Tamarind and Thyme

Blai and I had a little occasion to treat ourselves the other weekend and of course, we took it. After a few days of scouring restaurant review websites, I settled on Le Vacherin in Chiswick – a restaurant within the budget I’d selected, not too far from where we live, and one with terrific reviews.

It’s pretty obvious why the first criterion existed; if you haven’t guessed already, we’re far from rich, folks. As for the second criterion, nothing ruins a lovely night out (a rare occasion for us!) faster than a terrible trip on the tube home; a quick and easy bus ride is surely preferable. As for the last, well, that’s tied to the first – when every penny counts, you don’t want to waste it on rubbish food! While there’s always the desire to try new restaurants, especially in London where new ones pop out one every second it seems, there’s a high risk of having just not-that-great a dinner. Best to do my research instead and guarantee a fantastic meal.

Enough about my penny-pinching! I had booked a table for 7pm on a Sunday night and unsurprisingly, we were the first people there. The place was full by the time we left at about 10pm though.

I started with the warm salad of hand dived scallops, black pudding and Ayrshire bacon. This was a bed of dressed lettuce leaves topped with four tender scallops (four! wow!), two long streaky strips of bacon and a lump, for that is what it was, of squidgy and flavoursome black pudding. Blai had the cocotte of egg with smoked haddock in a mustard sauce. The egg came in a tiny little cocotte while the saucy haddock (ha!) came in a tumbler beside it with a long spoon. Both delicious and the haddock was actually available as a main course too.

I persuaded Blai to share the Chateaubriand for 2, with roast bone marrow, frites and green beans when he mentionned that he wanted another beef dish on the menu. He was kind enough to let me order it! We had asked for it to be cooked to medium but it came very rare (how French!) but it was very good so I can’t really complain. It came ready carved on a wooden board along with the green beans and the waitress portionned it all out between us. The green beans were so perfectly cooked with a bit of a bite and were soaked in butter and meat juices. We each also got a single mushroom and a beef bone from which to dig out the marrow. Mine had only a little in there…boo hoo. Skinny frites came in individual bowls with even littler bowls of bearnaise sauce alongside. Oh…it’s been a while since I had a good steak and this really hit the spot!

Blai had the pear and almond tart, vanilla ice cream while I chose the apple beignet, vanilla ice cream, 25mL Calvados. Blai had the better dessert – his tart was more of a pear and almond pastry tart but it was good! Mine was a relatively small slice of apple in batter and deep fried, topped with ice cream. My Calvados came a little bit after my dessert and provided a bit of a digestif for the both of us!

The damage came to a reasonable £35 per head but that doesn’t include wine because we aren’t big drinkers… and we had work the following day. Not exactly a budget restaurant but worth every penny. We’ll definitely be returning to Le Vacherin when we need another date night!

Le Vacherin
76-77 South Parade
Chiswick, London
W4 5LF

The cream gravy was good, as were the Lincolnshire sausages from Grasmere Farms – I peeled off the skins and patted them into sausage patties. However, I stupidly overbaked the biscuits. Oh well, they’re easy enough to put together again!

Gotta have the fried eggs too…it can’t be Sunday brunch without fried eggs!

Make your own pork floss at home! Chow Times provides the recipe. If you’re lost as to what to do with it: eat it with rice porridge, have a butter and pork floss sandwich, eat it out of hand.

Great photos of a lunch at Shopsins in New York over at LUNCH. If I ever go to New York, I want a meal at that institution!

Mmm…She Bakes and She Cooks makes delicious looking Korean black bean sauce noodles. Looks quite easy to make – I hope I can find the correct black bean paste.

Cook sister has a recipe for cheese olives, which look like the perfect party food.

Nam prik pao at Chez Pim – this is the Thai chili jam and the making of it in one Thai restaurant in London caused a terror alert! I think the purchase of a hand-held blender/chopper is in my future…

There’ve been some great looking recipes on the food blogs lately and I’ve had a chance to try a few of them.

I modified the sausage and broccoli rabe orecchiette recipe at Last Night’s Dinner to use up some Nurnberg bratwursts and a bunch of cavolo nero from the farmers’ market. Very tasty and I’ll be making it again soon!

One pot rice from Babe in the City – KL became a fast weekday meal after a terrible, rainy, delayed commute back home from work. I used Chinese sausage, dried shitake mushrooms and peas – everything I had either in the fridge/freezer or pantry. It’s extremely easy and delicious too! Hooray then – two winning recipes!

Last Saturday, I met an old friend who was in town at the Grocer on Elgin for lunch – unfortunately, their basement cafe was closed due to flooding (!). Luckily for me, my friend then whipped out a map and experted guided us to Ottolenghi – a delicatessen that I’ve been meaning to try for ages, especially since I saw their beautiful salads over at Notes by Naive.

The branch in Notting Hill is tiny – a long shop with a counter with loads of salads along one side and a single, large table at the end of the shop that seats only 10. In the window were multitudes of gorgeous cakes and pastries; I knew we had to save room for dessert!

After waiting about 20 minutes, we finally got seats at the communal table; of course, by then we’d already had a good perusal of everything on offer and had decided what we wanted. I had a selection of three salads: roast new potatoes with dried cherry tomatoes, olives, roast red onion, watercress and red chard; roast aubergine with chilli yoghurt, pine nuts, preserved lemon, pomegranate seeds and parsley; and broad beans and peas with smoked bacon, caramelized onion and parsley (£8.50). I’m not usually a big fan of salads as meals as many tend to be quite boring but those at Ottolenghi are not the usual lettuce mixes. I loved all the salads I’d chosen and only wished I had been more daring and chosen something other than the broad beans and peas as I make a similar dish at home. Oh well, another excuse to go back!

My friend had a main course of pizza (with tomato sauce, brie, parma ham among other nice things) with two salads: roast root vegetables with maple, citrus, parsley, black sesame seeds and rocket and couscous with red onion, peppers, coriander seed, pink peppercorn and wild organic blueberries (£11.50). Of his two salads, the couscous won out – the spicy peppercorns and sweet blueberries went surprisingly well together. Normally I’m not particularly excited by couscous but I could have eaten a bucketload of this stuff!

For dessert, we split a passion fruit curd meringue tart (£2.50) and a chocolate clafouti with peaches and blueberries (£3.50). The clear winner was the tart with its gorgeous passion fruit filling and light meringue spikes. The clafouti (what made it a clafouti? There was no fruit inside) was tasty but quite dry and the fruit wasn’t juicy enough to balance it out. Oh well, might try their chocolate caramel tart next time around!

Prices seemed reasonable though I know that it isn’t the cheapest around but the food is so awfully nice and so well made and is of such lovely ingredients that it’s hard to fault it. I just wish they’d buy up the shop next door and make more seating available!

Ottolenghi
63 Ledbury Road
London W11 2AD

Branches also in Islington and Kensington.