S-W-O-O-N

I don't often swoon (the sort of head over heels heart palpitating joy that's known to turn my face two shades redder with excitement).


Last time I swooned was at a gorgeous pair of hot pink, sparkly, made in Italy Kate Spade heels. Never mind that when I wear them I need to take pain killers they hurt my toes so much.  I'm happy just looking at them.  It was love at first site. 


This time around, it was love at first bite.  Not quite as sexy as my shoes, this afternoon I fell, hard - for some beef brisket. But not just any beef brisket - beef brisket croquets with Asian slaw at Nopi.


Let me explain.


As many people know, one of my favourite restaurants in all of London is Ottolenghi in Islington.  By a stroke of good fortune, FM happened upon a new restaurant in Soho yesterday.  He went to investigate and found out it was the soft opening for Ottolenghi's new restaurant, Nopi. 


Nopi is similar to Ottolenghi in that the menu is quasi tapas style, but very different in it's elegant cream and bronze setting...and no take away items in site.  There's even a proper cocktails menu which has always eluded Ottolenghi.


FM filled me in on his find just as I was walking out the door to meet GT for lunch.  Most certainly serendipity.


Not only did we feast on:

• Beef brisket croquets, Asian slaw 

but also...

• Twice-cooked baby chicken, lemon myrtle salt
• Seared scallops, pickled daikon, green apple
• Prawn toasts, ginger and cucumber dipping sauce 
• Braised winter greens, tahini-yogurt
• Chocolate, peanut brittle, mace, crème fraiche
• Churros, fennel seed sugar, hot chocolate (my least favourite of the bunch)

Next best bit (after the brisket) ... because the restaurant isn't officially open until next Thursday ... our entire bill was 50% off.  Swoooooon. 

Dinner of Champions

An orgy of spiced pecans

Mexican chocolate tart filling

In the fridge, setting

Last Saturday night I was invited over to a friend's flat for 'Latin Tea'. When pressed for a definition for this event I was told, "basically just afternoon tea (tea, cake and drinks). We'll eat, hang out - and see where the night takes us. 5 pm start."

I'd interpreted "see where the night takes us" to incorporating some late night savoury food stuff, and possibly (likely) more drinkies. Instead, after an evening of excessive cake eating, very little tea drinking, and a moderate amount of champagne drinking, we closed out the evening with a midnight snack of muscat and rhubarb tart.  It's amazing I didn't walk out Diabetic.

My friend is a real lover of great food.  But more importantly, he has friends who can support this habit of his by being great cooks and bakers.  I was invited to this get-together with something along the lines of "no pressure to bake anything, but I've a friend who's amazing and he's bringing something.   Really though, no pressure. ;-)"

Right, just because you end your comment with a ';-)' doesn't mean I wasn't going to bring it.  Game face was on - didn't matter that I didn't have much time.  I needed to REP-RE-SENT.  Can you hear the theme song to Rocky?  I did.

Funny, you know generally speaking I don't classify myself as a competitive person.  I think maybe I'm a bit in LaLa land with that one though...considering every time I mention to friends that I'm not competitive a lot of them sort of roll their eyes at me.  Hmmm...

Anyway, I digress. All in all it was a lovely evening with both home-made and bakery bought delicacies.  G's friend made a tarte tartin which was fantastic, and I made a Mexican chocolate tart with 'to-die-for' caramelised spicy pecans on top.  Definitely a winner.

I followed a recipe on epicurious for the filling and pecans, but switched up the crust.  Instead of chocolate cookie crumbs I used shortbread (and then less butter than the recipe called for).  I could say that there was some strategic planning in this shortbread decision, but the truth was - since I was to busy (lazy) to go out and buy the chocolate cookies I took stock of my cupboards and found some lovely shortbread that someone had given me for a Christmas present and used that instead.  Worked a treat!