Not Quite Nigella

Gooey Chocolate Brownie and Strawberry Sandwich Cake

Inspired by the moistness of the Middle Eastern Blood Orange cake that eschewed flour in favour of almond meal, I combined a recipe of Nigella’s for Flourless Chocolate Brownies and an idea from Tessa Kiros’s Apples from Jam. With strawberries being plentiful now, I had two punnets of gorgeously huge and sweet berries. I love strawberries and whipped cream, in fact it’s my favourite way of eating them, but this can really only be improved with the addition of chocolate in its gooeyest form.

Brownies are never going to qualify as a health food, the number of eggs and weight of sugar and butter would effectively muzzle any such claims but there is nothing quite like that gorgeous moistness and quivering inner. And this brownie recipe is the Queen of Quiver. That is to mean that it is also a little more delicate than a sturdier less quiver-prone brownie but the reward is in the texture. Yes it is a downright pain to arrange into place but the grateful glances and moans of appreciation will help ease any plating traumas past.

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September 9th, 2008 by Not Quite Nigella

Gordon Ramsay Royal Hospital Road restaurant, London

Gordon Ramsay once said that his Royal Hospital Road is his pride and joy, if all goes bottoms up then he always has that baby. Only open Monday to Friday it’s also the hardest place to get a table, and at up to £120 a meal for just lunch, the costliest of his restaurants. To secure a coveted table one needs to ring exactly one month in advance, and to secure the table give them your credit card details and should you not show, they can at their discretion, deduct £100 per person for the meal missed. It’s all phrased very courteously but you get the feeling that they wouldn’t hesitate in doing so.

Dear sister of NQN,

Firstly let me thank you for your interest in Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.

I am pleased to confirm your table reservation at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, located at 68 Royal Hospital Road, London, SW3 4HP as follows:

Where guests wish to make a reservation, it is the restaurant’s policy to secure the booking with their credit card details. In the event that the booking is cancelled in whole or in part by you with less than 24 hours notice or results in a no-show it will be at the discretion of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay to charge £100 per person to your credit card.
We are sorry that this has become a requirement but, regrettably, our experience dictates this precaution. We would be grateful if you could indicate your acceptance by completing and returning this form in order to confirm your booking by fax on 020 7592 1213
Email us at: royalhospitalroad@gordonramsay.com. Unfortunately, we will have to release the table if we have not received the completed form within 48 hours.As we will call you a day before to reconfirm, may I ask you for a contact number where we will be able to reach you on the working day prior to your reservation. Cancellations must be made in writing and sent by fax to 020 7592 1213 or by e-mail to royalhospitalroad@gordonramsay.com

Verbal cancellations cannot be accepted.
We very much look forward to welcoming you at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.
On Behalf of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay

Picture in menu

The night before, we were left a rather firm sounding voicemail that we were expected at a certain time. The outside of the restaurant is understated elegance, with a simple plaque outside the door and a simple white building as befits the upmarket Chelsea area it resides in. Walking through the corridor there is a small area for guests to wait which also has many copies of his 3 Star chef book for those to read. There is no waiting though as service is brisk, they know who we are and lead us to our table. As it’s earlyish (12.30pm) the dining room room is about half full but within half an hour, all tables are full of diners.

The menu (excuse the fingerprints!)

The manager Jean-Claude Breton is a smoothie, reminiscent a little of Jerry Orbach. He asks us who is “hosting” the table to which we reply “Umm no-one”. Ahh ok not a problem, he smiles and hands us all menus. My sister and I don’t have prices on our menu but my husband has prices in his which is a first. It’s a nice touch if someone is hosting the table so that other guests feel more comfortable ordering without keeping watch of the price.

On the first pages are the a la carte menu featuring ravioli or lobster, langoustine and salmon poached in a light bisque with a lemongrass and chervil veloute as well as slow braised pied de cochon pressed then pan fried with ham knuckle, poached quail’s egg and hollandaise sauce as well as other fantastic sounding dishes. These can be had for £120. There is also following a menu Prestige or a tasting menu made up of 7 smaller dishes for £90. Then there is the Menu of the day, with 3 courses for £45.

Bread with salted and unsalted butter

We order a bit of everything from the Menu of the Day so that everyone can taste all of the dishes. Whilst we are waiting we receive salted and unsalted butter and are asked if we would like olive, white or brown sourdough bread. The olive is my husband’s favourite whilst the white sourdough thickly slathered with salted butter is my sister’s and mine. The service from the staff is wonderful, quiet and unobtrusive but anticipatory of your needs.

Amuse Bouche: vine riped tomato consomme

An amuse bouche arrives, a tomato consomme flavoured with coriander. It’s poured at the table and is intensively sweet with ripe tomatoes.

Quail and wild mushroom pithivier with confit leg and celeriac remoulade

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September 8th, 2008 by Not Quite Nigella

Olive Foccacia

I remember when Foccacia first came to the masses in Australia. And by the masses, I mean me and other non Italians who had never tasted this delicious, slightly oily but delicious bread before. I remember some confusion as to how to pronounce it. My friend called it “Fok-ar-CHI-ya”. And no-one laughed because no-one else knew how to pronounce it.

One of the best kinds of breads you can eat is an Olive bread. It just cannot be beat for taste with the salty black olives giving the bread the perfect occasional flavour punch. This is great for sandwiches with the olives digging in deep into the dough and when sliced in half horizontally it gives two slices of olive dotted bread. It’s also wonderful with soups or to soak up a great sauce. The recipe is an adaption of Nigella’s Garlic and Parsley Hearthbreads. As a relatively new but enthusiastic baker, I cannot go past How to be a Domestic Goddess for a reliable bread recipe.

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September 7th, 2008 by Not Quite Nigella

Peyton & Byrne cupcakes-a very British Bakery

Even when traveling I find comfort in being able to prepare a meal. For me, cooking all afternoon in a kitchen unfamiliar to me is not a tiresome task, it’s quite exciting, particularly when I have fantastic or different ingredients to work with. So we hosted a dinner party for my sister’s friends and I received a fabulous hostess gift, an absolutely tailored to me gift of a box of 5 delicious cucpakes. I was so excited when I saw the logo’d box, obviously a lot of care had gone into choosing the gift and I was very chuffed.

So with a knife handy I managed to sample each of these adorable cupcakes (I didn’t eat all 5 myself although I wanted to).

The vanilla cupcake with vivid pink icing streaked with a fruit gelee streak is delicious. The cupcake is a plain vanilla buttercake but the icing, my oh my! I forgot my low sugar resolve readily-it was gorgeous.

The one with a hazelnut on top is a chocolate hazelnut cake, a little drier than the others, perhaps that’s the point of it. it’s like a hazelnut chocolate macaron in a cupcake form.

The yellow cupcake with the sprinkles was my favourite along with the raspberry icing’d cupcake, the lemon flavour perfectly balanced for sweetness and tang.

The raspberry and flaked coconut one is thick with cream cheese icing on top of a vanilla cupcake. It’s very much like the Frou Frou cupcake I’ve made in the past.

The chocolate mud is good and thick and studded with chocolate.

Full of sugar, unlike children, it makes us soothed and calmed and happy.

Peyton & Byrne at Heals

196 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 7LQ
T 020 7580 3451
E info@peytonandbyrne.com

OR
Peyton and Byrne
at The Wellcome Collection,
183 Euston Road,
London NW1 2BE
T 020 7 611 2138
E info@peytonandbyrne.com

Mon -Wed 8am – 6pm
Thu 8am – 8pm
Fri 8am – 6.30pm
Sat 9.30am – 6pm
Sun 12pm – 6pm

http://www.peytonandbyrne.com/index.asp

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September 6th, 2008 by Not Quite Nigella

ACP takes the fun out of food blogging

Well I got a not so friendly letter from ACP’s Legal Department asking I mean telling me to remove some of their recipes from my blog. The ones they specifically wanted removed were the ones from the Womens Weekly Cupcakes book. Given ACP’s recent stoush with a blogger it’s not surprising that they’ve relegated all of us to the “evil must be stopped” pile but it’s unfortunate that they don’t see the value of blogs.

Food bloggers routinely republish recipes from cookbooks because they want to share them with others and in turn, some readers may be opened up to cookbooks or authors that they may not have known about or were just curious about and often purchase the book in question (which I can clearly see from the data I get from Amazon and emails I receive). As far as I have seen, we always publish the source of the recipe, as I did, so it’s not a matter or stealing a recipe and claiming it as your own (to me, a worse infringement). Nor do people pick out large chunks of a book, it’s usually your favourite recipes that you pick to make. Food bloggers also give honest feedback about the recipe and whether it works as well as provide pictures which is useful to everyone.

To think that as food bloggers, we will be contacted by some lawyer to remove the recipes which we’ve taken the time to make and write about is disturbing. I suppose this means that the only choice we have in the future is to rewrite the recipe (which is easy enough) but then we would be forced not give the source for fear that they will send us legal letters. Although intuitively speaking, I think that a cookbook’s author would rather be given credit and have more copies of their book sell than have us change the recipe and delete their involvement in it. I only hope that the other authors featured on food blogs are not as petty and see their recipe inclusion as testaments to their recipes and of course, more potential sales, than anything else.

So in any case, I’ve been told to remove the recipes by the 11th of September which I have done. I have removed their recipes from the following stories and replaced them with even better recipes:

Queen of Hearts cupcakes

Passionfruit Coconut cupcakes

Banana and Caramel Almost Bannoffee cupcakes

Kaleidocakes

Pineapple Hibiscus cupcakes

Lamington Angels cupcakes

Mocchacino cupcakes

Easter Basket cupcakes

Lemon cupcakes

I shall also stop using that cookbook and other ACP books (hmmm flicking through the spines on my bookshelf I have no other ACP books) but this is more out of the negative feelings I get from picking it up.

But who is going to talk to ACP about them “borrowing” the decorating ideas from Claire Crespo’s book?