spuntino, london

very special american in soho. I must have walked past spuntino countless times while in soho, though I probably always dashed it off as one of those dodgy stores that you never really want to get caught into. but I have always wanted to come here and since copita wasn’t open today – why isn’t it open on sunday?! – it seemed like fate had it all planned out.

anyway, unassuming – to the point of broken down – storefront aside, spuntino is this weird mix of the relaxness of a cafe together with the informality of bar-eating. we were lucky to have come earlyish and gotten seats immediately as the store filled up very quickly by 1pm.

I’m not sure how to describe this food other than american-style tapas. it’s very much like reinvented and very high quality comfort food in small taster portions. we started with the complimentary pop-corn, salty in parts and generally a little oilier than typical but still nice. after that, our orders came by in comfortable spurts: ham croquettes, reminiscent of the cheese on lobster thermidors + soft shell crab, not impressive like a japanese one and quite lacklustre actually, since that white garnish on the side was rather tasteless and the mayo uninspiring + mushroom and taleggio pizzeta which was very good + sprouting broccoli on a bed of what seemed to be very chunky savoury peanut butter – very tasty + squid with garbanzos in ink which I liked but wasn’t particularly outstanding.

these were really rather good, but then dessert came. a cheesecake, for which I can’t remember the description, but tasted salted caramel-ish, and was so good, amazing good. and so was the chocolate whiskey cake, but then again I have a weakness for chocolate cakes. at this point I decided to order the peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich because I could not understand how it could cost 50p more than the other desserts and also curiosity would have eaten me alive if I left without trying it. it came, like stiff white bread on crumbled peanuts and overflowing jam and if you wondered like I did initially if it was some sort of artisan bread on homemade jam - and felt horribly cheated – then YOU ARE WRONG. it was peanut butter ice cream frozen into a bread-like shape, and it was very good.

I doubt there’s a better recommendation beyond saying that I’d come back here again, even given the large variety of dining options in soho. so good.

best of all, it was a lot cheaper than I had expected given that we were ordering without care, which makes this very inexpensive and brilliant value for a special dining experience.

mugen, london

average japanese by the river. we very spontaneously walked into mugen when we came out of the monument tube station.

the meal started very nicely with an unagi-avocado roll, good rice and the sauce-sushi ratio was just about right. then the squid tempura came – which was the day’s special and very cheap for £4.20 – a little overfried i.e. slightly greasy, and the batter a little thick but it was sufficiently pleasant though the you didn’t taste the squid so much as knew it was there from the bouncy texture.

our mains, a salmon sashimi and roe bowl as well as a katsudon were hit-miss. the salmon was fresh and plentiful for a bowl costing less than a tenner, but the rice was overly sticky and clumpy. a letdown for asians who love rice. the katsudon was less impressive, the batter separated from the overly chewy meat but the sauce and egg are very difficult to spoil and so we still finished most of the bowl (except for the clumps of rice).

we might come back if we were in the vicinity and didn’t know where to go, but probably won’t make the trip down just to eat here. unlike atariya.

three-cup chicken

dinner for a visiting friend that was both easy and tasty. chicken thighs are both inexpensive and tasty, and make for very good sanbei (三杯) chicken.  the name literally means three cups, referring to the equal amounts of sesame oil, chinese rice wine and soya sauce that goes into the braising liquid.

my method of cooking this dish is a sort of amalgamation of many different recipes that I’ve seen online: 4 finely chopped spring onions – separating both the green and white parts; 8 thin slices of ginger; 1 large head of garlic, separated into cloves and smashed; and 3 finely sliced large chillies.

at this point in time have a bite of your pre-dinner snack.

set aside 2 tablespoons of soya sauce, 2.5 tablespoons (tbsp) of rice wine and 0.75 tbsp of sugar in a small bowl – these are all estimates. heat 2.5 tbsp sesame oil in a large pot until it is toasty and the air smells incredibly nutty. throw in the chilli, garlic, ginger as well as the white parts of the spring onions and stir-fry until fragrant; they really should not brown.

at this point in time, throw in the chicken and brown as well as you can – this isn’t greatly significant but helps to render out some fat from the skin. now throw in the soya sauce mix with 0.25 cups of water and bring to a boil. simmer at low for about 10 minutes or until the chicken is cooked. I then remove the chicken and boil the sauce at high until it reaches your desired thickness. (lots of fat gets rendered out into the sauce though, so if you’re particular about that, make sure you remove the fat before you add in any cornflour to thicken the sauce – if you want to).

(you’ll see here that the liquid in my pot reached an amazing high, and that’s because I added far too much water – almost like I was poaching instead of braising. no worries though, just boil the sauce for longer and it all works out.)

baked french toast

I’m not sure to post this or not, as I don’t think it was necessarily the best bread pudding I’ve made now was it entirely to my taste – which I know realise means sufficiently sweet to stand on it’s own without custard. I can’t stop eating it though, so that might mean perhaps that I subconsciously love this, or I just have a sort of addiction to bread.

this is a two-layered best-of-both – that is wholemeal bread masquerading as white – bread pudding with skim milk, grand marnier and baileys, raisins and flaked almonds. my adaptation to smitten’s recipe is also probably the reason I don’t like it.

I made this with wholemeal bread and not brioche because I wanted it to be healthy as well as tasty, and skim milk because that was what I had. it’s still very good with baileys ice cream though, and the crusty bits at the side are the absolutely best.

try this with brioche and chocolate chips and I bet it’d be even awesomer.

update: very good after a rest in the fridge and cold. virtuous enough to snack on.

fiskmarkaðurinn, reykjavik

interesting seafood in reykjavik. the entrance of this restaurant is very unassuming for one that is meant to be a popular hotspot owned by a member of the Icelandic culinary team, and when you get it, there’s a sort of modern organic aesthetic going on. prices are high, and the food is asian-inspired.

we started off with a complimentary dish of crusty soft baguette – loved the sesame seeds on top – served with a dish of mayonnaise mixed with black rice. I don’t exactly remember what was in this, but this tasted just like japanese mayo, and that’s difficult to spoil. this was followed by a dish of salmon tartare on fried wanton skins with fish roe; quite nice and we thought the flavours were very reminiscent of chinese steamed fish. it was alright; when you give something chinese-inspired to asians, it’s very difficult for us not to judge it based on what we’ve had before – this is, after all, our food.

that bridged the wait for our starters, which was a lobster soup with coconut milk as well as minke whale sashimi. this lobster soup was good and served in a very modern style, with the soup being poured out of a sake flask onto lobster tails, and mussels on the side. this was good, but still didn’t make us think wow – hereon in we concluded that Icelandic lobster soup just wasn’t for us. the minke whale was very good – we ordered it in order to cross it off our list of local delicacies – and was served seared around the outside and in thin slices on a bed of pungent wasabi mayo and soya sauce. it was like very blue rare beef, and less gamey than you’d expect, like a cross between raw tuna and beef.

we shared a tuna which came on crispy well-seasoned fried onion as well as miso paste, but unfortunately the plate was also strangely doused – and i mean the entire bottom was soaked – with olive oil, which made the food just a bit too greasy. such a waste.

the other main of monkfish was very nice though, firm and accompanied with a large fried scallop. I don’t think the kitchen does very well with fried food – the taste of the oil was still apparently on the scallop and I left the fried batter on the plate.

this was good, but we’ve had far better in london, and it really is a little too expensive for what it is. I think you should try and get reservations for the grillmarket – or grillmarkaourinn – way ahead (we were told it was booked full two weeks in advance) because the food there sounds better.

potturinn og pannan, reykjavik

family-style icelandic in reykjavik. we were recommended this restaurant by the receptionist at the hotel, and it was a decent dinner with good quality ingredients, if nothing spectacular.

I ordered the catch of the day, which was good value as it came with the soup and salad bar. this was a white fish – can’t remember what – on a bed of tasty mash, surrounded by a strange curry sauce. strange because it was misplaced in a plate of what I thought was meant to be local, but it was still tasty. the self-service bar had two types of soup, and the vegetable one I tried was decent. the pretty-looking bread was very stale though – it needed long soaks in the soup to become edible.

we also had the lobster soup to share, but we weren’t impressed. I’ve found through reading various websites that the icelandic lobster soup is more a cream-sherry broth than a thick bisque which we prefer, so this is probably more a matter of tastes. as it was it was intensely savory – so much that we thought it was a little too salty initially – and the serving was far too big. the garlic cheese bread that came with it was nice though.

my partner had the lamb, and found as before that icelandic lamb is very mild – still too strong for me – and that while it was of good quality, it wasn’t impressive. this was a nice restaurant, and the waiters were well-meaning if a little unsure and unattentive at times. I’m not sure I’d choose to go back, but it was nice for a neighbourhood restaurant.

bæjarins beztu, reykjavik

fantastic hotdogs, harbourside reykjavik. iceland is known for its hotdogs, and we stumbled across this hotdog stand – a very lucky thing as it’s supposedly the best hotdog stand in iceland.

seeing as we didn’t know what an icelandic hotdog consisted of, we got three everythings; now I know that means ketchup, mustard and rémoulade over a snappy sausage on a bed of both raw and fried onions. it was very tasty, and the crispy onions added interest to the hot dogs. a little too wet though, and I had to remove some sauce to finish.

we still very much enjoy the hotdogs outside the London british museum with its sautéed onions.

tapas barinn, reykjavik

fantastic tapas experience in reykjavik by the harbor. this is actually the first time I’ve had a full tapas meal – strange to me as I love the idea of having the choice of many tiny plates of food.

in any case, this won’t be the last time. this place was awesome. we had eight plates of food that started with a complimentary basket of foccacia-type bread with an oil dip and salted chopped nuts on the side. this was followed in quick succession by puffin breast with blueberries, cream cheese and some sort of fruit paste – we’ve never had puffin before and it tasted so gamey like as though it had been cured. it was alright, but I’m not sure I’d ever have it again but it’s just one of  those things you have to try in iceland; lobster tail with foie gras in a bisque-like  sauce – really good this, especially the sauce; and squid. the squid sounded quite normal on the menu, but it was so tasty and tender and delightfully fishy – this was my favourite of the night.

then we had barbecued pork ribs with an avocado side, grilled lamb – which I don’t eat but was told it tasted only alright, grilled goose that had a bit too much sour cream on the side, and a grilled quail. these were all rather good, but I have to say I don’t remember as much about them as I did with the first few dishes, so they are more decent than fantastic. still very good quality though.

we ended the meal with a chocolate liquorice cake, fondant-style. so amazing. I could not have enough of this – and I don’t like liquorice. you don’t taste it so much here, more a second facet of taste rather than an overwhelming layer. the waiters here were friendly, and really made the meal special.

our best meal in reykjavik.

cafe nero, london

decent sandwiches around town. the outlet I recently visited was at heathrow t1, and I appreciate the toasted sandwiches as well as the not-too-creamy chicken sandwich.

next time I’m at t1 during lunchtime, I’m going to get the boots meal deal though. it may seem like a cop-out, but for less than four quid you get a sandwich, a snack and a drink – from what looks to be a decent selection.

chinese barbecued pork

this really isn’t so much about a recipe on making charsiu, or chinese-style roast pork so much a cooking and serving suggestion.

marinate your marbled pieces of pork – we used shoulder here which had a good ratio of meat to fat – for at least 24 hours. that tasty marinade needs the time to penetrate the steaks. I basically did a layer of marinade followed by a piece of pork, and ended up with another last bit of marinade over the last piece before cling-wrapping and fridging. at this point you can chop up garlic and throw it in to marinate, but I prefer to use garlic only while roasting.

on the day you want this, take the meat out of the fridge to rest so that you aren’t cooking directly from cold and place it on double-layered aluminium foil on a baking sheet. I’m just lazy to wash up so this method works well for me. always remember that it’s shiny-side down!

roast at 175C, or 160C on a fan oven for about 10 minutes or until you think your steaks are mostly cooked. charsiu isn’t really about pork that’s still pink in the middle, so going a little past that stage is still fine as long as the meat is tender and tasty. I then switch on the broiler, leaving the oven door open.

according to alton brown, this helps ensure that your thermostat doesn’t recognize that it’s already at the set temperature and keeps on heating. this high heat creates the perfect environment for your meat to crisp and char a little.

broil on both sides until you’re happy with it, since we all have different preferences for char. some recipes tell you to just stick the meat on skewers over a naked stove flame, but I don’t do this because i worry that the oil will splatter everything, and I hate cleaning.

always let meat rest at least 10 minutes before slicing, and serve over white rice. preferably with some wilted bokchoy as well.