Drinks and tapas at Morito

I visited Morito once before (for a special seafood and sherry tasting event last year), but - despite numerous trips to sister restaurant Moro - I never managed to return to try the standard menu. I finally got my chance a couple of weeks ago, at a relaxed Monday night dinner with my boyfriend and his lovely cousin. Showing up at 7pm, we had no problem getting a table for three, making Morito a great alternative to Moro if you haven't had the chance to book weeks in advance! (although it's still pretty busy later in the week).

Morito has a great tapas menu, offering everything from light vegetable plates to hearty egg and potato concoctions; and with the cheerful orange decor, carafes of wine, and somewhat over-enthusiastic application of olive oil, you can almost imagine you're in Spain.

The menu changes weekly in accordance with the seasons, meaning that you're always getting the best possible ingredients (and giving you a good reason to go back again and again!). I was enjoying my meal too much to take many photos, but I did remember to snap one or two!

The grilled tetilla cheese with walnuts and membrillo was probably my favourite dish, the decadently oozing cheese pairing perfectly with the sweet, grainy membrillo paste.

The spiced lamb with yoghurt, aubergine and pine nuts was another winner: flavourful shredded lamb, paired with tender, buttery aubergine, sweet pomegranate seeds and toasted pine nuts. Delicious.

The other dishes went down equally well: shell-on king prawns with tasty aoilio dressing; griddled asparagus with walnut vinaigrette; pork fillet coupled with with jamon ham and sweet Padron peppers; and chicarrones de cadiz (crispy chunks of slow-roasted pork belly flavoured with cumin and lemon).

And the desserts - creamy vanilla ice cream topped with a scattering of plump raisins and drowned in sweet sherry, and crema Catalana (a Spanish take on creme brûlée) - were excellent. I've had the former a few times before at Moro, and it was already a firm favourite, but the latter was also exceptionally good; a smooth and deliciously rich egg custard topped with a thin layer of crackly caramel.

Sunny Spanish memories to fight off the chill (an ode to Andalusia)

It's been absolutely freezing this week (hello snow!), so I've torturing myself by looking through holiday snaps from my trip to Andalusia last July. Gorgeous cities, great food, and temperatures in the high 30s. Bliss!

 How much would I give to be here right now?

We skipped the coast, and decided instead to spend a couple of days each in Seville, Granada, and Cordoba. These beautiful, richly cultured cities had plenty to explore and - unlike the Costa del Sol - there was hardly a lobster-red Brit in sight (except for us, of course!)

Seville cathedral

We got up early each day to walk around in the cool of the morning, pausing to breakfast on pastries and freshly squeezed juice outside one of the square-side cafes. The temperatures didn't begin to peak until around 2 or 3 in the afternoon (and stayed excruciatingly hot until 6 or so), so we'd have a long, late lunch, then snooze in our hotel room for a couple of hours until it started to cool down.

A key-hole view into the grounds of Seville cathedral

Post siesta, it was time for more exploring, followed by tapas and chilled wine at one of the innumerable tapas bars, before finally sitting down to dinner at around 10pm (which, by Spanish standards, was tragically early - we were eating with the youngest children, while most locals wouldn't venture out for dinner until 11 or even later!)

View from the palace of Alhambra in Granada

The locals were incredibly friendly (not to mention ridiculously attractive: the sunny squares were full of lithe, tanned beauties in teeny-tiny shorts and stunning young Spaniards with toned biceps and  sexy stubble). The relaxed, carefree way of life was so different from the "time-is-money" attitude of the City back in London, and we quickly unwound.

The beautiful gardens of Alhambra

Aside from the strenuous activities of 'wandering around' and 'lying beside a rooftop pool' we also did lots of eating. It was too hot for anything heavy - instead we snacked on tapas, light seafood dishes, and plenty of delicious helados (that's ice-cream, to you and me!).

While I failed in my search for a 'perfect' paella,  this fantastic seafood, rice and tomato stew more than made up for it, and (despite not being especially photogenic) was my favourite dish of the trip. I've been trying - unsuccessfully - to recreate it ever since.

Salmajero

Another tasty local dish was salmojero. Similar to gazpacho, this chilled soup is thickened with the addition of dried bread, and topped with chopped eggs, cubes of air-dryed bacon and a generous drizzling of olive oil - a refreshing (if somewhat rich) lunchtime snack.

 Why don't we make hot chocolate like that here?

And no trip to Spain would be complete without a cup or two of decadently thick Spanish hot chocolate. If you're feeling particularly gluttonous you can order some churros too: these long, thin donuts (which are delicious, if undeniably unhealthy) are dipped in chocolate as part of a traditional Spanish breakfast!

Happy - and warm! - in Cordoba

I'm heading outside now, preparing to face the blizzard in the name of getting some groceries. If anyone fancies escaping the snowstorm, the temperature over in Seville is currently in the mid- to high-teens...sickening.

Exmouth Arms

The Exmouth Arms is one of my favourite local pubs. Situated midway down Exmouth Market, this green-tiled haven is a great place to grab a drink after a meal at one of the many neighbouring eateries, and - with a wide collection of excellent beers and a fantastic bar menu - is equally worthy of a visit in itself.

The highlight of a trip to the Exmouth Arms has got to be the sliders. The buns (from the esteemed Harvey Rinkoff bakery) are superb - soft and gloriously squishy - and the broad and oft-changing array of innovative fillings will keep you going back for more. (See the menu below for the impressive selection on our last visit).

We decided to try the beef brisket, venison, and thai prawn sliders: all were excellent (the beef brisket - tender flakes of slow-cooked meat drenched in a beautiful salsa - was especially good). At £6.50 for three, they make a great light dinner - or,  shared, a tasty snack - and are infinitely more exciting than a bowl of chips or a packet of prawn cocktail crisps.

 Not the best picture!

Aside from the excellent beer and tasty bar snacks, the best thing about the Exmouth Arms is the atmosphere, which strikes a perfect balance between lively and laid back. It's always busy - but in  a 'groups of people getting together for a relaxed drink' way (no blaring music or obscenely long bar queues here). Basically, it's just how a local pub should be, and if you live nearby (or are just passing through), I highly recommend checking it out.

Monday evening at 6pm - it filled up pretty quickly after this

Slow roast lamb with chickpea and pomegranate salad

Inspired by my meal at Kopapa, I decided to have a go at my own slow-cooked lamb dish. Slathered in a pomegranate molasses marinade, and roasted until it fell from the bone in tender chunks of caramelised meat, this went perfectly with a chickpea and pomegranate dish (roughly based on a recipe from my mother's Moro cookbook) and a refreshing salad of cucumber, pomegranate seeds, fresh coriander and lime juice.

Pomegranate Molasses Lamb

Ingredients

Shoulder of lamb

Pomegranate molasses

Garlic cloves (optional)

Place the lamb in a large dish, and drizzle generously with pomegranate molasses. Massage the molasses into the lamb, using as much as you need to ensure the meat is well coated. If you want to, cut slits into your lamb (this allows the pomegranate molasses to penetrate the meat), and place a clove of peeled garlic into each slit.

Leave your lamb to marinade in the fridge for a few hours, removing 30 minutes or so before cooking in order to bring the meat back to room temperature. Alternatively, if you're strapped for time, you can simply marinade the lamb for 15 minutes while the oven is heating up (this is what I did, and it didn't seem to have a particularly adverse affect on my finished dish!).

Preheat the oven to 150C. Transfer the lamb to a roasting dish, pouring over the pomegranate molasses marinade (and adding more as needed - I think I used about twice as much as was recommended by any recipe...which probably helped make up for my shorter marinading time). Add 100ml or so of water to the roasting tin, and cover with silver foil.

A 1kg joint of lamb should be cooked at 150C for 3 hours. For each additional 500g of meat, extend the cooking time by 20 minutes. [E.g. a 2kg joint would require 3 hours and 40 minutes.]

Remove your lamb from the oven, discarding the silver foil, and pour off any juices into a seperate bowl. Other recipes recommend that you leave the juices to cool for half an hour before skimming off any fat, and returning them to the roasting tin.

If you don't want to wait for half an hour, you can do what I did: pour off any grease (and remove any large chunks of fat from the surface of your lamb). Then add more pomegranate molasses and a dash more water to the roasting tin, before returning the lamb (uncovered this time) to the oven.

Turn the temperature up to 190C, and cook until the meat is nicely caramelised (around 30 minutes). Upon removing the lamb from the oven, stand for a few minutes to cool, before tearing into rough chunks with two forks (OK, or your fingers), and serving.

Chickpea and pomegranate salad

Ingredients

250 grams dried chickpeas

Olive oil

3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
3 Tbsp pomegranate molasses
200 ml boiling water
One chicken stock cube (optional)
A few threads of saffron, infused in boiling water (according to instructions on packet)

Seeds of 1 large pomegranate

Handful of fresh coriander, chopped

Salt and pepper, to taste

Begin the day before, by soaking the chickpeas overnight in cold water. (If you don't have time to do this, you can always used canned chickpeas, but the dried ones are much nicer!). Rinse thoroughly, and prepare according to the instructions on the packet - I boiled mine for about an hour and a half, until tender.

Infuse a few strands of saffron in a tea cup with some boiling water. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a saucepan and briefly fry the sliced garlic* before adding the drained chickpeas and pomegranate molasses. Add the 200ml of boiling water, the stock cube (if using - this isn't in the original recipe, but I think it adds flavour) and the saffron-infused water to your pan, and simmer gently for ten minutes or so, until you are left with just a small amount of flavourful sauce.

Use the ten minutes cooking time to de-seed your pomegranate. This is my least favourite part of the cooking process - not only is it quite time consuming, but I am incapable of extracting the seeds without covering myself (and everything else in my kitchen) with brightly-coloured juice**.

Cucumber and pomegranate salad

Ingredients

1 cucumber
Seeds of 1/2 pomegranate
Handful of fresh coriander, chopped
Squeeze of lime juice
Salt and pepper, to taste

Cut the cucumber into two lengthways and use a dessert spoon to scoop out the juicy seeded centre. Discard (or eat...) as this will make your salad too watery. Roughly dice the remaining cucumber, and place the chunks into a bowl. Add the seeds of half a pomegranate (more tedious de-seeding required!), the juice of one small lime, and chopped fresh coriander. Season to taste, and serve.

Serve the three dishes together, alongside a pile of flatbreads or toasted pittas and an assortment of dips (hummus, baba ganoush, tzatziki...) for an impressive Middle Eastern feast.

*Be careful not to let your garlic get too brown, as it will develop an unpleasant acrid taste.

**I've actually started de-seeding pomegranates in my underwear - not because I am some sort of sensual domestic goddess, a la Nigella...but because I've ruined too many tops with spatters of pomegranate juice.

London Restaurant Festival: Graze @ Exmouth Market

As I mentioned in my very first post on this blog, I love Exmouth Market. As well as being a great spot for lunch on weekdays (when it becomes home to a fantastic variety of market stalls, serving everything from salt beef bagels to pad thai), it boasts an astonishing concentration of excellent restaurants. So when I heard that it was going to be the site of one of the London Restaurant Festival's Graze events, I booked my ticket straight away.

The concept of the Graze events - which will be (or have already been) held in a number of 'foodie' streets across London over the course of the two-week festival - is for diners to stop for one small dish (accompanied by a free glass of wine) in each of the participating restaurants.

Exmouth Market in the daytime

The restaurants participating in the Exmouth Market event were Moro, La Porchetta, Medcalf, Bincho, and Caravan - a great combination of places I've been and loved (Moro, Caravan and Bincho are already firm favourites) and places I haven't yet got around to visiting.

My boyfriend and I were fairly late in setting off on the trail: while the event kicked off at 6pm, we didn't make it out until 8.45. This was a shame as it meant we didn't quite manage to complete the 'circuit' (Caravan was closed by the time we finished our fourth dish at Moro), but to be honest, I think we would have struggled to eat another bite in any case!

We started at La Porchetta, where for £6 were were given the choice of two pizzetta from a menu of three: the eponymous Porchetta (topped with Italian sausage, minced pork, and ham), the Napoletana (anchovies, capers and black olives), or the Vegetariana. The pizza was delicious: the base was fantastic - light, but with a lovely doughy texture - and there was plenty of oozey mozzarella atop the fresh tomato sauce. The Porchetta was my favourite, topped with a generous medley of tasty sausage and delicious smoked ham, but the Napoletana was also excellent. Predicting that I might be too full to eat much else after this "small plate", I saved half of each pizzette, and the waitress was kind enough to put them in a doggy bag for me.

I'll be coming back to try the Capricciosa pizza: the combination of ham, artichoke and egg sounds right up my street! They do takeaways too - a cheaper, tastier, and healthier alternative to Dominos for those nights when you can't face cooking.

The next stop on our route was Medcalf, where we chose to share one plate between the two of us. A gorgeous dish of salt marsh lamb cutlet, bean stew, steak bavette and chips - with a glass of red wine on the side - was just £7.

The salt marsh lamb was amazing (I'm not usually a fan of lamb, but it was exceptionally good). The diminuitive cutlet - served atop a pile of delicious bean stew - was meaty, succulent and incredibly flavourful (causing us to severely regret our decision to share!). The bavette - a small-but-perfect hunk of rare steak, topped with a creamy dollop of fiery horseradish sauce - was also excellent, as was the accompanying pile of gravy-drenched chips (having spent my uni years up in the northern reaches of Durham, I am a BIG fan of the chips & gravy combo*)

After vowing to return to Medcalf in the near future - I hear they do a good Sunday roast - we crossed over to Bincho, where we were offered a tasting plate of different chicken skewers alongside two overflowing glasses of sake.

From left to right: fried chicken, chicken meatballs, chicken skin, chicken and spring onion, and chicken thighs

Fried chicken was delicious: the moist breast meat - encased in a beautiful coating of golden breadcrumbs - far exceeded my expectations of this dish( lowered by previous fast food experiences). The next skewer was home to a trio of chicken meatballs: incredibly light, these had a lovely ginger flavour and were coated in a glossy sauce. Next up was the chicken skin - consisting of tiny rolled up portions of deep-fried chicken skin, this was more appealing than the name would suggest. My boyfriend ate his with relish, but I couldn't face more than a taste of mine...a little too much grease for me! Chicken and spring onion is an old favourite (I ate my way through quite a a few of these skewers on our last visit!), and chicken thighs were also good.

The delicious tasting platter - along with the lovely sake (served in wooden boxes, from which we were instructed to drink the overflow; the wooden receptacles supposedly enhancing the flavour) - reminded me of how much I enjoyed my last visit to this restaurant. Bincho is a great place to come in a group, so I'll be returning soon, for drinks and even more skewers (the pancetta and asparagus are my favourite!).
It was already past 10 at this point, and we spent some time deliberating over our final destination. In the end, we chose Moro over Caravan - we've been to Caravan quite a few times for brunch, and the memory of the fantastic tapas at the recent Morito event, and the mouth-wateringly good wood-roasted seabass I had last time I ate at Moro, made us certain that their Graze offering was going to be something really special.

Even at this late hour on a Tuesday evening, every table was full (no wonder it's always so hard to get a reservation!). We were seated at the bar, where we paid £6 each for a glass of wine and a little clay pot filled with a gorgeous mixture of chanterelles, rice and prawns. The dish was fantastic: juicy, garlicky, and deeply savoury; it was replete with nutty chanterelle mushrooms and sweet prawns, and topped with a dollop of mayonnaise (a surprisingly perfect accompaniment to the flavourful rice stew).

As well as being a fun night out, the Graze events are the perfect opportunity to try some new places - I'll definitely do my best to attend one or two more (perhaps Charlotte Street, Brixton Village, or Soho) before the festival ends.

http://www.londonrestaurantfestival.com/events/graze/

*preferably smothered in melted cheese, drenched in garlic mayo, and eaten from a takeaway box on the walk home...but Mecalf's version was probably a little more dignified!

Morito Seafood Festival: Review for Bookatable

I had the pleasure of attending a sherry and seafood tasting event at Morito last week, in celebration of their first annual Seafood Festival. I wrote about it for Bookatable here:
http://www.bookatable.com/uk/blog/post/morito-exmouth-market
It's running until the end of this week, and if you like seafood, I'd definitely recommend getting yourself over there to try some of the tasty tapas they have on offer!

Exmouth Market

A short stroll from Angel tube station, Exmouth Market is a fashionable pedestrionised street running parallel to Rosebery Avenue. Home to an eclectic mix of oh-so-trendy boutique shops (selling books, furniture, and even bikes), cosy cafes, lively bars, and top restaurants (Moro, anyone?); Exmouth Market attracts a diverse crowd of foodies, students, office-workers and media-types.

During the week market stalls serve up tasty lunches for £5 or less. Some of Exmouth Market’s best restaurants have their own stand – including Moro, Gulshan and Sade – offering a perfect opportunity to sample their wares at a fraction of the price (and without having to book 10 days in advance!). Other stalls specialise in Mexican, Thai and Jewish cuisine (the salt beef bagels are a must); while a cake stand displays a mouth-watering assortment of cheesecakes for those seeking something sweeter.

Busy during the week? Come on the weekend or in the evening, and grab a table outside one of Exmouth Markets numerous cafes, bars or restaurants (see below) to indulge yourself with some of the best people watching in the city – over excellent coffee, delectable cocktails, or a hearty meal.