Minestra di Zucchini

This Italian recipe for courgette soup is quick and easy, and produces a delicate, thin soup that would be good as a starter or as a light lunch. I added croutons made from stale bread that I’d cubed, drizzled with olive oil and shaken together with a pinch of mixed herbs.

Courgette Soup

Chop 350g of courgettes into small chunks and put in a pan with 3 medium sized tomatoes, chopped into quarters. Add 450ml of milk and a quarter tsp of cayenne pepper. Bring close to boiling slowly, then turn down the heat and let simmer for 15 minutes. Beware the milk doesn’t separate! Blend in a food processor and strain through a sieve to remove the tomato skins and skin of the courgette. Pour into bowls and add a swirl of single cream.

Places to Eat: Ottolenghi

I recently visited the Estorick Gallery in Islington for the first time and saw a wonderful exhibition of sketches and etchings by Giorgio Morandi. After this feast for the eyes and soul, I felt in need of a literal feast and wandered down Upper Street to Ottolenghi, a restaurant I’ve wanted to eat in for some time. A colleague told me more than a year ago how good it was and since then I’ve been given Jerusalem, which is a wonderful cookbook and gave me more reasons to go to the restaurant.

Overall, I thought it was a lovely place to have lunch. My party of three had to queue for a space at a long communal table, but not for long, and the restaurant is a pleasing space to be in: minimalist and chic. I ordered delicious lemony roast chicken with coriander seeds; it was very well done, not dry at all, but succulent and zinging with flavour. We also ordered sweet potato with a satay sauce; the potato was delicious but the satay seemed redundant. The grilled aubergine was very good, as was the sweet red pepper. The hummus was as good as I hoped it would be. We finished our lunch with coffees and a sweet, crumbly pear and raspberry frangipane. We weren’t blown away by the flavours and there was nothing necessarily new, but everything tasted very good and was well executed, and the bill was certainly reasonable for lunch in London.

Ricotta, roast vegetables and harissa tart

Having blocks of puff pastry in the freezer means you can put together an open or closed tart with pretty much any ingredients you want in almost no time, as long as you remember to get the pastry out of the freezer well in advance.

This tart combines soft. crumbly ricotta cheese with fiery harissa paste and roast red peppers and courgette.

Lebanese spiced lamb chops

I wrote about eating Middle Eastern food in London in a recent post, but as well as dining out on this cuisine, I’ve been itching to cook something from the wonderful Jerusalem cookbook I was given at Christmas.

Having eaten lamb shawarma in a Syrian restaurant, I was curious to see what the Lebanese version Ottolenghi and Tamimi include in their book is like. However, their recipe called for a 4.5 hour cooking time, so I ditched the 2.5kg leg of lamb in favour of a couple of lamb chops, about 400g in total. The essence of the recipe is to marinate the meat in a spice mix, fry (or roast if using a leg of lamb) and serve with pitas and lots of fresh cucumber, tomato, parsley and onion. I kept the spices and marination but dropped everything else.

Mediterranean medley – Lebanese, Turkish and Syrian food in London

I wouldn’t claim to be a connoisseur of Mediterranean food, but I do love the flavours of that region and especially the Eastern Med and Middle East. Food from this part of the world is particularly easy to come by in London, where you could probably find a restaurant from every country in the region if you wanted to.

Lebanese

You can find Turkish restaurants (and kebab shops) pretty much anywhere in London, but other cuisines tend to be clustered in the West. I was recently on the venerable Old Brompton Road in South Kensington with my mate Alan, and dropped into a Lebanese restaurant, the Beirut Express, for lunch. We had delicious fresh flat breads and hummus, washed down with Lebanese beer, as well as crisp falafel studded with sesame seeds and lamb wraps stuffed with grilled meat, salad and piquant sauce.

Turkish

Very close to where I live in Lewisham there is an excellent Turkish restaurant, Meze Mangal, so good in fact that it’s in Harden’s and been reviewed by the Evening Standard (which unjustly calls it a ‘kebab shop’). We’ve eaten there a few times and always found the food to be fresh, well seasoned and perfectly cooked. I particularly like the pizza-like Lahmacun flat bread topped with lamb mince, but the different Pide dishes are also great, and the mixed meze starter comes with about six different dishes (including a great tarama salata) and is food heaven. Definitely as good as the equally well regarded Mangal II in Dalston.

Syrian

An exception to the general rule about Middle Eastern food and West London, Damascu Bite is a Syrian restaurant on Brick Lane in East London. I ate there with friends after spending a couple of hours in a local pub (The Carpenter’s Arms, which has an excellent beer selection). I ordered a lamb Shawarma, a dish of grilled lamb from the spit, a fragrant rice and green lentil mix and a mixed salad, which would have been very good even if not following three pints. The Shawarma is described as a Middle Eastern sandwich, but Damascu Bite differentiates between a Shawarma and a Shawarma Wrap.

Places to Eat: Apsleys at the Lansborough Hotel

If you’ve yet to sample really high end dining, I recommend you try it at least once. It lets you see how the 1% eat, which is frankly fascinating, if a little repulsive, but also means you get to eat expertly cooked food (hopefully).

Although I’ve posted about Michelin starred food before, this type of dining really is a rarity for me. This occasion, like the last, was on account of my birthday, and crucially the advent of London Restaurant Festival, which allows plebs like me to eat in fancy restaurants.