Rome! The Eternal City! The centre of a globe spanning civilisation! Bringers of aqueducts, sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education, health, etc.
Having prepared for a weekend visit in the most highly intellectual way (intensive review of all the Asterix books, especially Mansions of the Gods), it was important once on site to apply that high-brow culture-seeking mode and *not to get too distracted by the food*. Yeah, right.
Where to start? Perhaps with a lunch at Obika, a slightly incongruous name for a mozzarella restaurant (surely Japanese? but no) that has a sister in Selfridges, London. I had not realised that Mozzarella was so varied or so delicious - the key according to our brilliant hostess Judi is that this cheese does not travel well, so the closer to the Buffalo farm you are, the better. Here is evidence of our greed:
Before and after. on the nearest platter: smoked, 'stronger' and 'mild' Mozzarellas di Bufala Campana DOP, Stracciatella di Burrata and Ricotta di Bufala. It turns out that Buffalo Ricotta is heaven in a little dish.
That evening, with barely 4 hours for digestion, on to the amazing enoteca (wine bar) and restaurant (restaurant) [name to be inserted here when I can remember what it was called] in groovy party district Trastevere. A big thank you to Heroic Host Kevin for parking the car a trillion miles away after we realised that every single person who had ever complained about Roman traffic was in fact correct. While waiting for our hero in the enoteca section we got a chance to get stuck in to the array of local wine samples in gargantuan glasses. This brings me onto the subject of how much more sophisticated Romans are than Londoners, winning the following competitions hands down:
- appearance 1: Shoes appropriate to outfit, not to surface on which person is walking ie 5 inch heels on cobbles is fine.
- appearance 2: always imepccable makeup, even to the extent that old makeup is actually cleaned off off the day before, before applying new (thick) layer the next day
- appearance 3: WBWJEBTBONB (wear black, with just enough bling to be obviously not british)
- Milk. know it's place. If you drink Capuccino after the morning coffee break, you are proposterous. Expresso only.
- Quantity of wine drunk per person while out to dinner. Judi, on a previous visit to this establishment had been chastised by the sommelier for ordering a second bottle of wine between four. They had had a drink beforehand in the enoteca section which had been policed, sorry, noted by the sommelier. We kept it tidy and managed to restrict ourselves to several pre meal tasters, one bottle of reaaaaaly nice Barbaresco and 4 glasses of different, chilled, red dessert wines, which is v civilised.
Anyway, if you should find yourself in [what the &&*** was it called again] then definitely order the wild board papardelle dish which has gone straight into my top ten dishes ever.
A really posh meal should always be counterpointed with a local normal one and the next day Maccheroni delivered us the best two lunchtime primi platti you could hope for. Calorie count now 5 squillion in 2 days.
Just a little chilli in the pomodoro
Just enough Porcini in the tagliatelle
And finally, for a hat trick of Roman Foodie recommendations, you should not miss Franchi's Suppli ('telephone balls', so called because the mozarella inside the warm rice balls is meant to stretch out like telephone wires). 
Buy them at the counter, eat them standing up, and try not to buy a lifetime's supply of Pecorino or brasaola from the counter around the corner.
And now for that week long starvation detox thing.....
Hello World! I've had my head down at work the last couple of weeks, which has also resulted in far too much hotel or dial-in food and no blogging. So, today, a yearning for something green combined with something comforting (rainrainrainrainrainrain) resulted in this lunch, made of an incongrous north African-feeling green beans dish and horseradish cheese on toast.
For the beans: cook the beans (not too much! should be crunchy still when you finish cooking them, perhaps only 3 mins in boiling water). Drain and rinse in cold water.
Ideally use a high-rimmed frying pan (eg wok) for the next bit. Mix some ground almonds, whole roasted almonds, chili flakes and salt and cook over medium heat until it starts smelling nice. At this point, hurl the beans into the frying pan, mix around until coated and warm and serve.
I shall not give you instructions on how to make cheese on toast, apart from a suggestion that a layer of horseradish, mustard, marmite or chutney goes down nicely under the cheese.
I have a question for those of you who are experts in hot drinks. I haven't had caffeine for maybe 13 years and so while I can go through the ritual of making cups of tea for someone else, they aren't the greatest cups of tea. I am a human version of a Nutrimatics Drinks Dispenser from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
When the 'Drink' button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's brain to see what is likely to be well received. However, no-one knows quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
So. in our household where MB is a big tea drinker (something to do with coming from Yorkshire) but neither of us are regular consumers of milk, he is frequently presented with the following choice. Cup of tea with either:
-no milk
-something that used to be milk but is now closer to cheese
-strawberry yoghurt, which was made from milk originally
I recently proposed that a sensible option could be to make some ice cubes from milk, and upon making the tea, drop in a frozen milk cube. Et voila, perfectly fresh milk every time and also a cup of tea at just the right temperature for drinking, rather than burning the tongue. The response: expression on face as if I had suggested going to work in a cardboard dress; words out of mouth 'don't be ridiculous'.
My question is, has anyone tried this? can anyone suggest an alternative that is not UHT? Thank you, from an ignorant non drinker of hot drinks.
Notice to those from the North American region: courgette = zucchini.
Firstly you need access to some good courgettes.
Good courgettes:
Can actually be attributed to some kind of growing environment like your friend's garden or an overpriced organic shop.
Bad courgettes:
Presented in more than two of packaging from a large supermarket. Gives you the sinister feeling they have been drilled out of acrylic in an industrial prototyping machine.
To make the salad:
Ideally, gather some yellow and green courgettes. Young ones so that the central bit with the seeds is firm. Simply top and tail the courgettes, retrieve your favourite potato peeler and peel strips off each courgette. You should be prepared for the double delight of an incredibly satisfying sensation as the peeler zips through the vegetable, and the surprisingly attractive result, which I might call a perfect little parallel line of nature's pigment if I was being pretentious. Talking of which did you know that the M25 was build on a bed of shredded Mills & Boon Books. Sandy Toksvig said so on the radio so it must be true.
Anyway. If you aren't eating the salad immediately then you could store the strips in cold water in the fridge. Don't dress the salad till it is on the table, in front of hungry people. When ready, mix a dressing from:
-1 lemon, juiced
-1 teaspoon sugar
-olive oil
-shredded fresh mint
-salt, pepper
teaspoon Dijon mustard
Enjoy!
This recipe was not invented by any of the Huxley family. However it was eaten last night against the background of a debate about which Huxley had done what. So, in case you had forgotten, some of the most well known Huxleys are:: - The anatomist/biologist/medic Thomas Henry Huxley, who lived through the mid 1800s, is referred to as 'Darwin's Bulldog' because he was a key supporter of his theory of evolution. Having been exposed through junior medical apprenticeships to poverty in East London, he then studied medicine, anatomy and physiology. A role in the Navy allowed him to study invertebrate biology and he was made a fellow of the Royal Society at the ridiculous age of 25. Not only a great scientist but also a great influencer of education and the humanities. Lots of info at the wikipedia site (yes I know, wikipedia is not the most intellectually rigorous way to gather information but it's a very useful summary)
- His grandson Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World (which I am ashamed to say I thought I had read, but haven't, it was 1984). The origins of 'is-ness' is Aldous Huxley's mescaline-fuelled Doors of Perception. I cannot possibly embarrass myself by writing another word about Aldous Huxley when my mate Jake has done his PhD on the guy.
- Important if you are into neurophysiology or biophysics: Andrew Huxley, also a grandson of TH and I think brother of Aldous, who with Alan Hodgkin won the Nobel Prize for describing the action potential - the miracle of electrophysiology that means you can both read and comprehend this blog, and click away from the page because it is becoming too geeky.
Anyway this Spanakopita is also named after Huxley because it is a minor evolution from the traditional kind, adding courgette into the centre and including an additional layer of olive paste/tapenade. Some traditional versions don't have cheese at all.
Ingredients (serves 4/5/6 as a main course or lots at a party in bite size pieces)
500g - 750g spinach according to taste (in this photo I used 500g). You can buy good frozen spinach, if so then defrost and squeeze as much water out as you can. If fresh then wash it, wilt it (microwaves were made for this) and again squeeze it as much as you can.
3 small courgettes, diced
2 onions
2 slabs of good feta
dill or oregano
filo pastry (you could make your own but really the shop bought stuff is so good you would clearly be mad to do so)
butter/olive oil
olive paste/tapenade
to make it:
1. chop the onions into fine slices and sweat them down in a pan with a little butter and olive oil until they are cooked through. I recently had a revelation on this - putting the lid on the pan and turning down the heat actually works better than a high heat uncovered.
2. add the courgette and cook for a minute, add the spinach, herb and chopped up feta. stir till well blended, season and set aside to cool down a bit.
3. get your baking dish. I used a silicon square one, which was useful at the extraction-from-baking-pan stage which I usually balls up. brush with butter/olive oil and build up about 4 layers of pastry, bushing each one. Then spread a layer of olive paste/tapenade and build up another 4 layers. Then, add your spinach mixture and top with the same layer formation
4. cook in a non-fan oven for about 30-40 minutes until it looks cooked. It's good cold, too.
My lovely friends Will and Milla have an annual cricket match in September. It's the perfect balance between competitive play and crap people being allowed to have a go too. Naturally I am only using the C word with reference to myself, everyone else is county-class. My partner and I's 12 runs were offset by -15 points with three of our balls being caught. And that was despite the kind butterfingers of our field. Nevertheless it was a lot of fun.
At this annual picnic, everyone brings their own lunch and 
I thought I might experiment with some cold meats. Firstly I had the opportunity to use my friend Charlie's home made CK sauce. It turns out that if you coat chipolatas with this spicy and apple sauce and cook them so that you get a sticky crispy coating, the result is unfortunately too delicious to actually make it to the cricket match the next day. Be warned.
Next, the Scotch Egg. Having debated with Charlie (of CK sauce fame) and
his girlfriend Jess whether sausagemeat or minced pork is the better medium for scotch eggs, I can confirm that sausagemeat is excellent but must be handled correctly. You could could make your scotch eggs like this (or..if you try minced pork please let me know how it goes?)
1. boil some eggs so that they are soft boiled. Plunge immediately into cold water and peel. If you leave them to cool not only will they overcook but you might get that weird blue line around the yolk
2. get some good butchers sausages and extract the meat from the casing. I mixed extra sage into mine, you could mix any herbs in or even other ingredients like apple, parmesan cheese, whatever takes your fancy.
3. wash your hands and leave them wet. Form in your left hand a thin slab of sausagemeat, gently
drop the egg onto this slab and start making another slab to go over the remaining part of the egg. I found that the loosely-packed sausagemeat worked well after the cooking - the one that I packed more tightly ended up looking like this:
4. As you can see I got all poncy and rolled my good egg in some pine nuts. I know they are a bit 1990s, food style-wise but that doesn't stop them from being delicious.
5. bake at 180-200 for about 20-25 minutes
Part of the recent Cullen experience was going back to a simpler kitchen. Going cold turkey on my cookbook-and-kitchen-gadget addiction turned out to be fun. As well as finding out that fan-free ovens are in many ways better than fan ones, I got to play with a traditional set of kitchen scales. If you are doing the same, don't forget to perform an initial balance. To do an accurate baseline balance, you will need 5 tablets of swiss souvenir Tourist Schokolade and half a cherry tomato.
Just a little chilli in the pomodoro
Buy them at the counter, eat them standing up, and try not to buy a lifetime's supply of Pecorino or brasaola from the counter around the corner.
