By: Mrs Robot

So… we're still here. It's been over a year since my last post. And we didn't get the ’rona, or have to rely on our precooked meals because we were poorly, which was great. I honestly didn't think it had been so long since I'd last posted, but I guess this had better be some sort of retrospective. I'm going to split this into two posts, one for us at home and one for food cooked by other people, because there was some of that too.

We didn't actually have any trouble getting food. We always have flour, rice, noodles, assorted nuts and pulses and so on in stock, and because we get a weekly vegbox delivery and shop at the local butcher, we never had any gaps in what we needed. We did do a bulk order with Wai Yee Hong at one point because we weren't able to get to Bath to the Chinese supermarket. But compared to friends who couldn't get pasta (and whose kids live on the stuff) we had it easy.

Last year's initial lockdown coincided with a spell of good weather, and because we're lucky enough to have a garden that meant lots of eating outside on the patio. Even if we couldn't go anywhere, we could still enjoy a Spanish spread. There was always jamon and tortilla, and Mr Robot's become extremely good at cooking pescado en adobo, chunks of white fish marinated and then floured and deep fried. I'm a big fan of those fishy nuggets. As the epidemic went on, Mavalco, which usually supplied restaurants, started selling Spanish ingredients direct, and we've placed a few orders with them.

Poor old Mr Robot had a proper lockdown birthday in May, but we made a meal of it – literally. He joked that he wanted a dinosaur cake with a raspberry ice-cream meteor for his birthday, so I made lemon-cake dinos (mould from Lakeland) and a raspberry meteor, all on a 'lost world' scene made from biscuit and chocolate ganache. I was jolly proud of that!

We cooked increasingly elaborate meals when eating indoors. Being at home meant it was possible to prep something needing long, slow cooking at lunchtime and pop it in the oven during an afternoon tea break. Pot roast pheasant midweek? Hell yeah. And I'm prone to anxiety, and found cooking a good way to switch off after the working day. There were times when I didn't have the headspace for much, but I could crack open a cookbook and make something nice. Looking at the cookbook shelf, Fuchsia Dunlop's The Food Of Sichuan and Every Grain Of Rice are two books that got a lot of use.

We didn't really push many boundaries, food-wise, though Mr Robot has enjoyed cooking Korean food – and we've both enjoyed eating it. I think it started with a recipe for Army Stew and snowballed from there.  But overall the past year or so has definitely been a time of comfort eating, everything from meat pies to Indian dishes to lasagne. And, I must confess, takeaways. This possibly should go under 'food cooked by other people' in the next post, but I feel it belongs here, because those Deliveroo/JustEat orders relate more to the food we'd cook ourselves, in that they were what we'd eat when we simply didn't have the headspace or energy to cook for ourselves. At the start of pandemic restrictions, we were often having two a week. We have become rather rotund robots!

Anyway, I shall leave you with some Christmas food. We did our usual Christmas food, a tasty spread of normality in what had been a very not-normal year. A lot of 2020 was pretty sucky, but at least the food was good!

Quarantine cuisine

By Mrs Robot 

I guess we’re not going to be able to avoid updating this blog while we’re on lockdown, eh? To be honest, being shut up at home isn’t having too detrimental effect on our diets. Because of how we shop – milk from the milkman, organic vegbox from Riverford, meat, fish and cheese from Walter Rose – we haven’t yet encountered any difficulties in getting our usual fresh foods, and our diet is so varied we already had various rices, pastas and noodles in the cupboard. (Incidentally, Walter Rose is now doing veg deliveries as well as meat, across the south of England and into London, so they’re well worth taking a look at, or you can try looking round your own local small shops if you're having trouble finding what you need in the large ones.)

I’ve been really grateful for having a well-stocked spice and condiments cupboard, because making decent food has become an important part of daily life. Stepping away from our computers (we’re both currently still working full time from home) and making something is a good brain-refresher; plating it nicely and taking care with presentation reminds us we’re not just existing, we’re still living.

And so I made scones during one lunchbreak. Another time, I grabbed my usual salad ingredients, and instead of just bunging them all into a bowl, added some rice noodles and a lime/fish-sauce dressing to make something much fancier-tasting, and presented it all nicely on a plate. I charred aubergines during one lunchbreak, then left them in a plastic tub in the fridge to drain, and turned them into baba ganoush with home-made roti a couple of days later. I’d been meaning to make baba ganoush for ages, and being shut up at home gave me the kick up the bum I needed to get on with it.

We do have foods in the freezer in case we both get ill at once and neither of us can cook. For now, we’re focussing on eating well, with a decent quantity of fresh veg, to stay healthy. I hope you stay healthy too! Have you tried anything new, or made anything you're especially proud of?

Burmese Mutton Puffs

By: Mrs Robot

Ooops, Christmas came and went with no Greedybots. (In case you’re wondering, this year’s trifle was inspired apple crumble, with lightly poached apples, brandy and cinnamon cake in the base, custard, whipped cream and then crumble fragments on top.) BUT you’re getting a post in January, and you had to wait till February last year so…

We’ve accumulated many cookbooks over the past year, and one we’ve used a lot is Mandalay by Mi Mi Aye. We went to the launch of her first book, Noodle!, which we loved, and were invited to the launch of this one, but my job got in the way. I’ll do a proper review of that in coming weeks, but over the last weekend I made something which didn’t make the cut for Mandalay: seik-thar puffs, or mutton puffs in English. The recipe’s online at Great British Chefs.

The method is interesting, as you fry the onions and garlic first in spices, then do the mutton (okay, I used lamb) and more spices separately, adding cornflour and water and thickening it, then adding the onions later. I’ve learned the hard way to make sure I cook onions properly for Asian dishes, and I know the value of properly browned meat. I was a bit dubious about the cornflour stage – mutton in glue? – but it works brilliantly. I had a bit of meat left over, so ate that on its own. Delicious!

The garlic and turmeric made it taste really Burmese to me. There’s potential here to vary the dish. I think a pork mince would be really interesting, or you could use finely-chopped mushrooms, carrot, water chestnut or other veg with a bit of bite if you want a veggie option. Changing the spices would also make a big change.

Anyway, another great recipe from Mi Mi Aye here!

Bar du Boucher, Bordeaux

By: Mrs Robot

Ever have one of those days when the weather seems to be against you? We had one in Bordeaux; it was chucking down. But in the end we had the last laugh, as it drove us into a little bar we'd probably otherwise not have gone into. We love a bit of rock music, but on holiday tend to look for somewhere a little more traditional feeling, and in Bordeaux we'd been looking for the perfect steak Bordelaise. As it was, it was raining, we needed to hide from the deluge, and a beer plus Guns 'n' Roses seemed like a brilliant idea. I liked this place as soon as we walked through the door; I like a pub that feels well-worn, like it has regular patrons and doesn't give a stuff about being fancy enough to attract finicky types.

We hadn't noticed the name of the bar. Bar du Boucher: Bar of the Butcher. Had we not wandered deeper in we might never have realised what a treasure trove it was. The ceiling's vaulted, and the room itself long and slightly gloomy. The front is tables and bar, like in the photo at the top of this page, then the bar continues, with stools alongside it. We headed for those rather than a table to get a look at the beer pumps and there, by the opposite wall, is the meat counter. Beyond that there's a restaurant area with an amazing light made of pans – a pandelier, if you will – above the tables.

So, picture this: a slightly soggy pair of robots enjoying plenty of rock music and a pleasant beer or two, and right beside us, constantly drawing our eye, was the magnificent meat counter. We couldn't eat anywhere else that day!

You don't just order steak in the Bar du Boucher, or even the cut of the steak. You get a choice of the breed of cow your steak is from. We both had Blond d'Aquitaine, the local breed, and of course we had it bleu. In case you're wondering, it's the middle joint in the front row of meat in the picture above. Both it and the cut to the left of it are entrecotes, but the incredible dark colour of the Blond d'Aquitaine made it an automatic choice. The minimum size for a piece of meat is 200g, and after that the size is up to you. There's also duck breast (stuffed or plain) and andouillette on the counter, but really the cow is the star here.

I had my steak with potatoes dauphinoise, Mr Robot had chips, and the dauphinoise is definitely the way to go. We washed it down with a local wine. If the meat is impressive, the wine list matches it. Several of the bottles on there, vintage wines from some of the best-known chateaux in Bordeaux, were priced in four figures. Ours was nothing like those, so if you're hankering for an old Margaux, it's still there waiting for you.

Oh, and that steak Bordelaise? We never found one, but a charming local couple we met at lunch on another day explained that steak Bordelaise wasn't something the Bordelaise themselves really go for anyhow – a dish of lampreys stewed with leeks is the thing they really consider typical. I don't know if that's my thing. I do know if we're in Bordeaux again, we'll be heading back to Bar du Boucher, rain or shine.

Voila, le French Taco

By: Mrs Robot

Ah, la belle France! Home of the finest cuisine. So as our wedding anniversary holiday this year was to Bordeaux, it was only natural that we should seek out the French Taco.

Wait, wut?

I completely blame this article in The Guardian. Usually we avoid junk food places on holiday as possibly not very local, and the Bordeaux branch of O'Tacos is a reasonable distance from the tourist area. But the promise of authentically French junk food, a wrap stuffed with chips and meat and cheese sauce, lured us in. It's nothing like a Mexican taco. If anything, it's half-kebab, half-wrap, with cheese goop thrown in.

When we arrived at O'Tacos the queue was out the door – well, it was lunchtime, and the place was just round the corner from the university. We ended up going away for a coffee and coming back a little later when class had restarted. Even so, the chaps behind the counter were busy with a constant stream of Ubereats drivers picking up delivery orders.

It is really good. How something so wrong can taste so right is beyond me. As far as I could make out, the wrap, chips and cheese sauce are standard. Then you get to pick one to four meats (depending on the size of taco you've chosen), an additional sauce, and any extras (including the option to have it toasted with additional cheese on the outside). It's delightfully non-messy, very tasty, and very filling.

France: not just the best at fine cooking, but here to claim the junk food crown too.

Still greedy...

By: Mrs Robot

Even when our appetites for blogging wane, our appetites for food do not! We've new cookbooks to talk about, and lovely food to share. I shall whet your appetite – and hopefully summon the spirit of my blogging passion – with this little shot of today's lunch. Ma po tofu with rice for me (though I couldn't identify any meat in it, and usually I'd expect pork) and braised beef in udon noodle soup for Mr R, at Chili Family Noodle in Bath.

Chili Family Noodle is always really busy, especially during term times when all the students are back in town. It's an unpretentious little noodle bar at the bus station, and the food is really good. My tofu was packed with the tastes of black bean, chili bean sauce and Szechuan pepper, and I loved every mouthful. That said, I did envy those noods. Maybe we'll have to go back...

Lunch at Chez Dominique, Bath

By: Mrs Robot

Yesterday was my birthday (45 – might not be a 'big one' but it certainly feels big enough) so Mr Robot took me to Chez Dominique in Bath for lunch. Usually we go out in the evening for birthdays, but my workplace gives us our birthdays off so I'd booked a salon appointment in town that morning and we decided to make it a lunch date instead. Chez Dominique's a la carte menu is available all day, and we'd fancied going there for ages. It's just over Pultney Bridge, near our dentist, so we've both looked longingly at the menu on the way back from being savaged by the hygienist.

Mr Robot had booked the afternoon at work and said it felt very much like being on holiday, as we were eating nice food on a lovely day. It also felt a little like bunking off as he'd been in work that morning and then left it all behind.

But you're not here for tales of bunking off, you're here for food! I had smoked eel salad for a starter, and Mr Robot had a ham hock salad. Mine included chicory and apple, and both had a very nice dill dressing on that made us think yes, we really do need to grow some dill in the garden this year. The sweet crunch of the apple and bitter crunch of the chicory contrasted nicely with the soft, smoky eel and crispy smoky bacon.

For our main course we decided to share the chateaubriand from the Specials board. During our meal we heard the manager telling other customers the meat comes from Walter Rose – well, that explains why it was so good. We had it rare, because neither of us sees any point in having steak any other way. It came with fried mushrooms, salad leaves and frites. I'm fussy about mushrooms, only liking them when they're very fresh and very well fried, and these were perfect. (Honestly, stewed mushrooms are the worst.)

Mr Robot had the pear and almond tart for pudding, while I went for the cheese. This was good cheese. For one thing, there was an acceptable cheese-to-biscuit ratio. Too many places load up on (cheaper) fancy biscuits and stinge on the cheese, in my opinion. Chez Dominique makes sure that when you order the cheese, cheese is the star. And every cheese has a decent amount of punch.

I can't tell you how much it all cost as I didn't pay, but Mr Robot seemed to think the price was jolly reasonable, and we both agreed it's somewhere we'd go back to.

Telling porky pies

By: Mrs Robot

I had my first-ever go at making hot water pastry over the weekend. Mr Robot got me a 'Simple Simon' pie mould* for Christmas and I finally got round to testing it out. The mould is cunning because you can rearrange the dividers to make one big pie, six little ones, or all sorts of configurations in between.

I followed the recipe in the Ginger Pig Farmhouse Cookbook. I was a little apprehensive because of the time it said it took, but actually a good chunk of that was boiling two trotters to make the jelly. We had so much jelly left over I've frozen the leftovers – that should speed up any future pie making. The pastry was something else that seemed daunting but was surprisingly easy; I boiled the fats and water together and stirred it into the flour with the handle of a wooden spoon, by which time it was cool enough for my asbestos fingers to work with.

The recipe quantities were enough for three equal-sized pies in the Simple Simon, plus three more slightly smaller ones that I made in fancy metal cake/jelly moulds as that was all I had that looked the right size! The results weren't the prettiest, but I'm pleased with them nonetheless. When I make another batch I'll probably increase the amount of salt in both the pork and the jelly, and perhaps add more herbs or spices to the jelly too. These were nice, but with a little tweaking we could have pie magic.


*This blog is not monetised; the link is purely for information and we do not benefit from it in any way.

Our Thadingyut meal

By: Mrs Robot

We do a meal for Thadingyut each year. We started after visiting my grandfather McDonald's home town in Burma/Myanmar at Thadingyut some years back. We don't celebrate it in any traditional or religious way, we just cook Burmese food for it. (I guess in that way it's like our Christmas, which we also mark but not in any religious fashion.) 

In previous years we've made noodle dishes, but this year I made amethar hnat, a classic Burmese beef curry. I got the recipe from Easy Burmese Recipes, and tested it out in advance. We actually had Emily and Amy's version at their Rangoon Sisters supper club, and theirs was richer. As the writer of Easy Burmese Recipes states her version uses less oil and more onions, when I made our Thadingyut meal I left out an onion and added extra oil, and preferred the flavour, but it's good either way.

Alongside the curry I served boiled rice, two salads (tomato with crispy shallots and bean with toasted peanuts, though they were French beans not long bean, all dressed with fish sauce and lime), and chicken broth flavoured with garlic, coriander and a dab of yellow bean. 

The night I served it I was feeling pretty tired and not really in the mood to do the salads. The temptation to slap the curry on top of some rice and call it a day was strong! But I'm glad I didn't. If you're going to mark an occasion, it's best to make it special. Who knows what special dish I'll whip up next year?

Cat Bento!

 By: Mrs Robot

Working on games magazines for a living, I am surrounded by people who really love all things Japanese. And several of my favourite foodies are likewise obsessed with the place. Me? I'd love to go, though other places always seem to bump it from my travel list, and when it comes to cooking the food looks so elaborate. As much as I admire the precision and artistry involved, I'm too chaotic a person to make it.

Only now I have to control my chaos, because Mr Robot bought me a bento box designed like an adorable little cat, so it's bento lunches for me from now on.

He got me a Hello Kitty bento cutlery set and some sweet little animal-headed sauce bottles too. And, most helpfully of all, a recipe book. That was very reassuring, because the lunches in it didn't look half as elaborate as the ones I see online, which would probably take me half an hour or more to make – and I only have about ten minutes at most to cobble together a lunch. It's nice to know no-one actually expects me to recreate the hanging gardens of Babylon or the works of Studio Ghibli using rice and cherry tomatoes.

Monday's lunch was basmati rice plus beef, green beans and carrots in oyster sauce (leftovers from Sunday night), plus cherry tomatoes and cucumber as a snack, and today it's what I hope is a more correct rice* with duck in a sweet and slightly spicy soy-heavy sauce, plus cherry tomatoes, and melon and nectarine as a snack. The duck was left over from last night. Already a pattern is developing...

As I mentioned, I've never really cooked anything Japanese, and I suspect Cat Bento will end up full of confusion cuisine. I got some deep-fried tofu from the Chinese supermarket as until now I've been sticking to pure fruit and veg at lunchtimes, and while I'm prepared to introduce rice and possibly egg, I'm not sure I want meat in my lunch too often. The cookbook has a recipe for Japanese omelette, which I should give a go. I do appreciate the portion control dictated by the size of the compartments.

Anyway, watch this space for the continuing adventures of Cat Bento...

*The Chinese supermarket in Bath stocks Chinese and Korean foods, and this rice had Korean script on the bag but also a little English script calling it 'sushi rice'. As far as I know there's no Japanese shop in town. I also tried the Thai shop, but they just had jasmine rice or readycooked sushi rice. 

Yak Yeti Yak - I'll be back!

By: Mrs Robot

Last night I went with a few friends to Yak Yeti Yak, Bath's Nepalese restaurant. I'd been years ago and had liked it but not felt it was anywhere to rave about. Perhaps their food has changed in the intervening years, or perhaps I have, but last night's meal was excellent and has left me keen to go back with Mr Robot at some point.

The setting is lovely, in a little basement in the centre of the city. It's not at all dingy; there are windows onto an 'area' so natural light does get in, and the walls are painted white and the rooms are decorated with Nepalese art. We're currently experiencing a heatwave, so being below ground level is lovely and cool.

For a starter I had aloo dum. I know 'aloo' means potatoes and 'dum' to a method of cooking in a sealed pot. We had an incredible aloo dum with parathas on the way to Chandernagore when we visited India earlier this year, and I wanted to see how the Nepalese version compared. Well, it was completely different, but every bit as delicious! Cool potatoes, with herbs and onions. There was a fresh, sharp note that I couldn't identify – I'd guess some sort of fruit as it wasn't vinegary – that made the whole thing really refreshing. This morning I've had a look online and it seems there are as many Nepalese recipes for aloo dum as there are people who cook it: some with sauce, some without, most hot, and none with the sesame, but the online recipes for aloo ko achar look rather more like what I ate, with plenty of sesame and a souring agent. I guess I'll just have to keep going back to the restaurant and trying out recipes till I get it right... hard life!

My main course was a Dal Bhat Masu. 'Dal' is obvious, and from the menu I got the impression that 'bhat' means rice, so I'm guessing it all simply translates to 'lentils rice meat'. I chose black dal and pork bhutuwa for the meat. There was also a side dish of small dark chickpeas, a little pot of achar (chutney) and a mountain of rice. Oh, and a poppadom on the side. I didn't manage all the poppadom or rice, there was that much. The chickpeas and pork were the highlights, the former deliciously buttery, and the latter perfectly soft, spicy and savoury, but without chili-heat.

I really enjoyed the meal and definitely won't leave it as long before going back next time.

Zero dim sum game

By: Mrs Robot

Soooooo many good food things that I haven't told you about, from our trip to India to Mr Robot's birthday dinner at Henry's restaurant in Bath. So I am breaking my duck with a quick shot of today's lunch. 

The prawn and chive parcels are taken directly from Helen and Lisa Tse's book Dim Sum: Small Bites Made Easy, and the spring rolls are based on their recipe - s I didn't have any bean sprouts I subbed in julienne (not grated; I wanted bite) carrots and chopped water chestnuts.

I'm not sure whether there's something wrong with my portioning or the recipes overstate how many of each should be made, but I literally managed only 50% of the quantity each recipe should produce (yes, even when following the spring roll recipe properly). But they tasted great, and make a good al fresco lunch. It's a good job we have more chives growing, because those prawn parcels are going to become a robot family favourite.

Tasty New Year

By: Mrs Robot

And back to work we go! Back to work, with resolutions to be a bit less fat in 2018 than in 2017. But yesterday we had a day for one more slap-up meal. I was really in the mood for spice, as between Christmas and yesterday we'd kept things fairly British. We'd had roast turkey for Christmas, home-cooked ham, and roast beef, with leftovers of the three used in all sorts of ways, and okay one of those was curry, but curry made with leftover turkey isn't quite the same, even though I made a proper sauce base. (Thinks: maybe I should have got out the curry powder and made a retro-style British 'curry', the sort of thing my granddad doubtless suffered through for 50 years after leaving Asia!) Mr Robot  was definite that he wanted a lamb curry for New Year's Day, not a chicken one, and for some reason the lamb curries in most of my books really weren't grabbing me. I'd been meaning to make one of Bibi's recipes for ages, and Kathmandu-style mutton curry fitted the bill.

I don't have a mixie, so my marinade didn't come out as smooth as I'd have liked, though it still smelled heavenly. And in cooking my curry wasn't as red as Bibi's, but I put that down to not having Kashmiri mirch and making do with paprika and cayenne. Regardless of what you think about how it looks, it tasted utterly amazing; rich and deep and just the sort of thing you want in cold weather. I paired it with Meera Sodha's daily dal (our favourite dal), a cachumber made with cherry tomatoes and shallots, and roti. Is it possible to be addicted to a salad? I almost always do cachumber with curry nowadays as its freshness sets everything off so well. Really should try a different vegetable dish at some point...

I always make a trifle during the Christmas break, and this year left it right to the last minute. I probably wouldn't have bothered as I've been a lazy toad this holiday, but we'd bought all the cream and I'm a skinflint who detests food waste, so it needed to be used and eaten. But how do you make a trifle to follow a curry? With pistachio cake and fresh mango in the base, drizzled with fresh lime juice and triple sec, a luxurious home-made custard (six egg yolks and a pint of extra-thick double cream) flavoured with rosewater and saffron, and whipped cream lightly scented with cardamom, that's how. All those eggs and cream are why I only make trifle once a year - my arteries need 12 months to recover - but it's worth it.

Happy New Year to you! May it be filled with good food, and good company to eat it with.

Talking turkey

By: Mrs Robot

We had turkey for Christmas dinner this year.

"Yeah, yeah," you say, "everyone has turkey at Christmas." But we usually have goose, so this was a bit of a departure for us.

We also often have visitors on either Christmas Day or Boxing Day, but this time it was just the two of us (plus two greedy cats). It made the whole thing much more relaxed than usual. Mr Robot took over cooking duties. We started with prawn cocktail. That can sometimes be a bit of a sad dish, with teeny little prawns and some sweetener-laden glop out of a bottle, but in this case the sauce was made from scratch, covering the big, beautiful prawns we had in the freezer, and it all felt really luxurious. The prawns were so large the six we had each felt almost too much. And the hint of smoked paprika in the sauce really benefitted the whole dish. I could eat a lot of that!

After that we moved on to the classic turkey dinner.

Hari Ghotra at Walter Rose

By: Mrs Robot

Chef Hari Ghotra was at our butcher, Walter Rose, last Saturday promoting her book Easy Indian. We had to go and get our weekly shop anyhow, so stopped and had a chat. She was really friendly, and the chicken dish she was cooking smelled amazing, though we didn't stick around long enough to try any of it as we thought it would be rude to monopolise her time.

We'll review the book properly once we've cooked a few things out of it. We're probably not the ideal readership as we don't actually own a slow cooker, which is what all the recipes are designed for, but I'm hoping some of the dishes will be the sort of thing we can leave in the oven on Low while we go to the gym. I also plan to try some of the recipes from Hari's website as they look really tempting.

Hari's also bringing out a range of spices-and-masala packets. We're big fans of Anjum Anand's 'Spice Tailor' range as an easy option when we're feeling lazy, and these look like doing the same job. They'll be in Morrison's, which we don't have, but if you shop at a Morrison's they'll be worth looking out for to keep as a cupboard standby.

Rangoonies (never say die*)

By: Mr Robot

It's been a busy, exciting time at Casa Robot lately. The other weekend for example we had the great joy of heading to London for a Rangoon Sisters Burmese supper club.

We've been Twitterchums with them for a few years so I'm not going to pretend to be objective here - best consider this more an extended gloat than a review - but while it was lovely to meet up with them, I can honestly say with hand on internal fluid-pump that the food alone was worth the trek.

And it's fair trek at that - from darkest Wiltshire to the big city, out into Zone 3, past Olympic Stratford (and what a corporate hell-hole that looks) to the charming Coffee7 at Forest Gate. Hosted, incidentally, by Masterchef hero Michael Sanders, who turns out to be jolly nice indeed.

Having sufficiently disrupted Emily & Amy's preparations, we settled down with very fine lemongrass-infused G&T's, and gently thudded the table in anticipation, in the manner of spoilt schoolchildren, which we basically are.

First up by way of an amuse, we had some delightful Shan tofu: essentially a chickpea batter that's been set and deep fried, and served with tamarind dipping sauce. This was great because when Mrs R attempted it she completely destroyed the fryer, so we've been waiting years to try the stuff. Unlike her basket-o-goop, these were light and crisp, mildly nutty and went very well with the tamarind. They disappeared in seconds amid the first of my many curses at being forced to share.

What is this "sharing plate" of which you speak?

The first course proper was Nangyi Thoke, a spiced chicken noodle salad with squillions of accompaniments (as is the Burmese wont) that I've had a go at making in the past. Not only was it absolutely delicious, it was gratifyingly close to my own efforts. 10 points to me.

More importantly it set us straight to reminiscing about the food we'd had in Burma: the little cafe on Sule Pagoda Road in Yangon; the breakfast curry in Pyin Oo Lwin; street food at a festival in Mandalay... Now you may say "I should hope so - that's kind of the point" but this was the most familiar dish of the evening and these are such happy memories for us it was wonderful to have them brought back so powerfully.

Nangyi Thoke - humbly suggesting you rethink your idea of chicken salad

In any case, the other guests around us - not familiar with Burmese food - loved it too, so there.

Main course was a three-pronged affair of smoked aubergine, the traditional pickled-tea salad (Laphet Thoke) and a fabulous deep, rich shin of beef curry called Amehnat we'd never had before - heavy with (I think) ginger and turmeric and which I WILL have the recipe for, or we shall have words. It was stunning. I know the photo's dreadful but if you could smell it you'd understand - you don't mess around with that in front of you.

Yes, yes - how could I be so mean to one so lovely?

The tea salad was a proper treat since it's uniquely Burmese and not easily found. To my mind this well exceeded the one we had in Burma (a tourist trap in Bagan - the guide let us down that day), though Mrs Robot managed to get bonus shrimp so struggled a bit. Frankly that just meant one less competitor for me.

More tea, vicar? Laphet Thoke

Pudding isn't really a thing in Burma but we weren't let down with a pavlova riffing on the Burmese favourites of mango and coconut, and the most extraordinary jaggery praline that's now top of my list of Swank Things To Put On Things. Pick any sense you like, it was as beautiful as it looks.

Mangoconut Jaggery-pokery

Amy and Emily popped out from the kitchen afterwards (along with their respective husbands who'd been on waiter duty) so it was great to be able to chat a bit afterwards. If I was a touch over-gushy in my praise, well what are you going to do? Anyway, there had been Wine.

All too soon we had to brave the TfL line and head back to the relative comforts of Zone 1, but given my way I'd still be there now.

I understand the next supperclub is planned for some time in September so keep an eye on their website - if you're even vaguely nearby, it's well worth it. Even in Zone 3.



*Mrs Robot insisted I did that in the hope it would make people watch The Goonies, which seems cruel and unusual. Besides, for all I know "die" could be something really sweary in Burmese, in which case they may well say it quite a lot.

All images (c) PP Gettins

Viva La Revolution

By: Mr Robot

No better welcome

A couple of weeks ago we were lucky enough to get into a pre-opening night for the Bath branch of Omar Allibhoy's Tapas Revolution (the only time an email subscription has ever proved worthwhile, I might add).

Effectively a dress rehearsal for the staff, we were warned it may not be entirely perfect and in exchange given a frankly ludicrous discount, but of course given our love of all things Spanish we'd happily have paid full whack. They should have had no concerns, because it all went swimmingly and the staff couldn't have been more welcoming.

As we always do, we piled straight into the Jamon - promised genuine Bellota, I was expecting this to be excluded from the discount, but no, even that was included.

It was pretty much everything you could hope for. I've seen the odd negative comment since but honestly can't see why. Maybe it's not quite the stuff you find in the back streets of Extremadura, but that's only to be expected - they keep the best stuff to themselves. But it was clearly hand-cut (if I had to be critical, some slices were a little thick and so a touch chewy), deep, sweet and rich, and most importantly had that whiff of acorn that marks The Really Good Stuff.

Really, really good stuff

We went through a whole range of dishes with great happiness: croquettas were fat and crisp with a good ham level; a lovely salad of braised lettuce, peas and asparagus with runny egg; squid like armadillos (crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside); meatballs in a proper sauce done properly...

Through all of it the overriding sense was the absolute authenticity of the food - it took us straight back to our favourite experiences in Spain.

Not Armadillos

The meatballs in particular were exactly as our first encounter on honeymoon in Seville. That was a real moment of misty-eyed nostalgia.

Never mind the meatballs, here's the croquettas

Probably the highlight for me was bacalao (salt cod) with braised peas and sobrasada (chorizo goop) which was utterly lovely. When handled properly there's something almost magical about the way salty bacalao reacts with the other elements on the plate, and this was perfectly done.

The magic of Bacalao

The only real negative was the building. Like so many of these places (it's in the newish Southgate development), the units are multifunctional retail jobs modelled on - and with all the charm of - a warehouse.

While it's been managed well visually (I particularly liked the half-sherry-barrel lightshades) the atmosphere suffers: you don't get the cozy buzz of a busy bar, but instead it's just a bit loud and shouty.

Could be cozier

For drinks we opted to go Full Crass and have a jug of Sangria, which I'm sorry to say was more fruity than boozy (had an odd strawberry note) but I did manage some small hilarity in trying to order a bottle of Er Bocqueron beer and instead ending up with anchovies (boquerones). The waiter chastised me gently, as is only right, and it's the kind of linguistic snafu that marks every good  Spanish evening. I was very pleased to have achieved it.

Got there in the end

Being kind of snobby about these things, we're a bit suspicious of chains, expecting fakey plasticity and bland homogeneity over interesting excitement. Bath is the seventh iteration of Tapas Revolution which puts in that troubling genre: not a corporate monstrosity to be sure, but neither the romantically tiny, unique operation. That said, the similarly-sized Bistro Pierre is a favourite and even Wahaca has become a chain for goodness' sake.

Can't help suspecting that's plastic ham: 1. no little cups to catch ooze, and 2. health & safety would go MENTAL

In the same vein I'm happy to say that on our experience Tapas Revolution is not letting brand or consistency compromise quality, and long may that continue.

As a final thought, with Tapas Revolution alongside the truly outstanding Ole Tapas (shamefully yet to be written up) and as-yet-untried Pintxo, Bath now offers the prospect of a genuine tapas crawl. I sincerely hope they all find the space to accommodate casual walk-ups to make it possible.

All images (c) PP Gettins

A Simple Week

by: Mr Robot















I know we're extremely late to this party but earlier in the year we finally picked up a copy of Simple by Diana Henry, which is every bit as good as everyone says it is. Normally I'll pick one or two recipes to start with and slowly expand from there, but with Simple that was a hopeless task so in the end I had no choice but to devote a whole week to the thing.

So here are my six dishes (for, of course, on the seventh day He rested in the Pub).

Monday - Black Linguine with Squid & Spicy Sausage
Or, as it turned out, A Study In White since it turns out black pasta isn't a thing in darkest yokelshire. Which is a cursed shame because the dish looked much less dramatic but nonetheless tasted brilliant.

Now, I've never dabbled with squid before (one of the reasons I was so keen to do this recipe) but it's an exceptionally easy process and Henry is so blase about it, I had approached with confidence - and was rewarded by not cocking it up.



Fried off with our butcher's excellent Italian sausages and garlic, doused with lemon and parsley, and then tossed in pasta we ended up with a very light but hugely satisfying Monday dinner. In fact just writing this I count myself a buffoon for not doing it every week since.

Tuesday - Baked Sweet Potato, Chorizo, Mushrooms and Egg
Mainly because the vegbox was swamping us with sweet potato at the time, but also I could get a job lot of chorizo from Joe Le Butcher and partly because Mrs R has always found mushrooms challenging. Plus, it has A Egg on it.

This one, sadly, I did cock up in two ways:
1. I didn't give enough thought to the warning that the cooking time of sweet potatoes is variable, and
2. I did it on a night Mrs R was out on the lash so would turn up loudly demanding satisfaction, and demanding it now damnit.


Consequently my sweet 'taters, having roasted for only 50% longer than suggested, were still as hard as Vinnie Jones (this was also, incidentally, the final straw for the old cooker). So there was a fair amount of prodding and grumbling BUT the filling was a delight.

Fried chorizo will never make anyone sad and mixed up with mushroom, garnished with coriander and paprika, swimming in runny yolk was outstanding.

I kind of wish I'd left the sodding potatoes in the oven all night and served it for breakfast as I'm sure it'd be excellent with hangover.

Wednesday - Baked Sausages with Apples, Raisins and Cider


Look, if I have to explain it you'll never understand.


Just awesome. The only thing the title doesn't tell you is the raisins are soaked brandy. I know!

Beyond that it is exactly as amazing as it sounds. I'm actually kind of incoherent just remembering it, especially as the weather was perishing cold and this combined all the sausagey comfort of a toad in the hole, with the sweet/sharp apple promise that summer will be back before too long.

I served it up with some roasted (effing) sweet potato, baby spuds and spring cabbage but I'm kind of wishing I'd done about 4 kilos of mash.



Thursday - Parmesan Roast Chicken with Cauliflower and Thyme

In contrast I'd struggle to explain why I chose this dish out of all the other chicken ones available (there's even a Burmese one, riffing from the Naomi Duguid book we have - how did we resist that?) but I think the heart of it was when everything looks so very good, it can be a trigger to go somewhere you wouldn't ordinarily go.


Plus, the vegbox had delivered a LOT of cauliflower.

Like the sausage (OMG the sausage) dish above, this is basically a one-roasting-tin dish and in many ways I think the two recipes encapsulate what Simple is all about. There's little buggering around here - just the understanding that a little thought and attention, a few well-considered flavourings, can take the ordinary and turn it into a massive cliche.

So, chicken, spuds (not sweet, thank the lord), onions. Appropriately seasoned and roasted, topped with parmesan and roasted some more. Another one for a miserable evening when you can wait an hour or so for dinner because there's a good bottle on the go in the meantime.

Mrs Robot absolutely loved this, by the way, though she rejects the term Chick'n'Caul'n'Cheese.

Friday - Pork Chops with Mustard and Capers
This was the one I'd been looking forward to the most, since it's one of my favourite ways of cooking that perversely I've completely overlooked over the last few years. It is, in short, that classic French technique which (I believe) Escoffier codified as, "Put lumpy stuff in the pan until it's brown; put runny stuff in the pan until it's lumpy".

In this case the lumpy stuff is pork chops (and may I say how much I love the book just for having a chapter called Chops and Sausages), and the runny stuff is cream, vermouth, Dijon and capers.



At the risk of attempting double-insight, this too is Simple at its very best: one pan; maybe 20 minutes or so to make; ingredients you can probably get from a bloody petrol station these days; an old-fashioned (or perhaps unfashionably straightforward) technique that gives staggering pleasure. This is  the recipe I've used most, not in the following, but in the process. I've done any number of chops, or steak, or sausage, or fish, in a way I'd almost forgotten about. If nothing else, I'll be forever grateful to Diana Henry for that reminder.

Saturday - Orange-Oregano Roast Chicken, Olive Gremolata
Yeah, so I told a weeny fib earlier - I had to do at least two of the chickens. But like the Parmesan this is sort of outside my normal sphere. Mrs Robot raised an eyebrow but to me the it just screamed JOLLY EXCITING, and I was in charge.



I think I expected it to be Taste of Seville, which on reflection is stupid because the taste of Seville is jamon and jerez and other things beginning with j-pronounced-h. The oranges are only fit for marmalade and chicken is probably the protein they're least excited about. The element you're most likely to find is olives, and those as a standalone snack.

But don't take that to mean I was disappointed: this was a lovely, complex, multilayered dish and for that reason I think I prefer to the parmesan roast above. Or, as I write this on a sunny evening with a Bank Holiday looming, perhaps it just calls more to me now.

Sunday - Poorly a la Stallards
Told you so

This has been half-written for some months now and since then we've done any number of other things, not least the Balinese Pork which is oh-my-golly good. But one of the core premises of a book like Simple is that's everyday cooking and, implicit within that, Every Day cooking.

Well it was only for a week (good enough for BBC science programmes) but I did use it every day and by god we ate well, and with precious little fuss. There's a lot in the book we don't happen to have (pomegranate molasses haven't made it here either) but as I hope I made clear, there was equally a load of recipes suited for what was kicking around.

I have particular love of and gratitude for the double-page of sauces & relishes, which serves as either guide for dinner or starting point for play, depending on your mood. Looking at our recent cookbooks, this seems quite an old-fashioned thing to do; in some ways it's quite an old-fashioned book, though accommodating the huge growth in ingredients and cuisines that make us so lucky to be living now.

I can't tell you how much I love Simple. If you don't already own it, go and buy it now.

All images (c) PP Gettins