The biggest gig of our street food summer saw eight of our finest F&G ladies chugging down the M4, wipers at full speed and visibility impaired by torrential hail. 4 of us travelled in a battered 80s camper called Eric with a top speed of 45mph and the others in a truly terrible van packed to the rafters, which broke down if the speedometer crept even a millimeter over 60mph. Big respect to Annabelle for driving the beast with a smile and cracking jokes throughout! Much to our surprise, we eventually reached the beautiful foothills of Sugar Loaf Mountain for Green Man Festival 2012 – our magical muddy home for 5 crazy days in August. We slept very little, worked bloody hard and met some amazing people. Bring on next year!

The team and their beautiful flatbread masks at the F&G Wrap Party (sometime around 2am on Monday morning).

We thought we may never recover. Then an email, sent from the gods of travel PR themselves, bounced into our inbox. The lovely people behind Featherdown Farms were inviting us to camp in luxury at one of their nationwide sites and experience that toe-curling term ‘glamping’ in all its ridiculous glory.  This could not have come at a better time – we were still suffering from motion sickness after a week on solid ground! We jumped at the chance to trade shin deep mud for wood floors; damp sleeping bags for freshly laundered white linen; cold baked beans scooped from the tin with a coffee stirrer for fresh seafood eaten at a table with a fork; and manic chorizo griddling for slow stove-top cooking. So we rinsed off the wellies, scooped up two girlfriends and Rosie’s 2 year old son and, glutons for long drives by now, set off for Boswarthen Farm at the very tip of beautiful Cornwall. Here’s some of our wonderful weekend in pictures:

The kitchen

Ellie in socks with smoked mackerel paté

These lazy chickens didn’t lay one egg and we paid £10 to look after them. Pah!

Camembert to be baked in the fire with garlic and white wine

View from our tent

El dishing out delicious fish stew: monkfish, bream and bass fresh from Cornish seas stewed with potatoes, cream, tarragon & kale and served with generous handfuls of blanched and buttered samphire.

Our hob and our heating.

Beautiful mulled nectarines (recipe below)

Those nectarines were so good, here’s a quick recipe for you:

4 nectarines, stoned and sliced
Slosh of white wine
2 star anise
6 cardamon pods
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cloves
1 tbsp sugar
Grating of nutmeg
Clotted cream to serve

Wrap everything in foil and place the parcel in a pan over a fierce heat to soften but not turn to mush. They took about 20 minutes on the wood stove but probably no more than 10 at home where you could also sling them in a hot oven. Serve with a big dollop of clotted cream and a glass of white wine. So good.

Our stay at Boswarthen Farm was truly memorable and we were the most relaxed we’ve been all year. Thank you to Voyager PR for inviting us and to Adrian and Maddy for taking such good care of us city folk!  Now the weather is drawing in and our stall is hibernating in storage for a while, it’s all eyes on FRENCH & GRACE as we launch our new Autumn menu, get the heaters in and welcome some wonderful new cooks to the team. Join our mailing list here for more regular updates on the restaurant, the book, the street food and other random adventures.

Love,
Rosie & Ellie

First things first:

Ham hock, mustard and kale casserole
One of our most popular specials to date, this creamy casserole marries some of our favourite British flavours and never fails to sooth and sate the cold and hungry crowds, flocking to Brixton Village from ever further afield after the recent press deluge. Our waitresses have been asked for the recipe over many an empty bowl and it would be rude of us not to let you in on the action.

Serves 8
2 large unsmoked gammon knuckles (rinsed)
2 bay leaves
Pinch each of fennel seeds, cloves & pepper corns
Glug of olive oil
2 medium onions (red/white or one of each), sliced
1 pinch fennel seeds
1 small white/green cabbage, sliced
6 thyme sprigs, leaves picked
3 garlic cloves, finely sliced
Splash of white wine vinegar
1.5 litres chicken stock
2 tablespoons dijon mustard
2 tablespoons wholegrain mustard
2 x 400g tins cannellini beans, drained
Pinch of grated nutmeg
3 large handfuls of curly kale, chopped into strips
Sourdough toast, caperberries & olive oil to serve (optional)

Cover the knuckles in water (or better still, cider), throw in the bay leaves, fennel seeds, cloves and pepper corns, cover and bring to the boil. Simmer for 2-3 hours until the meat starts shrinking away from the bone. Drain, leave until cool enough to handle and shred the meat, discarding any fat or gristle along the way. Set the shredded hock aside for later.

Pour a long glug of olive oil into a large saucepan over a medium heat, add the onions, a pinch of fennel seeds, the sliced cabbage, thyme leaves and nutmeg and stir until everything is soft and pale. Add the garlic and white wine vinegar and stir for a few minutes before pouring in the stock. Bring slowly to the boil, stir in the mustard and beans and leave to simmer for 5 minutes before adding  the shredded ham hock and kale. Simmer for another 5 minutes and then remove from the heat, stir in the cream and give everything a generous going over with the pepper mill. Taste and add more nutmeg/mustard/seasoning to taste.

Serve with toasted sourdough, caperberries and a drizzle of olive oil.

Now if pig’s knuckles don’t turn you on, then how about this:

That’s right, two of our mighty wraps (lamb merguez or halloumi) for a tenner. Not only that but each wrap earns you a stamp on your F&G loyalty card and the tenth is on us. Now that’s generous and, if you live, work or waste your time in Brixton during the week it makes total sense. In other exciting restaurant news, from March 16th we will be staying open until 11pm so we won’t have to decant you and your wine out onto the streets of Brixton before you’ve asked for the bill! You might even have time to for a coffee and one of those amazing puddings from the blackboard photo up there.

Some of you are starting to make impatient grunting noises about the book and we’re very sorry to say that publication has been delayed by a month. We’re so impatient to hold the thing and get it up on a shelf in the restaurant for all to see but we’ll have to hold tight until late May – at least we’ll have t-shirt weather by then and you can get straight on with cooking our favourite spring/summer recipes. In the meantime, here’s a cheeky preview exclusively for you, our loyal blog readers:

We’re so pleased with the look and feel of every page – it truly feels like our book and we really hope you like it too. Well that lot should fill you up for now and we’ll be back shortly with news of our Spring menu and other exciting changes at F&G, plus more recipes of course and no doubt a bit of profound moaning and astute weather analysis! See you soon.

Rosie x

“Urch. Morning again.”

“Can’t get up.”

“Must get up.”

“But I can’t.”

“There’s nothing you can do about it.”

Kind of Beckettian, but without the mud. If that internal monologue doesn’t do the feeling justice, I distinctly recall every single morning feeling as though I’d been clobbered round the head with a bottle of vodka in the minutes between collapsing in bed and waking to the ringing of the alarm clock. It didn’t help that we were driven to drink through the latter parts of 13 hour shifts – which ran back to back for 4 days, every week – but drink or no drink, it was hard, hard work.

And it still is. It’s required everything of our joined mental faculties to keep on top of the orders, the staff, the cooking, the cleaning, the logging of fridge temperatures (it’s glamorous.) Those who saw us at the start witnessed the un-pretty, deeply etched bags from under our eyes which have just about lifted, and I’m sure they’d be kind and comment on the running of the place feeling more smooth. We must be kind on oursleves too, and enjoy the progress along with the journey. Not only that but we’ve started to claim back wedges of the social lives we had stolen from us in October and that too feels good. Slowly, carefully, we are finding what is called ‘a balance’, and this, after all, is half the point of being self-employed.

This week, however, Britain is experiencing a cold snap and we have no customers. It’s so cold in the mornings that the oven goes on – door open – to heat the room up and loosen the solid bottle of olive oil from Brixton’s arctic grip. Stamping around with nine layers and several cups of tea, the morning prep and shopping trip gets underway. And then I wait. And in come some staff. And we wait together. We serve a handful of brave local workers who manage to take off their coats and relax over bowls of hot specials and mugs of tea. But then they go, and we remain. It’s a bit of a shock, having enjoyed the surprisingly fruitful weeks of a busy January. But then that’s business, and quite specifically, Brixton Village. Come the warmer winds, our customers will quite rightly return.

Anyway, the point of all this is that it’s been quiet of late and we’ve missed the blog. We finally have a chance to say something during this period of chilly reflection and we would like to state that it’s our aim to really get back to writing this year and to make time to upload, photograph and share some new recipes – maybe even some from the book?! For now, though, here’s a snapshot of what we’re doing this month at F&G, in a bid to lure you down for a tasty lunch with us. Come on in – the oven’s on!

Ellie

Designing and building a beautiful, functional restaurant in a run-down arcade, with only 191 square feet to play with, has been a challenging, exhausting and exhilarating experience, to say the least. The process has aged us prematurely, ruined our hands, killed our social life and stopped us sleeping but, as we open the shutters to the restaurant we’ve dreamed about for years, we could not be prouder.  We’re looking forward to staying still for a while and getting back to our duties of cooking and sharing recipes here on the blog where the journey began.

People came, people cleared their plates and licked their lips, people read the papers and people said thank you. This made us happy! See you soon.

F & G

* We needed a little longer than we anticipated to get everything just right and will open to the public on Saturday 15th at Midday. See FRENCH & GRACE for more details.

We’re excited and scared all at once, and so very, very thrilled to be able to put down some roots in a space that we’ve watched and thoroughly enjoyed as it’s grown over the last two years. It wasn’t all that long ago that we hosted a day and night’s residency at Cornercopia, just round the corner, and we longed for a shop of our own. So now we have one! We fought tooth and nail with our proposal to get in there, and we’re well under way with the build. Watching the tiny, dark red butcher’s shop that it used to be becoming a Salad Club hangout and kitchen-restaurant on a miniature scale (believe, it’s 191 compact square feet) is a beautiful thing. We have anguished over paint colours, tiling, floor coverings, suppliers, refrigeration systems, you name it.

And no, we’re not quite there yet – there is a great deal of work to be completed still, but we’re on our way, and it feels darn good. No longer will we have to ferry pots and measuring jugs between our kitchens. We have a shared, loved workspace to cycle to in the mornings where we’ll pull up the shutter, get the coffee on the hob, and attend to our daily cooking, ready to share with you, the people we’ve allowed to go hungry for too, too long. We look forward to serving up our hearty, colourful Salad Club style street food and home cooking, and will be open for take aways, supper bookings and all sorts in between.

So now you see we weren’t ignoring you, we just had a lot of projects to hurl oursleves into. We’ve had enormous help from several great groups of people whom we’d like to thank: namely Raph, Rosie’s husband, who has been on his knees with a hammer and saw these last few weeks, advising, measuring and building the thing. Then there’s the unforgettable assistance and support of The Princes’ Trust who’ve helped us onto our business feet with a whole wealth of sensible, practical courses and spreadsheets. We face their Dragon’s Den approval committee on Monday to see if we can bother them for a loan – Deborah Meaden, here we come!

So yeah, we’ve built up an appetite too. As of today, OUR FINAL BOOK DEADLINE (ach!), we may just be able to carve out some time to start posting blogs again. We’ll be nipping off throughout September to rear our heads on the festival scene first (West Norwood Feast, Alex James Presents Harvest,  Abergavenny and Real Food Harvest Festival) and then we’ll be right back with you, ready to open up the shop, and in one place for once. Sort of. After that, we’d really appreciate it if you could sort us out with a holiday, yeah?

Ellie

As we’ve learned from buying our vegetables from British farmers recently, quality produce needs very little done to it. Simplicity was key with these recipes and with a few clever combinations, kicks and spices here and there, our food was soon ready to face the camera. And the camera loved it! Sadly we can’t unveil any of the recipes just yet–you’ll have to keep banging your knives and forks on the table until April, 2012.

Laura Edwards works her magic while El looks on

With the news yesterday that food inflation has risen to almost 6% in the UK, it was a relief to be paying much fairer prices for food and drink during our stay in Italy. Obviously, the Tuscans are blessed with a temperate climate, thus a long season of abundant crops, but if you shop carefully and seasonally in the UK at the moment you can avoid being stung quite so hard. While we wouldn’t dare preach about seasonality and understand that your mood and what’s at hand are likely to be the biggest influences on what you eat, in pricey times it makes more sense than ever to buy what’s abundant, fresh and fair to both the customer and the producer.

Take British tomatoes, for example. They’re overflowing at the moment and prices in your local supermarket should reflect that. Check out The Tomato Stall for amazing mixed boxes of Isle of Wight toms in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours. I know this somewhat defeats the object, but, if you manage to save a few pennies on tomatoes next time you shop, perhaps you could consider investing in a tub of buffalo mozarella? Once through the tills at Esselunga, Ellie and I proceeded to devour a tub of these *impossible to avoid testicular sounding description* with the greedy abandon of Brits abroad. If you can manage to make it home with yours, picking up some basil along the way, then we would suggest whipping up a capresé with your loot. Don’t put your tomatoes in the fridge if you’re using them the same day–they lose their flavour and wonderful greenhouse scent when they’re cold.

Capresé for 6-8
400g mixed tomatoes
200g buffalo mozarella
10-12 basil leaves
Quality olive oil
Salt and pepper

I know this is child’s play but for the sake of consistency… Roughly slice and season your tomatoes, tear over large chunks of mozarella and plenty of basil, drizzle with quality olive oil, grind over some pepper and serve with pretty much anything on a summer’s table.

In other Salad Club news, it’s feeding time at Zoo Lates this Friday, and again on Friday 22nd, where we’ll be serving up our delicious chorizo and halloumi flatbreads. Keep your eyes peeled for future dates and arrivederci.

Rosie

Introducing hot chorizo wraps with butter bean and rosemary hummus, Salad Club slaw and spicy herb gremolata! Our first outing with these beautifully juicy, colourful flatbreads was at Sunday’s West Norwood Feast, where the crowds braved the threat from dark grey skies and even continued to turn up and queue through the rain. There’s nothing like a sizzling paella pan of hot chorizo to pull in the punters, clearly! And if the photos are scintillating your taste buds, you can find us through the summer here:

*This Friday 10th June, Zoo Lates, London Zoo
*Sunday 7th August, West Norwood Feast
*Friday 9th – Monday 12th September, Alex James Presents Harvest at Jimmy’s,  Oxfordshire
*Saturday 17th – Sunday 18th September, Abergavenny Food Festival, Monmouthshire

Plus, we’ve started to take bookings of the stall at parties and weddings–get in touch if you want to jump on the bandwagon. And for the vegetarians amongst you, we’re working on getting together some more equipment to be able to serve a paprika-spiced halloumi version of the wrap–watch this space.

Ellie

New potatoes with lemon, capers, rosemary and garlic
Beets, lentils and thyme with Bath Blue cheese
SC slaw
Radish, cucumber and dill salad
Fresh pea pods
Caramelised onion and butter bean hummus

Be sure to get yourself some of this season’s muddy new potatoes, gently scrub away the mud with your thumbs (never peel them) and give them some love:

New potatoes with lemon, capers, rosemary and garlic

Serves 8-10
1kg new potatoes
Leaves of 1 rosemary spring, finely chopped
1 tablespoon capers, rinsed and chopped
3 spring onions, finely sliced
The juice of 1 lemon
A large pinch of salt
A long glug of olive oil

Boil the potatoes until tender and cooked through (usually about 10 minutes but cut one open to check).  Mix all the other ingredients together in a large bowl. Once cooked, drain the potatoes and, while they’re still hot and steaming, add to the bowl and toss gently. Serve hot or cold with pretty much anything.

Oh, and in case you were feeling too worthy after that lot, we also baked these rhubarb and cassis frangipane tartlets for the more sweet toothed. Yes, we did burn one and, yes, we did eat one.

No lie-ins for us this weekend as we were up at 7am on Saturday heading to Pimlico in time to meet Ted Dawson of Ted’s Veg who harvested most of our ingredients early that morning. Loyal as we are to Brixton market and its unashamedly unseasonal yams, avocados and citrus on the other side of the tracks, the quality and flavour of this super-fresh British produce is pretty hard to beat. Aren’t we lucky to have access to such a huge variety of food on our doorsteps? Ahhh… Brixton.

We sold out on Sunday but we’ll be sure to pile our plates even higher on June 12th and every fortnight thereafter. Come and say hello and get yourselves some lunch if you’re in the area.

Rosie & Ellie x

Rosie’s al fresco weekend kicked off on Good Friday with lunch for two tired gardeners on the allotment: tomato, bulgar and crunchy pitta salad, Ottolenghi’s hummus (in my view, still far from perfect) and chargrilled harissa halloumi with chorizo.

A couple of wheat beers later, the sun still beating down, we decided to cancel a restaurant reservation for six and invite the family over for a barbeque instead. The lunch menu was bulked up to make enough for supper and guests arrived with rib eye steak that was swiftly coated with olive oil, garlic, chilli and pepper; chicken that was smothered with harissa and wine that was eagerly poured. Rare, smokey barbequed steak is hard to beat, as is a crisped chicken thigh or drumstick coated with something sweet and spicy–both so much better for being cooked over white-hot coals.

The bulgar number from up there was popular. Inspired by fattoush, but making use of what I had in my fridge and cupboards, this salad is really satisfying and packed with colour and flavour. It went particularly well with the steak–the crunchy pitta soaking up the tasty juices from the tomatoes and the beef to delicious effect.

Tomato, bulgar and crunchy pitta salad

Serves 6-8
400g bulgar wheat
1 teaspoon vegetable bouillon
4 large vine tomatoes
Olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
1 large red chilli, sliced (seeds optional)
Salt & pepper
2 handfuls pine nuts
2 white pittas
3 large handfuls flat leaf parsley
2 large handful dill
More lemon wedges to serve

Put the bulgar in a bowl and pour over boiling water until the water level is about 1cm above the bulgar. Stir in the bouillon, cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave the wheat to soften and expand. Dice the tomatoes as small as you can and add them to your serving bowl with a long glug of olive oil (about 4 tablespoons), the lemon juice, chopped chilli and a generous pinch of salt and pepper.

Put the pittas in the toaster or under the grill and toast until just crisp but not brown then cut or break into roughly 1 inch squared pieces. Toast the pine nuts in a dry frying pan over a low heat until brown and finely chop the herbs. Once the bulgar is soft and has absorbed all the water, fluff it up with a fork and pour into the serving bowl with the tomatoes. Stir everything together then add the pitta, pine nuts and herbs and stir again very gently to combine. Serve with extra lemon wedges and a big spoon.

Now on with our weekend:

A busy Saturday morning of car booting and DIY was paused for leftover steak sandwiches with lashings of English mustard (and ketchup for Rosie).

*Insert Easter Sunday here: families, lamb shoulders, red wine, chocolate, champagne and slouching followed by beer and backgammon in Brockwell at sunset then onto pub gardens and friends’ barbeques*

Waking up on Monday to yet another clear blue sky and a gentle hangover, we may have taken the heatwave euphoria a step too far by cooking breakfast in the garden. Although it did make for a superior grill-up, with wonderfully moist and smoky mushrooms, crunchy bacon and classic barbequed bangers.

After a little lie down it was onto trial some book recipes in the park with the other half:

Here’s another recipe from Ellie for you and your next burst of sunshine (never know when it may be, but perhaps that pesky royal wedding will provide another opportunity to eat outdoors). See the plate of orange and white flecked with green up there on the top right? Well here it is:

Roasted Cumin Carrots with Halloumi, Pistachio and Honey
Serves 4 as part of a mezze picnic

4 lge carrots
2 generous pinches cumin seeds
Good glug of sesame oil
Little glug of olive oil
Handful of pistachios, roughly chopped
6 thin slices halloumi
A squeeze of lemon
A drizzle of honey

Preheat the oven to 210°C. Scrub and peel the carrots then use the vegetable peeler to shave them into wide ribbons. Toss with the sesame and olive oil and cumin seeds then roast in the oven til a little browned and crisped. Squeeze the lemon juice over the halloumi, heat a ridged pan and sear the cheese on both sides, making sure that it doesn’t run over from soft and melted to squeaky and rubbery. Arrange the carrot on a flat plate, top with the halloumi and finish with pistachios and drizzle of honey. Eat immediately.

Which just leaves us to wish you the best for this tiny working week. We hope everyone has fun waving union jacks, drinking Pimms, meeting the neighbours or moaning about the whole stupid business while enjoying yet another day off on Friday! Hooray for Spring.

Ellie & Rosie

Before ending up in a pub garden getting emotional and over excited, we were making delicious Salad Club canapés for 120 at Gallery Soho. We like to keep things simple and let quality ingredients speak for themselves on this kind of occasion. Last night’s menu of rare roast beef fillet on sourdough, mackerel paté on crispbreads and warm roasted beets with horseradish crème fraîche and dill vinaigrette went down a treat.

Good to see our loyalty to the beautiful purple root hasn’t faltered since that very first post. Today’s quick recipe, though, has to be the beef–our lovely waitresses fought hard to get plates of these past the predatory hoards circling outside the kitchen door! This beef is seriously rare which is how we like it, especially with fillet, but feel free to give it 10-20 minutes in a hot oven after searing if you’d prefer. You could also use topside as a cheaper alternative.

For 20-25 canapés
500g beef fillet
Quality extra virgin olive oil
Handful thyme leaves
Salt
Pepper
to serve:
1 sourdough baguette (or half a loaf), sliced
Dijon mustard
Watercress

Rub the fillet all over with the oil, thyme leaves, salt and pepper. Get a frying pan hot then sear the fillet on all sides until well browned. Allow to cool then slice as thinly as possible with your sharpest knife, or better still a meat slicer if you happen to have the use of one! Drizzle the sourdough slices with olive oil, top with a slice of beef, a sprig of watercress and a drop of dijon.

So it’s bon anniversaire Salad Club and now bon voyage as Ellie and friends whisk me off to a mystery location for a weekend with my hens. Wish me luck.

Rosie