Im still eating

Not sure where this picture is from! If I find the source , I will post it.

I know Ive been away from here for some time. Id like to let you know that I'm still cooking and eating. For some reason Ive actually been doing a lot more , he the mans I think is quite worn out with all our entertaining!!! But there is something nice about cooking for others to enjoy and be sustained. I just havent had the head space to write about it all though, theres just been too many layers of life to sit and type in the evenings on both my blogs.





I am writing gradually about our anniversary trip in April to New York City, so watch this space for my post on our eating experiences there . Ive also been practising my Thai cooking abilities after an evening with David Thompson of Nahm. We watched & listened to this very dry, witty and knowledgeable man from Australia cook up a Thai feast of 5 courses for us in the kitchens at Divertimenti a few weeks back.





Today we're having friends for tea and on the hob is some homemade tom sauce, in the oven is he the man famous banana bread and behind me he is now whipping up eggs for pavlova. A very odd concoction of smells!!





Back in June we went to Taste Of London , this years theme being Thailand. It seems Thai food has featured much this year for us. We had friends over at the beginning of the year and made our own Thai meal , which turned out great , but now after watching authentic Thai food cooked, (by a Thai food hero, no less!!) , it seems we had a way to go in knowing how to make it much more authentic and true to a real Thai taste.





We sampled all sorts of culinary wonderousness at Taste ; my favourite being the most amazing rich, sweet unctuousness of a lamb chop from Kai in Mayfair. I will say no more as I want to save it for another more detailed posting. For now I have to get my house ready for another 4 adults and 3 other children to be welcomed.





Happy Noshing to you

The marvels of tomatoes and other yummies!

We well and truly christened our new kitchen the other night with a 4 course feast for some friends. For 2 weeks he the mans and I sat with our cherished books compiling our 4 course menu. I fell in love with a dish from our French Laundry book and just had to try it. The rest was from Gordon Ramsey's 3 star Chef.

When a very good client of mine bought me the book French Laundry, (client is subsequently now a very good friend), looking through its hallowed pages, I never thought Id ever be able to make anything from it. But 2 yrs on and many a meal been made and experimented with, he the mans and I felt brave enough to give it a go. We have never previously made these dishes until the day of the dinner party! Mad I know, but we managed to pull it off to our complete surprise. Although it didn't come easily , the kitchen was a mass of equipment and non stop processes on every surface. It was true organised chaos! We tried our best to stay calm and in control all day preparing, mixing and sieving to our hearts contents! The girls loved seeing this commotion in the kitchen and little cupcake was especially proud of her contribution to the mixing!

Now I know many people would say we weren't being very creative as we didn't come up with something ourselves, but I feel we were really stretched technically and having mastered - will ok may be not quite mastered !! , but having tried , we're are now in a place to start combining our own things, eventually!

Our very own gourmet tasting menu was as follows :

Scallop with sweetcorn puree and truffles - Gordon Ramsay 3 star Chef page 134 Image page 20

Vine ripe tomato sorbet with tomato tartare and chive oil , served with garlic tuiles - French Laundry page 55-56

Navarine of lamb with buttered vegetables with celeriac puree (we substituted with salsify) & Thyme jus - Gordon Ramsay 3 star Chef page 190

Lemon meringue with marinated strawberries - Gordon Ramsay 3 star Chef page 216 Image page 100

Now with the corn puree I really wasn't sold. I thought sweet, creamy & corny = well ick! But Oh my gawwsh , he the mans has become my puree super hero. It came out so moreish and savoury sweet , I couldn't stop eating it the rest of the weekend!

Now onto the Intermezzo or Amuse Bouche. First you start with some tomato's and wow they were some tomato's! They tasted how tomato's you imagine should taste. He the mans made some time the day before at Borough Market to get them, as that seems to be the best place for real produce. There's then roughly 30+ processes that go into the tomato sorbet dish!

These

then become this

Then I had to boil and re boil this 3 times, that's orange zest by the way

Then I made one of these

The recipe asked for the use of a Tamis - basically a very wide and extremely fine sieve- to finely sieve the tomato puree. The Tamis retails for around £87 , now I know equipment is important , but at this stage of our cooking lives , I'm not quite in need of such a luxury - YET!!! I did however find this cheaper substitute on Amazon , but alas it wasn't available in time and doesn't seem to be available at all now! So I came up with the next best thing ,very fine muslin tied really tight across a bowl!

So it didn't move when I was pushing the tomato puree through twice , I laid it into another bowl.

This was my invention to allow the puree chive and oil mix to drip through to create the fine chive oil for plating up with the tomato's.

He the mans was amazed I managed to do these tuiles , as was I. It involved spreading a fine paste into circles onto greaseproof paper and baking to create crisp savoury nmm nmmmess !!!

and finally its all plated!!! Quick wheres my wine before the next bit!

I'll have to apologise for this image , we just started eating when I remembered I hadn't taken a shot of it. Again there were reams and reams of processes , but he the mans just pottered around the place bringing it all together! He makes it look so easy! I was too busy with my part of the meal to manage to get shots of his work in progress!

and finally dessert. This was a shared effort , again with some more tuiles , this time with pepper, sugar and sesame seeds. We got in a tizz with the meringue as it really wasn't working. Having tried it several times we had to give in due to time. The flavours were right just not the texture. Meringue is such a fine art and this creation called for a soft chewy slab of it, instead we had a crunchy , chewy, foamy, blob of lemony sweet and sour stuff! The sorbet however came out wonderfully, all zingy sweet smooth.

Ive just asked he the mans if he'd do it all again , he said yes , but not for a while!!!

3 months since the 1st wall came down

and all is great in Kitchen Nosh of Love! When I get round to it ,I will post some snazzy pictures! After 2-3 months of upheaval , dirt and constant people, we are now straight, gleaming and sparkling and ready for some major cooking action. I christened my new hob with a chicken soup fest last week , making nearly 10litres of the homely golden stuff! Im so abnormally excited by the sight of it all potted in the freezer, I can see me turning into a very annoying Nigella type! Its a real pleasure to cook in and finally be able to do some lovely home cooking, as we have lovely new equipment and amazing Anolon Meyer saucepans and pans. They DO make a huge difference in comparison to all my supermarket and cheapo shop bought, (Tescos!), ones Ive had for years, (yes I know, how shameful for a foodie)!!! Its been a great investment if we're to do some intense cooking this summer.

Writing about food on here when all we existed on was takeaways and simple fare didn't seem that interesting to report on, but now were all a flutter planning our very first dinner party in months next weekend ! Were seeking inspiration from the 3 star Chef recipe book from Gordon Ramsey & Thomas Keller of French Laundry, (which makes me think of the amazing Carol Blymire who has cooked her way through the whole book & blogged about it and I must see what her outcome was with what I fancy doing!), I wont say here what as one of our guests reads this and we want it to stay secret for now! How Im going to top Melon soup with basil oil, I dont know! I will report on it all after!

We're also going to great lengths to make our 10 yr wedding anniversary trip to New York in May an unforgettable foodie experience! At the moment we are so overwhelmed with choice we've only booked one night out of the 3! This being the very elegant and modern progressive food restaurant Eleven Madison Park , I will be sure to report back when we return, that's if he the mans doest get all humphy about me photographing everything in sight! Like London we can choose any style , atmosphere and type of food and Im so boggled with it all we've gone into inertia stage for now! I am however using the ever informative Chowhound (Manhattan Board), for real serious talk on where to go and have some experts pointing me in the right directions.

Yesterday I made my rich and dark warm spice beef hot pot and my little cupcake declared it the best thing I had ever made! Praise indeed from my extremely fussy eater! Its the recipe I first started this blog with , so its befitting of a new start in my new space! Its so amazing what a change of environment can do. Although it uses Agave nectar and Ive recently read some worrying news on that too good to be true ingredient. I will follow up with more on that very soon.

Tonight for the 1st time in weeks and weeks we are dining out together and trying a little restaurant in Islington called Sabor and from the menu it looks extremely promising.He the mans can have his favoured caipirinhas and I can hopefully be in ceviche heaven if its on the menu! Im actually getting fed up with eating the same style of food out, (modern British, Italian, French Brasserie...) and to have some new flavours from Brazil & Latin America will be a great change. It might even inspire some new menu ideas of our own.

Hotel food V home food !

Id like to say our Cyprus trip was a gourmet fest , but alas it was a bit hotel homogeneous and well just OK on the whole , with a few gems thrown in. I'm thinking it may be down to eating far to much buffet breakfasts and room service club sandwiches!

Due to the Euro everything cost at least 20% more than eating in London, it could also be due to the Hotel we stayed in though from what Ive heard. We tried various ways to keep everything better value , one by eating out the hotel more and also when in the hotel, sharing mains and ordering extras.

We also only had 2 meze's the whole holiday and I forgot to take pictures ,shame really as the one in the hotel at Vieux Village was quite lovely, but with 2 little busy girls in tow , I didn't get much of a chance to click! Oh and there was a 3rd that was Lebanese called Mandaloun which was quite tasty and has inspired some future experimentation this week with chicken livers and spices , but also consisted of lamb balls (I'm not as adventurous as Id like to be, say no more!!!!!!!!!!!!!). We had an amazing fish meal , again at one of the Hotels restaurants called Enalia,

with the most amazing spicy sweet Thai prawn coconut soup Ive ever eaten. We joked and said we needed to phone the bank manager to pay for one portion of fresh whole grilled fish , at £60 for one red snapper !!!!! I managed to get my fave sushi Ikura though at the Hotels Japanese restaurant Kojima!

Kojima at night

The pickle just would not eat properly away though and existed on cereal , bread and chips only and would refuse point blank anything better. I despaired for 10 days and had to look away! Its strange as cupcake was the same 3yrs ago in Cyprus also, so I wonder if its quite common for kids away from home? To this end we've been cooking non stop the last 48hr on our return, so that the girls would be able to eat some good home food.

Bread, bread and more bread

I was overjoyed this evening at her hearty scoffing of vegetables in my just made chicken soup. Two huge pots we made , no less!!! I think I may have linked to the traditional recipe somewhere in my previous posts. Ive just finished a HUGE bowl myself for dinner yum yum yum.

We also made our famed traditional Italian meat ragu yesterday. I cannot take any credit for its recipe , but Delia can here !!! Although I tend not to use the pancetta , or the pork or the liver and sub them for celery , carrots and if possible veal mince. In fact its almost doctored beyond the original! I also add in about 4 slugs of Agave syrup to balance the tomato acidity.

All I know is all my family both in this house and my parents, namely my little sister and her friends come flocking when they know its on offer! It has a deep unctuousness that makes you dip the spoon in the pot over and over , naughty naughty!!