Ordinary Food

Roasted Salmon with Braised Peas and Tomatoes

This is a great dish for dinner parties as its delicious, smart and the braised peas can be done in advance.

Ingredients:

4 salmon fillets
20 or so baby plum tomatoes
Balsamic vinegar
Olive Oil
2 tbsps butter
500g petits pois peas, frozen
2 little gems or 1 small round lettuce
Bunch of spring onions
1 teaspoon sugar
Small pot of creme fraiche
2 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley

Firstly, focus on the peas. These can be made in advance, then reheated just before serving. Shred the lettuce roughly and chop the spring onions. Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the peas, letting the peas get glossy with the butter. After a minute, add the spring onions and lettuce and stir well. Add 50 ml boiling water, the sugar and season well. Now cover with a lid and simmer gently for 15-20 minutes and set to one side.

Preheat the oven and a flat baking tray at 220c. Brush the salmon fillets with olive oil and season with salt and pepper and roast the fillets skin side down for 15 minutes. Then turn your attention to the tomatoes. Sprinkle the tomatoes with a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and tbsp of olive oil and season. Roast on a separate tray for ten minutes.

Now reheat the peas, with 3 tbsp of white wine and a small knob of butter and stir in the chopped parsley. To serve, put a serving of peas on each plate or shallow bowl. Place a salmon fillet on top, and arrange the tomatoes around the salmon. Finish with a teaspoon of creme fraiche on top of the salmon fillet.

If you feel the need serve with new potatoes, but I find this dish sufficient as is. In particular, I love the pinkness of the salmon and the deep red of the roasted tomatoes against the greeness of the peas. And it tastes great!

Tapenade (The Quick Way)

It has become fashionable to bemoan convenience food such as pitted olives. But in my view, most people’s lives are far too busy to pit hundreds of olives. So when I make tapenade I use a can or jar of stoned black olives in brine. I’m sorry if that offends, but honestly, it still tastes good!

Ingredients:

Can or jar of pitted black olives in brine
Handful of ‘decent’ Kalamata olives
Flat leave parsley
Extra virgin olive oil
Pepper
Garlic (optional)

Drain the pitted olives, and then soak in cold water for 30 minutes or longer if you have time. This will help remove the salty taste from the brine. Meanwhile, pit a handful, say 12-15 of decent Kalamata olives which will add depth. Chop a few sprigs of flat leave parsley. If you like garlic, crush a third to a half of a clove using a bit of salt and the tip of a knife. Now back to the pitted olives. Drain them, and then dry on kitchen towel to remove all excess moisture. Put both types of olive, the parsley and garlic in a food processor. Add a few grinds of black pepper- salt shouldn’t be necessary. Then add a good glug of olive oil - I often use a mix of extra virgin and the oil left over from the ‘decent’ olives that come in olive oil. Blitz briefly, then check for consistency. If necessary, add more olive oil to make a paste. You can make this as rough or fine as you like - I prefer it somewhere in the middle. Serve with warm pitta bread or with mixed antipasto. If I have left over tapenade, I often use it as a base for a fresh pasta sauce with fresh, chopped tomatoes and lots of herbs.

Cafe du Marche, London EC1M

http://www.cafedumarche.co.uk/

Times are increasingly tough for French restaurants. What with ever more exotic cuisines popping up on every street corner, it can be difficult for the palate to revert to sole meuniere after a Thai gaeng lueng or Malaysian ikan gulai. But there is still a faithful following for well executed French food, as demonstrated by the packed dinning room at Cafe du Marche.

I first visited this Smithfield institution with my family eighteen years ago. Since then the restaurant has changed hands just once. The place now feels more like an emporium with its three dining rooms, each with different menus. We ate at the “café” which is actually the most "restaurant" of the three and according to the management offers an “a la carte” dining experience despite being prix fixe. Next door is the rendezvous wine bar, whilst upstairs the Genier focuses on grilled foods and frites.

The place has a smug, conspiratorial vibe, with French staff dishing out upmarket French grub to grateful middle class punters keen for a taste of real France. The “handwritten” menu features French classics mixed with modern takes. Unusually, the management has adopted the commendable policy of charging 2.8 times cost for all bottles on the predominately French wine list. We settled for the “superior” (as opposed to “ordinaire”) house wine, priced at £14.95 a bottle. The white - a Viognier, was pleasant and not overtly flowery, whilst the red - a Grenache Shiraz blend was merely adequate.

Familiarity can breed contempt with French cuisine - the most one can usually hope for is charm and refinement rather than excitement. Cafe du Marche's fayre certainly doesn't pack any punches - father's soupe de poisson, blitzed and tomatoey and served with croutons, gruyere and rouille was acceptable but not dissimilar to the stuff available from French hypermarche in big jars. Brother's white bean and grilled mackerel starter was more of a success. My starter of chicken liver and poached egg was plain odd, sitting on a soggy piece of rye bread coated with a fibrous slimy green paste which didn't taste or look good. Father and brother shared a medium rare cote de boeuf (£6 supplement), delivered with a decent sauce Bernaise, fresh green salad and a saucepan full of oddly dusty and not particularly flavoursome potatoes, tomatoes and button mushrooms au Provencal.

A straight forward apricot tart and two rather small slices of nutty chocolate cake rounded off the meal. On the basis of the acceptable but unadventurous grub served to us, I fear Cafe du Marche might be resting on its laurels. The restaurant claims on its website that "it’s a mystery" why they do not feature in the Good Food guide. I suspect it might have something to do with the lack of innovation - there is nothing wrong with churning out French classics, but at £30 a head for the three course set menu, plus supplements for many dishes this is not sufficient. Our bill came to £173 including three bottles of house wine, some mineral water and coffee and a hefty £22 service charge.

At this price level, competent execution goes without saying; precision and innovation are the order of the day. Unfortunately Cafe du Marche doesn't manage either.

Pizza! Pizza!

Have you ever looked at the fat content of most pizzas in supermarkets? Many pizzas weigh in at over 100 grams of fat which is outrageous! Thinking about it, there’s no reason for pizza to be so fatty - its constituent ingredients - flour, yeast and tomatoes and whatever topping with the exception of cheese are not fatty. Thankfully, Pizza Express pizzas, available in most supermarkets are reasonably low fat, and taste good too. They are a tad more expensive than supermarket own-brands at £3.50 for a small pizza and £4.85 for a large one. I’m a big fan of the Americano…

Livebait, London WC2

Livebait, 21 Wellington Street, WC2.

Armed with a £15 discount voucher from http://sante.com I popped into Livebait, next door to the Lyceum theatre with my good chum Andrew for a spot of lunch last Saturday. Livebait sports a bar complete with a mini-fish menu, and a large restaurant behind.

We proceeded to the restaurant under a sign welcoming us to the best fish restaurant in Covent Garden and took one of the American diner style booths flanking both sides, complete with banquettes. The dining room is a pleasant enough but somewhat drab place- the myriad of off green shades and smeared mirrors didn’t help. Nor did the less than sparkling white and green tiled walls, reminiscent of an unhygienic East London fishmongers. At least Livebait’s dining room saved us from the usual mix of drift wood, nets and nautical memorabilia.

Anyway, on to the fish. I stuck with the set menu offering 2 courses for £14.50 and 3 for £18.50, settling on Louisiana fish cakes and ‘classic’ fish and chips with tartare sauce. Andrew chose moules mariniere and grilled king prawns with a garlic and herb butter. We promptly were offered a choice of breads. We stuck with wholemeal which was fresh with the right amount of chewiness and crust to be enjoyed with oysters et al. Not that we had any, but a point worth making in case you chose to!

The £14 bottle of South African Chenin Blanc was perfectly pleasant - crisp and clean which is my preference with all things fishy so one can focus on the business at hand- and arrived with an unprompted ice bucket. The starters were acceptable - the fish cakes were small but filling crabby varieties served with tartare sauce rather than its close French relative, the promised remoulade detailed in the menu. Either way, neither would have added a great deal to the dish given the tasty dill and egg potato salad mound next door. The little pile of leaves on top of the potato salad had seen better days but were edible. Andrew’s moules were moist and flavoursome, with an intense, relatively grit free jus. I would have liked some parsley added to the mix, but that’s just a personal preference.

Unfortunately we had to wait a while for our main courses, giving us time to contemplate the existence of the empty bar at the front of the restaurant. At least it gave customers the option of indulging in cocktails with their fish if they so chose I suppose.

The mains eventually arrived, Andrew’s prawns in a regimented line with a the garlic butter dipping sauce and the battered cod sitting on top of crisp, well cooked chips with a little dish of more tartare sauce balanced on the side. I can report the prawns were reasonably juicy and the dip pleasant enough, but at £14.75 should have arrived with a salad (we ordered a rocket and parmesan one- which was disappointingly small with shavings that clearly had been done a while ago). The fried cod was more batter than fish, and could have been chunkier and less greasy. I would have felt someone miffed if I had shelled out £14.50 for this dish from the main menu.

Our total bill, including a bottle of mineral water, a £1 cover charge each and a £7 service charge came in at £62- in my view somewhat stiff given the mediocre ambience and so-so food. The £15 voucher helped matters somewhat, bringing the quality of food more into line with the asking price and just meriting Livebait a cautious recommendation.

By the way, they do a express lunch where you can have mussels and chips or the aforementioned fish and chips plus a small glass of wine for £7.50 which is a bit of a bargain.

Loch Fyne, Various Locations

http://www.lochfyne.com/

Loch Fyne has 25 restaurants across the UK, and a sister company, Loch Fyne oysters who supply much of the seafood. Their restaurants all carry the same menu, viewable on their website.

I have visited their Guildford, Reading, Portsmouth and Covent Garden restaurants and am pleased to report decent cooking across the board, other than one travesty of a meal last Christmas, where the seabass was undercooked, the wine corked and the service lousy.

As is often the case with ‘chain’ restaurants and indeed fish in general, at Loch Fyne the simplest things are the most well prepared dishes on the menu, with the added advantage of being more economical than the more complex options. For example the seabass with salsa verde at £12.95 or the poached smoked haddock with mash, spinach, peas and wholegrain mustard sauce at under a tenner are winners, the meagre portion of scallops and king prawns at £15 less so. Smoked salmon in various forms is a safe bet. Moules, either served mariniere-style (traditional french with onion, white wine and parsley) or thai style are usually juicy and plentiful, at a very reasonable £5 for a starter of £9 for a larger main dish. Oysters at £8 for six or £14 for a dozen are of good quality.

Pleasingly, the Guildford restaurant was able to respond to my request for a red wine and shallot vinagarette to accompany oysters but annoyingly served it in a jug with a neck so narrow the shallots wouldn’t come out. The sizeable mixed salad at £2.75 often comes with fine green beans and is big enough to share. Bread is plentiful, but for my palate too airy and soft for shellfish.

To drink, I usually stick with the muscadet, around £13 a bottle which is fresh, stone dry and possessing a slight acidic edge which complements the fish. I should make particular mention of the Portsmouth branch at Gunwharf Quay which has very friendly service and the added advantage of offering draught lager - great news for moule lovers!

Baltic, SE1

http://www.balticrestaurant.co.uk/

I first visited Baltic on opening a few years back. The cool, grey austerity that greeted me was a world away from Daquise, London’s longest established Polish restaurant. The emphasis was firmly on sleekness and modernity rather than communist block, with polished concrete floors and perfectly rendered white walls. Uncared for, such spaces can quickly deteriorate with scuffs and the like, but not Baltic. The place still had the cool crispness I remember when it opened.

Andrew and I arrived for an early dinner as we were off to the theatre afterwards. We both stuck to Baltic’s pre-theatre menu at £11.50 for two courses, or £13.50 for three. Our table was immaculately laid out with crisp white linen. A beetroot and horseradish relish and a little saucer of pickled vegetables also featured. Service was attentive throughout.

We chose vodka-infused gravadlax with potato latkes and a lamb sausage with bulgar wheat from the set menu and greedily ordered a third starter from the main menu of blinis - a speciality- with Smoked Salmon, Marinated Herring, Keta Caviar, Aubergine Mousse, and Sour Cream (£7.50). All three starters were excellent - in particular the latkes - crisp and hot against the salmon. The smoked salmon accompanying the blinis was plentiful and exceptional in quality, slightly thicker cut than usual.

We both chose the same main course from the set menu - cabbage stuffed with veal. This arrived with more bulgar wheat - unfortunate given it featured heavily in one starter, but it was an accomplished dish, the cabbage rolls light but flavoursome contrasting the coarseness of the wheat and richness of the red wine sauce.

We had an acceptable organic bottle of South African Syrah/Cabernet blend at £18 and a bottle of mineral water, leading to a final bill of £58 - reasonable given the location and excellent service and quality of cooking. Strongly recommended.

The Cat Head Inn, Somerset

http://www.thecatheadinn.co.uk/

The Cat can be found in the little village of Chiselborough and I’m pleased to report it is a great place to stop for a break from the tedium that is the A303. Andrew and I stumbled across the place by accident, sent there by a pub landlord in neighbouring Chinnock who was all booked out for Sunday lunch. Judging by the wall of awards next to the bar, this particular cat is loved, and we can see why.

The place achieves a refreshingly simple take on the gastro-pub phenomenon, offering a choice of five starters, mains and puds. Pricing is simple - £8 for one course, rising to £14 for three. The pub’s interior is fresh and bright, with exposed sandstone and simple wooden tables and chairs. I should also mention a fine, deceptively large pub garden with terraces and lawns.

With a hunger pang and a hangover to resolve we ordered - calamari for Andrew, bacon and liver salad for me, and roast sirloin beef times two for our mains. Warm ciabbata and french baguette arrived and was promptly devoured. The two starters both featured their name sakes on beds of lightly dressed, well prepared leaves and chopped peppers and cucumber. Given the price and freshness of the food and the bargain pricing, it is churlish to mention that the calamari wore an overly thick, spongy batter and the liver was overcooked, while the diced pepper and cucumber was difficult to eat.

The roast beef arrived with a good, homemade gravy, Yorkshire pud and a big bowl of fresh vegetables and was most definitely superior to the microwaved Sunday lunch offerings from most pubs. The damage was £27 for this tasty grub including a G&T and a pint. We left refreshed, our hangovers sedated and our stomachs pleasantly full!

I will definitely be stopping at the Cat next time I head down to the West Country.