Song Que for your Supper

Lying half-way up Kingsland Road, fifteen minutes from Old Street tube station the mint green cantine-style interior of Song Que heaves with hungry diners. There are several other vietnamese restaurants and cheapo cafès along this road, but this is the only one with the serious queue at the door, and don't let that put you off, the waiter would free a table up for you if it costs him his daughter. This is no-frills, no trimmings, good-quality comfort food. Mains cost an average of £6 and are extremely generous. Flavours are bold and service is fast with some pretty witty banter coming from the staff. Don't expect to be fussed over and to lounge about once your plate's been cleared, there's others waiting behind you. Do, however, expect friendly and efficient service and a tasty and extensive menu.

Tried and tested:

Spring rolls - crispy and golden but a tad greasy for my taste
Vietnamese summer rolls - these were divine, full of fresh flavours and good texture
Pho Tai (rare beef noodle soup) - heart-warming and delicious, but could've been just a teensy bit more generous with the meat.
Pancake with prawn and chicken - light fluffy egg pancake with crispy beansprouts and very tender prawns
Grilled squid with ginger and spring onions - the squid was fresh and not at all rubbery
Chilli salted squid - this was a strong dish, popping with chilli
Lemongrass chicken with peppers - again, a real fiery kick of lemongrass and crunchy peppers for texture
There's jasmine tea and a varied selection of Vietnamese bottled beers as well as the regular beers.


Cost: about 14 pounds per head for two courses and a drink.


134, Kingsland Road
London
E2 8DY
Closed Sundays
Children Welcome

Dos Tortillas Para Ti

Well, technically speaking, one of them is more of a frittata, but let's not get lexically over-analytical over a few eggs...

Easy to knock up, wonderful to wolf down and probably far too high in cholesterol content, these eggy, summery delights are perfect to accompany a barbecue, or a light supper, or to slice up and pack for a picnic. You can put whatever you want in a frittata, and tortillas are filling enough to be a lunch all on their own so start experimenting. Excellent use of fridge leftovers too...

Tortilla de Patatas con Pimientos

You'll need:

6 eggs

1 onion

1 pepper

salt

pepper

olive oil

Heat 3/4 inch of olive oil in a deep frying pan and put in the peeled potatoes diced into smallish chunks. Sprinkle with salt. Let these simmer slowly on a low heat until they start to go mushy. They absolutely must not burn or go crisp. In a bowl, lightly beat the six eggs and season.Once the potatoes are done, drain off the excess oil and place the potatoes into the egg mix. Mush with a fork to amalgamate the mixture (a few chunks of potato are always nice).Heat whatever remaining oil is left in the frying pan and fry your onions and peppers. Once soft, add the potato and egg mixture. Cook, tilting the pan occasionally and pulling the cooked egg mix towards you with a spatula and filling the gap with still runny egg. Once the top is more or less cooked, place a plate over the tortilla and flip the tortilla onto it. Slide the tortilla, uncooked side down back into the pan and cook the other side. After a minute or two it should be done.Sldie back onto a clean plate, let it cool and serve...

Frittata with Sweet Potato, Tomato and Dill

You'll need:

6 eggs

3 small sweet potatoes

10 small tomates

half a white onion

1 clove of garlic

handful of fresh dill

parsley

salt

pepper

olive oil

Chop your sweet potato into small chunks and bake in a hot oven (160°)for about 4 minutes until soft. Whilst you're doing that, break eggs into a bowl and beat lightly, season and put aside. Fry your onions and garlic in a deep frying pan until soft, then add the tomatoes, cut in halves and fry those until soft. Season the lot. Add the cooked sweet potato to the pan, the shopped parsley and dill and then top with the egg. Use the same principal for cooking as the above tortilla.

Serve when warm or cool. This is the point where a cold beer should be offered to the chef.

Risotto con Asparagi e Verdure - Asparagus and Broccoli Risotto

Everyone's cooking risotto at the moment it seems, and since pasta now sits in the negative column of my diet plan I am increasingly turning to rice as a way of getting that satisfactory carby bloated feeling of gastronomic satiation. British asparagus is in its prime right now and broccoli is nice for a bit of crunch too. I unfortunately can't have parmesan or butter, but frankly they aren't wholly necessary if you're working with a tasty stock, and doing without is that little bit healthier! I used the leftover stock from my chicken and chickpea casserole and just added some more water.

For two people you'll need:

4 handfuls of arborio or carnaroli rice
1 bunch of British asparagus, discard the tough end of the stalks
handful of broccoli florets
handful chopped cabbage
1 sliced leek
3 chopped sage leaves
1 onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 litre of good strong chicken or vegetable stock
1 glass of white plonk
salt and pepper
olive oil


Heat a glug of olive oil in a heavy bottomed frying pan, add the diced onion and garlic and soften until transluscent. Add the rice and coat evenly with the oil, stirring for about 2-3 minutes. Add the chopped sage and stir in. Add a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Add the glass of wine and start stirring the rice grains, cook until the wine has evaporated.

Turn the heat down under the pan to a simmer. You can now start adding your stock, soup ladle by soup ladle, stirring slowly. After the third ladle of stock, throw in the asparagus tips, broccoli, cabbage and leeks. Only add another ladle once the previous one has more or less been absorbed by the rice. This is usually every 45 seconds or so, but you can tell just by looking.
After about 18 minutes, taste your rice for bite. Good risotto should have bite, not be completely cooked to a mush, but the amount of bite is a purely personal taste. Keep adding stock until the rice has the right level of bite for you and the consistency is creamy but not runny and the rice slides off the back of your wooden spoon in a gloop.

Taste and season further if necessary. If you want cheese, stir some in just before serving. Eat in the company of a delicious man and a good movie.

Tabbouleh - Moroccan Bulgar Wheat Salad

Day two of the new diet, I suddenly realise I can eat Tabbouleh, something I could gorge on until kingdom come and a perfect spring dish full of zest and fresh flavours! Based on bulgar wheat and parsley, the ideal proportions are 2 parts parsley to one part bulgar, but I need sustenance and am eating this as a main dish, so I've upped the quantity of bulgar wheat somewhat. You can play around and see which you prefer!

To make enough for four people:

2 cups bulgar wheat (or about 200g)

one massive bunch of flat leaf parsley

one bunch of fresh mint leaves

two lemons

a lime

olive oil

3-4 spring onions

1 red onion

1 fresh red chilli

box of cherry tomatoes or 4 fat tomatoes on the brink of going soft

salt and pepper

dash of cayenne pepper

First prepare the bulgar wheat. Add two parts boiling water to one part bulgar wheat. Cover and simmer gently until the bulgar has absorbed all the water. let it rest and cool down, then fluff up with a fork, like making couscous.

Whilst the bulgar wheat is simmering, chop your parsley, mint, onions, chilli and tomatoes into tiny bits. Mix together in a bowl with the lemon and lime juice and the olive oil. Add the bulgar wheat to this mixture in a large salad bowl. Season generously. Taste, add whatever you think is missing, especially if the mixture is too dry. Finish off with a spot of cayenne pepper. If you're not on a wheat free diet, serve with pita bread and my garlicky hummus for a spring meze...

Broadway Market and the First Swim of 2010!

I took a trip to London Fields this weekend, up Hackney way to explore the Broadway Market and get my fix of sunshine in the park there, which boasts one of the few heated lidos in London. Whilst strolling through the charmin market, with its preponderance of double bass-playing doo-wop buskers, I managed to pack away a Damascan felafel wrap with pickles and lemon tahini, a tangy seasonal veggie curry with cumin rice and a couple of portuguese custard tarts as well as some proper cloudy apple and rasberry juice from Chegworth Farm.
All that before plunging into the cool waters of the lido for the first splash around of 2010, and very welcome it was too, if only to soothe the sunburn (yes!!!) aquired whilst snoozing under the plane-free sunny skies. More volcanic ash please Iceland, the skies over London have never been so peaceful!










To get to London Fields, I took the 26 bus from Liverpool St to St. Joseph's Hospice then walked down Westgate Street to the edge of the market. Or you can take the National Rail service to London Fields train station...

Brixton Follies: Bellantoni's Pasta Shop

This is the first of what I hope will be an exciting little series of reviews of eateries in the newly revamped, renovated and rejuvenated Granville Arcade in Brixton, AKA Brixton Village. Left abandoned and dilapidated for the last ten years or so, a creative arts agency by the name of Space Makers took it over just before Christmas and invited artists, thinkers, entrepreneurs, chefs, writers, cineasts and more to take over the empty stalls and transform them into usable spaces, thus reviving the back of the market with a series of pop-up shops, cafès, even a tiny cinema and street theatre, DJ booths and children's reading clubs.

The Space-Makers end of the market has only been opened a couple of weeks and yet already a few places are making waves in the national British press. Time Out, who recently made it its mission to track down London's best coffee, riled a few readers by failing to include Federation Coffee, by the Coldharbour Lane entrance to the market. More on that later...

The first eatery to catch my eye, not surprisingly, was an Italian one. Bellantoni's is a tiny shop, with dark wood panelled front and large windows which seats about 5 (at a squeeze) people inside and has two tables outside. Behind his small counter, Dario Bellantoni a young chef from Genova, whips up fresh hand-made pasta daily, along with a small selection of tasty bites and, of course, coffee. On the Monday I popped in, there were two baked pasta dishes with spinach and rocket, or shiitake mushrooms, as well as cannelloni stuffed with meat.

Good wholesome warming food, full of flavour and perfectly comforting given the sub-zero temperatures outside. My meal came to £5.50 with coffee, which is less than you'd spend on a dubious Big Mac meal from hell up the road. A few locals from the market strolled in for a chat and a bite as Dario busied himself twisting tagliatelle into nests and dishing out relationship advice to anyone who'd listen. Once he plonked down a small dish of homemade twisted bread beside me and a large jug of olive oil to drizzle I felt teleported back to the Bel Paese all over again. "Tomorrow, he said as I shovelled creamy spinachy deliciousness into my mouth, I will make stuffed tomatoes". There was also noise about a possible baked apple cake.

At the deli counter, a small selection of well chosen cheeses, including the sinful and divine Burratina - a sort of softer mozzarella oozing buttery cream - and smoked Scamorza which is perfect grilled until soft and served on a bed of rocket with thin slivers of parma ham. Neither of these cheeses are easy to find in the UK, so jot Dario's address down now!

The warm red walls of Bellantoni's are strung with chilli peppers and small framed anecdotes and quotes from the Chef, doling out such nuggets of wisdom as "If you know, you know, if you don't know, you don't know". Failing the messages on the wall, Dario's entertaining stories will pepper up your lunch as will the excellent coffee.

Bellantoni's is opposite the art gallery and the Enter the Field pop-up shop

Polpo - aperitivo a go-go

Polpo touts itself as a Venetian bacaro in London. I've never been to Venice, so far be it for me to say how authentic it may or may not be, but frankly it looks just like an enoteca to me... It serves the Italian equivalent of tapas, "cicheti" the kind of small, taster dishes you'd find in any good wine bar in the major Italian cities.

The place is always buzzing, it's worth booking from Thursday to Saturday and don't expect to find a quiet table. The one truly authentic Italian element to this place is the noise level, and that's without the massive family christening parties with screaming babies.

I visited in the quieter hours after three, with a vague hangover that needed nursing. One Aperol spritz later and I was struggling to decide on only three dishes (these are hard economic times) from the menu as it frankly all sounds good.

I began with Spratti in Saor - marinated sprats in a citrussy, salty sauce served on small crostini. Gone in a flash, they whet my appetite perfectly. C. had the wild mushroom piadina, which was stuffed to the gills with a variety of funghi, although the bread was a touch chewy and dry.

For some reason that confounds me, I opted to follow with cotechino, essentially a type of sausage made from pork, fatback and pork rind, usually stuffed into a pig's trotter. I've yet to meet an Italian who eats this outside of New Year's eve where it is considered traditional and symbolic of good luck. It was probably since I'd missed out this New Year on my pig's trotter helping that I felt a twinge of nostalgia. It was, in fact, delicious. Nothing like the squidgy, boiled-to-misery salted mush I'm used to having in a drunken state towards midnight on the 31st, but delicate and handsomely flavoured with pine nuts and savoy cabbage and mustard.

C. had the pork belly, with radicchio and hazelnuts to balance out the sweetness and add bite. Equally tasty. 

The big mistake? The fritto misto. Not that it was bad, it was crispy enough and not terribly greasy. But after narfing through all the rest, the portion just didn't seem so small anymore and the squid, inevitably, had that rubber band texture that I couldn't really stomach after pig's feet and, yes, another Aperol spritz.

Neverthelss, between the two of us, we pretty much polished our plates. No sign of a venetian either in the kitchen or in the bar though, which made me wonder at the tenuous connection to the city of water... But the wine list told another tale, with a great selection of big and lesser-known northern Italian producers. Shame the hangover had me stuck on the Aperol, but I shall return to get my nashers round a Tocai soon...

Prices are around £3-£6  per dish, three dishes makes an ample meal.

Polpo

41 Beak Street 
London W1F 9SB. 
020 7734 4479.

Pasta con gli Asparagi - Pasta with Asparagus

It's asparagus season in Italy and we got a kilo of the good stuff from Terracina to whip up a good lunch with. To make this easy and delicious pasta dish for 2, you'll need:

200 g pasta, go for the tube type or the flat bow-ties.

150 g of asparagus tips

1 huge clove of garlic, bashed

glug of good olive oil

big knob of unsalted butter

freshly ground black pepper

two teaspoons of anchovy paste or fresh anchovy fillets

Heat a shallow frying pan with an inch or two of salted water and bring to simmering point. Blanche the asparagus tips in the water for 3-4 minutes (5 if they're really fat) then drain the cooking water from the asparagus into a saucepan. Keep the asparagus to one side.

Top up the saucepan with more hot water and bring to the boil. Drop in the pasta and stir. While your pasta is cooking, take the frying pan you used before and pour in a good tablespoon of olive oil and a knob of butter and heat until the butter froths, then drop in the bashed garlic clove and swirl around in the butter. 

Add 3-4 anchovy fillets or the anchovy paste

and stir until dissolved in the oil/butter mix. 

Once this is done, add the asparagus tips and cook on a low heat, stirring occasionally. Add a generous dose of black pepper.

Drain the pasta once cooked and add to the pan with the asparagus, coating the pasta in all the butter and oil. If necessary add a tablespoon of the cooking water to help coat everything. Add just the tiniest amount of grated parmesan if you want.

Spring Greens with Chilli Oil

Part of my 100% British Menu!

Dead easy to prepare, healthy and with a little spicy kick! To prepare (for 4), you'll need:

500 g Spring Greens

1 tbs good olive oil

2 small dried chilli peppers

1 fat clove of garlic, bashed with back of a knife

salt 

handful of pine nuts

Method:

Heat a tiny frying pan without oil. Toss in some pine nuts and toast over a hot flame until golden brown.

 

Put to one side. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, toss in the spring greens and boil vigorously for 3-4 minutes. Whilst you do that heat the olive oil in a frying pan and add to it the garlic and the crushed chillies, stirring to flavour the oil. When the garlic has turned golden brown, discard it. Strain the greens from the water, get as much liquid out as possible.

Toss the greens into the hot chilli oil, coat evenly and serve sprinkled on top with toasted pine nuts. 

Serve with the Oven-Baked Chicken with Red Wine sauce.

Sahara - Eritrean Restaurant (ROME)

Sahara - Eritrean Restaurant

43, Viale Ippocrate

Rome 00161

tel: +39 06 4424 2583

Rome boasts a fair number of Eritrean and Ethiopian restaurants, but this one has both the better interior (and exterior terrace) and spicier, better presented food. Run by an Italian and his Eritrean wife, this bright and sunny restaurant offers diners a choice between elegant seated area or more traditional wicker basket tables and low pouf seats, and, in the summer under a lantern-lit canopy on the terrace. 

The waitresses all wear traditional white linen robes with colourful headresses and, dazzling smiles aside, are polite and efficient the service is speedy. There are plenty of vegetarian options, including a tasty, if slightly sweet couscous and spicy hot lentil or chickpea purèes. Meat abounds, mincet abish is tender ground beef very lightly cooked in butter and simmered in ginger, cardamom and white pepper. Zighini, Francesco's favourite is a stew made either with beef or lamb and its pungeant sauce has a spicy start but a rich sweet finish, the name itself is that of the particular spice mix of about 25 different spices used to rub and stew the meat in. 

Most of the dishes are served on injera a sort of light, fluffy very wide pancake made of tef, a grain similar to millet, and you scoop the food up by tearing off a piece of injera and dipping it or wrapping it around the various tidbits on your injera. Its fun, and feels good to dispense with the niceties of (and unnecessary) cutlery. Only word of warning is it's very filling, so unless you're into eating loads of bread with every meal or are absolutely ravenous, don't order a starchy starter, or dip into the breadbasket before your mains!

There are South Africa wines on the menu, nothing dazzling, but perfectly suited to the hot, spicy dishes on offer and just what you'd expect from a decent, budget ethnic restaurant. It is possibly in the Eritrean food department that Rome offers its best shot at ethnic cuisine, because frankly, the other imports are sorely lacking in quality!

Brodo di Francesco - Francesco's vegetable broth

At heart, every Italian man is a mummy's boy, and Francesco is no exception. If he's down with the snuffles, or it's been a cold day, or... even in the height of blistering Italian summer, there's few things Fra prefers than a bowl of steaming hot brodo, like his mamma makes, with a hunk of bread for dipping.

Reputed to have mystical healing properties (think of it as an Italian "Jewish chicken soup"), its piss-easy to make, tastes fantastic and probably does make you feel a whole lot healthier afterwards...

You will need the following in any quantities and proportions you prefer. We both like it with a generous dose of celery, I quite like it with leeks:

carrots

onions

leeks

zucchini

garlic

potatoes

flat leaf parsley

water

olive oil

vermicelli or small stars pasta

pecorino or grana cheese

Chop up your veggies, heat some oil in a pan and start by softening the onions, celery, parsley and garlic.

Add the carrots and potatoes, then finally the zucchini. Cover the lot with salted water and leave to simmer for about 40 minutes. Whip out your blender, or if you're feeling authentic and old-fashioned, a granny-style vegetable musher and blend all your veggies together until smooth and not too watery.

Bring to the boil again and add some vermicelli, or small pasta stars if you're really hungry or simply enjoy the soup as it is. Drizzle some olive oil on top, a grating of cheese and serve with good bread.

And no drinking cold liquids with it, or you'll have Fra to deal with...

Orecchiette con broccoli

I went to the greengrocer's this morning as the fridge was bare and came across some lovely bunches of purple-sprouting broccoli, a British classic with a very short season. Since one of my favourite Italian dishes is the Puglian classic orecchiette coi broccoli - or orecchiette con cime di rapa I thought I'd have a bash at making it using some good British broccoli instead. Cime di Rapa are turnip tops, or what we in the UK call Calabrese broccoli, tight green sprigs of what looks like broccoli but longer and thinner, with flat, long leaves and tough roots. The taste is quite bitter and marries perfectly with orecchiette "little-ears" pasta as the sprigs disintegrate whilst cooking and nestle in the crook of the ear shapes. 

To make the orecchiette you'll need:

1 cup of semolina flour

2 cups of grano tenero tipo 00 pasta (you'll find it under "pasta flour" in the supermarket)

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1 cup of lukewarm water

For the sauce:

bunches of purple-sprouting broccoli or calabrese broccoli (cime di rapa)

garlic

dried chilli peppers

olive oil

Method:

Mix together the two flours and the salt and form a mound on your work surface. Dig a well in the centre of the mound and pour in a bit of the water. 

Working from the edges of the mound inwards, slowly form a dough out of the water and flour mixture until you have a soft, round ball of dough. Knead this for about 20 minutes until it is elastic and firm. At this point, put a large pan of salted water on to boil. 

Roll it into long, thin strips. Take one of the strips, and rip a pea-sized amount off it in a little ball, the press the ball into the pal of your hand using your thumb to flatten it into a small round ear shape. Continue until you've used up all the pasta dough. 

To make the broccoli sauce...

Your pan of water should be boiling by now, so plop in the broccoli. These will have been trimmed off their tough stalks and separated into small florets and leaves. 

Boil for no more than three minutes. Drain them but conserve the cooking waster which (if you're using purple sprouting broccoli) will have taken on a blueish hue. These are all the good nutrients and flavour of the broccoli which we will now cook our pasta in. 

Once you've drained the broccoli, heat up a generous spoon of olive oil in a pan and add some chopped garlic and pepperoncino: small bird's eye chillies, to taste (the Pugliesi like their spice, as do the Calabresi). Fry these lightly then add in the broccoli, leave these to simmer in the frying pan gently as you cook the pasta. 

Bring the broccoli cooking water to the boil again, and toss in the orecchiette. Give them 3-4 minutes then drain them and add them to the broccoli in the pan. Mix well and coat all the orecchiette with the broccoli and oil and serve with salty pecorino. 

A good wine to have with this is a rich red pugliese Primitivo di Salento...

Warm Salad of Wild Greens- Minestra di Erbe Spontanee

Minsetra di Erbe Spontanee - Stewed wild greens

To accompany our delicious stuffed aubergines, Rafaello's mum cooked us up a dish which represents the core of Cilento traditional peasant cooking. From a time in which resources were scarce, nothing was wasted and people made do with what little they could find comes this rich and delicately fragrant side dish of wild herbs. All of the ingredients are leaves and herbs that grow wild in the surrounding mountains and thus were free for everyone to use at a time when market vegetables were expensive and few. Its hard work to make though as one has to go out forraging for the ingredients ones self, not an easy feat on barren, rocky steep mountains. The result however is worth the struggle. Not even salt is added to the stew - simply herbs and water because the varied ingredients produce such a vibrant mixture of flavours.

You will need:

-a large deep cooking pot filled with bubbling boiling water.

-any quantity desired of the following wild greens:

dandelion leaves
wild fennel
borage leaves
nettles
thistle leaves
zucchini flowers

Put all the leaves in the water, boil for about 6-9 minutes, drain and squeeze out excess water.

Heat a good spoon of good olive oil in a pan, add the drained herb mixtures and a pinch of salt and toss in the warmed oil. Serve hot with fresh bread.

Of course, the beauty of this soup is you can add what you find in season, fava beans in spring time, fresh basil, thyme and oregan etc... But the wild fennel is what really gives the soup its kick!