Restaurant Review: Pitcher & Piano, Monument, London

For a pub chain, Pitcher & Piano has a really unusual menu. I don't think I've ever seen a quinoa and cauliflower burger on a menu - and I was quite keen to try it but didn't really want a burger and chips even if it was meat-free - and the rest of the menu is a combination of classics and a nod to current trends. Everyone seems to be obsessed with avocado at the moment, and at Pitcher & Piano you can enjoy a mozzarella and avocado brioche or a bacon and avocado salad, or a chicken and kale salad, and sweet potato fries as a side. Or if you want a classic pub meal there's steak, sausage and mash, fish and chips and the like.

I was there for lunch with work colleagues and there was something to keep everyone happy - even one person who avoids carbs completely and had a selection of dishes from the starter section instead of a main. We were in a hurry to order so without much time to think I plumped for the fish finger brioche - something I haven't had in ages.

It was quite nice but ended up feeling more like a fish burger and chips - I'm used to fish finger sandwiches being made with doorstep bread and not coming with chips. In another twist on the norm, my pot of tea came with an espresso cup - I assume that was deliberate and not a mistake, but it was a bit odd to keep having to pour myself tiny cups of tea. It did come with an iced ring biscuit on the side though!

This is a City centre bar that I can imagine is quite busy in the evenings but we had no problem fitting in a big group at lunch. The food was good even if it wasn't quite what I was expecting!

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Cauliflower Pizza: gluten-free pizza with a cauliflower base

When I was doing sugar-free September I cut out gluten and so wasn't eating bread or potatoes. I decided to make pizza for lunch one weekend - my husband had a normal homemade pizza base, while I decided to try something I'd kept hearing about - cauliflower pizza.

That's not pizza with cauliflower on top (though I did once share a pizza with a vegetarian many years ago that had nothing but broccoli on top) - but where the pizza base is actually made of cauliflower. Have you heard of cauliflower rice? The pizza base is made in a similar way with the cauliflower riced and then baked in the oven. It tasted surprisingly good - cauliflower normally has quite a strong taste but it is masked somewhat by the pizza toppings.

To serve 2, you need:
1 whole cauliflower
1 egg
30g pepper
pinch of salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C. Pulse the raw cauliflower in a food processor until you have crumbs that look like rice.

 

Tip into a large frying pan - you don't need to add any oil - and cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally, until the cauliflower loses some of its moisture.

 

Allow the cauliflower to cool then mix in a large bowl with the egg, cheese and salt and pepper.

Line a flat baking sheet with greaseproof paper and spread out the cauliflower mixture on top. Push down with the back of a spoon so you have a fairly packed down layer. Bake for 30 minutes until the cauliflower has turned golden brown.

If you can, get a spatula under the pizza base and turn it over in one piece and bake on the other side for ten minutes.

Remove from the oven and spread with tomato puree. Top with grated mozzarella and whatever pizza toppings you enjoy, and return to the oven for a few minutes until the cheese has melted.

Why not give it a go if you haven't tried this before?

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Mascarpone Orange Streusel Slice from Burnt

 

I'm hosting Food 'n' Flix this month and the film I have chosen is Burnt. (If you haven't seen the film - spoiler alert!). There are so many wonderful scenes that centre around food - at the beginning when Adam has gone to work in obscurity in New Orleans, as a self-imposed punishment for his bad behaviour, he is shucking oysters and only once he has done 1,000 will he stop.

When he returns to London there's a great sequence where he's eating different foods including a lamb wrap and another where he is cooking food late at night in a friend's flat where he is staying. His friend and the guy's girlfriend are surprised to find him cooking in the middle of the night but happily tuck into mussels, summer veg on a bed of ricotta, and smoked mackerel on duck egg.

When Adam is trying to persuade Sienna Miller's character Helene to work for him, he arranges to meet her in a Burger King; she refuses to eat there and there is a conversation around the consistency you get in a Burger King which they hate.

Adam meets Uma Thurman, a top restaurant critic, over a cooked breakfast in a café and when he takes over the restaurant, there are beautiful montages of cooking and food being plated up.

I thought about making turbot for my Food 'n' Flix recipe as in one scene, Helene messes up cooking a piece of turbot and Adam humiliates her by making her apologise to the fish; we then see a sequence where she is repeatedly cooking the fish for her daughter at home (even for breakfast) in an effort to perfect it. I did look at the major supermarkets to see if they had turbot but none of them did. There's also a scene later with Adam at Billingsgate fish market but I wasn't going to go there to buy fish!

Ultimately it's Helene's idea to bring in a sous-vide cooker that changes the way the restaurant cooks food, to great acclaim. A sous-vide seals food in a packet and poaches it slowly at a low temperature to seal in the flavour - you can buy the cookers from Lakeland but I don't have the space or think I would use it that much.

While I was trying to decide what to make, I googled the film to see what recipes were already out there and found an official site for the movie, that actually had recipes on it! Needless to say they were really complicated recipes, sometimes involving things I'd never even heard of (trimolene, anyone?) - but as I'm not one to shy away from a challenge, and I was at the start of a whole week off work, I decided to have a go at this recipe for mascarpone blood orange streusel.

I'm not going to re-post the recipe so do have a look at the link. It was very time consuming and complicated involving four different elements - not including the ice cream which I decided not to make. I had varying degrees of success with each one!

I started by making the mascarpone mousse which should have been fairly straightforward. I mixed the mascarpone, cream cheese, crème fraiche, sugar, vanilla, orange and lemon zest and juice and slowly added the Cointreau, which I already had in the cupboard. I softened the gelatine in water, but when I melted in the pan I had a slight concern that I couldn't get it all out of the pan. I added it to the mousse and blended it but when I strained the mousse, I could see that some bits of the gelatine were left behind in the sieve where it had already congealed. I suspected that the mousse might not set and I was right, so after a couple of hours in the fridge I put it in the freezer to harden. Failure number one.

The blood orange gel was easy enough, other than the fact that I couldn't get hold of blood orange juice and had to use regular OJ. I actually had some agar agar powder - it's a vegetarian alternative to gelatine and was part of a molecular gastronomy kit I was given once, similar to this:
Molecule R-Evolution Cuisine Kit plus Molecular Gastronomy Book with 40 Recipes Introductory Package

 

I simmered the juice and added the gelling agent, and spread the resulting liquid onto some clingfilm. It set quite quickly and I was able to slice it into strips easily. Success!

I was excited about making the honeycomb as it's something that I love to eat and the recipe didn't look too complicated. I put the honey, sugar, liquid glucose (which I already had from making marshmallows) and water into a pan and let it caramelize, then whisked in baking soda which made the whole pan froth up. Apparently all I needed to do was 'pour onto a baking sheet.

Allow to set and then break into pieces'. I ended up putting it in the fridge and even then didn't set - it firmed up a bit, but I had to scrape it up with a spoon and it looked nothing like honeycomb! Another failure.

Finally for the streusel layer which is somewhere between a crumble and a biscuit - I mixed the flour, ground almonds, sugar, salt and butter, moulded it into a block and put it in the fridge. But even after two hours it was still really crumbly and difficult to roll out without breaking. I baked it in the oven for longer than the given time, since after 10 minutes it was still soft and crumbly, but I ended up over-baking it and when it came to cutting up, the strips I cut broke into a couple of pieces. Partial success.

So when it came to assembling the dessert, I laid pieces of the broken streusel on the bottom, a thick slice of the semi-frozen mousse, then a slice of the gel, and a few pieces of the sticky in-set honeycomb on top. I added some crumbled streusel on the side and a few dots of the gel layer on the plate.

 

 

And how did it taste? The streusel was nice but a bit overcooked; the mousse had a delicate flavour and didn't come out too badly from the freezing (it had the consistency of soft scoop ice cream) but I didn't like the gel layer - the texture was just a bit strange. The amount of effort this took meant it is definitely not something I will be making again - it also shows me how skilled chefs in places like the Langham actually are!

If you want to join in Food 'n' Flix you don't have to make anything this complicated - there are lots of ideas you can take from the film! Find out how to take part here.

 

 

 

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The Life in your Years Birthday Card

Do you know the quote "In the end it's not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years"? I was familiar with it but hadn't realised it was attributed to Abraham Lincoln! I had a sheet of die cuts from a card making kit that had various sentiments and quotes on them, including this one.

The die cut was quite large so I decided to make it the centrepiece of the card on its own - but as it needed something else to create interest, a gatefold card was ideal. This is a card that is split in the middle of the front of the card and each side opens outwards.

I covered both parts of the front with blue spotted paper and covered the inside with a different piece of blue paper from the same pack - since when the card is standing the inside will be partly visible. I glued the die cut onto one side of the front so it would sit across both parts but allow the card to open, and added a 'happy birthday' outline sticker inside.

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Food 'n' Flix - Burnt

I'm hosting Food 'n' Flix again this month - a challenge that turns movies into food. The film I have chosen this month is entirely about food so there should be no shortage of inspiration for things to make!

Burnt stars Bradley Cooper as a chef, Adam, who has ruined his career and needs to start over, so gets a job running a friend's restaurant in a luxury hotel and devises a new menu, via trying out all sorts of eateries and street food stalls around London, in an effort to get a Michelin star. He hires Sienna Miller to work in his restaurant, which is shown to be in the Langham Hotel. I know the head of PR at that hotel and she had a great time watching the movie being filmed and was even in it as an extra, though I didn't spot her when I was watching the film!

I really enjoyed this film - it was impressive to watch the restaurant scenes (Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller both had to learn to cook and I've seen interviews where they talked about the lengths they went to and how good they now are at filleting fish!). It's also a great one to choose for Food 'n' Flix as there is so much to take inspiration from!

How to participate in Food 'n Flix:

• Watch the chosen film (Burnt).  Taking inspiration from the film, head into the kitchen and cook or bake or make something.
• Post about it on your blog with a link back to THIS post and a link to Food 'n Flix.  Use of the logo is optional.
• Alternately, post a photo of the dish you made on Instagram (public accounts only). You must include the following in your caption: short intro, recipe, #FoodnFlix and tag (@inserthostname).
• You must post must be current (during month of film). And of course we don't mind if your post is linked to other events...the more the merrier.
• Have fun with it!
• Email your entries to me at caroline@carolinemakes.net  and cc heather@foodnflixclub.com and include:

                     -your name
                     -name of blog as you want it written
                      -name of the dish/drink you created AND a direct link to your post (blog or Instagram)
                      -attach a photo or give permission to pull one from your post
                     -indicate "Food 'n Flix Submission" in the subject line

Deadline for submission is: November 30, 2016

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Spooky Halloween Doughnuts

I wasn't going to do any more Halloween baking this year but saw a video tutorial from Wilton, the US cake decorating brand, on Facebook for doughnuts and realised I had the doughnut tin that they used in the recipe. So I made a quick batch of baked doughnuts - they are quite easy to make as you bake them in the oven, so no hot oil to deal with - and decorated them as spider webs and pumpkins. Easy to do, and fun for the kids to join in with. You can even hand these out to any trick or treaters who come knocking!

I used this recipe from the Wilton website. Translated for UK bakers (we don't have 'cake flour' over here, you need:

2 cups (300g) plain flour
3/4 cup (175g) caster sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup (175ml) buttermilk
2 tbsp. butter, melted

to decorate:
icing sugar
water
black and orange food colouring (gel works best)

Preheat oven to 220C. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl and then beat in the buttermilk and butter until you have a thick batter.

 

 

 

To decorate, lay some kitchen towel or newspaper under your cooling rack as the icing will drip through. Mix icing sugar with a few drops of water, adding a few more drops until you have a thick and slightly runny consistency, that drops off the spoon but isn't liquid. Separate into three bowls with two containing more icing than the other - the smallest bowl is the one you will leave white.

Add orange food colouring (I used Wilton gel colour) to one bowl and black to another and beat in. Use a teaspoon to drizzle the orange icing over half the doughnuts. If you like you can add a green stalk for the pumpkin or even edible eyes if you have them or want to make them from fondant!

Cover the remaining doughnuts with black icing. While it is still tacky, spoon the white icing into a piping bag and snip off the end so you have a small opening. Pipe concentric white circles onto the black doughnuts. Take a cocktail stick (toothpick) and drag lines through the icing from the outside to the inside; this will give a spiderweb effect. Leave the icing to set and enjoy!

Grease a doughnut pan with Cake Release or similar and fill the holes until 3/4 full. Bake in the preheated oven for 7-9 minutes until risen and springy. Allow to cool in the pan for 5 minutes then cool on a cooling rack.

 

I'm sending these as a last-minute entry to the Food Calendar challenge hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.

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Meal Planning Monday 2016 - Week 44

I have a whole week off work this week which is great - I had some annual leave to use up and decided to use it to tackle all the big jobs around the house I had been putting off. The aim had originally been to finish the decorating with my husband but he wasn't able to get any time off work, and I don't want to do it on my own - I did enough of the decorating when we moved in as he couldn't get as much time off work then either! I have plenty of things to keep me occupied, from reorganising the kitchen cupboards to trying to finally get the hang of my sewing machine to changing my name on various databases that I started doing after I got married in June, but haven't had time to finish!
It also means I can have a bit more fun in the kitchen, though as my husband will want me to pick him up from the train station after work I can't make anything that will require me standing over the stove for a long time - unless I tell him to get the bus!

Monday
Lunch:  mackerel fillets in korma sauce on toast
Dinner: Sonoran chicken pasta (America's Most Wanted Recipes p.205)

Tuesday
Lunch: jacket potato
Dinner: sausage and baked bean pie for him, homemade mac and cheese with chorizo for me

Wednesday
Lunch: pizza toastie
Dinner: Santa Fe chicken (America's Most Wanted Recipes p.10) with mashed potatoes

Thursday
Lunch: rest of mac and cheese (easy to heat up as the cleaner is here)
Dinner: my husband is out at the cinema. I'll have Shrimp Marinara (America's Most Wanted Recipes p.232) with broccoli bites (p.26)

Friday
Lunch: broccoli cheese soup (America's Most Wanted Recipes p228)
Dinner: chicken nuggets (Deceptively Delicious p.76) with chips - well it is Friday!

Saturday
Lunch: I'm out all day on a course
Dinner: Today is the 6 year anniversary of when my husband and I met! I won't be home that early because of the course so I need a simple dinner -one of his favourite things is steak and chips.

Sunday
Lunch: baked camembert with fougasse
Dinner: spiced roast lamb chops with roots and alliums (Sophie Grigson's Country Kitchen p.145) with gammon for him as he doesn't eat lamb

This is a blog hop: join in!
 

An InLinkz Link-up

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