The Alternate Valentine's Dinner @ Lewisham College

Becks

For the second year in a row we went to the Alternate Valentine's Dinner at Lewisham College, just to prove how original, spontaneous and romantic I am!

The evening is held by the Mayor of Lewisham as a fund raiser for his chosen charity. The room is mainly filled with groups out for the evening, but there were a few other couples dotted around the room too. This year we were tucked in corner, which was better than being located next to the bar like last year, however, it did mean that we didn't get to speak to any of the budding chefs.

Last year we had the second year students cooking for us. I'm not sure which group of students we had this year, but we both thought that the food was of a higher standard. The celeriac with flaky Stilton cheese straw was good, the sauce served with the chicken was a star too. However, the highlight of the night was undoubtedly the dessert plate which looked great and wouldn't have been out of place in a smart restaurant. The lemon curd with micro basil was a combination that worked surprisingly well.

Like last year the waiting staff were friendly and enthusiastic, but not the most polished. I'm not sure if you can study how to be a waiter at the college? The flower arranging students however did a good job with table decorations that we were able to take home with us.

This year had the added bonus that we won a bottle of wine in the raffle too!

Roulade of smoked salmon

Celeriac soup with Stilton cheese straw

Chicken stuffed with mushrooms and pan haggerty potatoes

Dessert plate

A weekend in Cardiff

Becks, Andrew and Ruth at St Fagans

The weekend before last we decided to take advantage of my grandmother's house being empty and headed to Cardiff for the weekend. I thought it might be a little odd staying in her house without her, but there wasn't an unusual feeling to be had and I had a lovely time on the first night looking through old photo albums on the Friday night.

On Saturday we visited St Fagans, the National History Museum of Wales. Built in the grounds of St Fagans Castle (more a large country house), over forty buildings from across Wales have been moved to St Fagans to preserve and show off the culture of Wales.

We were very lucky with the weather and, despite the horrendous weather, it was dry whenever we walked between the buildings. I remembered part of the site from a visit as a child, the row of miners cottages in particular.

There were lots of new discoveries too. We found a wood fired bakery where we picked up a loaf of bread to take home. Despite my love of all things sourdough I don't think I've had any wood fired bread before. You could smell the smoke on the crust, but I didn't think it made much difference to the taste.

Pigeons at Roath Park Lake

 We didn't make the best of our Sunday, although I think we all fancied a lie in and were secretly happy to stay our of the rain. We had a quick walk round Roath Park Late before heading back to London. A few more items liberated from grandma's house safely tucked in our bags.

Competing in turbulent environments: Lessons from Formula One

Last night I went to the Cass Business School to attend Competing in turbulent environments: Lessons from Formula One.

If you're an F1 geek the event was a big draw with an excellent line up of guests. I would have paid to attend but the fact it was free and they gave us complimentary wine and canapés was a bonus!

The panel included:
Joe Saward - the only F1 journalist I read avidly and someone who I've seen a couple of times before.
James Allen - BBC F1 commentator
Nick Fry - former CEO of Brawn and Mercedes F1 team
Garry Anderson - F1 designer, technical director and BBC pundit
Amada Goodall - Cass lecturer and author of a paper on leadership in F1
Mark Jenkins - academic at Cranfield University who specialises in F1

The evening started with each of the panel giving a three and a half minute (the chair was very precise!) overview on what they thought made F1 on a successful business.

I thought Nick Fry articulated it most clearly by outlining three key criteria: clarity of the objective, getting the right people and then leaving them too it. It could apply to any business.

Nick Fry was all about the process and Gary Anderson was much more about the gut reaction when making key decisions.

Academic Amada Goodall gave a short overview of some research she's done studying F1 team principles over the last forty years and seeing whether former drivers, mechanics, professional businessmen or another category I can't remember make the most successful team principles in terms of points won. Interestingly the drivers came out on top. Without irony it sounds like it would be an interesting read.

It was clear during the evening that there were many levels of business during F1. The teams are one level and the general impression was that the teams were run well. In many ways they are just like any other business, but they like to think they innovate more quickly.

The business is less functional when you look at how the commercial rights are structured, unless you are Bernie Ecclestone or CVC Partners in which case it does very nicely.

There are also areas in where F1 is completely lacking; branding building and social media were two areas drawn out.

Given the title of the evening, and the fact the event was held in a Business School, I think the organisers were probably hoping to explore what F1 could learn from business and vice versa. I'm not sure the evening did that, and it was only in the questions that the panel talked about F1 technologies crossing into the 'real' world.

However, I'm not sure that the audience were there for a the 'academic' side of the night.
Like me, I think most people were there to hear some insightful conversation about F1and the evening delivered that nicely.

Moto G: the great leap to Android

I have a habit on keeping mobile phones for a while, with each one lasting me an average of just under four years. My last phone was a hand me down too. Seeing the broken power button and all of the numbers rubbed off on my ancient Nokia, my friends Kren and Dave took pity on me and sent their old iPhone 3GS in my direction.

I'm in the lucky position to be wiring up a new house within the next year. I haven't decided exactly what the set up will be, but I have thoughts of wifi thermostats and wireless music systems. I see a phone or tablet as the controller for whatever system I install. Will iOs or Android or Android be the best platform?

Before I could work out what I wanted, the headphone jack and then more crucially the power button, broke on my 3GS. A phone without a power button is a surprisingly annoying to live with. It was only four and a half years old!

Knowing I wasn't going to decide on the home tech set up any time soon, I made a purely cost based decision and picked up a Moto G for £150. It was time for an Android experiment.

I've been using the new phone for just under a week now. Here are some first impressions.

The Good
Coming from a four year old handset the Moto G feels lightening quick. While apps were sluggish on my old phone everything feels super speedy. The screen is lots better too. I expect I would have seen this uplift with any new phone rather than the Moto G being particularly special.


On the Android OS side of things I'm liking:
- The GMail app works a lot better for me than the email app on iOS. Being able to add labels and marking messages as unread just seem to work a lot better. I can also easily view more than the 50 most recent emails.

- I like the flashing LED which tells me I've got a new email or test message. It's like the Blackberry I had seven years ago and I like it.

- The notifications in the top left of the home screen is a really functional way to know if I have a new email / sms / tweet or instagram and then I can access it with a couple of swipes. The iPhone had the whole pull down from the top of the screen thing too, but I never found it very useful.

- Having widgets on the home screen so I can see the first line of an email or text message without having to unlock my phone is great.

- A bit of a fear of moving to Android was how my iTunes music would interact with my new phone. I download the Google Music Player onto my Mac and it uploaded all of my music free of charge and is now available on my phone.

Bad
Overall I'm really happy with the phone, but there are a few things which niggle. I'm sure I might be able to work round them in time and none are bigger enough to make me want to go back.

- I listen to podcasts more than I do music. It's disappointing that Android doesn't have a native podcast app. I've installed AntennaPod which seems reasonable. I need to do a bit more testing to see if all the podcasts are available outside of iTunes and if auto-downloads work.

- I liked having all my photos synced to my old phone and, even though I upload to Picassa/Google+ they don't seem to sync to my handset despite what settings I try. Checking a few forums I think this might be a 'feature' of the version of Android Motorola installs as it works on stock Android / Nexus handsets. Probably my biggest bug bear to date.

- The iPhones have a great little button which you can flick to turn the phone onto vibrate. I used it a lot when I go into meetings and want to discretely set my phone to silent. You have to use the menus to turn the phone onto vibrate which is a bit annoying.

- The bad side of Google Music is that it wants you to have all your music in the cloud. So far I've only found a way to 'pin' single albums at a time as available offline on the phone. Hopefully I'll find out a way to save more albums at the same time.


When I got a MacBook a few years ago I was a bit hesitant at being locked into the Apple ecosystem and therefore never fully jumped into the iCloud keeping my emails, contacts and calendars elsewhere. That undoubtedly helped in the transition. The phone was quite fiddly to set up as I got used to a new ecosystem. Everything seems possible, it just takes a bit more work to get it the way you like it.

There are no regrets so far.

Cooking: A couple of Christmas cakes

Bourke St Bakery Christmas Cake

Back in September I mentioned that I'd taken responsibility for the family Christmas Cake for the first time and had started my fruit soak using the Bourke St Bakery method.

Making the cake itself was relatively easy. You soak the fruit for five / six weeks giving it a stir every once in a while. I got into the habit of mixing mine up on Monday morning and then used the same spoon for my cereal. Alcoholic? Who me?

When it came to baking the cake I was surprised how little flour you add. The cake is practically just fruit with just a bit of a binding agent. The recipe called for the finished cake to have a weekly feed of brandy in the run up to Christmas. I only bothered twice.

The finished cake was pretty great. Rich, fruity, moist and a mild smell of Christmas. Dad thought it had a bit too much brandy, although I'd disagree and I'm normally sensitive to booze in a cake. If I make the cake next year I'd be tempted to add some flaked almonds to add a different texture.

Date, coffee and chocolate cake

 My cousin was given 10kg (yes, ten) of Saudi Arabian dates for Christmas by a grateful student. I didn't realise that Saudi Arabia is a bit producer of dates, but apparently they are.

Some of the dates found their way to me and I decided to bake a cake with half of them last weekend.

I did a bit of searching online and couldn't find a recipe that inspired me until I landed on this one. I went with it because I had all of the ingredients in my cupboard rather than anything else.

I'm not usually a fan of coffee cakes (this recipe had a cup of coffee in it), but I think the end result worked really well. It might be a bit of an opinion divider though as Becks wasn't the greatest fan. Her little cousin had three slices and her uncle two though, so there are others on my side....

Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined & Royal Academy

Last night I went to a preview of Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined at the Royal Academy. I have no idea why I was invited, but with my own house project underway I couldn't resist an exhibition about architecture.

Before we went into the exhibition curator, Kate Goodwin, gave us a short introductory talk. To paraphrase and add some of my own thoughts. Architecture is something you experience, rather than merely look at. Spaces change during different times of day and at different times of the year. We all know good architecture when we are in it. But how do we describe and replicate it? Quite daunting. Will the house I am designing be an enjoyable place to live?

The Royal Academy invited seven international architects to design pieces of architecture for the exhibition spaces and main courtyard. The resulting displays were all very different.

The first room I visited was the contribution by Chilean architects Pezo von Ellrichshausen, pictured above. They have gone for mass and presence. Each of the cylinders is a staircase which allows you to climb up to the giant platform above. The beauty of the design, for me, was how close up you could get to the ceiling of the Academy, not a perspective you usually get.

Next up I went into Japanese architect Kengo Kama's creation split across two rooms. His minimalism was in stark contract to Chile. Thin whisps of bamboo rise from the floor beautifully. One room smells of cedar and the other tatami. Graceful and peaceful it was my favourite installation.

On my way to Burkino Faso I saw the contribution from one of the Porugese architects. They'd created life size (i.e. enormous) replicas of the Academy's doorways and positioned them as if they'd been swung out of the wall. The architect I'm working with has been talking about pulling one space into another. I didn't think the installation worked which gives me things to think about!

Architect Diébédo Francis Kéré from Burkino Faso has created a honeycomb structure. Buckets of straws positioned round the edge of the room invite you to interact with the architecture. In a back corner of the structure I fashioned an 'E' from my straw and inserted it into the honeycomb. I'm keen to re-visit the exhibition and see if it is still there.

As I passed deeper into the exhibition halls I arrived at Chinese architect Li Xiaodong's creation. I was initially unimpressed by the maze created of larch (?). The larch felt clunky inside the wooden frame and in places not too well put together. The surprises and enjoyment of the space came in the small hidden rooms you discovered and the large mirrored rock garden. It ended up being my second favourite installation.

Last up was Grafton Architects, from Ireland, contributing a suspended structures in the roof of the Academy. It was a clever idea that should take advantage of the large roof lights and create a changing view throughout the day as the world outside changes. The only problem was we were visiting at night…..

In addition to all the installations there is a video featuring all of the architects talking about their creations which is well worth a look.

Overall it was an excellent evening. It gave me ideas of things to do in my own house and also a couple of things to avoid. It was a privilege to visit without the crowds too.

Restaurant Review: ReyNa Turkish, New Cross

Sucuk

On Saturday night Becks and I headed to New Cross, highly indecisive about where we wanted to go, but knowing that we definitely wanted to try somewhere new. We walked past the newly opened Birdie Num Nums, but it appears they don't open for dinner. Next on our list was ReyNa, a Turkish restaurant that opened in New Cross over a year ago.

They weren't full, but had everyone sitting in one half of the restaurant which worked well to create some atmosphere. There weren't as many students as we expected considering we were so close to Goldsmiths Uni. Perhaps term hasn't started yet?

Saksuka

Feeling hungry we decided to order three starters to share as well as a couple of mains. The sucuk (£3.50) and saksuka (£3.20) arrived at our table first, along with a bowl of hummus that we hadn't ordered.

The sucuk, Turkish sausage, was spiced and had a nice flavour from the grill. The saksuka wasn't quite what we expected, my knowledge extending as far as seeing Ottolenghi make one on TV. It was a mix if grilled aubergine, peppers, onions and a mildly spiced tomato sauce. It reminded of a ratatouille, but was no less good for that.

Grilled halloumi

We had to prompt for our grilled halloumi (£3.25), we think they might have got hummus and halloumi confused. The halloumi was possibly my favourite starter, incredibly salty it hd a nice tang.

With our starters came a basket of Turkish bread. Perfectly good bread, but it didn't hit the heights of Meze Mangal's from just up the road.

Lamb Iskender

As a main course I ordered the lamb Iskender (£9.90). The smokey barbecued lamb was mixed in with bread and covered in a tomato sauce. There were two huge dollops of yoghurt on each end of the place and small plate of rice served on the side.

The lamb was the standout element of the dish by far. I wasn't sure about the small cubes of bread burried beneath the lamb. It just seemed like disappointing filler when you got one.

Lamb Ribs

Becks ordered the lamb ribs. I managed to sneak a rib (or was that two?) and they were nicely barbecued and invited to be eaten with your fingers.

Dinner at ReyNa was good value and the food was enjoyable too. It didn't hit the heights of my memories from Meza Mangal just up the road. The theatre in Meze Mangal (which could have been lost now they have expanded) wasn't there. Meze Mangal cooks over charcoal too which makes a difference.

ReyNa
379 New Cross Road
New Cross
SE14 6AT