Tamarind and Thyme

Here’s another fast pasta dish that we cook on weekdays, after braving the traffic after work. Now that the weather is hot too, the oven is the last thing we want to turn on, preferring to cook on top of the stove. This pasta dish is rich, yet light; luxurious, yet still affordable. I cannot remember from where I picked this recipe up but there were a number of recipes recording some variation on crab, basil or parsley or coriander, lemon and chili a few years ago. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I didn’t actually use spaghetti for the photo, though I write it in the recipe, but I substituted fusilli lunghi, curly telephone cord-like pasta, as it was just too cute to resist in the shop.

I do believe I actually cooked this once when I started dating Blai and so there’s proof it’s perfect for cooking for your loved ones! Add a salad and a nice dessert and you’ll charm their socks (or more) off.

Spaghetti with Crab, Basil and Lemon
serves 2.

1 tin white crab meat (This time, I didn’t have access to fresh crab meat but if you do, use it! It makes a world of difference.), drained
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
large pinch of dried chili flakes
zest of 1/2 lemon
juice of 1/2 lemon
olive oil
250g dried spaghetti
a large handful of fresh basil leaves, chiffonaded (thinly sliced)

Set a pot of water to boil, salt it, and add the spaghetti to boil. The sauce is going to be fast!

Heat a pan over low heat and when hot, add a good glugful of olive oil. Add the garlic and chili flakes and when fragrant, add the lemon zest and stir together. Toss in the crab meat and give it all a good stir. When all is hot, turn off the heat, add the lemon juice and stir through. Add more extra virgin olive oil if it’s looking a bit too dry.

When the spaghetti is done, drain it and add to the sauce. Stir together, adding more oil or cooking water to loosen it as needed. Add the basil, toss again and serve.

I made this rice one day to accompany a dal that I had cooked for a rather simple meal. It’s a recipe that my mother passed on to me; she cooked it often to accompany one of her many homemade curries. I hadn’t cooked it in a while and only cooked it since I had a little time on my hands. Well, it got the Blai seal of approval and so I’ve got to share it with you! It’s a Delia Smith recipe, so, of course, measurements in the recipe are extremely precise. I chose to up some of the spices and I’ve modified the number of servings to a more realistic value; I doubt you’d be able to stretch this much rice to six servings! The two of us cleaned the pan!

As mentionned previously, this would work well alongside curries, dals, spiced vegetable dishes or even by itself! And do take this recipe as a starting point – I’ve been making other riffs on this general idea: adding peas, modifying spices, adding garam masala, etc. Any leftovers are quite nice heated up and topped with a fried egg.

Spiced Pilau Rice
adapted from a recipe by Delia Smith
serves 2-4, depending on how much rice everyone eats

2 cardamom pods
1 tsp cumin seeds
3/4 tsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp oil
1 large onion, chopped
275 mL basmati rice
1 inch cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
salt
570 mL boiling water

Heat a frying pan, or saute pan, with a lid over medium heat. Lightly crush the cardamom, cumin and coriander seeds and then pour them into the pan to dry toast them for about a minute, stirring them around. Add the oil and the onion and fry until golden.

Add the rice and stir through to coat in the oil and spices. Add the boiling water, along with the cinnamon stick and bay leaf and some salt, give everything a good stir and then cover the pan. Turn the heat down to its lowest setting and let cook for 15 minutes. After the alloted time, turn off the heat, take off the lid and cover the pan with a clean tea towel for 5 minutes. Fluff the rice before serving.

Sometime’s we all need a little treat – and what better occasion than a birthday! To be specific, two birthdays, as both my and Blai’s birthdays fall in the month of July. I’d been wanting to try La Trompette for a while after reading such marvellous reviews online, and the fact that they were recently awarded their first Michelin star didn’t hurt either, and so I booked a table for the two of us last Sunday at 7pm. We turned out to be the second couple in the restaurant, following close at the heels of the first couple. The restaurant did fill up throughout the night with many groups coming in at about 8pm.

After ordering, the bread basket made its way to our table and we were presented with a choice of three breads; there was a walnut bread flecked with bits of raisin, a heavily speckled black olive bread, and a white bread heavy with olive oil. Needless to say, throughout the course of our meal, we managed to try all three. All three were extremely delicious and perhaps we ate more than we should have. Upon inquiring, we were told that they baked all the bread daily on the premises.

I started with the Confit sea trout, crab and cucumber salad, crab croquettes, vichyssoise and pea shoots:

There were two generous slices of soft, melting fish sat in a bit of vichyssoise, acting more as a sauce than a soup. Inside the lettuce parcel was the crab and cucumber salad – just lots of crab meat with a bit of diced cucumber in a mayonnaise dressing. While the salad contained white crab meat, the crunchy crab croquettes were made of brown meat. I loved this dish.

Blai had the Soft polenta, English asparagus, cured ham, poached egg, black truffle and olive dressing:

While everything on the plate was very well cooked and delicious, Blai did not feel that all the ingredients worked altogether as a single dish. This was the only minor thing we could quibble about. Of the bits I did try, I very much liked the truffle and olive dressing and thought it worked well with the egg and polenta. I can understand though – I feel that some hams can be too assertive when combined with other ingredients.

For my main, I chose the Breast of duck, pastilla of confit leg, hot foie gras, cherry compote and caramelized endive:

The breast was cooked as I requested (pink inside) and sat on a bed of spinach. It was incredibly meaty and the cherry compote was beautiful with it. I never would have thought of caramelizing endive as they had here but its bitterness combined with just about everything on the plate, especially the foie gras and compote. A gorgeous dish.

After much deliberation, Blai settled with the Braised legs of poulet noir, with potato gnocchi, leek hearts, vin jaune and tarragon:

I tried a bit of everything off his plate and I can vouch that that chicken was as soft as it looks. It just fell off the bone and the sauce that went with it….mmmmm. We ended up having a discussion about what “yellow wine” was and we thought it was perhaps a typo and should be vin jeune, a young, not aged wine. However, it turns out that there is a vin jaune that is similar to sherry. Whatever it was, it made that sauce so wonderful! The gnocchi was chewy and potatoey and reminiscent of a German potato dumpling.

All the desserts sounded good but I chose the one that really stood out for me. This was the Fresh citrus fruits, banana sorbet, passion fruit jelly, Earl Grey tea, financiers:

Rarely does a dessert make me sit up and say, “Wow!”, and this one did. The photo doesn’t do this dessert justice – it doesn’t show that underneath that Earl Grey tea granité was a layer of citrus fruit segments, and under that was a scoop of banana sorbet, and under that was the passion fruit jelly. While all the ingredients sound disparate, together they blend together: the creaminess of the banana, the citrus note of the fruits and the tea, the zing of the passion fruit. Gorgeous. The financiers were equally fabulous, but I knew they would be after the quality of the bread!

Blai opted for another dessert that sounded just as refreshing, the Iced coconut parfait with lime granité, tropical fruits and lychee sorbet:

With the creamy coconut parfait sitting on a pastry base, his dessert was more substantial than mine but still very light and summery. I again only tried a bit of it and it was very good and judging by the way Blai cleaned his plate, I would say that he adored it too!

After dessert, I had an espresso, while they offered some hot water steeped with lemon to Blai as a refreshing alternative. Or as my brother so eloquently put it – “it sounds like you kinda drank a finger bowl”. But honestly, it was nice and really helped us relax and it possibly aided digestion; who knows? Alongside came these chocolate truffles:

Looking at these photos again is killing me; I cannot wait to return to La Trompette! Of course, this is unlikely to be very soon as all this deliciousness comes at a price; I would never try to convince anyone that this place is a budget restaurant! Two three course menus, 1 bottle of sparkling water, 1 glass of a red Bordeaux, 1 espresso, 1 hot water with lemon (no charge!) – this all came to £100 for the two of us.

La Trompette
5-7 Devonshire Road
Chiswick
London W4 2EU

We had a friend over for dinner last week and what a perfect excuse to put that dulce de leche to use, no? Since it was on a weekday, I resorted to making a one large dish instead of a starter and a main and then followed that with banoffee tarts. How can one go wrong with bananas and toffee and cream? Again, I took a shortcut in the form of ready made tart shells but I’ll have you know the cream was hand whipped! They went down pretty well though I think I overdid it a little with the cream!

Now I have two more tins of caramelised condensed milk… and one friend who says that I’ve so far offered him a tin every time I’ve seen him since I made them. Huh – my memory’s going, I think. Anyway, he keeps refusing – why does it scare people? It’s delicious!

Banoffee Tarts

4 individual tart shells
1/2 tin dulce de leche, (my tin was 397g)
1 large, ripe banana (can be increased to 2)
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 tbsp icing sugar

Whip the whipping cream with the icing sugar until your liking. Divide the dulce the leche between the tart shells and spread on the bases. Slice the banana(s) thinly and divide among the tart shells, arranging them in an even layer. Top each tart with the whipped cream.

The original banoffee recipe also includes a bit of freeze dried coffee granules in with the whipping cream. You can add it, of course.

When I heard that this year’s Korean Food Festival was scheduled for this past weekend (thank you, London Korean Links!), I cleared my calendar, called my brother who came down for the weekend and took along a couple more friends for an afternoon of eating. We arrived at about 12:30, and by the time we wove our way through the high street, filled with loads more stalls in the same kind of New Malden Day as last year, the garden of the Fountain Pub was absolutely packed. I believe it was much busier than last year – word has spread! Children’s shouts came from the presentation area as they went though the paces of their tae kwon do demonstrations but we ignored all these presentations for a good two hours as we plonked ourselves on a table on the other side of the garden and just started eating.

And boy, did we eat. Two orders of the Korean snack food of ddeokboggi, thick chewy rice cakes mixed with thin fish cakes and a spicy gochujang based sauce. This was very good, with some shredded carrots and onions mixed in and the sweet and slightly spicy sauce bringing it all together.

Smoke was wafting from the many charcoal grills and we followed our noses to a galbi so nice we had it twice. Actually, we had it three times but the second order had a disappointing marinade and so we had another order from the first stall. That marinade was so tasty it had us all gnawing away at the bones and licking our fingers.

We had some crossed wires between us which resulted in two different orders of spicy fried chicken but we took opportunities such as that to sample the fried chicken from various stalls. Shame the last one wasn’t as good as the first. Compare and contrast the colour of the first two examples with the last. The last was more like a sweet and sour sauce – not right. The best was the first as the sauce was the richest and had the addition of ground peanuts.

We also ate kimbap (always good),

and lots of chicken skewers (yummy!),

and fried vegetable fritters (just ok),

and extremely heavy, fried rice cakes that looked like marshmallows on a stick (too heavy! so sticky!).

We ate so much that we barely had any dinner later that evening. We did stick around to watch some of the tae kwon do demonstrations. Some of the kids were obviously very talented; I wouldn’t want to meet some of them in a dark alley. Rather luckily, we were just in time to watch this guy break a whole lot of marble sheets (I think that’s what the kids said). Very impressive! Will eating lots of grilled meat and kimchi make me this strong?

All my photos (and gosh, we ate a lot) can be seen in this Flickr photoset.