Japan Inn, Amsterdam

I really fancied sushi while we were in Amsterdam, and the client that we were working for recommended the Japan Inn. It is in the TimeOut guide as well, and even though it is in one of the busiest tourist areas in Amsterdam it seemed worth giving it a go.

We arrived to a small but bustling restaurant, and were sent away for half an hour before a table was ready. After enduring a drink at a terrible bar we returned and were given a table crammed in between two others. We started with Japanese tea and endamame while we looked at the menu. There was a huge variety of sashimi, sushi and yakitori (skewers), and in the end we decided to go for two set menus to share between us.

First to arrive was the sushi, which looked well made and tasted deliciously fresh. It definitely satisfied my craving, but my colleague had never had sushi before and was less than keen! Fair play to her for giving it a go though. My favourite was probably the scallop, but the salmon was good too. Then the yakitori arrived. I haven’t really had skewers served like this before, but I am definitely going to have to find some in London.

They were piping hot, and delicious. The meat was tender, and the vegetables retained a bit of bite. The selection included chicken, beef, lamb, pork, chicken balls and quails eggs. I had to let my colleague have the majority as she wasn’t eating the sushi, but otherwise I would have walked out of there feeling really fat!

There was masses of food, and it cost €25 a head, which was pretty good value for the amount and the quality. I would definitely return if I find myself in Amsterdam again.

Parkin

I hadn’t really heard of parkin before, and then once it was sitting in the tin it suddenly seemed to be all over the internet. I obviously hit the zeitgeist! It sounded like the perfect thing to serve at our Bonfire Night supper, post Battersea Park fireworks. With steak and ale pie beforehand it certainly added up to a hearty meal!

It needs to be made a few days or up to a week in advance, which allows the flavours to develop and it become sticky and yummy.

I tweaked a recipe from Delia, but there are loads about this year, including this one from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I particularly like the idea of putting stem ginger in it. Hix have it on their dessert menu too. I highly recommend making this, and I am pretty sure it won’t be a year before I make it again.

Parkin

200g golden syrup
25g black treacle
75 butter
100g soft brown sugar
225g oats (I used Pinhill, which are quite small)
100g plain flour (I used Doves gluten-free)
3 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
1 egg
1 tbsp or so milk

Preheat the oven to 140C.

Weigh the treacle and syrup into a saucepan (the measurements are approximate as I found it impossible to weigh them accurately – too sticky!). Add the butter and sugar and stir over a low heat until the butter is melted and the sugar dissolved.

Then stir the syrup mixture into the dry ingredients, before lastly adding the egg and milk. If you are using gluten-free flour then you may need a bit more milk.

Pour into a greased tin. I used a rectangular one, maybe 8 x 13 inch. Bake for 2 hours, until the whole kitchen smells of the spices.

Now you need to be patient. Once it has cooled remove whole from the tin and wrap tightly in foil and place in a tin. Don’t touch it for at least four days (and we waited a week). The stickiness it develops will be worth it!

This was a good recipe to adapt to gluten-free (as long as you are OK with oats) as it has a relatively low flour content, and becomes really moist and sticky as it matures. No one even noticed that it was gluten-free, which I always think is the best compliment.

Lavender and Lemon Drizzle Cake

I wasn’t quite sure how to name this cake. The lavender is in the cake rather than the drizzle, but it becomes a bit long-winded if you call it a lemon and lavender cake with lemon drizzle. I’m sure people get the idea anyway. The photo isn't the greatest either - the sun was too low - but it was good practice.

The inspiration for this cake came after I found some lavender in the supermarket. I have wanted to cook with it for ages, but we can’t grow our own as we don’t get enough sun, and it has proved difficult to source.

The first thing I made with it was some lavender shortbread, which made a lovely accompaniment to the chocolate sorbet. I was then toying with what to do next. I assume now that it is open it will lose its potency pretty quickly. R has been talking about lemon drizzle cake for ages, and I can’t even remember the last time I made one. The more I thought about it the more I thought the addition of lavender to this cake might be a good one.

The floral note contrasts well with the sharpness of the lemon. I upped the lemon quota a bit from my normal recipe, and the balance seemed pretty good. Next time I might try using partly ground almonds and partly flour (gluten-free) to try and get the damper texture I was after. This would make a great cake for tea party, with its delicate floral-ness.

Lavender Lemon Drizzle Cake

150g butter

225g caster sugar

225g plain flour (I used Doves gluten-free)

4 eggs

Grated zest of 2 lemons

Juice of 1/2 lemon (you might not need this with regular flour)

Juice of 1 1/2 lemons

75g caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a loaf tin with greaseproof paper. Cream the butter and sugar until pale, then add the eggs one at a time, followed by the flour and lemon zest a bit at a time, then stir in the lemon juice. Pour into the loaf tin and bake for 50 mins, until a skewer comes out clean. Prick the cake all over with a fork (or the testing skewer).

Stir the remaining lemon juice and sugar together and then pour over the cake while it is still hot. Leave in the tin to cool completely.

Pubs on Northcote Road

There seems to be a revolution taking place on Northcote Road, in terms of the pubs in any case. Up until now there have been a few trendy bars, and an All Bar One and a Pitcher and Piano. When R lived around the corner we used to go to the Goat on Battersea Rise, but it got really busy and is terribly dark.

We were therefore really pleased when we saw that Geronimo had taken over the Northcote. This pub has always had a great location, on the corner of Northcote Road and Battersea Rise, but it was definitely a football pub, and tended to be heaving. I have written about some of the Geronimo pubs before. They definitely have a formula, but it is one that we like and so I’m sure we will continue to frequent them. Particularly since they keep taking over our local pubs! There isn’t much to add on the Northcote at the moment, but I’m sure we will be eating there some time soon.

Then when I was running in the area I noticed the Bolingbroke. This has also been refurbished, and it turns out has been taken over by Renaissance Pubs, who also run four other pubs in South West London. We went for a drink, and it seems like a really good pub. It was fairly quiet, which we weren’t complaining about as it meant we could get a seat. They also have some more unusual offerings, such as Fentimans tonic water, which we had never come across before. I love their ginger beer (which is what I was drinking) so I am very interested to try the tonic at some point. We may have to go back to the Bolingbroke to test it, as we haven’t managed to find it anywhere else! The menu looked interesting too, so I think it deserves a return visit.

Finally there is the Draft House, which is run by the same people as the Westbridge on Battersea Bridge Road. This is opening some time this week, but I was lucky enough to get a bit of a preview as Eatlikeagirl had organized a meet-up to talk about the Blaggers Banquet (more on that to follow). The pub was still surrounded by hoardings, but it is a nice space. They have an impressive beer selection, both pumps and bottles. Anyone going in there looking for a pint of Fosters will get a bit of a shock, since they probably won’t recognize any of the beers. The staff have obviously been well trained on the stock as well, and seemed genuinely enthusiastic about it. Shame I can’t drink beer!

We also we given a preview of the bar snacks. Unfortunately I couldn’t eat quite a few of them, but I think that Padron peppers are a great idea for a bar snack. I also enjoyed the chorizo and baby squid. The breaded Ox tongue with beetroot relish was getting the most reaction, some good and some bad! I definitely want to return here once they are open properly.

So now we seem to have a dilemma if we want to go to the pub on the Northcote Road – which one to go to? It’s a nice dilemma to have.

The Botanist, Chelsea

I had one day of holiday left, and decided to take it last Friday, since R had that whole of that week off. As a break from painting the radiators and pruning the enormous rose in our garden we decided to go out for brunch. I have wanted to eat at the Botanist for ages, since their menu looks really appetising, although I have heard mixed reports. At 10.30 am on a random Friday it was very quiet in there, with only a few coffee drinkers and ourselves. This meant we got great service, but it wasn’t too attentive, and so we still felt we could have a conversation without being interrupted all the time.

I went for the buckwheat crepe with bacon and eggs, which I was really looking forward to. Although breakfast dishes are OK with no toast or the like, they are definitely missing something, and so I liked having an alternative. What arrived was a beautifully thin crepe with two fried eggs and heaps of crispy bacon. The whole thing worked well together, with the egg yolks providing the necessary moisture and the bacon some much needed texture.

R went for the eggs benedict, as is his standard. He seemed please with it, and the eggs looked perfectly poached. I didn’t get to try it though, unfortunately. I had a fresh mint tea, which seemed bottomless, and R had coffee. We also shared a freshly squeezed orange juice, which was lovely.

All in all a very nice spot to spend an hour or so of a morning. It wasn’t the cheapest breakfast ever, but I think it was worth it as a treat. Now I want to go back and try their lunch menu!

Frozen Yoghurt

I needed a quick treat at lunchtime last week, after a fairly hellish morning in the office, but didn’t want to resort to the clichéd chocolate bar. I recently read about the rise of the frozen yogurt bar in London in Time Out, and decided to check out the closest one to my office. After a quick bit of research that turned out to be Yog, on Charlotte Street, so off I set.

There seems to be a theme with these frozen yogurt places, from my limited experience anyway. The only other one I know is Snog, in South Kensington, but I have only ever walked past. Both have single syllable names (remarkably similar ones too). They also have similar décor, predominantly white with flashes of bright colours. The menu is straightforward at Yog, small or large frozen yogurt in either natural or dark chocolate flavours, with a selection of toppings laid out in the counter.

I went for a plain dark chocolate. It was good, but both the yogurt and the chocolate are quite strong flavours, and I felt that they competed with each other more than complemented. It definitely fitted the bill as a light treat though (a regular chocolate one had 119 calories), and I think I will be returning.

The next day I was walking through Covent Garden at lunchtime and remembered about Yu-Foria, which is another frozen yogurt shop, downstairs in the market building. They also have a stall on Thursdays at the Covent Garden market. I though that it might be interesting to compare and contrast the two, so I popped in.

They had a similar offering to Yog, although there seemed to be more tempting unhealthy toppings, such as marshmallows and bits of fudge. They offer natural, chocolate and a special flavour, although no where did I see it advertised what the special actually was, which seems a bit strange. It was slightly more expensive here, although I suppose they can get away with it in the heart of tourist-land.

In the interests of comparing like with like I went for a plain chocolate. This version was much creamier than that at Yog, and the chocolate was much less strong. This meant that it ended up not tasting of much really. I like my chocolate really dark, so the Yog one was my preference.

To be honest I think I went down the wrong track with these frozen yogurts, and I should have gone for a plain yogurt with a topping. Perhaps my next post will be a taste test of those!

Bill Granger's Banana Butterscotch Pudding

Although this is Bill Granger’s recipe, I actually saw it for the first time on a Rachel Allen show, which was then immediately followed by Bill Granger making it on his own show! It went in the memory bank for a suitable occasion, but has waited a few months since it definitely seemed like a winter pudding. We went down to my parents for the weekend, and my mother had bananas to use up, so its time had come.

This is definitely comfort food, to be eaten on wet or chilly days with lots of cream. The surprising thing is how banana-ry it is, given that there is only one banana in it. It is also terrifying to make, as the pudding part is incredibly wet, and then you pour the syrup into it. It looks like there is absolutely no way that it will turn into something edible, and I was even turning alternates over in my mind in case we needed an emergency substitute. There was no need to worry though, as the 40 minutes in the oven turned it into a soft, light sponge, made gooey with the butterscotch sauce. There certainly wasn’t any left over, although the recipe says it serves four and we found it easily went round six.