Unless you're on the sort of holiday where you don't even read four-day-old copies of the Daily Mail, you will have noticed that many places in London were, last week, under seige from 12 year olds equipped with a PAYG blackberry and their older sister's scarf wrapped around their head, intent on robbing a pair of Nikes from Footlocker.
I live in Peckham, which is very much the South-East London badlands at the best of times and last week we were even more front line than usual, which resulted in the Tesco Express next door being boarded up for a week, plus the one a 5 minute walk away. My local big supermarket was also closed for a time, and the main street through Peckham was also closed to both traffic and people on foot. Which, all in all, has caused a fair bit of inconvenience, shopping wise.
What has this got to do with food? Well more than you'd think. As we have the little Tescos so close by and only a small fridge, we only shop as and when we need it. We don't have a freezer and aren't eating pasta/rice so have fewer store cupboard options. So when the shops locally are shut and the only ones open are the corner shop, what do you eat?
Post-riot, I had long-life madeleines for breakfast. GluttonBoy had a Mars muffin. For lunch I had a pot noodle and a packet of crisps. How quickly the norms of civilisation break down, right?
Which brings me to the main point. If there's one part of cooking that gives me endless amounts of satisfaction, it's preserving. A row of jars, neatly labelled and ready to be distributed while wearing a floral pinny and a self-satisfied smile, fills me with warmth and, have to be honest, some smugness.
This is a peak time of year for the jammy jammer. I particularly love preserving fruits you can't find in the shops. Damsons are a particular favourite and find themselves in jam, chutney and also some kind of white spirit, usually voddy or gin. Tbh, after the last chutney batch which took me HOURS to take the fricking stones out, I now usually sling them in a kilner with some sugar and gin and hope for the best.
I also love greengages with a passion and my nice local greengrocer in Herne Hill is overrun with them. Six jars of slightly runny jam are now ready for eating. Of course strawberry is the classic, but unless you have access to a PYO it can be a bit expensive. But the pleasure of serving homemade jam with homemade scones is pretty priceless. We bought a flat last year, largely for two reasons - it had a garage and there's an apple tree in the communal garden. Apples have ripened early this year and each neighbour recieved a jar of spiced apple chutney as a little treat. The look on their faces was worth the lingering smell of boiling vinegar.
Now I'm not saying that a shelf-ful of chutneys will keep us in rations if we need to pull up the drawbridge, but preserving appeals to a deep sense of self-preservation which, in these times of instant gratification, can help us all feel a bit more grounded and rooted.
GG
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Village People
Now there is nothing that GluttonBoy and I like more than a bit of fine dining - a starched tablecloth, a highly trained and synchronised front of house crew, the theatre of the presentation of the dishes at table. But regular readers will also know that we also love a bit of rough- Meatwagon burgers at the pub next door, mac n cheese in front of the telly, fish and chips at the beach.
In the UK it sometimes feel like you have to be in one camp or the other. One of the reasons we love reading Saveur magazine from the US is that it celebrates home cooking and dirty (in the nicest way) cooking as well as cheffy cooking and a fancy resto.
So GB and I haven't seen much of each other of late, and with a Sunday in front of us and weather a bit unpredictable, I persuaded him to accompany me to Brixton Village. Despite only being a hop, skip and jump away, we don't often get to Brixton but we'd both been hearing tons about Brixton Village online. We're always late to the party but in case you don't know, BV is what the old Granville Arcade (a rundown, 1930s covered arcade) has become. It is home, possibly most famously, to the Thai restaurant Kaosarn, reviewed glowingly by the Observer's Jay Rayner and, most excitingly to me (as I love ice cream more than almost anything else) a artisan gelateria called Lab G which purports to offer an amazing salt caramel variety (I should also say I love salt caramel more than almost anything else too).
From the entrance we found, it didn't look promising. Happily, we couldn't have been more wrong and spent the next hour with a look on our faces like we'd found the promised land. It's a mix of great food shops and mini cafes/restos... some not much more than a couple of enthusiastic owners and a bench or two. Honest does burgers and triple cooked chips, Cornercopia has a cafe on one side doing really seasonal modern Brit/Euro food from brekkie to early evening, Agile does pizza/calzone and there were a few coffee shops, a cake place, a sweetie shop, a bunch of Colombian grills and probably lots more that I can't remember. And of course Kaosarn.
I'll be honest, I've never been a huge fan of Thai. I don't really like spicy food and if there is one foodstuff I'd ban if I was in charge it would be coriander. But I'm quite bossy normally so let GB decide for once and I'm super-glad I did, because it was delicious. I had a chicken Pad Thai and it was incredibly light and fragrant. GB had lamb mossoman - the lamb was so tender you could cut it with a spoon, the sauce was sweet and light and full of flavour. Neither was especially hot and I am partcularly glad to report that the coriander was large and on top of the food so easy to pick off and discard. It's also family run and the ladies were hugely friendly and we can't wait to go back. I really want to try an Honest burger but really, if I'm going to eat a burger I'll go next door to Meatwagon so I think Kaosarn is the one for me at the Village. Not bad for a coriander hater.
So, ice cream, the point of the visit. They were out of salt caramel, which I don't mind as it means I'll HAVE to go back and so I went for panna cotta - happily one of my top-5 desserts. Creamy but not heavy in the way premium ice cream brands are, fresh, sweet, creamy. I wanted to wolf it down and in fact I did. There, I said it. I wolfed it down and I will be back for more without any question at all.
BV also has some great shops - vintage women's and menswear, interiors, young designers. It's a fantastic initiative which, while it has clearly brightened up a much unloved and rundown area, is so much more than a wishful-thinking initiative. And welcome much more than local hipsters, especially with children. Its not worth supporting just because it's a right on thing to do, to support local traders, but its worth supporting because they offer a unique proposition - good food, good places to eat and drink, nice things to buy, a fun place to do it, a buzz you want to enjoy.
With love
GG
In the UK it sometimes feel like you have to be in one camp or the other. One of the reasons we love reading Saveur magazine from the US is that it celebrates home cooking and dirty (in the nicest way) cooking as well as cheffy cooking and a fancy resto.
So GB and I haven't seen much of each other of late, and with a Sunday in front of us and weather a bit unpredictable, I persuaded him to accompany me to Brixton Village. Despite only being a hop, skip and jump away, we don't often get to Brixton but we'd both been hearing tons about Brixton Village online. We're always late to the party but in case you don't know, BV is what the old Granville Arcade (a rundown, 1930s covered arcade) has become. It is home, possibly most famously, to the Thai restaurant Kaosarn, reviewed glowingly by the Observer's Jay Rayner and, most excitingly to me (as I love ice cream more than almost anything else) a artisan gelateria called Lab G which purports to offer an amazing salt caramel variety (I should also say I love salt caramel more than almost anything else too).
From the entrance we found, it didn't look promising. Happily, we couldn't have been more wrong and spent the next hour with a look on our faces like we'd found the promised land. It's a mix of great food shops and mini cafes/restos... some not much more than a couple of enthusiastic owners and a bench or two. Honest does burgers and triple cooked chips, Cornercopia has a cafe on one side doing really seasonal modern Brit/Euro food from brekkie to early evening, Agile does pizza/calzone and there were a few coffee shops, a cake place, a sweetie shop, a bunch of Colombian grills and probably lots more that I can't remember. And of course Kaosarn.
I'll be honest, I've never been a huge fan of Thai. I don't really like spicy food and if there is one foodstuff I'd ban if I was in charge it would be coriander. But I'm quite bossy normally so let GB decide for once and I'm super-glad I did, because it was delicious. I had a chicken Pad Thai and it was incredibly light and fragrant. GB had lamb mossoman - the lamb was so tender you could cut it with a spoon, the sauce was sweet and light and full of flavour. Neither was especially hot and I am partcularly glad to report that the coriander was large and on top of the food so easy to pick off and discard. It's also family run and the ladies were hugely friendly and we can't wait to go back. I really want to try an Honest burger but really, if I'm going to eat a burger I'll go next door to Meatwagon so I think Kaosarn is the one for me at the Village. Not bad for a coriander hater.
So, ice cream, the point of the visit. They were out of salt caramel, which I don't mind as it means I'll HAVE to go back and so I went for panna cotta - happily one of my top-5 desserts. Creamy but not heavy in the way premium ice cream brands are, fresh, sweet, creamy. I wanted to wolf it down and in fact I did. There, I said it. I wolfed it down and I will be back for more without any question at all.
BV also has some great shops - vintage women's and menswear, interiors, young designers. It's a fantastic initiative which, while it has clearly brightened up a much unloved and rundown area, is so much more than a wishful-thinking initiative. And welcome much more than local hipsters, especially with children. Its not worth supporting just because it's a right on thing to do, to support local traders, but its worth supporting because they offer a unique proposition - good food, good places to eat and drink, nice things to buy, a fun place to do it, a buzz you want to enjoy.
With love
GG
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