Emni - Upper Street

Angel is a great spot for places to eat out, mainly for somewhere to fill your stomach from a range of cuisine at a decent price. Examples? Well, if you're after Indonesian/Vietnamese there's Bannana Tree Canteen on St John's Street, (the 5-spice chicken and chicken in sweet and sour lime sauce dishes are particularly yummy); or you could venture along Upper Street to stumble across independent restaurants like the quaint Le Mercury with their classic French menu.

But in between these two venues is where we make our stop, at Emni for a modern Indian delectable dinner.

I went for the Pasliyen Chops to start and Chicken Chattinad for the main. The lamb chops were incredibly tender and packed a punch from being marinated in ginger and star annis. They left my mouth tingling (in a good way) until my main arrived.

The Chicken Chattinad was milder but still full of flavour with cumin seeds, tamarind and cinnamon. The accompaniments like the lemon rice and Peshwari Naan were enough to share between two people and surprisingly not too heavy.

Other dishes my friends ordered were also tasty and equally good to look at!

King Prawn Cutlet

Malai Scallop

Doora Kebab

Tandoori Duck

This was a particularly pleasing visit as Emni participates in the Taste London offer of 50% off the final bill (of up to 4 people).

There were a few bad points, however, which I'd like to get out of the way.

• I didn't like the knives I'm afraid. A good knife should be balanced when holding it and these ones are bottom heavy with a bizarre twisty bit where you're meant to put your index finger. No need to favour design over practicality when it comes to cutlery!
  
• One of the main course dishes came late and was cold when it arrived.
• The waiter added a service charge for the original price of the bill rather than the discounted bill with the Taste London offer - so look out for that!

Despite these slightly irritating points, it was a lovely meal and one of the best Indian restaurants in the Islington area for quality and for value.

Banana Batch

I've recently been trying to master a good banana cake after eating someone else's and getting cake envy. I've tried other people's recipes, changing ingredients, making it in two small loaf tins instead of one large, changing the oven temperature etc but by jove I think I've now cracked it!

Last night I concocted my best batch, but in a 'happy accident' kind of way. Mainly because I didn't have quite enough self-raising flour and used plain flour to top up the ratio. Now, I always thought this was a big no-no in baking...but as it turns out, it worked beautifully.

So without further ado, I give you The Banana, Pecan and White Chocolate Cake!

Ingredients:

125g self raising flour

50g plain flour

100g caster suger

75g demerera sugar

1 tsp baking powder

150g/4oz unsalted butter at room temperature, diced

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Generous squeeze of lemon juice

2 bananas, diced

100g Green & Blacks white chocolate, chopped

25g pecan halves, chopped

How To Make:

Preheat oven to 150. Grease a 2Ib bread loaf tin with butter.

Sift the flour, sugar and baking powder into a large mixing bowl. (The demerera sugar won't all go through the sieve so just add that to the bowl as it is).

Stir in the butter, eggs and vanilla extract until the mixture folds. Add the banana, white cholocate, pecans and finally the squeeze of lemon juice and stir well.

Add mixture to the loaf tin. Bake for about 30 minutes and check it's progress. You may need to put some foil over the top at this stage to avoid the top burning/over cooking.

Leave in the oven for a further 20 minutes. Remove from oven, take foil off and check it's progress by using a metal skewer to see if the middle of the cake has cooked through.

It probably still needs another 10 minutes, so leave the foil off and cook for 10 minutes until the top goes golden and the cake has cooked all the way through.

When done, leave the cake in the loaf tin for 5 minutes and then gently transfer the cake onto a cooling rack for a further 5 minutes.

Tasty Display

I recently visited the National Portrait Gallery twice in 7 days - that's not too much is it? - to see two different exhibitions. The first was the Beatles to Bowie: The 60s Exposed collection of the musicians and models who epitomised the emergence of pop culture from the 'Swinging London' scene to Beatles-mania through to the progression of psychedelia.

The second was to check out this year's Photographic Portrait Prize. On this visit however, I wasn't feeling too good and needed a little sit down and a refreshment (any excuse, right?). So, not wanting to venture outside and wander about in the cold, I headed to the Portrait Restaurant on the 3rd Floor.

There's a different menu depending on the time you arrive. It was about 4:15 which meant we got the 'Afternoon Tea' menu. Settling for a Latte, hot chocolate and a sultana and apple scone I was expecting an overpriced snack.

What I did get, however, was a velvety Latte with a kick to it and a warm scone which had the right amount of crumble to it - just enough to keep it together with the clotted cream and jam.

The view is also quite impressive, with the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben in the near distance, especially as the sky darkened and the lights of London began to twinkle. (Which reminds me, Christmas is a mere 5 weeks away!)

The afternoon coffee and scone came to £10 including service charge*, which is pretty good value considering it's within one of the Capital's more expensive areas and run by head chef, Katarina Todosijevic, whose background is with the Conran Group (now known as D&D London). I must visit again for lunch because the Beatles to Bowie Set Menu looks very tempting!

* Service charge is 15% but if you're just popping up there for a tea or coffee, you shouldn't need to pay more than a tenner.

British Sausage Week

It was British Sausage Week this week. Here's a little bite (which actually turned out to be a rather large and very filling bite) a friend and I put together for lunch, off the cuff.

Just simply:

Sausages (oven cooked)

Houmous

Spinach

Baguette

Ketchup

What a banger!

Hotdog - Simian Mobile Disco

3 Hour Lasagne

There's no doubt about it, a lasagne is one of the most comforting dishes ever. Especially one that takes 3 hours to make. If you've got time to burn get involved in some of this...it's a guaranteed classic.

Ingredients:

For the ragu

500g pork mince

500g beef mince

3/4 of 1 large onion, finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic

4 sticks of celery, finely chopped

2 carrots, finely chopped

2 x 400g can of chopped tomatoes

500ml red wine

200ml beef stock

2 x stem of rosemary

3 ball of mozzarella, sliced

handful of grated Parmesan

4 strips of anchovies, sliced lengthways

For the Bechamel sauce

1 1/4 pints of milk

pinch of ground nutmeg

1/4 onion

2 x bay leaves

50g butter

50g plain flour

How to make:

Cook the onion, celery and carrot on a medium heat for 15 minutes until soft and translucent. Add the crushed garlic and rosemary and fry for another 2 minutes.

Add the mince and cook until the juices from the meat have absorbed. Then add 400ml of the red wine and cook for 45 minutes.

Once the meat has absorbed the wine, add the tomatoes and beef stock and simmer for 2 hours adding the rest of the wine in stages. Season with salt and pepper.

15 minutes before the ragu is ready, heat the milk in a saucepan along with the 1/4 onion, nutmeg and bay leaves.

In a separate pan, melt the butter and mix together with the flour. Then add the milk in stages to the butter/flour mixture. Whisk thoroughly until all or most of the lumps have gone. If there are too many lumps after about 5 minutes, sieve the bechemal sauce into another pan.

In a glass or casserole dish, layer up the lasagne as follows: lasagne sheets, ragu, mozzarella, Bechamel sauce, lasagne sheets, ragu, anchovies, mozzarella, Bechamel sauce, lasagne sheets, Bechamel sauce to cover the top layer, then scatter the remaining mozzarella and Parmesan.

Put in a preheated oven set to 180, gas mark 4 for 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Hummingbird Cupcakes

So I've finally attempted to make something from the Lantana cafe. I decided to go for the ever expanding popularity of the Hummingbird cupcakes. And here's how they turned out...

I had a slight tinker with the recipe as I was only able to make 12 rather than 24, but it worked out fine and the cupcakes were soft, golden and moist enough on the inside thanks to the banana and pineapple. The cream cheese topping could have been more stiff, which means I will of course have to make them again to get it right.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1 1/2 cups demerera sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

75g unsalted butter, melted

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 bananas, diced

1/2 can of pineapple chunks, drained

25g pecan halves, chopped

How to make:

Preheat oven to 160. Line 12 muffin wells with paper cupcake liners.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon into a large mixing bowl.

Stir in melted butter, eggs and vanilla until just combined. Gently fold in pineapple, banana and pecans.

Fill the muffin wells about 2/3 to 3/4 full. Bake until golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes.

Leave the muffins in the pan to cool for 5 minutes and then gently remove them from pan and let them cool completely on a wire rack before frosting.

For the cream cheese frosting:

50g unsalted butter, softened at room temp

100g cream cheese

1 tsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups of icing sugar

With a wooden spoon (or electric mixer), beat cream cheese, butter, lemon juice and vanilla until light and creamy. Beat in the powdered sugar until well combined and paste onto the cupcakes. Finally, decorate with some pecan halves.

NB: you could use walnuts instead of pecans.

Inamo

So, I turned 25 quite recently and had the abundant task of choosing somewhere to eat out with my family. Now there are a few things to consider when picking a restaurant to satisfy my lot:

1) Portions must be filling

2) Atmosphere needs to be lively (but not raucus, let's not be silly now)

3) Menu must be varied

While pondering this I remembered Inamo. You can safely tick off all three requirements, and then scrawl down a few extra. I visited this restaurant months ago and knew I had to go back, if only for the battleships. You heard me, battleships! I'll get onto that in a mo, but let me tell you that relying on a waiter to get your order right need not happen my friend. Nope, you can order your food and drinks all by yourself. Each table has a projector above it which projects the menu onto the white table, and you control it with a small mousepad. It's worth remembering to pace your orders so that you don't get served everything at once! [note: this works successfully unless you are my father who failed to listen to this advice resulting in him receiving three main dishes at the same time, includine this pork dish]

And it doesn't stop there. You can play around with the table by changing the image projected onto it; or how about booking a cab if you've had a few too many beverages, or plan out where to head next with the interactive map? But the best thing has to be the games, which takes us back to battleships. You can play against the person opposite you while you wait for your food, brilliant!

Usually the idea of gimmicks and entertainment at a restaurant puts me off as it means not enough attention is given to making sure the food is a decent standard. But I was really surprised to experience some of the best food I've eaten at a restaurant in a long time. No, really.

Between seven of us we had quite a variety off the Oriental fusion menu, and by no means did any of it disappoint. The prices might seem high, but the food matches those prices. We had the aromatic duck pancakes (which the waiters shred for you once they've served it), the Thai red curry, the baby crispy prawns - with an extremely light batter and the Berkshire pork neck. I shared the duck leg with pancakes with my sister, which was lovely and tender. I also had some grilled black faced lamb chops with moromi miso and kim chi which was cooked to perfection, mostly pink with a bit of bite around the edges.

The desert didn't disappoint either. The black sticky rice with fresh mango was gorgeous, but a good one to share as it's very sweet. I've had a similar dish in Bali which I loved even though I'm not a huge fan of rice pudding. The mini chocolate desserts were delicate and looked so cute.

And what meal isn't complete without coffee and tea afterwards? I went for the chamomile flower tea which came in a gorgeous pot and glass cup.