week 31 - Ottolenghi

Stealth's birthday celebration have featured several times before on the blog, including summer strawberry cakes, handmade noodles, and several weekends where we probably didn't feel like eating much at all. This year I had something special planned - a meat feast, and not like the ones we used to get half-price when she worked a Pizza Hut.

To celebrate the heralding of the last year of her fourth decade, I had bought a whole, larder trimmed, fillet of beef from Turner and George. While this was a mostly altruistic gesture, I also knew that the tail fillet would make a great tartare, which we enjoyed the night before Stealth arrived, along with some frites and a green salad. 

The rest of the beef (minus a small part of the Chateaubriand, that I cut off and put in the freezer to attempt the wellington treatment on at some point) was going to be anointed simply with salt and pepper and olive oil, roasted quickly so it was still pink within, and served with three homemade sauces and some colourful salads. All taken from the brilliant first Ottolenghi cookbook.

Roast beef fillet with three sauces

1 beef fillet, trimmed, (about 1.5kg) at room temperature

olive oil

coarse sea salt

black pepper

Preheat the oven to 220C. Place the fillet in a bowl with the oil, salt and pepper and massage in to the meat. Place a heavy pan on a high heat and sear the fillet until brown all over. I

Transfer the fillet to a roasting tray and put in the oven to roast. 10-14 mins for medium rare, 15-18 mins for medium or longer for well done. 

Remove from the oven, wrap in foil and leave to rest for at least 30 minutes. When ready to serve, unwrap and cut into slices. Season with sea salt.

Choka (smoky tomato sauce)

450g plum tomatoes

2 tbsp sunflower oil

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1 red chilli, seeded and chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

2 tbsp chopped coriander

1 tbsp paprika

a pinch of dried chilli flakes

salt and black pepper

Preheat the grill half the tomatoes and place, cut side down, on a tray. Put the whole tomatoes under it and cook for about 15 minutes, until the skin is burnt and blistered. The burnt skin will give the sauce its smoky flavour. Place the hot tomatoes in a bowl and crush them roughly with a wooden spoon. Pick out most of the skin.

In a saucepan, heat up the oil. add the onion and cook for 3 minutes on a medium heat. Add the onion and oil to the crushed tomatoes, together with the chilli, garlic, coriander, paprika and chilli flakes. Taste and season liberally with salt and pepper. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Rocket and horseradish sauce

50g rocket

2 tbsp freshly grated horseradish (I used 1 heaped tbsp from a far)

1 garlic clove, crushed

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp milk

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

125g Greek yoghurt

Put all the ingredients except the yoghurt in a blender or food processor and pulse until smooth. Transfer to a bowl, add the yoghurt and mix well. 

Watercress and mustard sauce

40g watercress

1 tbsp wholegrain mustard

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 garlic clove crushed

2 tbsp olive oil

Sea salt and black pepper

100g cream cheese

Put all the ingredients except the cream cheese in a blender or food processor and pulse until smooth. Transfer to a bowl, add the cream cheese and mix well. 

Alongside the beef I also made the roasted aubergine with saffron yoghurt and pomegranate; a superb dish that both looks impressive and is easy to throw together (bake slices of aubergine in the oven and then cool and cover with the yoghurt dressing, pomegranate and basil). And chargrilled asparagus, courgette and manouri, which is a Greek goat and sheep cheese, similar to halloumi, that has luckily made its way to the shelves of Waitrose in Wycombe. 

At least I knew if the food didn't impress her, my choice of supermarket would. Luckily, it was all a big hit.

Warming our cockles

On our recent drive down to Margate to visit Stealth and Regina's new pad the Ewing proclaimed ‘we need to get all our friend’s to move to the sea’. And while I still love the charms of her home in E&C (no, really) there is something exciting about a visit to the Isle of Thanet that reminds me of my halcyon days at university where the housemate with the car (always the best kind of housemate) would drive us here on Sundays to eat pots of vinegary cockles on the bleak sand, while hoping the sea air would somehow aid our hangovers.

Things are obviously much more fancy now, even at the Clintonville end, and after a glass of fizz while admiring the new view – complete with a running commentary from Stealth about the boats currently in the harbour; everybody needs a hobby when they leave London - we wandered along the sea front to Angela’s for a late lunch.

A tiny place with a big reputation, it has been featured everywhere from the FT to the Good Food Guide and I was already very excited about an afternoon heavily featuring the joys of booze and seafood. Starting with a bottle of vinho verde, chosen by the Ewing and appropriately named Chin Chin. Check out the bottle too – I know you should never judge a book by its cover, but how can drinking a couple of bottles of a wine with a label like that, on a sunny afternoon, be anything but pleasurable.

One sign that you know you are going to get a good feed is when the menu is found chalked up on a board hanging on the wall, that can be unhooked, as here, and paraded around if needed. One of the only flourishes I really don’t mind in restaurants. Even if their ever-changing nature often means I can’t look at them online before my visit. The good feed theory was backed up by the fact that we all eagerly wanted to eat it all, despite mainlining the Co-Ops salt and vinegar crisps (the best salt and vinegar crisps, don’t @ me) before coming out.

Fortuitously we all decided on different mains, just like proper food bloggers would, which was hardly a hardship when we would all have happily eaten any of them. Looking at it now I'm just sad we didn't have a fifth mouth (although we were with the Ewing, which pretty much constitutes the same thing) so we could enjoy the halibut and girolles. But then, there's always next time.

Little gratis nibbles of salmon pate on toast were wonderfully retro and completely delicious and we also ordered a basket of sourdough bread which came with butter that was mostly eschewed in lieu of dragging the hunks around our main dishes to soak up the sauce.

Ray has been one of my favourite fish since I went to Madrid with my Aunt as a teenager and ordered it, only to be told by the waitstaff that I - very awkward, very English - definitely wouldn't like it. As well meaning as the advice was my Aunt was indignant that I did want it and I would like it, and of course she was right. 

I still remember the congratulations I received from several excited Spanish women after methodically stripping all the flesh from the cartilaginous skeleton. Here was no different, with every last scrap of flesh divested from the bones and every last drop of swoonsome cockle vinaigrette, full of garlic and parsley and salty shellfish, scooped up with said sourdough.

The Ewing's hake was a perfectly cooked tranche of fish with burnished skin sitting proudly on top of a heap of sweet, slow-cooked fennel ragout and a big and beefy crab sauce. I was lucky enough to get a taste of this (not just because, when I asked the Ewing how it tasted for the purposes of the blog, she replied 'hake-y'), and it was quite as excellent as it looked.

Regina chose a grand hunk of monkfish on the bone on a bed of curried lentils, which she kindly modelled with an action shot, fork raised, so I could take a picture.

Stealth had no option than to let me take a picture of her fish stew, but you can see from her hand position she is getting good at modelling a plate. Both ladies seemed very happy with their choices, the sourdough coming in handy to make sure every plate was left pretty much spotless.

What was even more impressive than my greed was seeing the size of the kitchen our dishes came from. Making my house seem palatial.

Now, a few days before, I had sent Stealth a picture via Instagram (as has now become the customary way of contacting each other) to point out that Angela's' sister restaurant - Dory, just around the corner - were selling sourdough doughnuts on a Saturday morning and that I would very much like one on my visit.

While Stealth had not managed to procure a doughnut before our arrival (or let's be honest, attempted to...), she did ask one of our charming waitresses whether they thought there might be any left. While they said it was probably doubtful, they were more than happy to go and see while we finished our  lunch. The, incidentally absolutely delicious, bowl of greens we ordered to the side going someway to offset the scoring of any potential fried carbs.

After our dishes had been cleared Stealth announced that 'I don't want pudding, I'll just have a cup of tea' before, after a Pinteresque pause 'I'll just have a bite of yours'. Since Regina and I had already decided we were going to share a piece of the chocolate cake with caramel I told her, in no uncertain terms, that this was not happening.

Finally we decided on two slices between three of us, which worked out far better for me as Regina was sitting  closer to Stealth's roving fork. And while I did have to contend with renowned chocoholic the Ewing trying to get a look in, I wolfed down the fudgy yet ethereal mousse-style cake with a lake of burnished caramel without the need of much help at all.

The Ewing snagged the last slice of plum tart although, sadly, there were out of creme fraiche sorbet so she had to soldier on with a jug of pouring cream to douse it with instead. This was a lovely, light thing with sharp fruit and sweet custard and a slightly bruleed top bringing a little touch of bitterness.

We finished with good cafetiere coffee while having a giggle with the two waitresses who were a hoot and had lots of memories of old and new Margate to share with us. The food and atmosphere at Angela's were superlative and it comes highly recommended. And at fifty quid a head (with two bottles of wine and the doughnuts for later)  it might not have been cheap lunch, but it certainly felt like good value. A big thanks for Stealth and Regina for making it happen. No, I'm still not sharing my pudding next time.

Even after managing most of the chocolate cake on my own, old habits die hard and it was off to Manning's Seafood stall after lunch for a second cockle fix to attempt to negate the effects of a two bottle of wine lunch. I may be older than when I originally used to visit for my tray of bivalves, but clearly still no wiser.

Still got it - adventures in Soho

Sometimes I think getting old just means rebelling about getting old. In the last year, for example, I seem to have regress to an early twenties version of me - getting a tattoo at a 24 hour tattoo parlour in Vegas, having a grade one undercut (which even my hairdresser questioned the wisdom of in mid-winter), rocking my Casio calculator watch (always a popular conversation piece with men and women of a certain age) and wearing my luminous green Nike Air Max 95s like they’ve never gone out of fashion (have they ever gone out of fashion?)

And so when trying to arrange the location for a staid, mid-week post-work dinner date with Stealth, I also decided we needed to go to a gay bar (sung in the style of Electric Six). Something she, surprisingly, willing acquiesced to.

Things started out in a more middle-aged way with a trip to De Hems, for strong ale and where they were fortuitously also showing the early Spurs Vs Milan game (and even more fortuitously, we had left before they conceded the two late goals) and then for dinner at the place with the worst name but, apparently the best Malay noodle soup in town, Laksamania.

I chose the (already) famed Penang assam laksa - a bold and spicy fish broth cut through with lime and tamarind and combined with udon noodles, flaked mackerel, red chilli, shrimp paste, pineapple, cucumber and onion. And, as a bonus for an ouef-avoider, no boiled egg.

This was bullish without bullying. A thrilling assault of sweet, sour and spice, every spoonful dredging up flakes of oily fish and fat bouncy noodles, at turns rich and refreshing and with enough spice to get that satisfying sheen building on your brow as you slurp. If I had any recommendations it would be don't wear a light coloured shirt. Or attempt more restraint than I managed.

I also ordered for Stealth: the Ipoh curry laksa - a peppery hot and creamy soup with hints of star anise and cloves, to create a complex flavour. Yellow egg noodles & rice vermicelli noodles, mussels, bean sprouts, bean curd puffs, king prawns, slices of BBQ pork and half a boiled egg.

I can't remember if I tried this, I'm pretty sure I (would have) liked it. So did she, although not as much as the pints of Hop House 13 she was dispatching as we put the  world to rights.

The dessert menu features a variety of different shaved iced, although the snow ice original and coconut snow ice seemed to contain exactly the same ingredients. Whilst I noticed this, I obviously had no intention of interrogating the waitress over the differences. Unlike Stealth, who was happy to quiz her, despite my very English protestations.

She was very quick to recommend the coconut version 'because it contains coconut'. Which it certainly did, alongside some lumps of jelly and the odd odd kernel of sweetcorn, which were surprisingly pleasant. I also saw what, I think, was the original shaved ice, which was filled with a lurid mix of beans and fruit and also looked pretty good if you like some fibre with your pudding.

Stealth was as good as her word and we ended up at Trisha's legendary Soho bar, drinking mystery shots and standing in their outside courtyard, enjoying all the second hand smoke and gossip while looking at the stars twinkling above us in the London sky (although that could have been the fairy lights, we had supped a couple by that point). 

I'm not at liberty to reveal the full horror of what happened on the way home - what happens in E&C stays in E&C - but we both survived to see the dawn. As I said to Stealth the morning after, whilst texting to compare hangovers, we've still got it.