She Wore Blue (Red) Velvet, oh oh...

Blue Velvet was my dog Charlie's favourite song. He has such good taste. I imagine he would have stretched to red velvet had he become aware of the Red Velvet cupcake from the Hummingbird Bakery. These are the legendary red and white cupcakes from Notting Hill's most over the top and expensive bakery and purveyors of all American baked goods. Jaimie was given the cookbook for Christmas, so I decided to tackle these infamous ruby jewels.

Red Velvet's are essentially chocolate cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting. These days a quite significant quantity of red food colouring is added to achieve that beautiful red tinge, however in the olden days cocoa powder was apparently much lighter in appearance, giving the cupcakes their famous red colouring.

Red food colouring or not, they tasted great. I took them to my friend James' for Sunday lunch as a little treat. So to the recipe:

For 24 cupcakes you will need

500g plain flour

165g unsalted butter, at room temperature

500g caster sugar

3 large eggs

6 tbsp red food colouring

3 tbsp cocoa powder

1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 and 1/2 tsp salt

330ml full fat milk

1 and 1/2 tsp red wine vinegar

1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 4. In a small bowl, sift the plain flour. Set aside. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about three minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Whisk together the red food colouring, unsweetened cocoa powder and vanilla. Add to the batter and beat well.

Stir the salt in with the buttermilk and add to the batter in three parts, ­alternating with flour. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are fully incorporated, but make sure you do not overbeat.

In a small bowl, stir together the cider vinegar and baking soda and add to the batter and mix well.

Divide the mixture into cases, then bake each tray of cakes for 20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Next to the cream cheese frosting. Which to be honest, I could eat on its own. So for that you will need:

125g cream cheese, come on we all know its Philadelphia

250g icing sugar, sifted

90g unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

This couldn't be easier, all you need to do is to combine all these ingredients in either a food processor or by hand. I did it by hand, it didn't take that long at all. And it was lovely. When the cupcakes are fully cooled apply a generous layer of the cream cheese frosting to the top. NICE.

Here is the finished article (I've got my camera back now, so the photos are loads better!)

So I transported them all around London, up to Columbia Road flower market, and then off to Fulham for Sunday lunch with James. Thanks for a lovely afternoon Mr Arkoulis...

Wandsworth Frittata

Went for a lovely dinner and catch up with my old school friends Lucy and Georgie. We went over to Lucy's place in Wandsworth for a spot of chorizo and potato frittata. Her recipe is based on a Jamie Oliver recipe.

Lucy was saying that she wasn't a very good cook, but this proved her to be mistaken. She was also worried about the amount of rosemary that the recipe called for, but, to be honest, the rosemary added a whole new dimension to it. Delicious. It was so nice that I convinced her to give me the recipe.

And here it is...

4 small waxy potatoes, scrubbed and cut into chunks

2 red onions, sliced

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

6 large free-range or organic eggs

2 x 60g good-quality Spanish chorizo sausages, cut into 1cm thick slices

2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, leaves picked

Lucy didn't do this bit, but Jamie's recipe calls for:

2 shallots, peeled and very finely sliced

Juice of 1 lemon

Extra virgin olive oil

Preheat your oven to full whack, or get your grill nice and hot. Put the potatoes into a saucepan of boiling salted water and simmer them until cooked, then drain in a colander and leave them to steam dry.

Beat the eggs with a fork in a large mixing bowl, season well with salt and pepper, and put to one side.

Heat a 20cm non-stick, ovenproof frying pan. Add the onions and cook until soft. Add the chorizo slices and the potato chunks. The chorizo will start to sizzle, releasing all its tasty oils and spices. After a couple of minutes, when everything's lightly golden and crisp, remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and put to one side. Sprinkle the rosemary leaves into the hot fat. As soon as they hit the pan, they'll start to crisp up. Pour the beaten eggs on top immediately, adding the potatoes and chorizo and spreading everything out evenly. Place the whole pan in the preheated oven or under the grill until the omelette is golden brown on top and just cooked through in the middle.

Lucy didn't include this bit, but Jamie's recipe calls for:

While the omelette is cooking, put the shallots into a bowl with the lemon juice, some salt and pepper and a glug of extra virgin olive oil. Toss and pinch the shallots with your fingertips to soften them slightly, then mix in the parsley leaves. Serve a little on top of the omelette and tuck in!

Lucy served her fritatta with a dressed spinach salad and crusty bread.

Chain Gang

Today I received and email from Grace asking me to participate in a recipe chain email. What a marvelous idea. I'm going to be blogging these as they come through, live as it happens. The excitement is killing me.

So firstly, here is Grace's take on the Italian bread salad Panzanella:

A Take on Panzanella

6 - 8 Tomatoes
1 red onion, thinly sliced (white onion will do if not)
1 garlic clove, chopped
3 table spoons of olive oil
1 spoon full of capers, chopped
handful of anchovy stuffed olives, chopped
handful of basil, torn up
parsley, finely chopped
red chillies (optional)
salt, pinch
pepper, pinch
2 table spoons red wine vinegar
chopped ciabatta (optional- it is part of the original recipe, but it goes soggy and is just as good without)

*Put the tomatoes into boiling water until the skins split. peel and chop roughly

*Let them cool and stir in the onion, garlic, capers and olives.

*Chop/tear the herbs and fold in with the salt, pepper, vinegar and oil.

If you want to use ciabatta, slice into chunks and layer the bottom of a bowl, the rest of the mixture goes on top and soaks into the bread, just as good without though and is delicious served with crispy skin sea bass or with a feta and spinach filo pastry pie.

Total chef pin-up

I must say that I have fallen ever so slightly for Julian Biggs, head chef at Hix Oyster & Fish House in Lime Regis. What he says about how to cook fish, here.

The Cook's Atelier

Beautiful food blog.

Beautiful pictures.

With thanks to Mary. She lives here.

Do you want a cake wi that?

Made some custard buns the other day. They were quite nice, but I ran out of butter to make an icing for them. Which they badly needed.

100g Custard Powder

200g Softened Butter

2 eggs

4 tbsp milk

140g Caster Sugar

100g self raising flour

Heat the oven to180C/160C fan and place 12 paper cases in a muffin tray.

Beat the custard powder with the butter eggs and milk, then stir in the suagr and fold in the sifted flour. The custard powder makes it turn an amazing honey yellow colour. Worth it just for that.

Spoon into the cases.

Bake for 20 mins. Leave to cool completley.

Like I said these would massively benefit from some butter icing. But I ran out of butter. What I did try was a smearing of lemon curd on them. Which was nice.

Monk's Mackerel from Mount Athos

There are these Greek monks from the monasteries of Mount Athos who apparently are some of the most healthy people on earth. They don't eat much, no meat, they occasionally eat fish, and their diet is famed for its anti-cancer properties. As one Times journalist says: 'if you want to avoid cancer, live like a monk'. I remember reading a Guardian give away leaflet about them, and when Jaimie went to stay with his Dad recently he cooked one of the dishes from it.

We were invited over to Natali's, (she's Chew The Fat don't you know) on Friday evening, where we planned to cook together. Jaimie had suggested that we cook this monk's dish that his Dad had made, so that's what we did.

The dish is really simple to make and really tasty. And, really very good for you.

So to make the monk's mackerel you will need (to feed 4)...

6 mackerel fillets
Spring onions, 2 bunches (about 25ish), topped and tailed
Plum tomatoes, around 6 good sized specimens, sliced
Ground cumin, 2 tsp
Dried oregano, 2 tsp
Garlic, loads. Perhaps 2 heads, whole cloves given a bash
Olive oil
Flat leaf parsley, 1 bunch

Pre heat your oven to 180 degrees.

Firstly we prepped our onions and tomatoes. All you need to do is to slice your tomatoes into 1cm thick slices, and tidy up your spring onions, keeping them whole but removing their ends.


You need to create a bed of these vegetables for your fish to sit on. So take a roasting tin/dish and place all your spring onions in the bottom, and top with a layer of tomatoes. You should use about half of the tomatoes for this. Jaimie chose to lay these out very precisely, but you don't have to. Jaimie described this dish as 'a kind of mackerel and tomato lasagna' due to the layering involved in its preparation. You are basically preparing a bed on which to cook the fish, so to beef up the flavour sprinkle some of the dried oregano over the tomatoes with some olive oil, and then add to the roasting dish all of the bruised cloves of garlic. It may seem excessive, but the more the merrier.


Next take your fish, we had the fish monger fillet some whole mackerel for us. Mackerel, what a cost conscious fish. We bought all this fish for £3.80. Not too bad at all, I'm sure you will agree. The fillets need to be patted dry, then salted and cumin rubbed into the skin and flesh. These are then placed on top of the spring onion, tomato and garlic bed.


Top the fish with the remaining tomatoes, and season with salt, pepper and add another glug of olive oil. Place in the oven and bake for 20-30 minutes. When the fish is cooked remove from the oven and top with chopped flat leaf parsley and serve immediately.

Here is our attempt fresh out of the oven...


This could totally be served as a dish on its own. But there were hungry boys to feed at dinner, so we decided to serve this with a roasted fennel, feta and pomegranate salad and new potatoes with truffle oil and Parmesan.


The salad was SO nice that I'm going to give you that recipe too:

So for my Roast Fennel, Feta & Pomegranate Salad you will need:

2 heads of fennel, each cut into around 8 pieces
150g feta, the best you can afford, (DON'T use salad cheese, it's shit) crumbled
Seeds of 1 pomegranate
Handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped
Olive oil

Pre heat your oven to 180 degrees

Place the fennel in an oven proof dish and coat in olive oil and season with salt and pepper, and roast in the oven for about 20 minutes. We baked our fennel just slightly just to make it slightly sweeter.

When the fennel is lightly cooked, remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly for about 10 minutes.

Combine the baked fennel with the rest of the ingredients and season.

Simple as that, but TOTALLY delicious.


We had a lovely dinner, got to meet Natali's lovely chap properly, had a glass of nice wine and were in bed by 11:30. Oh and did our selves masses of good with our super healthy Greek monk food. And ruined it with a KitKat Chunky on the way home.

The Holy Trinity

So spake the Lord. The Holy Trinity, the corner stones of any meal: bread, pasta, potatoes.



Or the devils food, depending on your relationship with the Atkins diet.

But, that is exactly what constituted our delicious lunch this Sunday, courtesy of Marcie.



Marcie has moved into her new gaff in East Dulwich and decided to christen it by inviting some of our favourite people round for lunch: Bert and Sam, Sally and Ben. Sam is a vegetarian, so Marcie decided to make something that we could all enjoy together. So we were blessed with a MASSIVE macaroni cheese. Here's Marcie's recipe, she made it to feed 8, but we're still eating it, so i reckon this recipe will most probably feed 12:

170g flour
170g butter
1.5 pts milk
small tub single cream
400g extra mature cheddar, plus 200g for the topping, grated
200g grated parmesan
1.5kg macaroni
1tsp mustard powder
4 small leeks
2 large cloves garlic, crushed

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

Firstly, cook your macaroni according to packet instructions. When it is ready drain the pasta and set aside.

Heat a knob of butter and a tablespoon of oil in a pan and add the garlic. Gently fry for a minute of two and add your leeks and fry until they are soft. Set aside.

Basically you then make a white sauce. Here is how Fanny Cradock makes hers:

1. Dissolve the butter in a pan and add the flour.
2. Stir until the mixture forms a smooth paste which leaves the sides and base of pan cleanly.
3. Cook for a minimum of 2 minutes to cook out the taste of the flour.
4. Pour in approximately one-fifth of the quantity of your chosen fluid and allow to boil without stirring.
5. Stir until the mixture blends smoothly, beat vigorously and add the remaining quantity of fluid as described, beating well after each addition.

At this stage you start to add your cheeses. Keep adding the cheese, a little at a time, stirring until its melted into the sauce.

Combine the pasta, leeks, garlic and sauce in a large oven proof dish. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. If the top isn't as crispy as you'd like, after 20 minutes, get it under the grill until such crispness is achieved.

It should look a little bit like this:



To accompany this delicious cheesy feast, we had new potatoes with parsley butter, french bread, and for the health conscious, a green salad.



It was whilst we were all stuffing ourselves that Bert proclaimed the carb heavy combo to be the Holy Trinity. Which got laughs all round. And then bought about the sudden need for a nap. Unsurprisingly.

A Sunday Stew

Shit weather outside on a Sunday = The desire to create something warming and decidedly 'Sunday' feeling to combat it

I managed to get some shin of beef from the butchers. A massively reasonably priced cut of meat and totally delicious. Just over a kilo of it set me back a fiver. Not bad at all. I've seen a beef shin elevated to pure levels of greatness and grace the table of Les Trois Garcons. If it's good enough for there, then it's certainly good enough for me.

Thing is with shin, it needs to be cooked for a long time; like a really long time. Otherwise it'll be tough as old boots and really fatty. Ergh. It is therefore ideal for stew. As is a miserable rainy day.

So here is the recipe for my really simple rainy day beef stew with cheese dumplings. This recipe makes enough to feed 6.

1kg stewing beef, chopped into chunks (I used shin of beef)
2 onions, chopped into chunks
4 carrots, peeled and chopped into large chunks
4 sticks celery, chopped
150g button mushrooms
1 litre beef stock



This is a really simple recipe. No fuss.

Take your diced beef and coat in seasoned flour. Heat some olive oil in a large pan (which has a lid, you'll need it later) and fry the beef to seal it, but do this in batches. Two should do it. Set the beef aside.



Reduce the heat and add a knob of butter. Add all the chopped vegetables and mushrooms, season and gently fry these for 20 minutes. Return the beef to the pan and stir to mix the vegetables and beef together. Cover with the beef stock and place the lid on the pan. Place in a pre heated (180 degrees) oven and leave for at least 2 hours.

Now for the dumplings!



I do love a bit of retro packaging.

Now dumplings are the easiest thing in the world to make, and always benefit from creative additions. They may come in the form of a load of chopped parsley and other fresh herbs or horseradish, but on this occasion I punted for mature Cheddar and wholegrain mustard.

175g self-raising flour
75g shredded suet
1 tsp baking powder
A small handful of parsley, roughly chopped
2 tbsp wholegrain mustard
100g mature Cheddar, grated
good pinch salt and pepper
1 egg, beaten
water, to mix

Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Then add the beaten egg and bring all the ingredients together. Add a small amount of water at a time until a sticky consistency is achieved.

Remove the stew from the over and break off the dumpling mixture and roll into balls (not too big mind as they expand) and pop into the top of the stew. These quantities should get you about 8-10 decent sized dumplings. Return the lid to the pan, and the pan to the oven and leave to cook for 20 minutes. After this time your dumplings will be cooked, but me, I prefer a dumpling with a crisper top. So after 20 minutes I remove the lid from the pan and allow the dumplings to cook uncovered for a further 10-15 minutes.

We served this delicious stew for a cold day with steamed curly kale.