Rooftop one-pot

It's the end of the growing season on our roof terrace, though I can't quite believe the tomatoes lasted until November. It was definitely a learning experience: aubergines can be tough to grow, you need multiple courgette plans for cross pollination, tomatoes need a lot of water, if you grow carrots in a pot they'll be tiny...but still delicious.



On the day we harvested the last of our pot grown carrots I decided to cook a tasty one pot roast dish. I love cooking all the ingredients slowly in one dishes and allowing them to infuse each other. The best meal we had in Croatia was at a plush harbourside in Komiza on Vis, where we had beautiful tender white fish baked in a big dish with potatoes, carrots and copious quantities of herbs and garlic and butter and olive oil. It was so simple and so perfect.

In the absence of fish straight out the sea, I browned some chicken legs and thighs in garlic and olive oil and put in a pyrex lasagne dish, before adding some parboiled (3 mins at boiling) and then halved new potatoes with their skins on, a leek, lots of garlic and all of our lovely little carrots. Lots of olive oil and some knobs of butter, and then into the oven. After a while I added finely chopped rosemary, tarragon, basil (all out the garden) and flat leaf parsley and a splash off white wine. I covered in tin foil and baked for maybe another 30 minutes until it was the perfect combination of crispy roast, melt in your mouth buttery, herby bliss.



The meal was a perfect bridge of the seasons, with summer's fresh herbs and winter's warming root vegetables. Maybe I was just feeling paternal, but our baby carrots were particularly sweet and tasty.

Some summer salads

Our (not so) new flat has a roof terrace with views of the City, and overlooks the domain of a family of urban foxes, some BBQ-happy hipsters, a building site and a small council estate. All very London. It has become a veritable jungle of vegetables and herbs growing in ports - courgettes, broad beans, aubergines, tomatoes, basil, mint, rosemary, tarragon, lavendar, salad leaves, carrots. With the recent warm weather we;ve been eating almost every meal on the terrace, whether it's coffee and croissants (to die for!) from Le Belle Epoque to evening meals with crisp white wine. The prospect of al fresco dining inspires summery cooking and I've been making up some nice salads for these balmy evenings.

One was a mackerel Nicoise style affair, with smoked mackerel fillets, served with broad beans, green beans, runny boiled eggs, etc. Play it by ear with quantities, but all you need to do is boil some new potatoes (and when they are almost done, add in the green beans and the broad beans and boil), chop up some cherry tomatoes and some gem lettuce, add the mackerel fillets, whip up a cider vinegrette with lots of pepper and mix it all together, topped with the runny yolked eggs and you have a very nice, healthy, summery salad.




With some green beans and broad beans left over, I re-jigged the salad idea, starting by frying chopped chorizo with onions and garlic, before quickly deglazing the pan with a splash of white wine. I boiled potatoes and added beans, beans and then some peas to the pan like last time. Then I mixed together the vegetables with the chorizo etc, shaved some Manchego cheese into the mix and served as a warm salad.



P.s. sorry about the absence of posts recently! Holidays, etc.

Fishy Fridays

As part of my fish odyssey I'm using Fridays' traditional status as Fish Day to expand my skillz with cooking fish. So far that's included fish pie, paella and portuguese shellfish stews (yum). Last Friday I decided to cook tuna steaks in a Moro-esque style.

Tuna steaks in pomegranate with grilled fennel salad

You'll need:
2 tuna steaks
3 tablespoons of pomegranate molasses
olive oil
Salt'n'pepper
teaspoon of cinnamon

2 bulbs of fennel
Bunch of flat leaf parsley
sherry vinegar
Handful of coriander

Mix together the pomegranate molasses, two tablespoons of olive oil and the cinnamon in a bowl before adding the tuna steaks and making sure all sides make contact with the marinade. Let it marinade for a couple of hours if you can, but half an hour will be fine.

Start heating up a griddle pan.

While the tuna is marinading, chop the fennel top-to-bottom and douse in olive oil. When the griddle pan is smokin', throw on the fennel and let it cook til it is becoming translucent and is charred in the right places. Remove from the pan and put in a salad bowl. Mix up a dressing with sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper and pour over the fennel. Roughly chop some flat leaf parsley and mix into the salad.

Now it's time to cook the tuna. Ensure the griddle pan is still sizzling hot and place the tuna steaks on. Depending on the thickness of the steaks and how you like it, you could cook them for as little as one minute each side.



I served it with fried potatoes and a garlic yoghurt, which worked really well. I love the rich tanginess of the pomegranate molasses combined with the sultry saltiness of the tuna steaks, and the parsley and fennel with their own fragrant notes. It's amazing how a few exciting (but easy enough to find) ingredients can teleport you to Mediterranean holidays, al fresco dining, warm breezes, sea air... Speaking of which, I've just booked my summer holiday - two weeks in Croatia and Bosnia. Mmmmm.

Fig and Fennel salad

Not a great start to blogging to take another two week break. But I've been busy guvna, honest! I actually have. My job involves going to each political party's annual conference, staying for about 3 or 4 days at each, putting on an event, meeting politicians and other bigwigs, going to lots of events for interest, to ask questions and live off the endless spreads of canapes, fingerfoods and run-of-the-mill wines. I'm going to blog about all that jazz later. The super-extra time pressure is a self-inflicted part-time Masters which I've signed up to do alongside my full-time job. It's all going to get crazy!

Today, however, I'm going to tell you about a tasty meal I cooked a couple of weeks back before it slips my mind.

I was walking past the fruit'n'veg stall at Kentish Town tube when I was grabbed by a scrawled notice: "4 figs for £1". I picked up 4. Then I saw another scrawled notice: "2 fennel for 50p". I bought 2. I halved and griddled the figs, then sliced top-down the fennels and griddled them too. Meanwhile I roasted quickly some chopped walnuts, prepared some rocket, chopped some manchego cheese, threw the lot together and whisked up a sherry vinegar dressing. Mmmm...it was delicious, smoky, earthy. It looked like this:



I have a thing for 'posh' sausages. When I lived in Berlin, you'd think I'd have had plenty of brilliant sausages. But once you've tried the exciting sausages available in farmers' markets and better supermarkets in Britain, German sausages don't cut it. The sausages you get in the supermarket and from street stalls in Germany are so processed you'd hardly know there was meat in them.

While there are clearly many better sausages to be had than the Sainsbury's Taste the Difference range, my biggest weakness in sausages has always been their Parmesan and Pancetta blend. Any guest that came to visit me would ask "can I bring anything from Britain? Cheddar cheese? Irn Bru?". No. Parmesan and Pancetta sausages from Sainsbury's. I hadn't seen them in Sainsbury's for about a year and then spotted them at the big 'un in Camden and had to buy a pack. I cooked them and served them with the fig'n'fennel salad and some zingy potato salad too:



All in all, a lovely end of summer meal.

La Voute to the top

Strange things have been happening in Archway over the last few years. Formerly the area had been the subject of ridicule; a grotty, grimey bus interchange, a gyratory system dominated by monolithic decaying office blocks and filthy dive bars. The smug folks of neighbouring Highgate, Muswell Hill and Crouch End would shudder at thought of eating out in Archway...

But things are changing. Sure, Archway is still a grotty, grimey bus interchange; the gyratory system is pretty horrid (I cycle round it twice a day), but there have been some wonderful restaurants and cafés opening in recent years. The most notable is the wondrous 500 - an unassuming-looking Italian at the top of Holloway Road that cooks up imaginative, excellent seasonal cuisine, with great wines and deserts and snacks and everything is so good and VERY affordable. More about that later!

One of my favourites of this new wave of new establishments is La Voute on Archway Island - right in the middle of the gyratory system! You wouldn't know you were surrounded by the A1 though; La Voute is a veritable oasis. Inside it's all clean lines, space, light...almost Ottolenghi-esque. Out the back there's a tranquil patio with plenty of tables out the back, surrounded by bamboo fencing. Look up and you see the backs of rickety Victorian terraces and the top of Archway tower; look around and you see happy couples, young families and students tucking in to brunch, reading the weekend supplements, making the most of the free wi-fi.



The food is Mediterranean-inspired with a definite leaning to the Eastern Med (Turkey, Greece, Cyprus). There are luscious brunch spreads with haloumi, spiced lamb sausages, scrambled eggs, spinach filo pastries. There are tasty toasted sandwiches, quiches, salads, crepes, croissants and pastries. La Voute also does delicious finely crafted patisserie-style desserts for the weekday coffee and cakes crew. The service is very laid back and it's a great place to catch up with friends at a leisurely pace without feeling obliged to keep ordering food. And if you did, it's very affordable too!

Given that it's only open during the day, it's great to see that La Voute seems to be doing a good trade. It's precisely the kind of chilled out hanging out spot serving great quality food and drink that is too rare in London, especially given the number of people who like that sort of thing. Keep up the good work, La Voute!