Christmas chez Connie

For a change this year, my family spent Christmas Day at my humble little house in London, mainly to avoid me having to get on yet another mode of transportation for a little while at least. We as a family do not celebrate Christmas in the British sense, but we do do what we do best, and that is to cook way too much food.

We had a very lovely dinner of salmon and duck, a very successful collaboration between my mum and myself! First, the salmon:

Baked salmon with whatever is available in the fridge (serves 4-6)
Half a whole salmon
1 lemon, sliced
1 bunch of coriander
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 glass white wine

1. Ask your mum to wash and scale and de-guck the salmon
2. Prepare 2 large square of foil, each comfortably big to wrap around the salmon, and lay on top of one another.
3. Put a layer of garlic, lemon, coriander on the middle of the foil, and lay fish on top. Repeat with some in the middle of the fish, and some on top.
4. Wrap foil tightly around the fish, until there is only one small edge left open. Pour in the wine, then tightly seal the end.
5. Bake at 200C for about 30 minutes, until fish is cooked.

And here it is, eaten traditionally with chopsticks, of course :)

My mum on the other hand was in charge of the duck. She seems to marinade it with a different thing each time, but this time it involved fermented bean curd on the outside (it is seriously yummy) and some hoisin sauce on the inside. The bean curd made the skin really savoury, and dad decided to carve it into slices rather than the traditional Chinese way - most excellent:

Unsurprisingly, we had tons of leftover fish and duck (much better than turkey leftovers!). My parents ran off with most of the duck, leaving the duck legs for me to munch on in front of the telly. There was tons of fish left, so I decided to experiment with a kedgeree. I adore kedgeree, and this was my first time at making it, and it was sooooooooo awesome. Here is the Nigella recipe that I plagarised:

Asian-spiced kedgeree (serves 2)
About 200g leftover salmon, flaked
3 soft boiled eggs
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
1/2 tsp tumeric
100g basmati rice
250ml water
Juice of 1 lime
1 handful of chopped fresh coriander
A little fish sauce

1. Fry the onion in a little butter and oil in a heavy bottomed pan (I used my little Le Creuset casserole), along with the cumin, coriander seeds and tumeric until the onion is slightly translucent.
2. Add the rice, and mix well to coat the rice with the spicy onion mixture. Add in the water and leave to simmer on a very low heat for about 15 minutes, stirring once in a while to stop it sticking.
3. Once the rice is cooked through, add the fish, eggs and stir gently, trying not to break up the fish too much. Add in the lime juice, coriander, fish sauce, and stir again.
4. Close the lid briefly for about 5 mins to warm up the fish and eggs. Eat for brunch!

And for those of you who are wondering what was the first thing I ate when I came back from South America, here is a little treat. Actually the first thing I ate was Nando's, given it was 10pm when I got home and it was the only thing opened, but what I am counting is this: fish fingers for breakfast, served with Nando's coleslaw. Food of the gods!! And apparently it looked so pretty it 'looked like something from Tetsuya's'!

What´s bad in Buenos Aires

We were getting a little bored of our constant diet of steak and pasta, and Clare suddenly had a craving for pad thai. We´d read that there was an "authentic" Thai restaurant in BA, and we were so excited to try it. Alas, it was probably also the worse Thai food I have ever had to eat. Just goes to prove Eirun´s point that you should never ever trust Lonely Planet for restaurant recommendations.

The criminal place is Empire Thai right near Florida. First off, the waiter decided to warn us from ordering both a starter and a main (???), and just had a weird air about him. Maybe they were just a bit shocked to see an Asian come into their restaurant. But the worse crime was the food.

Now, tom kha gai is one of the most beautiful dishes in the world. I eat it whenever I can. But oh did this place butcher it!!! First, look at the colour, it looks like mushroom soup here instead of lovely creamy pearly stuff:

Now, you can just about make out a little sprig of coriander in the soup, but can you taste any spice at all? Errr... nope. That´s because the whole soup appears to be a vehicle for salt, salt, and more salt. And it doesn´t appear to have been anywhere near a coconut, which is the main reason why I love the soup. I left most of it untouched.

As for the pad thai, well, at least it looked pretty decent, and had the requisite egg and peanuts that Clare craved:

But unfortunately, salt reared its ugly head once again! Oh my god was this salty. And completely oversauced. It was more like a bad chow mein made with rice noodles rather than a pad thai. Thank god for the few beansprouts on the top to make it a teeny bit less salty.

The disturbing thing, however, is that even on a Monday lunchtime, the place was packed with locals. Nowhere else in Argentina have we had such immensely salty food, which suggests they think Asian food is very salty, and that they enjoy it like that!!! Oh dear. Alan Yau, I think you have a lot of potential in Buenos Aires to roll out some decent Asian restaurants here!!!

This was also my last meal in Buenos Aires, and indeed South America! I loved this continent, in particular Chile, will definitely be back!

What´s good in Buenos Aires

One of the big culinary discoveries I have had in Buenos Aires is that their pastas here are extremely good. Almost every restaurant seems to serve their own homemade pastas, and I have eaten a lot of it here. And some of it is very creative. This is my favourite one I had, in one of the many Italian places along Puerto Madero, a squid ink ravioli stuffed with kingcrab and prawns in a seafood sauce - and a ridiculous portion it was too:

In an attempt to get another stamp in our passports, Clare and I hopped over to Colonia in Uruguay for a day trip from Buenos Aires, where the pasta were also muy bien. We loved the fluffy gnocchi served at El Drugstore just off the Plaza de Armas, which is cutely decorated with paella pans on the outside:

And here is the seafood gnocchi which unfortunately gave me a bit of a gucky tummy (not convinced the seafood was all that fresh!)

And of course, I have continued my eating of COW in South America, trying to eat as many cuts of steak as I can fit into my little tummy. We stupidly decided to go to one of the most popular steak restaurants in Buenos Aires, Cabera in Palermo, which is ridiculously packed when we arrived. The wait was about 2 hours, but they did ply us with copious amounts of champagne and chorizo as we lined up outside. More disturbing was the fact that we bumped into a Stanford GSB group that we had previously laughed at in Torres del Paine, and we were to bump into them again at the Modern Art museum MALBA.

When we were finally seated, the service by the waiter Alejandro was extremely sweet. We asked for a glass of Malbec each, and he proceeded to pour half a bottle of wine into each of our glasses, and we manage to blag ourselves 2 more glasses of champers each! After all this alcohol, it is amazing I remember the steak! I tried a butterflied sirloin medium-rare this time, and it was served with a multitude of side dips and tidbits. My favourite was the house special of roasted sweet whole garlic which you can swish into your steak!:

The softest steak award has to go to the cheapest steak I had. We were strolling around San Telmo and just wanted a little cafe for a simple lunch, so we dropped into Desnivel, a little unpretentious grill. Here, for about US$10, I had an enormous rare tenderloin steak with mushroom sauce. It was literally bigger than my hand:

And somehow I have actually lost weight on this trip... maybe Mr Atkins was right after all...

El Calafate

Our first glimpse of Argentina turns out to look very much like Chile! But we have only just hopped over the border from Puerto Natales to another sleepy little town called El Calafate, the main thoroughfare for tourists wanting to visit the Perito Moreno glaciar only 50km out of town. The glaciar is absolutely enormous, the surface area is bigger than Buenos Aires! And it´s not even the biggest one in Patagonia, it´s popularity deriving instead from its close proximity to land, and is easily reached by boat. This is a terrible picture, but hopefully gives a sense of how vast it was:

Clare and I managed to work up quite an appetite here, mainly from the awesome ice trekking we did on the glaciar (watch out when I have both my hiking boots and crampons on, I´m invincible!!). We met Dennis from the Boston office (yes, still Uncle B´s spies everywhere here) for dinner at Casmiro Bigua on Av del Libertador, supposedly one of the best grills in town. Here is my first taste of Argentinian steak!!!:

Mmmm - this is a rib eye medium rare - my choice steak. I´ll try different cuts in the next few days, but I thought I would stick to what I know. The verdict? Well, definitely good, but I think I was expecting some sort of steak nirvana and I don´t think I achieved it! The top section where all the fat is was goooooooooooooooooooooooood, but the bottom, leaner part was a bit tough going given how huge it was.

We also had our first taste of Argentinian wine here with 2 lovely bottles of Malbec. It is drier than I normally like my red wines, but very quaffable! Still not beating my obsession with Carmenere though.

Next place we tried was El Puesto, in apparently one of El Calafate´s oldest houses, with a very comprehensive wine list. We tried their house specials of pork shoulder in brown sugar, beer, served with 2 kinds of apple sauce:

And beef tenderloin stuffed with vegetables (not mozzarella as advertised on the menu, much to Clare´s disappointment):

To round off the evening, we went to the wonky bar overlooking Av Libertador, the Librebar, which is lovingly lined with books, and plays some awesome international music (live versions of Portishead, Bjork, and Tori Amos the night we were there!). We sat down to some very overpriced G&Ts, and tried their crepes with dulce con leche. We were told we had to try dulce con leche whilst in Argentina - basically a sickeningly sweet, milky caramel. I had to scrape most of it off in order to eat it, but the crepe was nice!

Off we go now to Buenos Aires - have had hundreds of recommendations as to where to go, but keep them coming!!!

Ode to pisco

"If you´re in Chile and you have not been offered a pisco sour, you may have actually been in Argentina", says Lonely Planet, and I for once will post about a drink rather than food. Pisco sours are the most beautiful thing, and I certainly had plenty of them in my month or so in Chile. Here is a beautiful example of a Chilean pisco sour:

There is however, a long debate between the Chileans and the Peruvians as to which country the drink originates from. Apparently the Peruvians have history on their side, but my heart is still with the Chilean version - less froth, more refreshing - although we did have the most potent one in Cusco (I shall not post the less than flattering pictures Clare took of me after I drank the following pisco):

Pisco is definitely best drunk as a part of pisco sour, but I also had a strange concoction of pisco hot chocolate whilst in Puerto Natales, in a cute little shop called Patagonian Dulce. I know I´m not a fan of chocolate, but it really was quite sickly:

But we did love this little inscription at the bottom of their menu!:

Anyway, I´m now in Argentina looking forward to mate and more vino! I loved loved loved Chile though, planning my trip back already!

Food on the W Trek

One of Chile´s national treasures is Torres del Paine national park in Patagonia, so it seemed rude not to visit. Clare and I did the very popular W Trek over 5 days and 4 nights, hiking to see Lago Grey glaciar, Valle Frances, and the famous 3 Torres.

We stayed in relative luxury in the refugios dotted around the park, which had hot showers (!) and beds everyday - we did snigger at the poor campers freezing outside. Unsurprisingly, the standard of the food was variable up in the mountains. Potentially the worst was at the largest refugio of all, Refugio Grande Paine, right by Lago Grey. The steak was pretty much indigestible, and the only spice they seemed to know was salt:

Refugio Cuernos (right at the foot of the Cuernos, with huge windows for you to admire them) did a bit better, mainly because they served us fresh vegetables with their chicken and rice:

But the most impressive was Refugio Chileno, where there was an obviously enthusiastic young chef at the helm. We finished the hike relatively early that day, so I spent the afternoon watching through into the kitchen as she made a crepe lasagne all from fresh.

One thing I really will not miss though is egg, ham and cheese. I seem to have eaten some combination of the three every single day in Chile. Up in the mountains, everyday we had ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch between slices of indigestible bread. Bleurgh!

Gore-Tex parties

Clare and I are now in Chilean Patagonia, right at the end of the world, and being very surprised by the standard of the food here. The area is teeming with tourists looking to hike in the Torres del Paine national park, so you would expect boring pizzerias and burger joints - but the quality and variety has been excellent. However, everywhere you go, everyone is clad in Gore-Tex, hence my post title!

Our first stop was in Punta Arenas, the main link from Santiago into Southern Chile, a relatively big city which disturbingly feels like you´re in Scandinavia. Highlight of our travels here was seeing a colony of penguins where 70,000 pairs are resident - they were literally everywhere:

Given the ridiculously cheap Chilean wine we were quaffing, I don´t remember much of our dining experiences in Punta Arenas, except a big shout to La Luna on O´Higgins, a cosy little restaurant whose specialty was their spaghetti marinara. The spaghetti was pretty good (think spaghetti smothered in cream with bits of king crab in it), but it was the atmosphere that we really liked. There is a big world map for tourists to stick pins in for where they come from, and there is a massive beer can collection lining the restaurant. Lovely.

We are now currently in Puerto Natales, a very sleepy little town, but beautifully surrounded by mountains. Guidebooks are pretty unkind about the place, but we are loving it here. Given that it is the gateway to Torres del Paine, the town is really chilled, the people are so nice, and such a refreshing change from Cusco where people are hassling you every minute of the day.

Our first favourite eaterie here is Casa Magna on Bolnes, which features a large boat outside, and potentially the sweetest waiter alive. We were not particularly adventurous with what we ate here - grilled fish with fried eggs and chips! - but we had such a great time (yes, another terrible pic by Connie, but Clare wanted to prove to her mom that she´d ordered fish for dinner!):

The waiter was just so passionate about his food, and he even did a little wine tasting lesson for the table next door. Given that we had arrived in Puerto Natales for less than 2 hours, we were made to feel so welcome.

Our next favourite place obviously tries to cater for the tourist crowd (with foreign magazines, freshly squeezed juices and Earl Grey tea!), but it does it all so charmingly. El Living on Arturo Prat specialises in vegetarian food, and it has been a welcome relief from the typical Chilean red meat with red meat dishes. Their colourful food also allows me to take decent pictures for once! - this is their hummus starter:

And a delicious apple, beetroot, and avocado sandwich:

Their special of pumpkin, cauliflower and cheese bake went down so well that we´ve already returned for a second visit! Although I think the existence of Guardian newspapers there may also have something to do with it!

As I said, this beautiful little town is surrounded by mountains, so last night Clare and I decided to do a lovely romantic dinner by the lake, where you can see the sunset (which occurs at around 10pm!). The somewhat weirdly named Concepto Indigo on Ladrilleros is right next door to the lake, and its upstairs restaurant is currently resident to Pippa the waitress, who is so unbelievably sweet you want to squeeze her. The food is definitely expensive for the town (about USD$15 for a main), but the cooking was impressive. I had my first Patagonian lamb here, and definitely up to the standard of good London restaurants - it was even served with some achingly trendy polenta (bleurgh!):

Peruvian favourites

I spent a mere 6 days in Peru, mainly in Cusco, so I was only able to sample ceviche once. Very little to report too, as I forgot to take a photo, it wasn´t great, and Eirun informs me that I shouldn´t have eaten ceviche so far from the sea anyway! But, I did sample some of Peru´s other pride of nation dishes.

On our first night in Cusco, we visited the Pachacutec Grill right on Plaza de Armas, and wisely stuck to their daily specials. My first plate of Peruvian food in Peru was quite a surprise - I chose the trout with reduced purple corn syrup, served with quinotto, which I have just looked up is a risotto of quinoa (how clever!):

Picture to come!!

The trout was absolutely divine - as I later found out, the Peruvians like a bit of sweetness in their food, and the corn syrup went very well with the slightly battered fish. It was also my first time of really eating quinoa rather than sniffing at it thinking how much I dislike Gillian McKeith - and very pleasantly surprised I was too! I ate a lot of quinoa in Peru (including some delicious quinoa porridge for breakfast on the Inca Trail), and I love the fact it kind of pops in your mouth.

For our last lunch in Peru, our little Inca Trail group decided we had to try another Peruvian delicacy - the guinea pig! As we learnt during our trip, the Incas (and their current day descendants) kept thousands of guinea pigs in their houses, under their beds, in order to keep their houses up in the Andes warm, so it became natural to also eat them. I can´t quite remember the name of the place we went to (Kuy-something), but here is the magnificient creature!:



When the waiter came and took the order, he literally said "I´m off to the guinea pig house now!" - so fresh you can see it´s toenails!!

Disappointingly though, it does actually taste a lot of like chicken - kind of like a cross between brown chicken meat and rabbit I guess. And there is hardly any meat on the bloody thing - thank god we shared a pig between the 6 of us given that it was always the most expensive thing on the menu in Cusco.

But! The treat of that meal was something else: the grilled beef heart or anticuchos were divine! Not sure when I will ever be able to eat it again though - are there any decent Peruvian restaurants in London?

Inca Trail and Machu Picchu

I have just finished hiking the Inca Trail, which is a 4 day/3 night trek through the Andes to see the magnificent Machu Picchu. Unsurprisingly, it was the most tremendous experience - I never thought I would be able to drag myself up a 4200m mountain, and the views of Machu Picchu surrounded by all these gorgeous mountains were unforgettable.

Even more unforgettable were the enormous efforts of the porters and cooks who helped us along the way. I dont normally advertise here, but I wanted to applaud SAS Travel for the wonderful work they do with their porters. In our group of 18 tourists, we had an unbelievable 20 general porters, 3 chefs, and 3 guides all working for us, and SAS were undoubtedly one of the better operators on the trail. Porters are expected to carry up to 20kg of weight, running up the mountain to get ahead of the tourists, so that they are able to set up camp, cook, and basically serve us once we arrive at the summit each day. I felt a bit disgusted with myself for hiring what was effectively a set of human pack horses, but at least SAS go way beyond the porters´code, and provide them with decent clothing, shoes, and health insurance - many of the other porters we saw on the trail were barely wearing sandals. Please, if you are going to set off on the Inca Trail yourselves, check their policies towards their porters.

To celebrate our set of wonderful porters, here is some of the delicious and amazing food they were able to whip up for us in the middle of a mountain. Each breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we were treated to a 3 course meal, including delights such as a shredded chicken stew (sorry for the dark pictures, they were taken in a tent!):


Avocado salad:


And various other courses to stuff ourselves with, including corn and cheese, rice, and tomato and cucumber salads:

And a final plea - if you are going on these trails where people are already carrying ridiculous amounts of weight, do not be fussy and pretend you have food allergies just so you can have more choice at dinner (just like someone on my team), meaning that the porters have to carry even more and work even harder. The selfishness really angered me.

Anyway, I promised some of Team Loving It that I would share some non-food photos - here is Machu Picchu in all glory!


The mountain in the background is Wayna Picchu, a steep climb where they only take 400 visitors a day. I clambered up on my hands and feet to get the following amazing view:

Sorry Ferdinand!!

Well, I have to explain the post title first off. After we finished building in Casablanca, we spent a few days of rest and relaxation in a holiday resort called Casada de las Animas, about an hour and a half hour´s drive from Santiago. We had a great time zip-lining and trekking and not being able to white-water raft there.

But potentially the best thing about it was that we had the most gorgeous encounter with a baby alpaca there. Apparently its parents were taken away and it cried for 2 days (the owners took it to the vet thinking there was something wrong with it, but the vet said he was just sad.) Potentially the cutest thing alive, I called him (although we think it was actually a her), Ferdinand:

Given that I only ever write about food on here, why am I talking about Ferdinand? Well, I´m now in Cusco, Peru, where alpaca can be eaten in almost every restaurant here (guinea pig is also very popular, although very expensive!), so of course I had to try some!!!

The location of the crime was at Chez Maggy, a pizzeria on Gringo Alley. I had my first pisco sour in Peru (not as good as in Chile), and the alpaca was called in a pisco sauce with quinoa on the side. The pisco sauce was rather sweet, and the whole thing tasted a bit like char siu:

I dread to think whether I ate one of Ferdinand´s parents, but I comforted myself with the fact that I had ordered it, and it was tasty, rather than I had ordered it, and it wasn´t tasty. If that makes any sense.

Anyway, I await abusive emails from Team Lovin´It upon this news. I miss you all guys!!

More sausages in Chile

Chile has had a lot of German influence over the years, and I have already been excited about the availability of frankfurters already. However, in my final days of my Habitat build, sausages just kept getting eaten!

One of the most popular street snacks here is a completos, basically a hot dog with all sorts of mess on top, including mushed-up avocado, onions, tomatoes, and mayo. Chris and I went to try it in our last day in Casablanca, and I am definitely having another one before I leave South America. They toast the baguette a little so it´s crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. The staff at the little cafe were quite bemused as we were taken pics (Chris has an awesome one of both of us which I will post later), but here is the chef!:



We spent a brief day in Santiago before leaving Chile, and ate at the very famous Donde Augusto Restaurant in the Central Market. It is definitely tourist central, a huge place with about a million tables. I had a very interesting seafood stew there - curados I think it´s called, which consisted of all the seafood scraps they had, topped with a chorizo, pork knuckle, and pork chops. The pork knuckle was very nice, but I don´t think Chilean seafood was best showcased here:

Still eating copious amounts of beef

I am still in Chile, with another week to go before I head to Peru to do the Inca Trail, and I am still eating my way through the cow population here. We have no idea whether it is the slow cooking or whether it is the quality of the beef itself, but it is so incredibly tender that you rarely need to use a knife.

Some of the highlights of last week's eating was to try some traditional Chilean favourites. First is the empanada, which is like a cornish pasty really, but they traditionally stuff it with beef, onions, boiled eggs, and olives (empanada de pino):

I also tried the Chilean heart-attack-on-a-plate, lomo a lo pobre, which is a steak accompanied by fried onions, chips, and two fried eggs. We actually had it at an Argentinian chain popular in Chile, and the steak was soooooooooooooooooooooo very good, even though the South Americans tend to overcook it to medium/medium-well.

However, given the geographical positioning of the country, the Chileans also eat a lot of fish. We were lucky enough to visit the port and beach towns of Valparaiso and Vina del Mar at the weekend, both popular hang-outs of Santiagoians. Here, we tried a Chilean seafood chowder, paila marina, which had abalone (!), scallops, prawns, and conger eel:

Most of the group actually opted for the Chilean version of fish and chips at this restaurant, and just chose the fish at the top of the page (menus invariably all in Spanish), not knowing it was conger eel. Some flinched when told, but most enjoyed it (yay!). The flesh is much less oily than the eels back home though, much meatier like a monkfish.

And of course, the reason I am actually here is to build a house, so I really should write about that. We were finishing a half-built wooden house for a single mother Valesca, and her child Martin, and here is the finished article! It sits on an extremely pretty plot surrounded by flowers, and we donated the paint for them to have it yellow :) It only consists of two tiny rooms (you can barely fit a double bed in each), but it will provide some much needed space for Valesca and Martin.

Apparently Chileans love frankfurters too!!!

So, I am in Chile doing yet another Habitat trip. Unlike in Kenya, we are staying in the most civilised place, which even has wi-fi connection, so I can keep you all up to date with my happenings here.

I have been here 3 days so far, and the food has been absolutely amazing. We are staying in a little town called Valle de Casablanca about 45 minutes from Santiago, and each day we have some local ladies cook for us - Lucia for breakfast and dinner and Rosita for lunch.

The first foodie thing we noticed is that there is a LOT of meat eaten here - each meal time there are literally HUNKS of meat on offer. For example, this is a typical lunch for us, just look at that hunk of beef I was supposed to eat!!:



The other most pleasing thing is that they are obsessed with frankfurters, just look at their supermarket counters!!! (the bottom shelf was also all yummy sossijes):

And also look at what they fed me for dinner the second night I was here (the gloopy stuff it is served with we decided was some kind of winter melon/marrow thing):

So all in all, having the most fabulous time here foodwise. And I shall post about the fabulous wine in my next one ... :)

The best roast dinner in London

This post is dedicated to Stu. xxx

It took me a while to decide which place I should go to for my final dinner before I left for South America. In the end, for a quintessentially British experience, I decided on going to Le Cafe Anglais in Bayswater, mainly because I liked the fact that it is a little bit special, but at the same time, it just serves good British comfort food.

The restaurant is in the most random of places - on the 2nd floor of Whiteley's shopping centre on the site of a failed MacDonald's - but once you arrive at the door, it is gorgeous. There is the most amazing Art Deco-ish windows on the outside, and inside, the lighting is also pretty retro and old skool. The other striking thing as you walk is is the huge spit-roasts in the centre of the room, and it is no wonder that it specialises in EXCELLENT roast dindins.

To start though, you are so spoiled. There is a choice (well, I say choice, but I normally end up getting both) between hors d'oeuvres at £3 each, which range from parmesan custard with anchovy toasts ("adults dippy egg and soldiers", as excellently described by Matthew Fort) to mackeral teriyaki and cucumber salad, and proper starters, simpler fare such as omelette with various fillings to the pike boudin that I had. I have never had boudin before, and I was in an experimental mood, and I was so glad I tried it. It was extremely light, although not very pretty - a sort of light fish mousse crammed with herbs surrounded by a beurre blanc:



For mains, it is mainly roasts (from chicken legs at a bargainous £4 each to grouse at £20-odd) as well as a few fish dishes. We had a little snoop at the rotisserie, and decided that the pork roast with fennel and garlic looked the most promising, and it was served with the most crackly crackling:

Potentially the second best roast pork I've ever had, which explains why this post is dedicated to my fabulous friend Stu. We did a little reunion trip to the Duke of Cambridge in Islington, which is an all-organic pub (right down to organic cola). The roast pork there is just out of this world - so favourful, just a revelation how they managed to make pig taste so good.

These sorts of places make me miss London. But off to South America I must go...

More ugly, but delicious food

Despite coming from Hong Kong, I don't own a digital camera, nor do I want one - I think it's something to do with the trips I used to do around China with 20 other Chinese people and having to stop for pictures every 3 minutes. The only pictures I ever take are of food, and it's all done with my slightly crappy camera on my Blackberry - that's why most of the pics on this blog look a bit dodgy.

But the food in this post really were pretty ugly, but just goes to show presentation really isn't that important. Anchor and Hope on The Cut has been hailed many a time as one of London's best gastropubs, serving some very good British grub. Given their no booking policy, it is always heaving, meaning you have to get there pretty early to avoid a 2 hour wait. But the bar area is a lovely traditional pub, and they serve some interesting Polish sausages as you wait.

The main reason we go there is for their duck hearts on toast, which are the most wondrous thing. I have no idea how they cook them so perfectly - they are so soft which suggests they have been hours stewing, but yet when you cut into them they are still perfectly medium rare. I was raving about them to the couple next to us, not sure they were convinced, but it is just like the perfect combination of ducks liver and ducks breast - mmm! So good we nearly ordered some extra for dessert:

The other starter we tried was the cuttlefish risotto - this was quite unusual given that they put a little bit of chilli in there. Again, very ugly:

For mains, we had originally wanted their roast rib of beef for two, but unsurprisingly they were already out of that when we got to ordering. Never mind, as we always eat that, and it meant we had to try something new. What we both ended up with was slow roast lop with fennel and creme fraiche - we had to look up lop, and it turns out to be very cute floppy eared bunny rabbits. This was gorgeous, the fennel worked really well with the surprisingly rich meat:

Anchor and Hope does have a sister restaurant Great Queen Street which does actually take bookings and is much nearer to my house. Only reason why I prefer A&H is the duck hearts, which I've never seen at GQS. Has anyone ever seen hearts at GQS? If so, that would make me a very happy bunny...