• over 2kg cherry tomatoes for £2
• 2 large aubergines for £1
• over 1kg broccoli for £1
• a huge whole salmon, filleted for £15 from the fish stall at the McDonalds end. A couple buying other fish there told us they’d had one from that stall and it was lovely.

Having found the fish we needed in Lewisham, we didn’t really need to go to Deptford. I’m afraid we went to Tesco – where I found Thai coconut milk for 69p a can (they also sell tins for 99p and £1.30 so make sure you find the right one – it’s called Cocofresh). We use a lot of this in curries. And as we weren’t going to Panda Panda I bought these udon noodles which I pimped with finely-sliced carrot, chilli, radish, peas and prawns. They were about £2.19 for 2 packets – and it was an excuse to get the Japanese mandolin out of the cupboard where it’s been for the last 12 years or so. They were tasty. And Chewy. I always insist on Chewy brand udon.

Serves 4. You will need:

• 200g cous cous
• 2 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes
• 2 x teaspoons harissa paste – more if you like it hot
• 2 x large teaspoons of garam masala ground spice mix
• 1 x 400g tin of chickpeas
• 1 very large or 2 medium onions
• 1 large clove of garlic
• 3 chicken breasts
• 2 handfuls of chopped dried apricots

Chop the onion and fry in a little olive oil with the garam masala spice in two separate pans. The spices should cook a bit and flavour the oil. After the onion has cooked a bit add half the chopped garlic to each pan. Add a teaspoon of harissa paste to each pan and give a good stir.

Cut the chicken breasts into strips and add to one pan, stirring so they get coated with the spices and cook all over. Add one third of the drained, rinsed chickpeas to the chicken, and then put the rest (two thirds) in the veggie pot.

When the chicken strips look cooked, add a handful of apricots and a tin of tomatoes to each pan, season with salt & pepper, top up with a little water if needed, put lids on and simmer for half an hour or so. Make the cous cous up by following the instructions on the packet – I just poured on boiling water to slightly more than cover the cous cous in a bowl, left it for 10 minutes and fluffed it up with a fork.

Give everyone two large spoons of cous cous and put the stew on top – serve with a dollop of yoghurt if it’s extra spicy, or and / or some chopped coriander leaves.

It was delicious. The veggie one ended up much spicier than the meat one for some reason – I must have put more harissa in it. I’m having the leftovers with Turkish flatbread for my lunch tomorrow. Can’t wait.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the comments on the Guardian article on coffee, but a few useful common themes seem to emerge:

• There’s not much point having an espresso machine at home. Making espresso well is indeed an art and you really do need to spend silly money for a good machine. If you love espresso, find a shop that makes it well and frequent it.
• Finding a coffee shop in Britain that really makes good espresso is still surprisingly hard.
• If you want to make coffee at home, make drip coffee in a cone, caffetiere or consider an Aeropress or similar (I’ve not checked the price of one of those mind) – or if you want something more like espresso, try a stove-top Bialetti Moka pot.
• If you have a Moka pot, the first few cups will taste disgusting, you must never clean/scrub it with soap (rinse it with water) and cheaper Lavazza works better than expensive Illy.

via http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/may/09/how-to-make-the-perfect-espresso

the Goods Shed lunchtime menu on 14th Feb 2012

I had lunch in Paris recently, in a fantastic restaurant, Terminus Nord, just across the road from the Gare du Nord. It occured to me that you would not find such a great eaterie so close to any major railway terminus in London. Well that may or may not be true, but there is an equally wonderful, but very different, restaurant right next to Canterbury West railway station.

The Goods Shed is a kind of fixed, indoor farmers’ market with a restaurant. There’s a huge variety of amazing produce on sale: meat, fish, cheese, vegetables, an extraordinary selection of bottled and kegged beer and cider, cakes as well as a cafe and ready-made food to take away and eat at home.

The restaurant sits around the outside of the shed on a raised platform. The atmosphere is informal and the food is amazing.

Eldest son had slow-roasted pork with marmalade sauce (£14.50). This photo really doesn’t do it justice – it was a BIG piece of meat. The pork just melted in the mouth and the crackling was perfect: crispy on top, without a hint of being burnt, and utterly melty underneath. The mashed potatoes and curly kale were perfect with it.

I had duck breast with roasted pears, hibiscus sauce… and some kind of mash and curly kale. At £16 this was the most expensive dish we had, and I was a bit disappointed with it. If you got each ingredient on your fork at the same time, it was lovely, but the duck on its own didn’t taste of anything very special to me.

My daughter had chicken – it was a leg, and being a leg they were unable to split it for a child portion. But what chicken! This was easily the best chicken I have ever had. It was cooked utterly perfectly – the source produce, seasoning and cooking process were all top-notch. And, like the pork, there was a lot of meat on the plate here. Superb.

There was also a very tasty, generously-portioned vegetarian platter on offer. I’m sure the puddings are amazing, but we were vanquished by the genorosity of the portions… and we thought we probably ought to visit the Cathedral, which was (ostensibly) the main purpose of our visit to Canterbury in the first place.

A very filling one course lunch for 2 adults and 3 children (two of whom had adult portions) came to £77.40 including one local ale and five soft drinks.

Thoroughly recommended – we’ll be back. And thank you to @ginandting for suggesting it.

Web site: http://thegoodsshed.co.uk/restaurant/
Closed Mondays!

I rounded off the day by watching one of my favourite films: Powell and Pressburger’s 1944 masterpiece A Canterbury Tale.

You will need:

• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 2 small red chillis
• 1 potato, peeled and chopped
• 450g carrots, peeled and chopped
• small piece of fresh ginger, finely diced
• 1  litre vegetable stock
• knob of creamed coconut
• small amount of fresh coriander, chopped

Fry the onion in some oil for 5 minutes. Add the potato, one of the red chillis, chopped with seeds and all,  fresh ginger and ground coriander. Fry for about 10 minutes. Add the carrots and vegetable stock. Simmer for 20 minutes. Add a knob of creamed coconut, let it melt then blitz in a blender. Season to taste.

Sprinkle some slices of red chilli and fresh coriander on top when you serve. Hot, spicy and delicious.

I’m very late discovering Panda Panda… but what a great café!

I was in Deptford, London SE8 and tweeted for suggestions of places to eat. @Sarahluv81 suggested Panda Panda, and she’s spot-on.

It’s a small café on the busy main road of Deptford Broadway – the main A2 out of London to Kent, close to Deptford Bridge DLR station. They’re famous for their Vietnamese baguettes, but we both had noodles. My pork noodles were delicious and hugely filling – £4.95 a bowl. My companion had Mushroom and Tofu noodles which were almost as nice. We were the only customers when we arrived for an early lunch but it soon started filling up, and our food arrived almost before we’d ordered it. You can have optional nuts and chillis on your noodles – we had both. Chillis were pretty hot, but on a cold day that’s no bad thing.

The thing that really has me hooked is the bubble tea, though – amazingly-textured concoctions served with a big fat straw through which you suck velvety balls made of tapioca. I love South Korean Aloe Vera drink, so this was very much up my street, but they have plenty of other healthy fresh juices without tapioca if you don’t fancy silky balls slipping down your throat…

A very filling lunch for 2 including fresh drinks came to £15.10.

Rather frustratingly it’s only open from 10.30 am to 6pm, so the free local delivery isn’t that useful, and it’s closed Sunday. I hear they visit Brockley Market in Lewisham too.

I don’t really do ratings, but I’d give it 9/10. They probably deserve an extra point for restraint – I almost certainly would have called the place ‘Panda! Panda!’ and would have been much more in-your-face with the panda motif all round.

I will be back – with my Oriental-food-crazy kids.

Website: http://panda-panda.co.uk/

I was making a chicken curry and a vegetable curry and somehow ended up making a mushroom one and a potato one as well. I think the potato one was the best of the bunch, followed by the mushroom. Here’s how I made it.

• 4 large potatoes
• 1 tsp mustard powder (recipe called for seeds but I didn’t have any)
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, minced or finely chopped
• half a tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• chopped fresh coriander to garnish

Peel and chop the potatoes into 1 inch cubes. Parboil for a few minutes. Don’t let them turn to mash.

Fry the mustard and cumin seeds in some hot vegetable oil. You’ll know when they’re done because the seeds will start popping and you’ll start to choke. Add the chilli powder and ginger and stir vigorously for 1 minute. Then add the drained potatoes, tomatoes, sugar and water. Simmer until the potatoes are cooked through, then stir in the cumin and coriander powder and serve with a sprinkling of fresh chopped coriander on top. Rather hot, and great as a side dish with any curry.

The Guildford Arms is a gastropub in Greenwich, SE London. It currently looks a wee bit blank and uninviting from the outside – indeed I had walked past it ages ago and found its starkness a bit intimidating. It might not exactly be a cozy boozer, but it turns out to be a great place to eat as well as drink, with local Meantime beer on tap as well as Madonna’s favourite pint, Timothy Taylor’s Landlord.

For my starter I had cauliflower soup with truffle oil – this was creamy, perfectly seasoned and the cauliflower flavour was spot-on, not too over-powering. My companion had Roquefort, Roasted Walnut, Beetroot & Chicory salad which was nice.

M’companion had beer-battered fish and chips – fish was excellent. I tried the chips – not quite crispy enough on the outside for my liking; possibly they’d not been cooked twice (or thrice) on a high-enough heat at the end. My main course was sublime though: slow-cooked ox-cheeks with anise, smoked garlic mash, sprout leaves and carrots. The meat was delicious and melted in the mouth. The smoked garlic was hardly detectable in the mash, but it was perfectly smooth and warm and filling, and perfect for a sunny winter’s day. The greens hiding underneath were perfect.

For pudding my companion had warm chocolate and hazlenut brownie with ice cream, and I had pecan tart with whisky ice cream. The former was very nice, the latter was perfect. The pecan tart was sweet and moist and the ice cream had a big hit of whisky flavour. One for the road!

The Guildford Arms has a formal dining room on the first floor and a second floor function room, plus a decent-sized garden and decked area. It’s run by Guy Awford, who also runs the nearby Inside restaurant which we had a lovely after-movie dinner in recently.

Three course lunch for two, including a pint of tasty Meantime pale ale and a half of cider came to £33.85. We’ll be back.

http://www.theguildfordarms.co.uk/

• 500g brisket
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp smoked paprika – must be smoked, this is a key ingredient
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• veg stock powder
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• red wine vinegar
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• small amount of chopped fresh coriander

Put the oven on – about 150 degrees C, or lower perhaps.

Score lines in the brisket. Season with salt & pepper and rub in the cinnamon, cumin, paprika and oregano. Brown the meat in a slug of olive oil a hot casserole on the hob. While it’s searing, in a small saucepan boil the chopped red pepper, bay leaf, tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce and stock made up with some boiling water – you need enough liquid to cover the meat.

Then add the onion to the meat and cook for about 5 minutes on the hob until the onions are translucent. Add the tomato sauce from your other pan to the meat, and put the casserole in that low oven – or on a low heat on the hob if you like. I cooked mine in the oven at 150 C for about 2 hours, then I cooked it for another half an hour on the hob with the lid off to thicken it up a bit. You could probably cook it for longer at a lower heat and get even better results.

When the meat is ready, pull it apart with a pair of forks. It should just fall apart. Adjust the seasoning with salt, pepper and a small amount of red wine vinegar to taste. Remove the bay leaf. Add chopped fresh coriander and serve on warm tortilla wraps with grated cheese, lettuce, rice &c.

The orginal recipe uses fresh red chillis, but I find the spices, especially the smoked paprika, give it enough kick. My middle son loves heat, so we let him add Barefoot Kitchen Habanero sauce to taste – you won’t need much!