Peking Duck at Yming Soho

Not last weekend but the one before we joined friends at Dumplings Legend to celebrate Ellen's birthday. I've been trying to get Paul into London for soup dumplings for about two years now and he's been a bit ornery so this is the first time I have succeeded. It was lovely - good food, excellent company and the usual patchy service - and apparently he got a taste for it, because I got an email a few days later from a friend informing me that Paul and her husband had agreed that we would go to Chinatown for dinner on Saturday.

Penny has a lot of contacts in the Soho restaurant business, and she recommended YMing, on Greek St. I perused the menu online (so irritating when restaurants have a website that doesn't have one, or has a "sample seasonal menu" that hasn't been updated in more than a year) and noticed that they do Peking duck, if you order in advance. As I hadn't had Peking duck since we moved to this country (you don't see it that often on menus, too labour-intensive I guess) and one of my most memorable food experiences involved it, I was pretty keen to give it a go.

At some restaurants when you order Peking duck you just get one course, the duck with pancakes. Sometimes you get the pancakes plus a course of sang choy bow or stirfried duck and beanshoots. Sometimes you get a third course of the duck bones made into a broth. As the menu didn't give any hints, we asked our waiter what else we needed to order. He said that it was going to be the three course full catastrophe, so recommended that we order some starters, then have the duck, then see how we fared.

So we did. He raised his eyebrows politely and queried our decision to have three starters with the same deep-fried spicy salt coating, but they were all delicious and I have no regrets. And of course, we were drinking a deliciously fruity Hugel et fils Gewurztraminer from the not-particularly-cheap wine list which was just the thing with deep fried salty snacks.

The soft shell crab was superb. Utterly greaseless and properly soft-shelled, not with the little bits that get stuck in your teeth that you often encounter. It was quite a small portion to share between four, and if we hadn't had so much other food coming I would have wanted another plate.

Scallops Delight was one of the more expensive starters, at £11, but we decided to order it anyway. Four huge scallops filled with a prawn paste, then deep-fried. Hot as hell inside, so there was much sucking of cooling air around the mouthfuls, but really delicious. I would be faintly surprised if they were genuinely scallops though - the texture and flavour were about right but they were so big!

I also insisted on the aubergine chips, which turned out to be much more French fry-sized than the robust chippy-sized chips I've usually had. Which meant more spicy salt per bite. No bad thing. Although it did mean that we pretty quickly needed to order another bottle of wine.

Yes, those are morello cherries

Then the duck happened. Perfectly lacquered skin, as crisp as toffee. Moist, richly flavoured meat. The finest pancakes I have ever tried, thin enough to read a newspaper through. Hoi sin sauce, cucumber and spring onion shards. A reverent silence fell as we rolled pancake after pancake.

The next duck course was the broth. Light and very clean tasting, full of chunks of the carcass with quite generous amounts of meat still waiting to be sucked off the bones, big crunchy wombok leaves and wedges of fresh tomato. It really was the perfect interlude between courses, almost serving the role of the palate-cleansing sorbet. But much less likely to totally numb the palate and ruin the wine (the second bottle of which had gone the way of the first).

I forgot until the very last minute to take a picture

While we sipped the broth we decided that we were very nearly full, so we only needed some rice and one other dish with our final course of duck and bean shoots.

We settled for the classic prawn and cashew nuts as our final dish. It was as good a rendition as I have ever had, with big meaty deveined prawns, loads of cashews and not too much gloopy cornflour thickened sauce.

As delighted as I was to see glazed toffee apples and bananas on the menu, there was no way any of us could approach dessert. Our waiter brought us glasses of chilled lychee wine, which he assured us we'd like because it had similar flavours to the Gewurztraminer we'd been drinking, plus it was good for us. He wasn't wrong.

The food, drinks and service charge came to £166 between the four of us. Bloody good value, I thought. Similar pricing to our local Chinese but food of a much higher standard. It will not be our only visit.

Pizza nostalgia and disappointment

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, I shared a house in Erskineville with three other women. It wasn't a particularly satisfactory living arrangement, and after that I ended up living in a one-bedroom flat I struggled to afford while swearing that I would never again live with another human being.

It wasn't all bad of course. I am still on good terms with two of the other women. I also developed a taste for the Inner West lifestyle and picked up some very good ideas about food. Making a fragrant Thai tom yum soup with slowly cooked oxtail. Beer-battered chips. A delicious take on a mojito involving three forms of mint.

Recently, I've been thinking fondly of the Aegean pizza that we used to get at Pizza Picasso. It was memorable for being a seafood-topped pizza that was actually nice, but the thing that really made it stand out were the slivers of lemon baked onto the top.

I see from the Pizza Picasso menu that the Aegean is still there, but that my memory of it was quite inaccurate. I have a very clear recollection of it being a pizza bianco, with prawns, feta and the lemon - no tomato base or sun-dried capsicum.

I'd bought a new product to try, some frozen balls of pizza dough, so I thought I would make the Aegean pizza as I remembered it. As the dough balls thawed, I was a bit apprehensive, because they had a thick, dry layer around the outside that cracked quite badly and made it difficult to roll out. But I followed the instructions and thought it didn't look too bad when shaped.

I drizzled the base with olive oil and scattered over some chopped garlic. Then I distributed raw peeled prawns, (too much) crumbled feta and thin slices of lemon cut into quarters. Halved cherry tomatoes, a sprinkle of dried oregano and a splash more olive oil and into the oven it went.

The result was... not good. The pizza base adhered to the tray like superglue. There was no possible way I could get it off the (old, reliable, never-done-this-before) pizza tray. We ended up scraping the topping off and eating it with a few rescued fragments of the crust. The next pizza did exactly the same thing. The trays had to soak over night for me to scrape the failed bases off.

The topping was delicious, exactly as I remembered it. Using raw prawns and cooking the pizza for a short time at a high temperature keeps them plump and sweet, the sharp bites of lemon and acid sweetness of the tomatoes cuts through the salty creaminess of the feta. It is a lovely, lovely combination. I will have to make it again soon using my own pizza dough, it's too good to wait another 10 years.

Don't let the good looks deceive you, this pizza was a failure

Beefeater Cocktails

Last month I was invited to attend a Beefeater gin cocktail-making masterclass as part of London Cocktail Week. Unfortunately I had a prior engagement (which did not involve booze and definitely didn't involve turning up late and drunk) and couldn't make it.

Pretty people making pretty drinks

Snacks

To really rub in just how much fun they all had, I was sent some pictures of their jolly japes. It was held at Graphic Bar, so to add insult to injury I know exactly how good the snacks were (very - especially if those were the polenta chips they do).

Then, to soothe the sting a bit, I was sent a bottle of Beefeater London Dry gin and a copy of some of the cocktail recipes they made, so I could have a bit of a play with them at home.
 
My taste in cocktails tends towards the tangy and tart. I've even gone off Schweppes tonic water because I find it too sweet (the Fevertree Naturally Light tonic is so much nicer, and has fewer calories). Of course, the slightly savoury aromatics in gin do lend themselves to lighter, fresher sorts of drinks, so I was delighted by the recipes that were included. I have heard of gin and milk as a combination, but that really is too disgusting to contemplate.

I didn't have any peach liqueur, and inexplicably the local Costcutter doesn't stock it, so the Peach Collins was out of the running. That still left me with two cocktails that I had the ingredients for and that I wanted to taste.

I filled the ice trays, cleaned off the cocktail shaker and martini glasses (Paul didn't even know we had a cocktail shaker, so you can tell how rarely I use it) and settled down to wait for cocktail hour.

Now, I don't want to come over all Stepford wife, but I have to say Paul was very impressed by being greeted with a martini glassful of cheer when he came home from work. I maintained my feminist integrity by wearing yoga pants and not brushing my hair.

The first drink we tried was the White Lady - Beefeater Dry, cointreau, lemon juice and an eggwhite. Paul was very sceptical about the eggwhite, despite my protests that all of the sours have that to give the froth on top and a creamy texture. Fortunately, when he tried it he liked it! Very strong but really good, with a nice depth of citrus from the cointreau and lemon juice.

White Lady - all but one of the bulbs in the kitchen blew and we didn't have a spare

The following night (these cocktails are too strong to have more than one of an evening, although that may be a sign I am getting old) we tried the Breakfast Martini. This was supposed to be made with Beefeater 24, which has a blend of teas, grapefruit and liquorice added to the botanicals to give more fragrance, but I made it with the Beefeater Dry. Like the White Lady, it had gin, cointreau and lemon juice, but instead of the eggwhite it was shaken with some fine-shred Seville orange marmalade. This was absolutely lovely. The burnt-orange flavour of the marmalade made the citrus aromas of the gin sing, while the extra sweetness rounded out some of the more aggressive alcohol flavours. I don't think the Breakfast Martini will replace the Bloody Mary as my breakfast booze of choice, but it is a very nice pre-dinner drink.

Breakfast martini

Onglet Wellington

I don't like to play favourites with food. There are so many very delicious things to eat in the world that it seems a shame to single out one or two dishes. I do go through periods of obsession, though, where everything I cook has nutmeg, or prawns, or pomegranate in it, and there are some dishes that I am delighted to eat more often than others.

Beef Wellington is one of the ones that I am delighted to eat quite often. Unfortunately, the recipe usually calls for an astonishingly expensive piece of beef, which means we really can't afford to eat it quite as often as I would like to. I've now worked out a way of making it a more regular treat.

Onglet is our usual cut of steak. It's inexpensive, delicious and, when cooked with a bit of care, as tender as you like. I couldn't see why it wouldn't work in a Wellington.

I seared the steaks for about a minute a side, then let them cool completely. They were the same weight, about 150g each, but one was long and thin and the other short and squat, so I cut a slice off the long one to even them up a bit. I made a duxelles from onions, mushrooms and garlic, flavoured with some tarragon, vermouth and a spoonful of minced truffles. I poured all the juices from the cooled steaks into it as well.

When the duxelles had also cooled, I spread it onto a sheet of puff pastry, topped it with the meat, rolled it up and gave it a good glazing of egg.

Then it waited obediently until I was ready to bake it. Half an hour in a 180C oven had it beautifully cooked. So beautifully cooked, in fact, that we didn't get a picture of the final plated portion. The flavour was just right, and the texture didn't suffer at all from being made with the cheaper cut of meat. Fillet at £37.25 a kilo or onglet at £12.45 a kilo? I will still use fillet for special occasions, but the onglet does make it an affordable option.

Meat Free Monday - Cheese & cider pumpkin fondue

This seasonal symphony of melted cheese and booze is this recipe from the Metro. But I decided that it was a good way to use up the scooped-out pumpkin flesh from my Halloween cat pumpkin. After all, those pumpkins are grown for size, regular shape and large seed cavity, not for delectable flesh, so the culinary uses need to involve lots of other strong flavours. This combination of cheese, cider, porcini mushrooms and calvados certainly fit the bill.

I finely chopped my leftover pumpkin and roasted it until tender, then divided it between two deep oven-proof dishes. Then I topped it with the fondue mixture. It's worth seeking out a really dry cider for this, because the pumpkin doesn't really need too much extra sweetness. I used real garlic, not granules, and a very strong Somerset cheddar. And, because I am incapable of making anything vegetable-and-cheesy without it, I added a grating of nutmeg on top.

We ate it with slices of crusty chickpea cob dunked in it and glasses of red wine. Warming right to our toes.

Yes, I watched the Great British Bake-off masterclass, why do you ask?

I'm going to link this up to Heather and Joanne's 12 Weeks Of Winter Squash event, where the mighty squash is being properly celebrated.

Masala chai friands

I've never had a pumpkin spice latte. It seems so perverse to me that a country that generally abhors actual pumpkin goes weak at the knees for sweet frothy coffee with pumpkin pie spices, and it's disrespectful to good coffee. I also avoid chai tea lattes because it's a stupid, tautological name for a product that already has a good name. Masala chai.

I know it is all kinds of contrary to dive into the middle of pumpkin pie season with an alternatively spicy dessert, but if you haven't figured out that I am contrary by nature this must be your first visit to my blog. I also happen to think that the masala for a delicious sweet cup of masala chai is quite a lot nicer than the standard blend for pumpkin pie spice, with pepper to give it kick and cardamom rounding out the aroma. Anyway, as an alternative to other spicy cakes, these friands are slightly spicy, beautifully buttery and not too sweet, perfect after dinner with a glass of dessert wine, mid afternoon with a glass of mulled wine or mid morning with a cup of tea. Or glass of wine. Drink it while you can.

Masala Chai Friands (makes 12 large & 16 mini friands)

250g butter
1 1/2 tsp masala*
120g plain flour
380g icing sugar
Grated zest of 1 lemon
200g ground almonds
9 eggwhites (or 240ml pasteurised liquid eggwhite)
2tbs chopped stem ginger (preserved in syrup)

Preheat the oven to 210C.

Melt the butter. Use some of it to thoroughly grease your friand tins (or muffin/cupcake tins, if you don't have friand tins), then add the spices to the remaining butter and allow to infuse while you get on with the rest of it. The aromatics in these spices are fat-soluble, so you will get more flavour carried through the friands if you allow them to sit in the butter for a while.

Combine the sifted flour and icing sugar in a large bowl, then stir in the lemon zest and ground almonds.

Beat the eggwhites until slightly frothy then mix them into the dry ingredients and mix in the spiced butter. Fold through the chopped ginger.

Spoon into the prepared tins, filling them about 2/3 full. I like to use a Chinese soup spoon for this sort of thing; I feel like I make less mess.

Bake the large ones for 15 minutes at 210C, then reduce the temperature to 200C (rotate the trays at this point if you need to in order to get an even bake) and cook for another 10 minutes. Then remove and bake the small ones for 10-15 minutes at the lower temperature, or until slightly risen and nicely browned.

Cool in the tins for 5 minutes before turning onto wire racks to cool completely.

*for my masala I used Schwartz whole spices - 1 stick of cinnamon, the seeds of 9 cardamom pods, a few cloves, a small piece of nutmeg and some peppercorns, ground in a spice grinder. You could also use ground spices, but I wanted the little flecks of imperfectly powdered cinnamon scattered through the friands. If I was making this to use in masala chai I'd normally add ground ginger as well, but I left it out because of the stem ginger - I didn't want the ginger to dominate!

In association with Schwartz.

Quiche

I'd decided to make some mini quiche for Paul's lunchbox - using Simon Hopkinson's recipe but using half-fat creme fraiche instead of whipping cream, and pancetta instead of streaky bacon. I also used bought butter shortcrust pastry instead of making my own.

After making 12 dinky little mini quiche I still had enough pastry and filling leftover to make a full-sized quiche for our lunch. I also had a log of goats cheese nearing its use-by date, I cut it into rounds and placed them on the top of the quiche so it baked in and browned beautifully.

Fortunately, having the extra quiche saved us from ourselves, and all the mini quiche survived to face the lunchbox.