Wayan'e

A first trip to Mexico is essentially a challenge to see how many tacos you can eat in a week. So taco eating starts early in the day. And if we weren't at the market, we were at Wayan'e. Aguas frescas helped us recover from the super hot, super short walk, and tacos followed.

Our order: all the breakfast tacos available (which turned out to be the perfect amount—not all on the menu were available). They made our typical Brooklyn bagel breakfasts seem a little underwhelming: freshly pressed, super thin tortillas topped with softly scrambled eggs, fresh greens, rich black beans, a dash of chili, soft onions, a splash of hot sauce (danger! super hot!), and whatever other veggies they had on hand that day. So much work went into every taco, with no fuss, no pretense, no unnecessary fanciness. And yes, you're right, I was jealous of the other people having their breakfast meetings over this breakfast platter.

Wayan'e, 412,  Calle 59 408, Centro, Mérida, Yuc., Mexico

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Creamy Cocoa and Sweet Potato Soup

When you work for a soup start-up, your life becomes more focused on soup than you could possibly imagine. Trying to think of something to make for dinner other than soup is like trying to win the final of a Spelling Bee. I dream about soup, write about soup, eat soup, and that Mighty Boosh song is stuck on a loop in my head. 

I'm not complaining — I'm just trying to convey the all-encompassing nature of soup start-up life. The fact that I get to spend two hours every Monday morning filming a Facebook Live of my boss making soup is a total dream. Writing about mindful eating and living every week is hugely refreshing after so many slideshows about tailgating. And it means I can eat delicious soups for lunch every day of the week.

In my second week on the job, we celebrated Halloween with this sweet dessert-style soup. Steamed sweet potatoes are mixed with cocoa, coconut milk, a dash of chili, and served over black rice. Yep, don't worry, I was skeptical too. But it's delicious. It's like rice pudding but with chocolate and natural sweetness and chewier, less jelly-like rice. I've been craving it ever since, and think it may have to make an appearance at the breakfast table on Sunday morning. It's so simple, can genuinely be made in 20 minutes (we proved that here), and will fuel your day with so much energy and goodness. Happy souping!

You can find the recipe here, but if you are a keen souper, buy Nicole's book here.

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Grilled Vegetables, Ricotta & Basil

I am embarrassingly aware of how little 'normal' food I talk about on this blog. By 'normal' food I mean food to live on and eat daily i.e. not cake, cookies and coffee. Although thinking about it I do eat most those things daily, just not three times a day. When I saw M on a brief trip to Bristol last month she mentioned that I should write about more day-to-day food, more savoury food, more normal meals. No less cake in this little internet space, but mix up the cake with some savoury too. I need to find that perfect balance between naughty and nice which everyone craves in life.

So after that rather longer than I had planned for ramble, I'm going to tell you what we cobbled together for a late, post-tennis and a little bit too much Pimms Sunday evening supper. It's not really a recipe, lots of you carnivores would say it's not even really a meal. But it was a plate full of food that made me happy, that was simple and healthy, pretty and tasty.

At Broadway Market on Saturday we'd bought some buffalo milk ricotta. As you may have guessed I am in love with ricotta, and there was no way I was leaving that stand without some ricotta in my bag. We dropped by the Turkish shop on the way back from the tennis, picked up a few vegetables, threw them under the grill, chopped some basil into a generous amount of olive oil and bashed it together with a pestle and mortar for a while. When a slight charring smell started wafting from the oven, B flipped the veg over, and returned it to the grill for a little while longer until it was sufficiently dark and soft.

All was thrown into a bowl, the creamy and super-rich ricotta sprinkled over, and the basil oil poured on top. Tossed. Served. Yum. Very little effort, very lot of taste.

FYI veg-wise we used two courgettes, one super long red pepper, one aubergine, a couple of cloves of garlic, and a couple of handfuls of cherry tomatoes. That's as much as a recipe as you need. Promise.

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Caravan

I've eaten at Caravan many times before. Their brunch is a firm favourite.

In need of an early evening, bank holiday monday, pre-gig meal, somewhere between mum's train platform and the Barbican, we headed for Caravan at Kings Cross. B and I were early and so started with fresh mint tea. We're that cool. The cups here were served on top of the pots: Pimlico Fresh in reverse, but a less perfect fit. 

Maman arrived and we moved on to bellinis for the girls and a beer for B. Bye bye fresh mint tea. The bellinis were described as seasonal. They were peach. As the waiter told us, they must be in season somewhere. Nice try, but not an excuse. If it hadn't said seasonal, we wouldn't have batted an eyelid. 

Not wanting a huge plate of food each, we shared a few of the smaller dishes. The best way of getting to try as much as possible, which, with this fusion-y menu, filled with enticing ingredients and mixtures, is exactly what you want to do.

Because of my miso-based work, we started with seaweed bread and miso butter which was as gloriously umami-filled as you would expect. A far superior alternative to marmite. Mine and maman's favourite spicy cornbread with lime and butter was spicy and sweet. If you have one dish when you go, make it this one. Just cornbread and a drink and I'd have been quite happy.

What followed was a mixture of fabulous and flawed. Roasted cauliflower with harissa; carrots with beetroot and goats curd (which we decorated with the herbs maman had bought from the garden for B and me); lamb ribs in miso and ale on the fabulous side. Heirloom tomatoes (read: one average tomato), chickpeas (big but soggy) and greens (and an unwelcome addition of raw red onion), on the flawed. 

A finale of black coffee for maman and cookies and cream for B made up for the previous mistakes. Together, the bitter coffee and glass of chocolatey, creamy heaven would have made a great breakfast. If you've got as sweet a tooth as me. 

We'll certainly be back, the buzzing atmosphere, wonderfully designed industrial space, and fresh coffee, are too good to give up for the odd faulty dish.

Highlight: Cornbread

Lowlight: Tomatoes

Caravan, Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, London, N1C 4AA

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Dan Lepard's Carrot, Orange & Pistachio Cake

It often happens that there's people coming round for a lazy lunch on a Sunday, I've already cooked everything I need to, but then I decide I need to make a cake too. Just in case. In case of what? I don't know. In case someone suddenly needs cake. And it seems that many people, when they see cake, do suddenly need cake. Cake never goes to waste.

And so it was that after a sleepy Sunday morning, everything ready and prepared for the arriving friends, I set about making Dan Lepard's carrot, orange and pistachio cake. This means they arrive to a scene of chaos rather than the scene of calm that had existed previously. Dan's little introduction to this recipe is so charming that the irresistible immediately becomes a necessary requirement in one's life. As an added bonus there's a little bit of health tucked away in this layer cake. I left off the top layer of icing as a nod to that vague notion. I'm not sure it counts as a health food but it's near enough for me.

Luckily for you, the recipe can be found here. That's your bank holiday weekend sorted. You're welcome.

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On the Bab

It seems I can no longer hide my slightly obsessive personality. This time it's a Korean obsession.

My now less-new office is rather too conveniently close to the now less-new Old Street restaurant, On the Bab. Every visit, I am incapable of showing any sign of reserve always order too many things. But how can I stop such a trait, when everything I've tried has been delicious? There's never a problem of there being food left to waste, rather there is just a problem of me being uncomfortably full afterwards. Complete lack of self control my end -  my eyes are much bigger than my stomach.

Busy at lunch, busy in the evenings, this little restaurant is always buzzing. And there's many a good reason why. Soju cocktails stirred with lemon, honey, and tonic water, or a sojito for B were both sweetly perfect, if a little slow to arrive. Fried chicken came in an enormous portion, with Korean slaw on the side. Fluffy Hirata buns stuffed full with beef and sweetly spiced sauce. Huge portions of rice and vegetable fritters. Stir fried spicy pork with vegetables and cheese sounded bizarre but tasted perfect. All served in perhaps not very original enamelware, by waiters in marine-striped t-shirts. Of course brick walls and wooden chairs accompany this. This is Hoxton after all. 

I was too greedy to get any really great pictures. Apologies. The meat was fantastic, and a vegetarian might feel slightly left out. But there are options, and maybe it's just that my eyes are more drawn to fried chicken than they are to more vegetable fritters.

Highlight: Hirata buns. Obsessed.

Lowlight: Service. Far. Too. Slow.

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Boopshi's

I think almost every other London-based food blogger has already told you to go to Boopshi's. So I'm going to be super unoriginal and do the same. Stripped back and bare (but without the recycled wood that snag your tights every single time); light and buzzy with glass walls and lights shining through the semi-transparent interior; tucked into a small corner right in the centre of town, and serving lethally delicious drinks and fabulously enormous schnitzel, there is no reason not to go. Unless you're a vegetarian. Then I might let you off. But you should still go and have many drinks and many spätzle and cheese. 

We have decided we need to return to try the two cocktails we didn't get to on the list. And the Prosecco on tap. I was too distracted by the cocktails as big as my head, the colours like a Panetone colour guide, that were far too yummy, to be thinking about Prosecco.

Pork schnitzel for me, chicken for B. Mine with a duck egg and capers, his with a hen egg. With spätzle and cheese, and a bit of speck for good measure, and a house salad, which, that day, was crunchy fresh leaves, cubes of roasted butternut squash, and roasted walnuts with a zingy dressing. The portions poured over the sides of the oh-so-trendy enamelware plates. There was no attempt at pretentiousness. They do schnitzel. They do spritzers. And they do it so well. 

Just enough space to share some kaiserschmarrn for pudding (which I didn't photograph as it wasn't the most beautiful plate of food) left us with that lasting happy memory you search for in the final moments of a smiling evening. I'd go back next week: schnitzel and spritz are a new favourite.

Highlight: those cocktails

Lowlight: the blast of freezing air every time someone opened the door. A small detail. But it was chilly.

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Rainbow Trout

So it seems that I've gone from an overdose of cake on this blog to an overdose of fish. I promise this will be the last one for a while. Please bear with me! 

I've never been much good at cooking meat. I guess you could say that I am pretty much a  vegetarian. But I will happily munch my way through a roast chicken, a baby quail, lamb chops, and, very rarely, a perfect steak, if I'm not the one who's had to deal with the flesh, and as long as I know where it comes from and can be reassured that it had a happy life before it landed on my plate. A flexitarian, some may say. So when it comes to cooking a more 'decadent' meal, especially when B is around and wants more than our normal veggie fare, I find myself heading to the fishmonger. Fin and Flounder on Broadway Market is our favourite haunt. Leaves us with the excuse of picking up many other goodies that we don't really need but can't resist at the same time.

Last week it was these little rainbow trout. Actually not so little. But just small enough to be acceptable to eat one each. They looked so perfect, their pink flesh and bright scales shimmering in the lights. I didn't do much: turned the oven on, and put whatever I had in and on them (this time it was lemon, thyme, butter, garlic), and shoved them in the oven until they were done. What has come to be known in this little East London flat as 'Mary's potatoes' came with them. Boiled baby potatoes, chopped and mixed with lashings of greek yoghurt, horseradish (a lot, if you're like me), a dash of white wine vinegar, olive oil, lots and lots of dill, a couple of handfuls of capers, and of course, S and P. A winner every time. And it always puts a smile on everyone's faces: the explosion of flavours far from what's expected of the standard, British potato salad. Some crunchy leaves and a couple of toasted pine nuts for some colour, vitamins and bite. Et voilà, my kind of Sunday roast.

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Baked Carrot Cake Oatmeal

So many bloggers seem to be talking about fancy breakfasts at the moment. And not breakfasts they've gone out for for lack of being bothered to be creative at home that early in the morning. No, proper, sleepy breakfasts made in their own home, in their pyjamas, made early enough so it is ready and waiting for when they're loved one awakes from their peaceful slumber. Well, this isn't something I've done often. Hardly ever. I normally wake up starving, or am off to yoga or on a run first thing to get that out the way. After that I'm far too hungry to start cooking when I get back... The ingredients would have all disappeared before they'd even had a chance to combine themselves into something decadent. 

In a determined state of mind to overcome my morning hunger problems, I set to work creating Sunday morning's breakfast on Saturday afternoon. I had set my heart on Green Kitchen Stories baked carrot cake oatmeal. And so had B. Other B was round that afternoon, and they both sat watching the football, discussing how strange I was to be making breakfast at 3.30pm on a Saturday. But I knew it was the only way. So with carrots grated, chia mixture whisked, oats tossed, seeds coated with coconut and honey, three separate bowls went into the fridge. Sunday morning arrived, I chucked everything in a baking tray, made a pot of tea and went back to bed. Twenty five minutes of tea (and the odd biscuit) later, and it was ready. The wait wasn't so bad after all, and the wafts of spices coming from the kitchen as it baked were wonderful. It felt like a proper Sunday morning. A Sunday morning I will have to repeat.

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