S. Worthen | Weblog

Down in the plaza by Royal Festival Hall, a cluster of white tents offered up Southbank's first chocolate festival this weekend. Although clearly located near Easter, the event itself was remarkably Easter-free, focusing instead on good things that can be made with chocolate, primarily edible. Under clear, cool blue skies, the crowds swarmed for the tasters and the talks in the tent. I watched the savory cooking demonstration, cooked by a twelve year old to demonstrate simplicity; her chocolatier mother talked us through the chocolatey salad dressing and chocolate-infused leek, mushroom, and pan-fried lamb. In both cases, the recipes used 98% chocolate discs for convenience.

I hadn't had a lot of notice about the festival, but what made my decision for me was reading about Paul Wayne Gregory, a pastry chef who set up his own chocolate company recently, primarily targeted at the restaurant industry, although also available through direct order. His flavor choices were inspiring to read about, and even better to sample. Deirdre McCanny of Co Couture from Belfast was a real pleasure to chat with, and her Irish whiskey truffle had the right balance between the whiskey's personality and a light touch to win me over. Artistry in Cocoa (who'd also done the workshop) had some nicely vibrant brandy-rum-raisin truffles to sample. William Curley, always a favorite despite the demise of his dessert bar, offered samples of balsamic vinegar flavored truffles whose pure smoothness blew away most of the competition. Other stands included ones selling "raw" chocolate (i.e. not heated to over 40°C), bath and body products, and wine matched with chocolate bars.



Amazingly, lunch was available at the festival. I started with a gentle spicy chili, with a hint of chocolate in it, from Santa Fe Mexican Food, served on rice. The chili was good, but I was even more impressed with their sensible serving sizes and reasonable prices. The rest of my treats came from Ooh La La Chocolaterie. The first was an small tea cup of molded tasty dark chocolated, filled to order with a contrasting white chocolate ganache, and topped with fresh strawberries. It was an unusual concept, and beautifully executed, fun and lovely all together. I liked it so much I went back to try their hot chocolate, one of about half-a-dozen hot chocolate options at the event. The hot chocolate was pleasant, with a hint of cinnamon and other spice, but not quite as much fun as the chocolate cup had been.

Perhaps they'll do it again next year?

The Taste Company (or whatever they're called) organized one of my favorite yearly events: Taste of London. This year, they've branched out into their first Taste of Christmas at Excel, a direct competitor to the BBC Good Food Show. I went on Saturday with fjm and C., through a hall of artificial, falling snow, to explore it.

When they called it "Gordon Ramsay's Taste of Christmas", they weren't kidding. It really was a Gordon Ramsay show. Enormous booths giving out samplers of G&T mixed with Gordon's, as advertised by Ramsay. Half of the 8 restaurants available for sampling were Ramsay properties. The pseudo-pub in the back corner was Ramsay-branded. There were Ramsay book-signings for Ramsay books. There were enormous photos of the celebrity chef. Every admission ticket came with a ticket for the Ramsay cooking demonstration show. This months' Restaurant magazine tells me he's the world's best-paid chef. No wonder, with all that sponsorship and his face all over the place. He's an industry. Gordon Ramsay Holdings is growing about as fast as Pizza Express, apparently.

( Show details, including pannacotta with mango and olive caramel... )

No question, but I prefer Taste of London to this, but I'd consider going back, ideally on a more off-peak day when, by early afternoon, the corridors aren't choked with solid masses of humanity.

One of the most impressive traits I have encountered in front-end staff in a large handful of high-end restaurants is a good memory for faces. I know it helps that I have the hair, but it's still true. The second time (a year later) that I was back at Anthony's, the man-at-the-door recognized me. By the third or fourth time I'd been to Splendido (spaced out over a minimum of six month intervals), one of the waiters recognized me from across the room by my voice alone. They all had some time to think about it, however, and possibly cross-reference with reservations.

No so today's encounter. My first trip to Simpsons in Edgbaston, a year ago, was technically a break between trains, four hours of idle, sumptuous eating on a long, sunlit afternoon when I was in no rush, and Birmingham was en route. I was by myself, they weren't too busy, and I had a number of nice, long chats with the staff.

Fast forward to today. I'm at Gordon Ramsay's Taste of Christmas at the Excel Center with 8000 other people on that day alone. The 8 restaurant stands in the middle of the venue have long queues, but they're moving with reasonable speed, time enough to hand over the show currency and retrieve a pretty little dish in exchange. I make it to the front of the Simpsons stall queue and ask for my slow roasted pork with savoy cabbage, pumpkin purée, mint and caper juice. The woman looks and me and said with a smile. "You've been to the restaurant in Edgbaston. You had a lot of luggage with you."

And that - even in the middle of a dense crowd of 8000 people - is one way to make a customer feel very special indeed.

It's that time of year again, when my very favorite* charity raffle occurs. The cause is good, the price is good, and best of all are the prizes! Chez Pim's Menu for Hope is a huge international undertaking, with prizes donated by foodie bloggers, chefs, cooking schools, and others working in and around the world of food. The beneficiary is the UN World Food Program, this year specifically targeting a school feeding program in Lesotho.

The prizes are amazing, ranging from spices boxes to cookbooks to cooking lessons to cases of wine to multi-course menus at major restaurants. Prizes are divided up into regional lists since many can only be collected from a particular location. Others can be shipped worldwide. (Scroll down on this post for a list of the regional hosts.)

For each US$10 you donate via this raffle, you can choose one ticket towards one prize. Go and browse - there're lots of tempting things on there.

And it's only on for another two days, until the 21st of December.

* I'm biased, in part, since I've lucked out two years running and won things through it - the first time a cookbook, the second time lunch in France!

In southern England? Like chocolate? Next week is Chocolate Week, an annual event featuring loads of chocolate-themed events, free samples, demos, and tours. Most of them are free. Some involve signing up. If you're interested in signing up, do so as soon as possible, as some of the more unusual events are already full. There's all sorts of things this year, from Paul A. Young launching a new chocolate shop right near Bank station to a chocolate-themed tour of the Natural History Museum organized by Rococo.

In honor of the week, Chocolate Ecstasy Tours will be doing another all day chocolate tour of London. I went on it last year with haggisthesecond and enjoyed it a great deal.

Most - but by no means all - of the events are in London. Most of the others are west of London, from chocolate-themed restaurant menus to samples at the Dorset Food Fair. Chococo is doing another mail-order Chocolate Week-themed box, and Sir Hans Sloane Chocolate & Champagne and L'Artisan du Chocolat are doing factory tours.

Happy fourth of July to everyone! Even if you don't celebrate it as a holiday, I hope it was a very fine day of the month.

I joined a slew of Americans, Canadians, and Brits for a picnic in Hyde Park this evening in celebration, thanks to the organizationally-gifted easterbunny. It was a lovely evening, the worst of the day's heat ebbed by the bout of afternoon thunderstorms, a long lingering sunset overseeing our champagne, sparklers, and Sainsbury's quite respectable fried chicken. My contribution to the Americana was a wild rice salad. Clearly many of us were affected by the heat, as more people brought fresh fruit than anything else. Old friends, new ones, and picnic blankets on the long-grown grass above the Serpentine.

I followed the pretty people from Oxford Circus through three changes of underground and train to Henley-on-Thames. The women were dressed in gauzy, strappy sundresses with heels and Ascot-worthy hats. The men were all in loafers, khakis, yellow ties, blue blazers, and straw hat. In lieu of the traditional picnic basket, most of them carried M&S bags. Most of the pretty people were bound for the Enclosures, the acres of tented areas encompassing shaded grandstands, bands, and other requisite amenities. The rest of us walked the long stretch of towpath alongside the Thames until we found a place to perch or picnic along the riverbank.

One-and-a-half kilometers or so further down the longest straight stretch of Thames, I found a large swathe of riverbank claimed by my fellow London food bloggers - the incentive for my morning's journey back to this lovely town. We were nominally there to watch the culmination of the annual four-day Royal Regatta; it's a good thing we had Cook Sister's husband along, a one-time rower, to provide explanation and commentary for the seemingly-arbitrary sequence of races which went by - a pair of eight women; a pair of single men; a pair of four male rowers. But really, we were there for the food - and, of course, the delightful company.

We arrived hungry and within an hour had laid out the savouries for the eating. Lots of people paused as they passed us on the towpath, feet away, to admire our spread. "Now that's a picnic," said a man carrying a barbecue. And it really was. There were breads baked full of savory treats; a tasty bacon-topped potato salad; smoked salmon dip and a meat salad; fresh mozzarella-tomato-basil skewers; chicken with preserved lemons and coriander; curried pasta salad; chickpea salad; lots of fresh crudites; and spicy peppadew and parmesan muffins - among other things. Later, we limped to dessert, partially a competition of bakewell tarts.

Well-armed with a copious supply of that classic British summer drink of Pimms and Lemonade, we whiled away the afternoon lazily by the banks, while England-supporting Elvises motored by in white-and-red, lipsyncing, and the main characters from the Wizard of Oz danced by on another boat. Teams lost and won and other people had all the good hats, but we were the ones with a Picnic.

The first thing I did after arriving at the show, stowing my luggage, and investing in an overpriced and unnecessary program, was to head over to the ticket booth for the "Birmingham Bites" tasting theatre, starring top B'ham chefs. Tickets, only available at the show, cost all of UKP 3.50. There were only 30 seats available per show, and only four shows a day. I'd missed the morning sales, but came back a good twenty minutes before the afternoon tickets were due to go on sale. It's just as well I did: the two people in front of me claimed the last two tickets... until another couple realized they had a celebrity chef show conflict, freeing up two tickets - one of which as all mine!

The show I lucked into starred the food from Sante Fe restaurant, a Mexican-themed foodery. We gathered at the gate to the fenced-off tasting theatre area a good fifteen minutes before the event was due to start. Round tables were draped with white linen tableclothes, with linen napkins, glassware, real silverware, china, and cheap chairs swathed in fabric and bows to look elegant. Waiters poured our water. By restaurant standards, it was expectable; by the standards of an enormous, over-crowded food fair, it was decadent. Up on a raised dais, our host, a perky media person, interviewed the chef and general manager of the restaurant, providing running commentary on the Santa Fe cocktail scene, Mexican food, and the restaurant's cookery.

Going in, I had my doubts. I have only ever had mediocre to lousy Mexican food in the UK. To my relief, this was some of the best and most interesting Mexican food I've ever eaten. Really. We began spiced tortilla chips, accompanied by a tortilla bowl half-filled with chunky garlic-and-coriander spiced guacamole and rich, spicy, chipotle-and-tomato salsa. Our main was lime, coriander, and olive oil marinated salmon resting on two salads. The slaw salad featured a chiffonade of red cabbage and carrot, among other veggies, tossed with balsamic viegar, brown sugar, and cherry vinegar. The fruit salad was comprised of pineapple, mango, cucumber, red pepper, coriander, and mint. The plating was completed with a sultana-chili-cinnamon-red wine vinegar reduction, a beautifully-balanced set of flavors all together. Finally, our unexpected feast was completed with a mango-and-cinnamon American-style cheesecake with biscuit base, topped with a smooth mango coulis. I liked the flavors, but I've become rather picky about my cheesecake lately, and thought the texture coarser than I liked. But that's a minor quibble in the scheme of things.

The event was meant to be comprised of tasting portions, but our chef hadn't gotten the message. We had full-sized portions, by far the best meal I've ever eaten for UKP 3.50!

A week ago today, I hopped on a morning train to Birmingham for my first expedition to the National Exhibition Centre (NEC), an enormous conference center with its own train stop in the outskirts of a UK city I'd never had reason to visit before. (Although I've eyed the prospect of a visit to Cadbury World...) Although Britain's biggest food magazine also sponsors the Festive Good Food Show in London this weekend, I thought I'd hit up The Big One - as at-show gossip had it, the Good Food Show is Europe's largest food show.

( Show orientation... )

billyabbott posts about Sunday's pie-off, and, even more excitingly, posts a selection of photos of the event!

Meanwhile, for thirty seconds of entertainment or usefulness, go fill out kashmera's short poll on spelling. She especially needs more data from Canadians and Americans.