• Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Snapchat
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

MsMarmiteLover

  • Food
    • Recipes
    • Vegetarian
    • Vegan
  • Travel
    • France
    • Italy
    • Spain
    • UK
  • Wine
  • Gardens
  • Supperclubs/Events
  • About
    • Published Articles
    • Books
  • Shop
    • Cart

Saturday in the city

August 9, 2009 7 Comments Filed Under: Uncategorized

Francesco Mazzei
Gal Zohar on the right teaching, Dino of Gastro1 in the middle, and future gourmand on the left.
Teaching how to plate up and garnish…
My fresh pasta with mushrooms and truffles, you could smell the forest..
Teenagers drinking: I think youngsters develop a healthier attitude to alcohol if they are given a little wine with food, making it a moderate balanced part of your diet
I was invited to go to L’Anima in the city where Francesco Mazzei was giving a cooking class to teenagers. I’ll take any opportunity to learn more about cooking and having a teen myself, it was an offer I could not refuse. It started at 11am. It being a Saturday I decided to drive down. No problem, I thought, it’ll be easy to park. How wrong could I be? It was so hard to access, so many streets are blocked off. Most of the parking machines don’t work and besides it costs £4 an hour to park although it’s free after 1.30pm. I literally spent an hour and a half, on the verge of tears, trying to find the place and park. Eventually I found a street round the back of Spitalfields where I could park all day for free on a Saturday.
However this meant that I missed the cooking bit. I arrived just as Gal Zohar @zoharwine, L’Anima’s sommelier took the group of 14 year olds, a birthday treat, to the wine room. He explained wines simply to the group, encouraging them to describe the ‘bouquet’. I was impressed by the freshness of their palates.
He started with Prosecco:
“What do you smell?”

The kids were hesitant at first…

“Say what you like, what first comes to mind” encourages Gal “don’t be afraid of saying something stupid”

“Apple” shouted one.

“Sherbet”
“Grape” to laughter.
“Well done” said Gal. “Now lets try a Pinot Grigio rose.”
This precocious set of youngsters knew Pinot Grigio…however this one was unusual being ‘Ramato’, going a copper colour when the grapes are very ripe.
Next a couple of reds, which the teenagers enjoyed less, the taste probably too heavy for their young palates finishing with a dessert wine which they all loved.
Looking around the ‘caveau’ the brother of the birthday girl asked “Which is the most expensive wine you have here?”
“£745” replied Gal “for a Chateau Latour 1995.”
“How many have you sold?” asked this kid, a future food journalist in the making.
“Four since we opened”
“How long have you been open?” I asked.
“A year”.
Of course, that is how long the recession has been going on, I imagine a few years previously, bottles that price were flying out of restaurants in the city as bankers lived it up. In fact forget the FT index, just ring up City restaurants and ask how many bottles of their top wine/champagne have been sold to get an idea of how well the economy is doing.
Afterwards we all sat down to enjoy the lunch prepared by the teenagers with the help of Francesco. We started with aubergine parmesan, cooked simply with tomato, basil, mozzarella, aubergines fried in flour and parmesan. Francesco told me his mother puts tons of ingredients into her version: eggs, dumplings, it ends up about a foot thick. Melanzane Parmigiana is one of my favourite dishes, it was beautifully cooked.
I particularly love the bread at L’Anima; the sourdough is the best I’ve eaten in a while.
Next the others had Fettuccini Bolognese while I, as a vegetarian, had an amazing treat: fresh pasta, made by the kids, with champignons du bois and tons of shavings of fresh truffle. Ha! Sometimes it pays to be a veggie…I felt the envious looks and shared it around with Dino, Gastro1 and the birthday girl’s parents. Dino had just come back from Italy, he’s half Italian, and brought a couple of excellent artisanal Parmesan cheeses for Francesco to try. For a main course I was served fresh salmon with salsa verde while the carnivores ate chicken (I think). It was a lovely family atmosphere, the type that Italians specialise in, and Francesco invested so much time talking to the kids, giving them encouragement to cook, taste, smell, experience food.
We finished with tiramisu and coffee. I felt privileged to attend especially as my own teenager is away in France and I miss her so much. It’s no doubt a taste of the empty nest syndrome that I’m due to experience in the next few years and I’m not looking forward to it. It’s particularly anxiety producing for me as I am a single parent. But you’ve got to let them go haven’t you? All part of parenting…
So, alone in the city, I wandered around Spitalfields, it’s all so posh nowadays. I chanced upon Teasmiths tea shop. I love tea far more than coffee (sorry Fat Les) and would like to see a proliferation of tea shops grow in the same way that coffee shop culture has boomed in the last decade. However just as the price of a cup of coffee has become ridiculous, often for very poor quality (Starbucks), Teasmiths selection were shockingly expensive. A basic cup of tea costs £3.50p, going up to £15. Yes! This is not a misprint! Fifteen quid for a cuppa! Granted, it’s some sort of rare tea, no doubt passed through the gut of grass-fed hand-massaged bison, with each leaf individually dried on a copper altar of a cult religion and picked by pygmies up a hillside somewhere, but that’s still quite a lot of dosh.
The girls in this shop were lovely; I said to them I’ll put myself in your hands, I don’t recognise most of these teas. They gave me a black tea, partially oxidised called Oriental Beauty. Normally this costs £12 for a cup but you get three infusions, meaning you can used the same dose of leaf for three teensy pots. Each one will taste different, it was explained. Fortunately they only charged me £3.50p. It was fascinating watching them serve it, an awful lot of pouring back and forth between different porcelain containers. But in the end I couldn’t honestly say it tasted better than builder’s tea. By the third infusion it was very tannin which as a Southerner, liking pissy weak tea, I wasn’t too keen on. They managed to persuade me to have it without milk however. Seeing my disappointment, the girls gave me some white tea for free, just to try. This was much nicer, light and delicate in flavour. I know what I will order next time. Much as I celebrate tea and would like to learn more, I do wonder if in these recessionary times, small Japanese style pots of tea at those prices will do well.
White tea on the left, black on the right.

Recent posts

Dutch Baby apple and cheese pancake

September 17, 2023

La bomba paella rice

August 25, 2023

No-churn ice cream recipes

August 7, 2023

Previous Post: « Savoy Truffle Club
Next Post: The Bruncheon club »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. bellaphon

    August 9, 2009 at 8:38 am

    Lovely write-up Marms. When I was 14.7 my housemaster taught me the finer details on how to appreciate good claret, that subsequently transformed me into an alky! Thank heavens for coffee, I'm now well dry. The best tea ever IMO is Pu-erh.

    Monsieur Brillat-Savarin is obviously very much alive! What a profound and uncanny resemblance Dino is to him!

    Reply
  2. theundergroundrestaurant

    August 9, 2009 at 10:00 am

    Yes I don't think Dino likes in wine in pill form (grapes) either. Lovely guy, I hope he doesn't think badly of me as I blathered on in a slightly drunken way over lunch. I do make an arse of myself sometimes.
    Teasmiths had Puer but I didn't try it.

    Reply
  3. gastrogeek

    August 9, 2009 at 3:37 pm

    Wonderful write up and gorgeous photos to boot. I really enjoyed the cookery course I went to at L'Anima having never attended one before – it's a really fun, informative experience and I'd highly recommend it. It sounds like those teenagers were a good laugh too. Can't believe the price of those teas though, streuth!

    Reply
  4. The Ginger Gourmand

    August 9, 2009 at 6:57 pm

    Fantastic write up! The class sounds great. I can't wait for my lunch at l'Anima on Tuesday…

    What is it with you and parking in town though?!!

    Reply
  5. fingersandtoes

    August 9, 2009 at 7:17 pm

    Oh that sounds like such a wonderful thing for the teenagers to do!

    I completely agree with you on the wine. My uncle used to have a vineyard and now teaches winemaking so wine has always been completely demystified for me. It did take me a while to get an appreciation for red though.

    Reply
  6. TheFastestIndian

    August 9, 2009 at 8:14 pm

    Right, am adding this place to my list of London eateries I'd like to visit- it sounds fab. On the tea issue, we did used to have a 'tea shop' similar to the one you've described in Cambridge. It was in a pretty central location but only lasted about 18mons or so. I think it was just about getting by initially but economic downturn seemed to spell its end. Sorry to see an indie close, but the teas were flipping expensive and the cake didn't look nice enough to tempt me in.

    Reply
  7. zoharwine

    August 9, 2009 at 10:58 pm

    Hey that was a cool Saturday. We had a great time together and finally a wine conversation with the usual boring yada yada.
    Cool to see these kids trusting their senses and not their egos…

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




Primary Sidebar

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.

Subscribe to my mailing list

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.
A lovely vegetarian recipe from @lulugargari - a g A lovely vegetarian recipe from @lulugargari - a green bean and basil pesto with Italian lemon 🍋 pasta. Fresh, light. This was at an Italian cooking class/demo @eatalylondon hosted by @ilovefruitandvegfromeuropecouk @flickflock #london#italy🇮🇹
Digital chefs came from Italy yesterday to teach h Digital chefs came from Italy yesterday to teach how to make pumpkin, chilli, taleggio fondue Paccheri pasta- warming and filling for autumn days. Thanks to @ilovefruitandvegfromeuropecouk @flickflock @eatalylondon @danielerossichef @lulugargari for the event. We then got to go shopping in Italy with a £50 voucher. I spent it on mostardi di frutta, burratta, carciofi, cheeses,. My sis in law @bro0907 spent it on two bottles of wine. 😂 #italianfood #italianingredients #cookingclass #campaniafood
Inspired by @kathybrownstev’s book on edible flo Inspired by @kathybrownstev’s book on edible flowers I did an edible flower supper club featured in my first book ‘supper club’ This weekend I briefly visited her garden. Decades of work and creativity went into creating this English oasis. It’s an hour and a half out of london near Bedford. It closes at the end of September: open Tuesdays and this coming weekend. It was odd to go on holiday so near to where I live! We had a beautiful Airbnb in Pavenham. The countryside starts nearer to home than I thought. #uk #england #gardens
Visited The speciality fine food fair today for th Visited The speciality fine food fair today for the first time. So many tastings! Great to see new products. Particularly impressed by @lamiriharissa which is smoked and delicious run by Jo Lamiri’s children and @quirkymonkeycoffee which is mushroom infused coffee and hot chocolate run by an autistic guy Darwin setting up his own business. Good for him. #foodexplorer
Bones and all. Just made tomato sauce pasta from m Bones and all. Just made tomato sauce pasta from my home made sun dried tomato concentrate made @tenutacammarana in Sicily last summer. It’s the taste of sunshine. Plus my English home-grown tomatoes. #Tomatoes 🍅 🍅 🍅 #dinner #babyledweaning
I’ve made a South African/ Botswana dish that is I’ve made a South African/ Botswana dish that is creamy samp with chakalaka. Samp is corn like hominy or pozole a native Indian or Mexican food. It’s strange that it’s a staple food in Africa. Corn is a new world good I think. Samp itself is quite bland, often eaten with beans. Chakalaka is delicious with peppers, Piri piri seasoning, ginger garlic onions tomatoes and carrots and baked beans.
Samp from Botswana. It’s husked corn and makes a Samp from Botswana. It’s husked corn and makes a porridge like carb- creamy samp. I’m rinsing, soaking and cooking today and will combine it with chakalaka tomorrow. #southafrica #botswana #samp #newworldoldworld
Did my living room floor with @woca_denmark_uk_ire Did my living room floor with @woca_denmark_uk_ireland natural floor soap yesterday which smells lovely. But high traffic areas need rewarding. This is a Scandinavian technique- regularly waxing pale wood floors. I did this floor during the first year of lockdown. I prefer waxed floors to varnished. #interiors #woodfloors
Handbag condiments: @tajinuk , salt @maldonsalt do Handbag condiments: @tajinuk , salt @maldonsalt do a great little handbag tin, soy sauce bottles, and of course a handbag @marmite . I’ve also been known to carry a handbag @wd40uk and a handbag @cremedecassis to make poor white wine drinkable. What do you carry in your bag? Are you like Beyoncé and carry hot sauce in your bag?
Alliums in a purple pot. Note to self: plant more Alliums in a purple pot. Note to self: plant more bobble headed alliums. Love the colour and shape. This is in a neighbours garden who I met on Saturday while working in the front garden. Traditionally the British have front gardens but now they are turned into driveways and building are developed into flats. Only very rich people in london can afford houses. But the front is very important for the community- it’s how you meet your neighbours. On Saturday I visited 2 different sets of neighbours gardens- the first time since I moved to this street 23 years ago. Our front garden is communal and has been an unloved space- I’m trying to change that. Tonight I cleaned all the wheely bins. A yucky job but otherwise they smell so bad in summer. I was thinking about all the terrible dirty jobs that someone has to do- clearing up after a road accident, or sorting out sewers, or unblocking toilets. The stuff that nobody likes to think about. #frontgardens #neighbours #londoners
What I’ve been up to: awning from @victorianawni What I’ve been up to: awning from @victorianawnings which has transformed our al fresco eating possibilities. Also been working on the front garden of our building using talented work men I found on fb marketplace: railings by @lincsecproducts ( the gates were bought by me some years ago and I’ve scraped off the rust and repainted), the arch, which took me 3 years to find on fb marketplace for the right price and size. The wisteria which will grow over the arch planted by @christina_erskine ( I’ve always wanted a wisteria and they apparently add to the value of your house), the Swiss style bike/buggy shed. Needs to be painted dark green to match the walls. My friend Jim repaired the walls, the coping, and laid the  concrete plinth. Now need to find coping for the pillars or perhaps urns for more plants. 47cm2. #interiors #exteriordesign #gates #railings #bikeshed #awning #design
Made a vegetarian paella with La bomba rice from @ Made a vegetarian paella with La bomba rice from @brindisaspanishfoods I used red and green peppers, saffron, sherry, Nyora peppers, smoked almonds and green olives #vegetarian #vegetariansummer #paella
Quick snap of my bedroom chimney wall with the @sa Quick snap of my bedroom chimney wall with the @sanderson1860 wallpaper - finally done. Never wallpapered before. By the way I’m totally open to interiors collaborations email me: marmitelover@mac.com #interiordesign #wallpaper #london
I was sent some incredible olive oil from Sicily b I was sent some incredible olive oil from Sicily by fattoriabaronemocciarolidestri Terrediequila wonderful quality. Intense new grassy flavours. #oliveoil #sicily
Cooking powders or flavour bombs: two of my favour Cooking powders or flavour bombs: two of my favourite are ‘chaat’ which you can buy in Indian shops- here I’ve sprinkled yoghurt with lime/achaar chaat and decorated with day lily petals. My other favourite culinary powder is @tajinuk which gives instant mexicanness to any dish. #tajin #chaat
Me and my beautiful granddaughter Ophelia. I look Me and my beautiful granddaughter Ophelia. I look a mess ( really need to dye hair but it’s sooo expensive) but I don’t care because my heart just bursts when I cuddle this little being who has been in my life for 8 months. Babies are a blessing. #granfluencer pic: @clairebelljar
Made arepas last week with masarepa, a precooked m Made arepas last week with masarepa, a precooked maize meal, topped with Wensleydale cheese which isn’t too dissimilar to a fresh Latin American cheese. I also added fresh corn kernels for texture. #colombia #venezuela #arepas #vegetarian
Quinoa salad cooked in a mushroom stock cube solut Quinoa salad cooked in a mushroom stock cube solution with hazelnuts & preserved lemons, home grown curly parsley. I’m not cooking most of my grains in a rice steamer. Turn out fluffy & perfect every time. #quinoa #grainbowl #summerfood
I took this photo of Jane Birkin when she performe I took this photo of Jane Birkin when she performed at @theroundhouse in 2008. Shabby chic with a sweet voice. #RIP #janebirkin #concert #london #rockphotographer
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Archives

Copyright © 2023 msmarmitelover