Seeing double

Walking up the street for Sunday lunch at Afghan restaurant Mazar felt a bit like a scene in the old Spiderman, where Spidey suddenly finds himself squaring up to an identically dressed doppelgänger. There, just across the road, no more than twenty metres away was Masa; a very similarly named Afghani restaurant with a similar interior and a similar menu. 

Even more confusingly, we had also previously eaten Sunday lunch at Masa - although I did find myself having to search the blog to confirm this, a perennial problem of eating out a lot coupled with general short-term memory loss – which added to the feeling of general discombobulation.

One thing that certainly did differ between our visits was the temperature. Previously, on our visit across the road, everything was festooned in tinsel and there were Christmas films on the TV (or so the blog tells me). Whereas this time the TV in the corner – another similar touch – was showing the European Road Cycling Championships, with Glasgow bathed in rare sun.

It was even hotter in Harrow, with the weather station down the road recording the highest temperature in the country. Only a few degrees shy of Mazar-i-Sharif, the Afghan city where the owner hails from and for which the restaurant is named.

The interior is a little more ramshackle that it’s slightly fancier rival across the road, with the decor somewhere between a takeaway shop – they also offer a menu of burgers and pizza - and a cosy family restaurant. The walls are dominated by pictures of Afghanistan, including one of the blue mosque, which the owner was very happy to come over and talk to us about when he saw the Ewing admiring it. In fact, she was so smitten with his descriptions that it went straight to the top of the holiday list, at least until she got home and saw the Foreign Office has advised against all non-essential travel there…

Thankfully, although a visit to this fascinating country remains off limits to all but the most intrepid explorer, there’s still a chance to experience some of the culture and Afghani cuisine in this corner of North West London. Eschewing the standard fast food options, we chose the family pack 1, a selection of different traditional dishes served with naan and salad.

A late start in the kitchen that morning meant we were warned it would be about an hour before the rice was ready. No matter, they had air con and the Ewing had her ayran, a slightly salty yogurt drink that, although the thought of it makes me feel a little queasy, is apparently just the ticket in the hot weather.

We started with Mantoo, Afgani parcels filled with lamb, onions and herbs and served topped with a sauce of yoghurt and dried mint. While these were likened to ravioli, a better comparison would be Chinese Jiaozi or Tibetan momo, dumplings with thick wheat wrappers stuffed with ground minced meat and then steamed.

Sabzi Palak, spinach fried with white leek & garlic, was very similar to a good saag bhaji, which I always think of as quite an understated achievement, seeing as most my efforts at cooking spinach end up oily or bitter or gritty or watery. And sometimes, most impressively, all of those things together.

There was also a dish of bamia – a stew of okra, another of my favourite veg. This little baby version had been cooked down with tomato and onions a lashing of olive oil, to form a rich sauce that avoided the gloopy gumminess that the ladies fingers can be prone to (behave at the back).

Skewers of marinated lamb and chicken were smoky and tender and were served with giant oval naan – it wouldn’t be a kebab without some bread - which was flatter and crisper than the more familiar puffy, tear dropped-shape. Its rigid construction made an excellent shovel for the remnants of the dish of strained yogurt, that the Ewing was determined not to waste.

Afghan food, our genial host told us, was better than Indian food as it was spiced, but not too spicy. Of course, I was too polite to challenge his point, but I was very thankful for a verdant dish of sauce - presented with an ominous warning - that proved the perfect blend of heat from chillies and freshness from coriander and parsley.

When the platter of  Qabili Palow finally emerged, it lived up to its billing of Afghanistan’s national dish. Meat (here lamb, on the bone) is slow cooked in stock and added to white rice, that takes on a deep colour from slow-cooked onions and spices, before being topped with plump raisins, slivers of fried carrots, and almonds. Whenever I think I’m not really a fan of rice, I eat a dish like this and have to reconsider my position. There were also plenty of leftovers to take home for dinner the next day.

For desert I was torn between the firni – traditional Afghan desert of set custard sprinkled with pistachios and almonds – and the hot ‘n’ crunchy pie, which I’m guessing is not a traditional desert, but had such an amazing name I wasn’t sure I cared. In the end it was a moot point, as I was far too full to eat anything else, although the owner very kindly gave us a dish of a barfi-like fudge with nuts and some sugared almonds, which the Ewing was very enamoured with.

Whereas when my favourite webbed warrior met his double, there was only going to be one winner, in the case of Mazar and Masa it’s win-win. Two great restaurants, twice the fun. I just wish one was a little closer.

Somethin' Hot - Kiln

Sometimes there's nothing quite as glorious as an afternoon in your own company. A position I found myself in a couple of weeks ago when, at a lose end in the Big Smoke, I spent a happy hour or so drinking the fabulous cask Harveys and equally fabulous keg Kernal at the fabulous Harp in Covent Garden. 

Buoyed by booze and getting peckish, (the Harp does offer pork pies, as all good pubs should), I decided to schlep along to Soho where I hoped to find a stool to balance precariously on at Kiln, the Thai restaurant that everyone's still (just about, see below) talking about, that has just secured the top spot at this year's National Restaurant Awards.

In case you were wondering how this one ends, the answer is happily and without incident (unless you count the splashes of curry sauce over my favourite blue work shirt), but I feel it would be remiss not to at least mention the 'Boring Thai' racist chef storm, involving erstwhile Som Saa chef Shaun Beagley, that engulfed Twitter the very day after my visit. 

Now normally I avoid anything faintly concerned with currant affairs on the blog - not because I don't care about such things, but who wants to read about the depressing real world when you can read about how many puddings my wife has eaten this week (four, for the record. It's Wednesday). But this exploded in such a timely fashion that it seemed odd not to at least mention it, and the fact that racism, sadly, still seems insidious, and often in the places that you would least expect. So, if it even needed saying, don't be racist and don't be a dick, but, for now, back to the joys of my solo adventuring.

As I arrived pretty much as they opened for the evening (you can only book the downstairs tables, for larger groups) I got my pick of stools along the ground floor counter. Obviously, I headed straight down to the far end of the counter to the one seat that was little set away from the others, while the staff nodded approval in endorsement of my choice, and it's certainly a grand spot for people watching while not having to actually engage with anyone. Perfect. 

From my vantage point I could see the lamb skewers being cooked over charcoal, so it would have been remiss not to order one, alongside an icy cold tankard of Hop House 13 lager. I suppose the big question is do they measure up to Silk Road's lamb kebabs, to which I say probably. And while you can have two and a half skewers at SR for the price of one of these, any saving is cancelled out by the bus to Camberwell.

Larb is probably the only dish ever to have made mince sexy. A 'meat salad', the most fabulous juxtaposition of words, that is most commonly eaten in Laos and the Isan region of Thailand. It can be prepared in a multitude of different ways, but I've mostly enjoyed it dressed with lime juice, fresh herbs and fish sauce and mixed with roasted ground rice.

Here it was made with roughly chopped raw beef and a healthy dose of chilli, like a tartare on steroids. Chunks of cucumber helped salve the thrilling spicy/sour burn of each bite. Not flavours for the faint-hearted, but an utter joy, and all mine.

The sour turmeric curry with turbot was outstanding. When I’m pretending my opinions are important (quite a lot of the time) I like to opine that turbot is my favourite fish. Mainly because my Mum bought some when I went round for dinner years ago, from the Transit van that used to come down one a week from Grimsby, then spent the whole time telling us it was seventeen quid for three pieces, which seemed like the most incredible extravagance for a Tuesday. 

It was bloody nice though; as was this, the meaty tranche of fish just about staying on the right side of perfectly cooked while bobbing in its fragrant bath – which was all at once rich, complex, refreshing and soothing, as good Thai food should be. It was also ten pence under a tenner, which, considering inflation over the last fifteen odd years since the infamous visit to the fish man in rural Buckinghamshire, makes it seem even more of the bargain for central Soho.

As I was flying solo I treated myself to a glass of one of the most expensive wines on the list, a Sonoma chardonnay that looked, and tasted, rather like scrumpy. Kinda weird, but I kinda liked it and perfectly pitched to stand up to the salt and the smoke.

If they had a signature dish (the majority of the menu changes daily, depending on what’s available), it would have to be the ever present claypot glass noodles with Tamworth belly and crab. I’m normally not a great fan of glass noodles, finding them gloopy and tasteless, but the dish here did much to change my mind, in no small part down to the fatty pork and rich brown crab meat that infused the noodles with a glorious piggy, crabby funk, lifted by the verdant green chilli sauce alongside.

There's no dessert menu at Kiln but the ever-reliable Gelupo is just around the corner, so I decamped there for a double scoop of bonet - still a fave, years after my first visit, and tiramisu gelato. As Saint Delia said, one is fun, but I can't help feeling that having the Ewing there to help me finish my second scoop is always better.

Bucks Bites: Cheque it out

There’s nothing mad dogs and Englishmen love more than pub garden weather. Any hint that the sun might be coming out and we are there, balancing a pint of fizzy lager in one hand, while battling with the slightly damp parasol with the broken catch. 

From sitting in unmown fields on splintering picnic benches, to huddling on rickety pavement tables while breathing in the hot fug of traffic fumes, to concrete courtyards that are sticky underfoot and smell of stale fags, the sheer elation of being outside with a beer in hand seems to overcome all other circumstances.

While it is nice simply to be outside, swatting away wasps and getting slightly sunburnt, living in leafy Bucks means we are blessed with some very picturesque pub gardens to sit in. Having decamped from North West London as a child, this often meant family expeditions out into the gently rolling Chiltern Hills, with one of my Dad’s recent favourites being the Chequers at Fingest.

As he was staying with us recently, on a bi-annual visit from Oz, it seemed an apt place to go for dinner and celebrate the start of the great Heatwave of 2018 (can anyone still remember back to a time when they needed a coat, or shoes or trousers, or pretty much any clothes at all…).

Being a Brakspear’s pub, somewhat unsurprisingly, they serve Brakspear’s beer. Regular readers (Hello, Mummy P) may remember me talking about just this very drop when I went for a recent dinner at another charming Chiltern pub, literally but a stone’s throw from the Chequers. Which is handy, as I can just put in a link here and don’t have to bother repeating myself (not that that normally stops me)

It turns out my Dad is rather a fan of a pint of the famous double-dropped bitter as well, and we quickly made our way through three each, while the Ewing cursed being the designated drivernot, perhaps, because she particularly wanted to drink lots, but more the fact the decline in the quality of conversation and increase in beer drunk seemed to be directly proportional.

As much as my figure and Instagram feed may suggest otherwise, I don’t eat a huge amount of burgers. Yes, the word huge may be relative (literally and figuratively) but, as most of us have bitter experience, their proliferation on most pub menus does not guarantee something that you will actually enjoy eating. Especially at 15 pounds, as the cheeseburger costs here (a sum that would buy you ten of my beloved double cheeseburgers from Maccy D’s, the connoisseurs choice).

Still, we all ordered the burger anyway, although my Dad did initially attempt to order the sausages, being starved of a proper pork banger in Australia – where the grainy and perennial disappointing beef snag still rules the roost, despite the influx of Brits and Irish living – only to be told they were off the menu.

As far as burgers go, this was a champion; hefty in stature, but manageable without contorting your jaw awkwardly to eat; pink and juicy in the middle – the burger is made onsite – this was a squirter; topped with good cheddar cheese (nothing really beats plasticky American, but this was nice in a classy way) melted properly across the top; and served with lots of pickles, tomato and raw onion.

In fact, the food was so good that, with the heatwave extending into an almost unprecedented second week, the Ewing suggested we returned (sadly sans my father, who was heading back Down Under) a couple of days later, which, being the weekend, meant there was the added bonus of the pizza oven in the garden being fired-up for the weekend.

Pizza came topped with prosciutto, rocket and Parmesan, finished with a hefty glug of heady truffle oil - bringing fragrant joy or funky misery depending on which side of the tuber-scented condiment you come down on. For the record, I'm a fan, of the funk if used judiciously as this was. As was the Ewing, masterfully modelling her dinner in a surprisingly good-natured photo opportunity. A decade of my incessant photo taking has gradually worn her down.

The fierce heat of the wood oven had given the base the proper combination of chewy and crisp, with a smoky depth coming from the charred spots on the edge of the crust. And, while at fourteen quid for a disc of dough topped with a couple of slices of ham and a handful of salad, it could hardly be described as cheap, it still seemed fair value.

While the lure of the burger was strong, I plumped for the pork chop - served with a green peppercorn sauce, cabbage and mustard mash. While there is nothing particularly revelatory about the combination of meat and two veg, pork chops were my favourite meal when growing up and, on tasting this, it's fair to say not much has changed all these years later. 

Everything on the plate was perfectly judged from the punchy mustard mash, to the buttery crunch of the cabbage, to the crispy rind of the chop, best eaten alongside the briny pop of the bottled peppercorns in the rich cream sauce. Pub food at its finest.

Relaxing in the sun with beer, family and pork chops. At the risk of sounding like Homer Simpson (and surely there's nothing wrong with that), I'm not sure things can get much better.