Earl Grey & Rose Supper Club, Streatham

The Bitter: Portions too huge to finish.

The Sweet: Everything else.

Sated. That would be the word I would use to describe my first Streatham supper club experience a little over two weeks ago. I could also use satisfied, stuffed, satiated and replete. I’m not just talking about the food though. I’m talking about an evening spent in good company, with the warmest of welcomes from our hosts AND the bonus of some truly excellent, hearty cooking.

The day beforehand, I had been on the bus on the way to work, scrolling through twitter, and I had seen the supper club advertised by @streathampulse. Nothing escapes the all-seeing, all-knowing streathampulse feed, you see, and given that I always like to sniff out a good local meal, I made a mental note to investigate further. When I saw that it was just the next evening, I didn’t think I would be able to go along, although I thought I probably should try to get to the next one. Lo and behold, later that day I received a text from my friend Malcolm asking if I would like to take up a spare ticket he had booked for the inaugaural evening (his girlfriend was poorly). Naturally I jumped at the chance and soon found myself calling the Earl Grey and Rose shop on Leigham Court Road to see if I could snatch one last spot for the Mister to accompany Malcolm and I.

So the next day  - a rainy, chilly Friday evening - we three found ourselves knocking on a grand-looking door on Gleneldon Road, and a blonde lady with a beaming face was welcoming us in to a spectacularly stylish house which was already full of people chattering and clinking glasses. Around 14 other dinner guests were already getting acquainted in the living room; an assortment of couples in their late twenties and early thirties, and several attractive, well-groomed women in their thirties and forties who were neighbours or friends of neighbours. I recognised another contributor to Streatham Pulse, @diddlysquat29, aka Alex, who was there with his other half, and was immediately glad I already knew others, although there was no need to be worried about striking up conversations – everyone was very friendly. 

Our host, Lydia, gave us some ribbons to identify our bottles of wine, (BYO alcohol was specified) pointed out some canapés (smoked salmon blinis, mozzarella, basil and tomato bites, and some chorizo and gherkin sticks, amongst others) and went off to get us some glasses for prosecco. Her husband Mark, a jolly soul who also beamed at us, was soon filling up (and re-filling!) our vintage-looking glasses, encouraging us to nibble and enjoy the roaring open fire in the living room. It was a warm and inviting start, and we looked around, impressed by the tasteful décor and luxuriant furnishings. We chatted to a couple who had recently bought a home in Streatham and were seeking out a bit of the local scene.  It was pleasing to be able to explain the beauty of Streatham in a nutshell to them, and the guests at the supper club embodied this: that Streatham is a fantastically diverse neighbourhood, that people are friendly and unprejudiced, and that although it may not have the aspirational pull of Clapham or the trendy edginess of Brixton, it has a burgeoning scene all of its own, and a much more organically-grown one at that.

Anyway, back to the evening – soon the last of the dinner guests had arrived and we were called into the kitchen/diner, a long room with two tables laid out with beautiful initialled serviettes and more vintage accoutrements, like silver salt and pepper shakers and butter dishes – slightly mismatched, charming, and beautiful. 

Our first course was a hearty and warming Vincisgrassi – a lasagne of porcini mushrooms, parma ham and truffle oil, which could have easily been a main course.  It was delicious – salty and cheesy, and crafted with egg pasta. It warmed us up nicely, and we could see that it was not going to be a night to watch our calorie intake – these hosts meant business with their portions!

Conversations flowed easily and the dining room was soon a low continual hubbub of appreciative noises.  Before long, more ENORMOUS portions were being dished up. The main course was announced as ‘slow-roasted rare breed pork with dauphinois potatoes, cavolo nero and French beans’. Between us all we may have eaten two whole pigs sliced into thick chops with succulent white meat and proper crackling, with creamy, garlicky potatoes and some lovely greens, which I’ve learned are the same as that perennial Scottish favourite, curly kale. Green beans were served in little side dishes to share and were cooked perfectly. For a moment as we all began, the table fell practically silent, bar a few murmurings of pleasure.

At this point, our hosts relaxed visibly. More wine was poured, and they managed to share a portion of the meal between them as they grabbed a rare chance to sit down. By the time most of us had made a fair stab at finishing our meals, we were groaning from being so full. I liked that Lydia and Mark hadn’t skimped on the food. Their cooking was full of heart.

We were given a brief respite from the calorific onslaught before being presented with perfectly set, largeish portions of panna cotta, speckled with vanilla and served with raspberries. All were in shock when Mark announced that they had been lovingly crafted with no fewer than fourteen pots of cream. A glamorous doctor we were sitting across from had eyes as big as saucers and joked about heart disease. This was seriously rich stuff, and not many could finish theirs, despite it being delicious.

However, there’s always room for some cheese, isn’t there? The penultimate course had been sitting on the counter behind us, wafting a scent every now and then to remind us of it presence. A surprising number of us gave a cheese plate a go. Somehow a few grapes made the load feel lighter.  And by then, bottles of wine were being drained and many of us were past caring about our waistlines. I was having a thoroughly good time. Lydia and Mark seemed to be too. And as the hosts relaxed, it all started to feel like we were at the home of old friends. They told us a little about their former businesses, and their holidays, and foodie inspiration, and it became clear (as if it hadn’t already) that they were lovely people who really cared about what they did. They also introduced their two adorable West Highland terriers to the table and won everyone over even more. I made a mental note to visit their shop on Leigham Court Road as I was sure it would be every bit as charming as their home was. 

By the time Mark was offering coffees and petits fours it was getting on for midnight, so Malcolm, the Mister and I drained our glasses and decided we weren’t going to be those people who left last and kept the hosts up after an exhausting evening of cooking and entertaining. We paid the balance remaining for the £35 per head suggested donation. Lydia remarked that taking payment felt odd, and I saw that as a triumph – we all felt we had eaten with friends. We had eaten our fill, and more.

Before staggering onto a bus home, we still tried some homemade meringues in pretty pastel colours (the Mister declared these the best he’d eaten) and a couple of chocolates.

Well, it would have been rude not to, wouldn’t it? 

Opening Windows

Before I turn 30, I've promised myself, I'm going to see where all four of my grandparents and all four of my great-grandparents came from. 

With 18 months still to go, I'm not far off. I've seen my maternal grandmother's tiny fishing village in the west of Norway, where her mother was raised, in turn, on fresh mackerel, sea air and goat's milk. I've stood on the spot where my paternal grandfather and grandmother built their little raised house with the corrugated iron roof on stilts in the verdant, wild bush of Trinidad (more goats here, too). I've walked many a mean street of Bermondsey, where my mother's dad knew every bus route going in Southwark (apparently this led to a degree of popularity with the young au pairs who happened upon his particular patch in Rotherhithe to go to the Norwegian church). 

But there's one part of my heritage I've never been able to experience first-hand. A part of my great-grandfather and great-grandmother's stories I'd been desperate to see. 

India.

When I was about seven or eight, I remember my father pointing out the northern and southern tips of the vast landmass on the map pinned to my bedroom wall. He marked two asterisks on this; his unmistakeable scrawled capitals marking the top: "MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER WAS BORN IN KASHMIR" and the bottom: "MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER WAS BORN IN MADRAS." Both places sounded so exotic and so far away from each other, let alone from my childhood home in south Florida. My father had never been to these places either, but his dark face and poker-straight jet black hair belied his roots. He contented himself with Kipling and Naipaul's literary versions of India, and I never knew if he would have liked to visit his diverse family beginnings at the top and the bottom of our map, but the foods of my childhood were certainly squarely tied in with his original ancestry (as for most Trinis): roti, paratha, chana dhal, okra, curried chicken, and plenty of hot pepper sauce on everything.

My first visit to India, at the end of last month, was to neither of the places on our map. I'm not ashamed to say it was to a place set squarely in the middle of the tourist (and hippy) trail; a place that Thomas Cook flies to twice a week and a place many Brits flock to in search of sun, sea, sand, and sex. I was certainly looking for sunshine, but more than anything, I wanted to get the measure of the people, and open a window I hadn't ever been able to look out of before. 

In most of the places we went while we were there, I was asked if I was Indian. And for once (unlike in other European countries this happens to me in - Greece, Italy, Spain), I could say with some conviction that this country was woven somehow into my family history. And I liked that. 

I'm already planning for our return journey. Next time, we'll definitely see more than a holiday resort and I hope to be able to open that window a little wider, look a little deeper, and take the time to try to visit those asterisks on the map of my childhood. I hope, with my return visit, to see a little more of the people who can already see quite a bit of me in them.

I have no more words. Just pictures.

Keep Warm and Carry On

As I started to write this post a couple of weeks ago, it was snowing heavily again. It's been hard to be warm in our Victorian terraced house, so we've taken to putting up extra sheets as curtains, stuffing old tights under the gaps in the doors, and I even clingfilmed our bathroom window in the hope of retaining some warmth. Look what I good job I did:

Hmmm.

With the ever-increasing need to hunker down and keep warm, we've been making lots of comfort food.

Kedgeree,

chicken noodle soup,

 huevos rancheros,

and polpette con ragù

...are just some of the things we've felt compelled to make - our calorie count increasing proportionally in relation to the temperature outside decreasing.

One of my friends over at I Think in Pictures has been asking me for a dhal recipe for a little while now.  I made it again this week and finally wrote down the ingredients. So, here you go, Neenen - this is a super easy recipe that has never disappointed.

Dhal 


Ingredients:
half a packet of split red lentils
2 onions, sliced
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 inch piece fresh ginger, chopped
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
half a tin of chopped tomatoes, OR
1 tablespoon concentrated tomato purée
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1/2 tablespoon garam masala
1/2 tablespoon curry powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
5-10 whole cardamom pods, if you have them
fresh coriander leaves, to serve
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, butter, or ghee, for cooking.

Method:

Fry up the onions in a small pan until translucent, then add the garlic and fry together until they are starting to caramelise (read:burn). You really do want them to have started to blacken. Add the mustard seeds to the pan and let them pop away happily. Keep everything moving around the pan so you don't get major burnage, and then add the ginger and all of the dry spices you have from the list above, followed by the tomatoes or tomato purée. Once everything has mixed together and cooked for a couple of minutes, turn off the heat and set aside for later.

In a separate saucepan, wash and rinse the lentils a couple of times, then cover with boiling water and bring to the boil, then simmer. Keep skimming the bubbles that will rise to the top of the pan, and keep topping up with water if it is being absorbed too quickly. You're going for a thick, mushy consistency to the lentils, which usually takes a good 20-30 mins of simmering time.

Once the lentils are done, drain off any remaining water (there shouldn't really be any) and add most of the fried onion mixture to the saucepan. Mix well, and serve with steaming hot basmati rice as a base, and the remaining browned onions and chopped coriander as a garnish. Watch out for those cardamom pods if you don't like them!

Grandma

My grandma, a woman of considerable character, an impish provocateur, a lady of substance who knew her mind until her final days, slipped quietly away on November 24th. It took us all by surprise that she decided to go so quietly. And decide she surely had, for she had suffered several falls, two small strokes and mild heart failure already this year, yet she hadn't given up in hospital. She had waited until the time was right for her to go, simply and quickly, at the nursing home she had lived in since August.

My mum asked me to say a few words at her funeral, which was scheduled for December 3rd,but the snow in Chelsfield, near Orpington, that town where all trains break down (and all who enter abandon hope) was about 18 inches deep and the town was practically unreachable, so the event was postponed to the 15th.

'A Remembrance of Grandma' was to be my section, after the vicar's introduction and history of her life - which made for some truly incredible listening.

Born on a small island off the coast of Norway in 1913, and raised to go to 'housewife school', she won a prize at said school for her goat-milking skills (the fastest goat-milker in the west... of Norway). In the early 1930s she came to England to work as an au pair for a rich Norwegian shipping magnate's family. By 1939 she had met my grandfather, a bit of a wide boy from Bermondsey, at the Norwegian Sjømannskirken (Seaman's Church) who apparently was a favourite with all the Norwegian girls due to an unparallelled knowledge of London's bus routes, and by 1939 they had a wartime wedding. She was unable to go back to occupied Norway during wartime and had no idea of how her family were for the duration of the war.

Making a life in Orpington in the 1940s as a foreigner must have been hard. Raising 5 daughters on a very tight budget, she excelled in making do and mending, cooking from scratch and tending to fruit and vegetables in her cottage garden. She spent her life mobilised for peace, too, after having been separated from her family by war, and was a vociferous supporter of Amnesty International and the WILPF.


Here are some of my other enduring memories of the fantastic woman I got to know over 28 years.

- Always in the garden when possible. I remember rows of hydrangeas, an archway of roses, and honeysuckle. Clothes were always drying on the line. Everyone remembers summers in her beautiful garden. It was her pride and joy.

-       A very snappy dresser! Liked to look good, have her hair done and always wore perfume. A true glamourpuss, and true to her star sign - a veritable Leo.

-       A firm but fair hand with children. She loved her grandchildren and her face lit up whenever there were children around. She was a stickler for good behaviour, though, telling us to eat up our ‘wegetables’ and had no problem with disciplining us if we were naughty.  She will always particularly be remembered for chasing a certain couple of my young cousins, Peter and Jonny, around the house with a wet flannel, a story which has become family legend.

-       This propensity for discipline was something that made her lack of success with her cat, Sandy, all the more astonishing – that cat weed everywhere! Oh, the smell! The other pet I can remember, Flossie the dog, was thoroughly pampered and had full run of the house as well. So we might say she was more of a softie when it came to animals...

-       A true trailblazer of the modern age, grandma championed fair trade products, shopping locally, recycling and the make-do-and-mend culture which is seeing a massive resurgence now. If you ever needed a bit of 15-year old tinfoil, or a tin of baking powder from 1987, her kitchen drawers were sure to hold your treasure.

-       Spirited and opinionated, even in her later years. She fought with nurses, argued about taking pills, told off carers and certainly didn’t mince her words when it came to a subject she felt passionate about. She championed the WILPF and Amnesty and we are a more politicised and outspoken family because of her - in the best way possible.

-       She LOVED her soaps. The Eastenders, Emmerdale Farm and Coronation Street theme tunes were forever burned into my brain after living with grandma for our first year in England. The TV was always on VERY LOUD, so in order to speak to grandma you would have to shout. The best outings/ entertainment for grandma were VERY LOUD things. An amusement for some of her great-grandchildren in her later days, was that at her house, one was not only allowed but encouraged to shout. Endless fun.

- And finally, she loved men! She always liked to meet new gentlemen and always, always enjoyed attention from a well-spoken young man. Rumours abounded of a gentleman friend in her last weeks at the nursing home and we were all glad to hear it.

Grandma, you will be remembered and missed by us all, for being a strong and inspirational woman who was ahead of her time in so many ways. We are all so proud and lucky to have known you for as long as we have.

Borghild Margit Cooke (née Nielsen) 17.8.1913 - 24.11.2010

All Change, Please

"This country's seen better days," says the old lady on the bus again, as she steps past us all to alight, tutting to herself. She is wearing a fluorescent shell suit and plenty of gold jewellery. We're speeding up Brixton Hill towards Streatham.

She's just witnessed the same altercation we all have: it's between an overweight, ruddy lady in her forties who clearly needs to cool off, and the small crowd of people (two Spanish dudes in their 20s, chatting away animatedly, an older Rasta man, and the aforementioned old lady) sitting on the back seats behind her who have been getting a chill every time she opens the window. 

Whoosh.

The window opens. We all feel a blast of icy air. It's well after the Friday evening rush hour and the bus driver is going like the clappers, so it feels breezier than it is. It's open maybe a minute and a half before one of the young Spaniards sitting behind the ruddy lady closes it.

THWACK. 

It shuts loudly. (Is there any other way of closing a bus window?)

The ruddy lady looks back in annoyance, but her neck is a bit fat and she can't really see who has closed it. The Spaniards stare back in open defiance. You can hear silent cheers from the others on the back seats. 

She opens it again, but no less than five seconds pass and -WHUMP- it has been shut again. The window is cleverly positioned so that both she and the young Spaniard sitting behind her can control its opening and closing. This little pantomime happens maybe three or four times. You can almost hear the audience joining in.

"OH YES it is open!"

"OH NO it isn't!"

"Can you STOP closing the window, PLEASE?" The fat lady says, in a schoolmarmish way. The Spaniards look at each other for support. 

"No," says one of them, in his singsongy Spanish way. "Eees cold." They look like they might have been a team at school, as well.

Fat lady huffs audibly. She reaches to open it again. She gets halfway and the other Spaniard reaches over and shuts it, fast. WHUMP. He can move faster than her. They are enjoying the game now. They can sense they have the support of the Rasta as well. 

"ER ...EXCUSE me", she says, stressing the Errr. "I would LIKE it open!"

"Weeell too bad," sings the Spaniard, we would LIKE it closed!" 

The Rasta chimes in. "Yeah, it's freezin' back 'ere, man."

One more time, the last time, the fat lady pulls the window open. A gust of wind blows into the old lady's face. The window is slammed shut by the hand of the young Spaniard, this time with no hesitation whatsoever. He looks ready to stand up and face her down.

"You're VERY rude," says the ruddy lady.

"There are three of us back here who would like the weeendow closed. ONE, TOOO, THRRREE," says the first Spaniard, counting his allies with his finger extended and finally pointing to his chest. Have some reespect for us."

The fat lady has given up. It's her stop anyway. She gathers herself and her things up and bustles past her neighbour to get off the bus, breathing heavily. The Spaniards look triumphant.

Their victory smiles are broken by a sudden outburst from the old lady. She tuts as she moves one seat away from the crowd. "This country's seen better days," she says. "Bloody got to get home." She stands, falteringly, to get off at the next stop, before repeating herself. 

I look over to the lady sitting opposite me, on the other side of the back of the bus. She's stifling a giggle behind her copy of the Evening Standard.

"Is it a full moon?" I ask her.

"Must be," comes her incredulous reply.

Then comes the familiar announcement, in that strange faceless woman's voice, which is so incongruous in Brixton. 

"This bus terminates here. Please remember to take all your belongs with you. This bus terminates here. All change please."

We all decamp to the very cold bus stop to await the next one.

Octobre/Ottobre

What a bleeding crazy month. I'm so behind, at everything. I'm behind on this blog, on my StreathamPulse reviews, on my life's general meaning.

What the heck have I been doing? Well, here's how the beginning /middle of October went.

It seems like a long time ago, but it was wonderful to be back in Paris. It was for work, but I took a weekend there and enjoyed the sunshine. It was unseasonably warm and sunny for October.

Did I mention I'd quite like to live in France?

At the end of the month I went to Milan, also for work, and took a weekend off to stay with my friend Thea. Instead of staying in Milan all weekend, I asked her if she would come with me to Lugano (where I had a school visit) and then on to Lake Como. We stayed in a lovely little hotel up on the hillside, 1000m above sea-level, in a hilltop town called Brunate overlooking the lake.

Here was how we got there:

Here was what it looked like from the top of the hill.

Just incredible. The air was clean and fresh, my lungs were stronger and my mind was less full. It felt nice to shake off the city for a while. A year ago, I would *never* have said that.

This is a simple post to just look back at these photos, really. Just writing this has calmed my city-frazzled nerves and slowed my heart rate.

And to say that a lot of the time these days, I wish I was somewhere else.

I am really going to have to fix that.

Just Desserts

I've been making a concerted effort to diversify my efforts, beyond the realm of one-pot cooking - soups, stews, stir-fries, tagines, ragus, curries - you'd be surprised how many variations on a theme there can be.

So I've started tackling the thing I'm really frightened of. Desserts. They're just so...exacting. I hate all the science-y bits. The measuring and the possibility of errors - mixing something in too early, or too late; the chance that the temperature might be too high or low. Oh, ok. It's just that I'm terrifically lazy and would much prefer the 'throw in a bit of this, bit of that' school of cookery.


Still. "Everyone can bake if they put their mind to it," says my mum. I should be able to stretch beyond chocolate-chip cookies (Thanks, Betty Crocker. It's because of you that I will nab myself that handsome husband someday).


Of course, she's right. Take brownies, for instance. What kind of doofus can't even follow a brownie recipe? Here's a foolproof one, that I adapted with my favourite Spanish product EVER. 

Cola Cao Brownies
(adapted from the original Betty Crocker recipe)


Ingredients:
1 cup caster sugar

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup chocolate squares - a mixture of dark and milk is best

2 eggs

2/3 cup plain flour

1/4 cup Cola Cao (with this ingredient, they're officially good for you)

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees/gas mark 4. Melt the chocolate pieces and butter together in a bain-marie until velvety and gorgeous. Mix with the sugar, flour, Cola Cao powder and eggs. Stir in remaining ingredients until you have a fudgey chocolatey sticky bowl of pure joy. Spread out in a greased square pan. Lick mixing spoon. Bake until a toothpick pushed into the middle comes out clean 25 to 30 minutes. Cool and cut into squares. 


Oh, and share with everyone you know. Sharing is good.

NB: Thanks to Lo-Sal for the Cola-Cao, which you can source here, or here.