Month: December 2010

St Stephen’s Club at Queen Anne’s Gate near St James Park is smaller and more intimate than most of the London Clubs in the Pall Mall area.  Two of us went for lunch in their Garden room, which does indeed look out onto their basement level garden at the...

As I’ve said before, when the weather is cold English food really comes into its own. There’s something to be said for a plate of warming, dense, food – with plenty of carbohydrates and lots of protein – that warms one from the inside out and protects against the...

Taken from Nigella’s book ‘Kitchen’ these lamb chops are real easy. A number of spices go on a plate, five spice and so forth, the lambs are dabbed in them and fried. My job in this cooking process was to cook the chops so I didn’t really see the...

This time it was the other half of the salmon en croute I’d made with smoked Atlantic salmon. I defrosted it and gave it15 minutes wrapped in foil in a preheated turbo oven, before opening the foil for a further 5 minutes. Meanwhile I steamed sugarsnap peas for 3-4...

My feelings on the subject of pies are, I think, well known. I had leftover turkey and stock from a Christmas dinner (of which more another time) and decided to make a pie. Standard pastry, with black pepper, was made and went in the fridge. Into a pan went...

There were three of us dining together, then a fourth sent a text from the train, so we ordered guinea fowl at his request and started the meal.  I began with parsnip soup, lovely and creamy.  Then we had the main courses with a bottle of the rather pleasant...

The Paramount restaurant is situated on the 32 floor of the Centre Point building in the heart of London. The food is rather good, although mine was all adapted to be dairy-free so represents a bastardised version of the menu. I started with the fois gras and duck terrine....

I went to About Thyme for lunch.  The traditional complimentary glass of bubbly now features cava instead of prosecco (fortunate because I prefer cava on the whole).  I began with quails’ eggs perched atop a slice of black pudding.  Utterly scrumptious. I went on to order baked seabass, done...

Caillou means pebble in french and I was put in mind of Demosthenes as I drank it. Particularly a poem by Tony Harrison called Them and [Uz]: “ay, ay! … stutterer Demosthenes gob full of pebbles outshouting seas –” The wine itself was quite smooth although remarkably strong at...

The seafood pie had smoked haddock, salmon and prawns under mashed potato with a top crust.  The Slug & Lettuce warned us it make take 25 minutes to serve us, but in fact the food arrived in 5 minutes. The wine was Libertad blend of chenin blanc and chardonnay...