…a feast of indian delights for november to celebrate diwali, contact us for your place. click hear for further details.
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so, i had some short crust pastry left over from a weekend tart session (!?) and decided to whip up a quick quiche lorraine (of sorts).
here’s how:
mould pastry in to suitable ovenproof dish – i used a medium size earthenware cazuela, cover with parchment paper and fill with baking beans (not baked beans, this would have quite a different effect). blind bake for about 15mins at 190C.
open the oven and drop the temp to about 160C for a further 5 mins to dry the pastry out.
for the filling:
fry off a couple of slices of bacon, bet aside to cool and then slice in to strips. small dice 1 small white onion, sweat in the pan with the bacon juices and a little butter. Meanwhile mix one whole egg and one yolk, with about 200ml of dbl crm, salt, pepper. Grate 100g cheese (i used Gouda, but any hard cheese will do), add 60g to the crm mixture and keep the rest to sprinkle on the top. chop a small handful of parsley and add to the crm mixture. add the bacon and the onions to the crm mixture also, give it a quick stir to distribute everything nicely, then pour into you pastry case.
sprinkle the cheese on the top and then pop in the oven at 190C for about 30-40mins. check it’s done by placing the tip of a knife in the centre, if it is still runny, back in and a few more mins. If it starts to colour too much, bung some silver foil over the top until the centre is set.
serve warm, with chips/salad, or just stuff it in on its own!
Enjoy
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Come and celebrate the very first pistachio&pickle supper club with a special Hallowe’en twist
Menu
Hubble, Bubble
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Amuse Bouche – blood shot
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Eye of Newt and Toe of Frog – pumpkin gnocchi, sage and truffle butter
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Fillet of Fenny Snake – venison, savoy cabbage, herb dumpling with blood jus
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Thrice Cheese – selection of British cheeses, biscuits and home made pickle
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Treacle Treat (dyu see what we did there? Trick or Treat?) – treacle tart and cinnamon cream
If you would like to make a booking we ask only that you come to us by recommendation. We are all about having a great time and creating a cosy environment for friends, colleagues and loved ones to chow down on some tasty home cooked food, but we do not accept unsolicited bookings. However, if we know you already then you are most welcome and bring a friend or two!
Please email us info@pistachioandpickle.com
ALLERGIES – Please inform us of any allergies you may have and we will attempt to eliminate them from your dish, however we make no guarantees. We are a supper club, not a restaurant and cannot cook to order or make subsitutions
Our location is our home and therefore a secret. We will send you the address the day before supper club. Please arrange your own return transport being aware of last tube times. We will send you a text reminder 5 days before supper club.
We may change the menu at short notice but we will notify you 48 hrs before.
CANCELLATIONS – Are a fact of life and sometimes unavoidable, please give us as much notice as you can and certainly within 48 hours. Cancellations are costly and a great shame for those guests sat next to an empty chair! If you cancel without any notice i.e on the day or day before please pay your donations by bank transfer – we will be in touch to provide our bank details.
We have one long table, you will be sat next to your friends but may be flanked by strangers (but fear not, for what are strangers but friends whom you haven’t met yet!?)
Please bring your own drinks, we do not charge corkage. We will provide a celebratory glass of bubbles when you arrive and jugged tap water throughout the meal.
We have a handsome 1yr old Hungarian Vizsla dog, called Cooper, he is hypo-allergenic and short-haired, super friendly and loves a cuddle. He will probably say hello and then slope off once all the fun starts!
The suggested donation is a minimum of £30 per person, which is paid at the end of meal. we accept cash only.
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As a freelancer there are certain periods where money is a little tight and good (or any) jobs hard to come by: this is one such time. So, it was either down the mines or up the chimneys and if you’ve ever seen my hips you know that the chimneys are totally not happening – actually their ever increasing girth make the mines an ever decreasing possibility too! But fortunately, the implausibly slim (given how much she loves to stuff her face) Uyen (aka Leluu) came to the rescue some weeks ago tweeting for a spare pair of food mits to help out at their illustrious (see yesterday’s 10/8/10 Evening Standard etc.) Supper Club.
Having only met them both very briefly a few nights earlier at the fab Bob Bob Ricards I was excited to meet them again and have a butchers at this supper club malarkey.
So, I rocked up at about 4pm to help prep etc. I arrived to find both of them running around apologising for not being more organised and insisting that, “we’re not normally this behind”. They put me straight to work, rolling a delicious vietnamese minced beef mixture in vines leaves, and from that moment on it was pretty much non-stop: food prep, plating up, washing up.
Simon and Uyen are simply charming. They are utterly unaffected and totally love food. I know this sounds like a big “I heart Fernandeznleluu” session, but really, what’s not to love! They both have impeccable palates and truly know what diners want, because it is what they want. They are their target audience and so it’s a bit of a no-brainer to be honest. That said, don’t be fooled, they work really hard to deliver 24 covers (6 courses or more) 6 times a month (3 consecutive days, every fortnight).
Their food, for those of us unlucky enough not to have been YET, is an ecclectic mix of vietnamese home favourites, mediterranean classics, with some cheeky modern British thrown in for good measure. Signature dishes include, Simon’s legendary sweet potato tortilla, with sweet tomato sauce and the, soon to be trademarked, Tuna Sashimi and Chips (the former, in a special marinade, the contents of which I have been sworn to take to the grave. The latter, the most delicious salty, crispy chips i’ve had for some while).
Constantly adapting and adding to the menu, they included a fantastic octopus carpaccio, which they discovered on their recent travels to Croatia. This is typical of Simon and Uyen – taste it, share it! Their guests, the lucky beneficaries, are a mixture young professionals, who travel in from all over London and the regions to see what all the fuss is about. They arrive, get a complimentary glass of wine, are sat often next to strangers, it’s BYO, no charge for corkage and by the 4th course everyone is sharing, laughing, shouting across tables, and all rather merry!
Well, anyhow, i enjoyed myself so much that when Uyen asked me back to help out, i was like, “totally!” This time they were very much more oraganised and they were both keen to point out, “see, we told you we were normally more organised!” Dessert was out by 10.30pm and Simon and I were enjoying a beer, as we got busy with j-cloths and anti-bacterial spray!
Check out some of the back stage pics below and if you haven’t been already (and even if you have, go again) GO!!!!!!!!!! Book at bookings@fernandezandleluu.co.uk and check out the website http://www.fernandezandleluu.co.uk/
Delicious mince beef, peanut and lemon grass wrapped in vine leaves
Amazing octopus carpaccio
Simon - hard at work!
Half way through the legendary Tuna Sashimi and Chips
Uyen's fab mum - Simon and Uyen background
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All I seem to do is make Spanakopita at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice but I think I really need to move on…
…for those of you who don’t know, here’s how you can rustle up this tasty treat – the Greek version of the Ginsters slice!
Serves 6
Ingredients:
1 pack Feta cheese
1 red onion
1 large bag spinach
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
pinch salt and ground pepper
Sumac (sprinkle between filo layers)
1 pack filo pastry
melted butter
seasame seeds
Method:
Wilt the spinach – Top Tip: I use the heat from my hands to wilt the spinch, add a pinch of salt and just scrunch the leaves and they very quickly wilt down. Squeeze off excess spinach juice.
Thinly slice the red onion, add to the spinach, crumble in the feta cheese, add the nutmeg and cinnamon, salt and pepper. Squidge together – get ya hands in and give it a good mash up!
For the pastry, I use a 24cmx24cm, 4cm deep baking tray, but just use whatever you’ve got to hand which has about 4-5cm depth. When using filo, you need to work reasonably quickly because it does tend to dry out, so when not using the pastry cover the rest with a damp tea towel.
Using the base of your tray as a guide cut your filo to fit neatly on one layer. Brush the tray with the melted butter, place the first sheet of filo in, more butter, sprinkle lightly with sumac and then add the next layer, repeat for about 10 layers.
Once you reach the 10th layer, take your spinach mix and spread evenly (I use my fingers here, it’s much easier than a palette knife or some other such nonsense!) over the pastry. Take up your next layer of pastry and place gently over the mix, more butter and then continue to build as before, for about 10 layers.
Once you’ve reached 10 (or got bored and stopped at 6) butter your final layer and sprinkle with seasame seeds and little more sumac. Top Tip: The key is to cut the Spanakopita before you cook it, this way each slice crisps up individually and is much easier to extract from the baking tray. So, cut down the middle and then each half into 3, which will give you 6 slices. Bake at 180C for about 20mins or until the top is nice and crispy and golden. Serve with salad and home made tzatziki.
So, then it was onto the Kleftiko. This is a Greek Classic (meaning “stolen meat”) slowroasted lamb shoulder, however I use shanks for this recipe because it’s nice for each person to have their own shank.
…and here’s how:
Serves 4
Ingredients:
4 lamb shanks
4 cloves garlic
4 sprigs rosemary
1 lemon
pinch cinnamon
salt and pepper
parchment/baking paper
silver foil
deep baking tray
Method:
Seal the lamb shanks in a hot pan, season and set aside. Cut a square of parchment and one slightly larger of foil, place the foil down first and then the parchment on top. Bash the garlic with the flat of your knife so it pops but isn’t mashed up. place in the centre of the parchment, add a sprig of rosemary, place the lamb shank on top of the rosemary and garlic, squeeze a quarter wedge of lemon over the lamb and add to parcel, sprinkle with a pinch of cinnamon. Gather the four corners of the parchment paper up around the shank bone, and then repeat with the foil, squash the foil around the bone, which will help keep the steam locked in. Repeat for other shanks.
Place shanks in a baking tray and fill up with about 5cm of water. Roast in a preheated oven at 140C for about 3.5hrs.
The lamb shanks should be tender and delicious, the meat should ease gently from the bone. There will be a lot of juice collected in the parchment parcels, which can be drained into a saucepan and reduced with a little red wine to make a sauce. Or, simply serve in the parchment with rosemary and sumac roasted potatoes and a ratatouille of seasonal vegetables.
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Oh dear, what was I thinking?! Can you ever really trust a curry on Brick Lane? Please, please, someone disabuse me of my belief that Brick Lane curries are amongst the most inferior offerings from the legendary culinary cauldron of India/Bangladesh/Pakistan. So, I thought that, at the very least, the lauded Shampan, (Bangladeshi specialities) would come good!
How wrong I was; with the exception of a rather tasty and almost basque sounding Lamb Xacuti – a slow roasted lamb with tamarind, fierce bird’s eye chillies, garlic, coriander and cumin.
Ok, what not to have:
King Prawn Puri – Shame on you Shampan, this should be easy! Tired, greasy, limp puri, and an almost artificially sweet, tomato drenched curry, served on, what I can only assume is some kind of ex-prison aluminium tray, with the most paltry, wilted shredded lettuce, i have seen in some considerable while.
The chicken jalfrezi had an artificial quality resonant of too much dried chicken stock – a kind of verisimilitude of actual chicken. I am convinced that this is the lowest grade, battery bird – flavourless and pulpy.
Our guest, a vegetarian, decided upon a selection of sides (querkily named “sundries” on the menu). So, here we go:
Tarka dal – unseasoned, and reeking of that dried chicken stock again
Sag paneer – amongst the greatest travesties of the meal. Now I know that the Bangladeshi like their jaggery, but really, this tasted more like dessert.
Mushroom bhaji – Over which I tried to fight my guests, but they were insistent. White, closed cup mushrooms, in coriander and spices (i’m always suspicious of the catch all “spices”) – GROSS!
…and finally the breads – stuffed paratha (some odd collection of starchy, illuminous veg), served slightly off warm – honestly, I nearly gipped!
Keema naan – I know, you are all saying, “well, Matt, what did you expect? Keema naan, is always, almost without exception,RANK!”, but we ploughed on inspite of the niggling voice in my head to the contrary…and we weren’t dissapointed, well actually, we were. It was indeed, limp, underseasoned, the meat of suspect origin and off-warm (the polite way of saying cold – HA!, now I’m holding back)
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!
…and the question has to be asked, why? I just don’t get it. There is so much competition on Brick Lane, and I have had a fair few Rubys, but the restaurants seem to resolutely not give a shit about respecting the food of their homeland or the clients whom they are feeding.
I have cooked with many friends from India and Pakistan and they always give a wry smile when I mention Brick Lane. They universally chime “have you ever been to a Harvester before”, and I cock my head and respond, “elaborate”. They go on to explain that in much the same way that British cooking has been bastardised and reduced to the LCD for a particular market, at a particular price point, thus with Indian food in the UK.
This is the Indian paradox, similar to the Chinese paradox, whereby we, in the UK, are peddled anglicised versions of the truth. Don’t get me wrong, I know what the culinary truth looks and tastes like in China and India, and sometimes it is unpalatable to us here in the UK. But, I hold that this is no excuse for crap! When I say crap, I mean low grade poultry, meat and fish; over oily breads – cooked at the beginning of service and then re-fried just before service – I mean that is truly rank! “Sundries” which taste like under-seasoned after-thoughts – NO, NO, NO!
A couple of years ago I was taken to Benares (http://www.benaresrestaurant.com/) for my birthday. Now I realise that it is inappropriate to compare Brick Lane to Benares, but I think, and I know that Atul Kochar would agree with me that anglicised Indian food can look and taste stunning and delicious. There doesn’t need to be a “spicy onion gravy” that is the base to every dish.
Stop me if I’m wrong, but I think we are all increasingly aware of food miles, seasonality and food provenance and i think that this (quoted from the Shampan menu):
“Exotic fresh water fish of Bangledesh
Throughout the world people are becoming more aware of the health advantages of including more fish in their diet.” They go on to list a minimum of 4 fish dishes – fish indigineous to the Bay of Bengal. Now, I think that this is incompatible with what many guests/customers/clients want. I think they want to see local fish, cooked in the Bengali style…and maybe if they don’t then, i would go as far as to say, they should!
Ok, so, I guess what I’m driving at is that these places should make the effort, open their eyes and provide a truly amazing gastronomic experience that the Moghuls would be proud of!
my final note on this – upon leaving Shampan I saw a group of 6 Americans, being customarily accosted by the many “touts” on Brick Lane, and I felt genuinely sorry for them – this should not be the case. Brick Lane is legendary and rightly so, but going forward the legend needs to pull its’ collective socks up and perform!
Please, Please, Please tell me I’m wrong and that I have totally missed the point and that you will take me on a whirlwind tour of the best that Brink Lane has to offer.
I’m gonna list Shampan, because I want someone to prove me wrong http://www.shampan.co.uk/
Mx
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What a fool! I spent all morning shopping, all day and all night cooking. I think it just because I am such a glutton/feeder that I just can’t stop!
anyway, judge for yourself!
Matt
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