nasty skank byotch: July 2006

Artigiano

OK, to the last of my free PhD dinners (for now....). Quite apt this one, while I'm doing the rounds of Italian restaurants in London. Thanks to JMG for a great meal at Artigiano (12a Belsize Terrace, London, NW3 4AX), a charming Italian hidden away between Belsize Park and Swiss Cottage. Not the sort of place you'd find unless someone told you about it (or unless you read my highly informative and helpful blog, of course.....). Artigiano has a café attached to it. It was closed when we got there, but looks quite appealing. Inside the main restaurant, the décor is modern and understated, but despite its moderate size, actually feels quite spacious, as the front section opens entirely out onto the front terrace.

The menu includes a varied selection of starters, pasta, meat, fish and rice, and you'll definitely find at least a few things to appeal to your tastes; the friendly waiters will help you find them. As a guide, the courgette flowers (although I'm not sure why they don't call them zucchini flowers....) with mozzarella and sundried tomatoes, are excellent, as are the grilled scallops with pink grapefruit. The baked seabass with fennel sauce was quite an unusual dish, but a great combination. The special was grilled rib-eye, cooked to your taste and with your choice of sace (should you require one). As for dessert....... well, micuit au chocolat with vanilla ice-cream........ tragically, due to technical problems, there's no picture....

Deep-fried courgette flowers with mozzarella and sundried tomatoes

Pan-fried scallops

Baked seabass with spinach and fennel sauce

The Love Shack

OK, crackheads, here it is: The Love Shack (as featured on Bastille Day, courtesy of H&A).

Unfortunately, we don't have a picture of the finished product, but you can fill in the blanks: a picnic table with food and an open bar and lots of thirty-somethings in ill-judged summer frocks. There were also meant to be some more streamers with hearts on them and stuff, but sadly, it was too windy....

Where does Superman hide it?

WARNING: spoilers

While we're on the subject of Superman, how exactly does he do it? One minute he's Clark Kent, bantering away with Jimmy Olsen at the Daily Planet, the next minute Lois Lane is in trouble and there he is, stripping off into his red and blues and flying up the elevator shaft to her rescue. Really, Clark, who are you trying to fool? You really want us to believe that you wear that outfit of yours underneath your work suit all the time? That nobody at the Daily Planet's been able to sneek a peak at that red 'S' through your white cotton shirt? That you wear your red boots under your leather loafers? Seriously, how does that work?

You think the best advice you can give your half-breed son is "You'll be different. One day. You'll feel like an outcast, but you won't be alone"? These are the practical things he wants to know. What does he do with his cape? Does he roll it and stuff it down his suit pants? Does it get creased? Does he need to iron it? Or is it made of some non-iron Teflon material? How much will he have to shell out on suits, given that he'll have to rip them off on a daily basis?

Pointless trivia: the score for Superman Returns was composed by John Ottman, who also edited the movie. John Ottman also edited and composed the score for The Usual Suspects, also, of course, starring Kevin Spacey. Other multi-talented composers include Alejandro Amenábar, who wrote, directed and composed the score to The Others.

I love the internet....

Where else could you type "smallville crisis" and find out within 10 seconds that the music at the end of that episode of Smallville you were just watching, just as Lionel Luthor was about to blow his brains out, is Je crois entendre encore from Bizet's Pearl Fishers? At best you might get one of the following in response: "You actually WATCH Smallville???" or "Dude, you're SUCH a dork!" or "Who's Lionel Luthor?" or "Eh??".

The internet rocks. I can't understand how we ever lived without it...

The Providores

The good thing about becoming a newly-appointed Ph.D. is that you get a lot of free dinners. I suspect I might not get any more of them until I become a professor, so I have to make the most of it. So here's my third:

I've been meaning to try Peter Gordon's much-acclaimed restaurant for a while (The Providores, 109 Marylebone High Street, London W1U 4RX), so thanks guys! The Tapas Room downstairs is a local favourite, judging by the endless Sunday brunch crowd. The small dining room upstairs serves about 15 tables and is a haven of the best of New Zealand Krip cuisine, combining traditional European ingredients with exotic Asian flavours. The space is a little cramped (not uncomfortably so) and I suspect you'd have trouble getting a party of ten in there, but it's a nice place for a more intimate, relaxed dinner. The menu's packed with exotic- sounding compositions, all of which look delicious. The dishes are quite complex, with lots of different flavours, and everything's very cleanly presented. Here are a few offerings from the current menu:

Salad of baby artichokes, Puy lentils, grilled courgettes, pickled beetroot and pea shoots with Greek yoghurt and NZ avocado oil dressing.

Buffalo mozzarella with grilled asparagus, yellow-bean cherry tomato salsa and fennel seed lavosh.

Pan-fried Manouri on moromi miso roast aubergine, inari, black rice, wild asparagus and walnut salad with sake ‘popped’ cherry tomatoes and pickled cucumber.

Roast ‘Welsh Black’ beef fillet on roast carrots and caramelised garlic Israeli cous cous with salsa rossa and vanilla oil.

Roast Gressingham duck breast on wok-fried Chinese broccoli with sesame dressed soba noodle salad, kombu broth, shiso cress and a Guindilla chilli.

Roast Elwy Valley lamb chump on Borlotti, broad and green bean salad with creamed Ortiz anchovies and crispy buckwheat.

Gooseberry compote with vanilla cream, wild strawberry sorbet, hazelnut praline and a Sevilla ‘torte de aceite’ biscuit.

On the whole, everything was excellent, particularly the sauces and dressings, which are all quite light, with interesting flavours but not overpowering (this coming from someone who's not particularly a sauce person). The one exception might be the caramelized cous cous, which is very sweet for that Wellington beef. My other gripe is that the dishes are really busy, so that it's really hard to remember what you've eaten, and some additions are pretty random (e.g., that guindilla chilli). On the upside, you'll find yourself dissecting each dish and saying "wow, those Puy lentils are excellent" or "that dressing is SO nice! What's in it?" [yellow-bean cherry tomato salsa]. If you're a hard-ass Blood, I expect this is the kind of place that might annoy the heck out of you. But if you wanna taste as many things as possible, all at the same time, this is a great place.

Bastille Day

There was a tricolore, a decorated smoked salmon quiche, a lemon and coconut cake, a dark chocolate cake, lots of other great food, frisbee, football and, of course, French people.

Amazingly, we were still outdone by the woman near us who was building a love shack, complete with tinsel, pink heart-shaped balloons and a love couch with furry cushions. It transpired that she was organizing a hen party, which was a great disappointment after we'd concocted all manner of stories about how she was waiting to propose to her fiancé (there was a love couch - how could he possibly say no??), or how she was waiting for men to come by and propose to her, or how she was just a raving lunatic.

Le pique-nique

Quiche

Vive la République!

Camerino

16 Percy Street, London W1T 1DT, www.camerinorestaurant.com

Is this the nicest restaurant in London? Quite possibly. I suspect it's not the best (read on), but it has a great menu, super-friendly but informal service (a rarity in this town), and a very red, but very cool interior. This coming from someone who doesn't usually go to Italian restaurants (the I-could-do-this-better-at-home syndrome...). As Italian restaurants go, it's not cheap, but Camerino offers a seasonal fixed menu two, three or four course menu, which is quite good value for money and offers a good selection of starters, pasta dishes, mains and desserts. See, for example, goats cheese with grilled asparagus, gnocchi with mushrooms (excellent!), baked cod with rocket salad, and orange tart with amaretto ice cream. If I have one complaint, it's that the menu suffers a bit from "over-rocket", which I think is quite a lazy garnish. And as a combination, orange tart and amaretto ice cream is a little weird, but both very nice on their own. But if you're bored of average Italian menus, it's certainly worth a visit.

Goats cheese and grilled asparagus

Gnocchi with mushrooms

Baked cod with rocket salad

Orange tart with amaretto ice cream

Stuff on a bed of....

This is, of course, that generic class of dish - of which I have already published a few examples - involving some form of protein presented on some form of vegetable. A few pointers:

1. A seared form of protein tends to work well. Slicing the seared protein helps presentation by revealing the succulent, pink centre.
2. An effective bed should be judiciously crafted. Often, the bed is designed to provide a contrast to the protein. Crips love beds, only marginally less than they love stacks, so beds are effective for fusion dishes.
3. Things with lots of bright colours make good beds, as they help accentuate the succulent protein.
4. Things with sharp flavours usually work well: citrus, lemon grass, chilli etc. A contrast in flavours is also good: sour, sweet, spicy, salty.
5. The bed should be structurally sound, so that it doesn't collapse when you put a hefty piece of steak on it, while still looking appealing. Bulky leaf vegetables, like radicchio and arugula have good structural integrity. Spinach is also good, but don't let it wilt completely.

Here are a few more examples:

Seared steak on a bed of chilli mango salad:

1/2 red onion
1 clove garlic
1 generous bunch of spinach
1 mango
8 handful cherry tomatoes
1 stick celery
1 handful sweet basil leaves
1 fresh bird eye chilli

Finely dice the onion, quarter the tomatoes and place in a large salad bowl. Add half the mango, finely sliced. Slice the garlic and de-seeded chilli and sautée for a few seconds in a frying pan with some olive oil. Add the spinach and heat gently until the leaves just begin to wilt. Add to salad bowl. Dress with salt, pepper and a capful of balsamic vinegar.

Blitz the rest of the mango in a food processor and set aside. You could strain and reduce if you have the patience, but fibre's good for you.

Sear the steak in a frying pan to your preference. Set on a cutting board and slice with Japanese steel.

Serve salad on a plate, pour over a spoonful of the mango purée and place the sliced steak on top. Adorn plate with some of the leftover purée.

Seared tuna steak on a bed of spinach and roasted pepper salad:

This is a similar concept, with much more drama.....

Phoenix Palace

It's perhaps uncommon knowledge that the best Chinese food in London is not to be found in Chinatown. For good dimsum, head to the endlessly popular Royal China (40-42 Baker Street, London, W1U 7AJ). Dinner there can be a little hit and miss, though, so for something slightly more unusual, try the Phoenix Palace just up the road (3-5 Glentworth Street, London, NW1 5PG). The place has inviting Chinese decor, the food is consistently good and you'll find things on the menu that you're unlikely to see anywhere else. The place went through somewhat of a dud patch, but a renovation and refreshed menu seems to have fixed that, and the place is bustling with a loyal clientele.

Below some suggestions, all of them excellent, and even better when someone else is paying for you...