Alive and well and eating

I'm sorry - I haven't been in touch. I've been an erratic blogger. I said I'd be here with news, dear reader, and I wasn't. I didn't even tell you more about Madrid!

But I'm alive and awfully well. And I'm discovering the eating delights of Smithfield. If I were the kind to use the phrase foodie heaven (which I'm not), I'd use it to describe the Smithfield area. It's a gastronomic delight, and no mistaking.

Never mind the fact that every famous, modern lunch chain has a branch right on my doorstep. And never mind the fact that there's a plethora of beautiful traditional old pubs to hand. I'm not even counting those things.

A short walk away I've discovered The Modern Pantry - a cutesy, wholesome restaurant with a fantastic choice of takeaway options for lunch. If you haven't tasted their aubergine quiche and soba noodle salad you don't know real happiness.

Then there's Farm, home of the fish finger bap. There's lesser known chain Benugo, with their excellent Parisian panini. There's Abokado for wonderful sushi.

When evening rolls on, you can choose from Hix Oyster and Chop House (also a good lunch venue, for small snacks at the bar), posh old Club Gascon, and any number of swanky bistros and brasseries.

I might be some time.

The best tapas in town

I could say so much about Madrid. And I will, I promise! But just while I have a moment, there's one place that deserves a mention before everything else.

Of course one expects tapas. And of course one expects some places with a touristy pictures-on-a-board menu and others full of locals. A mixture of basic, sophisticated, over-priced, cheap as chips, over-Spanish, traditional, understated and hidden gems. But I still wasn't expecting Estado Puro (by the way, watch out - the website plays music!).

Plonked on the edge of a roundabout just opposite the Prado, it's slap-bang in tourist territory. Despite the busy road running by, it has a tourist-trap outdoor terrace. It's just down the road from McDonalds. Yet it's the classiest place I saw in the whole of Madrid.

Sit at a high table just inside, facing the window. It's quiet but affords a great view of the bustle outside. The menu is printed on a little pouch housing cutlery and a napkin. At first glance it lists traditional tapas - patatas bravas, jamon, ensaladilla rusa, tortilla. But look again: it's tortilla siglo XXI (21st century). And ensaladilla rusa with pear mayonnaise. Little twists on a standard tapas menu.

And when the food arrives you'll be bowled over at how different it is. The tortilla is an egg foam in a glass, punctuated by the sweet taste of caramelised onion. The Russian salad is smooth, creamy and rich in taste. Patatas bravas arrive on a long slab - six tiny baked potatoes with a deep, flavoursome swirl of spicy sauce. The ham's unpolluted, excellent ham, but it's brutally cut and arranged in sharp-edged squares.

Add sophisticated decor, good wine, smart service and reasonable prices and you'll have a brilliant, relaxing but speedy lunch. This is a classy surprise and well worth a visit if you've been to one of the galleries, or have a bit of time waiting near Atocha station. It's like Spain, but on a great day.

Lunchtime creativity

One of the best things about having some time at home is access to my kitchen at lunchtimes. And, of course, a little bit more time to be creative about the food I prepare. I'm not a sandwich fan so I've challenged myself to make a lunch I love every day, from whatever I've got in the cupboards. And I've come up with some delicious results.

Roasted tomato soup

Easy as pie (or even soup), this one. Put a handful of either cherry or baby plum tomatoes into an ovenproof dish with a drizzle of olive oil and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Roast them in a hot-ish oven for about 20 minutes. Once they've cooled enough not to give you Freddie Krueger burns, decant them into a bowl with fairly high sides. Add half a slice of bread torn into chunks, a small spoonful of creme fraiche, a squeeze of tomato puree and a splash of water. Blend it all with a hand blender and you're done. If you prefer soup to be piping hot you can heat it a little at the end (add a splash more water if it starts to thicken).

Leek and parmesan risotto

Chop one leek very finely and soften it with a bit of butter or spread in a large frying pan. Add a large handful of either risotto or paella rice and stir it around to coat the rice with the butter. When it's starting to look and sound squeakily dry, add half a pint of either chicken or vegetable stock. Put a lid on and let the whole thing simmer until the rice grains are puffy - check now and again, because you might need to add more water. Once it's done, add a spoonful of creme fraiche (detecting a theme?) and as much grated parmesan as you fancy. Smother it with black pepper before tucking in!

Salmon noodles

Heat some chicken stock with soy sauce until it reaches boiling point. Add a salmon fillet, broken into large flakes, and some sliced shiitake mushrooms. Once the salmon is cooked, turn off the heat and add slices of spring onion and a forkful of ginger (the kind you can get in a jar is easiest). Either cook noodles in the microwave or add them straight into the salmon broth, depending on what kind of noodles you have. Serve the whole thing with a last drizzle of soy sauce.

So that's my top three, for ease of preparation and satisfaction at the end product. Can you inspire me further? What's your favourite lunchtime feast? Ah go on - tell me!

Hot off the press

I didn't like bread when I was a child. I wasn't very keen on sponge cake either; my childhood was a non-stop succesion of left crusts and party food forced down with a cup of tea (not a big fan of fizzy drinks either).

As a grown-up I've learned to tolerate bread, although I still don't much like the flabby sliced stuff. So, no sandwiches for me, which means lunchtimes are a constant challenge of imagination and resourcefulness!

Since discovering the panini press in our kitchen at work I've worked out that almost any kind of bread is better if you toast it. Even an uninspiring cheese and tomato sandwich becomes bearable after 2 minutes of heat and squishing. But, of course, the strong suit of the press is the panini itself. Oh, the endless variations of fillings! I've become so addicted to making paninis that I've even bought a press for my kitchen at home, too.

So, what should you fill it with. Well, funny you should ask! You know how good Thai food has a perfect balance of the four flavours - salty, sweet, sour and spicy? I've worked out the formula for a perfect panini: something meaty, something tangy and something melty.

Try it: you can't go wrong! The meaty thing doesn't have to be meat, it's essentially anything with a lot of umami, like mushrooms. The melty thing is usually cheese, and a particularly robust cheese could be both meaty and melty. To get you started, here's my five favourites.

• Bacon, brie and onion relish.
• Chicken, goat's cheese and yellow pepper.
• Ham, mozzarella and sun-dried tomatoes.
• Tuna, mozzarella and rocket.
• Portobello mushroom, mozzarella and spinach.

There, that'll get you on your way. Now, go and be creative. Then come back and tell me your favourite inventions.

Graze skies

Thanks to the delivery of the latest delicious magazine (I received the subscription as a Christmas present - hurrah!) I found out about Graze.

It's based on a simple premise: we know we should snack on small portions of delicious, nutritious nibbles throughout the day but we're too busy, lazy or unimaginative to provide ourselves with sufficiently tempting snacks. This is particularly pertinent for office workers, although I find I'm just as bad when I'm at home, personally.

Graze sends you a box of goodies, divided into 'just right' portions. They're certainly delicious and nutritious, aiming to provide at least one serving of fruit alongside something a bit more decadent. There's a huge range of snacks on offer, and you rate what you've received online; the bit where you browse the website and mark which food you love, like or want to try is almost as good as the eating bit! I spent a whole lunch hour rating snacks last week. It's worthwhile when your box arrives at the office containing the likes of wasabi coated peanuts and fresh pineapple slices.

The good news is that they're currently offering a free trial box, followed by one at half price. You do have to sign up, but it's easy to cancel or suspend deliveries at any time. Visit the Graze site and enter the code GB6C7QT to take advantage of the offer. The even better news is that for every 'friend' I recruit using this code, Graze will donate £1 to the Rainforest Alliance on our behalf.

Start grazing - it's the future.

Not poodle

I'm eating a Pot Noodle as I write this.

I've always wanted to start a blog post in that way! No, really - I am, though; I didn't just say it for effect. I'm two-thirds of the way through a Sweet and Spicy Pot Noodle. It's delicious!

There was a programme on TV a while ago in which the apple-cheeked presenter demonstrated how to create a homemade version of a pot noodle. It was essentially a pot with noodles in it, plus some vegetables and a bit of sauce, but she made it in five minutes (ie the time it would take to boil a kettle and follow the instructions on a shop-bought version).

Now, that's fine for her but I like Pot Noodles as they are! I don't want them to be healthier, tastier, more filling, etc - they're fine for me. I'm not even bothered about 'knowing exactly what I'm putting in my body' because, by the way, it really isn't a temple! I do a lot of my own cooking - as you've probably noticed - but sometimes I want convenience food and sometimes somebody else can do it better. There's a time and a place for everything!

Sunday service at the Church

We visited friends in Northampton a while back and, at long last, got around to trying The Church restaurant. It's a converted church (funnily enough!) and I've always thought it looked fairly classy as we've driven past. Although I'd never seen the menu I had read a few good reviews online and, all in all, had fairly high hopes.

Well, I can honestly say that I wasn't in any way disappointed. The entrance is quite impressive and we all looked around with 'ooh's and 'aahh's at the bar area with its high rafters and large stained glass window. We went for Sunday lunch so things were fairly quiet but it was clear to see that the bar could easily be lively with a good atmosphere on a weekday evening.

The decor of the restaurant itself is modern but understated to let the architecture of the church itself take centre stage. I sat next to another stained glass window and the sunlight sent beams of blue and purple light onto our table, which was rather pretty!

The food is at the high end of the 'gastropub' spectrum: a few brave, different choices but nothing pretentious and decent-sized portions. My starter of garlic mushrooms baked with pancetta and mozzarella was well constructed and delicious. One of my friends ordered scallops, which looked to be cooked excellently.

For the main course I ate a fish pie - perfect plain and simple Sunday lunch food cooked well with nothing fussy about it. One friend ordered the roast beef, served in the traditional way; he had good things to say about the quality of the meat but left quite a lot because the portion was enormous! The other two ate the salmon, which was apparently cooked well but was served with far too many 'branchy' bits of watercress and far too little lime dressing.

For me (strangely for me!) the highlight was the pudding. Everyone else had a hearty-looking slab of sticky toffee pudding (and none of it was left, so I'm guessing it was good!) but I chose three scoops of sorbet. The orange and raspberry scoops were lovely, but the champagne-flavoured scoop was utterly fantastic!

Add to this some excellent, well-judged service and some good music at just the right volume and I'd say the balance of everything was more or less right. So if you're ever passing through Northampton ...

Always do the hungry shop

The past few Saturdays seem to have taken a similar pattern: I wake up and realise there's nothing particularly exciting or appetising in the house for lunch. The sensible course of action would be to pop to Tesco for the weekly 'big shop' on Saturday morning and return in time for lunch with plenty of exciting options.

I'm not all that sensible, though. What we tend to do instead is try to postpone supermarket shopping for as long as possible in the following manner:

1. I suggest going out for lunch
2. We mull over this idea and discuss where, out of our collection of regular haunts, we should go
3. We get ready and drive to one of the lunch locations
4. While we're eating a plan for the afternoon formulates, which usually includes stopping off at Waitrose/M &S/local deli for wine and food for Saturday night
5. The shopping still hasn't been done by Sunday morning, but we've indulged ourselves gastronomically for at least half of the weekend, often at considerable expense.

Now, I have nothing against this and it means we get out and about on a Saturday, while exploring, supporting and enjoying our local eating places. We're now familiar with a fair few gastropubs, cafes, restaurants and delicatessens in the Uttlesford area, which is great.

However, there's a possible deviation from this plan and it should be resisted at all costs. Sometimes, when there's not much else to do on a Saturday afternoon, we give in and do the supermarket shopping just after lunch! This is A Bad Thing* and I'm here to warn you against it - and you never thought we'd get to the point of this post, did you?!

Last Saturday we ate a two-course meal at the Cricketers' Arms in Rickling Green (a reasonably well-known local gastropub). The food there isn't bad but, on this occasion, all four of the dishes we ate seemed to be over salty and incredibly oily! This isn't intended to be a review of the pub, though: I'm merely using this example as illustration.

So, fairly full from our large lunch of oil and salt we drove to Tesco to buy everything we'd need for the following week. But, of course, when you're full (and, in this case, bilious) you don't really fancy any more food and I found myself drifting aimlessly down the aisles unable to look a decent fillet steak in the, er, face! I just couldn't bring myself to imagine what I'd want to eat during the week, let alone that evening, and found that my powers of 'food matching' were severely under par. "Do green beans go with these noodles? Oh, I can't think about eating noodles at a time like this!"

I felt as if I never wanted to eat again (yes, me!) and the result was a whole week with no sensible food in the house. I'd hardly bought any 'proper' dinners and there was nothing to eat as a snack, so my stomach was rumbling almost every evening. I'd also failed to get anything for my lunches so I ended up spending over the odds by buying my lunch in London most days.

My advice to you, therefore, is this: always shop when you're hungry! It's the only way!

* Anyone who knows me particularly well will be surprised, nay shocked, by my use of Dickensian, teacher-style capitalisation. That's how bad a thing it is! You see what it's driven me to?!

Ham please

On Sunday I made the old experimental-restaurant-chicken for dinner, so I had a bit of leftover Parma ham knocking around. I thought I'd try out my new apple and whatnot salad, but with the ham instead of Wensleydale for lunch on the next day.

Hmm ... not as good! But please give it a go yourselves and let me know what you think.

Salad days

Today's lunch recipe:

I saw a nice-sounding packaged salad in Tesco and thought I'd buy the ingredients and copy it, rather than spend a fortune on it.

First of all I sliced an apple fairly thinly and placed it into a dry frying pan (no oil or butter). I blasted it (blast - ha ha!) on the hob for a minute or two before transferring the whole pan to the grill for about five minutes. See, I'm all smug now I have a gas hob and can actually heat something intensively like that at the drop of a hat. I don't know whether I'd have employed a different technique if I'd been using an electric hotplate.

So - on with the salad. Along with the apple I tossed some walnuts, red grapes, sunflower seeds, mixed lettuce and chunks of Wensleydale.

I added a very tiny amount of a variation on the usual dressing (lemon, olive oil, wholegrain mustard - without the honey on this occasion) on the if-it-ain't-broke basis. But really, just a very tiny amount because otherwise it wilts the lettuce and makes the cheese go mushy.

That's all. Yum!

No such thing as a free lunch

I had lunch bought for me today, because I have been on a training course. My colleagues and I were taken to The Eagle pub just off City Road*, having been given the chance to choose our lunch earlier in the morning so that it was all ready when we arrived.

I chose a chorizo and stilton salad, mainly because I was intrigued by the combination! I just couldn't imagine how they would go together because both have quite a strong flavour. I normally expect stilton to be served with green vegetables or with pastry because of the excellent way it melts and adds a certain tangy, cheesy saltiness.

I have to say, though, it was a good combination. It was served with mixed leaves and new potatoes, which both balanced the saltiness. The chorizo was a little on the chewy side but was very nice - not too garlicky. All in all I was only slightly jealous of my colleague's fish finger sandwich!!

But I have had to sit through a fairly boring and inappropriate training course to get this lunch, so ...!

*Apparently this pub appears in the nursery rhyme 'Pop Goes The Weasel', interestingly enough.

What's your favourite cheese?

It was a cheese day today! My lunch consisted of some of the leftover walnut oat digestives from the picnic, a few slices of gruyere, a slice of jarlsberg and some Canadian cheddar. Oh yes, and some Tesco Finest caramelised red onion relish.

I find gruyere a little bit hit and miss, really. It certainly does have a 'processed cheese' texture about it, similar to some of the worst Spanish cheeses. The jarlsberg, though, was very satisfying and rich. All in all, the spot of 'favourite Swiss cheese' hasn't been snatched from emmental just yet but I'm glad to have tried a couple of new contenders.

The cheddar was a bit too strong and crumbly for my liking, but was a perfect match for the biscuits and relish.

And still room for a carrot cake with butter icing, dusted with cinammon: quite possibly the best cake in the world! Me gusta la canela!

Crisps for snobs!

I am currently* eating Jonathan Crisp parsnip, beetroot and sweet potato crisps. They are quite tasty, but they just don't go 'crispy' enough!

I think I might have to try their ginger and black pepper flavour sometime, though.

*When I say currently, I really do mean right now! Chomp, chomp.