Pierre Herme Macaron

Every now and then you come across something that kind of changes your life as you know it. For me, one of these moments occurred in the summer of 2009 when I was offered my first macaron; a Laduree creation that had me reeling! Since then I have always tried to keep the macaron in my life, indulging whenever I have the opportunity. They are so sugary and rich (but they don’t come cheap), so they will always be an indulgence item, but boy are they worth it!

I always thought of Laduree as the pinnacle of macaron craftsmanship, that is until Christmas, when I was giving a gorgeous looking box stuffed with macarons of the most amazing colours and flavours. They were from Pierre Herme, the French patisserie chef who has mastered the creation of weird, wonderful and beautiful macarons.

I have visited their store on Lowndes Street only a couple of times since then because I find it practically impossible to resist the urge of buying a big box, but a sudden urge for macarons (plus a need to buy a present for Ben’s mum) sent me there the other day and I was once again reminded of its greatness.

Let’s put his in perspective, this place made not one BUT TWO sweet macaroons with foie gras at Christmas! Yup, they really push the boat out with the flavours and it honestly works. Having poked my nose in last weekend, my attention was caught by a gorgeous bright red and green macaroon, which they told me was their special Mother’s Day creation. Believe me, I can think of no better place to get a treat for your mum! The Mother’s Day macaron is Pistachio and Raspberry compote and fits in just perfectly with a big, mixed, box of macarons (as I found out when I was eating a box of them later in front of the TV). The store always has some of the classic macaron flavours, but mixes them up with something a little more interesting such as, Green Tea, Chanterelle Mushroom & Lemon. It’s good.

So, if you are thinking that Pierre Herme’s boutique might just merit a visit, it’s worth noting that they are running their Macaron Day on Tuesday 20^th March, too late for Mother’s Day but still a great way of welcoming the first day of spring on Wednesday 21^st...If you need an excuse.

Walking home with my valuable macaron!!

For one day only on Macaron Day, Pierre Herme will be stocking a staggering 25 flavour of macarons, including their foie gras variety(!), in what they call a “taste retrospective”. The event is held in aid of Ambitious about Autism and with the tag line “1 Donation, 1 Macaron” and with a percentage of all sales on the day to be donated to Ambitious about Autism, you can’t go far wrong. You can find out more here: www.pierreherme.com/media/catalog/product/JDM-UK.pdf

Now, I have made macarons on a few occasions with varying degrees of success. One thing is for sure though, I certainly can’t make them as neat as I’d like! I always like to try out different flavours and my latest batch of lemon and pistachio ones certainly went down well, it’s just a shame I didn’t think about the colour composition before I started as my greens and yellows all look a bit samey. A nice chocolately brown and pink would’ve brought them to life quite nicely...something to think about for the future, but for now here’s my macaron recipe very heavily influenced my Eric Lanlards from Home Bake, which I have found to be the best:

Ingedients:

For basic macaron mixture:

100g ground almonds

100g icing sugar
90g egg whites (from 3 large eggs)
100g  caster sugar

1.       Sift the icing sugar and almonds together in a bowl.
2.       In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites on a fast speed with an electric whisk. When this starts to thicken, gradually add the caster sugar until it forms stiff peaks.
3.       Fold the almond mixture into the egg whites, along with your chosen colouring and flavouring with a large metal spoon.
4.       Pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees Centigrade. Lay baking parchment on large backing trays and using a wide, plain nozzle, pipe out discs of mixture approximately 3cm round. Leave these to dry a little for 5-10 minutes.
5.       Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes, making sure that they don’t start to brown.
6.       As soon as they come out of the oven, it’s a great tip to lift the baking parchment and pur some very cold water onto the tray. This makes it much easier to remove the discs from the parchment with a spatula.
7.       When they are cool, sandwich together with your choice of filling.

For my lemon and pistachio macarons you will need the following:

Lemon:

2 drops of lemon essence for flavouring
A few drops of yellow food colouring to achieve your desired depth of colour
Good quality, shop bought lemon curd for the filling

Pistachio:
For the main mixture, substitute 20g of the almons with raw pistachio nuts and blitz them up into a fine powder (so 80g ground almond and 20g whizzed up pistachios)
A few drops of green food colouring
Pistachio Ganache  for the filling, as below:

Ingredients

100ml single cream
40g unsalted pistachios (smashed up into small chunks)
40g caster sugar
1 tablespoon caster sugar
2 egg yolks
20g butter, softened

A few drops of green or black food colouring

For the pistachio ganache:

Heat the cream in a saucepan over medium heat then add the pistachios, sugar and caster sugar. Bring to the boil, then add the eggs and cook and turn down, making sure it does not boil but is on the point of boiling. Remove from heat, stir in the softened butter and food colouring, then refrigerate.

Rick Steins Fish & Chips, Padstow

 Battered Oysters

Last weekend I took a much needed couple of days and headed down to Cornwall with my sister (Alice) and our boyfriends (Ben, George) in tow. The plan: to eat, drink, walk and generally look after ourselves very well until we felt we could face London again.

 
We were staying in George's bungalow in St Austell; a perfect little place to dump stuff during the day's activities and really settle into in the evenings. Very cosy with about 50 electric heaters blaring! Several evenings the pineapple rum made an appearance; it is delicious with ice after dinner (or whenever you fancy it really, I wouldn’t want to be too prescriptive!).
 
Well we certainly did look after ourselves and we pretty much ate ourselves to a standstill most days and yet, after two solid days of gluttony, we still managed to get completely over excited about getting ourselves down to Rick Stein's Fish & Chips for Sunday lunch.

 
We were queuing for about 30 minutes in the cold because (as you can imagine) the restaurant is pretty popular with visitors to Padstow. You can’t book at Stein’s Fish & Chips, which is really as it should be at a chippy. The prices are also pretty standard for fish and chips, but the taste is definitely better than most. I won’t say the BEST, that honour belongs to The Victoria Inn in Penzance, but I’ll save that for another day...

The restaurant was bright, simple and comfortable, with big scrubbed wooden tables which you will share with other people unless you are in a larger group. It’s table service without the frills, but essentially it was efficient and friendly and luckily the food appeared pretty pronto. We warmed up with a glass of wine, whilst the boys drank beer name after Rick Stein’s dog, Chalky.

Just because we couldn’t wait for our mains, and because we were intrigued, we ordered a couple of battered oysters a piece to get started. Ordinarily I'm pretty “take it or leave it” about oysters but these were really amazing. I could’ve easily just eaten a huge plateful of them for my lunch and couldn’t stop myself from asking the chef how he did them on my way out. The restaurant was just winding down and although the kitchen was closing, the very friendly David took me behind the scenes  to show me how they were done; I was making mental notes like a mad thing hoping mine might be half as good!

Obviously I intended to try these at home but, as I was buying my oysters at Whole Foods, I realised I had no idea how to shuck an oyster. My advice: if you’re going to try this at home then ask your friendly fishmonger for a quick tutorial. Martin at Whole Foods was very obliging and I even got a free oyster to taste out of it! Honestly though, I would have had no clue if it hadn’t been for my mini lesson. I actually had an oyster shucking knife at home (an unused present), but you absolutely need one so if you don’t have one then you must get one. They were selling them at Whole Foods for £11.99 which I reckon isn’t too bad.

Here’s my take on those oysters and I urge you to try it. A bit fiddly (and there’s obviously the need to be careful with sizzling hot oil), but it’s worth the effort.

The Bill:   £50.80

8 battered oysters      £1.45 each

3 scampi & chips        £8.50 each

1 cod & chips           £9.50

2 mush peas             £1.15 each

2 Tartare Sauce         95p each

Ingredients:

8 oysters

For the batter:

1oz plain flour

½ tsp cornflour

50ml cold sparkling water

300-500ml vegetable oil, for deep frying

Salt & pepper

1.Add the dry ingredients for the batter into a bowl and whisk in the sparkling water. Season with salt and pepper.

2.  Schuck the oysters, making sure they are cleanly separated from the shell. Discard the flat side of the shell and keep the rounded side for serving.

3.  Heat the oil for frying in a heavy bottomed saucepan (or fire up your deep fat fryer if you have one).

4.  When the oil is sizzling hot, lay an oyster shell on a slotted spoon and lower into the oil to kill on the pesky bacteria.

5.  Set the shell to one side and dip your first oyster in the batter so that it’s well coated. Drop into the oil for about 45 seconds and watch it crisp up and brown!

6.  Scoop the oyster out with the slotted spoon and repeat.

7.  Serve the oysters in their shells with wedges of lemon.

8.  Eat them quickly whilst their hot!!

Total Cost of Ingredients:    99p an oyster

(ingredients for the batter were already in my cupboard)



Mark's bar & Polpo Campari Bar

A couple of Saturdays ago, Ben and I spent the afternoon wandering around the sales on Oxford Street and looking for bargains and returning unwanted Christmas presents. Pretty stressful, not particularly successful and to be honest, by about 4.30pm we were ready for something stronger than a coffee to warm us up.

We made our may over to Hix in Soho, which has a lovely cosy cocktail bar downstairs called Mark’s Bar. We’ve been there before but never when we’ve been in such need of some warmth and a little pick me up. I basically was too tired and cold to look beyond the first thing on the menu: Guy's Punch (served hot or cold), well that was me sold, I went for hot, obviously.

Mark's Bar

Much as I love Mark’s Bar, the prices prevent it from being somewhere I can stay for too many drinks (unless someone else is paying!), but I wasn’t quite ready to step out of my fuzzy haze. Luckily, just around the corner from Hix is another lovely restaurant, Polpo. Ben and I had eaten at Polpo at the end of November last year and I had noticed then, a sign pointing to a Campari bar. The Campari bar is tucked downstairs just by the loos. We hadn’t had time to go that night but I had poked my head around the door to see a tiny room packed to the rafters with people who looked like they were having a whale of a time. Just my kind of thing. Polpo is the kind of restaurant that serves lots of delicious food for pretty reasonable prices, and I was banking on the Campari bar following the same formula, which I was delighted to find that it does.

The Campari bar opens at 5.30pm, Ben and I got there at about 5.45pm and if you like sitting down then I suggest you get there early as well because there were no tables left by 6pm. Bear in mind there are only about five tables to start off with! We got chatting to the bar man, Kevin, a friendly South African who seemed able to cope quite well with being the only guy serving there, even when Campari heavy. If you like that bitter Campari taste then you will love them; if not then there are a few other choices available too. Ben and I tried as many of the cocktails that we could and Kevin told us a bit about them; my Cynar Gin Fizz was great. I’d never tried Cynar before, but I’d like to again; Kevin tells me it’s an Italian aperitif made from various herbs and plants, predominantly artichoke. We ate a few of the snacky bites that they do as well and it was all pretty delicious and certainly gave us the courage we needed to face the cold again.

The Bill

Mark’s Bar:         £20.18

1 Guy’s Punch

1 Cider

1 Parsnip crisps

Polpo Campari Bar:          £29.50

Ne goni Sbagliato

Americano Cocktail

Grissini

Chopped Liver Toasts

Sidecar

Cynar Gin Fizz

I am a massive cocktail fan but pretty rubbish at making them for myself so I’m not going to insult people who have actually mastered the art by trying to recreate a cocktail recipe. There was one thing that really caught my imagination though; all those flavour infused spirits at Mark’s Bar. This appears to me to be something I can really experiment with and I’m going to start by copying them with the tried and tested brandy and pineapple infused El Dorado rum. The only thing is, as this is an experiment, I’m definitely not going to ruin a good bottle of El Dorado rum. Sainsbury’s will just have to do...

Ingredients:

70cl bottle of dark rum

2x Large Pineapples

Brandy to taste

1. Peel the pineapples and slice. Lay the slices into an airtight glass container. I used a jar with a capacity of about 1.5 litres.

2. One the jar is filled nearly to the top with pineapple, pour the entire bottle of rum in.

3. Add about two tablespoons of brandy. This can be altered to your tastes.

4. Seal the air tight jar or container and refrigerate for 10 days to two weeks.

5. Open and enjoy! You can try different spirits and lots of flavour combinations, so get experimenting.

Total Cost of Ingredients:            £13.49

Almost the same price as my Guy’s Punch..,.bargain!

Happy New Year!!

So, December seems to have come and gone pretty quickly in a haze of work and food and work and food and work, oh...and booze. Having rung in the New Year with my nearest and dearest with a very fun filled party, I suddenly seem to have woken up from my stupor of over indulgence and it’s already 9th January 2012 (!!!); I really can’t remember how that happened.






Celebrating New Year with my big sis

  

I suppose I’ve been a bit slow off the mark, but I’ve started thinking about New Year’s resolutions and all those many things that I want to achieve this year. I’ve got to be honest, it’s pretty daunting and I’m tempted to climb back into my food and wine fuzz but instead I’m going to try and tackle things head on. The thing is, we always have the potential to do something special but I suppose New Year just opens your eyes to the possibilities a bit more. Perhaps, it's as simple as assessing our lives and deciding that that thing we have always wanted to do, might just be possible; as Tom Hardy’s character in Inception says:

“You mustn’t be afraid to dream a

little bigger, darling.”

A bit cheesy perhaps, but a bit of positive thinking never did a gal any harm. Watch this space...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HELLIE!!

On Sunday one of my best friends in the whole world turned 25 and I was too busy working at Masterchef Live to go to lunch with her or even just give her a big birthday hug...quite a feat considering I live with the girl!

I tried to make her forget what a bad friend I am by making her a cake, and I’m thinking it might have sort of worked. The inspiration for this cake came from the front cover of the beautiful Miette cookbook. They are a bakery based in San Francisco which, by the looks of things, I would love. Sadly I have no immediate plans (or funds) to jet off to The Land of Opportunity, so this is about as close as I can get for now. You can check out the website of this gorgeous bakery here - www.miette.com

                                                                                                                                                        

On a more selfish note, not only was it very naughty of me to miss the celebrations, but I was also a bit miffed as they went to the, supposedly, very cool SEVEN in Brixton Market. I will have to investigate this place in due course...

I must also take this opportunity now to say that another of my lovely friends and housemates, Jess, also turned 25 last week. Here are the beautiful birthday girls at SEVEN...

Zanzibar

Pilau Rice

When the Autumn starts closing in and you have to start taking your woolies out of storage, there are two realistic options: 1. Embrace the cold and hope that your winter coat won’t have been attacked by the moths, or 2. Pack your bags and head off somewhere hot to try and put off the inevitable for as long as possible. I chose the latter and I write this having just returned from Zanzibar.

Zanzibar is a stunning island just off the coast from (but still part of) Tanzania. As promised in the guide books, it was hot, fascinating and absolutely beautiful. Being a small island with a vast amo9unt of fishing boats and access to a pretty impressive array of marine life, we ate nothing but fish for two weeks and I was in heaven. Zanzibar is known as “The Spice Island”, and the flavours in the food rarely disappointed. We even visited a spice farm to see where and how everything grows; that was a particularly interesting and smelly (in a good way) day.

I won’t bore you / show off about all of the amazing things that I ate whilst I holidayed, but I did want to share just a little recipe that was taught to me by a local lady in her own home. Ben, my holidaying partner, and I stayed in a lovely little guesthouse in Paje where they offered a “traditional Swahili cookery course” for 10,000 Tanzanian shillings, which is about £3.50. Bargain.

This was not some big tourist operation, this was just the initiative of the owner of our guesthouse to try and encourage tourists to contribute more to the local community. This made it all the more special as we walked to one of the local villages and were welcomed into a private home, complete with visiting relatives, little children everywhere and very suspect loo!

We chose to cook spiced pilau rice with chicken, a local favourite that is eaten on special occasions. This I have not yet tried to recreate at home but I will faithfully tell you what our “instructor” showed us. Please note, she cooked in quantities that would feed a small army and these are what I relate to you now:

Ingredients:

1 bag of white rice (I’d hazard a guess she used about 2 lbs)

3 medium white potatoes

3 red onions, finely sliced

1 small bulb garlic

2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon

2 small handfuls of cardamom pods

1 small handful of green pepper corns

3 small handfuls of cumin seeds

600 ml good chicken stock

Some pre cooked chicken, ideally from a small roasted chicken

1 ½ litres cold water

Coarse salt

Vegetable oil for frying

1. Peel the cloves of garlic and in a pestle and mortar (or food processor) blend the garlic with a little of the onion and some salt.

2. Heat around 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a very large saucepan and add the sliced onions. When these are soft, add the garlic paste and stir.

3. In the pestle and mortar, grind the cardamom pods with the cinnamon and add to the onions and garlic. Stir, and continue to fry on a medium heat.

4. Cube the potatoes into largeish chunks, add to the pan and stir.

5. Fry the mixture for a minute or two as you stir and then add the chicken stock. Stir well and then add all of the water and bring to the boil.

6. When the water has just started to boil, wash the rice and add to the pan and allow it to simmer for 10-15 minutes (or as long as it takes) until the rice is soft and the water is almost completely gone. Of course, add more water if necessary.

7. Add the cooked chicken to the rice, stir, cover the dish and place in a low oven (about 150 degrees) for 30 minutes. She used an “Indian Oven” by surrounding the pan with red hot coals which gradually cooled.

8. Remove the pan from the oven and serve with a fresh side salad. We had sliced carrot, tomato and onion.



An Indian Oven in all its glory!





A full Lucy tries to decide the best way to roll home...



Namaaste Kitchen, Camden

www.namaastekitchen.co.uk

Lamb Chops with Papaya and Ginger Spiced Marinade

Every now and then I really need a bit of spice in my life and at these times I try and get myself down to an Indian restaurant sharpish! I pretty much have the same things every time, a nice chicken Rogan Josh, and it tends to hit the spot quite nicely. But, since visiting India in 2009, I realised quite quickly that there is a lot more to Indian food than just curries and in fact that most restaurants in India don’t serve the staples that sit on the menus in Indian takeaways across the UK. I obviously generalise hugely, and this was made very apparent to me when I went to Namaaste Kitchen a couple of weeks ago with a friend and was delighted to see a broad menu that offered much more interesting Indian food than just curries. (Quick side note: Although it does do takeaways, the restaurant is buzzy and fun and the staff are so friendly and helpful that I would recommend sitting down if possible!)

Luckily, although we took ages to decide what to get, we were given some popadoms and sauces to eat whilst we mulled over the menu. I always appreciate a freebie so thought it was worth mentioning! My friend, still finding it too hard to decide what he wanted to eat, asked the waiter to recommend some dishes and he was certainly not disappointed when his food came because the jumbo Tandoori prawns he had for a starter were delicious. He went on to have a Lamb Biryani but that was sort of blurred out for me because I was simultaneously eating some of the best lamb chops I have ever had in my life. It said that they were tender on the menu, but the chops were SO tender that I had a hard time believing they were chops! They were also marinated beautifully in “fresh ginger paste, raw papaya & selected herbs and spices”, which complimented the flavour of the lamb perfectly. 

We went on to have some perfectly nice puddings but, as I think you can guess, the thing that really stood out for me was the lamb chops, simply because I have made lamb chops hundreds of times and never, ever have they tasted quite as good as those I had at Namaaste Kitchen. My dad, the world’s foremost lamb chop fanatic, would have been mightily impressed with these chops and although I have tried to recreate them for him, he is under strict instruction to get himself to Namaaste Kitchen and try them first hand. Honestly, my recipe (below) does not do them justice, but hopefully it will provide you with some inspiration on how to tart up this old favourite…

Ingredients:

2 large lamb chops

½ papaya, cubed

2cm ginger, grated

1 tsp garam masala

½ tsp ground cumin

½ tsp hot chilli powder

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Ground nut oil for frying

1. Cube the papaya half and pour into a medium oven proof dish.

2. Grate the ginger into the bowl and mash with a fork.

3. Add the cumin, chilli powder, garam masala, salt and pepper and mix.

4. Add the chops, cover and chill for an hour.

5. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees. Heat up a little oil in a large frying pan until very hot and cook the lamps chops for about 3 minutes on each side, until brown.

6. Return the chops to the dish and make sure that they are well covered with the papaya and ginger paste.

7. Place the dish in the oven for 30 minutes, turning after 15 minutes and ensuring they are well covered by the marinade.

8. Remove from the oven and serve with a side dish of your choice. I would recommend steamed English greens and mange tout for a light meal.

The chops should be really tender and packed with flavour and the remaining marinade can be used as a delicious sauce. I also used the other half of the papaya to make a spicy chutney to go on the side, by adding a little water, 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, a little finely chopped ginger, salt pepper and chilli powder to taste and cooking for around 20  minutes on  low heat.

Total cost of ingredients: £7.75 (I already had the spices and oil)

This should serve 1-2 people depending on how hungry you are.

Finally I do apologise that this isn’t the most attractive dish...sometimes you just have to accept that a chop will never sit neatly on a plate! Regard the picture above (made at the reestaurant) and I think you'll understand why, aesthetically, mine doesn't quite live up to expectations.