Taste of London 2014

Time again for the annual "Taste of London" and guess what? It didn't rain for a change!

We had a lovely time with too much food as always.. forgot to take photos of them all - guess i was too hungry :-)

Here is a selection of what i did take photos of...

Stripbar & Steak at the Malmaison - 18th of June

We celebrated our wedding anniversary on the 18th of June and i had originally booked this restaurant called "Canvas" but the day before we were due to go there i get a call and guess what? They've had a gas leak! Restaurnat is closed for a week and with that our reservation goes out the window..
After trying a few favorites like Roka and SushiSamba with no luck we decided to go out and have some steak instead and found a great offer at Stripbar & Steak at the Malmaison - 50% off the whole a carte menu! Yes please.

The Malmaison is a little boutique hotel situated on Charterhouse square and the restaurant is in the basement.. very dimly lit, music playing, banquettes and neon signs.... very friendly welcome by Fabio, the manager.

I had a lobster cocktail to start and hubby had a trio or cocktails (shrimp/prawn/lobster) We also had some interesting cheesy bread

For main we had steak (yeah, really!) I had a 350 gr steak which i could not finish but it was good. We had some Mac'n'cheese, spinach and some tomato salad on the side..

With 50% off this was really worth it. They also do a great sounding brunch menu.. might be back to try it out!

Duck & Waffle - 15th of June 2014

An old friend of mine was in London last weekend so we went out for a late lunch / brunch at Duck & Waffle.. such impressive views from up there!

I had the smoked salmon with warm flatbreads, gherkins, capers and creme fraiche - which was lovely. My friend had the ox cheek benedict and we shared the beetroot salad. Food was great and at a decent price too.

We also shared a decadent sounding waffle with home made nutella, banana, ice cream & peanut crunch - sounded good on paper but did not live up to expectations.. we even left some!!!

This was my second time here but i would definately go back again.

 

And here is a shot of the view /the Gherkin - and us! :-)

 

Home made chocolates with salted caramel and chocolate ganache!

I have some friendly bake off's with one of my bosses (male!!) at work - so far we have made macarons and cheesecake.

He is heavily into making chocolates - so our next date has been set for our chocolate making challenge (14 July) which means that i am now practising at home with my amazing new magnetic chocolate mould from Fat Daddios - perfect for chocolate transfers to make the chocs look professional. I used some slightly retro looking gold transfers in the bottom of my mould.

Check out the moulds here - they are FAB!
I followed the instruction for the tempering of the chocolate from Lindt and it worked a treat. I used dark 70% chocolate since that is the easiest to temper and for a filling i cheated and used a ready made caramel from "Bonne maman" (the same people who make those yummy jams :-) i just added some sea salt to make it tastier and not so sweet. I half filled the moulds with the now salted caramel and then i added a dark chocolate ganache on top (made from cream and dark chocolate) before "closing" the praline with more tempered chocolate.

I was sooo pleased with the result. Check them out! Fingers crossed they look and taste as good when i make them for our bake off!!

Mad Hatters Tea Party at The Sanderson Hotel

I quite like a spot of afternoon tea now and again - i mean, who can resist just out of the oven scones with lots of clotted cream and jam?
The best afternoon teas i have had in London would be the Langham and the Ritz - both with to die for scones :-)

This time i went with 2 girlfriends to the Sanderson hotel for the Mad Hatters tea party

What a popular place - when we arrived if felt like it was a Saturday evening at 10 pm - not a Saturday afternoon at 3:30pm. Lots of (mostly) women dressed up in cocktail dresses sipping champagne.

It was busy but staff were very friendly and organised. I loved the look of the afternoon tea and the lovely touches like the sugar box and tea choices but it was a little bit of style over substance. The sandwiches were not great - just lots of bread and hardly any filling - the best one was the salmon on rye.

Same goes for the mushroom marshmallows and meringue carrots.. looked great but lacking in flavor.
The mini sweet and savoury scones were great and the green tea /white chocolate mousse was also very good. I also loved the "drink me" potion.. :-)

The other good thing was that they happily refilled anything that you wanted more of - and you could also switch to a different tea/coffee if you wanted - nice touch.

We had a great time and the damage was £38 for the afternoon tea per person (or £48 with a glass of champagne or £58 for a glass of rose champagne)

PARIS

Paris is such an amazing city - i love just walking around exploring and finding amazing little places along the way. Saying that - i also do research to know where to find the best places for chocolates and patisserie too. This time i focused mostly on eclairs since i have done macarons so much.

I had read about 2 places: L'eclair de Genie & L'atelier de l'eclair

We first went to L'atelier de L'eclair which was on a quiet little side street (top tip - great parfumerie a few doors down called "Nose")

They had lots of display cabinets with eclairs in both normal and mini size. I quite liked the idear of a smaller size since you can try more of them. You can also sit down and eat your eclairs over a coffee in comfy sofas.

We shared a salted caramel, Vanilla and 2 pistachio eclairs and they were good but visually they were a little bit disappointing - not as perfect as they are on the website.

HOWEVER - we then went to the L'eclair de Genie in the Marais.. surprise surprise - a loooooong queue outside which luckily only took about 15 min - and YES it was so worth it.. the finish of the eclairs was stunning and the fillings amazing. They win hands down.
We shared a Pistachio/orange, Praline/Noisette and a Vanilla/caramellised pecan.. all amazing.

I really recommend this place to anyone who wants the perfect eclair!

Chocolate, transfer sheets and banana parfait

LOVE trying to make great desserts. This time me and my friend decided to get into the dangerous territory of chocolate tempering and transfer sheets.

After cutting up my transfer sheets to fit and nervously tempering the chocolate we went for it and created chocolate cylinders - we placed them in a muffin tray to keep them stable before letting them cool and harden.

We then made a banana & caramel parfait which was piped into the cylinder and then put in the freezer - which was amazing.. i just can't find the recipe anymore! Sigh.. also made a tuile, some mango coulis and some salted peanut brittle - voila - here it is. Not too shabby if i may say so myself!

Cheesecake and Hoovers!

It has been such a long time again since i have updated this blog so here is just a short update on what i have been doing!

Firstly we had a "cheesecake off" at work - i have a very competetive boss who loves baking :-) He made a NY cheesecake and i made a raspberry cheesecake with shortbread base (both were baked) and yay, i won with a very small margin. Here is my cheesecake:

In Sweden people have a "fika" at least once if not twice a day.. "fika" means coffee break really but with the difference that you can't just have a coffee - there has to be something to eat with it.. one of the most well known/retro cakes associated with a "fika break" is a "Dammsugare" or translated to english it would mean "Hoover" (well, another name is "Punsch roll")- apparently called this due to the resemblance to a hoover and also because you can use up a mix of stale cookies or sponge for the cake. Check it out here on Wiki.

I had a vanilla sponge that i used up for this - for a first attempt i think they turned out ok - tastewise they were amazing.

Jaffa Mac's and gingerbread Mac's

So, i have attempted to make jaffa cakes in the past and now it was time for jaffa macarons!
I got the idea from Yauatcha in Soho who has the most amazing pastries and macarons - and they do a jaffa mac which inspired me to try and replicate it.

I made the shells in an orange/yellow colour and made some orange jelly and a dark chocolate ganache which i piped onto the jelly discs and sandwiched them together. I also made some candied orange peel for decoration (not worth the hard work by the way) and then i dipped half the macaron in melted 70% dark chocolate and added some orange peel.

The gingerbread macs got a fetching purple colour with some bronze sprinkles on top. The filling was a simple white chocolate ganache with some gingerbread spices.

Avenue Restaurant

I first went to Avenue many years ago and now i decided to go back again - with the same friend i went with all those years ago. Avenue recently had a bit of a refurb and it has now launched itself as "Manhattan meets Mayfair".

The bar was buzzing when we got there and we had a warm welcome from the manager.

We decided to share a starter and to our surprise the kitchen actually divided up our salad of beets, buffalo ricotta and pistachio on to 2 plates - nice touch.

Service however was not great. The waitress kept on filling up water every 2 minutes - even though our glasses were full.. she was constantly popping up wanting to remove plates and generally just interrupting.

For main we both had the Stone bass with spicy kale and hazelnut butter. Fish was slightly over cooked and the kale was not very spicy - just a bit stringy.

Dessert - i had the DIY doughnuts with cinnamon sugar and an array of sauces, like bourbon hot chocolate, raspberry and whipped cream.  I quite enjoyed this dish! My friend had the hot apple fritters.

When we asked for the bill we had a few additional cocktails on there which were not ours so we had to ask them to remove them.

All in all i would not go back again for dinner - maybe for drinks in the bar which was very buzzy - there are plenty of other places in London with better food and better value.

The Garden Restaurant @ Stoke Place - 25th of January 2014

I think i have written about Stoke Place and the Garden restaurant before.. one of my favorite places in England!

I have stayed there a few times with my husband - this time we had a girls only birthday weekend for a friend.
After champagne and games in the bar we sat down for dinner and it did not disappoint!

You get 2 different pre-starters before your starters - both amazing!
The first one was "Pumkin espuma, curried banana and pumking seed"
The second one was "Lemongrass sorbet with lime crisp" - it was strange but in a good way - sweet and savoury at the same time!

My starter was "Mushroom Ragout, Pine Nut, Mushroom Panna Cotta, Truffle, Mushroom Froth" which was sooo good with amazing flavours of mushroom and truffle!

For main i had the "Seared Venison, Celeriac, Cape Gooseberry and Red Wine Jus" which was to die for. 4 of us at the table had picked this main and all you could here was "yum".

We then had a little complementary pre dessert of compressed pineapple and youghurt sorbet. Light and tasty

Most my friends went for the Cinnamon doughnuts for dessert so i decided to have the "Poached plums, Youghurt sponge, Sorrel Ice cream, Youghurt and sorrel soup" WOW - absolutely stunning dish with an explosion of flavours.

I can't rate this place high enough - just GO! 

 

Chotto Matte - New fusion restaurant 18th of January 2014

I read about Chotto Matte online somewhere and it sounded really interesting - Japanese / Peruvian fusion? Got to try it!
Booked in for a Saturday evening - it is situated smack in the middle of Soho on Frith street.. i think i remember it being an Italian restaurant there before (Bertorelli's?).
We were greeted by a bouncer dressed in black, wearing a headset (very MI5) and one of those "clickers" recording how many people are coming through the doors.. sounds more like a night club than a restaurant right?

When entering were were met by a "host" - also dressed in black, with a headset but no people counter :-) and he escorted us the 3 meters to the reception. To the right was the bar - which was VERY busy and to the left was the stairs leading up to the 1st floor dining room. Next to the stairs was a DJ keeping the people entertained.

We were ushered upstairs past the robata grill to a small table for 2. We had a very cheerful waiter who guided us through the menu - there are lots of "tapas" sized dishes and they recommend that you share 9-10 dishes between 2.

We started off with the "Taco selection" with Tuna spicy miso, snow crab yuzu, miso vegetables. It was basically nacho chips with 3 dips - very tasty but could have done with more chips!

We then had the "Prawn Tempura" with 3 different dips which were lovely and light. 

We then had the "Seabass Ceviche" with  sweet potato, peruvian corn,
coriander, chive oil, citrus sauce which was lovely and light with some crunch.

 

We then had the "Nikkei Gyoza" with Pork, prawn and cassava dumplings served on amarillo and butternut puree. Very interesting flavours.

 

Next was the "Robata chicken with Miso" with carrot, courgette, yellow chilli
raita. Lovely bite sized charred chicken - again very interesting and tasy.

We then had the "Prawn spring roll, shiitake, yuzu, shiso, ponzu
salsa". Crisp pastry bursting with filling - shame the portion was quite small! But then again - means that you can try more things!

Next up was the "Black cod, yellow chilli miso". I cannot avoid black cod when it is on a menu.. so lovely and delicately flavoured with the miso....

Next was the "Beef rib eye, chives, peruvian chilli" - it looked nothing like you would imagine it - instead it had been flattened and rolled into a cigar shape!

 

 

 Next we had 2 kinds of sushi rolls - "California rolls" and "Beef, peppers, onion, cumine, oregano, soy". The California rolls were lovely - i was in 2 minds about the beef ones - thought they tasted a bit too Indian for me. i liked the crunchy onions on top though!

We decided to go all out and have some dessert too (i know - we totally pigged out here). I had an AMAZING "Salted caramel chocolate fondant" - need i say more? My husband had the "Cheesecake with cherry ripple icecream"

We really enjoyed our dinner. Great ambiance, friendly service and good food. Great place to go to for /before a night out in London.

We had not eaten much all day in order to try as much as possible - however, people next to us on one side had even more food than us (2 girls!!) and the couple on our other side only had 3 dishes to share and a bottle of wine.. so i guess you can do what you want.