Operation Easter Bunny

Easter weekend is coming up, and I'm buzzing.

Here's why - on Thursday last week I got this happy little message in my inbox from the Mister:

Operation Easter Bunny requests your presence:

Date: Friday 2nd April

Time:

08:30hrs

Location:

London Railway Station (need-to-know-basis)

Kit:

Wee suitcase containing enough clothing for 2 night stay, toilet bag (own toothbrush optional), scrabble, notebook, book, make-up, waterproofs (we hope these will not be needed), swimming gear (optional but I'm taking mine)

Rendez-Vous at [our home address] - ready to leave at 07:30.

We will be returning to above address late afternoon on the 4th April 2010.

How sweet is that? Never did I think that those casually-dropped hints would have been taken on board so readily by the man in my life. "Wouldn't it be great to be surprised with a call to say, meet me at the airport with just your passport and toothbrush, you've got the next few days off work," is a sentence that has passed my lips many times, but has never been put into action. Until now (well, within reason). Actually I don't know if I'd want someone else to sort out my holiday dates with work. Scrap that.

He's a special one, and I'm an extremely lucky girl. The only trouble is: I'm also an extremely sniffly girl. I seem to have come down with a cold just in time to be a bit worried about whether I'll enjoy being whisked away as much as I'd enjoy my own bed, my slippers, fleece blanket and the entire back catalogue of Come Dine With Me. So today I'm at home resting up to make sure that wherever we're going, I'm going to give Operation Easter Bunny my best.

It's quite exciting, though, isn't it? I wonder where we're going. Waterproofs? Well, clearly we're not leaving the UK. Swimming gear? Does that mean a pool? Or does it mean some crazy Scottish urge to throw ourselves into subzero waters to prove some kind of point about hardiness?

His 'own toothbrush' clause points to a long-standing discussion (debate would be too strong a word) about why I won't share a toothbrush with anyone, not even my beloved. I'm sure my mum won't mind me blaming this on her microbiologist habit of analysing the likelihood of bacterial growth on any surface at any given time. It took me a long time to be able to share a can of coke. I know, it's sad. I'm working on it.

Anyway, I'll write all about it, wherever it is we're going, once we're back. Here's wishing you a wonderful Easter break too.

Bill's Produce Store/ Sabai/ Pompoko / Brighton

The Bitter: Lots of students (I'm only kidding, I love students!); the fact that this is my first non-London review

The Sweet: Three lovely eateries in 36 hours and a gorgeously sunny Spring day

7. All right, so they're not in London, but I thought they were worth reviewing

I love Brighton. It was where I wanted most to study at the age of 17 after a visit to Sussex University's rolling hills and because I had a distinct nose for anywhere or anything vaguely 'alternative'. It's a place that screams freedom - the 'screw you squares, I did a law degree because you made me, but gave it all up to work in a health food store and teach yoga on weekends' kind of freedom.

Now my cousin, S, studies there, and on a recent visit for work I took the opportunity to spend some time revisiting my own student days and admiring the town’s Laines, loonies, and the fine shops and restaurants that Brighton has to offer – as a working adult with a bit more than the dregs of my student loan to see me through.

First up was something of a Brighton institution: a shop, café and restaurant all in one – Bill’s Produce Store, on North Road.

It’s noteworthy for this blog in particular, because it feels like a little piece of East Dulwich in the town otherwise known as “London-on-Sea”. There are organic fruits and vegetables. There are lots of pretty jars of pricey, yet tempting sundries from around the globe. There's arborio rice in little sacks. There are yummy daddies (yes, it’s that fashion-forward) having lunch with their little cherubs in papooses. You can get a flat white there with not a hint of any disdainful glance from your server (I asked for one this morning in a Bristol coffee shop and was met with a dead-eyed stare). Look, it’s so London, I saw a yummy daddy with one of these there:

My cousin recommended it as a good place to take a family member who would undoubtedly pay for lunch. Smart cookie. The food was great, and our facially-pierced waiter was just the sweetest thing, calling us all 'madam' (there were four of us under 30 in our group), which went down pretty well. I had a smoked haddock pie with some cheesy mash on the top and a really fresh side salad. My cousin had eggs royale - basically eggs benedict with smoked salmon that actually garnered a resounding 'oooooh' from around the table when her eggs yolks burst out onto the toast underneath. Me? I don't like runny eggs much. Ah, well. That's what comes of having a microbiologist for a parent. I don't have any photos, sadly, but you can get a good idea of how it looks from this excellent post from An American in London, a cool blog I've just discovered. Sadly, she doesn't agree overall about Brighton's charms.

Next up, another good recommendation from cousin S for dinner - Sabai Thai Gastrobar. The name had me worried, as I pictured high stools, questionable music, expensive cocktails and weeny little spring rolls and satay skewers posing as dinner for birdy little stick-women. I was very pleasantly surprised. The restaurant did have a water feature, but was really tastefully done, and was packed to the rafters. We were lucky to get a table, and had to wait a while for our food, but the sweet, smiling waitress who was seemingly on her own that evening apologised, gave us lots of free prawn crackers and did her best to keep checking on us. I'd recommend it if you find yourself hungrily wandering by the Pavilion.

Lastly and possibly my favourite, we stopped for lunch at one of S's favourites - a student haunt that is as cheap and as cheerful as they come. Pompoko means a kind of dahlia, according to my friend Lo-Sal (this is not his real name), a quirky Spaniard who is studying Japanese Culture at Birkbeck. I simply had to take pictures for him, because it was right up his street. And mine. And apparently right up the street of most of Brighton's students. It was consistently busy, even at 4pm - snooze into your soup hour for most places.

What wasn't to like? The prices, the close-together-perfect-for-eavesdropping-tables, the quality of the food, the Japanese lucky cat on the counter, oh and did I mention the prices?! This lovely sesame prawn don with rice and chicken yakisoba were a little over £4 per dish, and were served hot and fresh within 5 minutes. Bliss.

Brighton, you have won me over again.

And I'm darned jealous of all those bloody students.

Fit.

I'm beginning to feel a bit old all of a sudden.

This is mostly because of some of my colleagues in their early-to-mid twenties and their sometimes frankly puzzling colloquialisms. I work with a guy, let's call him Aaron, and a girl, let's call her Jane, who also happen to share a flat as well as work together. They also went to the same university and worked together in the student union. They also both have evening jobs in a pub down the road. They are inseparable, and although they sit in separate offices, are always calling each other or emailing to share some joke or youtube video or discuss some raucous thing that happened last night when they were out drinking dressed as Smurfs, or chatter away about how one of them fell asleep on the toilet and left their kebab in the bed, or some other kind of kerrr-azy midweek japery. Oh dear. See? I sound so old!

Anyway, I'm learning a lot from them - particularly as far as vocabulary is concerned. Because Aaron and I share an office, I often overhear their conversations. One of Aaron's common favourites is to dial Jane in the next office over and do an impression of Anne, the mental poo-smearing patient from Little Britain whose catchphrase is "eh-eh-ehhhhh".

Maybe three or four times a day.

Oh, the things I've learned! They have been gleaned from snippets of conversations carried out behind me in our office as I've typed away, pretending to work but really making mental notes of whatever strange, young-person speak escapes their filthy little mouths. If something was 'gash', it wasn't a wound, it means it was rubbish. Oh holy crap - I just checked urban dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/) and it actually means a girl...you can guess why. That's so stupid! It's like calling all men knobs.

Anyway. If someone is 'butters', they aren't trying to re-enact Last Tango in Paris, it means they're unattractive. Apparently this one is very commonplace - the Mister had heard this expression at his North London comprehensive. Where have I been? At my Kent co-ed I was only exposed to the concepts of 'kushti', 'pikey', and 'chavtastic'. My cousins tell me that if someone is 'hench' it means they're well-built and likely to win in a fight. If they're bare hench, you'd really better watch out. Oh, and 'elephant leg'? That's kebab meat. I dare not think of what 'kebab meat' means. Oh wait. I know what it means. That's disgusting.

Anyway. 'What is all this in aid of?', you may ask. What does this post have to do with musings about London or food or outings? These ramblings are nothing like the usual astute meditations I expect to find when I visit this site. (Hah.) Well, the best colloquialism I've learned from these two characters at work is this: Jane refers to food she likes, or likes the look of, as 'fit', in much the same way another person might refer to a good-looking individual.

And I love that. I've picked it up and am using it unashamedly, whether it's about my plate of chicken stew or a chocolate bar. And, because Jane also grew up in Kent, you have to do it like she does: drop the 't' and make it more of a glottal stop. 'Fi-'.

'That soup was fi-'. 'That chocolate cake was 'fi-'. 'Those chips were well fi-.'

This last thing we* made was bare fit, innit.

*(amendment made, props to the Mister for his idea)

Avocado and Manchego Garlic Toasts

Ingredients:

1 avocado, ripe

1 garlic clove, peeled

wholemeal, seeded or rye bread slices

olive oil

dried chilli flakes

salt and pepper

1. Cut up and partially mash a whole avocado. Add olive oil, salt, pepper and a shake or two of dried chilli flakes.

2. Toast some good-quality sliced bread (we used some hearty Polish sunflower 'chleb').

3. Peel a garlic clove and rub lightly over the toasted bread.

4. Spoon on the avocado mash and slice some Manchego on the top, as thick or as thinly as you like. Sprinkle with pepper and slosh a bit of olive oil all over that bad boy.

5. Eat while hot - flippin' gorgeous. Sorry - fit.

NB: Thanks to Shannoncita and E for the Manchego: see here for more of their talents.

Whisking Away the Winter Blues

Mid-February, and it's still miserably, brutally cold.

Maybe everything seems greyer after our return from Marrakech two weeks ago. We bathed in sunshine there, our limbs lengthening, our skin shimmering, our eyes blinking, disbelieving - like puppies tipped out of a box, I believe is the expression. We lapped up our five days there. The feeling of shedding a layer of chapped winter skin, stripping to our sandals and short sleeves, was so welcome; like the faintest whiff of summer, the briefest whisper of days to come. We basked every morning in that glow, at breakfast if we could. We swam. We got pink noses. We marvelled at having to buy suncream. In February! How decadent!

Coming back to London, we hissed at the pilot who announced it would be 4 degrees when we landed. 'Damn and blast it all to hell', we cried. 'We're out of here. No more than another two winters here. It's bloody awful. How does anyone do it?' etc, etc. You get the idea. We started to look for jobs in the Cayman Islands and plot our escape.

To get over the shock of the return, we did what any shell-shocked and depressed couple would do: we ate. We tried to relive some of the holiday, recreating dishes similar to those we had eaten in Morocco. This was our first attempt, the day after we unpacked:

Moroccan Harcha (semolina flatbreads)

Ingredients:

2 cups semolina flour

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup milk

2 tbsp sugar

2 tsp baking powder

good pinch of salt

1. Mix together the semolina, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the butter, and blend well with your hands.

2. Add the milk, and mix until a moist dough takes shape.

3. Shape the dough into balls and leave to rest a few minutes.

4. Preheat frying pan. Roll, then flatten the balls into saucer-sized circles.

5 .Cook over a low heat, about 7 to 10 minutes on each side, until they become golden . Turn only once, and check regularly that the heat is not too high, so they have time to cook all the way through.

These Moroccan crumpety-biscuit type things were made by the Mister's fair hand, and were a warm treat for our first cold morning back, which was mostly spent cosying up to the radiators and catching up with our laundry. They were sunny little things, light and fluffy and great with butter melting on their doughy insides and jam or cheese jazzing them right up. We served ours with some typically Moroccan sliced oranges with orange flower water, cinnamon, icing sugar and as I didn't have strawberries, some reduced cherries from the Co-op.

Yum. After a few of these we were just about coming to terms with the winter again.

Greensmiths, Lower Marsh

The Bitter: Cold (still less than 2 degrees Celsius outside and the UK continues to not cope very well)

The Sweet: Discovering the great little café at my new favourite shop, an independent supermarket made up of local food retailers - an idea I wish I'd put into practice!

Monday, 11 January 2010

7. The good, the bad, the café and the cold

Greensmiths on Lower Marsh is fast becoming my most favoured shop, ever. I think they already know me in there now, so numerous have my after-work trips been. The greengrocer guy definitely recognises me and his eyes light up, because I have often fawned over the endive or asked about where their samphire comes from. The staff are extremely friendly and clued- up about their produce, to the point that they can explain how to cook something or what other foods it would pair well with. And there's little pretension - it's all quite straightforward supermarket shopping, except there aren't ever any queues, the food is locally sourced where possible, there's a sweet café upstairs, and - fundamentally - the people at the tills aren't dead-eyed and devoid of any charm, or pushing reward card points like smack.

Tonight I went with my friend Dany to see if we could get some food there after work, before heading down to Scooterworks (see my previous post here extolling the virtues of this other Lower Marsh gem) for their regular Monday night film at 8pm. Sadly the café, although replete with people, was no longer serving food (they do excellent-looking breakfasts until 11am, and then serve lunches from 12-4, I think). So we went to Sino Thai down the street instead, where we had some fairly standard chicken with cashew nuts and some sweet and sour prawns with coconut rice. It was average food, but came with friendly service and was inexpensive. I felt sorry for the man in the restaurant as we were his only customers and it was a bitterly cold evening with little chance of him encountering anyone else.

Poor Sino Thai dude.

So next time you're on Lower Marsh before 4pm check out the Greensmiths café and let me know what you think. Their cakes looked mighty good and I'd love to know what one of their bacon sandwiches would be like. Pigs have died for less noble reasons, y'know.

New Year's Bastard Chicken

The end of 2009, and the dawning of a new (very cold) year has seen a few structural changes take place, which may go some way towards explaining a shocking lack of regular posting ettiquette.

Here's a roundup of the major events of the last couple of months in quick-capsule format...

November

• decided to move out of shared house in Clapham and into flat with boyfriend
• began search for new replacement person for my old room and held viewings
• found suitably nice person to take on room; started looking for flats
• saw some horrendous hellholes advertised very unscrupulously by lettings agents (how do they sleep at night?!%@)
• had some crazy dealings with insane neighbour in shared house - had police over on my last morning living there - fun!
• moved out of old house; moved possessions into storage; moved a couple of bags to my mum's in Orpo
• found a perfectly lovely flat on gumtree and arranged to view it
• went to Leeds and Edinburgh for work
• went to see boyfriend's mum in Yorkshire; got heavily rained upon and saw beautiful scenery
• saw flat in SW2 - loved it; wanted it; took it
• Went on a crazy work trip that took in Berlin, Warsaw and Vilnius in 4 days
• came back and flopped with exhaustion; went back to work for 4 days

December

• Spent 4 days in Switzerland for work
• returned from Switzerland and went back to work for a day; attended work Christmas party - a predictably boozy car crash sort of evening that ended up with me hurling a camembert across the room (long story)
• picked up the keys for the new flat; moved in with a hangover
• adored everything about the flat and bought lots of little housey things to put in it
• had a housewarming/Christmas/ farewell party for two good friends leaving to return to Europe; made blinis and quaffed cava
• had nearly 3 weeks off work (but why no posting, you may well ask? - see next point)
• spent maybe two hours of my life that I'll never get back speaking to 4 separate BT call centre workers based in Sheffield, who bless them, tried, but couldn't have plugged in a wireless router between them, let alone place one.bloody.broadband.order. Still, it was Christmas, so I was lovely and patient with each of them and wished them seasonal tidings.
• finally manged to get into a a tight pair of jeans bought in the Barcelona sales in Feb last year and crowed at my reflection
• then ate my own weight in Turkey and sprouts and promptly undid said jeans
• started on the old one-pot soup and chilli routine, post-Christmas overindulgence and overspending
• had a glass of champagne on New Year's Eve, danced to Song 2 in a Smithfields club and went to bed at 6am
• woke up at 3pm, had breakfast (we called it 'tea' to make it less weird) at 5.30pm at Nando's, watched Avatar 3D and had possibly the most perfect New Year's Day in living memory.

Which brings us up to date.

So after the excesses of new year's eve and some fairly rich meals over the past couple of months, I found myself poking around in our fridge for something to inspire me on Monday - the first day back at work. We had chicken thighs, some reduced corn on the cob from the Co-op, some fresh chillies, red and green peppers and plenty of cupboard sundries. I thought about a gumbo type of thing because I figured it would be in one pot, bubbling away for a while and would take minimum effort. I also looked in the Levi Roots cookbook we'd been given for Christmas and looked at some Jamaican stewed chicken recipes, then bastardised them to make my own thing with my ingredients. And so New Year's Bastard Chicken was born. Here's the recipe, should it interest you to try it out.

NEW YEAR'S BASTARD CHICKEN (STEW)

4 chicken thighs

4 cut corn cobs

2 bell peppers, varying colours, chopped

1 sweet potato, chopped

2 carrots, sliced

2 fresh chillies, chopped (the long Thai kind will do)

1 piece of fresh ginger, finely chopped (thumb-sized)

2 large onions, chopped roughly

2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

juice of 1 lime

1 tin chopped tomatoes

2 cups chicken or vegetable stock

1 cup basmati rice

a handful of fresh thyme

2 tsp Madras curry powder

pinch of turmeric

pinch of dried chilli or cayenne

salt and pepper to taste

Marinate the chicken in the lime juice, and season with ginger, salt, pepper, turmeric and dried chilli. Leave for as long as possible to soak up the flavours.

After as long a marinade as possible, fry the chicken pieces with one onion until browned on both sides for at least 10 minutes (mine got burnt a bit, but that kind of works). Set aside for later.

In a large saucepan, fry the other onion in a little olive or sunflower oil. Add the garlic and cook until soft. Add the curry powder and fresh chillies. Leave to cook for 1-2 minutes.

Add the tinned tomatoes, sweet potato, carrot, corn cobs and thyme. Pour in half of the stock. Cook for 10 minutes on a high heat to soften the corn, carrots and sweet potato. Add the rice, peppers, the rest of the stock and the pre-sooked chicken pieces. Leave to simmer for 15-20 minutes until rice is cooked through.

Serve heaped in bowls while piping hot. Eat with fingers as necessary. Serves 4 very hungry people or makes 2 main meals and about 3 extra packed lunches (you'll be sick of it in 2 days, though). Beware - it comes out spicy, so ensure your constitution can take a bit of heat...

Happy January, folks.

Scooterworks Caffé, Lower Marsh

September somethingth, 2009
(bless me father, for it's been a while since my last post.)

The Bitter: Telling anyone else about this gem - it's becoming a little too popular at lunchtimes for my liking...

The Sweet: Everything else, from the little suntrap at the back to the dusty vespas at the front; from the mismatched chairs to the ever-present cats sleeping on them.

6. A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi

So I have this friend at work who is Italian. She's innately chic, but in a way that seems to communicate that she hasn't tried at all; she just fell out of bed that way. She's arty and fun, and we have shared many a tip on the kinds of things we do at weekends - me, a band or film; she, a flower market or gallery opening. It's all very 'Stuff White People Like' ; which coincidentally (or perhaps not), encouraged us to go and see the author speak at LSE this week. It rocked.

But anyway, she recommended this place for lunch last month which is spectacular. It's called Scooterworks, and according to their website it used to just be a scooter repair shop that served coffee to customers having a bike or scooter fixed. Lower Marsh is peppered with little scraps of old London like that - it retains a real east-end community feel, from the Iceland that still manages to exist there, to the Job Centre, somehow strangely at odds with the burgeoning gentification in the area - "but surely you can get a job sir, there are two organic restaurants across the street looking for sommeliers!".


The place is achingly hip, in that same way that my friend just fell out of bed looking great. It's darkish, dingyish, and dustyish, but has fantastic faded Italian Vespa and French coffee posters everywhere and the mismatched tables and chairs all add to the beatnik charm. A sunny little patio at the back with plants and Moroccan-looking tiles attracts those hazy afternoons that ask to be photographed, and suitably attractive smokers.

I have it on good authority that this was Ethan Hawke's preferred hangout when he was working at the Old Vic down the road. I have no doubt about that - it's like an amalgam of all his characters' hangouts in each of his lo-fi indie films.


Five neon letters spell 'CAFFÉ' on the wall above the bar, and they certainly mean business on that front - their coffee machine is a vintage Faema machine from 1957, salvaged from somewhere near Bologna. It makes a mean cup - wouldn't you, if you'd had 50 years of practice? - but won't be rushed.

This is a place for slow-food activists, a cause they give the nod to on their website. No tall skinny caramel frappuccinos here, and your coffee will take as long as it damn well takes.

More importantly...they have several resident cats! Check out the one snoozing here:


I was both amazed I hadn't found it already, and exasperated that so many others had already been seduced by its charms. Each time I go I find out more about it that I like. On Mondays they have film screenings in their downstairs room - decent, arthouse or classic films, like Respiro, or Blade Runner. On Wednesday evenings they have live music and open mic sessions.


But best of all, you can bring your packed lunch and eat here, because they don't yet do any food other than biscotti and cakes. You're never hurried, and no one gives you stinkeye for bringing in your homemade ratatouille or leek and bacon soup (my friend and I have tested this to its limits, sloshing in our tupperwares and ordering the bare minimum - a coffee). In a Starbucks this would be akin to climbing up onto the little counter with the sugar, stirrers and cinnamon shakers, pulling one's trousers down, and pooing into the little hole that the used stirrers and napkins go into. Here, you're silently applauded for making your own sandwiches and not being tempted by the Greggs down the road. I bet that soon, there'll be lunch clubs held here, with pot luck dishes and people comparing recipes. Maybe.

Really, it's quite commendable. I highly commend it. But don't tell anyone else, ok?