Wicklow Way: Worth waiting for

On a trip home a couple of months ago I was reminded how beautiful Ireland can be when the weather's behaving itself.

This is the Guinness Lake. So-called some say because it looks like a pint of the black stuff, while the rest say it's because the stunning house nestled beside it is owned by the Guinness family. It seems alcohol is good for you after all.

Sigh. And if this wasn't reason enough to move back to Dublin immediately, my mum's cooking surely is.

All the same, I arrived back to London to be greeted by another Jamie Oliver iPhone App Special (Thai green curry this time) from Michael, so I really can't complain.

Blogs, bloggers, Christmas and copious amounts of wine

From time to time you can't help but ask yourself why it is that you do a blog. Recognition? Reassurance? Boredom? For me, it was a lot about reminding myself why I live in London. It can be all too much sometimes with long working hours, nose-to-nose tube journeys and constant police sirens signalling fresh nastiness in the area. It helps to force yourself to sit and think about what it is exactly that makes this such a great city. Why do this in public? Recognition? Reassurance? Boredom? I'm not sure.


Anyway I don't think I qualify as 'doing a blog' exactly, having given up after a few short months. A couple of months ago, my laptop was stolen and I just couldn't be bothered anymore, took it like a sign for a fresh offline start. But yesterday I was very kindly invited to the London food bloggers' Christmas lunch by the lovely Uyen from Fernandez & Leluu (thank you!). Chatting to some of the faces behind names like the London Foodie, Maison Cupcake, Hungry in London, Miss Immy's London and Grubworm gave me the impetus to start again. Fascinating listening to them talk about why they blog, and keep blogging, and to hear that so many of them seem to be in entirely unrelated professions, like banking and law. Strange. But then I thought maybe it's the creative outlet they need - or just that they have the spare cash to keep eating out in nice places. Amazing to find out they were real people too. People say the internet breeds loners but the 50 friendly and really quite normal people who stepped out from behind their computer screens on Sunday would beg to differ.

Lunch was at The Ship in Wandsworth, a pub I'm happy to have trekked across London to discover. While the walk across a roundabout and through McDs drive-through was a bit worrying, it turned out to be a lovely, warm, welcoming pub. Huge and sat right next to the river. The food was suitably suitable for the discerning palates of 50 hungry foodies. Was thinking they must have been nervous about inviting such digitally-promiscuous food bloggers, but if they were they needn't have been.

A surprise amuse-bouche (crab cake I think) was followed by a gorgeous ham hock terrine with black pudding, kumquat jam and celeriac ribbons, then duck artfully poised on the plate like something out of the Krypton factor (with Yorkshire pudding, brought out when plate envy took hold), a surprise cheese plate then turned up, followed by Christmas pudding which, though feeling stuffed as a Christmas turkey by this stage, would have been rude not to eat.

All the while, an endless supply of wine, artfully teamed with each dish kept sloshing its way into my glass. Finished with orange Madeira dessert wine. Oh god there was a bloody mary at the beginning too wasn't there? It was a long afternoon. But food aside, the highlight had to be a swarm of starlings that performed aerial cloud tricks over the river out the back. They looked like a shoal of fish swishing around an invisible sky shark, totally mesmerising.

They even spelled out Happy Christmas for us... or was that one bloody mary too many...

Amarino: Gelato likea mamma used to make

After a dinner at a vegan restaurant it's only natural that your thoughts turn immediately to food. I mean, it's tasty and all but a plate of broccoli, carrots and brown rice just doesn't quite do it. We decided ice cream was our only saviour and luckily, the finest gelato place Soho could muster arose from the fog to greet our sugar-starved eyes. 

Amorino.

To my wonderment, the ice-cream man said I could put as many flavours as I wanted in my little copa. He became my best friend, ever. I was so excited my hands are a bit wobbly taking the picture, but below you will see I managed to squish in four. It was £3.20, which is enough for one and a half Magnum Temptations in fairness. But far far better. 

Blackberry, biscuit, coffee and chocolate. You had to be there to really understand how good these were, but rest assured we were left standing on the street drinking the dregs from the cups like winos from a gin bottle.

People: Lone London rangers

Saw both men in the same day. Felt poignant but not entirely sure why.

 

Wilton Way Coffee Shop: Caffeine, cake and cosiness

Can there be anything better than this sight...

accompanied by this...

together with a lazy Sunday afternoon?

Wilton Way coffee shop near London Fields is a gorgeous thing. (Are all good things in London called Wilton's?) It manages to get everything right. Woody but not too woody, cool but not to cool, busy but usually not too full. The coffee is fantastic too. It's owned by the Climpson's people I think, but the quality of the coffee seems to be better in Wilton's. I only live a few streets away but I actually want to move to nearer this place because it adds such a nice neighbourhood feel to the area. Then there's the wacky second hand shop next door that's always good for a browse (although I never quite want to buy anything - except the old photo albums, but can't quite justify £20 a go).

Even though I don't go very often it's just nice knowing it's there. A little pricey but worth it to feel completely at home, in the company of good coffee and food.

Aubin & Wills Cinema: Pull up a foot rest and enjoy the show

Cinema doesn't get more comfy than this.

In the usual weekly bid to escape the dreaded Sunday feeling, we took ourselves off to the new Aubin and Wills cinema in Redchurch Street to see The Illusionist. It's along the lines of the Electric Cinema in Portobello, but less of the leather and more of the living room. Comfy couches, cushions, foot rests, even blankets for the knees. Nice. I can personally recommend seat A5, front row, dead centre. Basically, you're in the movie yourself. And of course, as in every good living room, there are wine coolers beside every chair.

Which of course makes you buy a bottle of wine. Rose in our case (rosay, not sure how to make an accent). The toilets are like something out of a horror movie, but apart from that, Aubin and Wills is now firmly added to our cinemas of choice list. Along with the Rio, the Electric and that amazing massive cinema in Chelsea that I think is a Curzon. Oh and that Cineroleum thing that I need to go to while it's there.

Yes and the film was great too. An artpiece more than anything, so beautiful. And sad. But mainly beautiful.

Megafaun: Megamusicians, megabeardy, megabrilliant

A.ma.zing. I've been having long, serious conversations with myself to find out if this really is the case, or if it was the two and a half pints of coke I'd drunk, but I am thinking that this may well have been the best gig I have ever been to. One of those nights where you wonder how you can possibly walk into an air-conditioned lobby the next morning, and let the lift doors close behind you. There's a life out there to be lived, hands to be clapped, feet to be stomped.

Such are the cruel temptations of live music.

My own incredible profundity aside, however, Megafaun are truly one of the best bands you could hope to see live. Dry the River supported and I had actually quite liked these young spindly minstrels (the singer had a strong voice, was suitably riddled with nervous ticks and, though a few parent/forest/bible references too many, his lyrics were lovely and clever). But when the musical equivalent of the Marx Brothers came on, the anguished singer/songwriter act suddenly looked really quite silly. These guys had no time for maudlin. They stood there like they had just walked into your bedroom and wanted to get you out of bed with a tune. Didn't care what you thought, just gave you their hearts on a plate and let you make what you will of it. Made me crave America, where men are men and you are who you are and if you want to sit and tell a stranger on the train about your divorce and your hernia operation, then you do, and that's that.

They started with some kind of weird but mind-blowing prog-folk thing, long, with gratuitous one-note guitar solos. Sounds odd but really worked, started slow then built and built until suddenly you found your heart had stopped. Up to this point you think they're an intense bunch of musos who take their art very seriously indeed. Until they open their mouths. (And the great thing is they're all as vocal as one another.) They chatted about shoes, hats, the Slaughtered Lamb occult light... actually I can't remember what else but I remember laughing a lot. None of them seemed to have any ego at all, just a willingness to have a laugh and play some tunes.

They finished by unplugging their instruments and huddling at the front singing gospel songs, so that no matter where you were in the room you felt like you were round the campfire with a few mates. At one point I thought we might never leave the room again because none of us would let them stop playing. Me and Michael went up to them like schoolchildren afterwards telling them how much we loved them, we couldn't help ourselves. Phil Cook the banjo player said with a massive grin on his face, "we're just friends having fun", and actually you'd believe him.

Food: Pasta with various green things

Don't be fooled, this is not the scrapings of an overgrown garden, nor the inner workings of my brain (though a close likeness) but my latest attempt at an Ottolenghi 'three more ingredients than you can really be bothered to add' special. It's fried courgette salad from his new book Plenty, a little pressie from Michael. Not that he wants me to make him delicious meals of course, purely for my own delight.

Whizzing up herbs with oil and salt and pepper into a sauce was an exciting revelation. What was not a revelation was that I still don't like parsley. I have tried to come to terms with it, chefs seem to love the stuff, but I just find it abhorrent and bitter and no just abhorrent.

Another revelation was tubey springy pasta. Great fun altogether. If it didn't taste that amazing sadly (no parsley next time, add garlic/onion/something to make it taste of something), at least it was fun to play with.

Foto8 Summer Show: A great bingo photo, and some others

It's nothing to do with the fact that Michael has a picture in it, at all, no, not at all, but the Foto8 Summer Show in Host Gallery is the unmissable art event of the summer, if not this century.

In particular this picture of a woman playing bingo from the series Bingo & Social Club (buy the book here) is stunning. Positioned just above the couch on the left hand side, you can spend all the time you (will undoubtedly) need contemplating its monotone beauty and compositional genius.

Asides from that, there are some incredible pictures and it's a feast for the eyes, and it's free, and it's just across the road from the lovely cycle-cafe Look Mum No Hands for an in-depth post-exhibition discussion (and cake).

My particular favourite was the one of the caravan and the birds (number 148 in the slideshow at the bottom). Fell in love with it. Also liked the one of two naked squatters in a bath - stood out from the others somehow in its oddness (no. 37). The one of Brighton pier was pretty breathtaking too (no. 144). Oh to have £2,000 to spend on such things. Perhaps if I stopped buying £7.50 cocktails I might be in with a chance.

Very few of them had actually sold though, which just shows the difficulties in selling photos these days. I suppose it's fair to say that not many people want pictures of anguished people on their walls, and many of them, though beautiful, were quite difficult to look at for a few minutes, let alone for an eternity, looking at you accusingly in your living room. 

The next important exhibition of the year is, of course, Bingo & Social Club at Outside World Gallery in Redchurch Street in the first week of November as part of East London Photo Month 2010. B&Q has well and truly run out of plugs.

Spa London: Just don't tell anyone

So Michael's German (and an Ossie at that). For this reason I have spent many days of my life naked in various hot naked rooms. This, together with a year spent displaying my white skin to the shocked onsens of Japan has transformed me from a heat and nudity averse Irish girl to a confident spa siren. To a point where they are now well and truly essential to my existence. But they're so goddamn expensive in London. Like they're supposed to be a luxury reserved for the River Cafe classes rather than a basic human right. 

Which is what makes Spa London such a breath of fresh (eucalyptus-scented) air. Look, its web address is even a .org, so it's officially a charity, selflessly devoting its life to forcing miserable, overworked Londoners to bloody well just chill out and cheer up. It even says so itself...

Me and Michael are now trying to go here every few months or so as part of our intense programme to live and work in London and stay (in some way) sane. We think of it as some kind of garden area for our flat. It's just down the road, is a very reasonable £18.50 a three-hour session, and is perfectly adequate for our needs. So you can't have a mojito (you wouldn't want one anyway, you'd die) and you can't sit on a roof terrace (you wouldn't want to anyway, it's just off Mare Street) and you can't have a gourmet lunch (unless paninis do it for you) but it's got everything you could possibly want in a little spa escape. Two steam rooms, a sauna, a plunge pool, buckets of ice, even an authentically tiled tepidarium and caledarium. Tepidarium. That word always makes me laugh. Like they should also have a Littlebitchillyarium and perhaps a Fuckinghelli'mhallucinatingarium too.

There's even a little chill out area where you can drink cucumber water, read Triathlon monthly and sit on a big wet patch that someone else left behind on the comfy chairs. Well spas do bring people closer together. 

We're very happy we found this place. To be honest, I'd pay the £18.50 just to shuffle around in a fluffy white robe and slippers for three hours (though I feel the NHS could arrange that for me for nothing). Last night when we emergd into the evening sun of Bethnal Green we were so relaxed we couldn't even hear the police sirens any more. The run down pubs took on a new quaint charm. The herring salad I bought from the Russian shop on Cambridge Heath Road looked not like a foul array of food-coloured pickled sourness, but like an amazing exotic treat (it subsequently gave me heartburn). We're now just hoping not too many other people find out about our little bubble in the blocks of concrete.

Hummingbird Bakery: Mmmmmmmmmmmmm

Ok so I've never actually been to the real Hummingbird Bakery, but I do have the cook book. Therefore I will make it come to me. 

I've made these lemon bars several times now and am a little bit in love with them. Just don't overcook them, and remember (which I didn't) to press the base up at the sides so the lemon goo doesn't run underneath and give you some kind of goo-biscuit-goo sandwich. Serve with strawberries, an espresso, and preferably a nice big meal first. Also good for a cheeky breakfast.

Katzenjammers: Prost!

There are fewer cosier places in the world than German beer cellars. So what a joy to discover Katzenjammers in Borough Market on a dull Sunday afternoon. Yeah so it's tacky, yes there are girls walking round in ill-fitting durndls, and yes, it's slightly overpriced, but they still manage to create that everything is alright with the world feeling that personifies Bavaria.

This feeling could of course have nothing to do with a small wooden tabled filled basement and everything to do with the above. This is Paulaner dunkel, and is very tasty. Something I would never drink at home or in an English pub, but here (and in The Dove) it's like an old friend. One and a half of these and everything is beautiful. London is suddenly the best city in the world, with the most incredible sunsets. My we are lucky to be alive.

The food's nice too, warm crisp pretzeln, sausages, cheese, potatoes, big hunks of pork with knives sticking out of them, the echt thing. No better place to forget the week. Overdo the Jaeger bombs though (as the stag party beside us did), and you may not necessarily feel the same.

The Complete History of Food: With these fois gras Ferrero Rocher you are really spoiling us

 

Was so looking forward to this. The latest turning inside out of Bompas and Parr's incredible brains. This particular peek into their magnificent minds was terrifying.

 

A doctor first welcomed us to his dusty parlour, introduced his talking reindeer and declared I had too much black bile and Michael had too much phlegm.

 

For this, he prescribed a trip to an old wooden ship in a basement. Once we crossed the eel-infested swamp to reach it, I was presented with a remedy of fig with beetroot sauce and a spiced brandy cocktail and Michael was given the very medieval combination of crostini with lemon brandy. 

We were then taken in a time capsule to the future, located on a roof terrace covered in string, where we were given a fois gras Ferrero Rocher ball and a brandy champagne cocktail that fizzed in your mouth, not your glass.

Next stop was the 50s, where we were treated to a delicious, calorie-free scratch 'n' sniff TV dinner.

Then, to remind ourselves of the crimes we had committed to our bodies, we were sent to have a bounce around in the insides of our stomachs.

 

Next, off on a stroll...

 

...to the iguanadon for dinner. 

Naturally.

Downstairs again for the finale.

 

Jelly. On a giant rotating cake.

 

With whale vomit on the side.

Which wobbled pleasingly...

 

And was served with a generous quaffing of pretty much neat brandy

(watched suspiciously by a fellow food historian)...

...in a rennaissance setting filled with sugar sculptures in subtle shades of pastel...

 

...and a magic thumping table that wobbled your jelly to your own heartbeat. 

 

And thus ended our fabulous adventure in foodieland.

Or did I just make that up?