As I mentioned in one of my last posts, I will shortly be moving to Italy for six months to work in the Rome office of my company. While I cannot wait to eat my way around the city and see how far my Italian will get me when chatting with the produce sellers at Testaccio market, for now my excitement has been replaced with slight freak-outs at the amount of stuff I need to get on top of these last 3 weeks in London (interspersed with being slightly emotional at seeing certain places for the last time and saying goodbye to good friends). While I have started packing (never boring – do I have more stuff than I think? Do I have less stuff than I think? How heavy can I fill one of these boxes? Is this enough bubble wrap?) another key task is to clean out my pantry. I made a huge pot of chili the other
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Shrimpy’s
If I had to sum up our lunch at Shrimpy’s the other day in one word, I would say it was ‘filling’. I had been warned by my friend Millen and Philippe that the dishes at Shrimpy’s were filling (no wonder given that their signature dish is a burger filled with deep-fried soft-shell crab and guacamole) but in all honesty I had underestimated just how filling the food would be. And the portions are by no means humanguous so I am still puzzled as to why we were all so full after what, at least on paper, seemed far from a generous lunch. The last time Millen and Philippe had been at Shrimpy’s, they got to sit at the bar and observe all the dishes being churned out by the largely Spanish-speaking kitchen staff. As such, we knew to order the calamari with olive tapenade, the soft-shell crab burger as well as the pistachio sundae. And so we did. To
Brown / green / white – a recipe for fennel-tastic Oreos
White / sea salt As is clear from my post about my recent dinner at the bottle apostle, I love the combination of sweet and salty in desserts (as well as using unusual ingredients such as olive oil, or fennel, in desserts) … I am clearly not alone in this obsession given the recent explosion of chocolate bars with sea salt and other unusual savoury ingredients, such as Vosges bacon chocolate (which I would have totally bought already did it not come with a GBP6 price tag in Selfridges …). Adding a sprinkle of sea salt or, for an even subtler touch, some fleur de sel, on top of cookies, brownies, pralines or macarons for me really lifts something ordinary to something a bit more special. I also find that the addition of salt not only enhances a dishes’ flavour (unsurprising given salt’s properties of being able to do exactly that), but it often also rounds out a flavour –
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“Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!”
The words of the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland sound painfully familiar – I have lost count of the number of times I have slept through my alarm after another night of ‘burning the candle at both ends’ as some people like to call it and then running late for work, again. At least work is pretty flexible about when we show up for work each day (assuming you don’t miss any meetings or conference calls). However, getting up on time for work after pulling a late night (or, more accurately, an early morning) is one challenge – fitting workouts into my days when I am working this hard is quite another. I sometimes have to smile a bit when I read blog entries about how to fit in a workout into a busy working life when the authors assume readers have a 9-5 job and a short commute. So, I figured it was time to share my tips
Joyeux Noel
After weeks of planning and frantic email exchanges between me and my two flatmates, the day of our annual Christmas gathering with friends and colleagues had come. As always, there was a slight last minute rush to get everything ready – best demonstrated by my flatmate Millen’s exasperated phonecall from the checkout line at Sainsbury’s (just to check she hadn’t forgotten anything crucial) ca. 30 minutes after our scheduled 3pm meet-up in the kitchen to get everything ready. However, not only were we a couple of hours behind schedule, but so were our friends so it all worked out in the end. As our circle of friends is largely foreign we asked everyone to bring Christmassy food from home so we ended up with Panettone, Pandoro, Christstollen, Linzer Augen, Spekulatiuscookies, Swedish cardamom buns and a Belgian twist on cupcakes with cream cheese frosting: Spekuloos cupcakes and Spekuloos Reese’s cups. When I was living in Brussels this time last year I
REAL SIMPLE FOOD 