eat like a girl

This little blog is one year old. Or, was one year old last Friday, but the bank holiday intervened, then work and since then the sunshine, so, I am celebrating late :-)

What a year! When I started I had no idea how it was going to work out, but 121 posts later, it’s now my favourite hobby. It’s forced me to be creative with my cooking, and the other wonderful food blogs out there are so inspiring on that score.

Where did I think this blog would be one year later when I wrote my first post? I was quite nervous so I did it entirely anonymously, and those early posts were quite brief, but, as I settled into it, I loved doing it and found I spent so much time thinking and arranging what I was doing around it. All in a positive way - promise!

I never would have thought that 12 months later I would have 13,922 views in one month! Nor did I think for a second that someone at the Guardian Food Blog (Word of Mouth) would blog me, or that a colleague of theirs would interview me. I was suprised and flattered to see two of my photos blogged at Slashfood (here and here). I was delighted to win the photography competition run by lastminute.com for London Restaurant Week and am very much looking forward to indulging in that lovely prize. The lovely people at Trusted Places interviewed me - you can watch the video here.

Most importantly of all, I’ve loved the gorgeous feedback from my readers.

Guardian article photograph

All good? Surely not? Well, there is a downside. Lots of cooking & overeating whilst bad before, is now like an extreme sport. Not the healthiest of pursuits (but lots of fun!). So, there has been some corporal expansion which needs to be dealt with *soon*.

Have I delivered what I promised in that first post? I hope so, but I have lots of ideas for improvements in the future. I want to travel more and learn more. I want to photograph better. First stop: a better camera.

For now, I am very happy and very grateful. Thank you for coming by and making this such a lovely experience for me.

Recently, Walid from Trusted Places got in touch about doing an interview for The Trusted Places Blog. If you don’t know Trusted Places, you should. It’s is a community based reviewing site that allows you to post reviews, setup your own community of reviewing friends and it indicates people with similar tastes as you which can be really good if you are scouting new bars and restaurants! It has received fantastic acclaim in the press and has been listed in the top 25 UK startups in the Register, the Top 10 British Dotcoms to watch in the Guardian, the 50 Best Travel Websites and website of the week in the Times Online and on and on.

I really like it, I tend to look there for reviews of new places (as well as blogs of course!) and I’ve been a member and user of their site for a while, so, I thought that it might be fun to go down and meet them. Here are the results!

Important ps. My time/money comment followed a discussion about high end restaurants and how I’d love to go to more of them every week. That’s edited out so out of context it sounds worse than it is. So, please don’t worry, I am not impoverished and do treat myself ;-)
It’s a dreadful phrase that seeped in from my project management day job. Sigh.

from the Trusted Places Blog

I spent this past bank holiday weekend in London, and, intentionally had no plans, save unpacking, wandering and being nice to myself. I had read about The Cans Festival in Waterloo, a street art exhibition that sounded really interesting, so I popped down on Sunday evening. To my surprise I also found a Slow Food Market nearby! What a treat.

I’ve been a fan of the Slow Food movement for sometime. If you haven’t heard of it, it started in Italy 22 years ago and works to preserve the pleasure gleaned through food through preservation of the heritage, tradition and culture of food. They also work to protect biodiversity and the environment.

In their words:

Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. We believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work.

We consider ourselves co-producers, not consumers, because by being informed about how our food is produced and actively supporting those who produce it, we become a part of and a partner in the production process.

This particular market was run by the London branch, and runs several times a year, although it was mentioned today that this may increase soon. There was lots of interesting proucts and demonstrations, some stalls I already knew from Borough Market & Marylebone Farmer’s Market, but some were new to me, including a stall selling Oliver’s English Perry (which I’d read about in Matthew Fort’s column in the Guardian recently), Mersea Wines & beers, Colchester Oysters, honey from Orchid Apiaries, Welsh cakes from Mootown and chutneys and mustards from Norfolk and Suffolk Speciality Foods. The full list is available here.

I caught a demonstration in which pea and ham soup (also known as the London Particular) was made and sampled. It was very informative (& tasty!) with lots of questions and answers on how to make the soup, heritage meats and using specific cuts of meat. I will be making this soon.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for these events in future, and I’ll be joining up to Slow Food London soon!

Ps. I have a backlog of recipes to blog this week - apologies to any readers who have noticed an absence of these in recent weeks!

Interested in the Cans Exhibition? I took lots of pics - The Cans Exhibition on Flickr.

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My passion for food is well known, and as a result, many leaflets for the Real Food Festival made their way to my desk in the last few weeks. It seemed anyone that knows me thought of me when they saw this festival advertised, and, came bearing leaflets or emailed the details.

I am not generally a fan of big exhibition-type events, but the Real Food Festival intrigued me with it’s promised offerings of products from small and artisan producers. It promised:

The very best line-up of produce and ingredients, incredible wines and drinks from small, unique producers, restaurants serving carefully sourced dishes and a comprehensive programme of entertaining and educational workshops where visitors will discover some of the best food and drink in the world…

Regular readers will know that I am extremely passionate about produce from small producers, particularly local producers, and this seemed like an opportunity to see a generous selection of what the UK & Ireland had to offer, a chance to sample and purchase this produce, with the bonus of having an oppurtunity to meet and chat with the producers.

I had to go check it out.

I didn’t have much time, which was a real shame. I would have loved to have a whole day to interview producers and spread the word, but, my week has been packed with activity, work and otherwise, in advance of a long weekend in Ireland. I haven’t even had a chance to indulge in London Restaurant Week, but, I had to go to this, so I squeezed in a trip between work and packing for my trip home.

Earl’s Court, for those of you that don’t know it, is an enormous exhibition hall in West London. Enormous. Lots of things go on there including gigs, my other passion. When I first moved to London 6 or so years ago, I was given tickets to a trade food fair there by friends, that had planned to go but couldn’t make it. I had really been looking forward to it, but, found the experience a little underwhelming so was not sure what to expect this time.

On approach from the station it started to hail, nightmare, so I ran and rushed indoors. On entrance to the hall, I saw an enormous Whole Foods Market stall, and, while I like Whole Foods Market, my heart sank a little, I was worried that this might be a corporate affair. Within a few minutes it was clear that this wasn’t the case, as, while there were heavy hitters there like Wholefoods, the majority of stalls were small producers, farmers, fish & meat smokers, wineries, food importers with delights like Spanish meats and Italian cheeses, and much more. I was excited and proceeded to dash around to take in as much as I could.

What can I say? I was impressed and delighted. The food that I sampled was wonderful and the selection vast, why isn’t all of this stocked somewhere I can buy it every week? Beautiful sausages and hams, beef, mutton, game, exotic meats, wonderful smoked salmon (including Kinvara which I blogged about recently), wines, juices, real cornish pasties (gorgeous), pastries and on, all dished up with pride and enthusiasm. The restaurants serving included a favourite of mine - the Duke of Cambridge organic pub from Islington, and one I’ve yet to try - Konstam in King’s Cross although I used to frequent Konstam Café before it was closed so that they could focus on Konstam at the Prince Albert.

I was very sorry to have to leave and would urge all of you to go. Support and encourage these fantastic producers and farmer’s, we need more of them. Had I chance to go back, and I very much regret that I can’t, I would spend hours, so get there early, you might want to too.

Lots more details on their website: http://www.realfoodfestival.co.uk

Tickets cost £15 in advance or £18 on the door. The ticket price was used to subsidise the costs for the small producers, so your ticket will directly sustain small producers.

Earl’s Court, London, 24 - 27 April 2008.

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Did someone mention smoked salmon?? Oh, that’s right - I did! On Sunday and on flickr last week. Shall I let you in on a secret? I’ve discovered that Selfridge’s (in Oxford St, London) have started selling Frank Hederman’s smoked salmon from the Belvelly Smokehouse in Cork. Haven’t they always done that? Well, yes but now, it’s available not only at the Oyster and Champagne Bar as a dish, but, by the side and fillet at the, well, smoked salmon counter.

It’s not cheap, but I’ve been staying with friends for a bit and wanted to leave with a splash (decadent, moi?). Besides, it’s worth every penny and more. The texture is supple and firm with a delicate flavour and a beautiful smoky aftertaste from the beechwood chips. There’s a wonderful quote from the NY Times - Mr. Hederman smokes fish, which is a little like saying Steinway makes pianos. It’s just wonderful.

We know, I hear you roar! I blogged it when I had it in Selfridge’s last year and I mentioned it recently while in Ireland. I saw the man himself when I visited Midleton Farmer’s Market in Cork and I very much look forward to my next trip so that I can sample his smoked mackerel and smoked eel.

So, what to do with this beautiful smoked wild salmon? I prefer to keep it simple and let the smoked salmon sing. A simple accompaniment of good brown bread and cucumber pickle is all it needs - no cheeses, no cream, just the salmon, smoked with such care and attention.

The recipe for each is very straight-forward, there are more complex recipes with more delicate and elaborate flavours, but my quick, simple recipe was given to me by a friend that was a chef and it works for me. I love cucumber pickle, I love the sharp, tartness and intense sweetness of the pickle, it makes my mouth tingle, and in a very good way. As for soda bread, I grew up with it, and it’s something that I should make more often. I prefer a wholemeal soda bread, some people do half wholemeal/half white or white, but for me it’s wholemeal all the way.

This will make a large jar of cucumber pickle and a small loaf of bread. Soda bread is quite dense so it goes a long way.

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