To Dancing In Jaguar Shoes, To Family & To Eating Out

After spending a good few months writing a cook book, I felt reluctant to blog.  All my words were used up in the book and I stood in the dry words desert facing untitled documents on my laptop with the thirsty cursor line tapping away in vain hope that it could fill a page, a sentence, a line, a word…

I died a death when I saw Brandi Carlile at The Islington Assembly Hall. She sang so beautifully, her country songs of love, loss and stories of people gone in the morrow broke my heart further. She touches a fractured nerve in me but somehow I love the pain of her words, sorrow, wisdom and tune. I wept shamelessly as I sat next to the only vacant seat in the house, as if I had found a Jesus in her and she knew everything I had ever felt. And that was when I was reborn again, a new skin, a new firmer, guarded heart.

Life started again with Richard Vines, (as it does), who is my liberal, generous and charming dinner companion. We went to Ravinder Bhogal's supper club at South Place with the ever smiley, kind and loveable Francesco Mazzei, owner and head chef of L'Amina. He has the most beautiful hands and soothing yet infectious giggles. It was as if the dead winter was forgotten as they pumped the life back into me and things just kept shinning despite our weather.

PD James

I hoovered around the legendary PD James, aged 92, at Greene & Heaton's (my literary agency) 50th Anniversary party and was completely spellbounded by the superior and grand aura she has as she sat there with her cane and smiled at all the young people standing around her. She inspired a string of imaginations. I saw her for weeks to come as a young woman, perhaps with strawberry blonde hair typing away on a heavy desk with a typewriter on one day and scribbling with forceful excitement on another with a wholesome wrinkled notepad. If I am lucky enough to live into my nineties, I would still hope to attend lots of parties and shout into someone's ears about how young people just don't get it!

The Clove Club

But then I was thrown right back into reality, into Shoreditch (with the hipsters and young people whom I am so jealous of because they are fresh out of art school and they don't get it yet). We ventured to The Clove Club, a new restaurant by one of the Young Turks, Issac McHale. I went with Rocket & Squash (read his well informed review here). I loved it there, its 5 courses of whatever they are going to give you, you eat it. Its good!

Viajante bar with exquisites

aged beef at The Corner Room

My clan of loyal and loving friends is where its at. What better than a family get-together to swap stories, exchange anecdotes and share raucous cackle at The Scolt Head over roasted seabass and duck breasts. I love the more civilised nights too with a smaller group of friends at Vinoteca drinking prosecco on tap while lining the belly with their great tapas selection and trying all the different wines and never wanting to go home.

Like I didn't ever want to go home when we were at The Bootleg Banquet for my friend Adele's birthday and all my friends from Central St Martins where there. We ate so well, the lamb racks were incredible! And the party poured onto Shoreditch High Street where 15 years previous, we were the masters of the bars and knights of the party houses before everyone flooded there. We stood, stopped and still where-shall-we-go? We had become parents, purchased houses, became successful, got jaded and flew in the breeze. Our eyes had seen more than it had ever done but we still laughed as loud and as wide as we used to, if not even more so. We still 'cussed' each other, bigged each other up, beated each other over and then laughed and laughed and laughed and danced outrageously in Jaguar Shoes.

To family, cheers Nima who flew back from LA. To family, we all say. To family, I say, as a sister, a motherly friend, as I feel the happiest that I could ever be in the company of brothers who have such big hearts, who love their wives, girlfriends and children; who pave their own successes and failures and yet among each other's company are still the young gifted wide eyed boys who met at aged 18.

Gizzie Erskine at her book launch Skinny Weeks & Weekend Feasts

Tori Haschka at her book launch A Suitcase & A Spatula

In a more refined manner, I have been dinning well and had beautiful ceviche at The Corner Room; One Leicester Street served a memorable razor clam dish; Social Eating House serves a great ravioli and octopus carpaccio; had a huge orgasmic foie gras at Angelus; can never get enough of the scallops with apple at Duck & Waffle and the ridiculous feeling of being happy when on the 40th floor of The Heron Tower; everything at Elliots in Borough Market is amazing; the most delicious smooth hound and white sprouting broccoli with a hint of anchovy at The Quality Chop House; octopus at Boqueria Tapas; pizzettes and everything at Spuntino; the most beautiful fish and chips at The Ivy Club; I had some buffalo mozzarella with Aldo Zilli at Fratelli La Bufala; as per standard, excellent dim sum at Leongs Legends; a very good scotch egg at Brigade - they work with The Beyond Food Foundation, and offer people who have been at risk of or have experienced homelessness the opportunity to take part in an apprenticeship program.

Social Eating House - Octopus

 

Duck & Waffle

Foie Gras - Angelus

Nice rooms at The Dean St Town House Hotel

Scallops at The Ivy Club

However, the best meal I have had in a long time though came from the beautiful garden of Sophie Dening as James Lowe (Young Turks) served up a BBQ using the finest, in season, freshest of ingredients. This is just a different calibre I say to myself as I devour. His steaks were incomparable to many of the steaks I had ever had, even his salad dressings tasted like magic. This is the succulent life, this is how its all supposed to be done. It was just totally amazing!

James Lowe

So thats why I've been M.I.A and not really blogging. I've been eating, enjoying every bite of this delicious life and trying to cure my heart of ills and singing along with Brandi Carlile, for the sorrow will always be deep inside.

Thanks to my friend, Rosie Birkett for taking me to some of the places! She beautiful!

Food Styling With Uyen Luu - On The Good Food Channel

Create beautiful photographs of the food that you cook at home with just a few simple steps.

If you enjoy taking photos of a kitchen creation, it can be easily incorporated into the ritual of cooking itself. I usually take my daily food pictures with my iphone. Just one snap and off I go and eat it all up!

Read more here on The Good Food Channel

Bavette, Courgette & Pancetta

I really miss the spring and summer time in Liguria, Italy, where I spent my youthful twenty something days torched by the sun and then soothed by the Mediterranean waters. Those were some of the best days of my life!

Italian is my second most favourite cuisine (after Vietnamese). In Vietnam, my cousins crave and crave Italian food and there is a big market for it with many restaurants trying to recreate carbonara or bolognese. I always think of them, when dishing up and enjoying a plate on the sofa, in pure solitude enjoying all the simplicity with the great balance of flavours.

Bavette, Courgette & Pancetta

Serves 2
Prep & Cooking time 15 mins

Ingredients
1/3 packet of bavette, linguine or spaghetti
1 small onion, diced
1/2 bird seye chilli, seeded or de seeded, or dried chilli flakes
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 courgette, grated or julienned
100g pancetta, thinly sliced or cubed
1 splash white wine or cider
juice of half lemon
1 pinch of salt
1 pinch of sugar
1 knob butter or a dash of extra virgin olive oil
1 small handful of parsley, coarsely chopped
black pepper for seasoning
parmesan for seasoning

Method
Heat a frying pan and add a dash of olive oil.
Bring pot of water to the boil and cook the bavette according to packet instructions.(should be about 8 mins)

Add onion to sweat in the frying pan with the chilli and garlic. Then add pancetta, splash of white wine, pinch of salt and sugar and stir well. Add courgettes, cooking for about a minute (until soft) and take off heat.

Once the pasta is cooked and drained, mix the courgette and pancetta with it, adding a knob of butter or extra virgin olive oil, juice of the lemon, parsley and a good grinding of black pepper. Mix well and serve with parmesan.

Aubergine Hotness

After visiting, Fuchsia Dunlop's Ba Shan in Soho, I've gone even madder and fallen in love (even more than ever) with aubergines these past few weeks and have been putting this together for a fast and delicious meal.

Sweet Soy Aubergine With Chill & Red Onion & Chives

Serves 2

Ingredients

1 aubergine, halved, sliced lengthways 1 cm thick pieces

1 small onion or fennel, sliced into rings

Sauce

5 tblsp soy sauce

3 tblsp sugar

1 tblsp sriracha

1 birds-eye chilli, sliced, with or without seeds

1 tsp dried chilli flakes

1 tblsp cider or white wine vinegar

Garnish

10g mint or coriander, dill, Thai basil, chives, garlic chives, fennel flower

Method

Mix together the sauce mixture in a small bowl and set aside.

Slice the aubergine and steam in a steamer for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat a frying pan with a dash of oil and brown onion rings or fennel for about 3 - 5 minutes or until slightly brown around the edges. 

Then add the steamed aubergines to the same frying pan to brown off for a few minutes and pour over the soy sauce mixture. Cook for a minute or two and serve with your choice of garnish.

This is a great dish on its own, or with steamed rice or vermicelli. It is also great with peanuts or cashew sprinkled on top. 

Come To Pappa, You Chicken Heart, You...

pappardelle with chicken hearts, teriyaki, sage and buttered peas

Ingredients

Serves 1

prep & cooking time: About 15 - 20 minutes

120g pappardelle

130g chicken hearts, butterflied

1 shallot, sliced

3 tbls teriyaki sauce

1 pinch sugar

1 dash of white wine

4 tbls peas
1 pinch of salt

2 knobs butter

4 sage leaves
black pepper to season

Method

Butterfly the chicken hearts and marinate in teriyaki sauce.

Bring a pan of water to the boil for the pappardelle. Heat a frying pan and sweat the shallots for a couple of minutes (or until the pot of water comes to the boil). 

Add the pasta to cook (should be about 8 - 10  minutes) then add butter and sage to the frying pan and sautee the hearts with the marinade on medium heat. Add a pinch of sugar and a dash of white wine.(for about 7 mins).

In a separate frying pan, add a knob of butter and gently fry the peas to cook with a pinch of salt (for about 2 mins).

Once the pasta is cooked, drain then add to the frying pan and mix well with hearts then place on a serving plate and then add the buttered peas.

Season with black pepper and an option of parmesan.

Photography, Book Shoot With Clare Winfield

The greatest gift I ever received was a Canon AE-1 SLR camera from the 70s. My uncle gave it to me when my mother, brother and I left Vietnam in 1983 along with photographs he took of us and all our family together so that we wouldn't forget them.

I remember looking through the photographs every day as a child because I missed my family from Vietnam so much. I remember diving into them and smelling the cinnamon from my grandmother's bun bo Hue scented skin to the tabaco stench on my grandfather's shirt. I heard the laughter from my aunts and felt the fur of my kittens. Photographs were all I had of them.

I used to hide in the darkroom when I was thirteen. At first, I had no idea how to develop pictures nor use the camera properly. What did the numbers mean around the lens and body? I asked my art teacher but she didn't know either so I went to the library and I began reading the most important book in my life by David Bailey on what it all meant. 

That was when and where I found my place in the world. As a teenager, I didn't think I ever took very good photographs. Not good enough to be works of art nor did I have the capacity to "see" properly. All I knew was that I loved it and that was all that mattered.

I came home stinking of too much stop bath solution or my shirt would turn green or orange from the developing tank and my hands swarm in the fix solution to the point where skin would fall off the sides of my finger nails. I didn't care. I loved being in the dark and I loved seeing the image peer through, as if coming alive. There was truly nothing more satisfying than finding the perfect filter for your print and seeing the silver unfold on beautiful Ilford photographic paper.  

I never took photography further. I never felt that I was ever good enough to see like  my photographer heros and ventured into film making because I loved stories.

Nowadays, my beloved Canon AE-1 faces me every morning and I look neglectedly into its eyes like some old abandoned lover that I never take into my hands and I haven't seen through its viewfinder in years. It taught me everything, that beautiful old dignified camera. Today, I take pictures with my iphone and instagram it or if I am taking a serious picture, my Nikon DSLR has become an easier, faster and eager wing man. Every day I am sad for my loss of celluloid. 

The studio. Props by Jo Harris.

my studio

When I got a publishing deal for my cook book, I intended to do the photography for  it but like when I was a teenager, I now have no technical ability in digital photography to make the picture the way I want and nor do I have the experience in still-life and food photography (other than everyday blog photos). I acted like a diva when told that I had to have a photographer and didn't like that idea at all. But I succumbed and chose a photographer. I chose someone with the least commercial clients listed on her website and probably the youngest but one I thought lit all her pictures more perfectly. I am old school after all. Its just me, my camera and the daylight usually and I wanted to work with someone with the same artistic idea. I would be the food stylist.

In Clare Winfield, not only did I find my eye's soul mate but a concise, determined and direct partner. She was someone who soon knew exactly what I was thinking because she was thinking it herself and where I was coming from because she's been there too. When I laid the food down, she felt the mood and atmosphere of the recipe itself. She was someone who was also out to play and be a little daring to make something as beautiful as it can be but also modern and poetic. It was as if we were cut from the same piece of cloth. I totally love her!

Photography for the book took 10 days in total over 4 weeks. I am lucky enough to have a publisher who maintains a picture for each recipe. Phew - as I never look at the ones that don't have pictures. So we did 50 recipes and over 20 chapter openings and extras. In the days when I entered the studio until the moment I left, I had the best time of my life working on the book. The best! I left everything at the door or in my car - my troubles in love, in life and down the park. The work was hard and intensive but I had my wonderful mother helping me cook and Rosie Birkett who assisted with prepping, shopping, tea making, opinion giving and general great support and laughter. I could go and do this every day for a very long time with my team and live and really happy life. Once again, I found my place in the world.

mackerel ceviche 

tried using miniature models but they were too small

fin and flounder supplied the best looking fish

I couldn't resist- who doesn't dream of being massaged on a bed of salty chips 

sardines in coconut water 

the plate was really wrong, we tried to make it right but it was still wrong

one of Rosie's jobs was to hold up props

Thank you Clare Winfield, Rosie Birkett, Megan Smith (Ryland Peters & Small), Jo Harris (prop stylist) and my beloved mum. We can't wait to show the pictures. The book will be available to buy in October 2013.

Please note that the photographs in this post are a documentary of our photo-shoot and not actual photos of the book.