Halloween Eats

Happy Halloween!

Some friends and I decided to marke the occasion over the weekend with fun costumes and freakish eats. Photos below....

Raiding the freezer

One of the things about cooking is that you often have leftovers. Especially if, like me, you grew up in a large, rambunctious Caribbean family where anyone might drop by and be included in the meal. 

Personally, I love leftovers because they make life that much easier on days when I am too tired/busy/late to cook. As I attempt to empty my freezer so I can fill it up with game, a lot of my bentos are going to involve defrosted leftovers.

The main leftover component in today’s bento is sardine fishcakes. I made these a couple of weeks ago from 150g mashed potato and one fresh sardine which I brushed with a little olive oil, sprinkled with chilli flakes, grilled, flaked and stirred into the mash with salt and pepper. The fishcakes have also been rolled in breadcrumbs to make them look more professional.

The other leftover component is cubed potato, leftover from earlier in the week, which I used to make a quick Spanish-style omelette. I really love Spanish tortilla and I think this is a nice way to make a single-portion one. You just need one egg, 25g cubed potato, ¼ clove of garlic and a tablespoon of onion or similar (I didn’t have onion this time so I used a bit of chopped leek).  I don’t even use oil – I just heat the pan (I get it quite hot so that the egg ‘takes’ immediately and doesn’t ooze out of the mould) pour the egg + veg mix into the mould and turn down the heat.

The not-so-leftover bit was buttered leeks which I made specially for this bento.

Trying to be healthy

I have had quite a foodie few days, so today’s bento is an attempt to be a bit healthier than normal while still packing in some energy-boosting dark green veg. No eggs today, though, as I woke up too late to cook them.

So, today I made:

• 100g (cooked weight) sushi rice topped with
• 60g grilled salmon, flaked and sprinkled with sesame seeds
• Buttered leeks – my trick for making this less fattening than usual is to slice the leeks and put them in a frying pan on a low heat with 2-6 tbsp of water. Once the water has been absorbed and the leeks have softened, I add a tsp of butter (5g) per leek and a bit of salt and pepper. The result is every bit as good as normal buttered leeks, but without the guilt factor.
• Blanched spinach, no dressing, sprinkled with sesame seeds

Bento for a dark Tuesday

Today’s bento was rather a rushed effort. I am finding it really hard to get up in the mornings now that it’s still darkish at 7am, so I am trying to pack lots of energy-building dark green veg and organic, free range eggs into my lunches.

Today’s box contains:

• 100g sushi rice
• Two handfuls of spinach with sesame dressing (1tsp tahini, 1 tsp soy, ½ tsp mirin, ½ tsp honey)
• 1 spanish-style omelette (1 egg, beaten; 25g chopped cooked potato; 1 spring onion, sliced; salt and pepper; cooked in a fried egg or crumpet ring to keep the shape/thickness)
• 75g salmon grilled with a drizzle of teriyaki sauce and some soy
• Chopped celery (to fill the gaps) 

Afternoon tea at the Athenaeum Hotel, Mayfair

Food: 5/5

Service: 5/5

Ambience: 5/5

At a glance: generous, friendly, special

I have been to the Athenaeum for tea before, in 2009, and I remember being very impressed. So, it was some trepidation that I decided to return – always worrying that in the intervening two years they would somehow have lowered their standards. Happily not so!

One of the things I love best about the Athenaeum is that they staff are attentive, but not pushy. You can stroll into the foyer and take a seat without being asked why you are there, and everyone greets you with a genuine smile.

We took the Honey Tea, which at £39 is the deluxe package – I would recommend it over the standard tea if you like honey, alcohol and chocolate, but otherwise the Evergreen Tea is splendid.

The first step, of course, was to choose the tea. I had Margaret Hope Darjeeling which had a beautiful, floral, honeyed flavour and complemented the rest of the goodies perfectly. 

Next, came the “honey sandwiches”. The tea comes with honey roasted ham sandwiches and seeded rolls filled with goat’s cheese and onion caramelised in honey. However, they very kindly substituted half the ham ones for chicken because my friend doesn’t eat pork. She pronounced them the best chicken sandwiches she has ever had!

The finger sandwiches were generous in size and the seeded rolls substantial, but after the honey sandwiches, they bring you a platter of the standard afternoon tea sandwiches (cucumber, egg and cress, ham and two kinds of salmon) to choose from. The cucumber sandwiches were particularly impressive as they were served on pesto bread – a delicious combination which I shall consider when making my own afternoon teas. 

The sandwiches were followed by hot crumpets and warm scones (plain, but flavoured with orange blossom) served with bowls of jam, honey and clotted cream as well as butter. My only criticism would be that the jam was rather runny and slid of the scones, but otherwise it was all lovely – the crumpets were toasted to perfection, hot and crispy.

At this point, I was quite satisfied and what we’d had already qualified as a substantial tea. But. Next came the cakes! We were brought a glass of honey-infused Champagne each and a large platter of cakes. I was worried the bubbly would be oversweet, but it was merely floral, with a taste and odour of rose petal. The cakes were magnificent: chocolate millefeuille, honey cake, elderflower jelly, lavender macarons, chocolate and honeycomb marquis, honey cheesecake. I managed to try the millefeuille, jelly and macaron and then our waitress came back and offered to pack up our leftovers, which was very welcome.

I would definitely rank the Athenaeum as one of my top two afternoon tea experiences. It’s perfect for a group of friends or a low-key “occasion” treat as the atmosphere is relaxed, but the food is traditional, generous and served expertly. You can also call in advance for a birthday plate and they will pipe a message in chocolate.  I recommend going for one of the later sittings (after 4.30) as they allow you to linger as long as you please. 

Snail love

This morning one of my colleagues brought in some of his home grown grapes for us to try, warning that there might still be “beasties” among them. Well, I found one! The teeniest, tiniest snail, and we are all quite taken with it.

So here are some photos – what should we call him?

Making the most of leftovers

This morning, I felt like a lapsed foodie: I burnt my figs to a cinder (after I’d doused the pan in water I realised I should have taken a photo!), didn’t feel like eating all of my porridge and struggled to fill my bento. Admittedly today I used a larger box, so that was part of the problem!

Today’s lunch is mostly made up of leftovers, which gave me time to make some cute little nori shapes.

I decided to go for a chequered effect, which is one of the easiest ways to make a bento look fun. I still had a stuffed courgette left over from the other day, and a bowl of sushi rice in the fridge, so I cut that into pieces and alternated it with rice shapes made with my onigiri mould. Then I used the moulds as a guide to cut matching shapes from a sheet of nori – I scored the sheet with a sharp knife and did the rest with scissors.

In the final corner, instead of rice I’ve put my little piggy pot, filled with salad dressing. The salad is just a colourful mixed leaf affair from a bag.

Of course, I realised too late that I have run out of soy sauce, so I will have to get some of that before lunch time. *sigh*

Bento of the day: chicks and pandas

I did a lot of cooking last night – as well as preparing dinner I also boiled up some chicken stock and made a few items for my bento stash. Dinner involved rice, so I was able to cook a little extra and use it as the first layer of today’s lunch: not very much, just 100g. 

I made a beef topping by dry frying 50 lean beef mince with chopped onion, garlic, and sliced red peppers, plus some cumin, coriander and a sprinkle of chilli. I popped all that in one half of the lunch box and left it in the fridge overnight. 

This morning, I filled up the second half of the box with salad leaves and then all I had to do was make a quick salad dressing (1tsp tahini, 1tsp light soy, ½ tsp honey ½ tsp mirin), half of which I stirred into defrosted spinach (in the panda pot) and half of which I used to fill my little yellow dressing pot so I could drizzle it on the salad later. 

And here it is:

A Brit Does Bento

I have been making a lot of bento lunches lately, inspired by Makiko Itoh. I am too lazy to go into what all the past bentos had in them, but here are some photos, just to get you salivating.

In praise of porridge

I love porridge. I’d have it for breakfast every day if it weren’t for the perplexed stares I draw when cooking up oats in summer! So, when the warm weather hits I switch to fruits and yoghurt, but as soon as the air takes a cold turn, I reach for my oats!

I’m quite a purist about my porridge, and quite particular about how it is prepared. No microwave oats for me, and don’t even think about mentioning the awful, tasteless Ready Brek in my presence (sort of like baby food, but worse).

I favour organic oats and at the moment I’m using Flanahan’s, although sometimes I like the big, chunky oats Sainsbury’s does. However, my ideal texture is somewhere between the two so I might try combining them at some point – stay tuned for that experiment.

Step one for me is soaking the oats: 30g is about enough for me and I put them in a cup of water over night. In the morning, I pour the whole lot into a pan with a pinch of salt and let it cook on a very low heat until it reaches my desired consistency. I like my porridge thick, so it takes at least 15 minutes. 

Every five minutes or so I give it a good stir with a wooden spatula ("materials are everything") and when it is ready I tip it into my bowl. 

By now, you will have noticed the total absence of milk from this procedure: blame my Scottish ancestry. Occasionally, when I am out, I have to settle for porridge made with milk, but I never make it at home. I think it was Clarissa Dickson-Wright who described porridge made with milk as “puppy sick”. She isn’t wrong, you know. By all means pour a bit of milk or cream onto your porridge once it is in the bowl, but don’t insult your oats by poaching them in it.

Despite my aversion to milk, I do like to top my porridge with something: soft fruits, dried fruits, banana, peanut butter, grated apple, cinnamon, or some combination thereof. For breakfast this morning, I sprinkled some figs with brown sugar (I know some people are horrified by sugar, but one teaspoon won't hurt, even when you are trying to lose weight) and baked them until it the sugar bubbled:

And then put them on top of my porridge:

Delicious, filling and healthy :)

Cooking!

As part of my healthy living regime, I’ve been cooking up a storm. Essentially, I’ve been trying to prepare as much of the food I eat as possible, which has meant getting up early to make breakfasts and lunches instead of grabbing cereal at work or buying lunch from a café; making my own stocks and soups, etc.

Another reason is that I am quite a foodie and most low-fat foods in the supermarket just don’t inspire me. Also, I am signed up to an organic veg box service which means that once a fortnight I get a crop of food to use up. And since the contents are a surprise, I get to push my boundaries and think creatively. 

I am doing Weight Watchers, so my criteria for each main meal is that it must be fewer than ten points – other than that, anything goes. 

Here is what I cooked last night: stuffed courgettes with a side salad tossed in parmesan and balsamic vinegar. 

The salad was my own invention, but I got the courgette recipe from AllRecipesUk using smaller quantities of everything (100g mince, 50g brown rice)and substituting lean beef mince for the lamb. And yes, that is cheese on top - I grated 25g of parmesan, topped all my courgettes and still had a generous amount for my salad. Even with the more modest quantity of filling I made I was able to stuff two large courgettes and freeze about 1/3 – enough to stuff a small aubergine I think.