things we eat and drink, at home and out and about
One of my favourite things to do when I visit my home town is to have a walk in the countryside.
It’s a great chance to observe the extremely rich flora, as there are hundreds of aromatic and medicinal herbs, and that’s not even counting the trees.
Continue reading “Foraging, II: wild sage omelette”
When I was about eight years old, one of my cousins started helping at home, which meant she’d pick us from school and cook lunch etc. One side of her family came from Castile where the winters are very cold and you have to eat substantial food, so she started introducing us to stout meat and potato stews and other new ingredients that I wasn’t familiar with, which was quite a change from the food I was used to eating.
At the beginning, I was fine with this situation—the food was generally OK and the novelty didn’t bother me excessively. Plus, having her around meant I got to stop being the oldest of the younger people in the household (and thus didn’t have to be The Role Model all the time). And I most definitely loved teasing her teenage vanity; I took a special interest in hiding her cigarettes so she couldn’t smoke 😏
Continue reading “How I came to love lentils again”
A kick in the pants is a coffee-based drink, consisting in one shot of espresso added to a cup of drip coffee.
You get the aroma and almost all the purity and cleanliness of the drip coffee, and the espresso adds some extra body (and caffeine). It’s something in between the two; worth trying out!
Since the only thing that can fight indulgent stupors is a cup of strong espresso coffee, and there’s been a bunch of said stupors during these festive days, I’ve been making good use of our Bialetti coffee maker.
If we don’t drink all the espresso in a batch, I store it in a jar and use it the next day to make a couple of “kick in the pants”.
Continue reading “Kick in the pants”
It’s almost a month since we visited this place, but since you can’t go anywhere anyway, we might as well revisit it!
Natsuki Kikuya had posted about this place in her Instagram page, so I was curious about it.
But wait… a ramen place in Mayfair? 🤑💸
I looked at the menu on their website to make sure I would not have to sell a kidney to visit 😆 The prices seemed within the standards of ramen in Central London, and since there’s not a lot to look forward to these days, I made a reservation.
Continue reading “Heddon Yokocho”
We used to buy loaves of walnut bread from the Fabrique bakery nearby… and I say “we used to” because through trial and error I have developed a recipe which produces loaves that are even tastier than theirs. So we won’t buy this anymore!
Sorry, Fabrique! We still buy your cardamon buns (for now 😏).
Continue reading “Sourdough walnut bread”