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Cheap eats in London

Cinema club Close-Up and a Syrian dinner in Brick Lane, London

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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.

msmarmitelover

I went to @fourlondon yesterday for my MOB wedding

I went to @fourlondon yesterday for my MOB wedding hair. Expertly advised by Jenny on colour and @tomtsang for cut and blow dry, I came out looking transformed. I was so shocked by my new very adult sophisticated look I was speechless. @four are hairdressers to the stars ( whisper it @nigellalawson went recently) and the salon was full of women getting a glow up. This was an important occasion for me as it’s my daughter @siennamarla ‘s wedding tomorrow to my wonderful soon to be son in law @jamescalmus and as a single parent I’m both mother and father of the bride. I’m walking her down the aisle and doing a speech. 🎤 I’m quite nervous which is weird as I’ve done lots of public speaking. I’m scared I’ll start crying mid-speech. It’s been a long hard journey as all parents know- especially single parents, widows and divorcees.. I guess I must have done a few things right because I’m very proud of her. My 22 month old granddaughter Ophelia will be the flower girl. I’ve never been married so I’m a newbie to all things wedding. I’ve been writing about it on my Substack which as well as food and travel has become a repository for personal confessional truths about my life. Thanks to @fourlondon and @shirley_dmm for my ‘10 years younger experience’. Hair is important. Hilary Clinton says so. “If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle,” she quipped in 1995. I won’t be making headlines but I’ll feel more confident on one of the biggest days of my little one parent family’s life. #wedding #mob #hair #four #london #confidence #unfiltered

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Instagram post 18014274062540549

My latest long read in @scotnational on the future

My latest long read in @scotnational on the future of farming. I travelled to Puglia in Italy, phyto valley in Switzerland, found out about food and technology in Israel and visited organic carrot farmers in Scotland. I love writing for The National as they treat my work with so much respect and always make it look great- words and photos. The future of farming means robots, new crops and superfoods, soil-free farming, combatting diseases in animals ( did you know even wild animals get diabetes?) alternative energy and farming by app. It’s all very space age. #farming #scotland #futuretech

Decorated focaccia recipe to represent Virgo for H

Decorated focaccia recipe to represent Virgo for Holiday Goddess site. I do a monthly column featuring astrological recipes and foods. Any publishers interested in this for a book? Virgo rules wheat and the harvest as befits a sign straddling September. Virgoans are bakers and gardeners: they are an earth sign and good with their hands. Their affinity with wheat and their meticulous attitude lends itself to baking. #virgo #astrologyandfood #baker #wheatsheaf #harvest ing

Tomato salad from my garden with basil dressing.

Tomato salad from my garden with basil dressing.

Instagram post 18021833222388678

Instagram post 18021833222388678

Ophelia and I. She’s wearing vintage from Switze

Ophelia and I. She’s wearing vintage from Switzerland / I’m wearing @cabbages_and_roses sample sale top and skirt #Stripes

Med veg tian which is basically a deconstructed ra

Med veg tian which is basically a deconstructed ratatouille. I put a bed of tomato sauce down so it didn’t get too dry, then layers of aubergine courgette tomato and red onions, tightly wedged in hassleback style . Then olive oil, some sliced caper berries. Bake covered in the oven, then uncover and bake again for 20 minutes. Finish off with grated Parmesan. Aubergines are so expensive nowadays though! #summerfood #tian #mediterraneandiet

A tarte tatin, almost glowing with sticky toffee a

A tarte tatin, almost glowing with sticky toffee appley goodness. An amber halo 😇 the trick with tarte tatin is to let it almost burn, to let the apples cook long and slow, with thickly smeared butter and sugar, with star anise tucked in between the crowded apples. 🍎

Wild fennel flowers are in season right now, growi

Wild fennel flowers are in season right now, growing and self-seeding all over your garden. Pick them and scatter the flowers over potato salad or salads or soups. But don’t if you don’t like the taste of aniseed. Have picked this bunch and am going to splash heavily with water and try to freeze. First I’ll keep them in a dark place to rid them of any creepy crawlies though. #wildfood #freefood #wildfennel

I made a rhubarb crumble as a summer dessert. I us

I made a rhubarb crumble as a summer dessert. I usually associate crumble with colder weather but I had the urge. I’ve been obsessed with crumble since discovering a street food stall @crumbleshack that only sells crumble @womadfestival . Rhubarb was on offer so I roasted it gently with some sugar and cinnamon. I just discovered via @davidlebovitz that a crumble is called a fruit crisp in the USA. I have to say, a crumble is one of the few culinary things that the French have nicked from us. They love it! And pronounce it in the most delightful Gallic fashion. #crumble #pudding #summerdessert #rhubarb

Been given a pile of apples from my friend Sylvia’s garden so today I made tartes tatins, an Irish apple cake and 3 tartes aux pommes. #apple #cookingsaturday #glut

Sunday lunch. I did a bbq on my @biggreenegguk in

Sunday lunch. I did a bbq on my @biggreenegguk in the middle of the day. I should have waited till later as I was a red faced mess serving lunch. Also the hinge won’t keep the lid up- not sure why. The simplest salad: wedges of iceberg with blue cheese dressing poured over. Garlic mushrooms uncooked then cooked, with yoghurt naans in the background sprinkled with onion seeds; pacific salmon with fennel flowers on the egg; mastiha and rose liqueur from @visit_chios , rhubarb crumble with ice cream.

Snake pie filled with cheese and spinach with cinn

Snake pie filled with cheese and spinach with cinnamon and sesame seeds. Slightly untidier than I intended because of the thicker filo than usual but absolutely delicious. I used both feta and cheddar. I’ll continue to experiment with this recipe. #greek #pie #tiropita

Lemon rosemary polenta loaf cake from my book Msma

Lemon rosemary polenta loaf cake from my book Msmarmitelover’s secret tea party. Haven’t made it for a while and one is always worried that recipes don’t work but it’s worked beautifully. Currently I’m trying to use up ingredients in my pantry before starting again. I seem to have a lot of cornmeal/ polenta/ nixtamalised corn to use up. Last week I made a gorgeous cornbread- going to do that again.

Womad last weekend!Had some incredible food womad

Womad last weekend!Had some incredible food womad this year and talked about it to @radiowomad
Most of the stallholders have been going for years even decades. Many of them don’t do social media because they already have a huge following from word of mouth. Most dishes are between £11 and £14. My picks this year:
@littlebaobabuk @senegalesesoulfood huge queues for Senegalese cuisine: mafe peanut stew and roasted meats. The chefs are musicians - they were playing as well as cooking

The Chai shop, been there 20 years. Joe and Elan run it. Different food sells at different festivals. At Womad it’s the Thali. Joe has made food for Van Morrison and Chris Martin. The staff are family, always turn up for shifts. Sunday there are queues for the full English breakfast.

Goan fish curry, been going 19 years. The owners are Cornish & use their fishing contacts to get fish. They use pollock, a sustainable by-catch.

@delidosa run by Amy & Kristian. They travel to Bangalore every winter & research techniques in darshinis, self service cafes serving South Indian food. Delicious dosas & enormous onion bhajis with coconut chutney/sambal

@CrumbleShack. Just what you want on an English summer’s eve, when frankly it is quite cold. Choose your fruit, your topping and custard or ice cream. Delicious.
@HummusSapiens: a newbie: hummus bowls, made from scratch, lovely fresh textural salads and grains. Started by Jasper. Fantastic lunch for when it’s sunny & you want something both tasty and healthy.

The longest serving food stall, 31 years at Womad, is the @MadrasCafe. Authentic thalis, 2 veg curries, Dahl, yoghurt chutney, rice. All proceeds go to charity, run by volunteers. I loved their cookbook too.

Acts I enjoyed: @alison_goldfrapp @tlkvox @young_fathers @johnmetcalfeband @YUNGCHENLHAMO from Tibet
The Science tent was interesting - some great talks.
This festival is clean, no litter, no doubt due to the green credentials of the clientele. It’s a great place for families. Lots of older people, the original hippies, but also teenagers going to their first rave in a safe environment. #festivalseason #festivalfood #womad

I roasted my own coffee beans this week. I bought

I roasted my own coffee beans this week. I bought Green Ethiopian beans from portobello, kept them in the freezer, than dry roasted them in a cast iron crepe pan on the Aga. You have to have courage and keep going- to the point that you wonder if they are burnt, past the first and second crack- you hear them pop like corn- to a dark chocolate brown. Then I ground them in the vitamix, and made coffee. It was the smoothest, least bitter coffee I’ve ever tasted. A kilo of green beans is £7.50. This was also very economical. #homesteading #coffee #torrefaction #roastingbeans #cowboycoffee #bbqcoffeeroasting

I made Viennese whirls. They aren’t perfectly pi

I made Viennese whirls. They aren’t perfectly piped- the dough is very stiff- but they taste a million times better than shop bought. I used the @bbcfood recipe. #biscuits #cookies #vienna

Blueberry poppy seed galette- using produce from t

Blueberry poppy seed galette- using produce from the garden. Recipe on the blog. #blueberryseason

Seed collection. My saved sweet pea pods from last

Seed collection. My saved sweet pea pods from last year flowered better than the bought seeds. I’m now saving tree poppy seeds- when the go from yellow to black they are ready. Also radish pods - crack them open and sprinkle the seeds. Jalapenos- I dry the seeds to plant. And pumpkin seeds - these are Austrian oil pumpkins- I’ve grown seedlings 🌱 so save your seeds- it saves money and are often better than commercially sold seeds.

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