Kavey Eats

Tuesday, 17 January 2012

Win an Asda Extra Special Hamper

Some time before Christmas, I was invited by Asda to attend a blogger event at Leiths cookery school. You may have seen the TV adverts promoting the partnership between Asda and Leiths, whereby Leiths have given their stamp of approval to a selection of the Asda Extra Special range.

I'll admit that I reacted in a very unbecoming way, disdainful that a respected professional cookery school would be endorsing a range from what I perceived as a cheap supermarket with products to match. So I'll put my hand up and state that I was wrong, unequivocally wrong. Every single one of the products I've tasted from the Asda Extra Special range has been excellent, and would hold its own against products from any other supermarket, whether that's Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose or M&S. When I take prices into account, I'm even more impressed and genuinely disappointed I don't have a branch near me.

At the school, Leiths Managing Director, Camilla Schneideman, explained that her team had not only handpicked their favourite products, based on taste and quality of ingredients, but they had also developed a range of recipes using the products, to give Asda shoppers some fresh ideas on how to use them well. Initially, the partnership focused on Asda's Extra Special Christmas range, but I understand it will be an on-going partnership through the year.

Rather then sit down to a meal prepared by someone else, we scrubbed up, put on our aprons and spent a happy couple of hours in the Leiths' kitchens, cooking a festive feast using the Leiths recipes. In teams of 4, we cooked canapés, starters, a main with sides and a delicious pudding. Luckily, some of the ingredients preparation had been done for us, such as peeling and weighing, so we were able to do a lot in a relatively short time. Only after all our hard work did we sit down and enjoy the fruits of our labours. My stand out favourite was the rich gravy accompanying the rack of venison, and the chocolate Yule log, but everything was very tasty.

Asda kindly offered a Christmas hamper for a Kavey Eats competition, but as I was running a fair few competitions during that period already, I asked for a non-seasonal hamper instead, to cheer someone up through the new year blues. Being a picky sort, I made the selection myself and have chosen everything from biscuits and popcorn to crisps and nuts to balsamic vinegar and dipping oils to pasta and pesto to chutney, gravy and honey. There's even a nice bottle of red wine and one of bubbly cava!

Contents of Prize Hamper: Extra Special mini meringues, Extra Special Aceto Balsamico di Modena, Extra Special all butter parmesan and garlic mini twists, Extra Special soft-baked apple cookies, Extra Special stem ginger chocolate, Extra Special Belgian milk chocolate and pecan popcorn clusters, Extra Special caramelised onion chutney, Extra Special black pepper ciabatta croutons, Extra Special garlic dipping oil, Extra Special hand-decorated toffee cake, Extra Special apricot crumbles, Extra Special Italian conchiglioni, Extra Special Italian pesto alla Genovese, Extra Special rich beef gravy, Extra Special Spanish orange blossom honey, Extra Special spiced plum and ginger marinade, Extra Special Vietnamese jumbo cashew nuts, Extra Special vegetable crisps, Extra Special Marques Del Norte Rioja Reserva, Extra Special Mas Miralda Cava Vintage 2010 Brut

How to enter

You can enter the competition in 2 ways.

Entry 1 – Answer the question
Leave a comment below, answering the following question:
What's your best tip for combatting the January blues?

Entry 2 – Tweet
Tweet the (exact) sentence below:
I'd love to win an Asda Extra Special hamper from kaveyeats.com #KaveyEatsAsda

Rules & Details

The deadline for entries is midnight GMT Friday 27 January 2012.
One blog entry and one twitter entry per person.
The winner will be selected from all valid entries using a random number generator.
The prize is a hamper of food and drink from the Leiths Approved Asda Extra Special range, with an approximate value of contents of £50 (based on current prices). The prize includes delivery, and can be delivered to UK mainland addresses only.
Asda reserve the right to substitute any items that are out of stock for other Leiths Approved Asda Extra Special items of a similar value.
The prize cannot be redeemed for cash.
The prize is offered directly by Asda.
Valid entries must contain either an email address or twitter account, for contacting the winner. For those leaving a comment using their blogger/ Google ID, please make sure an email address is visible in your profile.
The winner will be notified by email or twitter. If no response is received by the end of Tuesday 31 January, the prize will be forfeit and a new winner will be picked and contacted.

*If you don't have a secondary email address already and are nervous about sharing your main email address on the internet, why not set up a new free email account on hotmail, gmail or yahoo, that you can use to enter competitions like this?

Thanks to Asda and Leiths for inviting me to the Extra Special cookery class and for offering this prize.

Sunday, 15 January 2012

Greenleaf, Holborn

When invited to review relatively new restaurant Greenleaf, it was described to me as "a lovely Chinese restaurant […serving] really lovely food, very different from the greasy little restaurants in Chinatown". I can't say I've found the food in Chinatown restaurants particularly greasy but evening menus are certainly formulaic and most offer little to excite. (I visit most often for dim sum lunch.)

I checked out Greenleaf's menu before accepting the invitation, and certainly there were a few dishes that caught my eye; things I'd be tempted to order, as they weren't your run-of-the-mill chicken in black bean sauce or sweet and sour chicken, though certainly there are familiar classics on the menu too.

Certainly, the interior was a nice change; modern and attractive in white and shades of warm grey with a simple circle motif wall pattern, bonsai trees in the alcoves and modern white light shades.

From the tea menu I ordered a pot of Tie Guan Yin Blue Tea (£2.50), listed as a "lightly-fermented blue tea with mild scent but strong tea taste […] refreshing and stimulating". I drink a lot of oolong, and when my tea first arrived and a cup was poured for me, I was sure I'd accidentally been given the Dan Cong Jasmine instead, so heady was the floral jasmine aroma but so lacking the normal oolong taste. I was assured that it was tie guan yin, so decided to let it brew a little longer. Of course, the waiter was correct, after a longer steep, the distinctive flavours of oolong revealed themselves and I began to realise this was an absolutely fantastic example. Much paler than the tie guan yins I have previously tried, but with a complex and full bodied taste, I felt this tea boded well for the meal to come. The waiter was proud to tell me that this tea is from very near where he grew up.

When my friend finally arrived, we tucked into a selection of starters from the a la carte menu.

Softshell crab in salt and pepper (£5.50) was crunchy, well seasoned and with lots of flavour.

Grilled scallops with Japanese BBQ sauce (£6.80) were delicious, though the cherry tomatoes distracted from the taste – we decided they must be for garnish. I love miso paste, so these were always going to be a winner for me.

Grilled minced pork dumplings served with vinegar (£4.50) are fairly ubiquitous so these had to live up. They did: generously sized, so juicy inside that they spurted as we bit into them and with wrappings which had a lovely balance between soft, chewy and crunchy. The flavours were spot on.

So far so good but we had picked up on one thing neither of us liked at all; every dish we'd been served so far was garnished with out-of-season fruits. Plump raspberries appeared on all three dishes, not to mention those cherry tomatoes…

Time for some mains…

First out were the Stir-fried tiger prawns with garlic, chilli and sesame in breadcrumbs (£8.80). Yes, that's two more out-of-season raspberries! Although the prawns were large, there were only two in the serving, which is a little steep for just under £9. The breadcrumb coating was delicious, with lots of salt, chilli and richness of flavour. This made up for the prawns which, whilst well cooked to the right texture, lacked any real flavour of their own. Really good fresh prawns have their own sweetness which would have been noticeable even through the strongly flavoured coating. We enjoyed these but they didn't blow us away.

The next dish did, though! Described as Stir-fried ground beef fillets with mushroom in red wine sauce (£11.80), I was expecting minced beef, but what came out were generous chunks of silky soft beef and mushrooms in a delicious sauce. Both of us were mesmerised with this fusion of a European red wine and mushroom sauce with the Chinese flavours of ginger and spring onion. I'd never have expected it to work but we both really loved this dish, to our surprise. (And yes, that's more raspberries you can see nestled in the greenery, there!)

Our waiter suggested we try a clay pot dish when I asked him what he felt was unmissable from the menu. We chose the Stewed tofu with prawns, chicken, scallops and pork (£13.80) and it was marvellous! Even with big fat prawns, chicken, pork and scallops, the tofu was still the star of the show. These circles of fried tofu were so meltingly soft inside, they almost felt like liquid balls bursting in the mouth. I was amazed by the braised bean curd at Pearl Liang last year; this tofu clay pot dish was even better!

We finished off with more tea and macarons. You guessed it, they too were served with out-of-season fruit. In fact, the only dishes to escape this obsession of presentation were the tofu hot pot and the steamed rice. The macarons were decent enough.

Although I usually take PR claims for new restaurants with a pinch of "they would say that wouldn't they" salt, I have to concede that this one was right on the money with her "really lovely food" recommendation. Everything was good, much of it was excellent.

With the exception of the tiger prawns, I thought prices were very reasonable. Our bill, including two glasses of wine, came to £65 plus service. And of course, we ordered 3 starters and 3 mains between two of us; you could knock a third off that bill by being less greedy!

A lunch menu of dishes served with rice or noodles is also available. Most dishes between £6.50 and £7.80, with one at £8.80.

After our meal we popped downstairs to view the two karaoke rooms. Both spacious, with comfortable banquette seating, they hold a maximum of 12 and 15 people respectively; I recommend you visit and check how many you think is optimum for each room as I'd probably go with 8 and 10. Rather than a separate room charge, they are rented out with a minimum spend requirement (£200 and £220) which is less than £25 per person for the group sizes I'd book; very easy to eat and drink that much during an evening. Guests can eat in the main dining room or down in the karaoke rooms, as they prefer.

Kavey Eats dined as a guest of Greenleaf.

Friday, 13 January 2012

Garlic & Sapphires by Ruth Reichl

I can't recall where I first read about Garlic & Sapphires but it must have been a positive review as I immediately added the book to my Amazon wishlist. Thanks to kind friends, it popped through my letterbox over Christmas and I tore through it during the first two days of the new year.

The fourth book by former restaurant critic Ruth Reichl, Garlic And Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Food Critic is a wonderfully entertaining meander through Reichl's working life at The New York Times. Essentially a string of anecdotes strung together with a simplified personal narrative, it's almost always amusing, often enlightening and occasionally touching too.

Tales of creating deliciously audacious disguises with wigs, wardrobes and wicked backstories are interspersed with stories of visiting many of New York's best known restaurants, and many lesser known places as well. These chapters include the restaurant reviews as they were published in the paper, giving a great insight into how Reichl translated the multiple visits she made to each restaurant into succinct and pithy pieces for print.

Keen cooks may also appreciate the seventeen recipes Reichl has shared; related to events in the book, they range from New York cheesecake to hash browns to vanilla cake to spaghetti carbonara.

At first, Reichl revels in her new role, relishing the chance to transform herself into an increasing number of alter egos which we too can giggle and gasp over. But just as the reader pales of the endless parade of new characters, so does Reichl, increasingly dissatisfied with these deceptions and her own changes in behaviour as a result.

It's not a deep book, by any means, and yet we do go on a journey with the author from start to finish.

An enjoyable read; perfect for a long hot soak in the tub or whiling away the time in the airport lounge or on the train.

Garlic And Sapphires by Ruth Reichl is currently available in paperback on Amazon for £5.30 (RRP £8.99).

Tuesday, 10 January 2012

Gooey Delicious Banana Cake (Revisited)

Charles Campion's Banana Cake is a recipe I copied across to my blog from a post that originally appeared on a food chat board, or in my general online diary, or was sent via email… or in one of the many places I shared my food experiences before I finally realised I was "stealth-blogging" and set up Kavey Eats!

It's such a good recipe I always intended to go back and add photos the next time I made it… but, although I've enjoyed making and eating it so many times since, I never have.

My talented-photographer-friend Matt Gibson made it recently and showed me his gorgeous photos. My brain started to tick tock tick tock and I discarded the plan to simply slot his photos into that old post, and asked him to guest blog it afresh instead.

Sharing the same recipe on a blog twice might be odd but Matt's lack of food processor means he's brought some new advice to the recipe, not to mention his confirmation that it's a doddle even for novice or nervous bakers.

Over to Matt:

One evening, a week before Christmas, I peered into my fruit bowl. My three remaining bananas stared forlornly back at me. Over-ripe and -- based on evidence from the two I'd already eaten -- also rather bruised underneath. What to do?

Twitter to the rescue. "Got a banana bread recipe" I asked. "Only this one I've found is American, and I have no idea how many bananas there are in two-and-one-third cups."

Auntie Kavey responded instantly, pointing me at her Charles Campion's Banana Cake page. Not only did it sound easy -- always a bonus for an inexperienced baker like me -- but it called for three medium-sized bananas, exactly what I needed to make use of.

So, I dived in, stymied briefly by the local Co-Operative supermarket having run out of both eggs *and* caster sugar (hint, Co-Op: more people than normal are probably baking stuff in the week before Christmas.)

Another minor speed-bump in my road was the first instruction in the recipe, "Measure all ingredients straight into your food processor and whizz into smooth batter," which rather assumes you own something as fancy as a food processor. Still, at least I've got an electric whisk. Instead of boshing it all together I cubed the butter, which I figured would be the difficult-to-mix bit, and rubbed it into the sifted flour and sugar until I had a breadcrumb-like consistency. Then I added everything else, roughly mixing as I went. Finally I took up my electric whisk and zizzed the mixture to a nice smooth batter.

And that was the hard work done, really. I poured the mix into my greased, floured loaf-tin. Pausing only briefly to check I was neither very young, very old, nor pregnant, I took my life in my hands and tasted a wooden spoon's scraping's-worth of the cake mix that had clung on in the bowl. Niiiice. So, all the signs were good.

I popped the loaf tin straight into my pre-heated oven, did the washing-up, and went to post some "before" photos on Twitter. This is the 21st century, after all; if you've not tweeted about it, it hasn't happened.

About forty-five minutes later I was walking past my kitchen door and had to stop and stick my head in and inhale the lovely banana-ey bready smell that was coming from the oven. Another fifteen minutes and I was pulling open the oven, crossing my fingers, and manhandling the loaf tin onto the kitchen worktop with two strategically-positioned tea towels (I know, I know. "Oven gloves" has been just above "food processor" on my kitchen equipment shopping list for about eight years now.)

It looked good. Dark-to-golden brown, with a nice light sponginess showing through the split that had formed on the top. After a few minutes, I gently tried to slide the loaf out, but it felt a bit too wobbly and was clinging to the sides, so I tried to practise some patience and left it to cool in its tin for a while. Once it wasn't so hot, it slid out more easily, and kept its nice loaf shape as I rolled it onto the cooling rack, though the gooey bottom did sink a millimetre or so into the rack as it settled densely down.

After my disaster with Nigella's Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake, which stayed entirely liquid in the middle when I made it, I was a little scared to finally start slicing into my banana cake, but my fears were unfounded. It was a little gooey at the bottom, but pleasantly so, and the rest was a lovely moist cake with a delicious light crust on top and at the edges (the end parts were my personal favourite.) The banana flavour was good, and I hadn't overdone the vanilla, despite my worries.

All in all, this was a fantastic recipe, easy for the baking beginner, even if you're only armed with a £4.99 electric whisk from Argos that smells a bit like a Scalextric car when it's running. You'll never let over-ripe bananas go to waste again.

My beginner's tips:

* "a few drops" of vanilla essence is just under a quarter of a teaspoonful.
* Wait until the loaf's cooled a bit before you try to de-tin it.
* Don't shop for cake ingredients in the Co-Op just before Christmas.

Here's the recipe again with my original notes below. ~ Kavey

Gooey Delicious Banana Cake

Ingredients
175 grams caster sugar
225 grams white self-raising flour
100 grams unsalted butter (I always use lightly salted actually)
3 tablespoons fresh milk (I used fully skimmed as that's what we buy)
2 large fresh eggs
3 medium sized, very ripe bananas
A few drops vanilla essence

Method

Preheat oven to 185 C (adjust down for fan ovens).

Measure all ingredients straight into your food processor and whizz into smooth batter.
Butter a large loaf tin well, then throw in some flour, tap and turn the tin to coat the flour over all surfaces and then tap out any excess into the bin/ sink.
Pour the batter into the tin.
Bake for an hour.

Note: Campion says "Because we are looking for a soggy end product, the old-faithful test of sticking in a skewer and withdrawing it clean is not appropriate. With practice you'll simply need to glance at it to tell. In the meantime, because of the style of cake we're trying to achieve, there's a wide margin of error to make things easier."

Note: If it helps, I find the cake rises delightfully and the top turns a lovely rich chocolatey brown (darker than golden brown) and also usually splits, like a lemon drizzle cake.

All images by Matt Gibson.

Saturday, 7 January 2012

Confit Clementines & Lemon Posset

When thinking about a suitably delicious but prepare-ahead dessert for Christmas day, lemon posset sprang immediately to mind. I first made it last January and was amazed at how quick and easy it was. After that, I took it along as my contribution to a couple of cooking clubs, and was delighted at the extremely positive feedback.

On those occasions I served it with a single long strip of candied lime in each serving. (I stuck it upright into the little black and white espresso cups, above, but forgot to take another picture).

This time I was determined to bring one of my favourite winter citrus, the wonderful clementine, into play but I didn't think candied clementine peel would work.

At first, I thought about making a two-layered posset – lemon underneath and clementine on top. But I wasn't sure whether pouring a second layer of hot posset would cause the previously set layer below to melt and result in a messy mix.

Luckily, I found inspiration in my RSS feed when I saw a post in which blogger Atomic Shrimp preserved whole clementines in sugar syrup. Essentially, the recipe creates candied or confit clementines which are soft and yielding and break apart easily.

Knowing the preserved clementines would be tooth-achingly sweet I made the lemon posset with a little less sugar and a touch more lemon juice than usual, to balance the sweet with more sharp. My unadjusted recipe is below; drop sugar by 30-40 grams and up lemon juice by about 20 ml for a slightly sharper posset.

The dessert went down well! Everyone enjoyed the rich, thick, silky creaminess of the posset and most also really liked the clementines. I particularly loved the way my clementine oozed thick, sweet syrup as I tore into it with my spoon and how the distinct flavour of my favourite orange citrus came through loud and clear.

Lemon Posset

In medieval times posset referred to a hot drink of milk curdled with wine or ale, often with treacle and spices added for flavour. It was considered to be a general restorative and a remedy for various illnesses. Later, in the 16th-century, posset was often made from citrus juice; cream and sugar, sometimes with the addition of egg; it sounds rather like lemon curd to me, but was apparently served as a sauce to accompany meat. These days posset most commonly refers to a cold set dessert containing cream, sugar and citrus juice, similar to a syllabub but without any wine.

Ingredients
600 ml double cream
180 g caster sugar
90 ml lemon juice

Note: I nearly always double the recipe to make twice the amount.
Note: Extra portions can wrapped in clingfilm and frozen. Defrost overnight in the fridge before serving.

Method

Put the cream and caster sugar in a large saucepan (that allows for the liquid to double in volume) and bring to the boil, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.

This takes several minutes but keep a close eye, as when it reaches boiling point, it expands very fast.

Reduce the heat so that the mixture doesn't boil over, but not too low as you want to allow it to bubble enthusiastically for 4 to 5 minutes, stirring regularly.
Remove from the heat, stir in the lemon juice and leave to settle for a few minutes.

Pour into small serving dishes or cups and leave to cool. Refrigerate for a couple of hours before serving.

Confit Clementines in Syrup

Ingredients
Approximately 750 grams whole, small clementines
500g white sugar
500ml water
Optional: 100 ml gin or other spirit

Note: AS' recipe used cloves and cinnamon in the syrup to add spiced flavours. I chose to omit these, as I wanted the pure clementine flavour to dominate.

Method

Prepare the clementines by washing them well, picking off the woody stalk remnants and cutting a small cross into the non-stalk side with a sharp knife. This will allow the syrup to penetrate the clementine and ensure it's fully softened and saturated all the way through. Take care not to make the crosses too large or the clementines may split during cooking. An alternative might be to prick the skin all over with a thin skewer instead, though I've not tried this yet.

this cross is a touch on the generous side

Choose a pan that fits all your clementines in a single layer. Personally, I'd pick a pan that fits them all in fairly snuggly, as a smaller pan means a greater depth of syrup. My pan was a little larger.
Put the sugar and water into the pan over a gentle heat and stir until the sugar is full dissolved.
Carefully place the fruits into the syrup, to avoid splashing hot sugar syrup. I put all mine the same way up (see later).

Bring the sugar syrup to the boil, and then reduce the heat to a very low simmer and cover.
For the next hour, continue to cook the clementines at this low temperature, returning to the pan every ten minutes or so to turn all the fruits over. By keeping mine all the same way up, I found it easier to quickly identify which ones I'd not yet turned each time, though towards the end of the cooking time, a couple of them spun around quite contrarily!

Sometimes, just before turning, I gave each clementine a gentle squeeze down on the base of the pan, to squeeze a little of the juice out and encourage more syrup to take it's place, however take care as too much pressure will cause your clementines to split apart.
If the clementines have had enough cooking time, you should see that the skins look a little darker in colour, because they are saturated with sugar syrup. The fruits will also be fairly soft to the touch, if you squeeze them gently with a spoon.
If your clementines were larger than average, or the fruits don't seem to be soft, continue cooking for another half an hour, turning regularly, as before.
When the clementines are ready, turn off the heat and lift them carefully out of the pan with a slotted spoon and pack them into sterilised jars.
If you are adding alcohol, stir this into the sugar syrup now. The amount above will not give a strong alcoholic kick so increase by taste if you wish.
Pour the sugar syrup over the fruit in the jars to cover them completely.

If there isn't enough syrup to cover the fruit, you can make more up by dissolving sugar into water.

Having preserved enough clementines for Christmas day dessert the first time around, I made some more a few days later. These ones I stored in sterilised jam jars and kilner jars, as above. I sterilised the jars (and lids) as I usually do for jam and chutney making and put the fruit into them whilst both fruit and jars were still hot. I am assuming that the high sugar content saturating the fruit should preserve them for medium to long term storage, however if you are at all unsure, you may wish to boil the sealed jars in a hot water bath.