This is authentic Team Work™: my partner prepared and cooked the leeks and potatoes, and I puréed them and prepared the croutons! ? Continue reading “Leek and potato soup”
Bastardised Staffordshire oatcakes
I cooked these loosely following this recipe from Felicity Cloake.
Except for the fact that I halved the amounts for the batter, changed the types of flour, and also didn’t use the suggested savoury fillings. Hence the bastardisation ? Continue reading “Bastardised Staffordshire oatcakes”
Roasted artichokes
We sourced a few good looking artichokes at Natoora and I couldn’t resist turning them into a lightweight dinner! This style of dinner is very common around my home area as it won’t have you digesting heavy stuff for hours, and so you can sleep well. Continue reading “Roasted artichokes”
Engawa
I’ve been here a couple of times and it has never disappointed me. Very tasty food, great presentation and my favourite aspect: their bento and omasake selections are varied enough that you don’t have to think and also you don’t regret trusting their chefs to ‘order for you’.
Last Friday, we had the omasake dinner–the small version. There was a bigger version with two or three more dishes but we already were super full with this, so I don’t even want to imagine what it would have happened if we had gone for the ‘mega’ version!
This was the starter. It was really yummy. Here’s a close up so you can see the actually edible thing:
It was such a delicious combination of flavours – the fish, the subtle dressing, the radish, the crispy herbs…!
Then we had one of their (as always) beautiful bento boxes. Sauces on the bottom right, various things in the different compartments. It was all so yummy and fresh. And we were already starting to feel a touch full…
But we had yet to get to the main course!
It was a steak on a VERY hot, sizzling stone, plus salad, rice and miso soup. You could still turn the veggies and steak around to cook to your liking, if you wanted to.
We went for a classic companion drink: Asahi beers! Although the staff kept pouring them in a brutal way that built up a lot of foam and I was getting very annoyed by that ?
This was fantastic and great value for money in Central London—albeit SO BUSY! Forget any idea of ‘quiet romantic date restaurant’… at least not on a Friday night! ?
Engawa
2 Ham Yard,
London W1D 7DT
Blood oranges
We got these from Natoora at the Spa Terminus market. They’re Sicilian and so very nicely sweet and citric!
I must have been five years old the first time I encountered a blood orange “in the wild”. I was tasked with helping to make orange juice at home, and blood oranges are not always very obviously bloody from the outside. When I cut the orange and I found the “blood” I immediately panicked, thinking I had cut myself!
I started yelling and calling for help. Obviously my mum was very alarmed, but she quickly determined that it was all fine; I hadn’t cut myself and the orange was “normal”, but I still drank that juice with lots of suspicions ?