The genius of Nana.

Today Nana is going to someone else's house for a party, I am staying at home. My grandparents have a more active social life than I do. I would be thoroughly depressed by this were it not for the fact that I got to watch her make this beautiful lemon meringue cake. Note her mastery of the meringue form, unlike my sad attempts. She's so clever!

Were I to attempt this recipe I would undoubtedly cock it up, but Nana is no amateur and she always gets results. Jimdad says that she's only ever cooked one thing that he didn't like, and it was meatloaf. I think we can forgive her that...

I've just realised that since I'm not going to the party, I won't get any cake. Suddenly I feel duped for accepting the simple joy of watching my Nana make a cake, when I should have been demanding a slice. I didn't even get to lick the bowl. Sigh.

Recipe:
FOR THE CAKE
3 unwaxed lemons
200g softened butter
200g caster sugar
3 medium eggs
250g self-rasing flour, sifted
6 tbsp milk

FOR THE MERINGUE
2 medium egg whites
100g caster sugar

FOR THE FILLING
250g tub mascarpone
2 tbsp sifted icing sugar
half a 450g jar of lemon curd (Nana made her own, because she is legendary)

Preheat the oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 21/2. Line the bases of 2x20cm sandwich tins about 5cm deep with nonstick paper. Grate the zezt from the lemons and put in a bowl with the other cake ingredients. Beat together with an electric hand whisk for 2-3 minutes until light and fluffy. Spoon into the tins and level the tops.

Whisk together the egg whites until stiff, then gradually whisk in the sugar until the meringue is stiff. Spoon half the meringue over each cake and spread to within 2cm of the edges. Swirl the meringue with the tip of a knife.

Bake the cakes for 35-40 minutes until the meringue is crisp and golden and the cake is firm. Test by inserting a fine skewer through the meringue - if just a few crumbs stick tot he skewer, the cake is ready.

Allow to cool in the tins for 10 minutes, then invert each cake onto a folded tea towel and then invert again onto a wire rack, so that the meringue is uppermost. Leave to cool completely. The cakes will keep for up to two days in a tin at this stage.

Beat together the mascarpone and sugar and swirl the lemon curd through. Set one cake on a serving plate and spread with the filling. Top with the other cake and dust with icing sugar. Nana added some raspberries to the centre and top, more for decoration than anything else I think.

Friday cake

I met a friend after work yesterday for a slice of cake. I thought this very civilised, as usually I would meet her for a drink. After sharing a slice of Mrs Marengo's white chocolate and pistachio cake, we did indeed revert to form and hit the next door pub for a vodka and tonic or three. You can't fight who you are.

Mrs Marengo's is a vegetarian cafe and cake shop, but as a committed and evangelical meat eater I can say that you shouldn't let that put you off. The interior doesn't have even a sniff of the hemp and hair shirt about it, with pretty pink tables and piles of Willy Wonka meringues in the window. Our cheesecake was excellent, though more cakey than cheesecakey. I sort of wished I wasn't sharing.

Mrs Marengo's
53 Lexington St
London W1F 9AN
020 7287 2544

Scandinavian Kitchen

Today Polly and I went to visit the Scandinavian Kitchen for an exciting sounding 'smorgasbord' of lunchtime delights. There was a very huffy and irritable man making a fuss about waiting all of 40 seconds for potato salad, I wished he would shut up and stop being such a twat. Just wait your turn, the food will arrive, and really, how hungry can you realistically be? The service was actually very brisk and polite, so obviously he was just unstable on some deep psychological level.

I went for potato salad with red onions and chives, a roast beef open sandwich and what I thought was a ham wrap, but was in fact salmon, which I don't like. Polly had a meatball open sandwich with beetroot salad and a ham and cheese wedge. I was jealous of Polly's lunch, mainly  because it featured more meat and was a bit more substantial and I am greedy. My beef open sandwich was served on dense rye bread and topped with mustard mayonnaise and some sort of crunchy scatterings, which I cannot identify, but which were pretty nice. Pickles too, which I must eat more of in light of how much I like them. Polly was impressed by the cutlery, which was not only substantial, unlike the terrible brittle offerings from so many other lunchtime haunts, but biodegradable. Good work.

The Scandinavian Kitchen is lovely, I think next time I will eat in (instead of on a bird poo-spattered bench on the ugliest street in London) and I will definitely have a slice of LOVE cake (Their capitalisation, not mine) which is a chocolate sponge topped with gooey chocolate and coconut. You can also buy Scandi food in their deli/shop at the back, so there's no earthly need to ever go to Ikea again. Hooray!

The Scandinavian Kitchen
51 Great Tichfield
W1W 7PP
Twitter.

Leon Dinner Menu Launch

Henry Dimbleby is, as reports suggest, a very generous host. Last night I enjoyed a jolly good feed at the Ludgate Circus branch of his Leon chain, a pretty decent splash of wine, and a brownie to take home with me. It was like going for dinner at your mate's house, when they've anxiously cooked too much and wrap it up in tin foil for you to take home and leave in the fridge for 3 days then chuck away. By which I mean very welcoming and warm.

Highlights were the lamb and beef meatballs in tomato sauce, a mild vegetable curry and sweet potato mash, which was almost enough to make you give up 'real' potatoes. I could eat chorizo until my arteries furred up, so I was pleased to be presented with a board of the stuff and gaily chomped slightly more than my fair share. Apologies fellow diners. The dishes were diverse in their origin but worked well together, so you could merrily order from around the globe safe in the knowledge that it won't end up in a terrible cross-cultural disaster on your plate. Phew.

Lovely, all. However the best thing about the evening by far was the banana split. Yes, a banana split, the kitsch childhood desert of choice is making a return to polite society, and I'm bloody glad of it. I last ordered a banana split on holiday in Spain when I was 14 years old. Until last night I thought that this was the only acceptable location and indeed age ceiling for guilt-free banana split consumption. To order one at twenty four and under the grey skies of London would be embarrassing; the sort of thing a maiden aunt would order on her birthday trip to the Harvester.

Leon's banana split is, of course free range and organic and whatnot, but it's also delicious. Three scoops of ice cream is the future, I refuse to accept anything less after my dinner. Two scoops of milky vanilla and one of strawberry that tasted like seaside holidays, a banana (of course) and proper squirty cream topped with almonds and for everyone on my table but me, salted caramel sauce combined to make a banana split that your maiden aunt would approve of, but wouldn't embarrass your trendy friends, as long as you told them it was ironic.
(Apologies again for the appalling quality of the photos, I really need to up my game.)

Urban Family Easter

When my friends and I realised that our beloved families were all jetting off on holiday over Easter weekend and we were not invited, something had to be done to prevent us from sitting alone and dejected in our respective homes, stuffing chocolate rabbits into our cakeholes and wailing.

As has happened so often in the past when our biological families have let us down, the urban family came to the rescue. I offered to make a Sunday roast, however following the insane folly of drinking buckets of wine on an empty stomach for a marathon period during the boat race, I wasn't feeling in tip-top cooking mode. I found myself in Tescos on Sunday morning, confused and bleary eyed, with no recollection of why I had made the journey. I bought some mini eggs and 3 organic leeks and went home. I hate that brain-muffling fog that a hangover induces, whereby you have no idea who you are or what you're doing, but with the niggling fear that it's something important and you're on the brink of cocking it up.

Luckily I'd prepared a Nigella Chocolate Truffle Meringue Cake in advance, because that's just how I roll; super organised and domesticated. In reality pre-preparation is an absolute necessity in my life since I'm drunk most of the time, and if I didn't cook in advance during the scant windows of sobriety that pepper my life, I'd probably starve to death. Following my meringue hell of the previous week, I was a bit sceptical about trying again, but I'm a plucky sort, so I rolled up my sleeves and got cracking. I'm pleased to report, it went pretty well. I'd venture so far as to say that anyone could make this cake. It's basically chocolate and cream poured into a cake tin...

Ingredients:

FOR THE BASE 1 egg white 50g caster sugar 2 teaspoons cocoa drop of wine vinegar FOR THE TRUFFLE FILLING 400g dark chocolate 60ml rum (I substituted coffee) 60ml golden syrup 500ml double cream cocoa to decorate Serving Size : Makes 10–12 slices    Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C. Line a 20cm springform tin with baking parchment and oil the sides with some flavourless oil; almond would be good, I used vegetable. Whisk the egg white until foamy peaks form and then whisk in the sugar a little at a time to make a thick, glossy mixture. Sieve over the cocoa and sprinkle with the vinegar, and whisk again to combine everything. Spread as evenly as you can over the bottom of the prepared cake tin and then put in the oven to bake for 15–20 minutes.Mine needed around 25 minutes, but do check after 15.     Melt the chocolate with the rum and syrup in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Remove the bowl from the saucepan and let it sit off the heat for 5 minutes or so. Whisk the cream until it thickens slightly – it should be slightly aerated and have the consistency of thick pouring custard, no thicker. Pour into the chocolate mixture, beating gently until everything is amalgamated.     Pour into the meringue-bottomed tin and cover the springform with clingfilm, and put in the fridge for a night or day, or for up to two days.    A short time before you are ready to serve the cake, take it out of the fridge and let it lose its chill. It will be easier to spring open if the chocolate truffle filling has become less fridge cold, although you don’t want soft room temperature chocolate.    Spring the cake free, then transfer to a plate without removing the base unless you think you can with ease (and have one of those big round spatulas). Smooth the sides with a spatula if you want a smarter look, and push the cocoa through a sieve to dust the top of the cake. I put some mini eggs on the top to look festive.   It was a very nice cake, and really very easy to make. You can't really eat much of it though due to the insane richness, so I've got most of it in the larder and I'm not really sure what to do with it. Ideas on a postcard please (can you freeze it?)

Walbrook & Avon

Walbrook & Avon is a stylish restaurant that pops up about once a month in the delightfully old school F. Cooke's Pie and Mash Shop on Broadway Market. It is run by the very clever and talented Paul Allen and Polly Clifton, whose motto is 'cook food, serve love.' How lovely. It was with gleeful anticipation then that I headed to Hackney on Sunday. Following the cake feast of the previous day after which I feared I would never be hungry again, I was relieved but not surprised to note that my appetite had returned; it would seem that my capacity for gluttony is almost unrivalled.

We were greeted with English Bellinis made with perry, raspberries, lime and mint which managed to ease at least one of our party who had sworn off booze in the wake of a particularly brutal hangover back into the swing of things. In fact she enthusiastically accepted a top-up. It was lovely to be reminded that once upon a time we didn't live in this terrible grey vista of chilly misery, but frolicked, bare limbed in fields and parks, sipping cider from the bottle and laughing gaily at the sun (!) I had all but forgotten about this alternative (imagined?) life, but remembered instantly upon tasting my English Bellini. It seemed an auspicious start.

Things continued well with summery Pintxos served from the counter. Feta and beetroot with toasted cumin seeds, devils on horseback, croquetas of pea and broccoli and mackerel and horseradish, and olives all went down an absolute storm. My party had several hushed and frantic conversations about how we could eat more of the tasty morsels without appearing too greedy in front of our fellow diners. We ended up passing  the counter more times than was perhaps strictly necessary on spurious errands to the front of the shop, just so we could eat more of the delectable bits on sticks. It was declared that we would be happy if all we ate for the rest of our lives was devils on horseback, fortunately this was not necessary, as there were two more courses to come.

Rolled pork belly roasted in cider with red onions, accompanied by garlic and rosemary roasties and spring greens was a perfect Sunday meal, the pork was neither too fatty, nor dry. Even the fussy vegetarian in our party was delighted with her field mushroom stuffed with cauliflower purée and parmesan. A resounding success. Yet more delights were to come in the form of a chocolate brownie with raspberry coulis and crème fraiche. Were I forced to make a teeny complaint, (not so much a complaint as an observation) I would say that by giving some diners larger brownies than others, a fight almost broke out at our table. Perhaps we just care more about brownies than most. Or perhaps we are just greedy.


I'll definitely be returning to F. Cooke's for future pop-ups, the combination of great food in slightly quirky surroundings (I was sat opposite a Diana 'People's Princess' poster) with the added degree of smugness when looking out at the passers-by gazing in is a definite winner. I literally cannot imagine anything more stressful or upsetting than preparing nine dishes for thirty five people, so it's a relief that I know Paul, who appears to take all of this in his stride.

Walbrook & Avon's Blog
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