Tamarind and Thyme

About a month ago, I was in one of the Italian delis in Soho looking to purchase some orecchiette. One of the ladies behind the counter suggested I just go whole hog and buy the 1kg bag. And that’s how I ended up with a kilo of pasta in a tiny kitchen that’s already full up to the gills. Now to use it up.

My favourite recipe for orecchiette is this one - good with regular ol’ broccoli and I guess must be very good with broccoli rabe. Even if you’re not fond of anchovies, do give it a try - they give a deep savouriness to the dish rather than an unpleasant fishiness.

Orecchiette with Broccoli and Anchovies
serves 2

200-250g orecchiette (depends on how hungry you are!)
1 small head broccoli
olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced thinly
1 clove garlic, minced
4-6 anchovy fillets or a good squeeze of anchovy paste
chili flakes (optional)
salt and pepper

Saute the sliced onion in olive oil over a low heat and in the meantime, set a pot of water to boil. Chop the broccoli into small florets - don’t let the stem go to waste! Peel it and chop it up too. When the water boils, toss in the broccoli. When the onion is golden, add in the garlic and the anchovies (or the paste) and the chili flakes and saute together. Scoop out the broccoli when it’s as tender as you like it, and add to the onion mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste, keeping in mind that the pasta will be cooking in salted water and that the anchovies can be very salty.

Add salt and the orecchiette to the boiling water. When al dente, drain and toss with the broccoli mixture. Add a little of the pasta water if the mixture looks too dry. Done!

Last weekend, I met a friend for dinner and while I had free reign to choose a restaurant, I took it as a challenge to find someplace interesting. What could be more interesting than okonomiyaki? My dining companion has had Japanese food in the past but not this interesting variant.

I had been to the original Abeno near the British Museum a couple of years ago and it was at that first visit when I was first introduced to okonomiyaki. A batter of flour, egg, and yam is mixed together with chopped cabbage and “what you like” (the okonomi) and then fried (the yaki) into pancakes. Like regular pancakes, they are deceptively filling.

And so we chose a Tokyo Mix okonomiyaki, with squid, pork and prawns (£8.50). The pancake is fried on the hotplate in front of us and then topped with Japanese mayo, a sweet and fruity okonomiyaki sauce, seaweed flakes and bonito shavings, that blow and sway due to the heat. The price of the okonomiyaki was a little on the high side though…especially in comparison to its size.

We also had an om-soba with chicken (£10.75).

It took me a while to recognise this twist on omurice, the omelette wrapped fried rice (as seen on Lunch Queen!). Fried noodles with chicken are wrapped in a very thin omelette and then drizzled on top are Japanese mayo, ketchup, and okonomiyaki sauce. Quite a combination! The food is tasty and extremely comforting and it’s somewhat fun to watch your okonomiyakis being cooked in front of you. Of course, you can give it go yourself if you like. One problem I noticed with the tables was that there wasn’t much space to place side dishes that you’re planning to share, like our sunomono, a cold seaweed and cucumber salad (£4.50), which, by the way, was definitely overpriced.

A word of warning: there is no air conditioning at Abeno Too. When you have a restaurant based on hot plates built into the tables, one would think this should be the norm but not here. There were a couple of fans around in a pitiful effort to disperse with some of the heat inside. I was boiling; on the other hand, my Valencian friend was very comfortable!

Update (03/08/07): My friend liked it so much, he returned there within the week! He learned that there is air-conditioning but it’s ineffective against all that heat from the hotplates. I bet the place is great in the winter!

Abeno Too
17-18 Great Newport Street
London WC2H 7JE

I had a cupcake, a chocolate and mint one, from Peyton and Byrne last Saturday. I found myself in the area after a fruitless search for camera accessories and thought, what the hey, I’ll have a cupcake. The space itself is very cute, with tiles everywhere and goodies surrounding you as you enter. I was helped by a sullen girl who placed my cupcake into a little paper bag and then tossed it onto the counter. I handed over my £2.50 (oof!) and wandered the streets to find a nice place to sit down and consume it. Never found that nice place and so instead, I wolfed it down while walking back down Tottenham Court Road.

Unfortunately, while the cupcake looked very beautiful with its swirl of green frosting, I didn’t like it. The chocolate cake was very dull and not chocolatey nor moist enough and the frosting, while containing enough mint, was too sweet and there was too much of it. Sorry, Peyton and Byrne, you haven’t won me over yet. They have other tarts and biscuits and slices but this cupcake has put me off slightly from visiting again. Oh well, someone’s just going to have to convince me to go…

Peyton and Byrne
196 Tottenham Court Road
London W1T 7LQ

It’s been a while since I was on Columbia Road but I remember the divine cupcakes from Treacle. Just the right amount of rich buttercream on top of moist sponge….mmmmm. I need to go back.

This past weekend was defined for me by the release of the HP book and lots of homemade Japanese potato salad. You know what that HP stands for and I’m definitely not referring to the sauce. I woke up nice and early on Saturday morning, walked over to my local supermarket and bought my copy of the last book in the Harry Potter series. No spoilers here so please do read on!

I spent most of Saturday afternoon out and only started reading HP in earnest after dinner, the balsamic-glazed sausages from Lobstersquad with the Japanese potato salad from Just Hungry. I’d never made potato salad before and was a little unprepared for the amount of chopping required - though in hindsight, gosh, duh, I really should have expected it. Chopping aside, the dish is very easy to put together; it’s all stir stir stir and there you go, potato salad. Oh, and because I can’t seem to follow a recipe exactly, I substituted chopped sweet German pickles for the cucumber. Both recipes are keepers.

The next day, a bit groggy from staying up too late to read HP, I needed to put together a fast lunch so that I could go straight back to the book. Enter the cheese toastie, with a side of potato salad - that recipe makes a lot! There’s still more leftover in my fridge - perhaps this salad won’t make an appearance again when I’m by myself in the flat! There doesn’t seem to be much point making a small serving of potato salad.

And I did finish the book.

Kimbap! The Korean maki sushi that uses all cooked ingredients and therefore keeps longer than Japanese sushi. I followed this basic recipe over at My Korean Kitchen thoughI didn’t follow it to the letter though as you can see from the lack of tuna in my kimbaps. I used Spam, crabsticks, cucumber, that yellow pickled radish, egg omelette, and carrot - the Spam, crabsticks and carrot were fried beforehand, as in the recipe.

Ingredient estimates
Two cups of rice (using the little plastic cup that’s included - I think it’s a 160mL cup) in my rice cooker resulted in enough for 5 rolls and the amount of seasoning in that recipe was also enough for this quantity of rice. I also fried 2 eggs, about half a tin of Spam, 8 crabsticks, and half a large carrot. All the filling was used up in the 5 rolls too. I’m going to try adding beef bulgogi to my next rolls and perhaps burdock, if I can find it.

I’ve rolled maki sushi before and my mistake then was with the thickness of the rice - use a thin layer; you should be able to see the seaweed through the rice. We could only work our way through 3 of these giant rolls that dinner time. The two rolls leftover were wrapped in plastic wrap and stored in the fridge - the rice was slightly harder the next day but there was no deterioration in flavour. This would be ideal picnic food and apparently children in Korea bring it along for field trips. Do try it - rolling kimbap is much easier than it seems.