Dinner Party! Pesto, Quiche, Cobbler, Cheese.

As a reward for a productive rehearsal of a musical number for an upcoming Amnesty party, we had a bit of a feast last night. A made fresh pesto with a recipe from Jamie Oliver's Italian cookbook - all amounts are in "handfuls" which is funny when you think about the different sizes of hands in the world, but it was very tasty. Up next was a spinach and mushroom quiche - my first attempt at making pie dough seemed to turn out ok even though the food processor broke in the middle of the process. The filling was just chopped spinach (the frozen stuff is easy), sliced button mushrooms, spring onions, and four eggs with a bit of milk. It was a rather intense green color as the picture above shows, but tasted really nice. Plum and blueberry cobbler for dessert, made by modifying this recipe - one punnet of plums and one punnet of blueberries, mixed with sugar, cinnamon and flour (instead of cornstarch). Then doubled the cobbler dough recipe (which was very runny, I don't understand how you're supposed to make little rounds of cobbler dough - instead I had to pour the batter over the whole dish). Baked for 35 minutes - it was lovely and not too sweet.

But the real star of the evening is thanks to J&A, who sent us the most ridiculous cheese selection from Neal's Yard Dairy as a gift. The picture above is only about 1/3 of the cheese that arrived - from the top left, there's Doddington (a bit like Comte), Wensleydale (so much better than any of the Wensleydale I've had before from the supermarket, it's almost creamy rather than crumbly), Harbourne Blue (sadly I still hate blue cheese, but everyone else loved it), Milleens (soft, slightly stinky cheese that is GREAT) and Ragstone (soft goat's cheese, one of my favorites). This magnificent cheeseboard also came with England Preserves Red Onion Marmalade (consensus among the others was that this was really good as I am not a fan of condiments) and Stockan & Gardens Thin Oatcakes (perfect as a cheese vehicle). Thanks J&A!

El Burrito

5 Charlotte Place
W1T 1SF

J's workplace is surrounded by tastiness so I met up with her today to try one of the three burrito places within walking distance of her office. El Burrito has a lot of options for fillings, and I went with the chicken tinga today. They pack a lot into these burritos, including pickled jalapenos. Quite different from Luardo's, since the rice looks like basmati and the beans are more of a bean paste than individual black beans. Also not wrapped as tightly so they're a lot messier to eat. Still tasty though, and they come with a few tortilla chips on the side (helps to scoop up all the filling that will inevitably spill out). I still slightly prefer Luardo's but then again I haven't tried all of the interesting fillings here (they even have a chicken mole). There are also tacos, quesadillas and nachos on the menu, but if you call a place El Burrito, it makes it hard to pick anything other than the namesake dish.

Huong Viet

An Viet House
12-14 Englefield Road
N1 4LS

M&S are thinking about looking for a place to live in our neighborhood, so to help sell them on how great it is, A and I took them to a couple of our favorite pubs and the Vietnamese restaurant Huong Viet. A successful attempt to show off the charms of the area, I think!

Between the four of us, we ordered prawn summer rolls, half a crispy duck with pancakes, chargrilled squid, fried spicy squid, fried spare ribs, steamed sea bass, rice vermicelli noodles with pork, and chicken with cashews. This resulted in a feast where as usual, I ate too much, but it was all very tasty - I think my favorites are the chargrilled squid, crispy duck, sea bass and noodles. All for a very reasonable 16.50 per person, considering how much we ordered (we brought our own wine, for which they charge a 1.50 per person corkage fee). I think we probably could have ordered half of what we did and still been quite satisfied, but when you're trying to convince someone to move close by, you have to pull out all the stops!

Scallion Pancakes

As soon as I saw this recipe for quick and easy scallion pancakes I knew I'd have to try it - my only other attempt at making these was a good 15 years ago and it was terribly time consuming, with only average results. This method looked incredibly simple though and this has been one of my favorite dishes ever since I was little. Success! I think the only tweak would be to add a bit of salt to the dough, though I suppose with the soy/vinegar dipping sauce it's not absolutely necessary. Plus, since you can freeze the extras it's a good recipe for making ahead of time and just pulling out when you'd like a snack (or lunch, in my case).

Brazil Flavor

Went to Whitecross Street today in an attempt to get a burrito with W but the burrito truck wasn't there! They're probably on their summer vacation or something - so instead, I decided to try the Brazilian stall - I think it's called Brazil Flavor but could be wrong. They had feijoada, a traditional Brazilian stew made with black beans, pork and sausage - this is served with rice and a sprinking of cassava flour on top. Mixed it all up and it was delicious! Really hearty and flavorful and the beans were cooked really well. They also offer sandwiches but why bother with that when they've got something so much more interesting to try?

Croatia

So I took a little break from taking pictures of everything I ate while I was on my honeymoon - I think the photographic evidence of a week of indulgence might horrify everyone too much! But I thought I would at least tell you a bit about what tastiness we encountered.

We started in Split, which is quite a large sprawling port, but we stuck to the picturesque UNESCO part which includes Diocletian's Palace, which is beautiful. The first night we went to a recommended seafood restaurant, Nostromo, from which I have the only picture of food from the entire trip. It was a good place to start - next to the fish market, it sells grilled seafood by weight, so the waiter recommended we get a 1/2 kilo of grilled squid and a 1/2 kilo of grilled dorade between the two of us. The squid was a revelation - not rubbery at all, crisp on the outside, with a few almost creamy bits inside. Fish was also grilled perfectly - these came with some lemon wedges on the side and a big bowl of frites. Delicious (but pricey). We also discovered Ojusko beer, one of the most popular in Croatia, which was often served in half liters (and once in a liter mug!)

We also went swimming at Bacvice beach where we had pizza for lunch - I'm not sure there's such thing as bad pizza in Croatia - some were better than others but everything I tried was better than the pizza I've had in London. The Dalmatian coast also has good smoked ham (Pršut, which is similar to prosciutto), which we asked for on our pizzas quite often. Dinner was at a restaurant in Diocletian's palace, at an outdoor place with grape vines for a ceiling - decent food but the atmosphere was what really made it special.

Took a ferry to Hvar, where we had a light lunch of octopus salad and burger at the hotel. The octopus salad was amazing - it was so tender that A couldn't stop being surprised by how much he was enjoying octopus. On a little walk to explore the town, we discovered Faria, which is where we decided to come back for dinner later in the day. More grapevine ceilings and candlelight -the grilled squid here was also tasty (but not quite as good as Nostromo) and A's pasta carbonara was very good.

We then had a one day sailing trip to the Green Cave and Vis island, where our skipper produced an amazing lunch with various salads, crisp breaded chicken cutlets, zucchini fritters, and white wine. Absolutely amazing trip - the snorkeling was great since the water was so clear and warm. Also got a tip from our skipper to try wine from Ivan Dolac, which is only found in Hvar - we managed to get a bottle at the grocery store since we couldn't quite stomach the price of a bottle in a restaurant, and it did turn out to be the nicest wine we had in Croatia by far. Back in time for a pizza dinner right on the harbor, where we watched a group of men on a yacht try to entice girls walking by to join them for drinks.

Back to Split, where we had a quick lunch at a place right by the ferry terminal, and then out to the resort where we were spending the rest of our time being as lazy as possible. Food at the resort was a little expensive but all pretty good, at least. Most remarkable was the seafood buffet we tried on our last night, where loads of fresh fish was laid out in front of a grill and you could have it cooked right in front of you - we tried tuna, swordfish, scorpion fish, squid, whole sea bass and whole dorade. Quite an experience.

Gingerbread Cake

Had F&A over for dinner last night and wanted to try making something new. We were having Chinese food so I was thinking about ginger-related desserts, and ended up finding Smitten Kitchen's recipe for Gramercy Tavern's gingerbread (I know, I know, that's not Asian at all). As is often the case, I ended up substituting a few things - a round cake pan for a bundt pan, black treacle for molasses, Meantime stout for Guinness, and allspice for the cloves and nutmeg. Also ended up using only 3/4c of sugar rather than 1 since that was all I had. And when I tested it after 50 minutes, it was still raw in the middle, so I ended up baking it for 65 minutes, which resulted in a wonderfully dense and moist spicy cake. Served with some Greek yogurt, it got thumbs up from the testers. Very easy to make, as long as you don't use an electric whisk and splatter treacle all over your kitchen!