook on the other side for a minute or so.
Slide the pancake off onto a plate and douse with freshly squeezed lemon and Fair Trade sugar or a topping of your choice.
Devour.

*Image courtesy of 101cookbooks

Terroirs

A good review is great for a new restaurant, but sometimes sucks for the locals! Living just 20minutes from Covent Garden, I am often in central London and love to dip into and try new restaurants. I use reviews to give me a feel for the place and the type of food on offer (and whether I will be able to eat much on the menu). However in this instance - when a restaurant such as Terroirs on the Strand recieves such rave reviews and the critics loudly sing in chorus the praise for French tapas and "natural" wines - I couldn't book a table. Even in the credit crunch?

Attempting the bar menu / chance table approach on Thursday night with my good friend Mrs Burger, we managed to get a spot by the bar for a glass of their natural French red wines, but no food.

Fast forward to Saturday lunch time in Covent Garden and looking for a late lunch venue after rejecting the idea of a 40minute wait at Wahaca (!), I took a punt on Terriors again. A perfect late lunch venue, there was space at the bar which we snapped up - as I was eager to try this place before my departure for the Indian Sub-Continent.

Phew - we were in.

The menu is dotted with a broad range of Gallic inspired dishes - piperade basquise, clams with aioli, a stunning French charcuterie range, duck scratchings (?) of which we chose 4 small plates. A succinct puds selection featuring the first rhubarb of the season on a panna cota which was perfectly wobbly.

With a terribly relaxed service, to the point where the chef took our order... we were relaxed enough not to be too annoyed, and happy to have had a chance to experience the hype.

Shame I am leaving the country, but hopefully it rise above the credit crisis until my return.

Indian Food Adventures

I have the most wonderful opportunity. Thanks to my partner, who has secured a secondment to a children's charity, we are going to live in India. I have jacked in my job and am packing up the flat to move over in just a weeks time.

The setup that we have back home, plus the complications in Indian visas mean that for the first time since I was 15 years old, I will not be working. Not between jobs - unemployed. Nor will I be a lady who lunches, that's just not very me. What I will be doing is immersing myself in the world of Indian food - which is thankfully very very naturally gluten free.

If we had been moving to another part of Asia such as China, there would have been many more barriers to temporarily moving our lives. However Indian food - across its rich and diverse regions - wheat, barely and rye seem to be used solely for making breads and the odd fried delicacy. Cooking methods have remained largely traditional, using onion purees or reductions for sauces, and where flours are required, the flavoursome rice and gram (lentil) flours are drafted in for fritters and pancakes.

This makes me so excited, you can't imagine!

At home we have some form of Indian food at least once a week - either I cook something from scratch: Aloo Gobi and Tarka Dhal being two favourites, or we pay a visit to our much loved Tandoori Nights. The chance to learn about Indian food, and visit the plantations of spices and ingredients is a dream come true!

Mixed up with the excitement of researching cookery classes, markets and restaurants I also have to complete visa's, book flights, get vaccines and pack up the house. We could and hope to be gone for as long as six months, plus there are friends to say farewell to. So this is my quite exciting excuse as to my absence from this site...

It's pretty much guaranteed that these pages over the next few months will be rich with Indian food adventures - whatever they may be. I have never stepped onto the continent before, so who knows what I will find.

In the mean time, if you know of a fabulous cookery school, restaurant, must-do food experience let me know....

Pork Butchery Class

This is the third butchery course I have taken at the Ginger Pig under the tutelage of Borat and Perry – this time it was pork having already taken the beef and lamb editions. The courses feature lots of hands on experience, crucial when getting to grips with where muscles and bones of the animal are placed.


Beginning with the farming practices used to rear the rare breads of pigs on their 4 farms, we learnt about different types of fat, how they make their renowned sausages (albeit brief as there is indeed a sausage making course too) and the differences between organic and free range pork husbandry.


Eager to get into chopping up the meat, we moved over to the butchers block as one lucky student was tasked with lifting half a pig off the hook onto the bench. Wanting to be at the heart of the action, I got a little too close and was surprisingly smacked in the face with the pigs’ trotter. After we’d chuckled about the dangers of handling pigs we began to identify the different pork cuts, taking turns to hack, chop and slice our way through 3 sides of pork.

Being hands on is the most efficient way to learn, so for the end of the session created a porchetta roasting joint from a section of pork loin to take home. Removing and scoring the back fat for crackling, then prizing the bones from the precious loin meat we each concentrated on not slicing our fingers with the sharp boning knifes. Smothering handfuls of salt, pepper, fennel seed and garlic pulp to the flesh, the back fat was then tied back in place with masterful butchers knots (after half a dozen attempts... I wish they would run knot tutorials!)

Whilst we had been butchering away, Borat had been roasting a porchetta for us to devour with a well earned glass of wine. Accompanied with potatoes roasted in beef dripping we devoured the meal as we swapped hearty foodie stories on road kill butchery and wild boar hunting – not for the faint hearted!

So, the weekend has forced a Saturday supper of porchetta (although enough to serve about 6, we’ll be enjoying leftovers all week) roasted to perfection with cracking crackling. Only the sausage course to go and I graduate from the Ginger Pig School of Butchery – maybe an apprenticeship next?

You may also enjoy reading:

Sharp Knives and Supper

Billingsgate Fish Market