Page 136 – A Little Bird

7th March 201314th October 2021

Rose Bakery’s new cookbook, How to Boil an Egg

We’ve previously waxed lyrical about the Rose Bakery book, Breakfast, Lunch, Tea and their perfect quiche recipe (see our post here) so we were super excited to hear about the launch of the latest book, How to Boil an Egg. 84 recipes with eggs, from chocolate orange muffins to spinach and ricotta gnocchi, it is written by Rose Garrarini, co-founder of Rose Bakery, with drawings by the botanical artist Fiona Strickland. The first Rose Bakery, an Anglo-French café/restaurant, opened in Paris in 2002, followed by several other branches and then, oh joy, a branch at Dover Street Market here in London (Rose is sister-in-law to Comme des Garcon founder, Rei Kawakubo who asked her to take over the top floor). Our top tip if you’re planning a visit is to try and avoid peak lunchtimes and don’t miss the delicious carrot cake! Oh and here’s a video interview of Rose too.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGPB_fyhb8U[/youtube]

7th March 201314th October 2021

Internet: best sites for renting gorgeous holiday houses

We’ve recently been looking to rent a house in Europe for a holiday this summer and what a frustrating, time-consuming process it’s turning out to be. With so much on offer online, it’s often hard to find exactly what you’re looking for (and once you do, is it really going to turn out what it promises to be in reality?) So we’ve done some research, asked our friends and readers and come up with our go-to list of top holiday house rental sites.

For houses to rent here in Britain, we love Landmark Trust for their quirky choice of historical buildings, whilst for modern design houses, it’s hard to beat Emilyescaped or for ultra-modern, try Living Architecture as co-founded by Alain de Botton. For a more traditional selection (but in no way skimping on cozy or luxury interiors) Sheepskinlife and Underthethatch have a great choice of country cottages that are hard to resist (just try looking!)

For renting holiday houses abroad, we often turn to holiday-rentals which has thousands of homes to rent all over the world, with a wide range of prices, lots of pictures and direct contact with the owners. We know people who rent out their holiday house through the website and they’re always singing it’s praises. At the more modern and luxury end, Spaces42 has some great houses for larger parties and if renting isn’t your thing, for hotels and b&b’s, our favourite websites are i-escape, MrandMrsSmith and for a cheaper option, Alistair Sawdays.

Happy holiday hunting!

21st February 201331st August 2022

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

Deb Perelman isn’t a professional chef or cookery writer, and yet her book, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, has been on The New York Times best seller list since it launched in the USA last October. Photographs of the queues for her book signings have made the news. And her Smitten Kitchen blog, which she started six years ago, about cooking in her tiny New York kitchen, has nearly 10 million readers (it’s a very good blog). The woman’s a phenomenon! We’re so not surprised. Perelman is pedantic, funny, and completely obsessive about her cooking. She seems to enjoy nothing more than tweaking a recipe over and over until it’s the very best version of itself that it can ever be. Plus, she includes all the most valuable lessons she’s learned from other cookbooks in perfectly pithy form. That’s so the person whose recipes we want to get hold of! And they’re all there, up on the blog or now in the book (the recipes on the blog and in the book rarely overlap), perfectly introduced and meticulously explained, with detailed photographs by Pereleman herself.

We’ve been using the book ever since we got it and love it. Perelman writes intimately and well, and her explanations about both why and how to cook things are really enlivening. And her recipes work almost uncannily well, as you might expect when written by an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist. We’ve made the rhubarb triangles on the cover three times no less. They are that good. Her flat roasted chicken with tiny potatoes is wonderful and quick to do. Her Japanese inspired avocado and cucumber tartine is our new lunch time favourite. And her red velvet cake is coloured and flavoured with red wine. And chocolate. Enough said. Get this book.

13th February 201331st August 2022

wonderful house by the coast in Kerry, Ireland

It gives us both pleasure and pain to share the news that one of our favourite houses anywhere is now available to rent. It belongs to a friend of ours and we stay there every summer, and sometimes in the spring. We’ve been there with adults only, and taken loads of kids too, from babies to teenagers and either way it’s always a fantastic holiday. The house, set in an incredible valley near the small town of Caherdaniel, is a few minutes drive from Derrynane beach (see photo below), one of the most beautiful in Europe with acres of white sand overlooked by the ruins of a little abbey. There is everything there you want from a holiday in Ireland: great pubs, good local food, throw-back towns and villages, loads of amazing walks – in the mountains above the house or around the spectacular coast line. You can go horse riding on the beach (our kids particularly loved this), sign up for water sports like surfing or body-boarding, go prawning, fishing and cycling. Or just lie around the house reading or playing games or staring at the landscape and the ever-shifting weather.

It rains a lot in Kerry – there’s no way round it – but the great thing about this house and the fact that it’s glass, is that you never feel holed up inside, held hostage by the weather. The other fact about Kerry weather, rain and all, is that it changes all the time. We’ve been going for years and, save for one gloriously hot summer, it’s never not rained. And yet a day hasn’t passed that we haven’t made it to the beach. The house – a stunner – was relatively recently built too, so it’s cosy and warm while being light and airy. It sleeps 8 comfortably, is owned by a keen cook, so the kitchen is really well equipped, and in the evenings, you can project and watch movies on the big white living room wall (there’s a great DVD collection there as well as a huge library of books). But you can get all the details about the house, and see lots more photos, from the website.

We adore this part of Ireland, and this house in particular, so we can’t recommend it enough (we even wrote about it for Vogue a few years ago), even if its being rented curtails us using it as often as we’d like. Fair enough. And because we’re recommending a house we know so well, owned by a friend, we’ve organised a special 15% discount for any of our readers who might want to rent it. You get the discount simply by quoting ‘A Little Bird.’

6th February 201331st August 2022

Pretty brilliant carrot cake

We’ve got a bit of a thing about carrot cake, and how it hits the spot without making you feel too quesy. Over the years we’ve tried many different recipes and narrowed the winning formula down to two fabulous variations. One is a Gordon Ramsay recipe, which makes a dark, raisin-filled, extra spiced loaf cake, dressed with a syrup rather than icing (we’ll post that recipe another time). The other, our all time favourite, is this, below. We heard about this version from an American friend who told us about having memorable carrot cake somewhere fancy in San Francisco. The cake came with carrot sorbet and cream cheese ice cream (must try that), candied carrot shavings and various other Michelin star-deserving accessories. It sounded delicious, but the detail that made our mouth water most was that the cake, cut into triangles, was made up of many layers, each one sandwiched together with cream cheese icing – so delivering the perfect ratio of cake to icing. After all, half the point of carrot cake (the whole point, even) is its icing. So here, below, is our take on that San Francisco fancy carrot cake.

Note: The instructions look long. Don’t be put off – most of them are about the assembly. The cake itself is incredibly easy and foolproof to make, as is the icing, and both are delicious without any special effects. So you could just spread the icing on and around the cake, then stick it in the fridge for a couple of hours to set. But it’s quite fun doing the layers. We did it with the help of a two year old, which added drama. Each time we make this cake, we strive to get the slices neater and cleaner, but never manage it. But oh, it tastes so good.

Carrot Cake:

210g white flour
1 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
250ml sunflower oil (or other flavourless oil)
190g light brown muscovado sugar
150g caster sugar
3 eggs
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
3-4 medium sized carrots (about 365g before being peeled etc).

Cream Cheese Filling:

450g cream cheese
150g icing sugar
3/4 tsp vanilla extract

Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees C. Line a 23 x 23 x 5cm baking tin with baking parchment paper.

Peel the carrots, cut off their ends, and grate using a coarse grater.

Sift the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a bowl and set aside.

Whisk the oil, brown sugar, caster sugar, eggs and vanilla together in an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. If you don’t have a mixer, you can whisk it all by hand.

Add the flour mixture and continue whisking till the flour is completely incorporated into the mixture.

Stir in the grated carrots. Then scrape the mixture into the prepared pan.

Bake for about 45 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool completely in its tin.

Meanwhile, make the cream cheese filling by beating the cream cheese in a mixer (or by hand) until smooth.

Add the icing sugar, and beat on low speed. Add the vanilla and beat again till the filling is smooth and free of lumps. Keep the cream cheese at room temperature so it is spreadable.

To Assemble:

Place a cutting board on top of your cake tin and, gripping the board and pan together securely, invert the carrot cake onto the cutting board, then peel off the parchment.

Use a serrated knife to cut the cake lengthwise in half. Slice each half into 3 thin layers to get 6 layers in total.

Place a sheet of parchment on a dry work surface, and use two large spatulas to lift up the first cake layer and place it on the parchment. Spread about 1/2 cup of the cream cheese filling over the layer.

Alternate the cake layers and filling, ending with a cake layer. (Press down lightly on each cake layer as it is added so the cake will be compact.) Transfer the filled layers with the parchment onto a baking pan and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Use a serrated knife to cut the cake in half again and then crosswise on the diagonal into alternating triangles, to make about 20 triangles in total.

Ta da!

24th January 201331st August 2022

Food 52

The internet is brilliant for finding recipes and helping with all kinds of cooking. Videos and step-by-step photos make things ultra clear, and other cooks’ comments and questions often clear up baffling instructions. How great, then, to have all this harnessed in one practically perfect food website: Food 52. Created by Amanda Hesser, the New York Times Food columnist and author of The Essential New York Times Cookbook, and her colleague Merrill Stubbs, Food 52 does online what they do in their lives: i.e. share recipes and tips, and discuss, endlessly, all things food. Just as they hoped, the site has become a community of well-informed contributors. Boy, it goes deep. You could spend hours on Food 52. Sure, you might just be after a recipe for Shepherd’s Pie, but it’s hard not to then click on the link for freezer tips, which in turn invites you to explore Braised Moroccan Chicken and so on. The recipes on Food 52 really are good – many are posted by Hesser and Stubbs themselves, and readers are invited to post their best recipes, which are then tested by both the staff at Food52 and the website’s community, and there’s a grading system of sorts too (and a category called Genius Recipes). Anything unclear solicits comments. Alternative ingredients are often suggested as are helpful tweaks. Then there are menu ideas, lots of features, foodie columns on things like feeding kids, or cooking the basics with confidence (How to Know When Fish is Cooked, for example), and so, so, so much more. So yes you can lose hours wandering around the site, but it’s also a brilliantly useful and speedy resource. Last night we were cooking Korean pulled pork (as you do, and more on that another week), and typed in ‘Asian side dishes’ into the search box. A whole load of fabulous recipes, all with photos, suddenly appeared. We did the Asian Garlic Green Beans, which were a big hit. And even if you aren’t interested in cooking, please cast your eye at the category Amanda’s Kids’ Lunch, which shows what Hesser puts in her twins lunch boxes each day. She’s kidding, right?

P.S: for another great food website, check out Weird and Ravenous. It’s much more personal and idiosyncratic than Food 52. A whole different thing in fact. But their video recipes, set to music, are inspired. Great restaurant suggestions in various cities too.

9th January 201314th October 2021

Delicious Gower Cottage Brownies

In our experience, there are brownies and then there are Gower Cottage Brownies. We’ve yet to find somebody who, once they’ve tasted them, hasn’t agreed that they are the best brownies ever. Made in Wales by Kate Jenkins who started selling brownies to her local shop in 2007, she has gone on to win many awards and now runs a thriving business. Packaged in a smart brown box with tissue paper, the brownies (which are always made to order using local free-range eggs) can be accompanied with a message and will be sent out the same day you make your order. You can buy them with or without walnuts and even gluten-free too. We’ve ordered the brownies as presents a number of times and find them especially popular with new mothers – or, of course, you can always order them for a party/tea at home.

31st October 201227th October 2021

Guest blog: Viv Groskop

Pappy’s

Pappy’s are Matthew Crosby, Ben Clark and Tom Parry. I first saw them at Karaoke Circus, a mad bi-monthly comedy extravaganza masterminded by comedian Danielle Ward and musical maestro Martin White. When sketch trio Pappy’s took to the stage it was to sing It’s Raining Men whilst wearing miniscule denim hotpants and dancing around with transparent umbrellas. It culminated with one of them pulling off his hotpants and leaping, naked, into the crowd whilst sprinkling handfuls of glitter dust around himself. Unpredictable, hilarious and immensely silly, Pappy’s Last Show ever was nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award this year and they’re now touring the UK until the end of November. Despite their show title though, it isn’t thankfully, their last outing as they have a new run at the Soho Theatre next April. Oh and Matthew Crosby is also a brilliant solo stand-up. See him. See Pappy’s.

http://www.pappyscomedy.com/tour.php

Kersha Bailey

I was lucky enough to see Kersha Bailey at Power Down, a showcase at The Power House, Metropolis Studios, in Chiswick, a stupidly cool recording studio frequented by persons such as will.i.am, Adele and Madonna. Power Down is an invite-only music showcase which takes place every few months to mark the re-opening of the studios once the latest big-name diva has left the building.

Bailey was last on to play a twenty-minute set in a baking hot, packed room where she silenced the place the second she opened her mouth. Fragile, soulful and powerful all at the same time. Her acoustic ballad Promises is gorgeous but I’m a sucker for covers so I loved it when she mashed it up with Jar of Hearts. Get me with my mashing it up.

http://www.facebook.com/KershaBaileyFan

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8ThRNCnzU[/youtube]

Austentatious

One of the biggest stand-out free shows at Edinburgh this year was Austentatious: An Improvised Novel, a wonderful, completely improvised show where a stellar cast of six weave an ad hoc tale in the style of Jane Austen. Their wit and panache have been rewarded with a coveted residency at Leicester Square Theatre (next shows: Nov 10, Dec 9).

Improv has finally started to get the audience it deserves in London. Other great shows include improvised chat show Monkey Toast (check their website for dates), Grand Theft Impro at The Wheatsheaf on Thursday nights and Hoopla at The Miller on Wednesday nights.

http://austentatiousimpro.com/

http://www.grandtheftimpro.com/

http://monkeytoast.co.uk/

http://www.hooplaimpro.com/

What Would Beyonce Do?

This was the other super-smash-hit free show at Edinburgh which absolutely did not deserve to be a free show. Lucky audience. Comedian and improviser Luisa Omielan presents a no-holds-barred whistlestop tour of her life as a single girl still living at home with her mum to a pumping Beyonce soundtrack. Brilliantly funny, inventive and original, I sat behind Sue Perkins when I saw it in Edinburgh and she could not stop laughing and neither could I. Catch it at the Comedy Cafe in Rivington Street, EC2, every Tuesday until the end of November. Tweet @luisaomielan #whatwouldBeyoncedo to reserve free seats.

http://www.facebook.com/events/122394914574483/?fref=ts

Upstairs Downton: The Improvised Episode

It would be rude for me not to say that this is my favourite thing because I am in it and it is one of the most exciting things I have ever done. In Upstairs Downton we attempt to recover a “lost” episode of everyone’s favourite period drama, guided by our founder, Sir Julian Chappes, using suggestions from the audience. Still trying to work out which is best: playing upstairs or downstairs. Wearing a frilly maid’s hat is pretty hard to beat. “Like” the Facebook page for updates on where our next gig is.

http://www.facebook.com/UpstairsDowntonTheImproVisedEpisode?fref=ts

27th September 201231st August 2022

Hester Gray London – stay in London’s best houses and flats

How we wish Hester Gray London had been up and running when we got married in London a couple of years ago, and had friends and family coming from abroad who wanted to stay somewhere as comfortable as a hotel, but with more flexibility and space and a smaller bill to pay. Hester Gray, whose professional background is in architecture, has set up a sort of cross between a flat agency and a club, whereby she rents out privately owned homes to people wanting to stay in the city. What’s different about Hester Gray London though, is that all of the properties on her books have been carefully chosen by her because they are architecturally interesting, incredibly beautiful, or just great, great houses. Gray doesn’t put details or photographs of the houses she has on her books on her website or in the public domain, but instead specialises in matching the right guests to the right houses, so you get in touch with her via her website and then go from there. (Potential guests are given a user name and password so they can then see the range of properties that have been specifically chosen for them). Meanwhile, though all her properties are private, individual homes, she takes care of all the hassle. She and her team store personal effects, take inventories, supply really great linen, towels, bathroom products and basically jzoosh up each house so that while it is still a home, it has all the advantages of a hotel. She welcomes guests in, shows them round, deals with keys, provides a concierge service, and is on hand for any queries or questions throughout the guests’ stay. Each property is also given a dedicated Little Gray Book, recommending the best things to see and do in the surrounding area, where to eat and shop, as well as a food hamper filled with things like Poilane bread, really delicious cheese and perfectly seasonal fruit (Gray knows all about good food: her mother was Rose Gray, who co-founded and ran the River Cafe until she died in 2010). You can see why people who otherwise wouldn’t dream of renting out their lovely houses are happy to hand over their keys to Gray, and if you are on the other side of the deal it works perfectly too. Gray has a wide range of houses and flats on her books, from Mayfair townhouses to Hoxton lofts, so you can stay somewhere amazing, have total privacy, lots of space, be looked after and still save money – renting a flat or house, even a really great one, nearly always works out cheaper and often significantly cheaper than staying in one of London’s good hotels.

20th September 201214th October 2021

Interiors: Surface View – make your own bespoke mural, tiles, pictures etc

We wish we’d found this website earlier when doing up our flat as we think it’s a genius way to inject lots of character into a home relatively cheaply. Simply choose an image that you like – they have a huge range from Slim Aarons photos to V&A drawings – which you can then manipulate or crop at will before printing it onto a stretched canvas, mural, lampshade or even ceramic tile. Canvases start at £150, whilst posters are only £65 upwards so you can really let your imagination fly.

20th September 201214th October 2021

Recipes: exclusive violet, elderflower and prosecco jelly recipe from Bompas & Parr

Yum, that’s what we thought when we were offered this exclusive recipe from jellymakers extraordinaraire, Bompas & Parr, with it’s delicious combination of violet, elderflower and prosecco. And if you’d like to see more of their work in person (for an edible jellied St Paul’s Cathedral for example), do go along to Design Junction where Bompas & Parr will be showing in the Crafts Council exhibition Added Value? from 20th – 23rd September as part of London Design Festival.

Ingredients for 500ml, enough for 4
5 leaves of gelatine
450ml prosecco or sparkling wine
30ml violet liqueur
30ml elderflower cordial
a squeeze of lemon juice
edible flowers

Cut the leaf gelatine into a heatproof bowl with a pair of scissors. Add enough prosecco to cover (about 100ml/31/2 fl oz/scant 1/2cup). Leave the gelatine to soften for 10 minutes. Bring a pan of water to the boil and place the bowl of softened gelatine on top of the pan of boiling water. Once the gelatine has totally melted, combine the melted gelatine/prosecco mix with the rest of the prosecco by pouring it through a sieve – to remove any unmelted lumps – and into a measuring jug. Squeeze the lemon through the sieve too and add the violet liqueur and elderflower cordial, balancing for taste. Top up with prosecco until you have 500ml.

Place the washed flowers into the bottom of the mould and pour in about one-third of the jelly. Put the mould in the refrigerator for the jelly to set. Leave until set enough so that the flowers seem safely embedded (about 2 hours), then pour over the rest of the jelly mixture and return to the refrigerator.

If you don’t want to set the flowers in the mould first, you can always add everything to the mould at once. Doing a double set, however, makes sure that the flowers float elegantly in the unmoulded jelly rather than sinking to the bottom.

9th August 201231st August 2022

Two Italian cookbooks: Polpo, A Venetian Cookbook (Of Sorts), and Anna Del Conte’s Italian Kitchen

There’s no better time to cook Italian food than in summer, when you can get the right ingredients at their very best. We were given both these cookbooks – one by the grand dame of Italian cooking, the other by a relative newcomer, an Englishman to boot – about two weeks ago and haven’t stopped cooking from them since.

Anna Del Conte is one of the best known and best writers on Italian food in the world, and has written twelve books on the subject. This one, Italian Kitchen, brings together the recipes from four of her classic books (and dishes from all over Italy) into one beautifully photographed (by the brilliant Jason Lowe) bible of a book. Here you’ll find her famous risottto with lemon recipe, and our favourite summer risotto dish, risotto with tomatoes, alongside classics like pesto and bolognese, bruschetta, and chocolate and pear cake. There are also more unusual recipes, like the one we cooked last night and loved, farfalle and courgettes with a pistachio and basil sauce. A fabulous, all-round book that you’ll use over and over again.

Russell Norman has become well known in London for his Ventian bàcari, Polpo, Polpetto, Spuntino, which serve delicious Venetian food (not so easy to find in Venice itself) in settings that manage to be informal, relaxed and glamorous. We love going to Polpo in particular, but because none of Norman’s restaurants take dinner reservations, it can sometimes make for a long evening of drinking at the bar while you wait for a table, then eating too many of the tempting dishes – no bad thing but not something we can do too often these days. So we’re thrilled that we can now make Polpo’s food at home. This book, Polpo, A Venetian Cookbook (Of Sorts) is one of the most beautiful cookbooks we’ve ever seen, bound like a series of Venetian papers, with wonderful photographs. Best of all: the recipes actually work and are pretty straightforward to execute. We made the pork belly, radicchio and hazelnuts, one of the restaurant’s signature dishes, the other night and it was quick and easy to do and fabulous to eat. The grilled zucchini salad (with rocket, chill and breadcrumbs) has also become a firm favourite as have the pork & beef polpette. But there are so many tempting things to cook and eat in this book, all inspired by the food the Venetians eat in Venice, rather than the appalling fare served up to tourists. Even if you’re not a cook, it’s worth getting this book if you are thinking of visiting Venice because the final chapter is an indispensable guide to Norman’s favourite restaurants, bàcari and wine bars in Venice, all of them tucked away in back streets and otherwise hard to find.