Blinis and beetroot at Baltic

Eastern European cuisine is not always the most glamorous. I mean, we're talking about gherkins, sausages and beetroot, aren't we?

Despite this, Baltic manages to be remarkably slick, sexy even. It doesn't give away much from the outside on Blackfriars road, but once inside there is a long bar where you can get dozens of different vodkas, or perhaps a cocktail based on once of them - fancy a Vodka Daisy (with home-made pomegranate syrup), a spiced pear mojito or a beetroot martini?

Behind the bar is the restaurant proper, a large, cool space - there is a high ceiling with daylight coming down between the wooden timbers, white walls interspersed with exposed brick, and some interesting design touches. I liked the modern light fittings and wall decoration made from dead (or should that be dried?) roses, though they may not be to everyone's taste.

Blinis at Baltic. Picture by Kake Pugh

The menu is more Polish than anything else, but draws from across the spectrum of European cuisine. I have visited a couple of times. The first time it was the blinis that stuck in my mind. If you have never had blinis, think Scotch pancakes, except from Russia. These were feather-light. You can get them with smoked salmon or keta caviar (maybe eastern European food can be glamorous, after all), but we had them with wild mushroom pate and a garlicky aubergine "caviar" - I think there may have been a touch of tomato in there too, at any rate it made me think of the Med more than the Baltic Sea. Some tzatziki and sour cream turned up too.

The second time it was the wild mushroom soup that lodged in the memory. This was a deep brown broth with enough flavour to knock you over. Unlike much mushroom soup, no dairy products had been added; the richness of the mushrooms simply spoke for itself.

We have also tried Sczcawiowa (sorrel and vegetable soup) which was a thick, slightly tangy soup, with unexpected pieces of hard-boiled egg. Braised rabbit leg with figs, bacon and spaetzle dumplings was all dark and rich and meaty. An excellent beef stew with smoked sausage and potato dumplings arrived in an individual cast-iron pot, some of the contents of which were ceremoniously ladled onto the plate by the waiter. The dumplings, as with the blinis, can be ordered as a starter or a main course. I had pierogi with potato, cheese and spring onion. These semi-circular dough dumplings had been fried to a golden brown. They came with sour cream and a welcome wedge of lemon - I felt in need of some vitamins at this point, as well as the acidity to cut through the fattiness on the tongue. They are delicious, if rather unhealthy. The plate was rather missing something green (or indeed any colour other than white, beige and brown) and if having them as a main course again, a side order of broccoli might well be in order.

All of this sounds more like stodgy comfort food than glamour food, but it is really very good. And there are plenty of more elegant options, such as salmon baked in pastry with leek, spinach and mushrooms, or pan fried sea trout.

After all the sour cream and carbohydrate I have yet to manage to try the desserts, but options include apricot torte, honey and poppy seed cake, or Polish pancakes with sweet cheese, nuts and raisins.

Fear not, though - beetroot and gherkins have not been forgotten. When you sit down a little dish of beetroot pate and a saucer of gherkins (sometimes other pickled vegetables too) appears, along with some excellent bread. And hey, I'm not complaining - I love gherkins.

Baltic Bar/Restaurant
74 Blackfriars Road, SE1 8AH
http://www.balticrestaurant.co.uk/
Tel: 020 7928 1111

Bad behaviour in the kitchen

I went to a thought-provoking talk on this subject at the Wellcome Collection (if you've never been, I recommend a visit - it's free, and there are some interesting events too).

As the summary of the event put it: "Our attitudes to food reflect underlying fears about changes in lifestyle, family and society as a whole, and food is a powerful tool for criticising the behaviour of individual consumers, especially when they are responsible for nurturing the next generation."

One member of the audience certainly felt criticised, lambasting one of the speakers as a snob. He felt that food should be about good times, not about ethics and morality, and claimed that worrying about food miles got in the way of the simple enjoyment of breaking bread (or slurping noodles, scoffing sweets or whatever) with friends and family.

I couldn't help but feel that this was over-simplification and something of an abdication of responsibility. Can't we buy food with ethical (or health) considerations in mind, and still enjoy it? To extend his argument, most people drink alcohol for enjoyment, but that doesn't mean we should ignore alcohol-fuelled violence or health ill-effects.

Anne Murcott, Professorial Research Associate at the Food Studies Centre, SOAS, pointed out that our views on food come laden with history and convention. We have certain expectations for our meals. You can't eat what you would normally have for dinner at breakfast-time, and vice-versa, without being thought very odd. Snacks, on the other hand, are much more flexible - a snack might be an apple, a biscuit, or a portion of chips. She suggested that proponents of healthy eating are more likely to succeed in changing people's behaviour if they target snacks (aka unstructured food events) rather than meals (structured food events). It's an interesting thought. I wonder if anyone will take it up?

The Three Wine Men

The Three Wine Men are Tim Atkin, Oz Clarke and Olly Smith. You may have seen them separately slurping vino on television, and now they have got together to hold wine tasting events.

There was one at the Lords’ cricket ground in London last weekend, another in Manchester this weekend (October 1-2) and another in London on December 3 and 4.

I have been to a few wine tastings over the years, but not as big as this one or on quite the same scale. It seemed well-organised, with unlimited wine tastings and plenty of opportunities to meet the wise wine men themselves.

Tim Atkin at the Three Wine Men tasting

A selection of wine producers and retailers were offering their wares for sampling. There were also themed wine-tasting sessions, where you could taste six wines while being talked through them by one of the experts. These were first-come-first-served and very popular.

Meanwhile Oz, Tim or Olly held court in a more informal manner, doing impromptu talks on particular wines and dispensing samples as a small crowd gathered around them. We got a front-row position while Oz talked about Innis and Gunn beers with great enthusiasm. Innis and Gunn, by the way, is an unusual Scottish brewery which makes oak-aged beers, including some aged in bourbon, rum or whisky casks. They demonstrated that beer can be every bit as complex and full-flavoured as wine.

Wines started at fairly cheap and cheerful prices and went up to champagnes and 30-year-old sherries. Spittoons were on hand, and visitors were encouraged to use them, but there seemed to be a fairly even split between swilling and swallowing.

Oz Clarke at the Three Wine Men event

Water biscuits were provided to cleanse the palate, but I would have liked to see more opportunities to buy food – always important when large amounts of alcohol is involved! As far as I could tell there were little plates of bread and cheese on offer but nothing more.


For cricket fans I suppose sipping wine by the hallowed turf of Lords would add an extra dimension.

And as for a favourite wine? I couldn't even begin to decide. I remember being quite impressed by the Chateau de Pennautier AOC Cabardes (available from Majestic and the Wine Society) but there were too many to choose!

Tickets, incidentally, are £20, though I think the London weekend in September had not sold as well as hoped, because a special offer for Groupon members offered tickets at just £8 the day before the event started.

Updated: The best ice-cream in London, part two

The second half of my round-up of my favourite places for great ice-cream. Quick, while the weather's still nice!

I've updated this after a weekend of October sunshine and more ice-cream eating opportunities.

Nardulli
29 The Pavement
Clapham Common
SW4 0JE

Should  I admit that I went to this place twice in one day? Well, it was an astonishingly hot October day - that's my justification anyway.
There are so many flavours at Nardulli that it's hard to choose, including some unusual varieties. Using all my willpower I managed to bypass my usual favourites of hazelnut and strawberry in favour of something different. So I tried the cardamom, whose elegant, slightly sweet flavour goes remarkably well with ice-cream. It's fairly subtle, not overpowering as I had feared. I can also recommend cinnamon, which reminded me of a warm oven full of biscuits and cake mixture - unexpected associations in an ice-cream, but downright delicious. The fig flavour, like the black cherry, is a swirl of fruitiness mixed with vanilla ice-cream. The black cherry variety contains pieces of fruit, while the fig is a reduced, sticky (almost syrupy) burst of fruit against the creamy background.
Other flavours include macadamia (nice, but I think I'll be sticking with hazelnut in future) passionfruit (bright yellow, beautifully intense), caramel, bacio (hazelnut and chocolate), Nutella (not sure how this differs from the last one), tiramisu, lemon, coconut, amaretto, pistachio, fior di latte, chocolate orange...
Expect queues on sunny weekends.

Ice-cream from Nardulli, In case you were wondering, that's cardamom on the left, fig on the right, plus some macadamia mostly buried underneath.

Lab G

6 Granville Arcade  

Coldharbour Lane

Brixton SW9 8PR

 

Proper Italian gelato is the order of the day at this tiny ice-cream parlour in Brixton Village.

We trued the chocolate sorbet and the hazelnut ice-cream – both very, very good. Chocolate sorbet is a winner to my mind, because I love dark chocolate and find that often chocolate ice-cream is too creamy and just not chocolate-y enough. With this chocolate sorbet, the pure chocolate flavour sang through with no creaminess to get in the way.

As you may have noted, I also tried the hazelnut ice-cream at Gelupo, and I would say they were equally good.  

Other flavours include stracciatella, proper vanilla (with tiny flecks of seeds), cherry and salted caramel.

Bocca

14 The High Parade

Streatham High Road

London SW16 1EX 

This is my local Italian restaurant, but their home-made ice-cream is really very good. They do a very good hazelnut (are you spotting a theme here?) but actually the Bacio (kisses) variety, with chocolate and hazelnut, might be even better. I also love the very fruity, soft strawberry ice-cream. I didn’t actually have high hopes for the blueberry sorbet (blueberries are pleasant enough but to my mind don't have the strength of flavour you want in an ice-cream or sorbet) but it was much better than I expected – they had obviously used lots of fruit.
You can have it at the end of your meal – a single scoop is £1.60 and is quite a generous size, making for a very cheap dessert – or get a cone or a cup to take away.

Read part one here.

The best ice-cream in London

One of the delights of moving to London has been the ready availability of ridiculously good ice-cream.

In my former home of Norwich you could buy decent, locally-made ice-cream in tubs to take home, but there weren't really any ice-cream cafes, and if you were buying ice-cream by the scoop it would usually be mass-produced stuff that you could buy anywhere in the country.

In London there is fancy ice-cream aplenty. I think breast milk ice-cream (allegedly available from Icecreamists in Covent Garden, but more of a publicity stunt than something you can actually buy) may be a bridge too far, but I thrill at the thought of grapefruit or tramontana flavours.

We are promised warmer weather for this weekend, so I might indulge myself while ice-cream still seems reasonably in keeping with the season.

These are my favourites so far:

Gelupo, 7 Archer Street, Soho

Unusual flavours as well as the classics, and a selection that changes regularly. Their hazelnut, made with lightly roasted nuts from Piedmonte, is one of my favourites. So is the chocolate ice-cream with chilli and cinnamon. It has quite a kick, actually - I adore its intensity, though I couldn't eat too much of it.
Compared with those the ricotta and sour cherry ice-cream was a bit of a wallflower. But if you like more subtle flavours it could be the one for you.
Did I mention the raspberry and clementine sorbets? Both were beautifully smooth and full of fruit, though the raspberry is the one that sticks in my mind - the flavour seemed to explode on my tongue on the first taste.

It's worth checking out the upright freezer (past the ice-cream dispensary on the left) before making a purchase, as this contains goodies like ice-cream bonbons (a surprise flavour, dipped in chocolate) and chocolate cones ready-filled with ice-cream.
Gelupo stays open late if you fancy an ice-cream to round off your evening.

Oddono,14 Bute Street, South Kensington

This was the first of the top-class London ice-cream parlours I visited. My friend and I both ordered an ice-cream, ate them with wonder, and then immediately ordered another one each. We were almost unable to stop giggling as we left - call it an ice-cream high, if you like.
They do smooth Italian gelato in an array of flavours - luckily you can have some samples to help you choose. This was the first place I ever hard hazelnut ice-cream, and I have been in love with it ever since. Their chocolate ice-cream is unusually intense, made with Valrhona chocolate, and I can also recommend the strawberry.

More ice-cream parlour recommendations to follow soon...

Oval farmers' market

There has been something of a hiatus in my efforts to visit all the farmers' markets around London. But the mission has re-commenced with a visit to Oval farmers market. Actually, two visits (such is my dedication to in-depth research on your behalf).

The location is one of its advantages - in the grounds of St Mark's Church, Kennington, right opposite Oval station. It's a tranquil green space in busy south London, so when the weather is warm enough you can make a picnic from your purchases without having to walk more than a few feet.

Stalls include some that I have encountered at other farmers' markets, including Honest Carrot (interesting vegetarian snacks like Brie and mushroom pudding or a spicy London Roast). I have mentioned the Cakehole before - their orange and almond cake is still moist, tangy and luscious. I tried the excellent  cream-filled chocolate sponge, too.

Baked goods are quite well represented, with breads and sweet things from the Old Post Office Bakery, plus a whole stall of giant cookies (the cookie stall also does a wonderfully rich brownie) and another stall selling home-made madeleines, meringues, cheese scones and few other savoury things. Their cinnamon cookies were pretty good (and my grandmother thought so too!)

A new producer to me was Bath Soft Cheeses,  selling three of their own cheeses (they were there last Saturday but not today, so not sure if they go every week). There is Wyfe of Bath, a medium strength cheese like a Gouda, Bath Blue, and my favourite, a soft cheese simply called Bath Soft Cheese, somewhere between a Brie and a Camembert, which goes nicely runny when ripe. The stylish packaging also has the original recipe, dated 1908, on the back.

A second cheese stall sells some very fine English cheeses (Appleby Cheshire, Tunworth, Blue Monday and much more) alongside some Continental ones. But I can't help thinking that farmers' markets should ideally be staffed by the producers - if you sell cheese from all over the country, are you doing anything different from a cheese shop? (It also struck me that Bath is a long way from Oval - this long-distance aspect of London farmers' markets has been perplexing me.)


There are also vegetables, soft fruit, eggs, Giggly Pig sausages, apple juice and quite a few other things.

A tip: go with sufficient cash. The only functioning cash machine I could find in the area was the kind that charges you for the privilege of extracting your money.

Vital stats:

When and where: Every Saturday, 10am to 3pm, St. Mark's Church, The Oval, Kennington, SE11 4PW
Website http://weareccfm.co.uk/Oval.html
Number of stalls: 15 (approx, on my visit)
Range of produce: Good
Value for money: 8
Marks out of 10: 8 

The last of the blackberries and a luscious baked cheesecake

I am a little distressed at how quickly the blackberry season is coming to an end.

Maybe this is because I live further down south now, but mid-September seems too soon to wave goodbye to this autumnal fruit. My recently-fertile hunting ground on Tooting Bec common is now full only of soggy or mouldy fruit.

A blackberry bush can actually be any one of hundreds of different species, some of which fruit later than others. So if you look carefully enough (or live further north than me) you should still find the last of the blackberries.

I can't think of much better to do with them than this cheesecake. (The ambitions I had been harbouring of making blackberry chutney may have to wait till next year).

I adapted the following recipe from a raspberry cheesecake recipe from BBC Good Food. It is actually the first baked cheesecake I have made. I was pretty proud of myself - it looked good and tasted even better, if I do say so myself. Baked cheesecakes can be prone to cracking when they cool, but this one didn't.

I have decided that baked cheesecake is the way to go when it comes to cheesecake. And all too often the uncooked style of cheesecake can be too creamy, without the depth of flavour you get from cheese. This one has a bit of extra richness from the eggs, and a touch of welcome acidity from the cream cheese.

Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to take a picture before it all got eaten, so you will have to use your imagination.

For other blackberry recipes, see my earlier post here.

Ingredients
10 digestive biscuits
40g butter, melted
600g/ 1lb 5oz/ 3 standard tubs cream cheese
2 tbsp plain flour
175g/ 6oz sugar (granulated or caster will both work fine)
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
142ml / 1/4 pint pot soured cream
200g/ 7oz blackberries (plus optional extras for the top)

Method
1. Heat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Crush the biscuits to crumbs by putting them in a plastic bag and hitting with a rolling pin or similar heavy implement). Mix with the butter. Press into a springform tin (it needs to be somewhere between 20 and 25cm in diameter) and bake for 5 minutes, then cool.

2. Beat the cream cheese with the flour, sugar, a few drops of vanilla, eggs, the yolk and soured cream until light and fluffy. Stir in half the raspberries and pour into the tin. Bake for 40 minutes and then check, it should be set but slightly wobbly in the centre. Leave in the tin to cool.

3. Scatter any remaining fruit over the top. It doesn't really need any accompaniment - I personally feel cream would be gilding the lily, though you could have a spoonful of clotted cream or crème fraiche if you insist.

If your foraging mission has failed to yield any blackberries, you could use raspberries or blueberries instead. Blackcurrants would also work, although if using them I would be tempted to reduce the quantity to 150g/ 5oz as blackcurrants have a stronger, sharper flavour.

(A note on cream cheese: I used 1 tub full-fat Philadelphia and two tubs of a cheaper alternative described as medium-fat, which is about 11pc fat so similar to reduced-fat Philadelphia. You could probably get away with using all medium-fat, or go for all full-fat if you want a slightly richer flavour).