Plating Up With The Ledbury

You've macerated, mixed, simmered and sautéed for hours (well, a good 20 minutes); you've added orange blossom water and crystallised stem ginger, jasmine flowers and three quid's worth of vanilla pods; yet when the big reveal arrives, it looks a little...underwhelming. A metaphorical bowl of meh. Sound familiar? You're not alone...

When it comes to home cooking, the resulting dish never seems to look as ravishingly delicious as the perfectly prepped photo of it in the recipe book. Personally, I think it might be my special 'ladle into bowl, serve with paper napkin' technique that hinders my own attempts at fine dining. But help is at hand! This week I’ve teamed up with The Ledbury to bring you professional plating tips to make your food look as good as it tastes. 

Recently named best restaurant in Britain by The Sunday Times, The Ledbury serves up two-star Michelin food in a light, unstuffy setting in the heart of Notting Hill. Whether you’re planning a lavish three-course dinner or casual kitchen lunch, Sous-Chef Greg Austin shows how a few tweaks can take any plate from simple to stunning...

SKETCH IT OUT

Forward planning can really make a difference with presentation. When trying a new dish, sketch it out a few times on paper first and play around with different arrangements. It needn’t be a Picasso, but think of your plate as a canvas for all the different components of your dish and have fun with it!

FIND THE PERFECT PLATE

Your plate should be a backdrop to the dish rather than a distraction. If in doubt, go white and opt for uncomplicated shapes like oblongs and ovals to give the dish a confident, contemporary feel. White isn’t your only option though: coloured plates can provide a striking contrast for showcasing food – think sunset-red lobster on blue porcelain, or creamy white celeriac served on black slate slabs.

THINK ODD

The golden rule of good-looking food? Use odd numbers. Three plump scallops positioned on a plate look far less contrived than two or four perfectly symmetrical ones.

SAUCE POWER

Get creative with your sauces! Use a squeezy bottle to dot circles of puree around a plate, or sweep a paintbrush through sticky reductions for a touch of background texture.

LESS IS MORE

Keep garnishes simple – it’s all about small flourishes that add subtle flair and flavor to a dish. Colourful toppings with punchy flavors like pink peppercorns, pomegranate seeds and peppery mustard and shiso leaves are perfect for a kick of character.

SHARING IS CARING

For big festive occasions when you’re short of time and space, serve up three or four platters of food for guests to help themselves. It’s a great way to present more rustic, thrown-together dishes like salads and antipasti - a vibrant mound of panzanella looks so much more inviting than ten painstakingly plated individual portions.

P.S….

Looking for some colourful plates to pep up your meal? Notting Hill tableware shop Ceramica Blue specialises in vibrant, handmade ceramics that look totally unique. 

Fashionable Furnishings

 

 

A rising star on the runway for two years now, Mary Katrantzou’s Ceci n’est pas une chambre collection for SS11 was quite literally picture perfect. Images scanned straight from the pages of Architectural Digest and World of Interiors were digitally printed in all their high-life luxury upon a parade of dresses, capturing crystal-clear swimming pools, sprawling gardens and palatial parlours in pleasingly polite pastels of baby pink, mint and duck-egg blue. 

Simply put, the concept was just so…clever. Where photography had flattened the architecture into two dimensions, trompe l’oeil prints played at bringing it back to life. But there's more! Katrantzou then took things full circle, decorating her dresses with physical furnishings - candelabra necklaces, billowing chiffon curtains and, best of all, structured skirts modelled on the most kitsch lampshades you’re likely to find outside of the designer’s native Greece. 

Such hyperrealism isn’t just art for art’s sake though – much like its inspiration, René Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe, Katrantzou’s re-imagined interiors cast a fresh eye over familiar objects and play with our perceptions of them. Seventies soft furnishings are suddenly seen as objects of beauty, and surprisingly wearable to boot. A room of one’s own? If only...

Tilda Swinton: The Thinking Girl's Fashion Icon

Strapless? Er, no. Smothered in Swarovski crystals? Not a sparkle in sight. Sun-kissed glow? What is this ‘sun’ you speak of?

So what's left? Let's see. Slicked-back choirboy hair, demi-couture Jil Sander skirt, crisp white shirt, furrowed brow. Now THAT’s what I call a cool approach to Golden Globes glamour. 

Portuguese Custard Tarts

Let me introduce you to the most delicious thing I’ve eaten so far this year: the Portuguese custard tart, or a pastel de nata if you want to be fancy about it. The discovery that there was a Portuguese café about three minutes down my road that sold them for 80p a pop stopped my Saturday right in its tracks. More moreish than your average Bakewell and a bit less in-your-face than a cupcake, my childhood memories are punctuated with these perfect little pastries thanks to yearly family holidays spent in the Algarve.

The first bite was delicately flaky, then soft and chewy as the pastry gave way. The second sank into the cool, creamy custard, scorched on top and accented with a faint egginess below. And the aftermath? An afternoon spent savouring a haze of sunny memories.

My advice would be to find a bakery that sells them and scoff one still warm from the oven, but if you’d like to try your hand at making them then lucky for you the ever-useful Jamie Oliver included a jazzed-up version of them in his recent 30-Minute Meals extravaganza. Recipe below…

Jamie Oliver’s Quick Portuguese tarts with orange caramel

Makes 6 tarts

Plain flour, for dusting

1 x 375g pack of prerolled puff pastry

Ground cinnamon

125g (4½oz) créme fraîche

1tsp vanilla paste or vanilla extract

5tbsp golden caster sugar

1 egg

1 orange

Preheat oven to 200C/ gas mark 6. Dust a surface with flour. Unroll the pastry, then cut it in half so you have two 20cm x 20cm (8in x 8in) squares (put one in the fridge for another day). Sprinkle over a few pinches of ground cinnamon, then roll the pastry into a Swiss-roll shape and cut into 6 rounds. Put these into 6 of the holes in a muffin tin, and use your thumbs to mould the pastry into the holes, so the bottom is flat and the pastry comes up to the top. Put on the top shelf of the oven and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, or until lightly golden.

Spoon the créme fraîche into a small bowl. Add the egg, vanilla paste or extract, 1tbsp golden caster sugar and the zest of 1 orange. Mix well.

Take the muffin tin out of the oven, and use a teaspoon to press the puffed-up pastry back to the sides and make room for the filling. Spoon the créme fraîche mixture into the tart cases, and return to the top shelf of the oven. Set the timer for 8 minutes.

Put a small saucepan on a high heat. Squeeze in the juice from the zested orange and add 4tbsp golden caster sugar. Stir and keep a good eye on it, but remember caramel can burn badly so don't touch or taste.

Pour some caramel over each tart (they'll still be wobbly). Put aside to set.

The Foodie Revolution

We popped it out of its plastic case steaming hot and treacley, the whole candied orange at its centre peeping out like a jellified jewel in the crown. So what was it about Heston Blumenthal’s Waitrose Christmas Pudding that made it December’s hottest buy? Whilst my canny mother had bought ours in November for what at the time seemed like a rather pricey £13.99, come Christmas these limited-edition puds were selling like, um, hot cakes for as much as £200 on eBay. £200! For some contraband sultanas in sponge? For a nation that once accepted boil-in-the-bag cod and a bowl of Angel Delight as fair game, such frenzy over food seemed like something of a revolution. And that’s exactly what it is.

Jamie Oliver and olive oil, Yo! Sushi, those Marks and Spencer’s food-porn ads, knowing how to pronounce “prosciutto”: 30 years ago this was all a distant dream, a foodie paradise found only in more clued-up countries like Japan or Italy. Over the past few decades however, there’s been a tsunami of a sea-change in the UK's view of food. Whether it's Nigella, Jamie or Gordon whom we have to thank for, it's now considered cool for a man to cook up scallops with a cauliflower foam on a casual night in. It’s de rigeur these days to know your rose from your white veal, your snail porridge from your black cod in miso and your scampi from your langoustine (spot the trick question there). The cultural heights of the Westfield London Shopping Centre alone reveal a Benetton-like variety of eats, including Vietnamese, Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Lebanese, Greek, Thai, Japanese, Indian and British. Our stomachs may be steadily expanding, but at least we’re letting them have some fun in the process.

And if you needed any more proof that what we eat now is a hell of a lot more exciting than what it was 30 years ago, cast your eye over this restaurant menu from 1981 (click on the picture and zoom to see it up close). 

 

The Beaujolais in Manchester was one of the city's finest restaurants, serving what was considered top nosh at the time, with top nosh prices to go with it. The images are taken from a total treasure of a book, a compilation of menus from contemporary '80s restaurants called Adventures in Dining: The Gourmet’s Guide to Greater Manchester and North Cheshire. I may have only scanned in one menu to show you, but rest assured, each page reads like a gastronomic Groundhog Day. In 1981 it seems every restaurant – and I mean every single one, whether pricey like The Beaujolais or a cheap little bistro – served the exact same blend of bastardised French fare. To paraphrase:

Starter: Prawn cocktail, avocado, melon, egg mayonnaise, pâté, onion soup. 

Main Course: Steak in cream, chicken in cream, pork in cream, sole poached in cream. Pudding: Crêpe Suzette, baked Alaska, crème caramel.

No sushi, no houmous, no nothing. So when your weekly trip to Wagamama starts to seem a little humdrum, just cast your mind back to a time when noodles were considered nouvelle cuisine and slurp up that bowl of ramen with a smile on your face. 

But returning to the pudding quickly - did Heston deserve the hype? Chock-full of fruit and doused in orange-scented syrup, it tasted delicious, if a little dense. Given it's high-profile past, I’m predicting a pre-emptive August rush on this year’s delivery. Elbows at the ready foodies...

Tea and Sympathy

I’ve gone from loathing it, to liking it, but never quite loving it: for me, a big f**k-off flask of Starbucks will never be as treasured as a nice cup of tea. 

I make no pretence to the contrary that by preferring tea to coffee I lump myself in the fringey, fuzzy, Kate Nash camp of hot drinks. A short and chic shot of espresso conjures up images of kohl-lined eyes and sultry Parisian girls shrugging in café corners. Meanwhile, a steaming mug of Earl Grey sits perfuming the air with a carpeted warmth, enveloping you with softly wrinkled hands delicately dusted with talcum powder. It’s certainly not sexy, but it’s sure as hell appealing. The offer of a cup of tea is Britain’s universal answer to the unanswerable, a comforting filler for unspoken feelings and irreversible truths. Whilst coffee prepares you for the world outside, tea welcomes you back in. With January drizzling miserably at my doorstep, I know which I'd prefer right now. 

Given all this, it's no wonder I instantly loved the concept behind bespoke tea company Blends for Friends. Founder Alex Probyn is what they call a ‘master tea taster’, who spent years blending for one of the world’s best-known brands of tea. Things really took off when he began to make custom blends for friends and family based upon their personalities, and swiftly Blends for Friends was born.

Simply fill in a form online, either about yourself or (as the name implies) a friend, and Probyn will use his expertise to rustle up a tailor-made blend of tea, personally labelled with its own name and description. The form doesn’t just cover preferred flavours, bringing the person’s appearance, their job and any hobbies or interests into the equation as well. I imagine it’s something like that love potion in Harry Potter which has a different aroma for everyone who smells it based upon what they find most appealing - although thinking about it, that casts Probyn as a fictional wizard and me as a massive Harry Potter nerd, so let’s back-track on that metaphor for now. Still, what perfect presents those cute little caddies make! Who said tea couldn't be as cool as coffee?  

And if you need any more incentive to turn over to tea, why not do a Lady Gaga and invest in a statement cup and saucer to sip it with? Pinkies poised at the ready...

Reiko Kaneko Drip & Lip cups, stained with 24-karat gold

Blaue Blume lace and legs cup

Jasper Conran for Wedgwood Chinoiserie cup and saucer

Strange Fruits

Fashion is a strange fruit, straddling a strange dichotomy. It prescribes what people should wear whilst celebrating personal expression: clothes are at once a reflection of self and a reflection of season. But when it all boils down to it, which is it really? As February’s issues of Vogue, Elle and Harper’s thud softly through letterboxes this week, stacked full of SS11 trend guides, does studying them signal an act of individual interest or one of sheep-like compliance? 

Skeptics seize upon the latter description, scorning seasonal shifts in what is considered stylish as the workings of a mob mentality. Yet fashion insiders have always insisted upon the former, fashion as self-expression, adamant that what they wear is never anything but personal preference. Alexa Chung declares, “I’m not very good with trends. I don’t really know what’s in or out.” But with such pledges of non-allegiance, of unaffected originality in the face of current fashions, where can trends ever come into the equation?

Herein lies what it means to be fashionable today – it’s the trick of being both seen and unseen, to become a part of the crowd whilst at the same time setting oneself apart from it. Chung slips on a new-season Christopher Kane dress, aligning herself with those who can recognise the designer and trend it belongs to, but then diverts the look from its expected editorial direction with a personal twist, a battered men's briefcase or a grandma knit. This roundabout route is the road to fashion itself: an insiders-outsiders club of non-conformity, where entry begins with a trend and ends with the individual. We may all start in the same place each season, with the same magazines and shows and clothes, but where we might end up is a different, far-reaching matter entirely. 

So as a little inspiration for your own individual mapping of the coming season, take a look at these gems from the legendary Japanese street-style magazine, Fruits. Shot by Shoichi Aoki throughout the ‘90s, the resulting book, also called Fruits, is a cornucopia of the weird and wonderful, and one which shows that caring about fashion is never about following, and always about having fun: sheep we are most definitely not. 

 

 

 

Theyskens' Theory

 

 

 

 

Impossibly flat stomachs slanted skywards, naval-grazing T-shirts draped just so and a blissful blank canvas of clothes to choose from. Could anything be more appealing after a month of so much excess? Although minimalism was already established as one of AW10’s most coveted looks, Olivier Theyskens’ debut collection as Artistic Director of Theory somehow manages to make the trend that much cooler for SS11. It’s less elegant, more urban, and a whole lot more wearable than autumn’s pristine palette and don’t-touch-me tailoring. You could take a ride on the Tube in those perfectly slouched pants without last season's forensic fear of dirtying your just-dry-cleaned camel coat. It isn’t loud, but it’s certainly a collection that Theyskens should be very proud of. I’ll be having one of everything, please. 

The Ottolenghi Detox

Lose half a stone. Don’t lose my iPhone. Take part in a sponsored ‘fun run’ (I’m trying to ignore the oxymoronic resonance of that phrase). Those are mine, and I imagine you might have some too: New Year’s resolutions. The most popular? Ah, of course - get healthy. You can almost taste it in the air at this time of year, the sense of deep, hungry despair as men and women go about their daily lives on a January detox, heavy-lidded with caffeine-withdrawal symptoms and lumbered with a telltale gym-induction limp.

Now in no way am I a pessimist, but I give mostly everyone – including myself – a month. It’s not that I question people’s resolve, but I do question the exclusion of fun from your life for an entire year. Nobody wants to end up sitting on the sofa alone at home, avoiding the pub, watching repeats of The Biggest Loser and nibbling on a corner of Vogue for some dietary fibre. So do feel smug for a few weeks, then please, retoxify as soon as possible - you’ve earned it.

However, there is one New Year’s resolution I intend to stick to: to cook my way through the latest Ottolenghi book, Plenty. Israeli-born Yotam Ottolenghi’s four delicatessen-cum-cafés, dotted around the yummy-mummy districts of London, are vegetarian meccas. Whether marinated in oils, deeply chargrilled, rubbed with herbs or sprinkled with spices, the Ottolenghi approach to vegetables is anything but boring. There is meat and fish on the menu too, but here, for once, roots, pulses, grains and leaves are the star attractions rather than the side dishes - and there isn't a quiche in sight.

Since receiving Plenty for Christmas, I’ve basically slept with its softly padded cover under my pillow every night, so seductive are its detoxifying dishes. The recipes are the perfect antidote to any junk-food cravings – they just exude health, but in an intensely delicious, mmm-my-God-ing manner. Last night I gave the celeriac and lentils with hazelnut and mint dish a go. Oh my. No, seriously. Mmm-my-God. The comforting nuttiness of celeriac paired with the earthy puy lentils, the soft crunch of roasted hazelnuts with the mint biting through in the background. It's heaven. I urge you to try it before all the resolutions go out the window and it’s back to Thai takeouts. Find the recipe below the here's-one-I-made-earlier photo...

Celeriac and lentils with hazelnut and mint (taken from Plenty, by Yotam Ottolenghi)

Serves 4 (or 2 depressed detoxers)

60g whole hazelnuts (skin on)

200g Puy lentils (I cheated and used Merchant Gourmet’s ready-made packets)

700ml water

2 bay leaves

4 thyme sprigs

1 small celeriac (650g), peeled and cut into 1cm chips

4 tbsp olive oil

3 tbsp hazelnut oil

3 tbsp red wine vinegar

4 tbsp chopped mint

Salt and black pepper

Preheat the oven to 140C/275F/ gas mark 1. Scatter the hazelnuts over a baking tray and roast in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven, set aside to cool down, then chop roughly.

Put the lentils, water, bay leaves and thyme sprigs in a small saucepan. Simmer for 15-20 minutes, or until the lentils are al dente, then drain into a sieve. Remove and discard the bay leaves and the woody sprigs.

Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, bring plenty of water to a boil, drop in the celeriac, along with some salt, and simmer for 8-12 minutes, or until just tender. Drain.

In a large bowl, mix the hot lentils (make sure they don't cool down - lentils soak up flavours much better when they're piping hot) with the olive oil, two tablespoons of the hazelnut oil, the vinegar, a few grinds of black pepper and plenty of salt. Add the celeriac, stir, taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary.

If you're serving this straight away, stir in half the mint and the hazelnuts, then pile in a big heap on to a suitable serving dish. Drizzle the remaining hazelnut oil over the top, then garnish with the rest of the mint and nuts.

If you're planning on serving it cold, wait for the lentil and celeriac mixture to cool down, taste again, then make a final adjustment to the seasoning. Add the rest of the hazelnut oil, the mint and the nuts just as you do when serving it hot. 

Say It With Biscuits

I don’t know about you, but for the past two days I’ve basically been lying prostrate on the sofa recovering from this year’s food-centric festivities. As always, I decided to take an all-or-nothing approach to Christmas eating, apart from without the nothing bit. Mince pie? Why not! A pint of custard to wash it down with? Naturally. How about a brandy-cream chaser? Oh go on then, I’ve earned it. And repeat, ad nauseam.

And so it is with great, unmovable girth that I gaze at the list of thank-you cards I must write. My fingers are practically too fat to type, let alone grasp a pen. But what’s this? A solution! A delicious, sugary solution! Biscuiteers is an online, London-based company (although they deliver all over the world) that specialises in – you guessed it – biscuits. Not just any old HobNob mind you: expertly hand-decorated and extremely moreish, it’s best to think of them as a very British alternative to New York’s now ubiquitous death-by-icing cupcake. 

With an exceptionally chic range of collections to choose from, including handbags, heels and poodles, they make the perfect present for anybody who likes to receive surprise sugar-fixes in gift-wrapped tins (i.e. everyone). They also do brilliant biscuit cards, delivered with a personal message. Forget January detoxes, what could be better than brightening someone’s day by saying thanks with one of these deluxe digestives? 

www.biscuiteers.com

American Vogue Goes East

The Cecil Beaton original, as featured in Vogue in 1948

There was a small flurry of criticism last month over a US Vogue December feature on Far-East Asia’s supermodels in the making. Entitled Asia Major, the controversy came in the subheading, “A new crop of models from China, Japan and South Korea is redefining traditional concepts of beauty”, where “traditional concepts of beauty" were placed in opposition to the models evidently ‘exotic’ appeal.

It's a disappointing thing for US Vogue to compartmentalise the growing prominence of Asian models into a curiosity of fashion rather than a fact, makeup artist Dick Page adding in the feature that “It’s mostly economics […] Everybody in the fashion/beauty industry recognizes the importance of global markets, and currently, China, Taiwan, and South Korea are at the forefront. The upshot is that customers want to see some version of themselves represented.” Drawing this kind of conclusion pinpoints the popularity of Asian models as an inevitability of economy rather than a mark of fashion’s increasing diversity, serving only to further sever the models from any valid connection with Western fashion other than one of profit.

Whilst the results of the shoot, photographed by Steven Meisel, are undeniably stunning – a baroque-and-roll tableau inspired by a 1948 Cecil Beaton portrait, where Grace Coddington mixed aristocratic Oscar de la Renta gowns with spiky mohawks and macaroons – it’s also undeniable that there’s something uncomfortably uniform about the way the models have been styled. With identikit makeup and perfectly poised facial expressions, there’s simply no interest in the individual in the way there would have been had it been an editorial involving Rosie, Karlie and Lindsey rather than Hyun, Tao and Liu. Interestingly, US Vogue still has yet to feature an Asian model on its front cover. 

So in celebration of Asian individuality, I leave you with Tokyo-born Tao Okamoto – who else could nail cool-as-ice androgyny better than this? It almost makes me long for a pudding-bowl Beatles haircut myself. Ok, maybe not. 

 

 

Colour Me Creuset

Today signalled a scary new stage in my life: I chose kitchenware over clothes. Intending to scour the Selfridges sale in the hope of finding some inappropriately jazzy shoes that wouldn’t go with anything, I instead found myself hypnotically heading towards the home department. Once there, said jazzy shoes skipped – or more likely, staggered - straight out of my mind, for across the room I saw the glazed gleam of Le Creuset's rainbow-bright pots and pans, and above them, significantly, a sign: 20% off. Jackpot!

Le Creuset’s cast iron cookware is the stuff of foodie-cum-fashionista dreams. Founded in France in 1925, the signature burnt orange shade of enamel originally used has since been expanded into an array of to-die-for colours, including a rich cherry red, a deep plum and their latest, a darkly glittering midnight blue. With such a delectable selection of shades, I can't help but think of them as the big brother to that other delightful French institution, the macaroon.

Spot le difference:

 

But Le Creuset is no mere foodie fad: its extortionately priced products make for true investments. To create each piece the melted materials must first be encased within an individual mould, which is then cracked open after casting, the enamel hand-finished by French artisans. With that kind of heritage behind their products, it’s no wonder Le Creuset's reassuringly hefty casserole dishes are the hallmark of a well kitted-out kitchen - they seem to shine with effortless culinary prowess. 

So it was with great excitement that I embarked upon my first Le Creuset investment. Resisting the ridiculously cute heart-shaped ramekins, I went for a utensils jar and a dinky oven dish, both in a beautiful sea-blue shade of teal. Not exactly flash enough to cook up a Julia Child-style banquet with, but it’s a start - and given the brand’s reputation for lasting a lifetime, at least I can take my time building up the collection - one Christmas list at a time...

 

 

www.lecreuset.co.uk