Christina vs. Food: A few things I ate in Chicago

The Chicago Skyline

OK, so there’s not much that’s worse than when a blogger apologises for not having posted for a few weeks due to the constraints of their ‘busy rock-and-roll-life’ (after all, who isn’t ridiculously busy nowadays?) But, as you may have guessed from the radio silence around here recently, things have been…well…a little hectic. A week of ridiculous deadlines was swiftly followed by a business trip to the USA, which saw me travelling between Chicago, Las Vegas and L.A. in the space of eight days. All great fun if you enjoy surviving on a diet of adrenalin, caffeine and french fries, and you ignore the jet lag, sleep deprivation and the incident where I called my Mum from Las Vegas and cried “I’M IN A PYRAMID, I HAVEN’T SLEPT PROPERLY IN FIVE DAYS AND EVERYTHING IS GOING WRONG” down the phone.

Las Vegas wowed me by charging $52.00 for three drinks in the Hard Rock Hotel and L.A. saw me commandeering a taxi to take me to the nearest branch of In-n-Out burger. But it was Chicago that really won my heart. Everything about it transfixed me, from the elevated trains running above the streets, rattling over my head when I went out for breakfast each morning, to the gigantic skyscrapers that scrape the landscape and make you feel like you’re walking through the pages of a Marvel comic. While I didn’t get to experience the place fully during my four day stay there, I did manage to shove some excellent meals down my ever hungry maw. These mostly came in the form of sandwiches. For if there is one thing I learned about Chicago during my time there, it’s that it is land of the exemplary sandwich.

Italian Beef sandwich at Max’s Chicago

A perfect example was this bad boy, an Italian Beef from the rather nondescript looking Max’s Chicago. While the decor left a bit to be desired, the food didn’t. A giant sub roll was stuffed full of thin, slightly fatty slices of beef, giardiniera – a mixture of pickled carrots, cauliflower and courgette and served ‘wet’, meaning that a thin beef gravy was spooned over the roll before it was served. All of those delicious meaty, briny  juices soaked into the sub roll, suffusing it with flavour as well as making it perilously difficult to eat in a ladylike manner. I have no idea if this is a particularly good example of the species; I just know that on a cold Sunday afternoon where I was tired, hungry and terrified of skidding on the huge piles of snow littering the pavements, it hit the spot.

Special mention should also go to Ada’s Famous Deli on Wabash, a small Jewish deli I frequently lunched at during my stay. Go for their giant Reuben sandwiches (a $12.00 lunchtime treat that could easily feed two people, but which I decided to eat by myself because I am a giant glutton) and stay for their amazing dill pickles, which are as thick as a baby’s arm. The limp beef rolls I buy from the sandwich shop next to my office will never look the same again.

Garrett’s Chicago Mix popcorn

And then there were the snacks. Numerous people told me that I couldn’t visit Chicago without trying a bag of Garrett’s ‘Chicago Mix’ – a mixture of caramel and cheese flavoured popcorn that sounds utterly disgusting, but tastes amazing. Made fresh in front of you, it’s the perfect conglomeration of salt and sweet – crisp, tangy and oddly addictive. Its neon orange dust also stains everything it lands on, which, in my case, was hotel pillows and duvet covers. I found myself eating gigantic handfuls of the stuff at 5am on a Monday morning, plagued by jetlag, watching awful news reports on CBS (“Are council employees watching Hula-Hooping strippers on YOUR tax dollars?”) I’m not entirely sure that it’s the kind of serving suggestion that the makers would suggest themselves, but it certainly gave me comfort when I needed it.

The Scotch Egg at The Gage

Honorable mention should also go to The Gage, an ‘upmarket tavern’ I visited on my last night in the city. I ate their restaurant week menu and, while certain elements of it disappointed, (such as a soup which tasted like a cup-a-soup with an egg plunked in it) I was pleasantly surprised by their meaty, punchy – if slightly overcooked – Scotch Egg, adored their amazing bread and butter and was utterly wowed by a White Chocolate Sponge. I’m not a white chocolate fan, but this cake was infused with a warm, spicy cardamom syrup that will haunt my dreams.

Sadly, work constraints meant that I didn’t get to see as much of Chicago as I would have liked to. Oh, I had well laid out plans of where I’d go and what I’d see, but by the time I’d finished work each day, I had just enough energy to consume a few cocktails and an easily accessible meal before passing out in my hotel bed in front of the TV. As I have discovered, the problem with work trips is that you actually have to work. However, I’m already planning my next trip back so I can explore more of this amazing city. Oh yes, and get my hands on more of that popcorn.

Skint Lunch Club: 81 Renshaw Street

Streaky Bacon, Cream Cheese & Spring Onion sandwich and a large bowl of Sweet Potato and Chickpea soup.

Hands up who’s skint. Well, that makes two of us. I looked at my bank account last week and let out a wail that could probably be heard across Merseyside. To add insult to injury, January looks to be the month where everything I own suddenly decides to break or run out. Eyeliner, jeans, PC hard drives, you name it. It’s like one long Monday where your bank manager has you on speed dial and you can’t afford to drown your sorrows in overpriced cocktails.

However, like the brave little soldier I am, I refuse to allow my straightened circumstances to stop me indulging in the odd lunch out every now and then. Thankfully, I’m lucky enough to work in an area of Liverpool where I’m spoilt for inexpensive lunch options, one of these being the recently opened 81 Renshaw Street.

81 Renshaw Street is an ‘arts cafe’, which opened with relatively little fanfare a few months ago. It’s the kind of unassuming little place you could easily walk past if you didn’t already know it was there. Like so many recent Liverpool openings, it’s decorated in ‘shabby chic’ (Christ I hate that term), so there are lots of old cabinets full of vintage crockery, rickety-looking tables, large squishy sofas and a gas fire that I’m sure my Nana June owned back in 1989. Where in other places this kind of ‘I’ve just accidentally wandered into a jumble sale’ style looks contrived, here it works – although this may just be because you can tell it’s there with no sense of irony whatsoever.

I had the soup and a sandwich, which consisted of a Streaky Bacon, Cream Cheese & Spring Onion sandwich and a large bowl of Sweet Potato and Chickpea soup. The sandwich itself was fairly utilitarian – two slices of crunchy streaky bacon and a large smear of spring-onion-studded cream cheese on a crunchy ciabatta roll – yet salty, creamy, crunchy and delicious. Plus, it wasn’t filled with any of the limp lettuce and watery tomato slices that can so easily ruin a perfectly good sarnie.

The real star of the show, though, was the Sweet Potato & Chickpea Soup. It’s always good when you see a simple dish done right, and this was as warm and welcoming as a bear hug. Hearty, slightly sweet and heady with toasty cumin, here was a soup that actually tasted of something, a delightful change from the bland fibrous mulch I’ve often had served up to me in other places. As a testament to how good it was, I overheard a woman at one of the other tables asking her waitress for the recipe, which she duly scribbled down. You don’t get that at Subway.

Flourless Clementine Cake

But woman cannot live on soup alone, so I decided to buy a slice of Flourless Clementine Cake for the road. Packed full of almonds and sour-sweet clementine peel, this was a squidgy slice of tasty complexity, and a cake that I will definitely be attempting to recreate in my kitchen sometime in the next few weeks. While I was there, I also had a sample of their Banana Bread in my mouth and didn’t instantly spit it out and cross myself. As regular readers will know, I deem bananas to be the devil’s own fruit, so the fact I managed to eat something containing them without wanting to wash my mouth out immediately with antiseptic is definite progress.

With its ramshackle charm, minimal web presence and really good homemade food, there’s a refreshing lack of pretence to 81 Renshaw Street. While its food is never going to win any awards for originality, it will win plaudits for being simple, tasty and full of heart. Plus, you can eat like a queen and get change from a tenner. And, in these times of economic hardship, you can’t really say fairer than that.

Christina vs. Food: A few things I ate in New York

A giant mouth image that I saw at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

Since my return from New York a fortnight ago friends, family members and colleagues have all asked me what fun-filled activities I participated in while I was there.  While I’ve been trying desperately to appear cultured by telling them how I wandered around the Guggenheim, MoMA and most of Manhattan, the fact is that the main activity I indulged in during my time in New York was eating. I ate everything I could get my hands on. Indeed, I gobbled down snacks like a mega-breasted Pac-Man – only stopping for the occasional pint or to plan where Mr. McMc and I going for dinner. There’s a part of me which feels as though I should be slightly ashamed of my gluttonous impulses, but I was in one of the world’s culinary capitals, it was my birthday, and hey – it would have been rude not to.

The day after my rather epic birthday meal at Momofuku Noodle Bar, we decided to pay a visit to Momofuku Milk Bar in Midtown for a slice of lunchtime Crack Pie. We were served our food by possibly the cutest Barista I’ve ever seen in my life, and we giggled about the sheer awfulness of having to wake up for work at 7am on cold Winter’s days as she served me my food. It was love at first sight, so much so that I didn’t even mind when she forgot to hand me half of my order.

As for the Crack Pie? Well, believe the hype. It might not look like much, but this stuff is fully deserving of its reputation of being culinary crack. Tasting of toast, butterscotch and everything that’s right with the world, it’s a perfect symphony of sugar and butter wrapped up in a sweet pastry case. Its creator, Christina Tosi (one of my baking heroes) says that this is the kind of dessert that should be eaten “with your favourite someone” which is exactly what I did. Mr. McMc and I shared a slice in Central Park while watching schoolchildren chase squirrels and washed it down with some of Momofuku Milk Bar’s signature Cereal Milk (which tastes like a Crunchy Nut milkshake). Romance, a scenic view and tasty pastry products. What girl could ask for more?

Another great sweet treat I tried were cookies from Beurre and Sel, a cookie emporium situated in the amazing Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side. If you read Serious Eats, you’ll probably have heard of Beurre and Sel, it being the store set up by legendary baker Dorie Greenspan and her son. I’m a huge fan of Dorie’s recipes – she specialises in simple, delicious food that can be made from practically anything – so I knew these were going to be good. We bought two cookies – a World Peace Cookie and a Vanilla Sablé. When a cookie describes itself as being so delicious that it could ensure World Peace and Happiness you know you’re in for something good, and it didn’t disappoint. Rich and packed full of chocolate, it was firm and crumbly to the bite, a small piece of deliciousness. However, both Mr. McMc and I preferred the Vanilla Sablé – a sandy shortbread which was exquisite in its simplicity. It tasted of butter, sugar and vanilla and was the perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea. It is a cookie that I can see myself attempting to replicate in my own kitchen very soon.

I was determined to visit Russ & Daughters on the Lower East Side during my time in New York. This legendary deli serves up some of the best bagels, lox (a salted smoked salmon) and ridiculously rich cream cheese you could ever wish to consume. We bought some for a lazy Sunday breakfast and ate them in bed while listening to the football scores on BBC World Service. I also noticed that they served two iconic New York baked products – Chocolate Babka and Black & White cookies. Being a bit of a Seinfeld fan,  couldn’t help thinking of the episode where Jerry and Elaine visit a bakery to pick up some cake for a dinner party  (Elaine tries – and fails – to buy two different flavours of Babka, and Jerry gets sick after eating a dodgy cookie.)  Thankfully for us, when we ate them, we had a significantly better experience than the protagonists of Seinfeld. The Black & White Cookie didn’t exactly like “racial harmony in cookie form,” but it was thick, fluffy and cake-like and covered in sweet frosting. The Chocolate Babka was undeniably the better of the two though – a gorgeous, squidgy slab of yeasted dough enrobed with dark chocolate goo that unraveled into delicious flaky ribbons when cut into slices.

Believe it or not, I did manage to eat some snacks which weren’t comprised of butter and sugar during my time in New York. After wandering around the Lincoln Centre on the Upper West Side, we decided to pop into Épicerie Boulud for a sandwich. Although my Banh Mi was more expensive than it really needed to be (and I found myself paying $8 (!!) for a pint of lager) it was definitely delicious – a thick slab of liver pate wrapped around lovely thin slices of pork and garnished with pickled carrot and radish. Although the baguette wasn’t made from rice flour in the traditional manner, it was still satisfyingly crackly without scraping the roof of my mouth off.

One of the best things I ate in New York, however, was also one of the simplest. It was a Knish, bought from a friendly street vendor near Central Park. A Knish is a little dough pocket which is filled with potatoes, onions and meat and deep fried. I was given a quick education on how to eat mine by a cop who was taking a break from directing traffic by eating numerous hot dogs in quick succession. You should cover your Knish with onions, mustard and tomato sauce, and eat it in the fresh air while drinking in the noises of the city bustling around you. It may not have looked like much, but my Knish was a warm slab of carb-filled comfort; a perfect example of New York street food at its finest.

Not everything I ate in New York was amazing, mind you. I had a terrible meal at a restaurant called Macondo which featured frozen empanadas, over attentive staff and being short-changed by $10. And the less said about Pabst Blue Ribbon, the better (seriously hipsters, why do you drink this stuff? It tastes like barely malted water). But I liked the fact that you didn’t have to spend lots of money to eat like royalty. And for me, that’s what a holiday should be all about.

A pan of Scouse for #globalscouseday

The Irish have their Irish Stew, the Lancashire types their Hotpot. And Liverpudlians have Scouse. It’s part of the fabric of the city, a major component of what makes those who live in this corner of the North West of England who they are. Ostensibly, there’s no real difference between these  dishes bar their construction – all three being a simple combination of lamb (or beef), potatoes and a few root veg chucked in for good measure. But, if you’re being poncey, you could say that there’s something about the Merseyside terroir which makes Scouse unique to Liverpool, and so much more than your average, everyday meat stew.

Of course, Scouse isn’t a native Liverpool dish. Like many things you’ll find in this city, you’ll find that it’s an immigrant that has been taken in and brought close to Liverpudlian’s hearts. To quote my good friend Wikipedia;

“In the 18th and 19th centuries Liverpool, being a major seaport, found itself inundated with foreign seamen, especially Norwegians, looking for a berth on any ship. There is still a Scandinavian Seamen’s Church in Liverpool built in the 19th century. Scandinavian seamen’s churches proliferated in many British ports in the late 19th century, and it is therefore probable that these incomers brought their recipes to Liverpool.

A “pan of scouse” became a common meal in working class Liverpool. A thickened stew, usually of mutton or lamb with vegetables slow cooked to tenderise cheap cuts of meat, it takes its name from the Norwegian for stew, “lapskaus”

My first introduction to Scouse came when I’d been living in Liverpool for only a few months. It was an achingly cold February day and the canteen in my office was closed. I ran across the road to the café situated in the Anglican cathedral and devoured a bowl of the stuff whilst watching flakes of snow drift slowly across Hope Street. Warm, rich and soothing, it made me immediately feel comforted and at home. It was the first time I really felt in love with Liverpool   – although it certainly hasn’t been the last.

I’ve now been living here for (almost) three years, and in that time I’ve eaten a lot of Scouse. But I’ve never actually gotten around to sharing my own recipe for the stuff. So what better time to celebrate this most seminal piece of Liverpudlian cuisine on this blog than today – Global Scouse Day?

According to folklore*, every 28th February, Scousers from across the globe all cook up a pan of Scouse to remind them of home. As I have come to realise whilst trying to formulate my own recipe for the stuff, every bowl of Scouse is different – and every Scouser you meet with invariably have their own opinion on what it should contain. Some people say you should use only lamb, some say a proper Scouse should always always contain peas. Others say that it’s a lump of swede which provides it with that certain something. However, it’s been agreed upon the core components of it are:

• Lamb or mutton (cut into chunks, and never minced)
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Onions
• Beef stock of some kind and a few generous dashes of Worcestershire Sauce

All of this various components are thrown into a pot and cooked together until the potatoes break down and the gravy acquires the consistency which could coat the back of a spoon. Again, there’s a fair bit of argument about whether it should be a thick or thin stew, but all agree that it should always be served up with pickled red cabbage or beetroot, and plenty of bread to mop it up with.

For mine, I made it with a mixture of a cheap cut of lamb and some stewing steak, which I fried in some butter and cooked down in a few pints of Bovril. I also added a dab of tomato paste to the mix to provide it with a bit more of an umami kick, as well as the ubiquitous potatoes, onions and carrots. After a few hours of football watching and concerted stewing, it was done – just the thing for a lazy Sunday spent watching Liverpool (fittingly) win the Carling Cup final.

I can’t make any claims for this being authentic Scouse, but then again, I’m not an authentic Scouser. If you fancied gussying it up a bit, I imagine it would be brilliant with a bit of black pudding or chorizo chucked into it. Happy Scouse Day everyone!

*a few people I’ve spoken to in the pub recently, and this Twitter account

SCOUSE (Serves four)

I used this recipe as a rough guide, as a quick search of the internet revealed it to be the most authentic

You will need

• 400g Stewing Steak
• 400g Neck of lamb (I used shoulder of lamb here and found it to be slightly too boney. Lamb is expensive at the moment, so use mutton if you’re trying to save your pennies)
• 1 onion, roughly chopped
• 2 medium sized carrots, chopped into rounds
• 5-6 large floury potatoes (I used King Edwards), chopped into large chunks
• 2 pints of good beef stock (I used Bovril because I really like Bovril)
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• A few good glugs of Worcestershire sauce
• Salt and Pepper for seasoning

Make It!

1. If it hasn’t been already cubed by your butcher, cut the lamb and stewing steak into large cubes and season well. Brown in batches in a mixture of butter and vegetable oil (or, if you have it, beef dripping).
2. Transfer the meat to a large saucepan  and add the chopped onions, carrots and the tomato paste. Add the beef stock until it has just covered the meat. Add a few good glugs of Worcestershire sauce and  simmer on a low heat for two hours.
3. After two hours, add the chopped potatoes and another glug of Worcestershire sauce, and simmer for another two hours, stirring occasionally. The large pieces of onion will start to break up and the potato will become soft and will make the final sauce thick.
4. Serve with pickled red cabbage (I used this recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for mine), and fresh bread. You can also add ketchup or HP sauce if you like (although personally, I think that’s a bit wrong).

Pork, Potatoes and Pilsner – Adventures in Prague

As you may have gathered from the dearth of posts on here, I’ve been rather busy recently – who knew that trying to hold down a full time job, a freelance career and a personal life whilst studying for a digital marketing qualification could take up so much time?  The past fortnight has seen me pretty much living out of a suitcase, and being forced to buy clean knickers from Tescos because I had no time to go home and fetch a fresh pair. I’m scared I’m going to become one of these women who carries emergency underwear in her handbag, next to the lipbalm and the loose change.

So, finally, last Friday I decided I’d had enough. It was time for me to leave these shores and head to pastures new for a few days. Those pastures new being Prague, land of churches, cheap pork products and a strange foodstuff known as “beer cheese” (the promise of beer cheese alone was enough of an incentive for me to be honest). The holiday didn’t really get off to the best start when we were faced with a seven hour delay after one of the engines of our plane set on fire whilst we were on the runway. However, when faced with such a setback, I turned to the one thing which I know for a fact will bring me succour in times of woe. Namely, booze.

Some would say that 7.30am is too early in the morning for Breakfast Martinis. I am not one of those people. Especially when aforementioned Martini comes with a (frankly ridiculous) slab of cold toast shoved onto the side of it.

By the time we got to Prague, both myself and Mr. Cay wanted to do nothing more than go to the pub. Which we duly did. This decision was justified when we discovered that beer in the Czech Republic is both cheap (an average pint will cost you around £1.20) and delicious, and that you could smoke in pubs. Which led to us both getting rather tanked, smoking like priests and eating pizza in bed. A very fine way to start a holiday by anyone’s standards really.

Being sensible and ridiculously gluttinous types, we decided to spend our holiday eating, drinking and looking at beautiful (and occasionally strange) buildings. Here’s some of the highlights:

WHAM, BAM, THANK YOU HAM

On our first day there, we decided to go exploring, and upon entering the Old Town Square, our nostrils were immediately assailed by the delicious smell of roast meat. I’m a sucker for any time of pork product, so I couldn’t really turn down the opportunity to feast on some authentic Prague ham, served up with rye bread and plenty of mustard.

It might possibly be the best ham I’ve ever eaten – juicy, smoky and with a delicious layer of crackling which we crunched between our teeth whilst watching a Czech television personality sing traditional folk tunes. It was so good, that I’ll even forgive the bloke who sold it to me for ripping me off after I handed him the wrong bank note.

It transpired that the ham man was there as part of International Chefs Day. Which meant that it would have been rude not to try some of the dishes being served up, like this amazing homemade lamb sausage from Apartmán hotel Jítrava . Served with garlic spiked mashed potatoes and an apple relish, it was just the thing to keep out the chill of a rainy October afternoon.

BEEF AND BREAD

The evening saw us dining at U Pinkasu, a cute – if slightly touristy – restaurant situated in Jungmannovo Namesti. U Pinkasu specialises in traditional Czech cuisine which, it transpired, is exceedingly heavy on the whole ‘meats and carbs’ side of things. Seemingly every dish on the menu appeared to contain ‘bread dumplings’ (which weren’t so much dumplings as very soft, doughy slabs of white bread), potatoes or (frequently) both. This is not the kind of food you want to be eating if you’re on the Atkins diet. Full marks must also go to our waitress – a woman who could not only carry five steins of beer in each hand, but who also appeared to speak four different languages (whilst we were there, we heard her speak to diners in Czech, Italian, English and Russian), and the section of the menu which was entitled ‘For Gourmets and Feeders’.

Beef goulash with bread dumplings and horseradish

Old Bohemian Beef in Cream Sauce with Cranberries and Bread Dumplings (apologies for the poor pictures, beer had been consumed at this point).

STUPIDEST THING I ATE

The award for ‘most outrageously stupid thing I ate on my holidays’ undoubtedly has to go to this heart attack on a plate -a deep fried potato pancake filled with pork & chicken, and covered in cheese. For some bizarre reason, I decided to order this for my lunch. In my defence, I think I might have been slightly under the influence of strong drink at the time. It would be wrong to say that this wasn’t delicious, but it was also absolutely bloody enormous. I ate about half of it before I gave up, and spent the rest of the afternoon lying on the bed in my hotel, rubbing my distended belly, and feeling like a boa constrictor who has just consumed a large deer.

You would think that after that little incident, I would have learned my lesson. No. No I didn’t. On our final day, prior to boarding a flight back to the UK, I had these potato dumplings filled with smoked meat and fried onions on a bed of cabbage. Undoubtedly tasty, but not the kind of thing you want to be eating when you have to be wide awake and drag a heavy suitcase across a city full of cobbles. They also gave me a raging heartburn that took me a good 24 hours to eradicate.

JEWISH FOOD AT KING SOLOMON’S

On our final night in the city, we decided to treat ourselves, and dine at King Solomon’s in the Jewish Quarter, allegedly the oldest  Jewish restaurant in the Czech Republic. The meal wasn’t perfect – they don’t serve wines by the glass, the restaurant was dreadfully quiet and one of the waiters appeared to having an argument with one of his colleagues about the music on a Jewish radio station which was being played in the background – but the food was excellent, and there’s always something quite lovely about an intimate  candlelit dinner. The standout highlight of the meal for me was their chicken soup with herb knedlich. I always thought that my Bubbie made the best chicken soup in the world, but sorry Bubbie – you’ve got competition.

Goulash with Matzo and herbed dumplings

Veal with bread dumplings (which, slightly bizarrely, came with a large squirt of whipped cream on the side of the plate)

We washed this all down with complementary shots of slivovitz, a potent plum brandy that you’ll find being served up at restaurants and bars across the Czech Republic. We would have had dessert, if it wasn’t for the fact we’d consumed this bad boy earlier that day.

Baileys Chocolate Mousse cake, aka three layers of chocolatey-dessert-joy. This was sinfully, indecently good. Especially when coupled with a strong espresso.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BOOZE?

Ah yes. The booze. Czech beer is possibly some of the finest beer I’ve ever tasted. Crisp, refreshing and punchy with hops, it’s a million miles away from the bland swill you so often find in British pubs. There’s a seemingly giddy array of Czech breweries, with Pilsner Uruquell being the most common. A lot of pubs also served Kozel, a dark beer, that looked like ale, but had a surprisingly light, almost fruity taste to it.

I also – in a fit of post dinner madness one night – indulged in a shot of the local spirit, Becherovka. It’s pretty interesting stuff, with a taste that’s a cross between floor cleaner and cinnamon tictacs, and a kick like a donkey. The lemon version is slightly tastier, but it’s definitely not something I’d advise you to try if your preferred tipple is Malibu. For reasons I’m still not entirely clear of, I bought a bottle to take home with me which is now taking pride of place in my drinks cabinet. I’m thinking of making cocktails with it. Does anyone know what mixes well with alcoholic Dettol?

SO, THAT WAS PRAGUE

After five days of Central European bliss, me and Mr. Cay  finally returned to Liverpool on Wednesday pickled in alcohol, marinaded in pork fat and – very probably – two stone heavier. It was worth it though. We’re already fantasising about where our next adventure is going to take us. But for now, back to the real world. Thanks Prague. You’re really something.

#Gastroclub – Habesha, Sackville Street, Manchester

It’s rare to find a restaurant in Manchester nowadays that relatively few people know about. The advent of websites such as Manchester Confidential, as well as the ever increasing glut of Northern food bloggers means that when one person finds a place that no one else has discovered, you’ll inevitably soon find the rest of the city’s foodies flocking to it. So, I was genuinely surprised when I received my monthly Gastroclub email informing me that this month, we were going to be dining at Habesha, an Ethiopian restaurant situated in the Gay Village. Ethiopian food? In Manchester? Speaking as someone who loves nothing more than a huge wodge of injera smothered in spicy stew, I’ll admit that I was suprised by the fact that I’d a) never heard of the place, and yet b) had walked past it practically every day when I lived in Manchester. Obviously, my powers of observation aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

My first experience of Ethiopian food came when I was in Amsterdam last year, when someone on Twitter suggested that I try out Fenan Klein Afrika. It was a revelatory experience. For a few euros, myself and Mr. Cay feasted like kings on huge portions of piquant beef and chicken stews, all washed down with some of the most delicious coffee we’ve ever tasted. It was one of the highlights of our holiday, and left me with a huge appreciation for this type of cuisine – as well as a desire to eat as much of it as humanly possible. Discovering that there was an Ethiopian restaurant in Manchester was like discovering some kind of holy grail. Made out of meat.

When I arrived at Habesha, it was easy to see why I’d walked past it so many times without giving it a second glance. Mainly because, despite all of the times I’ve walked down Sackville Street over the years, I’d never bothered to look up. Habesha is situated above a busy kebab shop meaning that, if you tend to walk past huge neon signs in a daze like I so often do, you’d never know that it was there. Thankfully my powers of perception were sharper this time – which is a good thing as myself and Mr. Cay were over forty minutes late arriving to the restaurant due to an almighty cock up by Northern Rail. By the time I managed to sit down and catch my breath I was tired, hungry, and in desperate need of beer.

After downing a rather tasty bottle of Ethiopian lager (which bore a label sporting a brilliant image of St George slaying a dragon), we decided to order three different dishes – Doro Wot, chicken legs marinated in lemon sauteed in seasoned butter and stewed in red pepper flavoured with onions, ginger and cardamom, Yebeg Alicha Fitfit, a mild spicy lamb stew and Yetsom beyeynetu, portions of stewed lentils, spinach, and a mild mixed vegetable sauce made with cabbage, potato and carrots seasoned with spices.

When our food arrived, we soon realised that our eyes may have been bigger than our bellies. Ethiopian food consists of portions of stew doled out onto portions of a traditional bread called injera, a large flat – slightly sour – bread which has the consistency of a huge pikelet. When you eat, you just rip pieces of this off with your hands, scoop up a bit of stew, and stuff it into your mouth. It’s an immensely messy (and slightly graceless) way of eating, yet wonderfully communal. After all, it’s hard to effect airs and graces when you’re trying not to dump sauce down the front of your top. To prepare us for this experience, we were served a basket full of fresh warm injera, rolled up like edible warm towelettes. We had great fun slapping them out onto the table, ripping them in two and using them to scoop up huge hunks of meat.

I adored the Doro Wat – pieces of chicken which practically fell off the bone on contact. The sauce was rich with berbere, that amazingly fragrant mix of spices which is the key to Ethiopian and Eritrean food, with all of the vegetables and spices cooked down in butter until they formed a rich, dark red slick. It was impossible to stop wiping my pieces of bread around the bowl, trying to pick up every drop of this amazing elixir. The Yebeg Alicha Fitfit – although not as good – was still a decidedly tasty bowl of food. Cubes of lamb had been cooked down to breaking point and were swimming in a bowl of spicy, tomato heavy broth. It was the perfect thing to wolf down between huge mouthfuls of beer whilst putting the world to rights with my beloved.

However, the stand out dish of the night was, surprisingly, the mix of vegetables all laid out in a neat row. I’ve always felt that a good restaurant can be measured on how well it cooks its vegetarian dishes, and Habesha is no exception. Each one of these dishes was perfectly cooked and seasoned – with the mix of cabbage, potato and carrots being the stand out (who knew that seasoned root vegetables could taste this good?) It felt sinful when I had to push this plate away saying that my stomach couldn’t feasibly hold any more before it popped in a Mr. Creosote-esque fashion.

After every slap up meal comes coffee. And once we’d eaten our fill, we were invited to enjoy a cup of the good stuff with our dining companions. The beans were roasted in front of us by the chef, who delighted in putting the roasted under our noses so we could inhale big lungfuls of the heavenly perfumed smell. The finished product was divine – light and fruity, with a floral note to it, it was a million miles away from the thick black engine oil I’m so used to gulping down on a daily basis.

Despite being situated above a kebab shop, Habesha definitely doesn’t serve fast food. However, it does serve some of the best, most unique food in Manchester. Best of all, it’s sinfully cheap too – a huge meal for two people came to £30. No, that’s not each, and yes, does include booze and coffee.

So, if you’re ever on Sackville Street looking for a place to go to mop up the remnants of a hangover, eschew the kebabs and look up. You’ll be surprised at the brilliant food you can get for the price of the loose change in your wallet.

Habesha
29-31 Sackville Street
Manchester
M1 3LZ

A Simple Tomato Sauce

I am notoriously terrible with money. Always have been, and (probably) always will be. Back when I was a student, I practically had a hotline to my bank manager who would often tut at me when I asked to extend my overdraft.  Somehow there was always too much month left at the end of my money – and who wants to spending their last tenner on sensible things like food when it could be used to go out dancing ?

In my younger days, I’d regularly go shopping with the loose change that I found down the back of my sofa. Indeed, back in 2003, I spent most of the Summer surviving on a diet of 15p ramen noodles which were pimped up with a bit of soy sauce, the bagels my housemate would bring home from the café she worked in at the time, packs of dried spaghetti and tins of tomatoes. As a result, I still can’t look at a pack of instant noodles without shuddering. However, there is a lot to be said for being thrifty. Mainly because it makes you inventive. And hey, what is cooking without a bit of invention?

I remember my Bubbie telling me about Marcella Hazan’s simple tomato sauce back when I was eighteen and preparing to leave home and move to big bad London. Although she’s not so well known in this country, Marcella Hazan is a bit of a phenomenon in the USA, and is deemed to be largely responsible for introducing the American public with many of the cooking methods that so many of us take for granted nowadays. She’s also been credited with starting the craze for balsamic vinegar – rather a poisoned chalice when you think of all the times you’ve been to an Italian restaurant and found your food smothered in the stuff. (If you’d like to find out more about this very inspiring woman, be sure to check out Steamy Kitchen’s excellent post detailing her meeting with Marcella, and her very suave wine writer husband, Victor).

Hazan’s methods emphasise the benefits of simplicity. All of her recipes are a celebration of how you only need a few store cupboard ingredients to create something satisfying. You don’t have to spend a lot of money, but you should always use the best ingredients that you can afford. And hey – is anyone really going to notice if you make one of her recipes out of some wilted basil you find at the back of your fridge, or some overripe tomatoes you find being sold for 5p in Sainsbury’s  at the end of the day?

This recipe is so easy to make, it feels almost shameful to write it down – it being more a combination of common sense and knowing what works together rather than any mastery of tastes and textures. If you’re using fresh tomatoes, you’ll need to skin them first by popping them into a bowl of very hot water for ten seconds before leaving them to cool off in a bowl of iced water for another five seconds. Then, the skins should easily slip off the flesh. Once you’ve done this, chop your tomatoes finely, making sure to remove any seeds which you feel might get stuck between your teeth at an inopportune moment. (Of course, if you’re using tinned tomatoes you can skip this bit altogether). Next, place your tomatoes in a medium sized saucepan with a whole onion and five tablespoons of butter (I used Lurpak Sea Salt Butter which is officially my new favourite ingredient. No, I’m not being paid to say that, Yes, I am open to all offers), and simmer the whole lot together for about 45 minutes, until the drops of fat from the butter start to float on the surface. Then, you can take the onion out (I like eating it with a knob of butter and some salt and pepper, because I’m strange like that) and stir the sauce through some cooked pasta.

I like to adulterate the sauce slightly with some fresh basil and a teaspoon of oregano, but, to tell you the truth, it’s just perfect as it is. Comforting, delicious and ever so slightly creamy (that’ll be the butter), you can feast like a king, safe in the knowledge that no one need ever know that you only spent a quid on ingredients. If my student self was reading this, I know she’d approve.