Fun Interesting Indian Restaurant in Marylebone

Had a great Sunday Lunch the other day in a small Indian restaurant called Trishna http://www.trishnalondon.com/ . This place was suggested by a food photographer and well I was very surprised by the creativity of the food. Judge for yourself.

Two dips for the poppadoms

The poppadoms were grilled and tasted interesting

A potato dish that I cant remember the name off, lucky you, but it was spectacular with the spiciness, crispy caramelised onions with a yoghurt sauce.

Grilled quail tandoori with sesame seeds and cucumber with  yoghurt

Tandoori Guinea fowl with lentils. Lovely way of steering away from  traditional chicken.

Seafood briyani with scallops and prawns. Dahl with what ended up being a very spicy fried chilli

Yoghurt Raita, spinach, plain chapatti and garlic naan and the dahl

My favourite dessert Gulab Jamun, little balls of sweetness fried in gee and soaked in sugar syrup. Served warm, it was so good that I had it with the ice-cream on the side and never ate the ice-cream

Warm mango rice pudding

Cumin magdalanes

Highly recommended if you would like to have an interesting Indian meal. They also have a great Lunch menu!!

A little piece of tradition

This is how they serve Cochinillo in Meson De Candido http://www.mesondecandido.es/ in Segovia. More than two hundred years old! This is what its all about great product made simply.

 I had the pleasure of eating here for the first time this year. Although I had already met Candido and his team when they came to London to do their culinary show.

Simply made the cochinillo with salt, water and pig fat. Crispy outside and tender inside.

Celebrating Segovian Gastronomy week we started with a game terrine made of pigeon, duck and hare wrapped with bacon and a fig compote and fig reduction 

Seared trout on a bed of spinach, candied lemon zest and honey blossom sauce

The Suckling pig or Cochinillo that Candido chopped for us, served with its juices. No garnish nothing just the crispy skin and the succulent sweet tasting meat.

Caramelized Torrija with chocolate ice-cream. Soft and fluffy first time I have tried torrija that had not been fried but soaked in a mixture of milk sugar, lemon zest and cinnamon. It was like eating a piece of bread soaked in sweet milk. Wonderful!

Does anybody else think that this is wrong?

Does anybody else think that the use of Tapas on this sign is a little bit strange? I mean, I enjoy fusion and love a little bit of mixture and different influences but is it not a little wrong to use the term tapas for indian food?

Firstly tapas is Spanish and its all about small portions but at the same time so is mezze and dim-sum. Why would they use the term Tapas for Indian food because its fashionable? Seeing it like this they could have said Indian Dim-Sum which in my opinion is a little bit more in keeping with asian food. Any comments from anybody?

Are culinary terms that are regionally specific interchangeable? Could we now have Indian Paella as well or Spanish Dahl? Should we be using fashionable terms to sell our food even if it has nothing to do with our food ? Should we sell out ?

Still my opinion is that they should not call it Indian Tapas...

Tapas in Valladolid, Spain

This was a small tapas trail that we did in Valladolid in Spain. This was organised by the Winery Pico Cuadro from Ribera De Duero http://www.picocuadro.com/.

Never been to Valladolid and found the city very interesting. Considering that this city has a yearly tapas competition you can really see that they take great care of them.

What follows is the trail that we took and the food that we ate !!

The group who hit Valladolid, a group of chefs, managers and the guys from Pico Cuadro.  Vinotinto was the last place we went to and the great thing is that we were all together still by the end. 

Beautiful the Spanish Royal Cavalry Academy of Valladolid the start of the night.

First stop Bar Suizo for a beer and a plate of queso manchego and jamon iberico.

Mahou served cold with a good amount of head, creamy and just the thing to start the night off 

Ready to start the engines, manchego cheese and iberico ham  match made in heaven. Beer, cheese and ham

La Taberna Del Herro, this place is famous for their broken eggs, fired egg and potatoes mixed together in pan. Breakfast for dinner, another beer 

Great dish to line your stomach with for the wine and beer to follow during the night. There is a great little addition to this dish which is a pimenton oil and of course some good crusty bread.

Our favourite of the night La Criolla. We had to fight our way into the  bar and what  place would attract a group of chefs but the open kitchen at the end of the bar. 9 chefs staring at another 6 chefs cooking during a busy Saturday service. Better than watching TV.

Winner of the 2004 Tapas awards. This dish was stewed vegetables  on top of courgette with glazed  mayonnaise. Interesting liked the idea of the vegetables and the mayonnaise on top a little too rich on the glaze though. 

Lamb sweet bread a la plancha, simple but great taste. 

This was a mini bocata of piquillo peppers and ventresca of tuna. 

Pincho of the month, monkfish stuffed with langoustine and pumpkin shooter. This one we did not like, one of the disadvantages of seeing how things are made is that you can see that the monkfish was cooked in the microwave which made it stringy and dry... Don´t know why they did that since everything else was done great a la plancha. 

Supposedly the best croquetas in Valladolid

That dish of croquetas basically last about 30 seconds on the bar.

Here they are... not bad creamy in the centre and light. Good but have now started a croquetas file. This one goes into at 6 out of 10... like more flavour in my croquetas

Bar Jero, was like walking into a typical basque pinchos bar. Bar Jero has won a lot of awards in the recent year in the Tapas competition and they make some very taste pinchos what follows is a carousel of pinchos that I can´t remember them all... they all where sweet tasting but good 

Red wine, switched from beer as things where heating up.

Your guess is as good as mine, what I do remember is that the bacon and cheese with barbecue sauce was sickly sweet but reminded me of barbecue pizza. There was a foie gras with raspberry, smoked salmon with cream cheese. All good but I suggest don´t order more that 1 or 2 as they are heavy and cloyingly sweet.  

Warm pinchos as well very good but with sweet predominating through them as well. Can´t remember  what they were but there was one with prawns... think the wine had started.

Vinotinto, the guys of the kitchen was kind enough to allow us into the open kitchen , great Asturian made coal barbecue.  

Pulpo a la gallega, ok don´t need to explain this because it was very very good and disappeared quickly enough. The potatoes in cachelos and just a right amount of pimenton picante. 

Take your eye of the ball for a second and that is all thats left of a chuleton de vaca vieja... literally took a sip of wine and looked away for a second and bang gone.... the bone was really good though.

There ends the photo tour as we then finished and moved off for Gin and Tonics. The camara was packed away into my pocket from then on. Though for those who are interested Valladolid has a 4 to 1 girl to boy ratio when going out. But we where advised that it is very difficult to start conversations with them....we tried though !!!! But that is another story.

So if you guys have a chance go to Valladolid!! Great food !!

Probably the best Churros Con Chocolate in London

Had a craving for some churros con chocolate and remembered this great new place in Westfield Shopping centre. Tapas Revolution http://www.tapasrevolution.com/ its as its name implies a tapas bar and its located on the second floor of the Westfield Shopping centre.

Created by a friend and fellow chef Omar, who aside from other things became famous when Gordon Ramsey called him the Antonio Banderas of chefs, in his program Gordon Ramsey´s best restaurants. Well it made him famous among the chefs circle anyway.

Go and enjoy the churros con chocolate... they also have tapas!!!

Your place setting is your menu so enjoy it!! Great tapas though some things are better than others. For me I go for the churros

Lovely churros con chocolate, I know what you are thinking, very little chocolate, but its just enough and the quality of the chocolate is very good. Top tip here the mixture of sugar and cinnamon that they crust with the churros gives it a great flavour and in my opinion takes out the oiliness of the fried churros.

Dedicated to my sister so she can be inspired

Was walking around Covent Garden the other day and found this really great little cafe called the TeaPod

Had a craving for some nice tea, homemade scones, clotted cream and strawberry jam.

http://teapodtea.co.uk/

Nothing like a cup of house blend tea, scone, clotted cream and strawberry jam (the jam was a little on the runny side) but hey on a cold winters day this hit the spot like there is no tomorrow !! 

Well this is a brownie that was sooo rich and creamy we actually left half of it on the plate cause it was sooo heavy... any other day and that would have been polished off, but the scone hit the spot tooo well. Worth going back to for the brownie and the carrot cake looked really good too!!! Mmmmm Max you have to have a look at that 5 layer carrot cake.

Very much in the cafe style, did not have any of the savoury food,  but have to go back to try a little sarnie !

I thought this was really funny cause I´m the first one to put a tea cozy on my head... it just has to be done! Like to know that I´m not the only crazy one out there and that I can be trusted ! On nice photos of tea related things !! haha

The tables were nice great little place to sit and have a cup of tea after trudging around Covent Garden

New Project

We are going to be opening our new restaurant soon so am going to start designing the new kitchen !!

So if there are any suggestions out there please send them in. I am going to need everything from pots and pans to ovens and burners. So any help would be great !! Haha