Londoncooking.co.uk

Are you classy? Then check out the Vogue-of-Cooking website, Epicurious’ collection of quick & easy recipes – my pick of the bunch is the Louisiana Devilled Crab Cakes, y’all.

Are you, well… not classy? You could do worse than checking out the Sun’s slideshow of the World’s Rudest Food, bringing Pee Cola, Shito Hot, Mini Dickmanns (pictured) and Cock Flavoured Soup mix to the masses.

Meanwhile, the Guardian challenged its readers to come up with two course menus costing less than £5 – downturn-tastic.

Finally, don’t miss the London Paper’s London’s top secret restaurants – top of the list is the mercurial Food Rambler’s Rambling Restaurant – they’re doing the following dates:

Sunday 21st – Camden Town, menu/theme to be confirmed
Sunday 5th July – place/menu to be confirmed
Sunday 19th July – place/menu to be confirmed

This will def be worth checking out – you can book/find out more info by emailing ramblingrestaurant@googlemail.com.

Nestled beside one of the least prepossessing roundabouthospitalskyscrapers in London (if not the world), lies 500, a modestly decked-out trattoria which takes its name from the much-loved Mini-esque Fiat:

The main thing to note, is that this is the real deal – not your usual ‘UK crap version’ of Italian cuisine. It’s also not pricey, considering the quality.

My recommendation: go for the meat – lamb, veal (whoops…) whatever – it’s bloody amazing…

Photo by someone called Kake Pugh (EH?) Thanks, anyway, Kake.

Ah, Bolognese – the king of pasta sauuuce. Known as ‘ragu’ in Italy, here’s the London version…

Ingredients

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Beef or lamb mince
Passata or chopped tomatoes
Miso or soya sauce

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1. Fry the meat in a little oil, breaking it up with a wooden spoon
2. Once brown, add the passata/chopped tomatoes and mix
3. Leave to stew on a medium/low heat, until the tomatoes are absorbed (leave on a low heat for 2-3 hours if you can, for added flavour)
4. Finally, add soya sauce to taste, or, if you have it, miso, which adds a really satisfying salty kick (NB – miso denatures if exposed to boiling sauce, so best to remove a little sauce into a bowl, leave to cool a sec, then mix with the miso. Also, miso is incredibly strong, so you might need only a tablespoon or two…)

As they say, “that’s ah-it-ah” (or at least they do if they’re part of an ad campaign for pasta sauces which encourages Italian stereotypes with the use of puppets.) Oops… Did I say that?

Amazing as it might seem to some Londoners, Italians actually know which pasta goes best with which sauces. Get the wrong one and you could be a laughing stock. For Bolognese/ragu, LondonCooking suggests you plumb for tagliatelle.

(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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Sainsburys has gone all social with a Facebook page (Simple Food Ideas) you can ‘become a fan of’, and get some helpful recipe tips.

Launching at the start of April, it’s already amassed about 300 followers (not bad going, Jamie, John and co.) which would suggest the recipes aren’t bad at all… Here’s one of them -

Hearty barley chicken pot

Sainsbury’s 500g pack skinless chicken thigh fillets, 1 loose red onion, 4 loose carrots, 150ml pot single cream, 500g pack pearl barley, 410g tin cannellini beans in water. (Ingredients from your store cupboard: olive oil, chicken stock cube, dried herbs)

Recipe: Serves 4

Cook Time: 10 minutes
Prep Time: 35 minutes

1. Cut 1 x 500g pack of skinless chicken thighs into small chunks. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large flameproof pot and fry the chicken until it begins to colour.

2. Add 1 red onion and 4 carrots, all peeled and cut into chunks, to the pot. Stir in 200g pearl barley and 1 teaspoon dried mixed herbs, and fry for a few minutes.

3. Add 750ml chicken stock, made with 1 stock cube, and simmer for 30 minutes until the pearl barley is tender.

4. Stir in a 410g tin of cannellini beans, drained, and 75ml single cream and heat through. Serve immediately.

Pukka.

As the guy once said, a good pub in Camden Town is hard to find.

But the Crown and Goose, aka Goose and Crown/Moose and Frown (or so Abi calls it,) tucked away on the corner of Delancey and Arlington, is the real ramona, with friendly staff and excellent gastropub-type food, made by a chef fresh from Michelin-starred acclaim.

The place abides, despite its owners almost getting the green light to turn the pub into a strip joint (a sure indication the kind of classy outfits that operate in Camden…)

So all the more reason to cherish it, if it weren’t already the top of the pub pile in a Camden packed with by-the-numbers, characterless craphaunts.

The Crown and Goose’s Website.

Abi’s Article: ‘Long live the Goose!‘

What about a shakshuka for dinner tonight? This Tunisian/Moroccan tomato ‘n’ egg combo is a incredibly easy to make, satisfying and just a little different.

Ingredients

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for 2
1  big/medium onion
2 cloves of garlic
3 tomatoes or can of chopped tomatoes
4 eggs
some yellow cheese (not necessary but great)
some salt and pepper
Bread/pitta (for ‘mopping’)

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1. Cut the onion and fry in olive oil with halved garlic cloves.
2. Add the tomatoes the salt and pepper and simmer (about 5-7 min).
3. Once it’s all bubbling away, break 4 eggs into the mixture – if it’s hot enough, they should poach in the sauce.
4. When the eggs are cooked, you can add the crumbled cheese on top, waiting until it melts
5. Locate and throw out the garlic.

There’s something really satisfying about eating shakshuka by dipping bread into the mixture. I’ll call it ‘mopping’ for now (until I think of a slightly less gross term…)

You can add mushrooms, olives or peppers, hey – let your imagination run wild!

(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
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If you thought “I’ve never heard of shakshuka, sounds a little odd to me”, just check out what they’re serving down at the Phantom’s MuchenTuchen:

‘America is Satan’ is a great strapline for a fast food joint, beats ‘I’m lovin’ it‘ hands down, eh?

This is a clip from ‘You don’t mess with the Zohan‘, almost definitely not as racist as it looks. Honest…

Look what slithered into my inbox last week:

‘I hope you are well.  I have really enjoyed looking through your blog.  (personalise what you like) I hope it is ok for me to quickly introduce myself and ask for your help in spreading the word about a cooking competition I have set up?’

Note to PR workhounds: always read your work thoroughly before hitting the ’spam’ button. It continues:

‘I work for a PR company called [name removed to protect the incompetent] and we are currently working with [generic food show/exhibition name here.]‘

‘The idea of the competition is to encourage people to submit their favourite British or Irish recipes in the medium of a video recipe!’ [!loving the exclamation!] ‘Entrants simply need to upload a video to lookandtaste.com with the tag bobi09com and it will automatically be entered into the competition.’

‘It would be fantastic if I could send you additional information about this event [no] and competition [nox2] and equally as great if you got involved and decided to enter a recipe.’ [guess what? That would be no! (notice the exclamation, thought you'd like that)]

‘We are offering a select number of bloggers [I'm 'select' - hoorah! And there was me thinking you were just spamming the entire blogpopulation!] the chance to offer their readers a comprehensive 30% discount on double ticket. Meaning they can book a double ticket (two adults) for just £10.50 – full price of £15…’

Wowee! If I put together a video (no small task, of course, if you want to do it well) you’ll ‘gift’ me a princely sum of £5 – bargain!

Like the food ad networks that want to pay bloggers 1p per thousand views of their site (no joke), this is what’s known in the business as digital usury.

I go through periods (like right now) where I just wake up early.

It’s annoying: even if I go to bed at 3am, I still wake up latest 7/8am. While no doubt this is nowhere near as bad as not being able to get to sleep in the first place (no probs there), if not insomnia, I’d definitely call this a kind of sleep intolerance.

I think I’ve discovered a kind of cure, though: twice I’ve woken up at the eye-watering time of 2 or 3am. So here’s what I do:

Boil water, add a spoon of honey, and squeeze in half a lemon.

Originally taking this for a sore throat, I think I’ve stumbledupon a partial cure for my sleepintolerance:

Apparently, the lemon’s strong pH has an alkaline effect on the body – could that be the reason this works?

Sleepless in London? – tell me if this works for you, or if you have an even better cure…

Here’s an easy, delicious and quick cold pasta recipe, perfect for big dinners, buffets and picnics (well, it’s turning Spring, isn’t it?)

I made it with a kilo of pasta, and it went some way to feeding around 10 people (depending on appetites, you can usually go by 100-150g of pasta per person.)

Ingredients

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1kg penne rigate pasta (’tubes’)
3 packs of mozzarella
3 packs of cherry tomatoes
1 bottle of pitted green or black olives (unseasoned)
1 clove of garlic
Basil, salt and olive oil to taste

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1. Cut the mozzarella, tomatoes and olives and mix together in a bowl with olive oil and some salt.
2. Cut up fresh basil (if you have it) or add some dried basil to the mix. Cut the garlic in half and add that too.
3. Leave to marinade (preferably at least half an hour).
4. Cook the pasta – make sure it’s ‘al dente’, ie not over-cooked – keep tasting it as it nears the predicted cooking time (usually around 8-10 mins.)
5. Drain the pasta, and run under lots of cold water (it’s important it cools down, so the cheese doesn’t melt when you add the sauce.)
6. Add a little more oil and basil to the sauce and mix it together.
7. Remove the garlic (if you can find it! Or else warn everyone – garlic looks remarkably similar to mozzarella!)
7. Mix the pasta and sauce, and bob’s your uncle!

Moni and I are second cousins, but I feel like we’re very closely related. My great-grandparents were also second cousins.

Not meaning to flatter myself here, but I’m sorry Cousin Moni, I’m just not ready for that kind of relationship.

You do make a mean cold pasta though.

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Stupid question.

Everyone knows the honey monster wins everytime.

Still, spotting said ’spelt popples’ in a local tofu emporium, I thought: “What the hell, can’t be all that bad?”

I should add I have fond childhood memories of sugar puffs, and was only allowed to eat them when I went to visit my grandparents up north (usually while watching kids TV classic Wackaday (another forbidden pleasure.)

LondonCooking Verdict:

The honey monster has nothing to fear from his vegan competitors.

Spelt popples are utterly bland, without a doubt more like styrofoam than anything else I’ve ever tasted.

Honey Monster Foods 1 – Amisa ‘Special Diet Nutrition’ – 0

More classic Sugar Puff ads, ooh… and buy the T-Shirt (you know you want to – it’s just £2, and for charidee, after all.)

On the other hand, the less said about Honey’s rap duet with Samanda (’Honey Love’) the better.