Comfort food: Mac and cheese

When I was in New York last year I was lucky enough to have been told about a lovely place on the Lower East Side which specialised in serving macaroni cheese. S'MAC took the humble dish and added a plethora of different flavours to it. My eight-portion sampler included some French, Cajun, Italian, and of course American flavours. Probably a bit to heavy for lunch, but when in America, who cares about portion size?

Here’s my macaroni cheese recipe

Ingredients
Macaroni – purists will protest, but I have been known to use penne or frusili too
Butter
Milk
Plain flour
Grated cheese – I find it best to use these three types: mozerella, mature cheddar and parmesan, cut so long as it melts, I think you'll be OK.

Cook the pasta to packet instructions, until al-dente

Melt the butter gently in a saucepan then add the plain flour. Mix until it forms a paste. Make sure all of the flour is mixed in.

Slowly add the milk and stir out any lumps. Lumps only form when the flour isn't mixed with the butter properly.

Add the cheeses and season to taste. I use lots of pepper.

Once the pasta is cooked and rained, add it to the milk, butter and flour mix and stir so the past is coated.

Transfer to an oven dish and top with more the parmesan and more grated cheese, if you wish.

Cook in the oven until the top is brown. Leave it to cool down for a bit before eating it.

In praise of carbs

Carbohydrates have had been given a bad rep over the last few years and I don't really know why. OK, I concede if you eat too much of them you'll probably get fat, but come on, this is surely the case with every food group.

It takes a strange person to cut carbs out. You become moody, get awful headaches and a terrible case of envy once the chips come out. The bunless-burger brigade would do well to remember that fruit is a huge source or carbohydrates and more importantly, chips taste good.

Seriously though, it's unhealthy to cut out one food group for a dieting whim, especially when that food group contains very healthy things, like fruit and some vegetables. Replacing it with meat and cheese doesn't really help your general well-being either.

Anyway, not a tip for slimmers, but here are my top three guilty carb pleasures:

Potato duphinoise – carbs + cream = dying happily of a heart attack.

Macaroni cheese – there's so much you can do with this humble dish, but on it's own the carb/cheese combo is an unbeatable treat.

Roast potatoes – surely no one can resist a roast tattie come Sunday? There's been great debate on how to get the best results, but it doesn’t really matter. I don't think I've ever had a bad roast potato, even the rubbish ones tasted nice.

Porcini mushroom and chestnut pie

Ingredients:
Porcini mushrooms
Chestnuts
Other mushroom varieties of your own choosing. I use field, chestnut and button
Tomato puree
Onions
Garlic
Potatoes
Cheese
Milk

Boil the potatoes and make a mash in the way you prefer. If you're like me, this will involve lots of cheese.

Soak the porcini mushrooms in luke warm water. Make sure they are covered completely, but down drown them.

Chop and fry the garlic and onions until they start to brown. Chop and fry the other mushroom varieties.

Add the soaked porcini mushrooms and the water they were soaking in so that all the ingredients ate just covered with the water.

Roughly chop the chestnuts, not too small, and add them to the frying pan.

Turn the heat down and let it reduce, adding the tomato puree if you need to thicken.

Season to taste.

Once the mushroom mix is nice and thick, transfer to a baking dish and pile the mash on top. Smooth it out, as if you're making a shepherd's pie, and top with some cheese.

Put it in the oven at gas mark 7 (220C) for about 15 mins, until the top browns.

Guilty pleasures

I have a terrible confession to make. Last week I purchased a packed of Bernard Matthew’s Turkey drumsticks. They were £1. Worse still I cooked and ate them.

From time to time, I’m positive even the most ardent foodies eschew the vegetables, preferring to veg out themselves, and yes, I am no different.

My pre-Jamie Oliver school dinners used to consist of turkey drumsticks. It was the 90s and we had not yet graduated to twizzlers. Perhaps I will use this as the justification of buying them, yes, I wanted a bit of nostalgia for tea.

And perhaps the taste was nostalgic. They tasted like bitter chemicals. The taste I used to get in the changing rooms after netball when everyone had just fogged themselves with a can of Impulse Vanilla Kisses. It tasted like shame.

Lesson learnt. I’ll not reach for the drumsticks again, but is any guilty pleasure food acceptable? Do you have any guilty pleasure treats? Do share

Romance reviewed: Dans Le Noir?

Now, it’s not often that you find yourself partaking in a conga line at the beginning of an evening’s entertainment – normally that curious pleasure is reserved solely for the initiation of drunken uncles once things are well underway – but then this was no ordinary night out. So it came to pass that my companion and I were instructed to form an orderly queue with eight other diners, each placing our right hand on the right shoulder of the person in front.

There was a sudden burst of excitement at the front of the queue, and we were introduced to Cyril, our waiter for the evening. In we charged, to the depths of the Dans Le Noir? building, down a ramp, through some heavy curtains – and into the darkest space I’ve ever been in, even when I only had amniotic fluid as a friend. Your eyes just don’t adjust. You become disorientated and the room seems cavernous, with voices and the jangling of fork to plate coming at you from all angles. I’m assured the room seats 60 diners, but when you’re in there you have no idea of the size, scale or layout. Which is why it makes sense that Cyril is blind.

Before descending into the dining room you’re given the option of four menus: red, green, blue and white – meat, veggie, fish and specials respectively. Being something of a fish fiend, I went blue, while my companion was feeling experimental and opted for white. To accompany, we’d have the special surprise wine, I declared. Which leads me to my first question: have you ever tried pouring yourself a glass of vino in the dark? The more hardened among you will know that it’s actually fairly simple – feel for your glass, pop a finger in, pour s-l-o-w-l-y and stop when your pinkie gets wet. Easy.

Using a knife and fork in zero visibility? Not so much. When my starter arrived – huge pan-fried scallops and haddock fishcakes – I approached in the only way I knew how, desperately clutching my cutlery and hoping for the best. Having successfully speared a scallop, ascertained that that was indeed what it was, and sliced some off, I realised that the whole charade was pointless. My sliver of scallop was lost in the tumult of my plate. “I’m eating with my hands!” declared my neighbour, Francine from Hornchurch. And so we flouted social convention and laughed in the face of polite society, picking up our food and gnawing on it in true caveman style.

From my initial trepidation, by this point I’d begun to relax. It’s easy to see how someone with claustrophobia might make a bolt for the door, but with Francine and her boyfriend Dave for company – “Everything tastes like melon!” – my companion and I didn’t have much time for staring into the abyss or being perplexed by the fact that if you closed your eyes, everything looked the same.

And the food! Oh, the food. My main course was as hearty and succulent as the first, with Mozambique prawns the size of John Merrick’s head, some other fish – possibly bream – creamy mashed potato and a cabbage, celeriac and fennel salad. And my companion, usually a fussy-eater, wolfed down his unbelievably tender Ostrich steak quicker than you could say, er, ‘squark’. Incidentally, they do let you look at the menu on the way out to discover exactly what you’ve consumed, but I think it’s a real oversight not to give diners printouts to take home. As I’ve just illustrated, it’s difficult to remember the nuances of a three-course dinner after a brief glance at the menu when you’re hopping on the beer scooter in your wine gilet.

The pudding was possibly the only other disappointment of the evening. A trio of desserts, it consisted of a chocolate truffle, berry sorbet and melon jelly. Regardless of what menu you’d chosen, all diners got the same final dish and it was… mediocre. And for the price, you expect more than mediocre. Luckily for me, my companion was footing the bill.

Food: 8.5/10
Service: 7/10
Cost: £115, for 3 courses, including a bottle of wine, water and a tip for Cyril

Dans Le Noir?
30-31 Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0DU

A COCKTAIL ON A PLATE

Because, like most ladies, I like to look good, yesterday after work I spent two hours in a hairdressers being primped, trimmed and preened and whilst I came home sporting a remarkably stylish new look, I wasn't particularly in the mood to be traipsing around the supermarket situated at the bottom of my road looking for something to cook. So, I decided to see what I had in my store cupboard. Unlike Nigel Slater-a man I worship as a God on earth-my store cupboard isn't filled with such exotic fancies as White Truffle Oil and Black Olive Paté. However, I do have a pack of risotto rice, some leftover tomato and garlic pureé from another cookery adventure, some Marigold Vegetable Bouillon, various delicious tasting liquids such as Tabasco and Worcester Sauce, and my housemates were kind enough to provide me with some delectable french goats cheese bought from a local farmers market and a fair amount of Absolut Vodka. So, what better to make than a Bloody Mary...and then transfer it into a Risotto? Which, fortified by Vodka and some exceedingly good music on the radio provided by my favourite music station Revolution 96.2 I duly did.

MISS CAY'S BLOODY MARY RISOTTO (serves 3-4 people)

Ingredients:
One Onion
1/2 jar of Passata
Two tablespoons of Tomato & Garlic Puree (Or just plain old tomato puree if you're not feeling too exotic)
One pint of Chicken/Vegetable Stock (You're best off using liquid stock or Marigold Bouillon for this as I feel they give a better flavour to the dish than just a plain old stock cube)
100ml of Vodka (roughly about four/five shots. I used Absolut Vodka here because we just had it in the freezer, but any brand should do, even Grants The Exciting Vodka)
One tablespoon of butter
One pack of risotto rice
A dash of Worcester Sauce
A dash of Tabasco (as much as personal taste dictates)
100g of Goats Cheese
Salt and Pepper


MAKE IT!
:: Chop the onion and sweat it in the butter until soft
:: Add the tomato & garlic pureé and cook with the onions for around five minutes
:: Add the risotto rice and cook until every grain is coated in the mixture.
:: Ladle the stock slowly into the saucepan. Wait until the liquid is soaked up by the rice and it starts to look "creamy" before adding more.
:: Once 3/4 of the stock has been added and the rice is almost cooked, add the passata and the vodka and allow to cook for five-six minutes. Add more stock if necessary to keep the rice from drying out.
:: When cooked, add the Worcester and Tabasco Sauce to taste and stir in the Goats Cheese until melted. Serve with Celery and more Vodka if avaliable.


This is a dish best served in good company when piping hot. Preferably in front of the TV when some crap show (e.g. Big Brother) is on. Although I'm sure it would taste just as good eaten in front of something like The Culture Show. Why don't you try both and let me know?

Just like Mum made: Banh Xeo

At the weekend I was thrown into a haze of childhood nostalgia on the train when I stumbled upon a recipe for Banh Xeo (pronounced in my poor anglicised Cambodian as Ban Cheow - it's acutally a Vietnamese dish) in the Guardian.

This is one of the few things my mum cooked and I actually liked. It’s one of the few things that my mum cooked that wasn’t boiled rice (fair enough she gave me the deposit on my house but I did have a childhood of no toys, no holidays and 18 years of boiled rice for dinner EVERY DAY to pay for it).

Anyway, this dish reminds me of happy, simple times. Helping make the coconut milk (by painstakingly taking a rinder to the flesh and carving it out) drinking the juice (bizarrely I had a hatred of coconut for a long time – too many Bounty bars and bad frosting on Victoria sponges) and rushing home to stuff my face and going back for seconds.

Mum used to make us top and tail bean sprouts by hand, everything was very methodical when she cooked, rhythmic. It always took ages. I give her less credit as a cook then she deserved, but I put that down to 18 years of eating boiled rice.

The Guardian recipe for Banh Xeo was a vegetarian adaptation, but here’s my mum’s version, as I remember it.

For the pancakes
Rice flour
Coconut milk (you can buy it tinned, or spend hours making your own)
Egg
Some people advocate adding tumeric, but I don’t ever remember my mother doing so

For the filling
Minced pork
Shrimps
Onion
Bean sprouts
Salad leaves
Cucumber
Thai mint

For the sauce
Fish sauce
Lemon juice
Crushed garlic
Crushed peanuts
Chili (optional)

It really makes a difference if you can make the sauce the night before. Simply mix the fish sauce, lemon juice, crushed garlic together, altering quantities to taste. Mum used to add warm water to dilute, the flavours are quite strong.

To make the pancake batter, beat the egg and add to the rice flour. Add the coconut milk slowly, stirring out any lumps. The mixture needs to bit a little thinner than a conventional pancake mix.

Set the batter aside a while to work on the filling.

Chop the onions and fry. Add the pork, then the shrimps at the last minute add the bean sprouts. Take off the heat and leave to one side while you cook the pancakes.

Heat some oil in a large wok. The oil needs to be hot, but not smoking, make sure the sides are coated and the oil doesn’t just sit in the base. Using a ladle, spoon in the pancake batter, swirling it around to make a big, thin pancake – it should have thin, crispy sides.

Spoon in the meat and bean sprouts into the middle of the pancake and fold it in half. Transfer onto a plate and garnish with the salad leaves, mint and cucumber. Spoon some sauce, it's like a sharp vinaigrette, over the top with some of the peanuts.

We always ate this with chopsticks. It’s a challenge.

Romance reviewed: Amersham Arms

You have to feel sorry for the chef at the Amersham Arms. After eating his home-made pie with hand-cut chips, it was clear that his home must be some giant processed-food factory, and his hands must have been cut off and replaced with square blades in order to slice these potatoes in to perfect 5mmx5mm French fries.

Either that, or someone is telling porkies.

Now, I have nothing against processed food, but when you’ve stepped into a place trying to pass itself off as a gastropub it smarts when you get the cuisine of a local chippy.

Doubly so when you take into account the Amersham has been bought up by those behind the Lock Tavern – a fine gastropub if there was one. As an indie-loving teenager, I remember the Lock when it was a horrid shack of a pub, with a fridge buzzing away in the garden, serving McCoys as it’s daily special. So as it triumphantly serves fat, juicy burger and chips that have actually been hand cut, it’s disappointing that it’s new venture could live up to the reputation that proceeds it.

Food: 5/10
Service: 5/10
Cost: £12, for 1 course, including 2 pints of beer

Amersham Arms
New Cross Road
London, SE14 6TY

Romance reviewed: Pulcinella

Italian is rarely my cuisine of choice when I dine out – it’s easy enough for me to make it at home that I resent handing over a tenner for someone else to do it for me.

So I’m even more annoyed with Pulcinella who took my tenner (and a bit more) and served up some tomato slop.

I should have known better when my companion and I walked into the Italian next door (The Amalfi) and found it heaving, while Pulcinella was half full at best. Another indicator would have been the waitress, who I can only describe as dim, rather than wilfully unhelpful.

After a brief tour of the restaurant, comprising of places we could sit which didn’t involve her serving us (a choice she made, not us) we were finally led to our seats, sandwiched so tightly between two other tables, I managed to treat some other diners to a nice view of my arse as I squeezed past them.

The poor service set the tone for the rest of the evening. The music sounded like a Worst-of of Turkish European Song Contest entries from the last 10 years.

Then there was the food. The Gnocci in tomato and ricotta sauce was so soggy it could have been pre-chewed. Served on a plate that felt like it was fresh from the fridge didn’t help much, neither did the ridiculous sprinkling of parsley. The Bruchetta also displayed attributes of sogginess – perhaps this was a theme I was missing?

Their famed pizzas didn’t seem like much either – they’re so low on toppings they have to list oregano as one.

The wine was generic, the décor beige and, yes, the service was utterly crap.

Food: 3/10
Service: 2/10
Cost: £40, for 1 course, including 2 glasses of wine

Pulcinella
Old Compton Street
London, W1d 5JX

Romance reviewed: Randall and Aubin

It’s takes a pretty special restaurant to make Saturday night in Soho sound like quiet country town. Randall and Aubin is one such place, but only because it’s so loud inside, that once you step to into Brewer Street your hearing has been damaged so much the noises of London’s drunken louts seem positively peaceful.

I know I sound like an old woman: “The music was so loud, when I go out I want to be able to have a conversation, not listen to pounding funky house.”

Randall and Aubin is suffering from a sense of confusion, one part cheesy gay dance club, one part romantic-as-hell couples cubby-hole. I can’t fault the food – my lobster was as sweet as nectar, the crab linguini rich and meaty, but the noise, oh my God the noise…

It was like eating in on of the clubs you’d find down the road in Leicester Square, but instead of bar snacks, I ate oysters and shellfish – soul food, date food, not stodgy, soak-up-the-alcohol nachos.

With two-seater booths around the walls, it looked like it was designed for couples, not gaggling groups of revellers to get bladdered. The wine list was thoughtful and comprehensive and it says a lot that despite, or perhaps because of, the noise the queue was still out the door at 9.30pm.

Even now, trying to define Randall and Aubin is making my head spin – is it the place to go before hitting Soho on a giant binge, if so, is ordering the prawns that good an idea?

Once it sorts out it’s identity crisis, this could be one of London’s finest restaurants.


Food: 9/10
Service: 6/10
Cost: £75, for 2 courses, including a bottle of wine

Randall and Aubin
Brewer Street
London, W1F 0SG