Red wine mac 'n' cheese. It's the future!

Five things I cannot stand:

1. Being interrupted. Working with little kids means I have to deal with it every day on some level. But it's alright. They make up for it by being so damn happy all the time.

2. The Hammersmith and City line. Especially at 7:30 am. Again, unfortunately that's a daily annoyance.

3. Collateral damage in action movies. That was someone's car!!

4. When people try to set me up with their single friend, just because we're both single. It's the only thing we have in common. It's always awkward. It's always blatant. No.

5. Mac 'n' cheese with not enough cheese in it. There is nothing more infuriating than dry pasta with a thin crispy layer of cheese on it. Nothing. (Okay, the Hammersmith and City line is worse. So is your single friend.)

I bet you know where this is going. Mac 'n' cheese anyone?! (Hint: the answer is "yes, always".)

Drinking whilst cooking. Or cooking whilst drinking? (It's a whiskey-coke.)

The solution to the dry-as-the-desert mac 'n' cheese dilemma is of course a cheese sauce. You may laugh at this obvious comment but I've eaten my fair share of dry macaroni topped with a bit of shredded cheese. Those who do know about the importance of cheese sauce usually have a preferred recipe. Until recently, I was not one of those people. Oh the shame! Then I watched the cheese episode of How To Cook Like Heston with Heston Blumenthal… he of the (in)famous bacon and egg ice cream. I'd heard that it was "kind of sciency", based on exact melting points and all that jazz. I don't have a very scientific/mathematical brain. Adding and subtracting in my head is so much effort that I practically have to take my shoes and socks off. Converting measurements and oven temperatures makes me dizzy. I have to sit down and have a sugary snack to make the feeling go away. So i was prepared to be put off. Nope, I was so fascinated that I started taking notes. I am in awe of how Heston's brain works, and how he has used his talent to perfect cooking basics such as the perfect boiled egg. 

Anyway. Cheese! Heston made an amazing cheese sauce. Instead of the age-old roux idea, he uses stock, white wine, parmesan cheese and a bit of cornflour, et voila! Perfect cheese sauce! I was intrigued. Of course, this is me we're talking about. It's been slightly, erm, `'tweaked`' through necessity rather than choice. Heston's recipe calls for chicken stock…. as a vegetarian, that's not going to happen, so I used veggie broth. Then, a few days ago, I really fancied some mac 'n' cheese, but had no white wine. Oops. We had red wine though. Red wine mac 'n' cheese… Blasphemy? I hesitated, then threw all caution to the wind and got to work.

 

The results were surprisingly delicious, if I do say so myself. The red wine gave the cheese sauce a nice earthy taste (especially with added mushrooms). My dinner companions agreed. Sure, the sauce isn't what you would consider a "traditional" mac 'n' cheese colour, but throw in lots of broccoli, top it with some cheddar and crispy fried onions and trust me, nobody will care.  

PS: I like a lot of cheese sauce in my mac 'n' cheese… If you don't, then just halve the measurements required for the sauce. Though I honestly don't know why you would want to. Weirdo.

PPS: sweetcorn and some fried mushrooms stirred in would make this the best meal ever, no?

PPPS: There will be no leftovers.

Red wine mac 'n' cheese

You will need:

- 600ml red wine (or just white wine, if I'm really grossing you out)

-600ml veggie stock (chicken stock if you're not veggie)

-160g parmesan cheese, grated, plus the rind

- 200g philadelphia

- 2-3 tbsp cornflour

- a head of broccoli, cut into small florets, and the stem cut into batons

- 2 red onions, finely sliced

- 300g macaroni

- 250g cheddar cheese, grated

For the sauce:

In a pot, reduce your wine from 600ml down to 60ml. Add your stock, chuck the parmesan rind into the pot, and leave it to simmer and infuse for 20 minutes. Then add the grated parmesan to the liquid. Make sure the liquid isn't boiling when you add the cheese. Stir it in until it is just dissolved. Add the cornflour and stir until the sauce starts to thicken. Lastly, add the philadelphia and stir it in, then stop stirring.

For the other bits and bobs:

While the wine and the stock are simmering, start preparing the onions. Throw some oil and a knob of butter into a pan, add the onions and fry them up a bit, then turn the heat down low. Stir regularly and cook slowly until they are brown and looking crispy but not burnt, about 20 minutes. When they're ready, set aside.

About 5 minutes before the stock is ready for the cheese, add the pasta to boiling water and cook according to the packet instructions. Add the broccoli florets 3 minutes before the pasta has finished cooking (although be aware that the stalk batons will take a couple of minutes longer to cook). Drain and set aside.

When everything is ready, set your oven to grill at 200 C (my oven heats up quickly, but if your's is slow to get going, turn it on earlier). Pour the pasta-broccoli mix into a casserole dish and stir in the sauce. Top it with the cheddar cheese (the amount is just a rough guideline, of course) and then top the whole thing off by spreading the fried onions evenly over it. Pop it in the oven and grill it for about 10 minutes until the cheese is bubbling and a bit crunchy-looking at the sides.

Not glamorous. But tasty.

I surrender. Now give me all the chocolate orange flavoured things.

Okay. Confession time.

Until very recently, I hated the chocolate/orange flavour combination. HATED. Yuck. Gross.

Hey, everyone has foods they don't enjoy eating. Olives, anchovies, aubergines and mushrooms seem to be the most common culprits. Sometimes they're lifelong aversions that you just can't shake off. Other times you can teach yourself to like something if you try it often enough. Then there's the situation where you've tried something, hated it, avoided it for ages, been forced into trying it again and…. kinda sorta maybe liked it just a bit! Such is the story of Sophie and all the chocolate/orange flavoured things. It was one of the only foods I never had any interest in. Why ruin chocolate with an overpowering citrus-y taste?

Then I had a Jaffa cake. I don't even remember the circumstances under which I made the momentous decision to try one, but I'm glad I did. I've had a lot more Jaffa cakes since then. Some might say too many not enough. Those little bastards are just too easy to eat! Now I even enjoy those Cadbury's chocolate oranges. Eating one of those is part of the UK citizenship test, right? My transformation is almost complete!

So when I saw the recipe for a chocolate orange cream cheese pound cake on Joy The Baker's blog, I thought…. Why the hell not?

Joy's baking blog is the one of the first food blogs I came across. She comes up with some pretty wacky combinations (peanut butter bacon cookies anyone?). I'm a massive fan of pound cake, and have made a fair few of her pound cake recipes, including a very green and very delicious avocado pound cake. Since avocado is totally a fruit, it definitely belongs in cake! No hating. Anyway, while I was vegan, most of Joy's recipes were sadly off-limits, and I'm super duper happy that this is no longer the case!

Let the pound caking begin!

I beat the crap out of some butter and cream cheese....

I had to sample quite a bit of this. For quality control.

Oh yeah. This recipe requires a stand mixer, or at the very least a hand blender. I own neither of those things. There's a surprise! But I didn't let that hold me back. After all, pound cakes existed before stand mixers, right? So, two words: Elbow. Grease. If you have a bit of extra time, love chocolate/orange, and enjoy a good arm workout whilst pondering your life choices (especially how they have left you unable to afford a mixer), then I highly recommend giving this a try!

It was dark by the time I got around to photographing the finished product.

Next time, more chocolate chips!

If I had any residual misgivings about chocolate and orange together, this cake has managed to banish them forever.

I shall call them.... Bon Jovi muffins!

This is definitely it. Spring has arrived. Look. JUST LOOK. 

Whenever I see blossoms of any kind, it just makes me so damn happy! My whole outlook on life changes from Sad Banana to Happy Melon. Maybe it's because I grew up in Japan. Cherry blossoms - blossoms of any kind, but cherry blossoms in particular - are a big deal there, and they're celebrated accordingly. 

I know it's still a bit early to get excited, especially here in the UK…. let's face it, surprise snow could still strike tomorrow. But I'm still gonna do my little happy dance, okay? Not many happy dances have happened these past few months.

I was all set to bake something more seasonal. And then I found this. It was hiding in the back of the pantry.

I imagine I was planning on making a pumpkin pie with it last Autumn, but was probably too tired/lazy/angry/asleep at the time. So it was banished to the back of the cupboard.

I figured it was time to make amends. I had to use it, despite the fact that it was so out of season I was running the risk of losing my Happy Springtime Feelgood Mojo by catapulting myself back into late Autumn. UGH.

To be fair, the sunshine outside was enough to ensure that this wouldn't happen. I was also listening to lots of Bon Jovi, and I challenge anyone to feel shitty whilst listening to Bon Jovi. It just doesn't happen!

Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi. Jon Bovi? I've done that thing where I've said it in my head so many times, I've ended up confusing myself and the name just sounds like something I've made up....

ANYWAY. Pumpkin spice muffins. Did I mention these are vegan? I got the recipe from the the ppk website. Isa Chandra is a Vegan goddess. I would happily give her my firstborn in exchange for an opportunity to read her mind and gain all her knowledge. I added walnuts, as she suggested. I wanted to add dried cranberries too, but I couldn't find any at such short notice. 

I had mini cupcake holders... mini muffins!

I know, they're not much to look at, but they're sweet and the pumpkin puree gives them a lovely moistness. The flat definitely smelled somewhat autumnal whilst these were in the oven, but what's the harm in that? Who says pumpkin is just for Autumn, anyway? Who makes these rules?! 

I bet the boys from Bon Jovi would applaud my pumpkin-in-the-Springtime efforts. Might start calling them Bon Jovi muffins! .....We weren't booooooooorn to follow...... Go on, sing with me. I know you wanna.

Restaurant review - Mildred's Vegetarian Restaurant in Soho

I am ILL. AGAIN. This is an outrage! And I had a potentially great dinner-based experiment planned for yesterday evening…. that will now have to wait. Oh well. In the meantime, I have decided to write my first restaurant review! Here goes...

I don't really eat out in restaurants all that much. This is a sad thing, because I LOVE it. Sometimes it's nice to not have to wash dishes, or get up mid-chew and go to the kitchen for a glass of water. Last year, finding anything that I could eat outside of my own home became a bit of a chore, so I pretty much gave up any restaurant outings, save a handful of visits to vegan/veggie places such as Terre a Terre in Brighton (highly recommended), and Cookies Cream in Berlin (don't do it to yourself). Most eateries have veggie options now, but vegans still have a mighty tough time out there! So as a vegan, it's an amazing feeling looking at a menu and thinking: "I can order ANY of this? Whatever I want? …If I really wanted to, I could order ALL of it!" Oh the euphoria, words cannot describe it.

Despite having gone back to the cheese and the eggs, vegan food still intrigues me. Especially restaurant-standard vegan food. Because, well, it's restaurant-standard, and I love the realisation that, actually, there are people out there who are so devoted to showing the world that vegan food isn't just rice, tofu and sprouts that they have gone and set up a restaurant. Setting up any restaurant takes balls, but setting up a veggie/vegan restaurant in the hope that vegans, veggies and omnis will love it, I think that takes huge dinosaur balls. Because, let's face it, the majority of humans out there love their meat, fish, eggs, and cheese. The majority of humans out there are gonna take a lot of convincing. 

So, Mildred's. It wasn't actually my idea. My mate Michael suggested we try it out… hell yeah. 

Mildred's is pretty easy to find if you live in London. It's on Poland Street. Everyone knows Poland Street. Everyone has probably walked past Mildred's at some point. It's very small and unassuming, there's nothing gimmicky about it. We got there at around 8, and it was busy. A good sign! We found ourselves standing by the bar, with a mere 5-minute wait ahead of us. We got lucky. Mildred's doesn't take bookings, so it might be wise to turn up a little earlier than we did. We ordered Bloody Marys, which I can only describe as being "perfectly adequate", and sipped until we were seated. The drinks menu also includes a bunch of fresh fruit concoctions that sounded right up my alley because I'm a freak (any combo of apple, beetroot, carrot, celery, ginger or orange juices?? Yes! I shall have all of those!), but they also have your standard soft drinks and a small list of organic lager and cider.

Now onto the food! This is where it got painful. Decision-making in general is hard for me, and when faced with a menu of food where everything sounds good…. Let's just say there were almost tears. The menu caters to most tastes- it features a fair few Asian and Middle Eastern-inspired dishes, which is unsurprising for a veggie establishment. But there's also heartier fare available, such as a pie, a pumpkin and goat's cheese ravioli, and a burger of the day. I reckon some might find it a bit odd that the pub grub and Asian dishes (as well as the dreaded superfood salad, listed here as the "organic energising detox salad"… there's always one...) are listed side-by-side, but I didn't mind in the slightest. 

I struggled to make a decision between the burger of the day (an apple, celery and beetroot mix), and the bean, tarragon and sun dried tomato sausages and mash. I had narrowed it down to those because, let's face it, my staple diet already relies heavily on couscous and veggie curries. Also, I'm a huge fan of veggie alternatives to meat (i.e. replacing a traditionally meaty item, such as a burger or sausages, with a vegan/veggie option) and it's always interesting to see what route they've gone down- either getting the texture and taste as close as possible to meat, or embracing the veggie-ness. It certainly looked like the latter was being done here. Michael went with the Sri Lankan sweet potato and cashew nut curry, sat back and laughed at me while I flailed around trying to be decisive. I ended up ordering the sausages and mash. We also ordered fried gyoza as a starter, which is always a gamble- I have eaten too many bland cabbage-stuffed veggie gyoza, where no attempt had been made to substitute the pork. Yawn.

Here they are! Excuse the really shitty camera photos. I thought there was no way I was gonna bust out a massive camera in such a tiny restaurant. In hindsight this was a mistake.

These were amazing! It was the perfect appetiser portion. I wanted more. There's a surprise. Michael took one bite and remarked: "I can't believe that's not meat." Yep, they were pretty spot on in terms of flavour and texture of a traditional gyoza filling… I was trying to guess what they had used, might have been firm tofu, but it's hard to think when you're busy stuffing your face. They came with your standard gyoza dipping sauce.

Onto the sausages! And Michael's curry.

Sorry Mike, the kiwi shirt didn't make it. Stupid camera phone.

The sausages looked amazingly meaty, almost a bit too meaty. When I took my first bite I found that they were made of kidney beans! I was not expecting that. Kidney beans are a thing for salad bars and Mexican food. But guys, it definitely worked! I actually would have liked them to have been a bit more… savoury. I think I was expecting more bursts of sundried tomato. Nonetheless, they were tasty, the mash underneath was as creamy and mustardy as the menu had promised. The amount of sauce, a pear cider jus, scared me a bit at first, but it was spot-on. Veggie sausages always need a bit of extra sauce. Michael let me have a taste of his curry, which was also good, no complaints there. The rice was lovely and saffron-y, the curry itself was coconutty and creamy. The chunks of sweet potato were as big as my head, but let's not nitpick too much. There was a yummy spicy tomato sambal (that's condiment sauce to you and me) to go with it. Pretty straightforward. I would have been shocked if they'd stuffed this up.

Of course we had dessert. We decided to go for a non-vegan one (oh the shame)… a white chocolate and pistachio cheesecake. 

As far as cheesecakes go, it was nice. I was a bit sad that the pistachio crumbs were not crunchy enough, but it's cheesecake, so I got over myself pretty quickly. Next time I'm definitely getting a vegan dessert though (banana and coconut tofu cheesecake anyone?)- there's a lot of skill to be showcased there and I felt somewhat guilty for not showing my appreciation by ordering it.

All in all, it was a good dining experience. This is definitely one you can take a group of friends with varying food preferences and dietary requirements to, and where everyone will come out happy (vegan, vegetarian and gluten free options are marked on the menu). Just don't bring too big a group. I don't think they could cope. 

I shall definitely be going back there. I'm totally having a freaky juice and a burger next time.