Fish Central – very nice local fish restaurant on the southern edge of Islington

Just went out to this place in the St Luke’s (part of very-South-Islington) area for a colleague’s farewell lunch. Very nice indeed – great food and cheerful service. Strongly recommended.

I had:

• Whitebait
• Haddock and chips

OK, I know it’s pedestrian of me but, dammit, I like fish and chips and I am weird about “proper” fish dishes … and this was just delicious.

There’s a proper posh menu but most of us had the express lunch deal, which is a choice from three starters and three mains for seven quid or something. Thus struck me as good value and it was a filling and delicious plateful-and-a-half. I would definitely go there again.

Mrs von Neustadt would like it too, I have no doubt. On the other hand, whilst one of the tiny von Neustadt Family Singers would like it, one would run (sic) away screaming and one wouldn’t be too keen but might tolerate it. So not really a family-outing-arama for us.

Remind me to ramble on about its area sometime. It’s interesting.

Brilliant!

There's an interesting-looking fish restaurant, "Fish Fish" on Archway Road, on the corner of one of its eastern junctions, maybe Causton Road or Cromwell Avenue.

It would be an excellent place for a rendezvous. Why? Because instead of any more complex description, or even its name, you would merely have to say, "I'll meet you in the place with the lighthouse on the roof." That should pretty much clinch it, I feel. In Highgate, anyway.

I think we will probably have to go and eat there, even though I am weird about fish. How could you not want to? It's got a lighthouse on the roof! I mean, come on.

Note: it was apparently called - and I know this is going to come as a bit of a shock - The Lighthouse when it opened, but since then the proprietor has massively expanded his restaurant empire and has this branch and another in Temple Fortune, that legendary destination in the far far west. Since I started writing this on the 43 this morning, I've looked at the website and, more particularly, the menu, and we are not probably, but definitely, going to have to give it a go. Oh yes.

The Black Bull, Balsham

http://www.blackbull-balsham.co.uk/ fantastic walker-friendly pub with stunningly good food. Go there now!

Location:27 High St, Balsham, Cambridge, CB21 4DJ

Pics of previous years’ mobhanded icing attempts

As requested by a Regular Reader (and Kronprinzeßin).

2005

2007

 

2008

 

No, I don’t know what happened in the other years! :)

GJ’s Christmas Cake recipe

Ingredients

• 8 oz sultanas
• 8 oz raisins
• 4 oz currants
• 2 oz mixed peel
• 2 oz glace cherries, halved
• 6 oz dried apricots, chopped
• 2 oz dried apples, chopped
• 4 oz dried dates, chopped
• 4 oz dried peaches, chopped
• 4 oz dried pears, chopped

(Note after all the dried fruit: “If you cannot get all these it will probably be OK if you get different weights, as long as they more or less even up to the same total amount. If you can’t get the variety in the shops try the Julian Graves website.”)

• 8 oz butter
• 8 oz brown sugar
• Grated rind and juice of a lemon
• Grated rind and juice of an orange
• 4 fl oz orange juice
• 4 fl oz brandy
• ½ tsp grated nutmeg
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp allspice
• ½ tsp ground ginger
• ¼ tsp ground cardamom
• 1 tbsp black treacle
• 5 eggs, beaten
• 11 oz plain flour, white
• 1 tsp baking powder

Method

Put the fruit, butter, sugar, lemon and orange zest and juice, into a large pan with 4 fl oz water. Bring slowly to the boil, stir and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.

Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly. Add the brandy and spices and transfer to a large bowl. When cold, cover and put in a cool place (not the fridge) for three days, stirring daily.

Line a 10-inch round cake tin with double sheets of greaseproof paper.

Preheat the oven to 170°C/325°F/gas mark 3.

Stir the treacle into the boiled fruit and beat in the eggs.

Sift flour and baking powder and stir into the mixture. It will be slightly sloppy.

Turn it into the tin and bake for about 4½ hours.

Note – excessive hotness

In consultation with the great GJ herself and with the Junior GJ-Cakemaking Year 10 Work-Experience Trainee Apprentice Team of Drs AC and DY, the following has emerged: this cake has a slight tendency to burn on top. The following advice has been offered:

1. Keep an eye on temperature and time, and maybe consider reducing temperature
2. Keep an eye on the cake itself towards the end. (Yes Tamsin: Duh indeed.)
3. Consider giving it a lid of greaseproof paper fairly early in the cooking process. Not touching the cake mix itself but over the top of the tin. There’s no science on what effect this has … er, convection currents anyone?? Maybe it’s just magic. I know, I know … go figure.
4. It’s a huge cake, and is meant to be iced. Having, therefore, to saw the top off due to its frazzlation is not such a disaster and has certainly happened “more than once”, I am told.

ITG 2009 – food

Did you really expect me to ignore this important, nay consuming (ahahaha) topic? No, me neither.

• ITGdex 2009

Breakfast insight

I have had a revelation. If you get some lovely Yummy Granola-based Breakfast Thingy With Hot Milk, or whatever it is called, from the ever-wonderful Pret a Manger, please eat it while it is hot, delicious and wholly satisfying.

If you leave it cooling, cooling and cooling further while you discuss oppression and injustice with a colleague, what you will end up with is, essentially, cold porridge.

That's not so nice.

New rule: eat breakfast first, put world to rights later. You know it makes sense.

The Bread Man Cometh

I have had a birthday sometime recently and my Dear Wife Bless Her gave me a Panasonic bread making device. I am so chuffed with this that I can hardly write. I had been dropping hints about such a kitchen wonder for some time, as my Dearest Muvver and my Bruvver of Height and Clevernosity are both satisfied owners of this type of machine; however I got busy/distracted with Other Stuff™ and had more or less forgotten so it was a genuine surprise when it was piped in by the servants' fife band and carried by Mr Thompson wearing a croissant costume. (He gets some strange ideas.)

Anyway anyway. I didn't get to try it out at once due to the continuing issue of Other Stuff™. Last night, though, I finally did. So I read the instructions very carefully and went through the detailed startup procedures with great precision. (Put ingredients in machine, turn on. Kind of thing.)

Then I got lost in an orgy of catching-up TV thanks to Mr Branson's Disk-Based Recording Device With Multiple Tuners. Specifically Family Guy and Heroes, a slightly odd juxtaposition but hey. I was just dozing off nicely when I was awoken by the unmistakable and utterly wonderful smell of delicious new hot fresh bread that I made. This is so brilliant that it's brilliant. Of course my skill in the culinary arts is well-known so it is hardly surprising that my first loaf (pictured above) was such a particularly fine example: these complex machines clearly need an expert hand at the helm.

But wow. I made bread. Me. Bread. I am soooooo pleased!

Go ahead! Strawberry yoghurt breaks

go ahead! (made for McVities in Holland)

strawberry yoghurt breaks - "delicious yoghurt flavour topping on light crispy biscuit with a sultana and strawberry filling, ooh yeah baby"

Right then.

Smells very sweet, almost sickly. The yoghurt gunge is that slightly addictive industrial yoghurt paste stuff, like yoghurt-coated nuts have. It's quite nice but doesn't have enough edge to really convince you that it's yoghurt. The biscuit is pleasant, brittle, flat, a bit like a garibaldi without the dead flies. In fact it's perhaps even flatter than the Italian "Hero of the Two Worlds", maybe a little distance on the way to being a matzoh (yum). The fruit makes a very limited impact indeed - it's in there somewhere but hardly jumps out yelling Strawberry! at you, or even Sultana!

NB the shift key was broken when they designed the packaging - or maybe gummed up with "a sultana and strawberry filling" - so upper-case letters are a bit of a rarity. But I digress. (G&S Chorus: yes yes he digresses.)

This is a low-fat product (hence the urging to "go ahead") and is perfectly pleasant and goes well with a nice cuppa. All of which is good and nice, in fact almost as nice as bunny-wunnies. Of course what it won't do is satisfy that screaming void in the very kernel of your existence that sobs crazily for strawberry yoghurt and babbles and whoops with delight when it is served. (You do have one of those, don't you? It's not just me? Ah good.)

PS It doesn't really say "ooh yeah baby" in the product description. Aha. I know you thought it did and I know you will never never be able to admit to being caught out by my "wacky humour"™. Aha. No. It does not really say it. Indeed not. Aha. It was just me being "sidesplittingly whimsical"™. (G&S Chorus: yes yes it was just him being "sidesplittingly whimsical"™. Aha.)

Horrible vs. Really Horrible: Hubba Bubba Seriously Strawberry Flavour Bubble Gum; Trident Splash Strawberry and Lime Flavour Sugarfree Juicy Gum

I feel it is part of my duty as a Chartered Strawberry Yogologist to sometimes explore the more remote side of strawberry-related foodstuffs. Like, Out There. So I bought two different strawberry-flavoured gums and here we go.

Firstly, they are both fairly disgusting and, I think, have probably not been anywhere near an actual strawberry at any time in their short and no doubt sordid life-cycles.

Hubba Bubba Seriously Strawberry Flavour Bubble Gum has an initially quite nice taste, if you like lab-produced strawberry flavour that is. Actually I do quite like that, but I am just weird so, like, hey. It is also honestly sweet, containing sugar as a key ingredient. Sadly this all fades pretty fast and what you are left chewing tastes like you're licking the underside of a silage lorry which accidentally drove through a roadkill storage-dump on the way to the powdered aluminium factory. I advise you to get rid of this gum before it reaches that stage. So it's briefly pleasant(ish), then horrible.

Trident Splash Strawberry and Lime Flavour Sugarfree Juicy Gum is a monument to the taste of aspartame and little else. When you first bite it the lime stuff is quite excitingly bitter and you (very briefly) think woo yeah we are on to something here. However, that fades even faster than the Hubba Bubba's initial pleasantness and leaves you with a revolting sweet aspartame blandness which gives me the impression it will last for ever. It won't get worse, it just started dire and stayed there. If there was even a moment with a hint of even the lowliest factory-strawb flavour, it was over so fast that only Glexons from the planet Graaart, to whom our minute is a lifetime, might have noticed it. So this one is even more briefly pleasant(ish), then really horribly sweet and aspartamishly bland and repulsive, possibly for the rest of your life, but I wouldn't keep it in my mouth more than a few depressing seconds. Maybe it tastes great after a day or two ... and maybe it does not.

Conclusions:

1. Don't buy either of these products as they're both vile, but if you must buy one then get the Hubba Bubba and spit it out before you reach the EndTimeTaste™. This is your only hope. Spit, Tamsin! The Trident thing is too depressing for words. I just can't be bothered.
2. If you want gum to chew buy something else. Buy Wrigley's Spearmint, or Juicy Fruit: they are both much nicer.
3. If you want chewy strawberry get Fruitellas. I suspect them of not being all that intimately acquainted with real strawberries either, but they are still nicer by roughly 160km. OK they are not gum: they are, however, chewy. What do you think this is, Which? (Stop press: maybe Fruitellas do have fruit in. Watch this space.)
4. These two products are a very saddening experience for a Chartered Strawberry Yogologist. Maybe we are innocents, not yet ready for the outside world, and should be protected from stuff like this.
5. Gak!

The search for the Perfect Chicken Korma: The Tiffin Tin

I know it's a sad failure for my image development (ho ho) as a trumpet player but I don't really like very hot curries and never have. And yes, I know it's terribly pedestrian and unimaginative of me but I quite often end up having a chicken korma because I feel reasonably safe with that and I know I will usually like it, or at least that it will not frighten the horses.

Recently, however, I have started to feel rather dissatisfied with some of the chicken kormas supplied by the average High Street restaurant/takeaway. The problem, I feel, is that the lack of spiciness can lead to a certain blandness: it's as if, somehow, the broader landscape of hot-spicy food leaves more room for the chef to manoeuvre and to deploy interesting flavours. Conversely, the less-hot environment seems to sometimes leave little room for variety and you can get a pretty uninspiring meal out of it. Mild should surely not have to mean characterless but this is what often happens here.

A very good example of this was served to me recently in Salisbury, where we were doing a Christmas Oratorio at the Cathedral. (I ought to write about this some time but goodness knows when.) It was a perfectly nice restaurant, that the brass section has been to often before, but the chicken korma really was a huge disappointment. It was so bland and sweet and untroubled by any real flavour or interest - in fact it was really like eating chicken in a yellow condensed milk sauce - just sweet, and pretty much nothing else. Why would you want to eat this when Indian food can be so interesting?

And hence my quest for the Perfect Chicken Korma, or at any rate for Some Better Chicken Kormas. That is, I know that it can be better than this but I don't that often encounter the better ones, so I am going to try to identify and remember them, and avoid as far as possible the sad boring ones.

My first Fantastic Chicken Korma Award goes to The Tiffin Tin. This wonderful takeaway in Hornsey High Street (020 8347 7700) has much to recommend it anyway and if you are local and have not tried it yet then I urge you, please, to do so - but apart from its general wonderfulness it has quite stolen my heart with its delicious chicken korma. This is an interesting, subtly flavoured dish with all sorts of interesting stuff going on - I couldn't even begin to list it for you but please take it from me that it is a world away from the sickly custard-like stuff I got in Salisbury. I would love to know, in fact, what would happen if the Salisbury chef could try the Tiffin Tin chicken korma - would he/she love it, hate it, give up, resolve to do better, or what? The fact is, it has the same name but is really not the same dish. A bad chicken korma just makes you wish it was over - it's a feeble toot on a party squeaker: the Tiffin Tin one is a whole symphony in glorious stereo and makes you wish the sensation could go on all evening. Marks out of ten? Ninety-six! Yum.

PS There's another Tiffin Tin opening soon (or already there?) in Junction Road, N19. If it is as good as the Hornsey one it is going to have many good friends very fast.

Kipferl (Rush-a-Blog™)

Kipferl - excellent Austrian cafe at 70 Long Lane, London EC1. Dash in, grab a nice coffee and something delicious (Linzertorte, say), quick (optional) German practice, dash out again. Delicious. They also have sit-down space and deli sales, and will sell you a whole cake (e.g for my birthday at work, I think I got a L'torte, a Sachertorte and some nice little epis or other). Yes indeedy. Undeniably fab.

When I get my "life" back I am going to rush less and then it will be more of a Leisurely-Lunch-a-Blog™ when I am over there sitting down and tucking into a plateful of something nice.

For now though I am still in a rush. Tell you what, continuing the Germanic theme I may just dash over to the brilliantly-named Kurz & Lang, sausage specialists also just round the corner, and grab a brattie. Mensch, das schmeckt lecker!!

Incidental moments of deliciousness

A quick mention of two excellent things we bought at the very nice farm shop at Hayles Fruit Farm.

September organic blackberry and apple crumble dairy ice cream is very very delicious indeed. It's got a gorgeous, delicate flavour and a brilliant, slightly crunchy (well, crumbly I suppose) texture. At £4.20 for 500ml it is not cheap but it is unbelievably good.

Zaramama's Roasted Nutty Seeds are also seriously pleasant. We had the Hot Smoked Paprika and Cheese and Chives flavours but sadly they didn't have the Sea Salt and Black Pepper one in stock. Strongly recommended. I'm a complete sucker for these sorts of things and these ones do not disappoint. More please!

---

Cotswold-o-dex™:

1. The Power of Guiting

2. A Wednesday walk

3. Strawberry Yoghurt - Daylesford Creamery organic yoghurt with strawberry compote

4. A Thursday of Longwalkness

5. Incidental moments of deliciousness

6. Friday (mostly) in Oxford: a sort of Missed-the-Gig-a-Blog™

7. A Cotswolds Saturday, another concert, and the road homeward

Breakfast at nice café, by accident

In the sort-of-obsessive-compulsive world I inhabit everything has a fragile balance and one element out of kilter throws the whole lot off.

So I won't bore you with the process but suffice it to say that I slept in a bit this morning, so got the bus in, so here I am (was) at Sliced and Squeezed, a pleasant café on Whitecross Street at its junction with Banner Street. I'm sitting out on the pavement writing this over breakfast. As it were.

Random points:

• Nice coffee
• Excellent bacon sandwich - with huge mound of salad! (yer what?)
• Strawberry yoghurt yup yup yup
• Fantastically sunny
• Mild breeze
• Quiet
• This street has a market but not today or not yet
• Shiny metal tables and chairs on the pavement - benignly dazzling
• Up to my left the unusual ?Hawksworth spire of St Luke's - a strange, fluted obelisk. Looks fabulous from here.
• Down to my right the Barbican: before it, reflected sun starting to catch the Victorian brick of the flats on Whitecross Street. Looks warm.
• Lots of people out at café tables
• All very very pleasant

While the cats are away ...

... The mice will Fray.

Arf arf.

Mrs von Neustadt, the oldest von Neustadt child, and my mother-in-law are all in Amsterdam (a city in the Netherlands) having what I hope is an excellent time. The middlest daughter is in Edinburgh, Scotland, being cultural. The daughter of youngestness was out at the pictures, or whatever you call them nowadays. For the sake of completeness I feel I should add that this last was in London, England.

Naturally I am in a terrible state of bereftness and upsetitude, rattling around alone in Schloss Neustadt, wandering between the Great Ballroom, the Upper Gallery and the Battlement Terrace, weeping quietly to myself. On the other hand it means I have a clear run at my great indulgence, the Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney Pie. Yeah babay!!

The point is that this is not a pie that anyone else here would be, er, overkeen on. So as a very general rule people being not here is my cue to do the Fray Bentos Thang. Hence my decision to pick one up on the way home tonight.

Here's the thing though - it turns out that there were already two in the cupboard - as usual, Mrs von Neustadt is waaay ahead of me ...

Never mind, absolute bliss anyway. That's quality food that is - just listen to this: Succulent steak and kidney in delicious Oxo gravy topped with light puff pastry - I mean, what's not to like?

Oh and just in case you were wondering, it's not all just unhealthy pie eating. I was interrogated at length about this aspect of my diet when the youngest daughter came home from the cinematograph showing-house. Gosh no - of course I supplemented my already delicious meal with a balancing dose of greenery, illustrated herewith. Cross & Blackwell marrowfat processed peas in water, sugar, salt added it says here. Well gosh. Odd wording, very fine vegetables, and so fresh too. Mmmmm-mm-mm! Glass of wine, telly, no programming discussions, fridge full of strawberry yoghurt, cup of tea ... I'm lonely, but I'm coping!

Cosmically fantastic lunch

A very nice colleague from the other Centre we support left yesterday. Sadly this wasn't a triumphal, elective exit to some swish new job - the money for her project has run out, so she's off. A great pity as she is lovely.

She obviously decided to leave in style because her farewell lunch - to which I felt privileged to be invited - took place at a rather good restaurant, round the corner in St John's Street.

The Clerkenwell Dining Room was quiet, pleasant and served wonderful food. The menu prices are a touch disconcerting but (at the moment anyway) lunchtime was half-price though I am not sure if this was because we were a group, or what. See Toptable or The Guardian for more, but take a tranquillizer first if you are easily upset by bad spelling or grammar.

I had:

• Pork belly, scallops, celeriac puree, baby cress, apple and walnut salsa - priced at £17. Absolutely sensational. A huge round flat tower of extremely tender and delicious meat topped with its own lid of exquisite crackliness. The superb scallops I could have eaten as a meal on their own. Trimmings - delicious. A stunningly excellent meal.
• We had some kind of very nice white wine whose name I am ashamed to say I cannot remember. Bad bad Vogel.
• Dessert: Chocolate mousse with almond cream, caramel sauce, and pistachio ice cream - menu price £7.

Although the dessert was excellent I should not have had it: I usually eat quite lightly at lunch and it was pretty greedy to have the mousse after such a great main course. I felt I could hardly walk back to the office. Twit. Oh well.

I think this has gone straight into my Top Ten Great Lunches. I hope I can think of an excuse for going back soon, without having to lose any more nice colleagues.

Odd ... (Pret a Manger seaweed and miso crisps)

... yet oddly delicious.

OffTopic-a-blog: Tesco Finest Strawberries & Cream Mousse

Strawberries & Cream Mousse

A fruity compôte of strawberries topped with a luxurious creamy mousse blended with a juicy strawberry compôte.

Yeah babay. Delicious dessert, clumsy language. Better than the other way round I guess.

DisAppointment Book (an occasional series) - Fruit Tea

If fruit and herbal teas tasted as good as they smell, world peace would break out tomorrow and happy workers would abandon their looms (er) and sit out on sunny lawns, discussing poetry and art, while their bosses brought them out sticky toffee puddings and tried to talk them into accepting more pay.

Unfortunately fruit teas may smell like heaven but they taste rather more like dishwater.

I have experienced The Best Sticky Toffee Pudding in the Entire Universe. There is no going back.

The middlest of my Monstrous Regiment of Daughters and I were at the ICA on Wednesday doing a gig, which I need to write up some time when I have some "free time". Ahahah. (Update: it is now to be found here.)

Just for now, though, I wish to record the fact that the ICA cafe served us with The Best Sticky Toffee Pudding in the Entire Universe. I don't usually like to eat much before playing (chiz) but we had a bit of a gap and had been issued with meal vouchers, and when offered pud it seemed churlish to refuse so we had one between the two of us. Just to be polite, you understand. Ahem.

As I wrote to a friend, this was "a transcendental moment, choirs of angels, celestial percussion ensemble™ etc, 'move into the light Vogel, approach the Pudding of Excellence', an ting ..." Why was it so good? Erm dunno - toffee was fab, all caramelly, hint of a slightly burnt flavour even; the pud itself was so deliciously light that I am suspicious that it was perhaps floating a millimetre or two off the plate. This was created not by a chef but by a sorcerer, I reckon.

Oh and the clotted cream with which it was served didn't exactly make things worse, either.

I know I'm going on a bit but honestly this was really something else. Not just good but a world apart. Yum.

• GoodBookDex™