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Is there anything more English than High Tea? I suppose you could queue for High Tea (at the Ritz?) or you could just go to The Grand at St Pancras station. We were given a voucher for 2-4-1 High Tea, so decided we absolutely should. It was such a lovely experience. The Grand is a beautiful restaurant - I would definitely consider having your pre-Eurostar champagne there rather than the Champagne Bar, as it is certainly warmer.
As you can see from the picture, we got plenty of food - a selection of sandwiches (the egg was surprisingly the best), scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream, a strawberry tart, fruit cake (no good) and an orange cake (surprisingly good). We washed all this down with a glass of pink English fizz and plenty of English Breakfast tea.
The service was excellent, the setting felt very olde worlde English and altogether, we felt terribly English!
Food: 8/10
Drinks: 8/10
Service: 10/10
Ambience: 8/10
Overall: 8.5/10
St Pancras Grand
St Pancras International
Pancras Road
London NW1 2QP
Yep, that's right - a weekend in Brussels! We did all the Belgian food cliches and as so often happens, across the board, it was easy to see why these are cliches - everyone should eat in Belgium!
We started with a bottle of Laurent-Perrier champagne in the St Pancras Champagne Bar, the best introduction to the always fun journey on the Eurostar.
We sampled many Belgian beers (although probably barely skimmed the surface of the range). They were good, strong but good. Except for the cherry beer, which was bad. Very, very bad.
Mussels and Frites were mandatory, the Flemish stew (Carbonnade) was good and the simple pleasure of frites with mayonnaise (and tomato sauce if you must!) sitting in the square in Bruges cannot be beaten.
Of course, there was chocolate everywhere and after wandering around in the cold, we all really enjoyed our hot chocolates. We got our chocolates to take home from Leonidas. The waffles in Bruges were amazing (from a proper tea house, not one of those nasty looking take-away waffle places!) - mine with hot dark chocolate sauce and ice cream and Kyle's with butter and icing sugar.
Brussels was a good place to eat . . .
Of course, no visit to London is complete without visiting Borough Market. This was my first visit on a weekday rather than Saturday, so it was a bit different for me too - only a few thousand people, rather than a few million (at least, that's what it feels like!). Unfortunately, there are also less stalls on a Thursday, but it is still an impressive market, especially for my visitors from Brisbane!
I was also excited to see Jun Tanaka filming a segment for Market Kitchen - he was making Rabbit Navarin and the segment is supposed to air some time in early March. Mum and Dad didn't know who he was, of course, so were less impressed than I was!
Dad, however, was very impressed with the Pieminister Pies, so we decided to get those for dinner. They were very good with some creamy mash and really good sugar snap peas.
Mum found it hard to go past the Baklava, so along with an Apple Strudel, that was the dessert decision made. Unfortunately, the strudel in particular was quite disappointing.
That did not detract from how good these markets were - always a great foodie excursion in London!
I am incredibly proud of the food around where we live and wanted to convey this to Mum and Dad when they came to visit. We decided to visit some of the local food shops to pick up some goodies for lunch.
To start, we headed to The Fromagerie where the very French fellow there recommended a nice mature cheddar and a Brie so ripe it melted before we got home! We also picked up a fresh loaf of 12 grain bread from there. We moved onto Da Mario, the Italian deli, for some ham and delicious kalamata olives and the fruit shop for some strawberries.
We then paid Sean at Highbury Vintners a visit and he helped us pick out a dozen wines (not all for lunch!) from around the world. This is something you don't really get in Australia, because it is a wine-producing country. One of the things I love about living in the UK is trying all the wines from different countries and different grapes that we don't get in Oz - the range is really extraordinary. He talked us into trying a Chapel Down white wine, which was very nice with our roast chicken the following week. Other highlights for me were the Tannant from Argentina - very tasty. We also picked out a classic Pinot Noir from Burgundy to go with our lunch.
We finally headed home to feast on our Blackstock Road treats, as well as my homemade chutney, some duck sausage we got from The French Show back in January and some fresh tomato. Yum!
As I mentioned in my previous post, Mum and Dad were popping over from Oz to check out our London lifestyle. There would be much eating and drinking in the two weeks ahead!
After about 36 hours of travel time, they arrived at 10am on Sunday 15 February - which meant they had to stay awake for a quite a while or risk never-ending jetlag. We started our two week 'Food Fest' with Nigella's Christmas breakfast option of Triple Cheese and Onion Strata followed by a refreshing fruit salad of blackberries, raspberries and pomegranate with lime juice. It is prohibitively expensive to just eat berries in Queensland, so I knew this would be a treat.
After a trip on a London bus, the London Eye and a couple of drinks in a London pub, we headed home for dinner. I had given this meal an enormous amount of thought. I wanted yummy things that I could make in advance and also had the bottle of Billecart-Salmon champagne Kyle had bought me for my birthday to match with a starter.
I decided on Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese rolls to start, champagne and smoked salmon being a classic combination. As they were part of a Delicious magazine picnic article, these could also be made easily the day before and were on the table in minutes. They were very tasty and the Billecart-Salmon was every bit as good as I remember from my one glass in France.
I have to say - this picture does not do justice to the Lamb and Date Tagine with Pomegranate Couscous we had for main. I have made this dish before - it keeps very well made a day in advance. The lamb is so tender and the dates actually melt into the dish and make the sauce all sweet and yummy. I don't think you really need the pomegranate in the cousous, it would be fine just made with chicken stock instead. This is certainly a tasty dish and one of my new favourites.
Despite Mum and Dad really starting to flag now (Mum actually did that head dropping thing at the table and knocked over her wine while Dad started slurring his words - it is interesting to see how extreme fatigue resembles drunkeness!), we pressed ahead with dessert. One of my other new favourites since coming to London is rhubarb and particularly this Apple and Rhubarb Crumble with oats and ground hazelnuts in the crumble. It was served simply with single cream and a bottle of French dessert wine Domaine de Grange Neuve Monbazillac recommended by the very knowledgable Sean from Highbury Vintners.
Hopefully a fitting introduction to their visit - at the very least, I certainly enjoyed it!
Lamb and Date Tagine with pomegranate couscous (From Delcious magazine - Jan 2009)
Serves 6-8
Takes 20 minutes to make and about 3-3 1/2 hours to cook
2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, chopped
1 large knob of fresh ginger, chopped
4 garlic cloves, crushed
1 cinnamon stick
1 tbsp coriander seeds, crushed
1 tsp cumin seeds, lightly crushed
1.5kg boned shoulder or leg of lamb, cut into cubes (I use shoulder)
200g medjool dates, pitted
400g can chopped tomatoes
400ml lamb or chicken stock, hot
1 lemon and 1 lime, cut into wedges, to serve
For the couscous
500g couscous
1 tbsp olive oil
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
Handful fresh mint, roughly chopped
Seeds of 1 pomegranate
1. Heat the oil in a large, heavy-based pan and gently cook the onions, ginger and garlic for 10 minutes, until softened. Add all the spices and cook for 5 minutes, then add the lamb and cook for a further 10 minutes.
2. Add the dates, tomatoes and stock. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer gently for 2 1/2 - 3 hours, until the lamb is very tender.
3. Place the couscous, oil and lemon zest and juice in a bowl and cover with 600ml boiling water. Cover and leave to cool completely, then use a fork to fluff up the couscous and stir in the mint and pomegranate seeds.
4. Serve the couscous with the tagine and garnish with citrus wedges.
Delicious recommends an Australian Shiraz with this - we had an Argentinian Malbec, which was also nice.
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