Hash browns

I woke up yesterday hankering for a fry-up, so I made my own hash browns  They were tasty, crispy and salty and would go well with some sunny side up eggs with runny yolk and grilled tomatoes.

Ingredients

4 medium-sized white potatoes
1 small onion
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1 egg
sunflower oil

Peel the potatoes and the onion. Use a food processor with grater attachment (or a simple box grater) to grate both the potatoes and onions. Put them in a clean tea towel and squeeze the excess liquid out of the veg by twisting the closed towel above your kitchen sink. A very satisfying experience. Repeat this motion a couple of times until the potatoes and onion are quite dry. Now put them in a big bowl and crack in the egg with it. Season generously with salt and pepper. Mix the ingredients well. Now heat about 1 inch of sunflower oil in a frying pan until a bit of the potato bubbles up as soon as you put it in (test this!) but before the oil starts to smoke. Put in a spoonful of the potato mixture and squeeze flat with a slotted turner. (I fried three hash browns at the time - this depends on how big your pan is. Don't crowd the pan.) Turn when the bottom bit has turned a nice golden brown colour, and remove to a plate lined with kitchen towel when both sides are browned (this took about 3 minutes).

Restaurant review: Allans, Hay's Galleria

Last Saturday, my fiancee wanted to buy me breakfast. Both of our favourite greasy spoon cafes were closed though, so we tried a new French bistro at Hay's Galleria (near London Bridge) called Allans. Why Allans? Well, it was nearest to our usual breakfast hunch. It looked alright from the outside. And a guy very convincingly, when asked "Do you serve breakfast?" said "Yes." then gave us a tasty bit of crepe with sugar to lure us in. Hurrah, we thought! But never had we been so wrong. Never.

We sat down upstairs in a cozy but distressingly kitchy and faux seating area, full of couches, mis-matched chandeliers (some of them with bits of wiring sticking out) and trapped tourists. We took one glance at the menu, then ordered two vegetarian breakfasts from the nice but awfully shy waitress. She gave us some 'freshly squeezed orange juice' which was most definitely not fresh. It came straight from a pack and it had a sugary aftertaste. Almost like, well, store-bought orange juice with sugar. Another far grumpier waitress came quickly, served us two plates of the most distressed version of an English breakfast ever seen, without even a word or friendly smile. She nodded, then left, as if to say: "Ahh, yu zilly peeple, orderink an Engleez brek-fast at mon love-ly Frènch restaurant, I will teech yu un lesson! I will zerve yu... an English monztrozity! Your fa-zer was a hamstèr et your mo-zer zmelled of le elderberries!"

The plate contained the following: 1 deep-fried store-bought tasteless vegetarian burger (instead of the vegetarian sausage on the menu); 1 big oilspil of beans that when tasted turned out to be extremely acidic and actually made us wonder whether 1) the stuff had gone off, or 2) the stuff had gone off and they had tried to mask this by adding a cup of vinegar; 1 pile of obviously tinned, grey-greenish, slightly warmed mushrooms that were especially foul-tasting (a bit like the beans, actually); 1 tiny omelet (this was one tasty omelet, we must admit, but we had ordered scrambled eggs); 1 very sad pile of iceberg lettuce with a slice of cucumber (instead of the tomato that was on the menu); 2 slices of brown toast with a cup of butter. We tried a little bit of each, then looked at one another, and raised one eyebrow (a move amusingly repeated almost exactly by the couple that came in after us and ordered the same).

When we told the shy-but-nice waitress, "We're sorry, but this tastes off," she did not attempt to argue, but immediately said: "Would you like something else?" Good service, that. We ordered two crepes, hoping for the lovely morsels that lured us into this odd restaurant in the first place. Then the grumpy lady came to our table, and with a graceful French arm movement produced a plate of cake. "On ze house," she muttered, then left. The cake, it turned out, was not as acidic as the beans. It was a bit... odd. Perhaps we were barbarians, under-appreciating a carefully produced French delica-zy, but we could've sworn there was something sour in the cake as well.

A few minutes after we finished our cake (in the meantime entertaining ourselves by observing a teenager handing out flyers for the cafe in the laziest way possible) we got our crepes. They were OK: the Nutella and banana one was mostly Nutella with some crepe, the plain banana crepe was alright. They turned out to cost about 5 pounds each, which was a bit pricey for our portion size. But, well, let's be honest and give praise where praise is due: the crepes didn't taste of vinegar.

Aubergine and potato winter stew

Once when I was still a student, me and my fiancee decided to check out a Turkish restaurant down the street from my flat. There was nearly no-one in there, but the food was excellent. One dish I still remember was an aubergine stew that was so tender and meaty it made me forget all the bad ratatouille I had ever had.
The tomato sauce it was sitting in reminded me of  a simple and beautiful dish I had in Antwerp one summer in what was then advertised as the cheapest restaurant in town. Basically, it was potatoes that had been stewed in tomato sauce until they nearly fell apart. Inspired by both dishes, I've made a hearty winter stew. It's vegan, but only by accident. If you do want to have some meat in it, try adding some cubed, fatty lamb neck or shoulder when you add the potatoes and add another 20 minutes to your simmering time.

Ingredients (serves 4)

An aubergine

4 medium-sized white potatoes
1 aubergine
2 400ml tins of peeled tomatoes
400ml can of cannellini beans
1 medium-sized onion
2 cloves of garlic
125 ml red wine
1 tbsp paprika
1 tsp cumin
3 tbsp olive oil

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Slice the aubergine into 1 cm thick slices and put on a plate. Sprinkle generously with salt in order to drain them of some of their bitter juices and make them more tender. This takes about 30 minutes. Just before this is done, roughly chop the onion and garlic and fry these on a medium heat in a large casserole pan in 1 tbsp olive oil. Peel the potatoes and slice into 1 cm cubes. When the onion is softened and slightly browned add the potatoes and the rest of the olive oil. Now carefully remove the salt and the juices from the aubergine with some paper kitchen towels. Slice the aubergine into 1 cm cubes as well, and add to the pan. Stir occasionally, and wait for the aubergines and potatoes to colour a little. Then add the peeled tomatoes, cannellini beans, wine, paprika and cumin. Once the stew comes to a boil, turn down the heat a little, put the lid on the pan and simmer for about 60 minutes. Serve with crusty bread (I used ciabatta).