Vegan cake and a drink

I had some of my stepmother's relatives over for dinner, they're very religious and observe the Lent... religiously, which means totally vegan and alcohol free for the next couple of months.
I got in some falafels and houmous (which it was totally tempting to pretend to have made), olives and artichokes, and made guacamole, cucumber dipping sauce, steamed broccoli, fennel salad and lemon risotto. All of which I forgot to photograph of course.
I made this incredible vegan, flourless orange cake which went down LIKE A FREAKING HOUSE ON FIRE!!! Natasha asked for the recipe, it made me so happy, basically you boil a couple of oranges then blend with tofu, olive oil and ground almonds. Very very grown up, tart and delicious. See? Last little piece left.
But the thing I'm most pleased with (apart from almost reducing the boyfriend to tears when I made him hoover and wash all the floors twice before the guests arrived) is my incredible alcohol free cocktail. You just crush together some raspberries and ice and pour over equal measures of apple juice and tonic. I swear to God it tastes like there's booze in there, that's why I've dubbed it Miley Cyrus. Best served out of vintage girly goblets.
Oh, and everything went smoothly despite it being the freaking Ides of March, and almost nobody got stabbed...

Pork Tenderloin with Celeriac Creme and Puy Lentils

Bonjour! I've been fancying it up lately - in my own mind, anyway - and decided that what's missing in my relationship is extra un-necessary work. I've decided to try and do a Sunday lunch for the boyfriend and me at least a couple times a month.
I'm using the back section of I Know How To Cook by Ginette Mathiot (one of the giant Phaidon volumes), the bit where famous professional chefs give meal ideas.
I quite hate celeriac, and it features in this dish quite prominently, but actually boiled in cream and mixed with lentils, the flavour is very subtle. We both agreed, and so much so that I was prompted, for the first time, to defile a cookbook and leave a note for my grandchildren.
The recipe was to serve 4, but somehow there didn't seem to be any leftovers, don't know wht happened there...

Shrove Tuesday - Spinach Pancakes

What do you do after an entire weekend of overindulgence?
Eat these amazing spinach pancakes. They are the absolute epitome of my least favorite Americanese adjective - 'healthful'!
I don't think I'm selling them properly when I say that these toxic waste green babies are very easy to eat. There isn't much of a savory taste, so these can be munched equally well with maple syrup as they can with say... sour cream and caviar?

Part four - Ube ice cream, urmasice and umeshu

Dessert was a simple affair of aforementioned ube ice cream, umeshu and urmasice. Umeshu is a Japanese dessert wine made from the Ume fruit, like a plum or peach or something
This is what my 'drinks cabinet' really looks like all of the time.
Urmasice is a Bosinan cake which I made three or four times, trying to get it right and failed miserably every time. Basically you're meant to bake buttery little dumplings and then soak them in lemon syrup overnight. They never held their shape in the oven, someone suggested freezing them before baking, but I didn't have any room in my freezer because of all the freaking ice cream in there! The taste was nice though, sweet buttery and lemony.
Dig the cute espresso cups?
Ciao!

Part three - Uzska

Uzska are the traditional Polish dumplings served either bobbing along in borscht or on their own. I bought this fantabulous gyoza press from the Japan Centre when I was(seriously, I pretty much cleaned that place out)
which makes the process a lot simpler. Just make a dough, kind of like a pasta dough but with sour cream mixed in, roll out - you don't need a pasta machine for this - cut little circles out, place the circles in the press (with a teaspoon of the filling) and squash together. Perfect every time. The filling is meant to be either mushroom or beef - I used both and served them with a beetroot and green apple salad and a scoop of horseradish cream, sprinkled with yuzu ponzu.
This was the most successful dish of the night, most people had seconds (maybe I was just super stingy with the portions?)
And of course, the most important lesson learned was that all food tastes better when eaten off of Royal wedding commemorative plates
It should have been me!

Part two - Urchin Croquettes

I woke up at 5 am on the Thursday before the party, sprung out of bed as energetically as is possible under the circumstances, had a cup of coffee whist brushing my hair and ran out the door. You have to picture what it's like to run on pure adrenalin, for the last two weeks I had been frantically making to-do lists for every day counting up to the big finale, and now as I stood on the (packed for some reason) train to Poplar station I could triumphantly check off 'wake up early to go to Billingsgate Market before work'.
This is the view I took in when I got off the DLR.
The dawn light filtered thorough the Millennium Dome's support towers and bouncing off the Bank of America building. If it wasn't for the smell of fish you could almost ignore the single story structure of the market, which looks and feels out of place in suit land.
I made my way down the motorway, along a tall metal fence surrounding the market. 'How do I get in?' I wondered, then I saw this
Sheesh, take it easy man, didn't realise it was such a big secret!
The selection was interesting, lots of razor clams, plenty of whole salmons for a tenner, some fish I couldn't identify. The tuna loins were already vacuum packed and priced at around £13 per kilo (half of what you would pay at a supermarket!) but obviously they're not going to rip open a package and cut you a little slice so I had to buy the smallest piece I could find - 4kg (I did get a nice-face discount, and some relationship advise from the trader, so I feel as though I came out on top in the end).
Here it is
I couldn't stop photographing it, it was so beautiful, a deep dark meaty colour. I couldn't help sneaking slivers as I was portioning it up and the taste was just incredible. I cut a big piece for my dad and another one for the boyfriend's mum, and set about grinding the rest up to make the body of the croquettes.
The recipe is fairly simple, you grind together fresh tuna, onions, and a loaf of white bread soaked in milk, season to taste and form into little balls, fry to seal and then finish off in the oven. I mixed in a little chopped urchin into each croquette - I was desperate, ok?
This proved to be the most difficult course, I mean look at it, what a bloody mess!
It's meant to be some kind of half assed charcuterie plate. I pickled some cauliflower in sugar and cider vinegar, and almost killed myself looking for the cheese. Urbriaco is an Italian cheese soaked in wine. I thought I'd found a trader in Borough Market, and dutifully wrote 'Saturday - wake up early and go buy the cheese' to do on the morning of the party, and get this - dude never showed up! I went home seething that he decided to sleep himself out of a 100g sale that morning, and stopped in at Waitrose to get some unpasturised hard cheese (Un-pasturised, get it?), a poor second choice. Luckily I found out thorough this blog that Selfridges Food Hall also carries Ubriaco and dispatched the boyfriend to go and fetch me some. Phew, crisis averted. This is why you should always read blogs, children.

The un-erotic story of U: Part one - Ugro Soup

All I can say is that I got very very drunk, and I don't even want to tell you what happened to my camera. Urgh, I really actually need to erase that mental image...

Anyway, here we go.
Our magical story starts a few weeks ago and involves a lot of Google-fu, trips to random food shops and stress, stress, stress.
I've hit every single charity shop near my house and office looking for nice random crockery, but still ended up purchasing most of the extra soup bowls or whatever from Zara Home. I found a revolting rotten chair in the street, and me and my brother spent an entire Saturday sanding and re-upholstering it
Well anyway, this isn't a DIY show. Had to borrow 3 chairs too. These are the menus -
Good old Uccello and Uglow and Utrillo too, I went to three different galleries to pick up the postcards - had to cancel date night because Friday is when the National and Tate Modern are open late - the ol' bf wasn't very happy about that. Someone might have called someone obsessive and someone else might have called them a big stupid dumb ugly gorilla back. I don't know who these people are, I just went to the check out and paid for my postcards! YouknowwhatImsayin'?
Also, clock the totally awesome 'umbrella' table cloth. Maybe I am a little obsessive.
The first thing on my list was Ugro, a Tajik lamb soup made with noodles and meatballs. Long story short, I didn't take a picture, but my version was basically 'minimalist' if that's what you want to call it? It had no noodles or peas or potatoes, just meatballs and cubes of carrot. I bought a shoulder of lamb, cut the meat off of it (got a picture of that)
boiled it up with onions, garlic, bayleaf and sumac to a thick broth, ground the meat and made that into meatballs.
Honestly, trust me when I say this, there is no way to have a letter 'U' themed evening unless you have a meat grinder.
End of part one.