The blog specialists known as the Big Blog Company want you -- if you're a coding and (in some cases) design whiz. One thing the job spec doesn't tell you, though, is that working with tBBC comes with amazing perks.

Specifically, you'll be invited to tBBC HQ for feasts like the one pictured at right (yours truly sat at the head of the table, looking very confused by these things called knives and forks). Not only is the food reliably fantastic, but as your fearless gastroblogger here has just joined the company, it's only going to get better. I don't mean to sound immodest, but I am a good cook -- and I'm better when I collaborate with my old friends and new colleagues.

Recent experiments have proved this. At the dinner pictured, Adriana Cronin-Lukas and I put together a simple fruit salad, but let it macerate for an hour or so in a shot of lime schnapps and the juice of a couple of limes. To call the result sublime would not only be a horrible pun, but entirely truthful.

Yesterday, our working lunch consisted of amazing smoked marlin, grilled spicy chicken breast, hummus and taramasalata with garlic pitta bread and a fresh loaf of sourdough, ripe tomatoes, a curiously delicious hunk of nettle cheese (no it didn't hurt to bite into it), and bowls of the most exquisitely ripe and juicy mango you ever did taste. And I haven't mentioned how the calibre of coffee they brew at HQ has turned me from someone who never, ever drank coffee to someone who only ever drinks it -- and lots of it -- when I am there.

Plus, there are always at least one or two pretty girls in attendance. And everyone loves a pretty girl, no? (I do, especially when they're as smart as the ones we invite over for dinner.)

Good food, good wine, good coffee, attractive surroundings...And you get paid. If you know of a better gig going, it just can't be legal or safe.

All you need to know about the Blueprint Café:

1. It was the first restaurant in the Butler's Wharf Gastrodome, and is upstairs from the Design Museum on the banks of the Thames in London.

2. It has an amazing view.

3. It has one of the most deceptively simple-yet-delicious starters of all time: asparagus with a poached egg, sprinkled with Parmesan.

4. I am reliably informed by a fellow diner that the Blueprint Café's veal hash is the best hash ever.

5. To this eel virgin, the smoked eel was a revelation. A more jaded, experienced eel eater, who ordered it with some trepidation, also enjoyed the eel.

6. The Blueprint Café's crème brûlée has ruined me for all other crèmes brûlées. It's the best I've ever tasted, better even than those I've had in France.

7. All of this comes at a price that, while not cheap, is not piss-takingly expensive.

8. And the surrounding neighbourhood of shops, restaurants, museums and galleries is really nice.

9. You should go there.

10. You should take me with you.

Please excuse the slightly shaky, blurry photo at right; it was taken by a friend who had just emerged from the throes of a ferocious gastrogasm. (Actually, no -- he took the photo before we'd even sat down to eat. Must have been the anticipation getting to him.)

There is a brief story behind this dish, and it's somewhat uninteresting, but I record it here for posterity: After a long day of blog expert business, which had started several hours earlier with a lunch of black pudding, turkey, salami, salad, and various chutneys, we were tired and hungry. One of us had been thinking about aubergines (eggplant) all day, and fancied something containing the gorgeous purple vegetables. I had an idea about how to make them. We went to the market. We bought some food. We came back and cooked it. It was awesome.

Continue reading "Aubergine Mozzarella Bake"

Yes, I'm going through a bit of a chickpea phase right now. I can't help it. Is it pathetic to think of a pulse as cute? I know it is, but...they are! Even their names -- chickpeas and garbanzo beans -- are cute. Not too cute to eat, though, obviously.

I was talking to the guy who taught me how to make patatas bravas about my new favourite soup. I told him that I'd bought a load of chickpeas and was wondering what to do with them. He advised me that a simple chickpea curry is very nice, I agreed that it sounded like it, and then I set off and made one for dinner. And lo, it was a smashing success.

It was also almost too easy.

Continue reading "Spinach and Chickpea Curry"

This is the only food I can share with my kitty. Not that I do share sardines with my kitty, but I could if I wanted. (Well, I do share them, but we don't eat from the same plate or anything. That would just be wrong.)

When I was growing up, sardines were considered the most disgusting food imaginable. Not that I had ever had them, but we all knew they were gross, because all the sitcoms had jokes about how nasty sardines were -- so it must have been true. (Anchovies were thought to be just as bad. Could we have been more wrong?)

Anyway. I first had sardines in a Spanish restaurant in London a few years ago, tapas-style. I was surprised that I liked them. Lately, I've taken to keeping tins of them on hand to have for lunch, because although I love to cook, I am also quite lazy and prefer not to do so all the time. And although I like sardines, the words of a close friend have stuck with me: "Any food that arrives on my plate with its spine intact is not for me." That's what I used to think. But my cat and I now know better.

Commenting on my fellow Samizdatista David Carr's post on Britain's supposed obesity "epidemic", Chris Goodman nails it, and makes me laugh heartily at the ridiculous line we're being fed -- no mean feat, that.

Food ought to be banned, or at least rationed by trained medical staff in public service centres, since people are not rational enough to use it properly. At the very least food should be labelled “Food can be bad for you”. Those who make billions of pounds growing and distributing food should not be allowed to give people what they want. It turns my stomach to think of all those multinationals making money out of producing delicious food. There ought to be a march against it. Think of the children! In a modern society politicians have a democratic mandate that decide what we should have for tea each day. I vote for the party that raises taxes in order to pay for more regulators.

Sadly, there are many people, in government and in the medical establishment, who are thinking exactly along those lines. Needless to say, I think each and every one of them should go suck an egg.

My first impressions -- of people, places, things...all nouns, in fact -- are often inaccurate. For instance, my first taste of physalis reminded me a tiny bit of (I am afraid there is no polite way to say this) sick. My second taste was somewhat tomato-esque, and by the third taste I was taken with its subtle sweetness with a very slight bitterness.

And in the beginning, I was most taken with the gorgeous, papery leaves of the physalis. For a summer fruit, it sure does look awfully autumnal. In fact, I had to be talked out of saving the leaves to use in Halloween decorations later this year.

But first, I had to do some research. What were these pretty things? I'd picked up a packet of them from the supermarket, as I'd seen them used to striking effect as a garnish at various restaurants, but had never actually tasted them. I discovered that the physalis is also known as the ground cherry, clammy ground cherry, Virginia ground cherry, and smooth ground cherry. My physalis came from Colombia, but they also grow in the US. Physalis is the Greek word for bladder, and these little ground cherries have been used as a diuretic to treat urinary problems.

Feeling as if I were back at school, I tried to find some recipe suggestions for these little berries, and squealed with glee when I found an old Mennonite recipe for physalis pie. For some reason, the idea of making an old Mennonite recipe with this new food was more exciting to me than making something modern. Alas, I don't really like pie, and I didn't have enough ground cherries to make it anyway.

But two commenters on the Plants Database entry for physalis noted that it makes excellent jam, which gave me an idea. I wasn't sure if I could produce an actual jam, especially as I didn't want to use any sugar, but I suspected I would come close. I had no idea just how pleasant the results would be.

Continue reading "Physalis Confit"

I recently enjoyed yet another meal in the company of the world's foremost blog experts. After much conversation and a little hilarity (yours truly could not open the bathroom door, and had to leave a voicemail message on one of their mobile phones, asking someone to come let me out -- which they did quite quickly, I should add), everyone was starving. There was only one thing for it: a Chinese takeaway.

I don't have takeaways very often, but when I do, I really enjoy them. It's actually pretty easy to eat healthily from a Chinese menu, at least opposed to hitting a pizza place or an Indian restaurant. I went for the always-satisfying beef with broccoli and mushrooms in oyster sauce, sans rice, and was glad I did so.

The next day, I was thinking what a piece of cake it would be to approximate certain takeaway favourites at home, but with many fewer calories, much less fat, and no MSG. So I tried it, with excellent results.

Now, granted, a big part of the pleasure of a takeaway is that you don't have to cook it yourself, but sometimes it's more of a chore to open up all those individual cartons than it is to chuck some stuff in a pan and stand by the stove for a couple of minutes. And also, it's cheaper this way. Plus, in the UK, takeaway places are open weird hours, and sometimes you want beef with broccoli for lunch, not at 9 PM. I'm not saying we should all stop getting takeaways -- perish the thought -- but merely suggesting that we do have healthier, more economically sound alternatives.

Continue reading "Fake-away Beef with Broccoli and Mushrooms"

This is baby food, adult food, and the only recipe I've ever posted that I haven't actually eaten myself. And it has its origins with a certain Scottish television presenter. But I'm reliably informed that it's fantastic.

I'd never made rice pudding before, but a while back, my friend Lisa asked me to make some for her 11-month-old daughter. (We all know I like to cook, so when I visit them, I tend to make batches of food for the baby. I love doing this, as I often feed Hannah when I am there, and I can tell you that it's just as gratifying to see a little one enjoy your cooking as it is to see a bunch of your friends wolfing it down around the dinner table.) Lisa had purchased Lorraine Kelly's Baby and Toddler Eating Plan, written by the infectiously cheerful morning TV host with Anita Bean. The book turned out to have tons of excellent recipes for babies and toddlers, most of which have been a huge hit with Hannah. One of those was a recipe for rice pudding, and that's been the biggest success of all. The baby loves it, especially mixed with stewed fruit or apple and pear compote or fresh mango.

When I found out about the latest edition of Is My Blog Burning?, which Pim had decreed would be rice-themed, I thought I'd feature this recipe. They don't call this nursery food for nothing, but nursery food has come back into vogue in Britain in recent years. So I made some for a friend, who told me he adores rice pudding, and it turned out to go down as well with him as it did with Hannah. I've not yet tried the stuff, but it does smell incredible.

Continue reading "Rice Pudding: An Is My Blog Burning? submission"

The sad thing? This is the after picture. If this cupboard is ever truly organised, it is a sign that I have far too much free time on my hands. Or at least that's what I tell myself to justify keeping it like this.

And is it a sign of old age or extreme lameness when one finds oneself fantasising about the spice rack of one's dreams? Probably a bit of both, I suspect.

NB Please, no comments from the peanut gallery about my Nescafé and Tetley teabags. I don't drink either, and only keep them on hand for company. It is my hope that if I don't splash out on the good stuff, people won't ask me to make them cups of tea and coffee all the time. So far, this faux hospitality tactic has worked a treat.

And I have owned that jar of bouquets garnis for at least two years. I've never used even one of the stupid things.

This recipe reminds me of a scene from a very bad 1980s sitcom, Just the Ten of Us. The show's characters, a family of ten, are sitting down to a home-cooked meal with the boyfriend of one of the daughters. Looking quizzically at what he's been served, the following exchange takes place between the boyfriend and the mother:

BF: "What are these things?"
Mother: "They're chickpeas. Garbanzo beans."
BF: "They look like little butts."

Okay, that's enough hyper-sophisticated humour for one day. This recipe came after I had a tin of chickpeas in my cupboard but no desire to make hummus or felafelburgers. I cribbed most of it from Sasha's pumpkin and chickpea stew, omitting the pumpkin and turmeric and swapping chicken stock for the vegetable stock. (I also left out the oil and cooked the onion and garlic in a bit of chicken stock instead.) This soup could not have been simpler to make, and it's really very good. I will definitely make it again, and soon, but with a lot less cayenne pepper -- I used about half a tablespoon -- as the broth was slightly too spicy for my palate.

In addition, I deliberately used a bit more stock than called for, so that this came out as more of a soup and less of a stew. Consequently, I didn't eat it with couscous, but if I were going to do so, I'd add some toasted pine nuts and almonds to the couscous first.