Village East - Bermondsey

 

Sometimes there is nothing better than an incredibly lazy Sunday lie in followed by a hearty meal, all really chilled out because I cannot handle another drop of alcohol before the weekend is out. A quick Google search zooms me on to Village East, with its better than good reviews and the possibility of gorging myself silly on delicious brunch goodies – big fry ups, smoked salmon and wobbly eggs, golden French toast …. buttermilk pancakes!!!!

Orange and Ginger Presse

Short of a skip and a hop (or jumping into the car for the drive to Bermondsey), we arrive in good time but spend another 20  minutes driving around in circles because there’s no bloody parking. I get terribly savage when I’m not fed on time and doesn’t SM know it! SM suggests I’m dropped off to get a table to which I bark it’s bloody pointless since we’re having a fun day out or are supposed to be having one anyway.  Bless SM’s little heart for putting up with me all these years :) We do finally get parking, make it to Village East, are seated at a front facing corner table and then informed by the bemused waitress that the kitchen stopped serving brunch about an hour ago as it was past 3PM. No amount of pleading would get Chef to change his mind, she added. Damnit, it’s bloody Sunday! It should be mandatory that brunch be served all day on a Sunday!

Grudgingly, I settled for Grilled Chicken Sandwich with smoked bacon, flat mushroom and Gruyère cheese (£7.40) and double grudgingly I admitted I was pretty damn happy with it. It was hearty, tasty and just what I needed to take the edge of my Sunday growl.

My side chips (£3.60) were hot, crisp and most importantly skinny. I’m willing to turn a blind eye to the extra calories.

I never thought I’d have such good memories about a salad but there was something so yummy about this one. Thin slices of baby radish, little carrot matchsticks, fine cliced salad onions, small chuncks of tomato, sliced skinless and seedless cucumber on the diagonal tossed with the usual suspects of the green leaf salad bag - baby spinach, chard and rocket. Lightly dressed in a vinegrette. So simple but yet utterly refreshing not just fed green leaves straight out a ready washed bag of leaves.

 

SM was in the mood for a roast and went for the beef Lyonnaise potatoes, veg and gravy.It was rather good despite it looking slightly too pink (for SM) with too thick a border of fatty wobble (for me).

For a sweet treat I manage to convince SM to share a Hot Fudge Sundae with me - really just a ploy to take the edge off my guilt for eating ice cream. And to eat those pesky little marshmellows - chewy little disrruptions to an otherwise perfectly good ice cream dish.

 

I've never been to New York (ok ... so shoot me) but I'm told that places like Village East are in abundance over there (East Village - geddit?). It's cool, it's chilled out. I'm a bit of a fan.

Village East

71-173 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3UW

Weekend Breakfast - The Lido Cafe, Brockwell Park

For all the best laid plans, my sister C and nephew ZW's recent visit to the sunny English shores unfortunately managed to coincided squarely with the burning of London town. Unable to fully tackle C's 'To Eat' list (thankfully it included easier to source items such as a M&S BLT sandwich, as well as the trickier meal at The Ledbury), I hope I managed to feed them both sufficiently.

Scrambled eggs on buttered sourdough toast (£4.25)

On the morning before their depature it was a hearty brekkie at The Lido Cafe at Brockwell Park. Revamped to highlight it's Art Deco heritage, the cafe now does brisk business with the yummy mummy and daddy crowd during the day and with a more mellow wine and dine feel in the evening. Overlooking the swimming pool, the glass doors are opened to the terrace in the summer with the overspill of customers seated in the great outdoors with the splash of happy swimmers in the background.

Blueberry Pancakes with Bacon & Maple Syrup (£5.50)

Free Range Full English (£8.65) -Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms grilled tomatoes and buttered sourdough toast

It was a nicely filling breakfast that I can't complain about - the overall consensus, I believe. The eggs were nicely buttery and soft, the toast had an enjoyable slightly charred/grilled flavour, the sausage was delish (pure porky goodness and none of that overpowering herbiness) and there were lots of mushrooms (I like me a mushroom or two!). There was some ... constructive feedback on the bacon though - it could have been crisper. Well done, Lido Cafe.

C and ZW - I had hoped your trip would have been more enjoyable but ZW did manage to adopt a new, cool hood on fashion and a full English brekkie sure does make the rest of the day more positive, innit? x

The Lido Cafe
Dulwich Road, Brockwell Lido, London SE24 0PA

East Meets West

Roti canai topped with a fried egg and a side of caramelised onion sausages and red onion chutney

Why the utterly marvelous meal combination? Just because I could .... and because there was no better combination I could dig out from the depths of my freezer/larder that I could be bothered to deal with. I can't claim it was utterly delicious. It was certainly.... utterly interesting ....

Buttermilk Pancakes, Crispy Bacon and Butterscotch Bananas

A breakfast to induce a heart attack and add inches to those pudgy thighs, just what I need this Sunday morning.

Serves 2 hungry people or 3 slightly less hungry people

Buttermilk Pancakes
100g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tbsp golden caster sugar
2 large eggs
284ml tub buttermilk
pinch of salt

Butterscotch Bananas
100g butter
100g caster sugar
100ml double cream
2 large bananas

Crispy Bacon
6 rashers streaky bacon

• For the pancakes, sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, sugar and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Mix together the eggs and buttermilk and whisk into the flour mixture until the batter is thick and smooth.
• Heat a large frying pan on low-medium heat, preferably non-stick, and brush lightly with melted butter. Drop 2 or 3 large spoonfuls of batter into the pan to make pancakes about 10cm in diameter. When bubbles begin to appear on the surface, after about 3-4 minutes, carefully flip the pancakes over and cook on the other side until browned. Cook in batches of 2-3 pancakes in the pan until all the batter is finished.
  
• Whilst you're cooking the pancakes, make the butterscotch by heating the sugar and butter in a pan on medium heat. Be careful when heating sugar - it gets really hot and burns pretty fast as soon as the sugar melts. As soon as the sugar crystals have melted into a medium brown colour, add the cream. Let the mixture boil until it turns a lovely golden butterscotch/caramel colour. Peel the bananas and slice on diagonal into half inch thick slices. Add the bananas into the sauce and stir. Remove the mixture from the heat and set aside.
• Just before you cook your last batch of pancakes, put the bacon on an oven try and put the meat under a pre-heated grill. Grill for about 3-4 minutes on each side or until crisp.
• Plate up with 3-4 pancakes a person. Laddle on the butterscotch bananas and top with the bacon.

Pancake Sunday

Thanks to Betty Crocker, we had a really nice but very late lunch last Sunday. Late because I slept well past noon ... it was Sunday, so it can be overlooked ;)

I've had a box of Betty Crocker's Bisquick All Purpose Baking Mix sitting in my pantry for a few weeks now, just waiting for the right Sunday to cook up a batch of American style fluffy pancakes. It's just one of those things I've been dying to try and I finally bought a box - it even had a great picture of American pancakes on the box, oozing over with syrup. Just add milk and an egg .... cook over a pan on a medium heat. Brilliant! According to the instructions, half a packet makes about 16 smallish pancakes. I managed about 10 pancakes of various sizes :)

Serves doused in maple syrup with a small mountain of crispy streaky bacon and ... black pudding. Stuart went out to buy milk and bacon but also brought back a tube of black pudding - just to try. Haha he's such a food wuss sometimes. He seemed to enjoy the meal. I think he sometimes misses the big American breakfasts he used to get when he lived in Vancouver - he wolfed down 7 pancakes :D

Cheesy Sunday

Two cheesy meals today. It wasn't planned - I usually make sure I don't have too much dairy in one day (or my tummy gets a little upset) but what the heck, the soybeans can wait until tomorrow :)

I made grilled ham and cheese toasts for lunch with a side salad; should always have greens my mother said. I used up the smoked cheddar that I bought to make pizzas. A hint of smokiness came through on the toasts that I couldn't taste on the pizzas. Overshadowed by the other ingredients. For the toasts, I cut the crusty white loaf up quite thickly - really just greediness on my part but great sustenance on a cold wintry day. Stuart had his toasts with ketchup and mayonnaise but I really didn't think it was necessary.

We bought a huge ready-made lasagna when we went out today from M&S (yup, another one of their deals), which we had with more salad. I seriously did think we would have enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow but no such luck. It all went into our bellies tonight and it was seriously large lasagna but it was yummy. Oddly though I just found out today that lasagna is one of Stuart's favourite foods.. haha ... after all these years and I never picked up on it. I really should pay more attention :)

Dessert. Yes, we had dessert even after all that pasta. Little individual pots of raspberry sherry triffle. I haven't had triffle in years!

Layers of sherry soaked sponge, raspberry compote, vanilla bean custard, whipped cream and a sprinkling of sugared almond kernels. Definitely heavy on the dairy but it was pretty darn good. I remember when I was at university, some friends and I would buy large ready-made fruit triffles from M&S (they have the best ready-made meals!) and just dig in. Oh so good!

Sunday Brunch - Eggs Benedict

The laziness of a Sunday afternoon and the lack of exciting ideas for making anything more interesting led to this meal. I've never made hollandaise before... but how hard can it be, right? No, not so hard....I just threw the first batch away. Ha! But the second was fine :) I did modify the recipe... just a little. I used lime juice instead of the traditional white wine vinegar or lemon juice (I didn't have either in stock) and I didn't cook this over a pan of simmering water but it tasted fine. Couldn't be happier for a first ... alright.. second attempt :)

Hollandaise
An egg yolk
A squeeze of lime/lemon / white wine vinegar
melted butter (about 50g, depending on the size of your egg) - if you're really picky you can used the clarified stuff or do it yourself but if you're lazy like me, then go ahead with the normal stuff - it didn't seem to make a difference
salt and pepper to taste

• Melt the butter on a low heat, make sure it doesn't burn.
• In a clean bowl, whisk the egg yolk, lime juice salt and pepper until thickened.
• Whisking (I used a hand held one) hard, trickle in the butter in a slow, steady stream*. You should be able to see the mixture in the bowl thicken.
• When all the butter has been incorporated, wipe down the side of the bowl with a spatula to ensure all the sauce gets mixed in and give the mixture another whisk.
  

*This is where recipes call for the whisking of the mixture over a pan of simmering water and where it went horribly wrong for me. My bowl got too hot and the egg yolk cooked into slimy, lumpy bits. Pretty. So down the kitchen drain it went and I started a new batch without having to use any hot water.

Putting it all together
Poach the egg - bring some water in a pot to a gentle simmer - add a touch of vinegar to the water. This helps the egg hold its shape by causing the outer layer of the egg white to congeal faster. Break the egg into a little bowl. Swirl the water to make a mini whirlpool - with a spoon or a whisk does the job even better. Drop the egg into the middle of the whirlpool and watch the egg white whirl around the yolk. Poach for about 2-3 minutes for a nice runny-medium yolk.

In the meantime, slice the English muffin in half and pop it into the toaster. Butter the muffin halves if you so wish and layer on the ham. I have to confess, since we are on an economy drive, I used economy ham ... *shock horror* :) Then again I adore Spam and this stuff is probably just as bad.

Gently lift the egg from the water and place it on top on the ham on the muffin. Spoon over the hollandaise and crack on some black pepper.

Conclusion? The sauce was good but not as rich as it can be. Maybe next time I'll use a tad bit more butter and definitely some better quality ham.

Cheesy Scrambled Eggs on Toast

Back in London after a brilliant holiday, Stuart asked for cheesy scrambled eggs on toast. And that is what he got...though a little more than he bargained for. Fours eggs scrambled over low heat with a knob of butter, a splash of milk and a minute before the eggs were ready, a generous handful of grated mature cheddar. Served over granary toast.

Stuart thought it was there was too much cheese :) I thought it made a lovely photo but as I didn't eat any of this, I had no complains.