With a trip to Borough Market, a meal at a fantastic restaurant and a couple of great pub lunches, this weekend couldn't have been much better.
It didn't get off to such a good start. On Friday night, my camera died. This really annoyed me because I was in the middle of taking a picture of a very delicious dinner. It was venison stew with cherries and cinnamon served with marcapone and nutmeg linguine. It looked pretty good and I'm rather miffed that I didn't get a proper shot of it. A mobile phone photo may appear here soon if it looks any good.
Things got better the next morning with an early trip to Borough Market. In the past, I'd only visited on Fridays but it turned out that there were even more things open on Saturday, so I had even more exciting stalls to investigate. When I arrived i was ravenous, so I picked up a chicken spring roll from Mrs Bassa's kitchen with lots of chilli sauce. I'm sure that I shouldn't really have deep fried Indian snacks for breakfast but the smell was far too good to resist!
As usual my first purchase came from the Gamston Wood stall. This time I was after some kangaroo steak. At some point I'll try the crocodile but at £33.50 per kilo, I'll have to be feeling rich!
I was really tempted by the ostrich eggs. The ones in the picture are blown, but they sell fresh ones there too at £10 each. One day I'll make a giant scotch egg from one.
The vegetable stalls had some interesting things on display. It appears that there are a lot of things I haven't eaten. I decided to try some black leaf kale this week and some smoked garlic which smells absolutely gorgeous. I also gave in for my craving for blood and bought a large black pudding.
These guys are on my shopping list for next week. I nearly bought them straight away but reconsidered when I realised it would be several hours before I got home. I doubt they'd be smelling very good by then! The Madagascan prawns also looked amazing I swear they're almost the same size as a lobster.
When I was all shopped out (i.e. had run out of money), I met up with James for some lunch. The Borough stalls seemed a bit busy so we trekked over to All Bar One at Waterloo where we really stuffed ourselves. We had:
Crayfish patatas bravas. James loves patatas bravas. I'm not so keen but I'm a big crayfish fan so this ended up being a really good thing to share.
Tiger Prawn Skewers with sweet chilli sauce. These were excellent. The prawns were lovely and juicy.
Chicken quesadilla. I think the All Bar One quesadillas could benefit from a little more chilli. Other than that I can't complain!
And of course, Rose wine. All Bar One have recently started storing wine the old fashioned way in big barrels. This Spanish Rose is one of the new range and is sold by the carafe. It was passable. I'm still annoyed that they didn't have anything sparkling in stock!
The rest of the afternoon was spent swanning around the Tate Modern, smelling quite strongly of smoky garlic. After that we walked back to Chelsea and had some cocktails in the Jim Thompson Oriental Bar on the New King's Road. This place does a damn good Mojito and the passionfruit Bellini isn't bad either! I thought the Singapore Sling was a bit dissapointing. It would have been a lot better without the orange juice.
The highlight of the day had to be our fabulous dinner at Chutney Mary. The restaurant is beautiful and they serve up some of the best Indian cuisine I've had in London. How can anyone make daal so good!? I sat for ages trying to identify the flavours but I doubt I could recreate it. I wish I could have taken photos but my camera didn't like the light at all. I'll post a full review soon.
So, that was an excellent Saturday. Sunday was good too but I guess I should get some work done before I start writing about that!
With a trip to Borough Market, a meal at a fantastic restaurant and a couple of great pub lunches, this weekend couldn't have been much better.
It didn't get off to such a good start. On Friday night, my camera died. This really annoyed me because I was in the middle of taking a picture of a very delicious dinner. It was venison stew with cherries and cinnamon served with marcapone and nutmeg linguine. It looked pretty good and I'm rather miffed that I didn't get a proper shot of it. A mobile phone photo may appear here soon if it looks any good.
Things got better the next morning with an early trip to Borough Market. In the past, I'd only visited on Fridays but it turned out that there were even more things open on Saturday, so I had even more exciting stalls to investigate. When I arrived i was ravenous, so I picked up a chicken spring roll from Mrs Bassa's kitchen with lots of chilli sauce. I'm sure that I shouldn't really have deep fried Indian snacks for breakfast but the smell was far too good to resist!
As usual my first purchase came from the Gamston Wood stall. This time I was after some kangaroo steak. At some point I'll try the crocodile but at £33.50 per kilo, I'll have to be feeling rich!
I was really tempted by the ostrich eggs. The ones in the picture are blown, but they sell fresh ones there too at £10 each. One day I'll make a giant scotch egg from one.
The vegetable stalls had some interesting things on display. It appears that there are a lot of things I haven't eaten. I decided to try some black leaf kale this week and some smoked garlic which smells absolutely gorgeous. I also gave in for my craving for blood and bought a large black pudding.
These guys are on my shopping list for next week. I nearly bought them straight away but reconsidered when I realised it would be several hours before I got home. I doubt they'd be smelling very good by then! The Madagascan prawns also looked amazing I swear they're almost the same size as a lobster.
When I was all shopped out (i.e. had run out of money), I met up with James for some lunch. The Borough stalls seemed a bit busy so we trekked over to All Bar One at Waterloo where we really stuffed ourselves. We had:
Crayfish patatas bravas. James loves patatas bravas. I'm not so keen but I'm a big crayfish fan so this ended up being a really good thing to share.
Tiger Prawn Skewers with sweet chilli sauce. These were excellent. The prawns were lovely and juicy.
Chicken quesadilla. I think the All Bar One quesadillas could benefit from a little more chilli. Other than that I can't complain!
And of course, Rose wine. All Bar One have recently started storing wine the old fashioned way in big barrels. This Spanish Rose is one of the new range and is sold by the carafe. It was passable. I'm still annoyed that they didn't have anything sparkling in stock!
The rest of the afternoon was spent swanning around the Tate Modern, smelling quite strongly of smoky garlic. After that we walked back to Chelsea and had some cocktails in the Jim Thompson Oriental Bar on the New King's Road. This place does a damn good Mojito and the passionfruit Bellini isn't bad either! I thought the Singapore Sling was a bit dissapointing. It would have been a lot better without the orange juice.
The highlight of the day had to be our fabulous dinner at Chutney Mary. The restaurant is beautiful and they serve up some of the best Indian cuisine I've had in London. How can anyone make daal so good!? I sat for ages trying to identify the flavours but I doubt I could recreate it. I wish I could have taken photos but my camera didn't like the light at all. I'll post a full review soon.
So, that was an excellent Saturday. Sunday was good too but I guess I should get some work done before I start writing about that!
