Jo Lives To Eat

Just thought I'd share this with the world - my 2 favourite London food guilty pleasures -

Number 1 - Standing in my kitchen and eating baked beans from the tin:

Number 2 - Chocolate shakes with a shot of peanut butter from The Diner.  You must try them:


By the way I am very aware of the fact that I am a total weirdo!

It was my very fabulous Mum's 70th birthday a few weeks ago and my brothers and I decided for her present we would treat her to a full day of fun in London.  The majority of it was obviously going to be centred around food.  Helping us to get through the British Museum, Natural History Museum and a visit to the Southbank, we created an eclectic but very classically British menu in the form of breakfast at the Wolseley, a visit to the food department at Harrods, tea and cake at Claridges and a posh curry at Benares innit.

I've been to the Wolseley a few times and have never been disappointed.  Its pretty hard to not love it to be honest, the setting and ambiance are quite glamorous. At 8.30 in the morning the ratio of suits to mere mortals is fairly one-sided but nevertheless you feel warmly welcome and not out of place.  The breakfast menu is extensive with all manner of classic egg combos, thick and creamy yoghurt with all sorts, pancakes, french toast, pastries and the more bold and brave dishes such as haggis, kippurs and a caviar omelette (£60!)  I had blueberry pancakes that tasted delicious.  They were light, fluffy and perfectly sweet.
The service in there from the right staff is excellent but it does sometimes range from utterly charming to indifferent and snooty.

After seeing the incredible Book of the Dead Egyptian exhibition at the British Museum we decided to add in a late addition to the day to visit the food department at Harrods as my 35 year old brother has never even been there.  Harrods is certainly not the place it once was and it will be interesting to see if there are yet more tacky add ons now that the owner has changed hands.  However, the food halls are still absolutely beautiful and really fun to be in and gaze in awe at. The displays are truly mouth-watering and the range and varieties are comprehensive.  No visit to Harrods is complete for me without visiting the jelly belly counter as as a young teenager I used to always have to go and pick out an abundant amount of flavours to take home with me.



After Harrods we drove conveniently up the road to museum district and stopped off at the Natural History Museum to see the phenomenal Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.  God I want to be able to take photographs like that.  Some of them made my heart ache.

Anyway, I digress.  After that and a wander round the hordes of stuffed mammals we left to enjoy what I was most looking forward to the most - tea and cake at Claridges.  Now this really is glamorous stuff darling - pristine table cloths, grand piano, suave piano player, champagne for £10 a glass and Frank Lampard and Christine Bleakley at the next table.  Oh and Morrissey looking thoroughly miserable.  

This is a tea connoisseur's dream with at least 30 different varieties from all over the world and you'd better like tea as you'll probably drink about 4 cups.  Accompanying the tea is an array of finger sized treats starting with perfectly formed crustless sandwiches.  All lovely and simple such as egg and tomato, smoked salmon, the terribly British cucumber and cream cheese, roasted chicken and ham and lettuce.
The cakes and scones then followed.  A tray of apple and raisin scones  first with clotted cream and jam.  The apple ones were gorgeous and my favourite sweet treat of the afternoon.  The plate of cakes weren't really cakes - more like mini deserts and were certainly beautifully presented and well made but I was a little bit disappointed at some of the choices - there was a vanilla custard mille-feuille that was rich and yummy.  Then a fruit tart that I thought was a little bit of a cop out.  The passion fruit, chocolate and banana mousse with pistachio crumble was very nice but perhaps a little too small to appreciate all the flavours.  Finally a chocolate bomb with a lemon curd centre.  The chocolate was yummy and the lemon was yummy but lemon curd in a chocolate desert?  I thought it was a bit odd.

All that said, I'm just being a bit picky for the sake of it.  I loved it here and everything about it - plus I got to stare at Frank and he really is quite a cutie.



Finally after a long stroll along the Southbank and back up towards Mayfair we finished off the day with the ultimate curry-fare; a 2 michelin starred Indian restaurant.  Atul Kochar's Benares.  This is no ordinary Indian restaurant and actually you wouldn't recognise much on the menu if expecting Masala, Rogan Josh and Balti.  This is subtle flavouring with spices and a menu of quality rather than quantity.    With only 6 starters and 8 mains, between the 5 Sharff members we were able to sample most of what was on offer.
Starters were very clean and simple.  My spice crusted scallops in a grape and ginger dressing were certainly tasty and looked appetising but I struggled to find all of the combinations of flavours that were trying to get out.   My main course of lamb shank with gold leaf and chickpeas was cooked beautifully - no question but the subtle spicing just felt rather absent for me.  I could have been eating the same lamb shank in a gastropub with some mash.  To be honest, this was how I felt about several of the courses - they just felt a little bland. My Dad's choice of roasted roe deer fillet with venison biriyani and stuffed courgette sounded and looked incredible, but again, I just felt somewhat disconnected from what the flavours were trying to achieve.  Some were better, especially the side dishes that can often be overlooked.  Punjabi paneer with peas was delectable as was the goan spiced courgettes but the more I think about it I struggle to understand how this restaurant is worthy of 2 michelin stars.  The prices certainly reflect this (grossly) but I'm not sure the food does.

I feel overly harsh about my first experience with cordon bleu Indian food and perhaps I should open my eyes a little further.  People do say fantastic things about Benares.  The setting, style and service was certainly exquisite and effortless.  Maybe years of eating spicy English curries has deadened me inside......and my taste buds!

I thought it was high time to put my first recipe on my blog - I'm ashamed I haven't done it before now. Apologies.

So, I wanted to keep it simple to start - nothing too fancy and do a little baking.  Actually, something I feel quite strongly about is cake.  Yes, you might see a recurring theme here as I've already had my cupcake gripe in an earlier post but now I'm talking about good old fashioned cake.  Cakes are so easy to bake and I just don't understand how so many people get it wrong.  I've tasted so many that are either dry, artificial tasting or tasteless and there is just no need for it!

So I've decided to pass on a recipe for one of my favourite cakes in the whole wide world - chocolate orange cake and it takes minutes to prepare!

So the ingredients are as follows:
4oz of butter, 6oz of caster sugar, 6oz self-raising flour, 2 large eggs, 4 tablespoons of milk, 1 orange, 4oz of chocolate chips and a further 2-3oz of cooking chocolate (dark chocolate is best)

Start off by creaming the butter and sugar - you can use a spoon or a handheld whisk if you don't have a mixer but it will be harder to do if the butter is rock hard.

Once the consistency is nice and smooth beat the 2 eggs and add to the butter and sugar, then grate the orange rind into the mixture.


Next fold in the flour alternatively with the milk.  Once finished everything will have come together in a nice sticky and thick consistency. Before pouring into a cake tin add half of the chocolate chips into the mixture.
Finally pour the mixture evenly into a small cake tin (19cm) and pop the rest of the chocolate chips on top but don't mix them in.  This ensures that the chocolate chips are distributed evenly throughout the cake.


Put the tin into a pre-heated oven at 160 degrees for 45 minutes.  Thats it!!

Just before the cake comes out of the oven squeeze the juice from the orange into a saucepan with a little sugar and boil it up.  As soon as you take the cake out of the oven pour the juice all over the cake - this makes it all the more orangey and yummy.

Leave the cake to cool now for at least half an hour and then release it from the tin.  Melt the cooking chocolate up with some single cream and spread it all over the cake.  Delicious.  The best part is then licking the bowl!


So thats it.  Simple as and the cake is extremely moist, not too rich, very orangey and very chocolatey.  Anyone you bake this for will love you.  Believe me!

I was talking to a friend from work a few weeks ago and she mentioned that she was doing Come Dine with Me. I got very excited at the thought of her being on TV but she informed me that she is not going on TV but actually doing it with 4 of her friends.  What they do is follow the TV format and give each other marks out of ten but at the end they go to a swanky restaurant in London and the winner doesn't pay.  How utterly fabulous darling.  I immediately sent an email round to 4 of my most culinary skilled friends and the first date was set.  As with the TV show each impending chef du jour has to send through the menu before the actual date.
First up - Gemma.  I have to admit I was really intrigued by what she was going to rustle up - after all when I first met her at University she could barely cook an egg but now, 10 years on she was the obvious choice for this foodie jaunt.  She is quite the cook.
So, the menu came and it all sounded lovely.  A selection of meze for starters, followed by Lamb Tagine with a chocolate torte and lemon sorbet to finish up.
The evening at Gemma's house was just gorgeous.  Music playing, table set, chilling in the kitchen and plenty of wine.  The meze was yummy.  Humous, a sweet potato and olive salad, goats cheese with sweet peppers and chick peas and an aubergine puree plus lots of pitta.  It was all a little too moorish for me and I just wanted to keep eating.
Up next was the lamb tagine served with cous cous and apricots.  I was a tad apathetic regarding the apricots - I've never been too much of a fan however the whole dish tasted delicious - apricots compliment cinnamon so well.
So finally came desert - an extremely rich chocolate torte with extremely lemony sorbet.  The sorbet wasn't quite set but it didn't matter - it tasted excellent and placated the richness of the chocolate in a subtle way.
Along with the good food and flowing wine there was great conversation with 4 of my best friends.  Gem really has set the bar high.

Even though Hix on Brewer Street has been open for exactly a year now, the press has only been fairly prolific in the last 4-6 months.  It won Time Out's best new restaurant recently and so I'm sure its awareness has increased ten-fold. To be honest I would like it to stay slightly off the "London's best restaurant lists" radar purely from a very selfish point of view.  I am in love with this place.  I took a friend of mine from Tel Aviv for his 30th birthday on Friday night and it couldn't have been more of a pleasure.  I have to admit from the outset that we did get some special treatment as my other friend who came with us is in the restaurant industry so pulled some strings for us but regardless this was dining out at its absolute best.

Ok technically today's post is nothing to do with food. Technically I didn't eat any food at The Betsy Smith pub today.  But, I did drink a lot of  Bloody Mary's, which normally I class as a full meal so I feel this post is completely justified.

The Betsy Smith is a new pub on Kilburn High Road from the owners of The Winchester in Islington.  I was intrigued to go and see it as I feel that other than the North London Tavern,  Kilburn High Road is somewhat lacking in decent drinking holes, unless of course I'm an "old geezer", work on a fruit or veg stall or am an unemployed alcoholic.

I wasn't just pleasantly surprised when I arrived, more like mesmerised.  Its awash with luscious chesterfields, warm and bright wallpapers, kitsch ornaments, whacky lighting and pink flamingoes.  Now if I'm honest with myself this pub isn't as spectacular as I'm making out and the reality of it is, is that it is just a really nice bar, but I'm totally obsessed with everything in there.  I love furniture, I love lighting and weirdly, I love pink flamingoes a la Alice in Wonderland and so I think this place is gorgeous.

There is a great drinks menu too - some of the cocktails look a little pretentious and contrived - parsnip, tequila and blue cheese?!!  Having said that, most of them look interesting, varied and tasty. There is one with a jaffa cake on top!  The thing that drew me the most was the additional menu of cocktails for 2 served in a teapot.  I just love this.  Its so simple and a little stupid but I think rather quaint and lovely.  My friend and I had a "chilli pot" which is 6 shots of Bloody Mary for just £12.  Bargain.  And it was really good too - very spicy and thick.

A few niggles - the service needs to improve ten-fold.  It was extremely slow and several of the waiters are not trained in cocktail making however I'm sure that will get better.  They need to be weary though that as this place gets more popular, and it will, the bartenders need to be totally on it.  Also, the manager looks like a bit of a stress head and will definitely need to mould his staff and himself in a more positive manner.  Other than that, The Betsy Smith is the new rabbit hole to get lost in.



Do I look dignified?!