Radio, Copenhagen

Can Danish people please feed me everyday? I mean look at this:

It’s not even a DSLR shot, I took it on my iPhone and I haven't even bothered with post-production.

New Nordic cuisine might just be my favourite thing to eat right now. And not because it’s trendy or was last year and I’ve just caught on. Because it’s brilliant.

It tends to sound and look deceptively simple. When you taste it, you might be fooled, because the flavours work so well together that it is as though you have always eaten them that way. But don’t be deceived - there is an incredible amount of care, attention and precision behind the combinations, the cooking and the presentation.

Click to read more ...

Short & Sweet: The River Café

Style: High-end Italian

Budget: Very expensive, considering this is simple cooking, but the ingredients are top quality and the portions are generous. 

Venue and atmosphere: More casual and relaxed than you might expect. Go for lunch on a sunny day and book a table outside.

Service: Friendly, knowledgeable and efficient. 

Food: At The River Café ingredients reign supreme. The focus is on seasonal, Italian and locally sourced produce, simply cooked to showcase their pure, intrinsic qualities.

Click to read more ...

Cake baking and decorating with Juliet Sear

Last Saturday I went to an Easter baking and cake decorating class at Borough Market. The teacher was Juliet Sear, one of the UK’s leading cake designers and baking experts. She sells to some of the country's most prestigious department stores, Fortnum and Mason and Harvey Nichols, and has baked cakes for numerous celebrities. She is also a food writer, consultant, has done stints on TV and teaches baking master classes. Anyone else feeling a little incompetent? 

I felt very lucky to attend this event at Borough Market’s invitation. It's the first cooking class they have done in their event space, The Cook House, which until now has mainly been used for tastings, dinners and photo shoots. It is a lovely space; tastefully furnished and full of light. It's great for cooking lessons with a well equipped demonstration kitchen on one side and a dining area, which can also be used as extra workspace, on the other.

Click to read more ...

Test Kitchen Tuesday at Craft London

My friend Mark is a fussy eater. He favours crunchy, dry or well-cooked foods. He is repelled by rare meats and goo. There are three rules to follow when cooking for Mark: no blood, no egg and not too spicy. One look at the menu at Test Kitchen Tuesdays and I could see that this was going to be a test in more ways than one.

Test Kitchen Tuesdays is a fun concept by Craft London to get customer feedback on dishes that are in development, giving the chefs a chance to experiment with new techniques or ingredients and the customers a unique opportunity to be a part of the creative process.

Click to read more ...

Paper plate dego

“Any dinner that ends with dancing on the tables is a success in my books!” said my sis when we woke up, heads throbbing, after the first London edition of the Paper Plate Dego. Agreed, but there are so many other reasons why this dinner was a success that to solely single out the dancing is to do a massive disservice to the chef.

‘Dego’, for those of you who don’t speak Aussie, is short for degustation. (If you find yourself stuck in the outback, a good rule of thumb for words over 2 syllables is to chop off all but the first and stick an ‘o’ on the end: avo, servo, dego and so forth.)

But why the paper plates? It started out with a lack of crockery and now the name has stuck, so why not? It means less dishes to wash and, in a neat play on words, Chef Sam’s twitter handle can also be read as ‘paper plated ego’.

Click to read more ...