London for fussy eaters, or how to order vegan food in non vegan places

I wanted to write about the difficulties that you encounter when you try to be fussy in London.
I love to read the posts of othr blogs and how people come to London for holiday and they find it the best place for vegans, wheat intollerant, raw food eaters, or whatever other fussy food habit or requirement.
When you do live in London in fact it can happen that is not your turn to choose where to dine or have breakfast and your are likely to go out with people that are not veg, especially if you don't choose your friends because of what they eat!
In Italy I can always get away with pasta al pomodoro, in the London's pubs it's a bit harder.
So I went to Princess to have breakfast with a couple of friends hoping to find something vegan on the menu.Princess is a gastro pub (I know the sound of this word i horrid) and there is a reastaurant upstairs.
It was a lovely Sunday early afternoon and the idea to go to a pub wasn't coming from me but I accepted as I have heard so much about the place that I thought I give it a try.
Clearly there isn't anything on the blackboard that I can/want to eat, everything was meat or fish or dairy based.
I ask the waiter:
"Hi have you got anything vegan"
he is incredibly hadsome and looks at me in disbelief

"just put something together with any vegetable that you like, please" I say while dreading the thought of the transparent iceberg lettuce, the ultra cold tomatoes slice and the cheap balsamic vinegar.

Well I couldn't be more wrong. When the lovely waiter comes out with the vegetables I am actually rather impress by what was put together. A pleasent combination of different textures with french beans, different leaves rosted sweet potato and vinaigrette with dijon mustard as a dressing.
The bill was also very good as it was only eight Pounds for the salad and a juice!

The Princess
76 Paul Street,
London EC2A 4NE
tel: 020 7729 9270

Princess passed the fussy eater test!

Impressive mixed rice salad for your summer party

Have you ever seen those mixed rice bags in the healthshops and wondered what to do with it?
I made a version of a popular wild rice salad from the Candle Cafe Cookbook, with a slight variation.
On Sunday I was invited to a Sicilian themed barbeque, with all the people I went on holiday with.
A nice bunch of people reproducing the atmosphere of a "Baglio" (Sicilian courtyard) in a lovely garden in Hackney.
The pressure was on as my Italian friends are quite good when it comes to traditional, so there was caponata, peperonata and insalata pantesca (a great potato salad with capers and cherry tomatoes). I decided to go for something with a citrusy flavour but just not as classic (I am not very good with with traditional recipes, and I wish I was!)
So from the Candle Cafe' cookbook, but with a twist:
Impressive Mixed Rice salad

1 cup mixed wild rice (long,camargue, wild)
1/2 cup sunflower seeds (roasted in a dry skillet)
1/2 cup cranberries rehidrated in warm water
the grated zest of 1 organic orange
the juice of two organic lemons
1/4 cup of shoyu or tamari

Not very difficult... cook the rice in 2 parts of water (my variety needed 40 minutes) and add the other ingredients, voila'! (Unfortunately not very macro either!)

Back to the UK tofu

Back from a great holiday in a little paradise location in Sicily, I feel really rejuvenated and the sun incredibly enough is shining in London too, even if it’s not really hot.
I have neglected my blog just as much as my little basil plant, that today ended up in the bin, but my resolution is to add lots of recipes in Aug/Sep
Hopefully I will have to cook for quite a few picnics so it’s going to be interesting..
On Monday, after my allucinatory journey home from Stansted, very few hours sleep and a full on day in the office, I was ready to make my own dinner again but nothing too complicated so here’s the recipe, quick and summery:


Back to the UK Tofu
1 cake firm tofu
½ a cucumber
1 piece ginger
some alpha-alpha sprouts
1 tbs mirin
1 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs rice vinegar
50 grams pistachio nuts

Peel and deseed the cucumber, cut the cucumber and ginger julienne, mix with the alpha-alpha sprouts.
Mix mirin, soy sauce and vinegar.
Place the vegetables on top of the tofu and pour the sauce over.
Grind the pistachio (leave them a bit coarse) and sprinkle on top.
Yummy!


It's so funny that I thought I share this.
It was 43°C in Palermo, Sicily last Sunday, too hot for anybody... even for these guys

Notting Hill for fussy eaters (and ambitious cooks) – part 1

When you start working in a new area of London it’s always very exciting. As well as the new workplace there is also a new area to discover, and this can be really refreshing.
After working for three years in Battersea and enjoying one of the most beautiful parks in London I now work in the trendy Notting Hill.
The Notting Hill described by the brilliant novel "The Lonely Londoner" by Sam Selvon, (a recollection of the Caribbean that moved to London in the late 1940s) is just a memory, now its population is mainly ultra rich, fashion conscious and the houses are amongst the most expensive in the whole of London.
However the area is beautiful and Portobello Market is still one of my favourite things (both the vintage and the veggie) and for people who like to cook there are two gem addresses:

Books for Cooks 
4 Blenheim Crescent
W11 1NN

Tel 020-7221-1992
Fax 020-7221-1517


It’s the best place to find inspiration (it has also a lovely little café’ at the back), because let’s face it, Amazon is very often a cheaper option but with the cooking books you have to fall in love with.

Just opposite there is another wonderful shop where you can buy all your spices.
I buy Juniper Berries that are hard to find anywhere else and dried organic pears and that are the little treat that I buy in my worryingly short lunch break

The Spice Shop
1 Blenheim Crescent
W11 2EE
Telephone: 020 7221 4448
Fax: 020 7229 1591



And if you are just trying to find a vintage outfit and you find yourself starving on Portobello Road?
A reasonably cheap takeaway (really simple wholesome food) where you can buy vegetarian/vegan food but you have to hope in a sunny day as this place is take away only...

The Grain Shop
269a Portobello Road
W11 1LR
(sugarless cakes, brown rice, veggies, and natural juices)


… more to come!

Tofu and fresh herbs tart

I am getting really upset about the "English summer", this is becoming like a big joke, it seems like it's never going to stop raining and I almost got used to go to work by bike and get inevitably wet.
If we have to look at the bright side I could say that this weather gives me the chance to bake that is one of my favourite cooking methods.

Ingredients for the shell:
50 grams buckwheat flour
50 grams wholewheat flour
50 grams all purpose flour
1/2 a teaspoon of salt
4 teaspoon of sesame oil
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
1 teaspoon dried majorain
1 cup water (or less, add the water slowly till achieved the right consistence)

For the filling:
1 silken tofu pack
2 tbsp soy milk
Fresh herbs: Basil, terragon, oregano, chive etc.
1 bunch chopped spring onion
tamari to season

Mix all the ingredients for the shell and create a dough (elastic but not too wet). On a lightly floured surface with a floured rolling pin roll out dough into a 3 mm thin pastry and fit into a 10- or 11-inch round tart pan with a removable rim. Prick dough all over with a fork.
Preheat the oven to 180 C°, bake tart shell for 10 minutes, or until almost cooked through but still pale.
In a food processor blend the ingredients for the filling and stir in the herbs at the end.
Pour the ingredients in the shell and bake for 20 minutes (the filling should set).

Sarah brought a slice to work today and she thinks that it could go well with chutney and salad.

A meat substitute: homemade Seitan

In Italy when you turn into a vegetarian you eat a lot of seitan, as it’s probably the closest thing you can get to meat.
In the UK this is not really popular, and I have to explain fairly often that what I am eating is not chicken…

Seitan and watercress in brown mini pita bread



I used to buy it from health shops at ridiculous prices, but once I arrived in London I just stopped having it.
Thanks to a lovely food blog written by Vera a Vegan girl from Naples that has a brilliant blog (in Italian).
I started making my own.

Seitan is a meat substitute, very high in proteins. It is a meat looking product obtained by the wheat gluten that is left once that the starch has been washed away.

Ingredients:
• 1 kg wholewheat flour (I use the Waitrose one and it works well for me)
• Salt
• Shoyu
• Herbs to taste, and fresh vegetables to make fresh stock
The objective is to make quite elastic dough, by an energetic kneading; the dough should be compact but soft.

Leave the dough to rest for one hour.

Fill a big bowl wit water and immerse your dough (cold water is better), try to massage the dough and keep it together…
Change water often till it becomes clear; you can use two bowls as this makes the job easier.
Once that the process is finished you end up with a sticky ball of gluten.
In the meantime prepare the stock with fresh vegetables, water (I added kombu seaweed too.)
Wrap the dough in muslin so tight that it doesn’t fall apart and boil it for 30/40 minutes.

You can now slice your seitan and use it like if it was a cold meat, or a sliced tofu…
I quickly sauté a couple of slices with garlic, added some soy sauce and used it as a filling for a sandwich with watercress and mustard.
From a dough you can get a reasonable quantity for the week so if you are having a lazy week (like me) you can just grill a slice, or even make ragu’ (bolognaise sauce) with it etc.

Pressed salads

I just moved to a new flat, and I have been too busy to look after my blog.
I haven’t really been cooking either, and in the past three weeks this is the first time I can relax on a Sunday, buy some ingredients and put the apron on! It’s nice that time when you start feeling home, in my life I moved to so many different places (certainly more than 20) that this feeling is rather familiar to me.

Today I prepared the pressed salads, which are a fermented dish and a classic of macrobiotic cooking, they are going to last me for a while and they’d help my tummy when I have a drink too much (I know I shouldn’t but these are tough times!).
I finely sliced some vegetables: cucumber, red spring onion, radish, celery and carrots. Everything was seasonal and British, a part from the red spring onion that were French and I bought them at Waitrose as I have never seen them before. I should have taken a picture, as they were so pretty!
I put the slices in a glass container and covered them with a liquid made from half shoyu, half water that has been brought to the boil for 30 second and then left to cool down to room temperature.
I put a little saucer on top and then some weight (a bag of pulses would do) so that the vegetables are all under the liquid.
Normally I leave them out and just put them in the fridge the day after. I find that they go nicely with boiled grains, silken tofu, and they are they ideal start of a meal. Sometimes I add some grated ginger to add a little zing ☺
I am preparing quite a few things to have in the fridge to take to work; it’s great that you can quickly add them to your brown rice to take to the office. So to all the people that ask me how can I always find time to cook my own lunch, Id like to ask them, how can you eat that Tesco sandwich or that sad salad every day?