I’ve been busy lately. Real busy. But I’m pleased to say I found time for a little R&R in Devon, or South Devon to be precise, which is in many senses my homeland.
Trips down to Devon in the autumn are about windswept walks with the dog along the beach, driving over fog-topped moorland, the smell of woodfire smoke pumping out the chimneys of thatched cottages and, of course, food.
Here are a few snaps of the kind of food I love to treat myself with down in Devon. It’s hearty, homely and guilt-free if you consider all the walking that gets done in the wild outdoors of the Westcountry. Why hold back?
What's a trip to Devon without a cream tea?
Or a tankard of cider, for that matter?
Fish mezze by the river - whitebait, battered squid and juicy prawns
A Halloween hog roast on the moors
Sea bream's a must when it appears on the specials board
Colourful vegetarian food at a cosy hippie cafe
Sunday roast: Pork with carefully positioned crackling
Sunday roast: Lamb with red wine jus
I know it doesn't look it but this treacle sponge was so light as to be almost dainty
Don't underestimate the humble trifle: Boozy sponge, tangy raspberries and that combo of custard and cream - I'd have died happy
(You might notice that I haven’t told you where I was eating. As mean spirited as this may sound, I’ve done this on purpose. It’s great to share, but some things have to be off limits, kept for myself. Plus, I don’t have to feel too bad about it — it’s not hard to eat well in South Devon.)
It’s cold and you want a warm dessert, but you’re poor. What do you do?
Why, bake some fruit, of course!
Except it doesn’t have to be as plain Jane as throwing some cored cooking apples in the oven. Also, poor is relative, this recipe featuring amaretti biscuits that I bought from Waitrose.
(I’ve pretty much undermined the whole premise of my introduction now, haven’t I?)
Another excellent thing about this recipe for baked peaches is the book it was inspired by. I’ve got more to say on that subject, but it’s worthy of a post all of its own. In the meantime, if you’re curious here’s a hint: the Association for the Guardianship and Exploitation of the Traditional Culinary-Gastronomic Heritage of Italy. Catchy, huh?
These peaches don’t need to be served with cream or ice cream, they’ve got several layers of flavour making them a rich and fulfilling experience all by themselves — the sweet amaretti, the bitterness of the chocolate and the fragrant orange.
The recipe says it serves six, but if it were only to serve three would that be such a pity? I suppose it depends how poor you are.
Chocolate and amaretti baked peaches
Serves 6
7 medium peaches
2 heaped tablespoons of sugar
50g butter
4-5 amaretti biscuits
1 egg yolk
100g dark chocolate
½ cup of orange juice
Preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Wash the peaches and dry them. Cut six of the peaches into halves leaving the peel on. Remove the stones.
Scoop out some of the flesh from each of the peach halves and put it in a bowl. Peel the seventh peach and add its flesh to the bowl. Place the hollowed peach halves in an oven-proof dish greased with 20g of butter.
Add to the peach flesh the sugar, 30g of butter, the crumbled amaretti biscuits and the egg yolk. Mix together using a hand blender until a slightly lumpy mixture has formed.
Fill the hollowed peach halves with the mixture. Add a small piece of dark chocolate to the top of each filled peach half. Tip the orange juice over and around the peaches.
Place the peaches in the oven for around an hour. The dish can be served hot or cold.
I used to live with a vegan. It’s really not as bad as it sounds.
I used to be vegetarian myself so don’t tend to feel cheated if I’m sitting down to a meal that doesn’t contain meat, which is one of the reasons why, although no longer bound by anyone’s self-imposed dietary constraints, I still make this vegan version of bolognese sauce every so often.
When you come across an Italian restaurant full of Italians in London, it’s generally a good sign. But what about when those Italians all have London guidebooks resting on the table alongside them? These are people who have travelled to London to eat at a restaurant they could easily visit in their own backyard, seeing as Neopolitan pizza chain Rossopomodoro has restaurants in around 30 Italian cities. Can we trust the opinions of people with such closed culinary minds?
I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but please, try the bulgogi.
If you’re not familiar with Korean table-top barbecues (and I wasn’t until last week), bulgogi is barbecued marinated meat, in this case beef. It was my second visit to Myung Ga in a week, that’s honestly how good I thought it was.
I feel ridiculous but I’m going to be honest — it’d been over a year that I’d been meaning to try Chinatown’s Baozi Inn. I first heard about this cosy Szechuan/Beijing street food café after Time Out gave it a good review.* When I saw that other bloggers concurred it went on my Must Try list. Somehow, despite multiple trips into Soho and Chinatown for lunch and dinner, that’s how Baozi Inn remained, on my Must Try list.
Maybe I knew what was coming? Or maybe I liked Jen Café and their handmade dumpling window too much to tear myself away? I think I got into a vicious cycle of leaving it so long that it didn’t seem to matter if I left it a bit longer…
And then, for no reason I am able to fathom, I broke the curse and arranged to meet a friend for dinner at Baozi Inn.
If you think that ham with melon is weird, that cheese and honey should never go together, or that the border between sweet and savoury should generally never be transgressed, please look away now because I am about to confirm what you really don’t want to hear — yes, that’s a picture of ice cream with ham on top. Melon cream gelato to be exact, sprinkled with pieces of Parma-style cured ham.
And while your gaze is transfixed in horror, here’s another one:
You know times are tight when I start posting about what I’m cooking at home. So tight in fact that when instead of toasting the almonds I burnt them, I carried on rather than throw half a bag of nuts in the bin.
Almonds are one of the ingredients that differentiate this Sicilian pesto recipe from its Ligurian cousin, the basil-based green Genovese pesto (where hazel and pine are the nuts of choice). Another is tomatoes. I’m sure there are some Italians who would argue that this pesto trapanese (pesto from the western Sicilian town of Trapani) isn’t pesto at all, the only true pesto being Genovese. After that much pestling, however, the muscles of my right arm begged to differ.
I don’t have a car but if I did it would be a convertible. Until I get that payrise I can live the dream through the proud owners of a battered old Audi A80 Cabriolet who also happen to be my friends.
On a sunny August day we roadtripped from Clapham to Stoke Newington, south to north via Blackfriars Bridge. I leave you with a few visions of London as seen from the backseat, the beguiling beauty of which hopefully offsets any extra fuel spent travelling without an aerodynamic roof.
I know a girl called Harman. Seeing as we’re friends and we get on pretty well I think it follows that we’d have a few things in common. So when I texted her to say I’d spotted a restaurant that shares her name, she was completely on my wavelength. We both knew we had to eat there. After weeks of plotting, we chose a sunny Sunday afternoon to dine at at Harman, a Turkish/Mediterranean restaurant at the Archway end of Holloway Road.
I first saw Harman (not the girl, the restaurant! Ho ho, this never gets old) while visiting friends who live nearby. They came along too, happy to sample the food at this relatively new establishment, and soak up the relaxed and convivial vibe of leafy but trafficky Upper Holloway, which, for the record, is nothing like Central Holloway (large groups selling contraband cigarettes out of binliners in front of the Nag’s Head shopping centre) and pretty far from Lower Holloway (which is basically Highbury Corner. Hang on darling, are we in Islington?).
