Stale Bread, Garlic, and Over-ripe Tomatoes

Let’s not over romanticise this too much; bruschetta or bread and tomatoes whatever you’d like to call it was invented as a vehicle to avoid waste.  Clever cooks of yore took some stale bread, rubbed garlic on it, and covered it with ripe juicy tomatoes and olive oil.

Turns out it was delicious; but that should be no surprise with good ingredients at the core of the dish.  More often than not we’ll have some tomatoes just on the turn in our fridge; in actual fact there’s usually a bendy carrot as well but I’ve not found a use for that yet...

The Hawksmoor Bar - Commercial Road, E1

Hawksmoor have quite successfully made a reputation for cooking some of the best steaks in London but I’d only ever eaten in the Seven Dials outpost before now.  Having seen a piece in TimeOut about London’s 100 best dishes I thought I’d make the effort to check out the Spitalfields branch as well.

I was there for one thing; the Short-rib French Dip.  It looked amazing in the article; sad I know but for me you can’t beat slow cooked beef and bone marrow, it’s a sexy combination.

Yippie ki-IPA M*therfucker

IPA was one of the first beers I remember drinking; illegally bought cans from a dodgy off-licence that always served the kids near my school.  Back then it felt like a poor choice for those skived afternoon booze ups so we moved on, escalated, to the likes of Special Brew or what ever was on offer that day.

I kept coming back though as I got older; it was probably the fact I could drink more of it without vomming than tramp strength super brew that made it my go to beverage when sneaking into pubs.  It’s been quite a while since I’ve actually had any though so I thought it was about time I redressed the balance.

Summer Rolls with Chilli Oil and Soy

I'll be honest and admit these aren't the prettiest Summer Rolls I've ever seen; I haven’t rolled anything but cigarettes in years and I'm even out of practise with that as well.  That said they are really fresh and taste delicious when your body is craving something healthy.

Exactly the situation I found myself in after a weekend of playing Jubilee drinking games...