Summer Treats...

 To celebrate the real start of Summer (and as I write this, the sun has just broken through the clouds at last!) I thought you might appreciate a new recipe. Sugar Moon has just taken a week off to rest and recuperate...you can read more about where we went here....and, as usual I came home itching to get into the kitchen straight away! Work doesn't begin properly until tomorrow, so these were made at home, and use the best of the current fruits - you can easily adapt this recipe to use whatever you like best. Raspberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries will all work well here - perhaps adjusting the sugar levels in the topping if the berries are very tart.

Apricot & Blueberry Bars

Base:

150g wholemeal spelt flour (you can use regular plain flour or even gluten-free if you prefer)
1 (preferably free-range) egg yolk
150g butter
100g ground almonds
20g whole hazelnuts (or whole almonds if you prefer them)
75g light soft brown sugar
pinch Maldon or other sea salt flakes (optional, but so good!)

Additional ingredients for topping:

50g wholemeal spelt flour (or other flour as above)
50g whole hazelnuts (or almonds as above)
1 tbsp light olive oil (or other vegetable oil if you don't like the taste!)
50g soft light brown sugar (optional, depending on tartness of your chosen fruit)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 180c
Line a 23cm square foil tray (or equivalent tin) with baking parchment

For the base: pulse ground almonds and whole hazelnuts for a few moments in a food processor until whole nuts are in small pieces...

 Add the rest of the base ingredients to the processor...

( This is the spelt flour we usually use...I love its nutty flavour and great texture...but do feel free to substitute as it won't make much difference to the finished bars!)

 Pulse until the ingredients form clumps....then press around 3/4 of the mixture into the prepared baking tray (leaving the remaining mixture in the processor bowl)...

 ...bake the base for about 10 minutes, until it turns a light golden brown....

 ...this will help prevent a soggy bottom! Then cover the base with your chosen fruit. As a guide, I used 5 apricots (stoned and roughly pulled apart) and 150g fresh blueberries...

 Add remaining topping ingredients to the rest of the mixture left in the processor and pulse to combine. It won't clump together as much, but will start to stick together if squeezed between your fingers. Scatter over the fruit...

 ...you want it to just about cover, but I always like to see a little of the berries peeping through the crumb! That's just personal preference though. Flatten the top slightly with your palms to help it stick together a little. Then bake for around 30 minutes, turning the tray halfway through the baking time to ensure an even colour...

 Cool thoroughly (preferably overnight in the fridge) before lifting from the tin using the edges of the baking paper and slicing into bars. They will crumble a little at the top, but just scoop these up with your fingers and enjoy!

 Apricots are one of the only fruits that I think are better cooked than raw...I just adore them in season.

 These bars would actually be gorgeous eaten slightly warm as a dessert, with cream or ice cream, too! Feel free to experiment and enjoy them. I thought I'd finish with one of my absolute favourite Summer lunches - this is usually what I would eat during the week, on a baking break (probably listening to The Archers!)

A toasted slice of good sourdough (I love Richard Bertinet's loaves available from Waitrose, if I can't find any handmade) rubbed with a raw garlic clove and topped with fresh, ripe tomatoes...here I added fresh marjoram from the garden and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast flakes. And always, lots of freshly ground black pepper. Heaven on a plate! Enjoy the summer and all it offers food-wise....it won't be here for long! Sugar Moon is now back in full production...so do visit our lovely website if you haven't already.

Happy June xx

Food from Friends...

On Sunday...which was a beautiful day...my parents came for lunch. We normally all meet at their beautiful farm, so this was a rare occurrence! I decided to cook two recipes that friends had given me. I don't usually do this for some reason...I trawl through my hundreds of cookbooks until I find the perfect dish for the occasion. But I really wanted to use these ideas, as I knew that my Dad in particular would love them. He has a very dear aunt (now in her 90's but spry and active as a little bird) who is Portuguese...and he cherishes the memories of the meals she has cooked for him. So when my lovely friend Rosinda - who is also Portuguese - posted the recipe for Caldeirada (Fish Stew) on her beautiful blog With Love from the Kitchen XO I knew that it had to be cooked for him!

Rosinda has posted the full recipe...so I won't do that here. But it's a very simple yet delicious meal...layers of red pepper, onion, garlic, tomato, paprika...

potatoes...

white wine, fresh coriander, olive oil..

and finally fish (I used haddock as it was fresh and good from the market) Rosinda also adds seafood..and Dad would have loved that too, but unfortunately Mum doesn't really like it, so I stuck to the white fish. It looked absolutely delicious...and Dad posed for this quick picture before he couldn't resist tucking in!

I didn't know what to serve with it...I'd made some bread in the morning (warm spelt & white rolls) but wanted an interesting salad. And then a gorgeous one that my other darling friend, Susan Branch, had posted a few days ago on her blog (isn't the internet wonderful??) popped into my head. Her original was a White Bean Salad...but as I had some dried chickpeas that were nearing the end of their shelf life, I soaked and used them instead!

Red onion, sage, tiny cauliflower florets (blanched), garlic, flat parsley,...I added fragrant tomatoes too. It was the perfect side dish.

Gooseberry & Greengage Crumble with creme fraiche followed, before we all went into the garden to soak up the last of the sun and chat...a wonderful Sunday afternoon!

Also baked during the last week for The Coffee Tree...

Fresh Raspberry & Redcurrant Bars...

Yum!

Carrot Cake...this was on a chilly day, one when I wanted to give them something spiced and warming...

Bluberry Almond Cake...

I love the way blueberries burst when baked...spilling their beautiful purple juice into the cake...

This was originally a bundt cake...but the Coffee Tree customers seem to prefer a 'whole' slice! So it's Vanilla Cake with a maple walnut streusel filling baked through the middle and a maple glaze...mmmm
and finally, on Saturday morning, some 'healthy' muffins! there wasn't actually much sugar in these...the sweetness came from the earl grey tea-soaked prunes, which went beautifully with the rye flakes, the pumpkin seeds, the orange zest...

I kept one back...and I can report that it was perfect with a cup of steaming black coffee and the Saturday papers!
I hope your week has been good so far...I'm just home from the Farmer's Market again...time for a rest and a drink of something lovely!
xoxo

A Fabulous Fusion of Friends & Food...

How much more alliteration can I cram into one title??

Readers of my other blog will probably have spotted that one of my favourite London restaurants is The Providores. Paul & I have loved Peter Gordon's stylish, innovative, beautiful restaurant for many years now. We even had our wedding lunch there! One of my other favourite memories of the place is when we ate there together with 4 other friends for my birthday dinner about 8 years ago. Paul told the waiting staff that I was a chef & asked if Peter was cooking & if so, would it be possible to meet him? I was absolutely mortified! This was at about 8.45pm on a busy Saturday evening. Surely no chef on earth would welcome a stranger into his domain at such a time (I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have!) Well, to my utter amazement and considerable pleasure, Mr Gordon was only too happy...he even invited me dowstairs to the kitchen, to be shown around! An incredibly generous & kind gesture. And knowing Peter a little now as I do, since he co-tutored the  Arvon food writing course I took last Summer, I realise that this generosity & warmth wasn't a one-off. The man has style!

He, together with Michael McGrath-his partner at The Providores- and 2 others, recently opened a new venture in Covent Garden, Kopapa.

Paul & I first visited a couple of weeks after opening, on Boxing Day for brunch. That's when the picture above was taken. Not a great day to test a restaurant...but we were in need of good coffee,a glass of prosecco, a plate of something tasty and full flavoured, and a pleasant space to relax.

We weren't disappointed on any of these counts. But I wanted to go back for lunch and the real Kopapa experience!

So last Wednesday, I met my good friend, Arvon compatriot & fellow blogger Hummus Boy for a late lunch in rainy, warm London. The restaurant is much lighter and more open than The Providores...more cafe-like, less intimate...with a swish dark green velvet curtain to shield diners from draughts at the door (very Salzburg!)  The Boy is a confirmed carnivore (read the fascinating recent post on his trip to Iceland a week or so ago!) so we decided on a selection from the tapas menu, to include his desired Parmesan & Bone Marrow on Toast with Chrain...and one main course:

a Tempura spicy dahl stuffed inari pocket on sugar snaps with caramelised coconut, plantain fritter, pickled green papaya & coriander (one thing about Peter Gordon's food is that the menu descriptions are novellas..and you need to be Mr Memory to recall them!) We both had work/driving to do later, so we each had a non-alcoholic Tamarillo Daiquiri to drink...

so gorgeous to look at, and sweet/sour/refreshing to the taste...it was easier to sip, as the seeds from the tamarillo caught in the straw!

We started with some stunning, chargrilled flatbreads and chunky, smoky aubergine babaganoush - something I could eat all day. I'll leave The Boy to describe the meat and fish elements of the meal...standouts for me included the plate of cassava chips with avocado, sriricha chili sauce (a thin, hot thai condiment) and creme fraiche (reading the Boy's blogpost of the same lunch I've noted with embarrassment that I hogged this plate to myself and he didn't even get one to try....

can you blame me?) The cassava was like a sturdy parsnip..sweet & mealy on the inside and crisp on the outside...the little prickles of heat from the chili, cooled down by the avocado and creme fraiche were perfect.
I also loved the char-grilled aubergine with tamarind caramel, pickled ginger and za'atar...

and wished again that we weren't sharing!! True to his nature, Peter (who wasn't cooking that day) had asked his chefs to send us up some complimentary dishes too...in the end, what had started as a chance for the two of us to meet up and chat about food, writing and life became a massive foodfest...we even had to push two tables together to hold all the plates! The day was made even more special when another mutual and very welcome friend joined us for coffee. Unfortunately, he'd already eaten! But we persuaded him to help us clear the table all the same!

So, Kopapa...not so much of a restaurant in feel or look as The Provs...perfect for the all-day dining approach. The food is light, bright & perfectly balanced...also priced incredibly reasonably for this standard of cooking. I loved it - I may be a little biased, but I still loved it. It's my kind of food, and I can think of no better place to while away a few hours in Covent Garden. I'm planning my next visit already!

Kopapa - 8.5/10

The Amazing Artichoke

Old Amersham has always held a special place in my heart. It's an historic and beautiful small market town....I was born and brought up very nearby and it was always a special treat to visit the interesting High Street as a child. I'd spend my pocket money in places now long gone...Scoops, The Daisy Shop...and we'd love to imagine the way it would have looked in it's heyday (not difficult - I'm sure that not much has changed, architecturally speaking!)

It is also the place that I started my professional cooking career. As a 17 year old schoolgirl, I became a Sunday 'washer-up' at the long gone but much missed (and not just by me, I'm sure) Willow Tree Restaurant. A few years later, after much more part-time work there and as a relieved 'drop-out' from university (something I've never regretted) I became Head Chef . In a lot of ways, those years were among the happiest of my working life - certainly until I owned my own business. I learned so much in those hectic, happy, affluent days of the late 1980's....and I'm forever grateful to Carol & Mark, my bosses, who placed a lot of faith in me at a young age and gave me such amazing training.

So, I still love visiting the town. And Paul & I have a good reason to do so, as it has for a few years contained one of our very favourite 'formal' restaurants, and certainly the best one outside London that we know.

The Artichoke is the place we choose if we feel like brightening up the day, as we did yesterday when we headed there for lunch. It's run by a husband and wife team, Laurie & Jackie Gear - he is the chef and she heads the front of house team.

The restaurant is small (in my day, it was a newsagents!) but beautifully designed to be light and luxurious and so never feels cramped. Service is impeccable without being intrusive, and there are touches of humour too which make customers feel welcome and at home. If you've been before, they will remember you...and any special requests or dietary requirements you may have, which is very rare outside big cities, I find. It all adds to a wonderfully pampering and relaxed experience. But it's the food that really sets it apart...

Light, fresh, seasonal, vibrant....my starter of jerusalem artichoke a la grecque, leeks, green beans,truffle mayonnaise,artichoke crisps, toasted hazelnuts and hazelnut vinaigrette will stay in my foodie memory for a long time to come. I could eat it every day.

Above is Paul's main course - breast of wild duck with spiced pastilla of confit duck leg (the little parcels on the right), butternut squash fondant, candied kumquats & pine nuts and coxes orange pippin apple sauce. He had the biggest smile on his face while eating it..and was quite quiet for once too! My main course was a picture perfect plate of white onion mousse with lots of beautiful, intricate vegetables (unfortunately I deleted the photograph!) and made such a change to the ubiquitous nondescript cheese-filled dishes that I'm usually offered. And the desserts...

the picture doesn't do justice to my plate of orange compote, vanilla ice cream, warm madelines & orange salad...which sounds fairly simple, but was a complex dish of preserved, candied and fresh oranges, with a hidden & wonderful surprise in the ice cream pyramid!

Paul hardly ever has a pudding, but succumbed to this pear & caramelised white chocolate galette with poire william sorbet - he wouldn't give me a taste, which shows how good it must have been...

The courses are not huge, but we always find that they are just enough. I hate to leave a meal feeling too full, it's something that really puts me off...and I also dislike wasting food and leaving lots on the plate. Never a problem here.

With my 3-course set lunch at £25, it also offers terrific value for this level of service and well considered, perfectly executed cooking.

The Artichoke - I have a feeling it will always be on our Top 5 list. Highly recommended. 10/10

Wild about Wild Honey...

So last weekend found us in London again. We usually prefer to eat out at lunchtime when we're there...often better value, easier to find a good table and it leaves the evening free for other things...like sipping a world class margarita outside The Providores and watching the world go by, for instance!!

Wild Honey is one of our favourite lunch spots....



it's on the site of the former Drones club, and the panelling makes it look a little 'clubby' still...but it's a polished, beautiful space with a wonderful bar...which is where we always prefer to sit. Paul and I are both people watchers...a polite label for 'nosey'...and always fight about who gets to sit looking at the wall over the other person's shoulder in restaurants and who gets to look out at the room! So sitting side by side, able to see who's coming in & out, who's sitting down and being able to look out of the window at the same time as eating fantastic food is our idea of heaven!
The set price lunch menu (2 choices) at £19 is incredible value for this standard of cooking. Anthony Demetre and his team have perfected the art of simple presentation mixed with incredibly intense flavours and beautiful combinations. On this occasion I had a bowl of white bean soup...I can taste it now! The light broth was so deep and perfectly seasoned that I feel as though I could eat it for every meal a the moment. All I really needed...but I also had a salad of hazelnuts, sheep's curd, syrupy figs and bitter leaves which left me feeling light and virtuous but replete at the same time. Wines are served by the 250ml carafe, so you can choose a different one with each course if you want to...I chose a Gruner Veltliner, sparky & flinty and difficult to find a good one outside Austria. I always jump on it in a restaurant that knows wine well...and Wild Honey is one of those. The staff are always extremely efficient yet friendly, which is my ideal combination. It's somewhere we'll always go back to. A lot is made of their sister restaurant, in Soho, Arbutus. It seems to attract most of the accolades. We've been and it was fine. But for me, it's Wild Honey every time.

Afterwards, wandering around Soho...which is a favourite Saturday afternoon pastime...we visited the much-talked about new bakery Cox Cookies & Cake in Brewer Street. Opened by the designer Patrick Cox, it's on the site of a former sex shop...now a dark ,hot (they hadn't had air conditioning installed yet!) glittery box of a space...handsome young men in studded leather aprons serve amazingly decorated cupcakes from a perspex topped counter. At a price. A HUGE price (to me, also a professional baker as you know...) A selection of 4 regular sized cupcakes (no prices on display) came to £14.50! But they were a present (I imagine that is what most of them will be, I can't see people buying them to take home themselves..) and therefore it really didn't matter too much!

Good luck to them I say! But I'm not sure that I'll be back....soon, anyway!

Enjoy your week xox

Return to disappointment....

Today we decided to go out for lunch (as we often do on a Sunday) and we drove in beautiful sunshine back to the village I was born in.

I only lived here until I was 6, but it holds many happy memories for me, even though the village - in common with so many small English places - has changed from being the vibrant little community with shops & post office that I remember to a purely residential place...the butcher and hairdresser now estate agents, the chemist, grocers and newsagents all private homes. But my first little school still stands on the village green, the pond is the same one I used to 'fish' in with a bamboo pole & piece of useless hanging string, and if I close my eyes I can almost see 2 tiny girls, their newborn sister in a pram, running over the harebells to play on the common by the church.

Before I drowned Paul in all this nostalgia, we stopped for lunch at a gastropub we've been to before. It's part of a small chain, we know & like the others but this one has been disappointing before so we thought we'd give it another try to see if it's changed. Sadly not. It's a beautiful, ancient building that has been renovated and decorated beautifully and sympathetically....authentic low beams, flagstoned floors, mismatched chairs, tapestry rugs and muted colours on the walls. The staff are young, efficient and friendly, there are newspapers to read and dogs are welcome (they have their own jar of biscuits on the bar) What's the problem, you may ask. In short, the most important thing....the food, of course! The menu looks and reads wonderfully (almost the most frustrating thing, it promises so much!) All the right things : Local ham hock terrine with home made piccallilli, locally reared roast pork, Organic smoked salmon with caper berries and horseradish creme fraiche....mmm. But everything was slightly wrong. I ordered 2 starters (something I often do at lunchtime) homemade hummus and pumpkin seed flatbread for my first dish, poached pear, walnut & blue cheese salad with wholegrain mustard dressing to follow., with a side order of unusual beetroot fritters with horseradish.Perfect.

The flatbread was certainly homemade, looked good (chargrilled in stripes, a nice touch) but SO oversalted - and I'm someone who loves salt - that it was almost inedible. And the hummus. My friend Rami would have had a fit of apoplexy! I don't think there was much tahini in it, no garlic, minimal lemon juice and a strange, bitty texture....almost separated. I've thought long and hard about the taste and what was wrong. I honestly think that they hadn't cooked the chickpeas.....soaked, yes, but if they'd seen boiling water I'd be very surprised. So weird. I'm just hoping (3 hours on) that there will be no toxic effects - although I obviously didn't eat much.

Salad next....really just an assembly dish, no real skills involved. Pear, blue cheese & walnuts with watercress and mustard dressing. No walnuts. Anywhere. I called the waiter over. "I think they may have forgotten to add the walnuts to my salad?" "yup, highly likely" he laughed and went to the kitchen, returning with a small bowl of nuts fresh out of the packet. Somehow the magic was lost! The beetroot fritters - more tempura really - were the best bit of my meal, although the batter was chewy and slightly tough instead of being crisp and light. The beetroot quarters themselves were lovely and the horseradish went perfectly with their earthy blandness. Hardly a meal, though.

We didn't have coffee or dessert (we wouldn't usually at lunchtime anyway) but left unsatisfied and frustrated. Great looking building, good location and such a dearth of  other good eating places in this very affluent area so close to London..... but so badly let down by lack of attention to detail and poor kitchen skills. At a time when even wonderful places are having to think of new ways to attract and retain customers, it seems a big mistake to actually repel them like this. We won't be back in a hurry.

Lunch at the TownHouse

We just walked back from Easter Saturday lunch at The Dean Street Town House in London's Soho. I'm SO full, wanted to write about it straight away while it's fresh in my mind. The restaurant is fairly newly opened and has received a lot of press recently. It's owned by the same company that run the amazingly luxurious Babington House hotel in Somerset...and every attention has been paid to the detail, look and feel of this gorgeous space. We sat at one of the round tables (like the one pictured above)...really comfortable, velvet upholstered chairs, beautiful linens and cutlery.

There's a special vegetarian menu (always a welcome bonus!) and it was hard to choose from the delicious sounding selection....most of which came in small or large portions, so you could mix & match the menu as you liked. I decided on Goat Curd, Beetroot & Chicory Salad to start....absolutely gorgeous, jewelled with pomegranate seeds, fresh & delicate...then a Chanterelle & Onion Tart with side orders of jersey royal new potatoes & purple sprouting broccoli. The tart was flaky & light with plenty of onion and the wonderful flavour of the wild mushrooms permeating through.

We drank a bottle of our favourite wine in the world...Isabel Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand...not often found, always ordered when we do!

I had the most divine dessert too....Peanut Shortbread with Salted Caramel Ice cream. Oh my. The shortbread was rich and salty with the crunch of peanuts and soft chocolate contrasting the texture from the middle....and the ice cream was a taste I could happily die eating!

The service was slightly slow to start with, but once we got talking to the friendly Aussie sommelier it soon thawed out. A great place to people watch (such interesting types in Soho!!) and they're open all day, including breakfast & afternoon tea. You could even get a room and stay after dinner (I always judge a place by the standards of it's bathrooms....and this one was just beautiful, all black & white with blood red velver chairs & antique mirrors....)

The Dean Street Townhouse: a feast for the stomach & the senses in Soho  8.5/10