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Beltane Menu 2/5/09

May 3, 2009 4 Comments Filed Under: Food, Recipes, Uncategorized

 
  
  
 
 
  

Maybe it was because I was pre-menstrual, or my particularly full-on stressy week but I was bereft of inspiration for the menu. I even asked Twitter for suggestions of what to cook. I received a reply from comedian Hardeep Singh Koli:

“Smoked aubergine and pea curry?”.

“Wanna cook it?” I asked cheekily.

Turns out he does. Hardeep was a finalist in celebrity Masterchef. He will be cooking for The Underground Restaurant one night in May. 

The muse was resurrected during a trip on Friday to Borough Market and a conversation with Joseph of Gastronomica. I visited the Gastronomica stall to buy Burrata, the most delicious mozzarella style cheese which is filled with cream. It is imported direct from Italy and Gastronomica is one of the few places you can buy it in London. Unfortunately it is not sold covered in a bundle of real asphodel leaves as it is in Italy, but with a fake green plastic version.

I discovered Burrata three years ago when visiting Turin whilst attending an international protest with the Torino branch of activist samba band Rhythms of Resistance. We slept in a huge hall, about 60 of us, communal meals from one camping gaz ring. Here’s a brief account here and here. 
Borough market is an inspirational place for any foodie but nowadays full of tourists. Which has led to some stall-holders frankly taking the piss in terms of prices. The main fruit and veg stall is ridiculously expensive. About a year ago I bought a pack of their heritage potatoes, £5. A few months later I saw the same pack in Fortnum & Mason’s for £4. Something wrong with this picture. Don’t tell me that Fortnum’s has lower overheads than this stall. Yesterday I bought some baby aubergines, 20 for over £7. Popped into Tesco later, they had the same aubergines, £1.60p for 10. The Tesco ones were in better shape too, with shiny hard purple surfaces. Figs at this stall were 60p each! How do markets expect people to buy fresh good food, avoiding large supermarkets, if their prices are astronomical?
I bought the last four Burrata for my guests. Joseph of Gastronomica was buzzing with recipe ideas … I’d been thinking of making cheese cake. He said “How about a goat’s cheese cake?” selling me an expensively gorgeous goat and cow cheese for £7 ‘rocchetta’.
Mayday is also Beltane, a fire festival, the start of pagan Spring. It is also exactly one year since I got my Aga.
My menu:
Kir Royale
Olives
A modern-day tricolor salad: burrata, vine tomatoes with balsamic and basil, avocado sprinkled with pink peppercorns and smoked salt, honey-roasted figs with mint
Parmesan and red onion topped sourdough focaccia
A Beltane curry: baby aubergines, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes with lemongrass and coconut milk.
Basmati rice
Goats cheesecake with almond base, topped with blueberries
Coffee with almond and lemon biscotti
I served the salad with a pair of scissors for the guests to snip away the Burrata packaging. 
I was entirely on my own and was glad when Paul came to be ‘front of house’. My teen wanted to go to a party then get a cab to a friends..

Me: “Can I have the address of the party? and can I have the number of the friends? I’d like to check with the mum”

Cue shouting “OH MY GOD you are RUINING my life. I’m fifteen, I can do what I want, I should be able to go wherever I want without you knowing! NO other parents need to know this. YOU ARE MAKING ME LOOK BAD!!! You never want me to go out. Fine I’ll stay in.”

“All I want to know is the address and the number just in case. If something happens to you, you don’t come home and I call the police, what can I tell them? ‘Oh yes she went out, no idea where and no idea who with?'”

“I’M FIFTEEN!!!”

“Yes still a child legally.”

“You are so controlling”.

“Yes I am. It’s called parenting.”

Ten minutes later I receive a call from the other mum.

“I’m so relieved that another mother also wants this information.”

We discuss what time the cab should come to get the kids (sorry ‘young adults’). My teen in the background “Two o’clock”

Me and other mum: “One o’clock is quite late enough for fifteen”.

My teen: “NO ONE GOES HOME AT ONE O’CLOCK. I’m not a baby”

I had to be in at 10.30pm when I was her age. 
The guests were lovely. We had a treat when talented singer Brooke Procida sang showtunes for us at the end. She has a lovely powerful voice. It was all very “jazz hands” as another guest described it. I love that kind of music as my collection of Judy Garland and Liza Minelli vinyl will attest. I have the musical taste of a gay man.
Her uncle and aunt from Long Island, New York, also came. It turns out they have eaten everywhere, Gordon Ramsey’s, all the Michelin star restaurants and here they were at my humble abode. 

“The Fat Duck. I wouldn’t go there again” declared the uncle “Snail porridge! I prefer Pepe’s near JFK “

The cameraman from ‘Tonight with Trevor Macdonald’  came with his lovely girlfriend Victoria who was a presenter on ‘Wish you were here’ I think. ‘Tonight with T.M’ was on Friday night (if anyone has a link please send it to me). I didn’t watch. But I was told presenter Johnny Maitland was going on about how much money I am making. Complete bollocks. In fact Ms Canal Explorer is doing the accounts at the moment and I will be posting them up here for everyone to see…

I had a bad moment when I dropped a pepper-pot on top of one of the cheese cakes. Splat! Paul tried to push it together with his hands while I crammed it into a bowl.
One last thing, clearing out the bins this morning I note that there are many used ear buds in the bathroom. I think other restaurants are missing a trick here…they should all be providing ear buds to their customers… my dad always uses those little hot flannels they sometimes give you in restaurants for a quick once over!

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Comments

  1. ahackinhackney

    May 3, 2009 at 1:10 pm

    Another resounding success MsML… so glad your muse has returned… (not that it/she ever went away)… great post…. most inspiring

    AHIH xx

    Reply
  2. Helen

    May 3, 2009 at 2:10 pm

    I have a confession to make….I think I have a vague memory of using some earbuds in your bathroom when I was there! Sorry about that. I must have been desperate. As desperate as a woman can be to clean her ears anyway.

    Reply
  3. MsMarmitelover

    May 3, 2009 at 10:09 pm

    Haha helen. I’d do the same thing! Think of it as yet another benefit of going to a home restaurant.

    Reply
  4. Michael

    May 13, 2009 at 2:07 pm

    Totally with you on Borough Market. I live a few minute walk away, and only go there to buy things that are really hard to find elsewhere (Burrata, some of the artisan breads etc).
    On the plus side, if you go stupidly early in the week for the wholesale market you can still pick up past-best raspberries in summer for jam etc. At least, you could last time I checked.

    Reply

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MsMarmiteLover aka Kerstin Rodgers.

Chef, photographer, author, journalist, blogger. Pioneer of the supperclub movement.

This is my food and travel blog, with recipes, reviews and travel stories. I also stray into politics, feminism, gardening.

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msmarmitelover

Kerstin Rodgers/MsMarmiteLover
Apple rose blossom tarts with rose jam. Rose Appl Apple rose blossom tarts with rose jam.  Rose Apple Blossom Tarts

Serves 8

Equipment: 
Microwave
Cupcake or muffin tin

I use a red-skinned apple to make these, to get a hint of blush at the edges of the ‘petals’.

Ingredients:
4 Pink Lady or Royal Gala apples, cored, cut into quarters, sliced thinly into half moons
1 lemon, squeezed
1 pack all butter readymade puff pastry 320g, on a roll, cut into 8 strips about 6 cms long
100g of melted butter
1/2 jar of rose jam
1 or 2 tbsp cinnamon or cardamom, ground 
Pinch maldon salt
2 or 3 tbsp icing sugar

Instructions

Prepare a bowl of acidulated water (cold water with lemon juice) to prevent browning.
Core the apples, and cut them in quarters. Slice thinly into half-moons (a mandolin is useful for this). 
Put them into a large bowl of cold water with the lemon.
Microwave the bowl of sliced apples for 5 minutes until soft enough to bend slightly but not cook them.
Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
Roll out the puff pastry. Divide into 8 sections by cutting the roll into quarters then halving each quarter. You will end up with 8 approximately 6cm strips.
Brush the strip with melted butter then paint with a layer of rose jam. You can then dust with either ground cinnamon or cardamom.
Lay the apple slices along the top of the pastry strip, overlapping them. Fold up the bottom half of the pastry strip to make an pleat with the skin side of the apple half moon poking over the top.
Roll up the folded pastry strips until they look like a rose made of apple at the top
Place ‘rose’ side up, in a buttered cupcake tin
Repeat until all are done and bake for 20 -30 minutes.
Using a tea strainer or small sieve, sprinkle with icing sugar.
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