The Ladywell Supper Club

Wild garlic soup with hazelnut pesto and cornbread

Being so on trend I heard about supper clubs rather late. I love the idea of someone cooking lovely, homely food in their own houses for a group of strangers, but by the time I caught up with the trend they'd become more commercial operations. I loved Mike and Ollie's dinner in particular, but being run by a foodie professionals it didn't have some of the innocence I'd expected.

Now that the London food scene has moved onto street food I thought my chance to experience, my idea, of a supper cub had gone. So when I saw a new Ladywell Supper Club offering dinners at £25 and BYO booze I booked at once (or prompted Becks to book, as may have been the case).

Crab, fennel and blood orange salad

The first thing I noticed was how beautifully set up the dining room was. The tables were covered in parcel paper, with the outlines of plates drawn at each place setting, cutlery in small homemade pouches and plenty of tea lights.

The night started with a honey, rhubarb, grapefruit and gin cocktail and a couple of tasty little canapés. I'm not usually a fan of grapefruit, finding it a bit sour, but it worked well with the honey and gin.

Our first proper course was the wild garlic soup with hazelnut pesto and cornbread. It was a good start too with the wild garlic thankfully sufficiently mellow so that it didn't blow our heads off. The warm homemade cornbread reminded me that I need to make my cornbread recipe again sometime.

Cutlet and confit of lamb, potato gratin and port jus

Next was the crab, fennel and blood orange salad. Topped with a generous amount of crab the salad had a good balance of flavours. The blood orange helped bring everything together and I could have done with a second slice.

We had a bit of a wait for the main event of the evening, a cutlet and confit of lamb, with potato gratin and a port jus. The wait was the only blemish on an otherwise excellent dish. The lamb cutlet was cooked to a perfect pink. The single asparagus spear and to a lesser extent, the twenty one peas, looked the part in presentation terms but did leave me slightly wondering what the point was.

Lemon tart with vanilla cream and candied rhubarb

Dessert was a lemon tart with vanilla cream and candied rhubarb. It was a good little lemon tart, with little being the operative word. I would have happy eaten a slice double the size.

Thinking that there was only one El in the Ladywell food business, I thought the night was going to be hosted by the former owner of the Ladywell Deli. (My assumption, no misleading advertising.) It turned out that it was hosted by Ellen another local whose name happens to share the first couple of letters.

This was a fun supper club experience. Good food at reasonable prices and the opportunity to meet some other locals over a glass of wine.

Easter Weekend: The Didcot Railway Centre

Easter snuck up on me this year. As dense as it might sound I didn't realise we had a four day weekend coming up until five days before. Once I realised we had a long weekend coming up I couldn't wait limping through the last couple of days at work.

Becks and I decided to escape to the Oxfordshire countryside on the Friday evening to enjoy a bit of time outside of London. Not long after we arrived it was straight down to the local pub The Bear for dinner. It was my first visit since the new landlords took over at the beginning of the month and the food has moved up a notch, without the prices going in the same direction, which was good to see.

On the Saturday we visited The Didcot Railway Centre which we've been threatening to do for a while but hadn't made it to before now.

I can't have visited in over twenty years and don't remember anything from my previous visits so it was like a completely new attraction. We started our visit with a ride on a stream train - selecting the First Class carriage of course - from the entrance to the far end of the site.

Rather than walking back we caught a train on the other line which operates to carry visits around the site. The second line had a Steam Railmotor running, which has the engine located inside one of the carriages, rather then being a separate unit pulling the carriages. I hadn't seen anything like it before.

The whole site had the feeling of somewhere which is run for the benefit of the members who like to play with steam trains, rather than set up as a tourist attraction. We were able to wonder around, more or less where we liked, but there was virtually no information on what we were looking or signs to help us navigate around. But when we found our way into the second shed it was train gold with four / five tracks of gleaming steam trains rising above us. Becks seemed very enthusiastic about the whole experience, which surprised me given the almost non existence of trains of NZ. But then perhaps that was the reason?

Restaurant Review: Polpo, Smithfields

Spinach, Parmesan & soft egg pizzette

On Monday night school friends Rob, Joel and I had one of our six monthly catch ups over dinner. After Joel's successful choice of Vanilla Black last time out I put my neck on the line and suggested Polpo next to Smithfield Market. I was addicted to The Restaurant Man earlier in the year and had been looking for the opportunity to try one of Russell Norman's restaurants. Dinner with the boys seemed like the ideal chance.

Joel and I arrived early so we had a chance to order a beer and catch up. Seeing the food head to nearby tables was piquing my appetite and we decided to order a couple of the small plates to keep us going. Rob arrived just as the food hit the table which made us look like we'd time things perfectly, rather than being caught in the act of eating.

Potato & Parmesan crocchette

We stuck almost exclusively to vegetarian / fish dishes and with all the plates being under £10 I thought it was pretty good value. My highlights were the spinach, parmesan & soft egg pizzette (£8). The egg was indeed soft, but thankfully hadn't made the pizzette soggy (cooked separately?).

The chick pea, spinach & ricotta meatballs (£6) were surprisingly tasty and I didn't regret ordering the vegetarian option at all. I suspect it was the ricotta which made them taste so good. The prawn & artichoke linguine, bottarga (£8) was a generous serving for the price with sweet prawns.

Salmon tartare, horseraddish & carta di musica

If I wanted to pick the salmon tartare, horseraddish & carta di musica (£7) had a little too much horseraddish which hit you in pockets and dominated the salmon. And I thought thought the savoury dishes were better than the sweet.

Overall it was definitely a good evening. Just a shame I forgot my tape measure so I couldn't measure the height of the bar........

Chick pea, spinach & ricotta

Castelfranco, red onion & pine nuts

Prawn & artichoke linguine, bottarga

Duck, blood orange & fennel salad

Dessert special

All my eats are added to my map.

Polpo Smithfield
3 Cowcross Street
London EC1M 6DR

London Marathon 2014

The leading pack read by Haille

On Sunday Becks and I headed down to Deptford to watch the London marathon from the same spot that we stood in last year at the top of Deptford High St.

Playing with the live tracking on the London Marathon website, we were able to anticipate when the leaders might arrive and check to see if friends had yet crossed the starting line. We had around a fifteen minute wait until the leaders passed, led by the legend Haille Gebrselassie who was pace making.

They passed in such a blur I wasn't quite sure whether Mo Farah was with the lead group, but thirty seconds later we got our answer as Mo passed with the second pace maker. I was a bit surprised not to see him with the leaders, but it was the sensible choice to run his own race.

The Mobot!

In the third pace group was the the first Kent runner. It was good to see that unlike last year, they'd given the sharp end of the club runners a pace maker. Although unbelievably they didn't let anyone know what time the pace runner would be going for. Not particularly helpful.

We then had a short wait for me runners from my club and other friends to come past us. I did my to give all of them a big shout as I always get a boost when someone calls my name during a marathon.

The third pack featuring John from Kent AC

After the quicker club runners the huge crowds started to arrive. We didn't manage to spot any celebrities this year, after my Michel Roux spot last time. We saw quite a few people in fancy dress, include one man who was doing it incredibly tough carrying a fridge on his back for charity. I gave a loud cheer for someone from Didcot Runners who was probably left wondering who the heck I was.

The last runner we saw before heading off for a coffee was my uni friend Ed. He was looking relaxed and in good form when he passed us. I wasn't quite quick enough with the camera so the only shot I have of him is from the back. However, it does show off my Camelbak rather nicely that I lent to him!

Ed

My running club, Kent AC, had a good day. John Gilbert was selected to run for GB in the European Championships this summer based on his performance and we won the club championships for the second year in a row. However, quite a few people performed just a bit slower than the times they were hoping for. It was a pretty hot day which wouldn't have helped.

Happy birthday to my blog: seven today!

The seventh year of the blog has felt a little slower in terms of post published. However, I've just checked and wrote ninety seven posts over the last twelve months. A lot more than I expected and not a bad haul.

The highlight of the year was probably the mind blowing leopard hunt that I saw in Zambia. The rest of my African adventure in Malawi was pretty special too.

As you'd expect on the blog there was a lot of eating. I was spotted on the Guardian running blog, and set a new personal best in the Abingdon Marathon. Not bad for a stomach ulcer affected race. In fact it was my hardest running year to date. I probably averaged over fifty miles a week for a continuous six months up to Christmas.

It has felt very special to have Becks at my side over the past twleve months. We had a delightful week in Paris and got to share my favourite meal of the year. 

Top ten posts of the year:
The Blogger stats and Google Analytics vary wildly, which is odd, as they are both powered by Google. Below are the top ten posts according to Analytics (as that is what I have used in previous years).

1. Reading the Economist for free on the Kindle - hopefully the Economist's lawyers will never read this one and come knocking on my door.
2. Best kebab in Istanbul - a couple of awesome kebabs from my visit to Istanbul.
3. Garmin Forerunner 100 unboxing - tech reviews can be a real hit. Just a shame I don't know what I'm doing!
4. Habberfield: Ricotta cheesecake taste off - two very good cheesecakes get the recognition they deserve.
5. Camelbak Hydrobak review - runners of the world have come to read the post.
6. Top Eats - people clearly love to search for restaurant recommendations. Bit of a shame I haven't added anywhere to it recently!
7.  Project Sourdough: Air bubbles, the elusive texture - I haven't posted about my bread making much recently, but still enjoy to bake.
8. Galtaji Rajasthan - A non mover at number two in the charts. Indian women in their brightly coloured sarees at Galtaji gets a lot of hits.
9. Kenwood KMix Unboxing - unboxing the mixer for my bread making. Shipped all the way from Germany to Sydney and now back to London.
10. Cooking: Coconut and lime slice - people obviously love recipes containing coconut and lime.

Thanks if you have stopped by during the year.