La Trompette in Chiswick

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

 

Banoffee Tarts

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.

 

Korean Food Festival 2008

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.

 

Making Dulce de Leche

Dulce de leche. Do those words make you drool yet? Thick, brown, sticky, caramelised condensed milk is all that it is and it’s awfully easy to make. I finally got around to making some when I saw tins of condensed milk at my local budget supermarket (Netto, if you must know). I bought three, as I estimated that was what my largest pot could hold, brought them home and then nervously watched them all night. And that’s without even boiling them yet!

You see, I had read a few horror stories online about how unopened tins exploded while being boiled, spattering hot brown goo all over kitchen and ceiling. Of course, I started to wonder how exactly did that goo escape? Through a small puncture or were there sharp metal shards all over the place?! Upon careful rereading, the exploding only happened when the boiling water evaporated enough to expose the tins to air, whereby the risk of their exploding increases exponentially. Other techniques for making dulce de leche involve pouring the condensed milk into a pan and then baking it slowly in the oven. Nah, I was going to risk it.

The next day, while watching the men’s Wimbledon finals (which incidentally, lasted longer than the boiling!), I placed the three tins on their sides into my stockpot and covered them with lots of cold water; they were covered by at least an inch or two. If your tins have paper labels, remove them; mine had the labels printed directly onto the tin, something I’d not come across before. The pot was set to boil for three and a half hours. Every half hour or so, I would top up the pot with boiling water direct from my electric kettle. Do make sure the tins are always covered! I checked on mine nervously every five minutes at the beginning but then realised that half hour checks were going to be ok.

After they’ve finished their 3.5 hour stint in water, turn off the heat and let the tins cool in the water. Don’t be hasty and open the tins while they’re hot as they’re still likely to spray molten goo all over you and your kitchen. When we finally opened a tin, this was what greeted us:

Oh yeah. Thick, sticky, caramelly goodness. It’s very thick and we tasted first on teaspoons. It’s sweet and slightly milky and gosh, it’s hard to describe it but you ought to try making it too since it’s so easy! I like my caramel with a bit of salt and so we next had some on crackers; salt and caramel are just perfect bedfellows.

The best part of boiling directly in the tin is that you can take those unopened tins and put them straight back into your storecupboard. I’ve read that the sugars might crystallise a bit but it’s supposedly a good thing as you get a bit of crunch.

Now I still have 2.5 tins of dulce de leche left… what shall I do with them?!

---

Oh, and if you’re reading this in time, tomorrow (Saturday, 12 July 200 is the Korean Food Festival at the Fountain Pub in New Malden. More info over at London Korean Links.

 

Around the Web

Finally, all the Vancouver posts are done! Thanks for bearing with me and I promise some “nice food at home in London” posts for the next couple of months (save perhaps one or two posts on a weekend away I have planned in August!). I can only promise a couple of months as I’m going to be in NYC for a week in September! Do you have any recommendations for a first time visitor?

Now onto the web roundup:

Will it be cold in New York in September? I mean, will it be too cold for ice cream sandwiches?

Mark Bittman does it again - 101 simple recipes for picnics!

Robyn over at The Girl Who Ate Everything has a wonderful guide to Parisian patisseries in three parts.

Steamy Kitchen has posted on four different kinds of fried rice, each featuring a different processed meat. I’ll admit here that I have cooked with two of those processed products!

It’s only kind of related to food but this anatomy of a gummy bear over at Serious Eats just cracks me up!