Northern Food

Viet-Thai-Cuisine, Stanningley, Leeds

2012-03-04T20:37:00.001Z

I found pho in Leeds! Ever since returning to Yorkshire I've been moaning about the dearth of South-East and East Asian dining options in these parts. It's still proving a bit of a challenge. Thai Aroy Dee have come up with the goods for great Thai food but there's still no sign of Korean or Malaysian, and Vietnamese continued to prove elusive. Until last week that is.

Viet-Thai is a lovely little neighbourhood restaurant in Stanningley. When I paid a visit one lunchtime last week it was clear this is a popular place with the locals. There was a steady stream of customers, most of whom seemed to be on first name terms with Huong, who runs front of house with husband Minh in the kitchen.

I ordered beef pho, upgrading to a large portion because the normal size is listed alongside Tom Yum on the menu as a starter portion. What arrived was still in the small sized bowl rather than the huge vats pho tends to be served in, but there was a more than generous amount of beef in the dish and I was brought an extra bowl of stock to top up from if I ran dry.

So what about the all important stock? Intensely savoury, quite salty, just a hint of anise and all round good depth of flavour. That, combined with nice, bouncy noodles made me very happy. The beef wasn't the thinly sliced flank or brisket usually used for pho, rather the same stuff they'll be using in the curries and stir-fries - cut into strips and tenderised using cornflour, like Chinese takeaway beef. It was tasty enough though and I ate every last morsel.

The platter of bits and bobs to throw in to the soup included beansprouts, hot chillies, lime, mint and coriander. All standard stuff but a more generous hand with the herbs would have been a bonus.

Service was lovely and the bill was £8.40 including a large pot of jasmine tea (£1.80). I've had better pho, but I doubt a little place like this would sell enough of it to make stocking the little extras worthwhile (pho specific beef, rarer herbs, enormous bowls), and it was still very satisfying. If I lived in Stanningley I'd be a regular. Good food, small, basic, clean, friendly and you can bring your own booze.

7/10

132/134 Bradford Road
Stanningley
Leeds
LS28 6UR

www.viet-thai-cuisine.co.uk

Roast squash, thyme, feta, sweet pepper & tomato sauce

2012-03-01T22:18:00.000Z

This was a bit of a random throw it all together and see what happens supper. It turned out really well so I thought I'd write about it. I've roasted squashes with thyme before, and paired thyme with feta (usually crumbled over lamb chops), and eaten tomatoes and peppers with feta, but never the whole lot together.

It tasted great. Sweet, caramelised squash with tart, lactic cheese and fragrant thyme. The sauce sort of mirrored the squash and the cheese, being both sweet and sour, and stopped the whole from being a little too dry and mushy. I ate it scooped out of the skins onto airy, open textured crusty bread. Lovely.

What you'll need, enough for 2

For the squash:
1 large or 2 small squashes (I used butternut)
a few sprigs of fresh thyme
a chunk of feta (I used about 75g)
olive oil
salt and pepper

For the sauce:
half a tin of chopped tomatoes
1 red or yellow pepper
1 clove of garlic
white wine vinegar
sugar
salt and pepper

What to do, takes about an hour:

1. Set the oven to 190 deg C. Cut the squash into fat wedges, scooping out all the seedy bits. Put the wedges into a roasting dish, season generously with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle on plenty of thyme leaves. Put the squash in the hot oven for about 45 minutes.

2. Cut the pepper into large chunks and grill it until soft and charred at the edges. Put the tomatoes in a small pan over a low heat with the clove of garlic, peeled but not chopped.

3. Cook the tomatoes for about 15 minutes over a low heat. When the peppers are done let them cool for a bit then scrape off the skins, blend them to a liquid then add them in with the tomatoes. Add a good pinch of sugar and a good splash of wine vinegar. Heat for another few minutes.

4. Remove the garlic from the sauce. Taste it and season it, then set aside.

5. Check the squash after about 45 minutes. It should be almost tender. If not return it to the oven for a bit longer. When it's almost tender and caramelised at the edges remove it from the oven and crumble over the feta and a little more thyme. Return to the oven for 5 more minutes.

6. Heat the sauce back up, then remove the cheesy squash from the oven. Pour the sauce over the squash, drizzle with olive oil and serve immediately with crusty bread.

Café Marhaba, Manchester

2012-02-28T19:27:00.000Z

It's curry café time again! This time Marhaba, a classic of the genre and possibly my favourite one in the city centre. It's friendly and family run, scruffy, cheap and has a tandoor for fresh bread.

Rice and three curries (£4.80) looked unappealing (except for the nice flowery tea-and-cake at Grandma's plate). Dun coloured slop was my first impression, but it tasted a whole lot better. The rice was surprisingly good, a perfectly cooked pilau fragrant with cardamom, cloves and pepper. The lamb was the best of the curries, lovely slow cooked meat in a fairly hot, reduced sauce. The lentils were also good but the chicken was a bit rubbish. Boring sauce, overcooked dry meat.

A naan was crisp and fresh, a touch doughy in the centre but not half bad, especially at 90p.

Stick to lamb, lentils, rice and bread and you won't go far wrong.

7/10

36 Back Piccadilly
Manchester
M1 1HP

North Tea Power, Manchester

2012-02-26T19:31:00.000Z

There are so many cafés popping up all over the Northern Quarter I'm not sure where to start. I'm not in Manchester very often these days so I've not had the chance to check out many of them. There's been plenty of praise for North Tea Power so it seemed like a good place to start when I wanted coffee last week.

They specialise in tea, but the coffee is definitely not an afterthought. The flat white I drank was excellent, strong and smooth but not bitter and with quite a pronounced fruity flavour. I'd rather have my coffee in a cup than a glass though, but maybe that's just me.

To eat there are sandwiches, soups and cakes. A Viennese whirl had a nice homely feel to it, collapsing into a pile of lovely, buttery crumbs.

Prices are quite high, my coffee and cake cost over a fiver (£2.40 for the flat white), but no more expensive than the chains and for a far superior product. Very good.

8/10

North Tea Power
36 Tib Street
Manchester
M4 1LA

http://northteapower.co.uk/

El Mexicana, Meadowhall

2012-02-24T16:59:00.000Z

I've been meaning to visit Sheffield for ages. I always think it's the most enigmatic of the great Northern cities. Always going about its business slightly under the radar without feeling the need to shout about how wonderful it is to the world. Yes Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds I am looking at you.

There could be two reasons for this. Either Sheffield is a bit rubbish or it just doesn't care what others think. I have a sneaking suspicion it's the latter, and intend to go find out.

Unfortunately I'm not going to find Sheffield enlightenment at Meadowhall, so that will have to wait for another day. As a general hater of large shopping centres, you might imagine I don't much like Meadowhall. You'd be right, it's awful. Particularly awful when I was there last week. It was half-term and the place was rammed to the rafters, the entire population of South Yorkshire seemingly having decamped there to noisily eat shit food in a soulless echoing void.

Still, I needed something to eat and El Mexicana didn't have a queue and wasn't a fast food mega-chain so I thought I'd give it a try. As luck would have it it was pretty good.

Burritos - not very photogenic

A pork pibil burrito was generously stuffed with tangy, tender slow cooked pork. The ratio of meat to rice and beans was just right and it didn't feel overly heavy like burritos sometimes do. The chipotle salsa could have done with a bit more kick though.

£4.49 for the burrito, so not cheap but about the norm for these sort of places. Guacamole was 50p extra, what a surprise! Certainly one of the better meals you're likely to eat in the Meadowhall fast food court. Hopefully I'll be back to do Sheffield properly soon.

7/10

El Mexicana
Meadowhall
Sheffield

http://www.meadowhall.co.uk/website/eat.aspx

My top ten pancake fillings

2012-02-21T21:01:00.000Z

In no particular order here are my favourite pancake fillings. What are yours?

1. Spinach and gruyere

Cheesy spinach. Yum. Doesn't have to be gruyere but a good melty cheese is best.

2. Golden syrup

My childhood favourite. I haven't got any golden syrup at home (I have some at work where I use it for ruining the health benefits of porridge) so I couldn't have one of these.

3. Banana, pecans, honey, greek yoghurt

This one would be great for breakfast too.

4. Raspberry jam.

My favourite fruit, in jam form, in a pancake. Marvellous. Forgot to buy the jam. Boo hoo.

5. Lemon juice and sugar

The classic. And possibly the best of the lot. This one is a particularly fine specimen. Look at it, beautifully mottled and bronzed. Like a sun dappled Friesian, like a fair freckled maiden. Or something.

6. The Middle East special

Featuring chargrilled peppers, hummous, spiced lamb, yoghurt, lemon, herbs. You want a nice thin crispy cake for this one. Who needs pitta?

7.Garlic mushrooms

Best with lots of butter. Lots and lots of butter.

8. Nutella

This is actually Lidl own brand nutella with actual hazelnut chunks. It's even better than the real thing.

9. Caramelised apples, vanilla ice cream

Another one from pancake sessions past. Can't remember when I last had these but they were bloody lovely.

10. Parmesan, black pepper and olive oil

First one out the pan. Wonky but delicious. You'd have these toppings on pasta, so why not a pancake. It's more or less the same thing anyway.

Kev's of Eastmoor, Wakefield

2012-02-19T21:48:00.000Z

My constant moaning about the poor standard of takeaway food in these parts doesn't extend to fish and chips. Credit where it's due we know what we're doing in West Yorkshire when it comes to chip shops.

They're not all excellent by any stretch of the imagination, but I can confidently predict that I'm more likely to walk out of any old Wakefield chippy with a satisfying meal than from the curry house or Chinese takeaway next door.

I'm not really sure why Yorkshire excels at fish and chips above all other regions, it just does. The best chip shops are here, and even some of the mediocre ones put the best efforts of certain other areas to shame.

Kev's is an archetypal example. Basic but effective. Unshowy and friendly. Smells delicious.

Fish and chips were good, though not great. A long, chunky haddock fillet (very long. Look at it! It doesn't even fit in the picture) was fresh, moist and flakey. Crunchy batter, maybe a smidgen too thick but still a pleasure to eat.

Fluffy-centred chips with crispy edges here and there. Great tasting but an extra minute or so in the fat would have given them a more generous loading of crispy bits.

I didn't have peas, being in the mood for curry sauce, which was a little gloopy though fine flavour-wise.

Service was with a smile. Fish, chips, curry sauce and a can of Ben Shaw's pop was £4.70. I was a happy man.

7/10

120 Stanley Road
Wakefield
WF1 4LR

Good things to eat and drink [Volume 8]: a beer special

2012-02-17T18:27:00.001Z

I'm finally taking the plunge and writing about beer. In over a year of blogging I've yet to write a post dedicated entirely to my favourite drink. Nothing else I consume so enthusiastically has been overlooked in this way (see posts passim about sandwiches, curry, pies, fish and chips, fry-ups and Sichuan food).

The truth is, I've been scared off by the beer bloggers. Until this time last year I was unaware of their existence, but slowly this merry band of enthusiasts began to seep into my consciousness. There are a lot of beer bloggers, many of whom are extremely knowledgeable, write very well, describe taste and aroma beautifully, and are utterly obsessed (some might say too obsessed) with beer.

Many of them are also based here on my home turf, in West Yorkshire. You'll find some of my favourites popping up on the sidebar on this blog, under the heading 'Some food and drink blogs'. Please do have a read, there's loads of entertaining and informative material out there.

This breadth of beery knowledge and dedication to the cause is something I'm never likely to match, so I thought I'd leave writing about beer to the experts. Or at least I did, until now. I've changed my mind, simply because I like beer too much not to write something about it. If my knowledge is lacking then so what, there are many others whose food expertise is far greater than mine too, and that's never stopped me.

I thought I'd compile a list of my favourite British breweries and my favourite beers from each one. Some of these I'm only recently acquainted with and some have been serving me well for years. The list is written more or less in chronological order from old favourite to recent discovery, so it's essentially a brief history of my beer drinking habits.

Hopefully there might be some you've never tried before.

Timothy Taylor

One word: Landlord. Timothy Taylor Landlord is a true classic as far as I'm concerned. Well kept pints of Landlord have kept me refreshed for over a dozen years now, and I still love it. It's a very smooth, quite sweet, moderately hoppy pale-ish ale. Best served in a Dales pub at the conclusion of a hike, or on a pub crawl round Keighley. Or maybe Skipton if you're feeling slightly less adventurous.

I've always found the rest of the Timothy Taylor range to be reliably good too. Nothing spectacular, just solid tasty ales for regular drinking. I'm particularly partial to a pint of Golden Best.

Where to find them: Widely available, they have dozens of their own pubs mostly in West and North Yorkshire. The Town Hall Tavern is a good choice in Leeds. Landlord in particular is found in many other pubs too.

Badger Ales

I've got Morrison's to thank for this one. It's probably ten or twelve years since they began stocking decent quality beer, constantly on offer at what was then any four bottles for a fiver. Many's the camping trip I've had that's been lubricated by Golden Champion and Golden Glory, my favourites from the Badger offering. Both are pale, fruity (one peachy, one quite strongly flavoured with elderflower), quite sweet beers. I can't drink either without immediately thinking of the British summer.

Where to find them: Morrison's. Loads of pubs, all of which are down South. There's one below Charing Cross station in London.

Meantime Brewing Company

I lived in South-east London for three years, and Meantime were a godsend. My drinking locale was Greenwich, an area with many splendid historic pubs, not many of which served particularly splendid beer. The Greenwich Union was a notable exception, the Meantime brewery tap serving their full range, of which my particular favourites are the Helles beer and the London stout.

The Helles beer is a lovely crisp, dry German style lager; another perfect Summer afternoon drink. The stout is the polar opposite; dark, malty and complex. A beer to drink on a Winter's night. Happily I don't need to go to London for a fix, because the stout and their also very good IPA are available in Sainsbury's.

Where to find them: Sainsbury's. The Greenwich Union in Greenwich. Beer Ritz in Headingley might have some.

Fuller's

As with Timothy Taylor, Fullers are on my list because of one specific beer. That beer is London Pride. In London pubs, where no other good draft beer is available, you can almost guarantee there'll be a pint of Pride on offer. It's ubiquity is justified, because it's a lovely beer. Very balanced, noticeably malty and roasted tasting, but with hoppy bitterness too. It rarely lets you down, and if you drink in London, often comes to the rescue.

Fullers make a lot of other beers that are apparently very good, but I'm not familiar enough with any of them to comment. If you see them, try them.

Where to find them: Loads of pubs, mostly down South. Widely available in supermarkets.

Marble Brewery

The best beery discovery of my year in Manchester. The Marble Arch pub, about which I've already written, is a thing of wonder. The beer doesn't let the side down. They're all good in bottles, but the best place to drink them, without a shadow of a doubt, is in the Marble Arch itself.

My favourites are Dobber, an IPA, and Marble Ginger. The Ginger is absolutely delicious served on cask, the aeration brought about by the dispense seeming to give the beer a fullness of flavour that's somehow missing in the bottle. So rich, warming and err, gingery.

Where to find them: Three pubs in Manchester, the original, the Marble Arch, is the best. Guest appearances in other pubs. I'm sure I've seen some in Latitude Wine in Leeds.

The Kernel Brewery

Finally, the more recent discoveries, breweries about which I'd maybe never have known were it not for the beer bloggers. Thanks beer bloggers! The Kernel Brewery make bottle conditioned beers in very small batches, with a focus on individual hop varieties.

I'm not going to name specific favourites, mainly because I can't remember which ones I've tried. What I can remember is that every one I've tried has been lovely. They seem to be very skilled at this bottle conditioning business, producing beers that are beautifully gassy. I don't mean gassy like cooking lager (Carling or whatever), I mean gassy in that they don't go flat, that like a good sparkling wine they release a steady stream of fine, delect bubbles. That makes for a lovely mouth feel, which in combination with lots of fresh, hoppy flavours, makes for a fantastic drinking experience.

Where to find them: Plenty of places in London, especially around Borough Market. Beer Ritz in Leeds.

Ilkley Brewery

One of the best in the expanding firmament of West Yorkshire breweries. Every Ilkley brewery beer that I've tried I've enjoyed very much. I'd like to give a special mention to Ilkley Best, a classic Yorkshire bitter of some distinction.

I often overlook what you might term mid-range beers. Brown booze, bitter, 4% session beer, whatever you want to call it. In the rush to sample the latest exciting new India pale ale, stout or porter, the pleasure in a moderately alcoholic pint of bitter can sometimes be forgotten. I shouldn't do this, as I've already mentioned I'm a big fan of Landlord. Well I bought a bottle of Ilkley Best the other day, and absolutely loved it. I'm not going to elaborate further, just go buy some.

Where to find them: Now available in Morrison's. Beer Ritz in Leeds. Lots of pubs in the lower Wharfedale area.

Magic Rock Brewery

Huddersfield's Magic Rock, the newest Brewery on this list, only started production in 2011. They've not messed around, producing a whole sequence of stunning beers in short order. As a general rule they brew American influenced, very hoppy, often quite strong beers.

The ones I've enjoyed the most are High Wire, a US style pale ale, nicely bitter and packed with tropical fruit flavours, and Magic 8 Ball, some kind of bonkers black IPA type thing that I'm not even going to try and describe suffice to say it was a delight to drink.

Where to find them: Various pubs around West Yorkshire, Port Street Beer House in Manchester. Beer Ritz in Leeds. Mr Foley's in Leeds.

Oak Farm Hotel, Cannock, Staffordshire

2012-02-15T18:00:00.000Z

In the unlikely event that you're ever looking for a cheap-ish hotel on the outskirts of Cannock or Wolverhampton you could do much worse than the Oak Farm. The rooms are pleasant and have recently been refreshed. They make good chips. Just don't order a salad.

This crab salad, from the Specials board, had four ingredients. They were: tinned crab meat, red onion, leaves from a bag of mixed leaves, tomato. It wasn't special. It was bloody awful. No seasoning. No dressing. Not even a squeeze of lemon. Just some tasteless crab mush, some tasteless leaves, some tasteless mealy tomatoes, and lots of tasty red onion. The overall impression was of slightly briny red onion served with a variety of unpleasant textures. Oh dear.

I wasn't really looking forward to my gammon after that. But what do you know it was a bit bloody good. Of immense proportions, around 3/4 of a pig at my best estimate, salty but not overly so, nicely cooked with just the right amount of bite and chew. Chips were home made, maybe a little bit chunky but properly crisp and fluffy within. The egg was dippable. The leaves on the side were as per the starter, no dressing, no seasoning etc.

No problems with the service, and the bill came to around £17 with a glass of (shit) Chilean merlot. Stick to meat and chips and you'll do fine. The chef must be a salad dodger. You don't win friends with salad anyway.

4/10 (1/10 for the salad, 7/10 for the gammon)

Watling Street
Cannock
WS11 1SB

http://www.oakfarmhotel.com/

Café 164, Leeds

2012-02-14T17:50:00.000Z

Café 164 is the new-ish city centre outpost of Bakery 164 who've been trading on Woodhouse Lane opposite the Parkinson Steps since 1994. I don't remember them from my Uni days when I spent a lot of time in the vicinity, perhaps they were too upmarket for my budget back then, or maybe I was still seduced by deep-fried filth at Flames just down the road.

Either way Bakery 164 have apparently built a reputation on good quality breads and sandwiches, so I was looking forward to giving the city centre outlet a try. You'll find it in Munro House, just across from the bus station and down from the little cultural quarter around the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

My flat white (£2) was very good, not exactly pretty but it tasted fine. A good strong, rich blend, slightly bitter but balanced.

Sadly the sandwich, falafel and hummous (£3) wasn't so great. The falafel were fresh tasting and moist, not dry and mealy like they can be, and the bread was high quality, but there wasn't much salad and no more than a thin scraping of hummous. The whole thing was just a bit bland and heavy going, needing something to give it a lift. A more generous hand with the hummous and salad and a good squeeze of lemon juice would have done the job.

Although I wasn't impressed by the sandwich the coffee was good and there were some fine looking cakes. Prices are also reasonable as the sandwiches are very big. The café itself is a pleasant room and it's adjacent to a commercial art gallery that I'm sure is worth a look. It's also in an area that doesn't seem to get the footfall it deserves, feeling a little cut-off from the city centre by the main road that necessitates a two-leg crossing. I'll return to give the cakes a try and to check out the gallery.

6/10

Unit 2 Munro House
Leeds
LS9 8AG

http://www.cafe164.com/

Sri Lankan style beef curry, rice and sambol

2012-02-12T19:30:00.000Z

Sometimes I want a curry that smacks me round the face, something intensely spiced and fiery. Anything Thai usually fits the bill, but on this occasion it was the earthier flavours of the Indian sub-continent I was after.

I don't know a great deal about Sri Lankan food, I've tried a few classic Sri Lankan dishes and I have a fair idea of the style of curries that originate there. They like a good hot curry the Sri Lankans, of that I'm sure. Chilli is used generously as are many other spices, which they like to roast before grinding into powders. Fish and seafood are popular as you'd expect on an island, including the use of fishy tastes as seasoning a la South-east Asia. They also seem to eat more meat than the Indians, and aren't short of coconuts which pop up in everything.

So here's my attempt at a curry, Sri Lankan style. It's probably inauthentic, but I hope it's recognisably in the style of that country, and either way it tastes good.

Serve with plain rice and coconut sambol, a sort of coconut chutney. The sambol is sweet and fresh, and contrasts really well with the earthy, aromatic depth of the curry.

You'll need to make the curry powder first. This can be done in advance and the powder stored in an airtight container (preferably a metal one, or at least store it out of sunlight) for anything up to a few weeks. Once you've made the curry powder the curry itself takes about an hour and a half to cook. The sambol can be knocked up in a few minutes when the curry is simmering.

The Curry Powder

What you'll need:

For the curry powder
5 tsp coriander seeds
4 dried red chillies
3 cardamom pods
2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp black peppercorns
2 tsp mustard seeds
2 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 small cinnamon stick
about 20 curry leaves

What to do:

1. Set the oven to the lowest possible heat. Mine starts at 80 deg C, so at a rough guess I had it on at about 70. Spread out all of the ingredients on a baking sheet.

2. Roast in the oven for 60-80 minutes, until dry and a bit darker in colour (only a bit, not burned or anything), then take out and leave to cool.

3. Grind to a powder in a coffee/spice grinder or a pestle and mortar.

The Curry

1lb stewing beef
1 tin coconut milk
1 batch of curry powder, made as per above
1 onion
5 cloves garlic
1 large thumb of ginger
1 tbsp worth of chopped fresh coriander (stalks and leaves)
2-3 small fresh hot chillies
1 tbsp palm sugar (jaggery)
15-20 curry leaves
vegetable oil
salt
Thai fish sauce

What to do:

1. Heat some oil in a large pan, finely chop the onion and throw in the pan. Fry for a couple of minutes.

2. Season the beef with salt, then add it to the pan. Leave it to brown, stirring occasionally.

3. While the beef is browning roughly chop the garlic, ginger and chillies, then blend them to a paste with the coriander and a little water.

4. When the beef is brown add the curry powder to the pan and continue to fry, stirring to ensure it doesn't stick. Open the coconut milk and add a little bit to the pan if it does start to stick.

5. Fry for 2-3 minutes then add the garlic, ginger, chilli and coriander paste and fry for another 2-3 minutes.

6. Pour in the coconut milk, then fill the empty tin with water and pour that in too. Throw in the palm sugar, curry leaves and a good splash of fish sauce.

7. Bring to a boil then leave to simmer for about 80 minutes, until the sauce has started to thicken and the beef is tender. Give it a good stir from time to time.

8. Adjust the seasoning when it's almost ready. I find that the roasted spices can occasionally have a slightly bitter edge that can be sorted out by adding a little more salt.

The Sambol

What you'll need:

half a fresh coconut, flesh and juice
2 limes
about 1 tbsp of finely chopped red onion
1 hot red chilli (fresh), finely chopped.
about 1 tbsp of finely chopped coriander

What to do:

1. Shred or grate the coconut flesh and put it in a bowl with the finely chopped onion, coriander and chilli.

2. Squeeze in the juice of both limes and give everything a good stir.

3. Set aside to let the flavours marry.

Rahman's Balti House, Stanley, Wakefield (takeaway review)

2012-02-10T20:21:00.000Z

It's time to delve once more into the underwhelming world of takeaway curry. Would tonight be the night I finally came up trumps? Would Rahman's Balti House turn out to be the elusive hidden gem? Would the 35 of 36 people who reviewed it enthusiastically on Just Eat be proven correct?

No, no and no. I didn't really come up trumps, it wasn't a hidden gem, and sorry to sound like a snob and a know-it-all but all 35 of you are wrong. It was ok, but I could have guessed everything that would be wrong with it before I started.

A mixed starter of seekh kebab, chicken tikka and onion bhaji. The fault list:

Greasy bhaji - check
Red food colouring on the chicken - check (although not an obscene quantity of it to be fair)
Plastic bag containing sweaty iceberg lettuce and a mealy wedge of tomato - check
overcooked lamb - check
watery mint yoghurt sauce - check

On the plus side every component did actually taste ok, it was all quite nicely spiced and the chicken was moist and not at all overcooked.

A fish masala, a tandoori roti and a chapatti. Again, the predictable faults:

Far too much ghee in the curry - check
doughy bread, either not rolled thin enough or not cooked at a high enough temperature - check

It wasn't all bad, the sauce did have a pleasing warmth and a good garlicky tang. The flavour of the fish wasn't overwhelmed but it wasn't particularly good quality, soft and a bit mushy rather than firm and flakey. The roti was pretty crap, the chapatti better.

Just short of £12 all in. Delivered quickly. Ho hum.

5/10

Rahman's Balti House
213 Canal Lane
Stanley
Wakefield

http://www.just-eat.co.uk/restaurants-rahmansbaltihouse

Leeds Kirkgate Market: an update

2012-02-08T21:31:00.002Z

It's time for more of my increasingly frequent commentary on what's going on with the plans for Leeds Kirkgate Market.

Back in November the Council had just appointed Consultants (Quarterbridge Project Management Ltd) to produce a report advising on various matters including the optimum size for the market, possible governance and management structures and a plan for achieving these changes.

That report was completed in December and made publicly available in January. The Council department responsible for the market have put forward their response to the report and the whole thing is due to be discussed by the Council Executive Board this Friday.

For anyone who might be interested in a bit of the detail here's my take on what's been going on.

The Consultant's Report

This was finally released for public consumption on the 12th January, you can find a link to it at the bottom of this article. I had a quick read through the document at the time, and made a few notes. My initial thought was that it's better than I expected, and I probably shouldn't have been quite so cynical about what the report would say (almost as cynical, just not quite so).

I think that they've responded to the brief fairly well overall, although some of the alternative options (for the size and refurbishment plans as well as the governance and management arrangements) considered should perhaps have been fleshed out in a little more detail to explain why they were dismissed.

On the positive side:

- A reduction in size of the market by 25% is recommended, but that's not by as much as I'd feared.

- The recommended way of achieving the size reduction is to knock down both the 1976 and 1981 halls, but replace one of them with a new build. A new indoor section would surely be a good thing.

- The report doesn't recommend a management and ownership model that would fully cede control to the private sector.

On the negative side:

- The outcome is, as predicted, that the future optimum size of the market is considerably smaller than it is now. I still don't agree with the rationale behind the reduction. Given that vacancy rates in the rest of the city centre are comparable to those in the market, is anyone suggesting knocking a few streets down to better match up the supply to current demand? Still, I've pretty much accepted that this is going to happen come what may.

- The language used to describe how stalls in the upgraded market will be allocated is a little worrying, with talk of 'a tenant reselection process' where tenants may 'be allocated to new positions' and that 'tenants would be offered an Agreement for Lease in return for surrendering their existing agreements'. To me that reads as 'here's your new stall, here's your new contract, sign up or bugger off'.

- The report is even more dismissive of temporary tenants, stating 'As these [temporary lettings] represent licences which can be easily terminated we have assumed there is no need to offer them equivalent reinstatement.' Presumably true but I thought the primary purpose of temporary lettings was to help start-up businesses find their feet, then hopefully they can become permanent tenants at some later date. Turfing them all out is hardly going to encourage market based entrepreneurialism.

- the soft market testing of private sector interest was a bit of waste of time, the obvious answer being something along the lines of: Yes, we're interested. We'd like the option that allows us full control so we can do as we please and maximise our return.

- They've only really looked at one management and ownership model in any detail (a limited liability partnership on a fixed term lease from the Council), with all other options being dismissed without proper assessment.

- A limited liability partnership, as recommended by the report might be the best legal vehicle, but I've got some serious concerns over the proposed 99 year lease and how the contract with the council will work. It could end up being a century long PFI style disaster (see numerous NHS hospitals, the London Underground upgrades et al).

- Among the governance and management models dismissed is the idea of a mutual or social enterprise. The main reason given for their dismissal is that the writers 'doubt if any already exist in a form suited to this type of opportunity'. So they don't know they don't, they just reckon probably not. This, for me, is a model that deserves more detailed investigation. It would keep money in the market rather than drain more out, and it's hardly a completely novel concept in the retail and food environment (anyone ever heard of the Co-op?). I appreciate that then raises questions about where the initial investment would come from, but I don't think it's necessarily impossible.

- There's a proposal for a balcony level food court. This worries me. It's not necessarily a bad idea, but out of the way, up some stairs market food offerings have a tendency to become underused backwaters. They don't (and certainly shouldn't) have the popular draw of big name chains to entice people in like shopping centre food courts do. If this idea is going to work then it needs to be thought through very carefully.

- The size reduction proposals would result in the freeing up of the existing open market area for redevelopment as an 'anchor attraction'. What this would be is obviously beyond the scope of the report but can't really be taken in isolation. Whatever plans are developed for this part of the site should be included in the scope of the whole market area project, as a smaller market with a big fenced off hole in the ground between it and the bus station is in no-ones interest.

The view from the Council

The market management published their initial response to the report on their website on the 12th January. After I criticised some of their previous pronouncements I must say I was pleasantly surprised this time. I thought it was balanced, informative and sensible, providing a decent precis to the full report.

On the 3rd February the council department with ultimate responsibility for the market (which I think is called City Centre and Markets, I'll stick to 'the department' from hereon) published their report to the Executive board, confirming what they believe should happen in light of the Consultant's report. You can find a summary of their views here, there's a link to the full report at the bottom of the post. In short, an overview of their recommendations is:

- accept in principle the plans to reduce the market in size by 25%.

- don't make any decision on how to achieve this until a full feasibility study has been done.

- don't make any decision on management and governance arrangements without exploring the advantages and disadvantages of commercial partnership against sole ownership and management by the council.

- set aside some of the market surplus to pay for the feasibility study.

I can't argue with any of that at this stage, it seems like a sensible approach and their concerns mirror mine as a general rule.

The Council scrutiny board for regeneration have also reviewed the Consultant's report and have made a similar set of recommendations. The minutes of this meeting can be found here.

What others are saying

The main, and certainly most vocal of the interested parties seems to be the campaign group 'Friends of Leeds Kirkgate Market'. I admire their tenacity, but am starting to get irritated by their scaremongering approach. You will generally find that their articles start factual but quite often veer off into speculation or exaggeration.

In their article of 17th January they claim that Councillors at the Scrutiny Board for Regeneration meeting accused the Consultants of going beyond their remit, which is not what the minutes for that meeting say. They do suggest that concerns were raised as to whether the brief was fully met, but that's not the same as going beyond it.

In their article of 14th January they state that if the limited liability partnership model was implemented the Council 'would therefore lose any power to influence the way that its [sic] run', whereas one of the fundamental points of this proposal is that the Council, as one of the partners, would retain a modicum of influence over how the market is run. I don't actually think the LLP is a good idea either, but making stuff up about the nature of it isn't going to help.

If you want to read reliably good, concise and honest information about what's going on in the arena of local governance in Leeds, I recommend turning to the Leeds Citizen, where you'll find a less rambling post than mine on some of the key market related issues. Or just keep reading me, because I'm the Oracle. (That bit was a joke by the way.)

What happens next?

The findings of the Consultant's report and the Council department response to that will be discussed at the Council Executive board meeting on Friday. The Executive Board will have to decide whether or not to accept the recommendations made by the Council department, also taking into account the recommendations made by the Scrutiny Board for regeneration.

Who knows what they'll decide, I for one am going to stop making (incorrect) predictions on the matter.

Any comments made by the public and submitted by 9th February (which is why I'm writing this now) will be fed back to the Executive board meeting, so here's my two penn'orth:

- In reviewing the advantages and disadvantages of commercial partnership against sole Council management of the market, the Council should investigate other alternatives, specifically the feasibility of a Mutual or Social Enterprise. Any option that would not have to result in additional surplus being siphoned away from the market would be preferable.

- The Council should reject the proposal for a 99 year lease, irrespective of the management structure chosen.

- If the recommendations for size reduction and rebuilding in the Consultant's report are adopted, the rights of existing permanent tenants need to be safeguarded, and existing temporary tenants should not automatically be removed. The market should support new businesses through a temporary tenancy system.

- If the recommendations for size reduction and rebuilding in the Consultant's report are adopted, the proposals for an upstairs food court need to be considered very carefully to ensure the necessary footfall could be achieved.

- If the food court idea goes ahead, please can it include the following: a good coffee stall, a proper greasy spoon in the market tradition, a taco truck, a good quality burger stall, a Vietnamese banh mi stand, a Vietnamese pho stand, a currywurst cart, a Bury market style black pudding shop, a dosa stall, a laksa stall, a good quality pie and mash offering and a Gregg's. Thanks. If this is possible I personally guarantee to keep the whole food court in business.

Cheese, onion and potato pie

2012-02-07T20:31:00.000Z

Sunday was a pie baking sort of day. Cold, with lying snow on the ground. Head a little delicate from the previous night's excess.

A big plate of carbs was the order of the day, something filling but frugal. This pie really hit the spot. Cheap to make, satisfying, cheesy, savoury, and lighter than you'd imagine thanks to the delicate, flaky pastry.

Good pastry is essential for this. Stodgy pastry with a cheesy potato filling would all be a bit heavy going, but Delia's flaky pastry recipe is just perfect. Butter-rich but thin and with a lightness that belies the fat content. It's ridiculously easy to make too.

This will serve 3-6 people depending on greed and accompaniments. It will take around 90 minutes to cook, not including the time taken to make and rest the pastry.

What you'll need:

1 batch of flaky pastry made using the recipe here
2.5 lbs of good mashing potatoes
milk and butter for the mash
2 large onions
6-8 ozs of strong tasting cheese (mature cheddar with a bit of parmesan added is good)
salt
vegetable oil
white pepper
one egg (not essential)

What to do:

1. Put the oven on at 180 deg C then finely slice the onions. Warm about 1 tbsp of oil and a knob of butter in a large heavy bottomed pan then add the onions. Keep the heat low as you want them to sweat without browning until they're very sweet and tender. This will take up to 45 minutes.

2. Get out a large, deep oval or round pie dish. Roll out about two thirds of the pastry so that it will cover the bottom and sides of the pie dish. Push the pastry case into the dish then put it in the oven to blind bake for 20 minutes. If you haven't got baking beans any dried bean or pulse should do the trick. Put the remainder of the pastry back in the fridge.

3. Remember to keep stirring the onions to make sure they don't stick and start to colour. Peel and chop the potatoes then put them on to boil in salted water until tender (about 15 minutes).

4. After 20 minutes remove the blind-baked pie case from the oven. Drain the boiled potatoes and mash them with a little warm milk, plenty of butter and loads of white pepper. Add more salt if it needs it. You want the mash to be very moist, but not wet. Just so it can't quite hold its own shape.

5. Grate the cheese. Check the onions for doneness. They should be very soft and sweet, give them longer if they need it.

6. When the onions are done everything can be layered up in the pie dish. First spoon in the mash, then the onions and finally the cheese.

7. Roll out the rest of the pastry to make the pie lid, then add it to the top of the pie. Seal the lid and brush it with egg wash if you've got an egg to hand. Otherwise just squash the lid into place. Prong a couple of holes in the top with a fork then bake the pie in the oven until golden brown, about 35 minutes.

8. Serve hot with peas, or even better, with baked beans. This is also good served cold, sliced into wedges, maybe with some salad.

Art's Café, Leeds

2012-02-05T22:16:00.001Z

I'd describe Art's Café as one of the workhorses of the Leeds dining scene, and that's meant very much as a compliment. It's not new, there are no big name, high profile chefs involved, they don't even have a Twitter feed as far as I can tell [edit: they are on Twitter: @artscafeleeds, as Clare helpfully pointed out]. It's been quietly going about the business of serving good food since 1994, and those 18 years experience shone through in my first meal there last night.

It's a convivial place to be. On a Saturday night the music was turned up above background level, not intrusively loud, but combined with a full house enough to give the room a pleasing, lively atmosphere.

The menu is short and probably best described as modern British, with some simple and some more ambitious sounding dishes. My main of seared venison haunch steak, buttered green cabbage, honey roast parsnips and parsnip puree, chocolate sauce and roast hazelnuts was a lovely wintry plateful, perfect for a snowy night.

The venison was excellent, a substantial steak already sliced to reveal a dark, ruby rare interior. It was very strongly flavoured too, rich and intense, the gamiest venison I can recall eating. The strong tasting meat matched the sweet, earthiness of the parsnips very well. Both ways were cooked beautifully too, particularly the wonderfully smooth puree.

I'd have been happy to eat an abridged version of this dish, as I'm not sure the last two items were really needed. The hazelnuts were nice but didn't really lend anything extra to the whole. As for the chocolate sauce, I'm actually quite surprised to see it there, I'd forgotten about it until I just checked the menu online. I don't recall noticing any flavour of chocolate in what to me just tasted like a very good meat reduction.

Across the table the quite complicated sounding seared monkfish with duck leg & smoked bacon bolognaise, courgette & pepper spaghetti, basil emulsion was also declared a success.

I finished with sticky toffee pudding with Horlicks caramel and vanilla ice cream, which was the real deal. A huge brick of proper pudding of the dark, date filled variety, a lake of toffee sauce and a nice, malty ice cream. I'd have liked it served a little hotter, but other than that it was great. I tried my companion's panna cotta, and that was good too.

With a decent bottle of Puglian red the bill came to just over £57 including an already added 10% tip. Automatic inclusion of tips is never something I'll be a fan of, but that's a minor gripe when it's 10% rather than the almost standard nowadays 12.5%, and also when the service was excellent throughout.

I don't often have much to say about service, but it was particularly good at Art's. Well-versed and efficient, casual and friendly, but not the least bit intrusive. It just felt right.

Good food and wine, great atmosphere and service, fair prices. Long-lived, reliable, quality restaurants are an asset in any city, and Leeds has one of those in Art's Café.

8/10

42 Call Lane
Leeds
LS1 6DT

http://www.artscafebar.com/

p.s. Thanks to those who reminded me about this place on Twitter.
p.p.s Sorry about the lack of photos, sometimes it's good to focus on the moment, and not worry about the future blogging opportunity.

Bacon Sandwich Quest: January

2012-02-05T19:09:00.000Z

I'm starting to wonder whether Bacon Sandwich Quest was such a good idea. January wasn't a particularly auspicious start. I ate four bacon sarnies only one of which was much good, and I didn't remember to take a photo of any of them.

Scrap that, I've just found a photo hiding on my work phone. Here it is you lucky people:

That's the passable effort served by the Cosy Caf in Bollington, Cheshire. Exciting eh?

Without further ado here's the championship list so far:

Venue	Where's that?	Bacon	Bread	Accompa-niments	Value	Service	Total
Rumbletums	Otley	8	3	4	4	3	22
Cosy Caf	Bollington	6	4	2	2	3	17
Monty's	Windsor	7	2	3	2	3	17
McDonalds	A19 Billingham	4	1	3	3	2	13

A very solid effort from Rumbletums of Otley is the clear leader so far. A standard soft bread roll harbouring a generous three sizeable rashers of thick cut piggy goodness. Brown sauce added in sensible quantities. The right price. Good but better will almost certainly await me.

Next in line are two average attempts that I can't be bothered writing about, and bringing up the rear is a lamentable effort from Maccy D's. Why would you have a bacon sandwich at McDonald's you may well ask. Why would you do such a thing when you could have had a strangely delicious but clearly evil breakfast pork burger with overdone egg? I can't answer the question I'm afraid. I don't know why I did it, but I won't be doing it again.

February is the month of bacon (possibly), so let's hope things take a turn for the better.

London and South-East round-up: the not so good, the bad and the ugly

2012-02-02T21:47:00.001Z

I thought I might as well balance things out with a report on the less than inspiring things I ate down South last weekend. It's not all amazing street food and wonderful sourdough pizzas down there you know.

The George, Gravesend

This was actually better than expected. It's a pub attached to a Premier Inn which usually means crap food. The George seems to have retained some semblance of independence though, offering a Sunday carvery which isn't the norm for Whitbread establishments. Carvery is usually a byword crap food as well though, so it was almost a pleasant surprise.

The beef was dessicated and flavourless, but the turkey, hidden beneath its leathery cloak of cow, was much better, moist and tasty. None of the vegetables were overdone, a welcome change to the regular carvery mush. Good gravy and a passable Yorkshire too.

Sponge pudding and custard for afters wasn't bad either. Overlook the beef and all in all a satisfying enough meal.

6/10

Hever Court Road
Singlewell
Gravesend
DA12 5UQ

Wagamama, Windsor

Sometimes I hate Wagamama, but after a visit to the Windsor branch I left feeling generally positive about the place.

When I'm in hating Wagamama mode I tend to dwell on how average much of the food is, and how if you're in most UK cities the same dishes can be had elsewhere, executed better and for less money.

I was probably liking Wagamama on this occasion for two reasons, firstly I had one of the dishes they're better at, chicken chilli ramen. In my experience there's a sliding scale at Wagamama that goes something like this:

Noodle soups = not bad, can be quite satisfying
fried noodle dishes = ok
fried rice dishes = just about ok
curries etc = awful

My bowl of ramen was quite satisfying, it hit the spot on a cold day. Nice bouncy noodles too.

The second reason was the presence in our group of four young children (in the under 1 to nearly 4 range). They've really got the family angle covered in there, there were crayons and colouring pads and beginner chopsticks all over the place, which generally made for a festive and entertaining lunch.

I want some of those beginners chopsticks in adult size though please. They're like normal chopsticks but fatter and with a little hinge to join them together so they kind of form chopstick style grabbing tongs. All the better for eating more noodles at once I say.

6/10

31 High Street
Windsor
SL4 1PH

The Kingfisher, Chertsey

Things are heading downhill now. I had the burger here (£8.95) and there wasn't a huge amount right with it.

The patty itself was the high point, generously proportioned and formed from good quality beef. But it was overcooked and the cheese on top wasn't even remotely melted suggesting it had been added some time after the burger finished cooking and the bun was dry and the chips were average at best.

Other dishes of calves liver, steak and another burger were respectively overcooked, not bad at all and no idea because it never turned up after an exceedingly long wait so we got bored and cancelled it.

Not much in the way of beer choice either. A distinctly mediocre pub.

4/10

The Kingfisher
Chertsey Bridge Road
Chertsey
Surrey
KT16 8LF

Frankie and Benny's, Rochester

I can't recall ever having been to a Frankie and Benny's before so in a moment of retail park madness with a work colleague I thought we'd give it a try. Rest assured it's as crap as you might expect.

A louisiana wrap was a large flour tortilla stuffed with some low grade chicken that was more mushy, bready chicken coating than actual chicken, alongside some bits of iceberg and an awful lot of red onion, the whole lot doused in far too much of a one-note vinegary, hot sauce. A bit like Frank's hot sauce with the heat and acidity, but without the flavour.

The chips were weird and undercooked. It cost six quid. Couldn't fault the friendly chap who served us though, so he got his tip.

3/10

Medway Valley Park
Rochester
ME5 2SS

Côte, Ealing

Another chain, another disappointment. I've eaten at a Côte before and quite enjoyed it, so I did expect better. Breakfast this time. I wanted eggs but not a fry-up. The breakfast menu at Côte had just what I was after.

Sadly when it arrived it wasn't just what I was after anymore. It's not a complicated thing, Eggs Royale, but I do think it needs quality ingredients and accurate execution otherwise it will be minging. It was minging.

The salmon and bagel were inoffensive but basic, like if you bought the cheapest available version of each in the supermarket. One of the eggs was woefully underdone and leaked raw liquid white over everything as I cut into it. The hollandaise was ok but what with the greasy salmon and egg juice it was like eating a great big pile of cholesterol slop.

I didn't bother sending it back because I didn't really fancy another plateful even if the eggs were right. £8.10 for the meal but by the time a small coffee and 12.5% for the (confused) service had been added that had become £12.64. Shit.

2/10

9-10 The Green
Ealing
London
W5 5DA

London and South-East round-up: the good

2012-01-31T22:05:00.000Z

Home at last. I'm just back from a rather silly week long jaunt around the country for both work and play. I've stayed at a Premier Inn, a Holiday Inn, two Travelodges and one friend's house, with no more than a couple of nights in one place. I'm not half glad to be home.

It's been an interesting week food-wise though, I've experienced much of what's good about eating on the cheap in Britain; the enthusiastic adoption of foreign cuisines and the rapidly developing street food scene being the primary examples.

On the other hand I've also experienced much of what's bad; the distinctly average offering in most pubs and the proliferation of crappy chains interested only in the bottom line being cases in point.

Other than Silk Road, which got a post all to itself, here are the things that were good, and if I can be bothered I might write about those that were bad too:

Franco Manca, Westfield Stratford City

There's much to dislike about the new Westfield mega-mall adjacent to the Olympic site at Stratford, if, like me, you're really not that enthused by shopping. Or by corporate-style marketing nonsense, which seemed to be in overdrive in an area of the centre named the 'Great Eastern Market', and described as a 'modern take on a traditional market'. If that's the case then a 'modern take' on a 'traditional market' means not actually like a market at all, more like an area of a shopping centre where the units are small and everything is hideously overpriced. Great.

Now I've got that rant out of my system I'll have to give credit where it's due. There is much to like about Westfield Stratford City from an eating perspective. All of the usual suspects are there, but a significant proportion of the extensive food offer is given over to small London based businesses. Businesses like Franco Manca who have opened their third outlet here.

Franco Manca are widely acknowledged to make some of the finest pizza in London. I've eaten at both of the other branches, in Brixton and Chiswick, and agree that they're excellent, although I didn't think Chiswick was quite up to the standard of the original in Brixton market.

When I spotted them in Westfield I was worried that they might have sold out, expanding the empire at the expense of the quality. I needn't have worried, the wood burning ovens were present and correct and the prices no higher than in Brixton.

Just tomato, mozzarella and basil, simple but absolutely delicious. They use a sourdough for the base which is then blasted in those fiercely hot ovens producing a crust that's beautifully bubbled and charred on the outside but remains soft, light and slightly chewy within. Good quality cheese and tomato in just the right proportions offset the dough nicely.

The ease with which a whole one of these can be gobbled up is amazing. Just compare and contrast with the heavy going stodgefests that so many pizzas become. An absolute bargain at £5.90, especially when you consider that the vastly inferior equivalent at Pizza Express costs £7.50.

9/10

Unit 2003
The Balcony
Westfield Stratford City
London
E20 1ES

http://www.francomanca.co.uk/

Buen Provecho, eat.st at King's Cross, London

I'm all for the street food revolution. Mobile catering has been improving at festivals and the like for a good few years now, and it finally seems that bringing the same idea (that you can serve good food from a van) to the city streets has caught on in a big way. London's new eat.st is at the forefront, with a rotating list of traders pitched up along a new pedestrian precinct round the back of King's Cross station.

Mexican stall Buen Provecho tickled my fancy last Friday, mainly because I'd heard great things about their tacos. Which as luck would have it were unavailable because the tortillas were late arriving. No matter as the lunch box meal is any two of the same taco fillings served on rice, with salsa, guacamole and tortilla chips.

A point of note to virtually every one of those burrito places that have popped up in recent years. It wouldn't kill you to include guacamole in the price. 50p extra or more for a smear of mashed avocado is a rip-off. Buen Provecho showed how it should be done by making good guacamole and including it in the price. Self service salsas and tortilla chips, and the fact the guy serving was friendly and looked like a pirate also made me smile.

Star of the show was Cochinita pibil, slow roasted pork marinated in orange juice and spices (I'm not quite sure what). The meat was reduced to lovely moist shreds that oozed juices with an intense tangy flavour. If I ever get round to going here again I'll just have this stuff. The salsas were also pretty good, one of raw finely diced veg and coriander, the other a hotter, smokier affair probably involving some sort of roasted chillies. A dollop of refried beans were also successful, lending creaminess to the rice.

The only duff note was the other meat dish, chicken and chorizo in a sauce that was a bit nondescript. It tasted ok but was dull in comparison with the outstanding pork.

A substantial meal box costs £6, service is friendly, you can help yourself to salsa and there's plenty of kerb to sit on.

8/10

King's Boulevard
London
N1C

http://eat.st/kings-cross/

Banh Mi Bay, Holborn, London

Imagine a sandwich that's rich and meaty but fresh and tangy. A sandwich that marries three types of pork with mayo and pickles. A sandwich that's spicy and fragrant. A sandwich that's crusty and crunchy but smooth and moist. This is the Banh Mi, Vietnam's notable contribution to the pantheon of great sandwiches.

I fell in love with the Banh Mi when I lived in Woolwich. Someone opened up a Vietnamese coffee shop just off the high street, so they were pretty much the only exciting foodstuff I could eat without hopping on a train (Woolwich is not London's finest foodie suburb, there are some potentially good Ghanaian places, but they always had strange blacked out windows and I never plucked up the courage to venture inside). I would muck around in the gym for half an hour or so, then reward myself with bread, and chilli, and three types of pork.

I digress, the special Banh Mi at Banh Mi Bay was pretty damn good. All the key elements were there: a light rice flour baguette, roast pork, pork roll, pork liver paté, slightly pickled carrot and mooli, mayo, cucumber, coriander, chilli. I'd have liked the paté to have been more liver-y, there are plenty of other strong flavours present to stand up to it, but apart from that I couldn't fault it.

£3.85 for the special Banh Mi, perfectly reasonable as it's an impressively proportioned sandwich. It contains three varieties of pork too, did I mention that already?

8/10

4-6 Theobalds Road
Holborn
WC1X 8PN

http://www.banhmibay.co.uk/

Silk Road, Camberwell, London

2012-01-29T19:12:00.000Z

Silk Road is one of my favourite restaurants anywhere, ever. I first ate there around three years ago after a whole host of recommendations on the Chowhound boards.

At that time I'd barely scratched the surface of the myriad wonders of Chinese food, my only experience being takeaway standard Cantonese and a couple of tentative forays into Sichuan.

Silk Road pretty much blew my mind. It's one of the only (if not the only) restaurant in the UK specialising in food from Xinjiang province, the vast territory in the far west of China. The geography and many of the people here are more central Asian than Chinese. The native Uighurs are predominantly Muslim and their cuisine is influenced by the nations to the West -Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan to name the largest.

That means plenty of lamb and mutton, a diet based on wheat and potatoes rather than rice, and use of spices not always associated with Chinese food, cumin being the most obvious example. Mix that all up with the majority Han Chinese influence from the East - loads of chillies and peppercorns, rice, soy sauce, stir-frying, and you've got some fantastic food.

Anyway, lesson over. Camberwell isn't that handy for someone who now lives in Wakefield, so I hadn't been to Silk Road for well over a year. That was rectified last night as four of us headed South to fill our boots.

It's not a posh restaurant this. Expect bench style seating and sometimes rather erratic service but it's more than worth it for the food. Order a round of Tsingtao beers and as much of the menu as you can manage, then just wait to see what arrives first.

In our case, the lamb skewers (£1 per skewer). Don't wait around, eat these quickly while they're fresh off the grill. The juicy pieces of meat and fat come liberally doused in a cumin/salt/chilli rub and are delicious when hot. After they've cooled down they lose succulence and the fat goes a bit wobbly and unpleasant. When they're fresh I can't think of a better way to eat sheep fat.

Next all three vegetable plates arrived in quick succession. Home style cabbage, home style aubergine (about £6 each) and cucumber with garlic sauce (£3).

The home style dishes are similar in execution, but taste quite different. Both have the main ingredient stir-fried in a garlicky sauce with plenty of chilli heat, fresh green peppers and a little soy, but the aubergine is silken and comforting whereas the cabbage is more assertive, crunchy with dried chillies and a lovely smokey back note from the wok. I love both dishes but the cabbage is my favourite. To make something so delicious from a humble cabbage really takes some skill.

The cucumber dish, served cold, brought large chunks of the veg, bashed around a bit to absorb the flavour of a very garlicky marinade. Strangely refreshing and really enjoyable.

On to the dumplings, there are several different varieties, we just had one plate of the pork and celery. They're small with satisfyingly chewy skins and a meaty filling, and are also a steal at £2.50 for ten.

Then the beast arrived. The photo really doesn't do this dish justice, and nor does the name for that matter. It's medium plate chicken (£9, small and big plate are also available), a huge vat of beautiful, deeply savoury broth, spiked with star anise and Sichuan pepper, in which are hidden bone-in chicken pieces, potatoes and sliced mild green peppers.

Included in the price is a serving of belt noodles; thick, chewy, wheat noodles that are a carb-lovers dream. The dish doesn't arrive with them in, one of the waiting staff will come over whenever a fresh batch are ready and chuck them in the bowl. Much mess-making then ensues as everyone at the table dives in at once, attempting to fish the two foot long monsters out with chopsticks.

The final dish of the night was pork with black fungus (about £6), another dish of interesting textural combinations. Soft pork, a few crisp greens and slightly rubbery fungus, all held together in another knock-out flavour packed, umami rich sauce.

We ate everything with a few extra bowls of steamed rice and washed it all down with Chinese tea and beer. The total bill came to just £56.30 between four of us before a tip was added. As ever the service was a little random, one happy guy, one miserable and the rice didn't turn up until after most of the other food.

But what food, and what fantastic value. It's all so deceptively simple. Hearty food with theoretically straightforward seasoning, but all imbued with such utter deliciousness I'm not quite sure how they do it. The prices also haven't risen in three years despite the place attracting the attention of the critics and being constantly busy

I don't know when but I know I'll be back. I love Silk Road.

9/10

49 Camberwell Church Street
Camberwell
London
SE5 8TR

Malaysian Delight, Chinatown, Birmingham

2012-01-25T21:52:00.000Z

I've been in Birmingham today. I needed a quick, casual, cheap meal before leaving and was reliably informed that the city has a decent Chinatown. Where better to head?

A bit of a British Chinatown classic this place. It reminded me of similar restaurants I've encountered in London, Manchester and even Newcastle. Small, a bit grubby, brisk, efficient service and a menu covering all the usual Chinese bases (i.e. if it's on your local takeaway menu it's on this one) to keep the punters happy.

That, and a separate menu section for whatever the restaurant actually intended to specialise in. In this case not Chinese at all, but Malaysian.

There weren't really any Malaysian sides or starters which was a little disappointing. I wanted roti canai damnit.I bloody love roti canai. Against my better judgment I ordered curry samosas, kind of hoping they'd turn out to be a delectable curry puff.

They were ok, in a straight out the freezer and fried properly in hot, fresh oil sort of way, but nothing more. The salad underneath and an almost tasteless dipping sauce were completely pointless.

I fancied noodle soup but not anything coconutty so I went a little off piste and ordered assam laksa rather than the more common curry laksa. I'd never had an assam laksa before but had a vague notion it was fishy and sour.

Memory served me correctly as what arrived was an exceedingly fishy, moderately sour (tamarind I think) and spicy broth topped with various bits and bobs. The broth itself was very good, intensely flavoured with shredded mackerel and (probably) shrimp paste.

Everything else was a bit of a let down though; overcooked noodles with no bite, very little mackerel in actual pieces and not much of the other stuff which mainly comprised cucumber and pineapple (though I'd happily have foregone all of that for some good springy noodles in the broth).

Passable and cheap at £12.50 including a beer but I wouldn't rush back. It's also worth bearing in mind that as well as only taking cash, they also only accept real cash. There's a useful sign pointing this out at the counter. 'Forged money is forbidden' it says. I was ok today as I've not been on the counterfeiting plant and I won't be laundering until next week, but on another occasion it could have been embarrassing. You have been warned.

5/10

8 Ladywell Walk
Birmingham
B5 4ST

Robin Hood Fisheries, Robin Hood, nr Rothwell

2012-01-23T20:44:00.000Z

The first chip shop visit of 2012. In some ways highly impressive, in others a touch disappointing.

I'm slowly working my way through the multitude of chippies strung out along the A61 between Leeds and Wakefield. If you're not familiar with the area, it's mostly one long stretch of nondescript suburbia lacking anything particularly interesting (although maybe pit wheels and whale jawbones deserve a mention). What it doesn't lack is Chinese takeaways and fish and chip shops.

Of the latter I've already been here and here, and last Thursday night after football it was the turn of Robin Hood's finest.

I didn't have enough cash on me for peas, having to copper up just to reach the magical £4.50 necessary for fish and chips. So there it is, plain and simple.

Good points first: the fish was freshly fried and absolutely gargantuan. And I mean huge. Extensive in length but I think it was also the thickest fried fillet of haddock I've ever eaten. I'm actually a bit worried because at £4.50 it's doubtful it came from sustainable stocks and if not I think I might have eaten the Queen Haddock. The Mother Haddock, the progenitor of the species. Haddocks are doomed on account of my moment of greed.

Fingers crossed that's not the case, but either way it tasted great. Flaking away into lovely pearlescent slivers, fresh and sweet.

Onto the bad points: the batter was a smidgen too thick. Lovely crunch and bite at the edges, just a little soggy towards the surface of the fish. The chips were past their best, being rather chewy and aged. I was so full of fish I didn't really care about this much though.

I'll have to rate this one highly, purely on account of that fish. I haven't a clue whether they're regularly serving up such colossal portions but I somehow doubt it. I've a sneaking suspicion they bunged me in a special by mistake.

8/10

Robin Hood Fisheries
Leeds Road
Robin Hood
WF3 3AJ

Trying to cook the perfect steak (volume 4)

2012-01-21T10:01:00.000Z

I know barely a month has passed since last time, but I'm going to write about cooking large slabs of cow again. Vegetarians and those bored of beefsteaks look away now.

I had to write about this steak, because it was the best yet. I've almost cracked it. Without the use of charcoal I don't think I can do much better.

This was an unplanned steak night. I was at the excellent Welbeck Farm Shop buying some cheese and inadvertently wandered over to the butcher's counter, drawn in by some mysterious form of meat magnetism. And there it was, some very fine looking rib on the bone, priced most temptingly at £9.99 per kilo.

I ended up with this. A one rib steak, a good two and a half inches thick, weighing in at around 1.25 kgs. Here it is just after salting. I should note at this point that I shared this one with a friend and her daughter. I do have limits.

The cooking method was the same as last time, for details see here. The gist is this: salt generously at least an hour before cooking, very hot pan, plain oil, turn it regularly, add butter for the last minute or so, give it a good rest.

Prior to cooking I also tried Heston's extra ageing method, essentially leaving the steak uncovered in the fridge for a couple of days. The theory is that this dries the steak a little, tenderising it and concentrating the flavour. I've no idea whether this made any difference, but we'll assume Blumenthal has done his homework.

The steak being such a whopper I salted 90 minutes before cooking this time. Here it is after the salt has been absorbed, just before it went in the pan. The only other improvement I could think of was keeping better control of the temperature, so I bought myself a new toy:

Meat thermometer at the ready. Hot pan at the ready. Impending fat splattered smoke choked kitchen at the ready. In it goes!

Two minutes in, the first signs of a crust start to appear.

Seven minutes in, the char is coming along nicely, and the fat is starting to render and crisp.

Fourteen minutes in, almost there. The butter has just gone in and the crust looks lovely. I was keeping a close watch on the internal temperature at this point. 130 degrees fahrenheit was the target point, which is just on the cusp of medium rare. This was the only mistake I made. The temperature rose slowly and steadily throughout the cooking time, but then suddenly started to shoot up rapidly towards the end. I missed the cut-off point by a couple of degrees, removing it from the pan at 132.

Here we are, post-rest, resplendent and ready for slicing.

It was wonderful. See how the thin, dark crust gives way to tender pink juicy flesh. It was a beautiful piece of meat too, with a powerful savoury beefy flavour and delicious fat.

I always think you can spot quality, well aged beef by the fat. It should be yellow-ish in colour and smell a bit buttery. It should be rich in flavour and entice you to eat it, even the thick wobbly bits. This was all those things.

Served with sautéed potatoes, green salad, and mushrooms fried in smoked garlic this was one of the best Sunday dinners I've had in a long time. It even went down well with my friend's two year old daughter (who will eat anything as long as you tell her it's sausages).

Dock Street Market, Leeds

2012-01-19T21:51:00.001Z

This place has changed a bit since last time I was there. A year ago it was very much a work in progress, now things are finished I really like it. There's a proper bar with a very good beer selection, plenty of seating some of which is perfectly suited to a proper loafing session, and there are also plenty of books and board games with which to while away the hours.

There's a hot food menu in addition to the sandwiches (I'm keen to try the feijoada), with bread still provided by the Riverside Sourdough Bakery and coffee by La Bottega Milanese.

I opted for the hot salt beef sandwich, a steal at only £3.50 as it was a monster. A good monster. It was generously packed with salty, juicy chunks of well-flavoured meat, gherkins, salad and rather a lot of hot mustard.

A little too much mustard for my tastes, I like the stuff but I'm just not in love with mustard heat in the same way as chilli heat. It makes my nose go weird and doesn't make me happy like chillies do. Maybe that's just me though.

All in all though a very good sandwich and excellent value. I'd like to see them do a classic American version, with about twice as much meat and on rye bread. It would cost twice the price and be exceedingly gluttonous, but it would be worth it.

I'll be returning here for beer, feijoada and more cracking sandwiches!

8/10

28 Dock Street
Leeds
LS10 1JF

http://www.dockstreetmarket.com/

Baltic Café Bar, Gateshead

2012-01-17T18:17:00.000Z

I'm stuck in a bit of a restaurant routine at the moment. If it's not Thai Aroy Dee it's Red Chilli. I went to the former last Saturday, the latter the Saturday before, and I'll be back to the latter this weekend. That's not necessarily a bad thing but it doesn't give me much to write about on here, not without a tedious amount of repetition anyway.

Lunches and recipes it is then. I try and go somewhere interesting for lunch once or twice a week to liven things up a bit between the dull home-made sandwiches, tetra pak soups and such-like.

This morning I was in Newcastle so I thought I'd pay a visit to the Baltic. A twenty minute glance round the galleries followed by twenty minutes for lunch would do nicely, then back on the road to Leeds.

As it turned out I was short of time so lunch took precedence. The galleries will have to wait.

Soup of the day (£3.50) was broccoli, chestnut and mascarpone. It was pleasant if a little unexciting. A more generous hand with the barely detectable chestnuts would have been an improvement. The hunk of baguette on the side was good quality though.

I also spotted these (£2 each), and couldn't resist ordering one. I'm not normally into pretzels, big lumps of boring dough that they are. Cover them in melted cheese though and everyone's a winner. Why has no-one thought of this before? Maybe they have and I wasn't paying attention. Anyway it was warm and soft and chewy and cheesy and a bit greasy and delicious.

The café has big picture windows framing the Tyne, with it's wonderful bridges and backdrop of Newcastle city centre, so it's a nice place to sit for a while. The service was great too, friendly and efficient.

I'll return when I have time to visit the gallery, and will probably eat here again. The food was good, nothing special but better than you'd get at many other cultural venues, and it's also worth it for the view.

7/10

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art
Gateshead Quays
South Shore Road
Gateshead
NE8 3BA

http://www.balticmill.com/visit/Eating.php

Lime House Café (and Welbeck Farm Shop), Welbeck Estate, Nottinghamshire

2012-01-15T14:57:00.000Z

I've been planning a visit to the Welbeck Estate ever since I discovered it was the home of Stichelton. I struggle to find some of my favourite cheeses outside London, so when I found out that the cheese I love perhaps more than any other is made less than an hour away from home it was only a matter of time before I made the trip.

Friday was the day. I was in Nottingham for work and it's not too much of a detour off the M1 on the way home. Welbeck is one of those great big whopping country estates that's been turned over to tourism, a slightly less famous Chatsworth if you like (perhaps because it's half way between Mansfield and Worksop rather than in the middle of the Peak District). There's an art gallery, a school of artisan food, a working farm, a garden centre, a café and a very good farm shop, of which more later.

After a visit to the farm shop to pick up a few goodies I stopped off at the café for a quick afternoon tea.

A fat scone (£2.25) was fresh and light, and came served with very good raspberry jam. A pot of good tea was a reasonable £1.35. I didn't have anything else, but the sandwiches arriving on other tables looked excellent.

The room is also lovely, a spacious, airy modern conversion of a building that formerly housed part of a Victorian gasworks. The staff were nice too.

First impressions of what I've bought from the farm shop are also very good. I have a lovely looking piece of beef, a bulb of smoked garlic and some cheese. The cheese selection is exemplary, as you'd expect when it's all sourced from the Kings of British cheese at Neal's Yard.

I don't think it'll be long before I start thinking of reasons to visit Worksop more often.

8/10

Welbeck Estate
Worksop
Nottinghamshire
S80 3LL

http://www.harleygallery.co.uk/index.php?pg_id=20

http://www.welbeck.co.uk/experience/visit/farm-shop/home