So, following on from Thursday’s haggis hunting post, the three lambs’ plucks continued to boil and change in colour and consistency. The lungs kept bobbing to the top of the pan like jostling whales. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Burns' Night, haggis, heart, lamb's pluck, liver, lungs, offal, Rambling Restaurant, Robert Burns, secret supperclubs
I’ve spent a good few hours this week hunting for the elusive wee rampant Scottish beastie that is the haggis. It’s Burns’ night on Monday and we need a few of them to stab and recite poetry over.
Lamb’s pluck is not that easy to get hold of. After trying a range of butchers, all of whom seemed to think that making my own haggis was a bit insane and needed a good few days to get hold of any, I tried the excellent Marky Market. He rang me, as requested, from Smithfield meat market at 4am on Wednesday to tell me what was on offer. I’ve been having Delicatessen-style dreams about sheep organs ever since.
A few hours later he arrived with a bag of three lambs’ plucks, delivered straight to my door and up four flights of stairs. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Burns' Night, haggis, heart, lamb's pluck, liver, lungs, Marky Market, offal, Rambling Restaurant, Robert Burns, secret supperclubs
Last night I went to the opening night of the Lex Eat! supper club in part of a converted school ’somewhere in the back streets of Islington’. The place was so stylish it could have been a boutique hotel. The top floor bathroom was immaculate, in a way that made me want to jump into the bath and stay there. There were colourful, neatly rolled towels, jars of liquorice allsorts and buttons by the sink and designer shoes on display on the shelves outside. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Ashburton, home restaurant, LexEat, Marcus Wareing, pomegranate floss, supper club, Turkish delight cheesecake
In March I got excited by and involved in promoting the Big Lunch, but not quite as involved as art student Stephanie above, who is wearing a cabbage as a hat.
And went to a very strange party populated by green people, lions and long pepper at the Lord of Bath’s house.
I also followed a trail of flowers and cryptic clues to The Sea Flower, an ultra-secret Dalston supper club at the home of marvellous mixologist Grant. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Dalston, G20 London summit, home restaurant, lawyers, Longleat, Lord of Bath, March 2009, recession, secret supper club, The Big Lunch, The Sea Flower
JANUARY (photo by Mora McLagan)
I began 2009 with an incredible pot luck feast at mine, where friends shucked oysters, cooked slow-roast pork, brought delicious salads and baked melting chocolate fondants. I served up vanilla icecream and raspberry sorbet and then spent much of the month being ridiculously pleased by my new ice-cream maker. My friend Jess went back to live in the bountiful fish paradise that is New Zealand. I was suitably saddened by her departure and blogged rather uninspiringly about hairy vegetables. On the first day back at work I had an appraisal, which went something like this: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 2009
This December Rambling Restaurant was hugely excited to be invited to run a pop-up café at the Somerset House Super Christmas Design Fair (Emma and Mei are deep in concentration in the photo above, but believe me, they were bubbling inside). Next to the skating rink, in the maze of rooms that makes up the East Wing, stalls were were manned by established designers and students from the Royal College of Art and Camberwell College. There were all sorts of original Christmas presents to be had, from the sublime to the silly, including hip flasks for two; chocolate battleships; i-pod cuckoo clocks; newsprint wallets; moustache brooches and my favourite – the share-faces-with-your-friends-and-relatives mirror. This is a hard one to explain, but hilarious and at least an hour of fun.
We teamed up with some students from RCA who were working on food design projects. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: banana cardomom & poppy seed cake, Camberwell College of Art, chocolate brownies, cinnamon buns, cream tea, December 2009, edible cups, hot spiced cider, Kate Weatherall, Mad And Sad, mulled cider, orange coriander and polenta cake, pop-up cafe, Rambling Restaurant, RCA, rice crisy treats, Royal College of Art, Somerset House, Sugar & Spice, Super Christmas Design Fair
This is the final episode of Douwe Egberts’ short coffee series. The man with the sexiest voice (aka James Nesbitt) takes us to the coffee farms of Columbia and tries to explain why we’re so obsessed with cappuccinos over here… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: cappuccino, Christmas hamper, coffee, Columbia, competition, Douwe Egberts
Having spent the best part of the last six months cooking and partying with Californian Bostonian Mei of Family Styles, I found myself being invited to my first ever Thanksgiving dinner last weekend. Today Mei is in Boston, and no doubt just about to do it all again there – good luck!
So, last Saturday Mei and her flatmate (or is it room mate?) Chris asked if they could borrow my enormous stock pot to deep fry a turkey… I was appalled, intrigued and excited. Unfortunately, due to the disgusting weather that afternoon, the ritual deep frying of the bird was abandoned – it was way too wet and windy to start abseiling a turkey into a pot of boiling fat on the terrace, and the idea of oil being spattered all over the kitchen wasn’t pleasant. However, there was enough other bizarre food preparation going on to keep me popping into the kitchen to point and stare. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: bean casserole, biscuits, candied yam, deep fried turkey, deviled eggs, food baby, marie rose sauce, pretzels, scones, snakebite and black, Thanksgiving
Over the next couple of weeks, one of the UK readers of foodrambler will win a Christmas hamper to the tune of up to £45 (6x Etienne products, a cafetiere, 2 mugs, a thermos travel mugs and a Douwe Egberts storage tin). The competition relates to the two Douwe Egberts videos in this post and one coming next week. Keep your eyes peeled for the competition question… Closing date is December 5th 2009 Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Amsterdam, coffee, competition, Douwe Egberts
So, it has taken me this long to recover from the blaggertinis and delicious Portuguese wine (from Casa Leal, called Quinta Lagoalva De Cima) from the Blaggers’ Banquet the Sunday before last.
When I and a dozen or so other bloggers dribbled into the Hawksmoor that morning there were mountains of vegetables waiting to be julienned for decoration, shaved into crisps, oiled up and pureed down. It was somewhat daunting. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Abel & Cole, Barbers 1833 Vintage Chedder, blaggers' banquet, blaggertinis, bompas & parr, Bramley & Gage, Brock Hall Farm, canapes, Casa Leal, Chapel Down, Chegworth Valley, Donald Russell, Easy Tasty Magic, gougeres, Halen Mon, Laverstoke Park, monkfish tartare, Peter's Yard, Pong, Portuguese wine, Quinta Lagoalva De Cima, Rambling Restaurant, Riverford Organic, Sainsburys So Organic, Sipsmith, St John Restaurant, the Hawksmoor, Trethowans Dairy, Trish Deseine
