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0 degrees longitude: Olympic opening night at the Global Feast

July 28, 2012 Leave a Comment Filed Under: Uncategorized

Chef Col has a machine; it’s called a ‘rumbler’. When Chef Kiren turned up today, he nodded approvingly “that machine saves me £400 a week in wages. Before I employed someone just on potato peeling duty, but the rumbler does it now.” He showed me: you just tip in the dirty potatoes with a jug of water. Around the sides of the machine is sandpaper. The potatoes dance, the sandpaper rubs off the skins, the water turns brown and the spuds emerge white and shorn, their virginal flesh showing beneath the hirsute clothing formed by months growing in dirt.
Col has lots of tricks. A lukewarm bottle of white wine? Put it in ice, throw a handful of salt into the water and the temperature will plummet in double quick time. 
Today was the turn of the British at the Global Feast for we arrive at 0 degrees longitude, Greenwich Mean Time. The line runs through Stratford, shimmying through the bed shop on the corner near Stratford Town Hall, where Global Feast is located. Aoife Behan, who comes from Ireland but lives in Edinburgh and runs a supper club called My home and has since expanded to roving pop up merchants Jelly & Gin, made canapes and the starter. The vegetarian haggis bonbons, sponsored by MacSween, went down a treat, as did her thick cut home-made oat cakes, topped with Isle of Mull cheddar from Neal’s Yard Dairy and Aoife’s beetroot chutney. I’ve never tasted haggis before, vegetarian or otherwise, and it is not scary at all, just good tasting.
Denise Baker-McClearn of the Moel Faban Secret supper club got the train from Wales to East London to represent the principality. She spent the morning baking: Bara Brith tea loaves for icecream and gingerbread infused with exotic flavours, part of Britain’s seafaring past, from Steenbergs Organic Fair trade spices. 
My contribution was fish, chips and peas served in a cartographical cone with a dollop of home-made tartare sauce, piquante with gherkins and capers.
Later, as light faded, a roar grew overhead, heads shot up as a flypast zoomed over, trailing red, white and blue. Champagne and Courvoisier cocktails were served as Danny Boyle’s affecting opening ceremony beamed across the table. If you couldn’t be there, Global Feast, right next door in Stratford, was the next best thing.
British menu:
Cocktails from Courvoisier
Oat cakes with Isle of Mull cheddar, beetroot chutney.
Tartlettes with Welsh shitake mushrooms, and oak smoked tomatoes.
Marmite on toast with silver leaf.
Mixed leaf salad with Strathdon blue cheese, pickled cherries and radishes, toasted oats and violas.
Pollock in beer batter, twice cooked chips, petits pois à l’anglaise and tartare sauce.
Bara Brith icecream, gingerbread, vanilla caramel with a shot of Welsh whisky from Penderyn
Globe pops
Bottom pic: some guests reserved their seats off the coast of Africa. “We thought we’d be a bit like the Germans and their beach towels reserving the sunloungers first thing in the morning”
Claudia Stachelhaus of the White Room Supper Club and left: the map cone of chips looks remarkably like the Olympic Torch!
Tonight is the turn of Northern Europe with Sweden’s Linn Soderstrom of Hemma Hos Linn supper club and German Claudia Stachelhaus of White Room Supper Club, paired with excellent Austrian wine from Merry Widows. 
Book here for tonight

Book here for the rest of the world

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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.
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
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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
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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
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