Chocolate orange profiteroles & sibling rivalry

So here it is - or there it was - Christmas is over and the New Year nearly upon us. A time of reflection and anticipation etc etc. It's been an important year in the Recipe Junkie household on many levels - the big move west in February and all that's brought for us, Blue getting the big all clear from his leukaemia in the summer, 5 years after the end of his chemo, and yes, I've mastered choux pastry.

Not perhaps as significant as the other 2 major highlights of the year which have impacted in a major way on all of us, but as a personal highlight, it ranks pretty highly (and who am I kidding, the mob are pretty chuffed that these are now no longer a dessert dream, but a very real pudding possibility).

Another major milestone was my parents' celebrating a milestone birthday in March, which saw all of us (my parents, me, my brothers, our spouses, children and Fred the dog) gathered at a rather luxurious barn conversion outside Bristol for a long weekend. Significant in itself that we were all together in the same place which is at best an annual event these days, it was lovely to spend time with my parents and brothers, all of whom I love very much and don't see enough of, and to see the cousins getting on so well. It was also endlessly entertaining watching Fred the dog do his best to catch one of the Koi carp that floated langorously in a pool outside...

The barn had the most amazing kitchen with the most enormous AGA I've ever seen - I suspect you really needed a licence to drive it - and plenty of gadetry, but astonishingly hardly anything to actually cook with or on, pans and tins-wise. We who had elected to cater had to be inventive. My contribution to proceedings was a massive Sunday roast, with one of my brothers knocking up dessert.

And knock up he did - profiteroles, just like that. Choux pastry made with no scales or anything. As far as I could work out he just did it by eye - and this from the bloke who's spent a significant part of his adult life mapping jungles in Africa (or something). To say the man has hidden talents would be an understatement.

And while I was, as you'll understand, delighted not to have had to make a pudding, having slaved over roast pork for 12, that little corner of my soul reserved for sibling rivalry that we all like to pretend doesn't exist now we're all grown ups and can put the the irritants of childhood behind us (yeah, right), was definitely awakened, agitated, and up for the challenge.

Or not - because at least once a week since Easter, I have thought to myself, right, choux pastry. And then thought - may be not, After all, it's quite decadent once you fill everything with cream. And the leftovers will only get left in the fridge and I'll just eat them. And we're busy this weekend... Nervous? Afraid of failure? Too worried about whether I'd be unable to better (or frankly, even equal) the brother's efforts? You bet. Sibling rivalry sucks...

But no longer, I have broken by choux pastry duck thanks to the magic of Vicky North and her nascent Vic North Cookery School (runner up in the Best New Cookery School of 2014, doncha know?!) nestled in the beautiful North Pembrokeshire countryside not very far from here. A day of pastry included sweet, savoury, puff and choux. Inspiring and practical, I am no longer scared of making pastry, and am now fully equipped to make profiteroles, much to the delight of my family.

These are filled with a mixture of the orange curd I made the other day and softly whipped cream and topped with the most divine chocolate 'ganache' which is not ganache at all in the conventional way, but made with coconut oil, cocoa and honey. A complete revelation. You should try it.

And in a break from tradition, I made sure everything was ready before I began. Another revelation...

Chocolate orange profiteroles

Makes many

125g plain flour,
225g water (yes - weigh it!)
60g unsalted butter
1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs

300ml double cream
jar of orange curd (or whatever you fancy - or not at all)

60g runny honey
30g coconut oil, melted
20g cocoa
pinch of salt

Pre-heat your oven to 180C.

Sift the flour into a large bowl, and put the water, butter and salt into a pan.

Put your eggs by your mixer, K beater/paddle attachment fitted, and get a piping bag ready with a large nozzle.

Line 2 baking sheets with greaseproof paper - I usually secure it with clothes pegs for the piping part but remember to whip them off before putting them in the oven.

Ready to go? 

Bring the water butter & salt to the boil.

Tip the flour into the boiling water, reduce the heat and beat the mixture as vigorously as you can with a wooden spoon for 4 minutes. It's a killer, but worth it.

When the mixture is glossy and comes away from the sides of the pan, tip it into the mixer bowl and beat for a minute.

Keep the beater running then add the eggs one at a time. You may not need all of them - keep an eye on the mixture. You're aiming for a smooth glossy mix that will hold its shape when being piped.

Dollop this into your piping bag and do the thing. I'm no expert piper - you could also dollop the mixture out using spoons I think. Leave space between your mounds of paste to allow for rising during baking.

Bake for 15-20 minutes till puffed up and golden. When the buns come out of the oven, immediately make a small slit in each one to let out the steam and stop your buns going soggy.

Leave to cool.

Whisk the cream up with half a jar of orange curd if using and pipe that into the buns - easier said then done - I made a bit of a mess if we're honest, but the cream tastes darn good, and really is anyone going to mind??

Mix together the honey, coconut oil and cocoa, and working quickly, smear on the buns and chill till required.

So it just remains for me to wish you all Happy New Year. Thanks for following my blog this year - looking forward to 2015. xxx

Christmas Curd

For various reasons including a vomiting child and a cancelled party (both the child and the party being my responsibility), I found myself at a loose end and with excessive amounts of oranges to hand earlier today. 

What to do? 

My eyes strayed to the eggs, and I started to think curd. Specifically, orange curd, having a number of oranges available that were intended for the vast vat of mulled wine I had planned for aforementioned party...

Then I began to wonder if you could lace in that quintessential aroma of Christmas - cloves - into the curd. Such is the way my mind works.

I was making bread sauce in advance of Christmas Day last week, and that smell of clove-y, milk-y, onion-y bread is inextricably linked to this time of year for me, Combine clove with orange and it reminds me of my Granny, who always had a pomander knocking around, Christmas or not, and it reminds me of mulled wine. I mean really. What's not to like?

Since we've moved, one of the things I have definitely missed is the chickens. Our old ladies were unlikely to have made the journey down the M4 and beyond, so we re-homed them, and I have been buying eggs ever since. I was aware that the current stash of eggs were getting on, but marked with the British Lion Egg* logo and a date, I was confident that they would be OK - a change from the hastily scrawled dates I used to add to the eggs of our own chooks as I collected them.

Curd is one of the great things you can make with eggs, although if you're not confident that you have mastered how to boil an egg, you might want to do that first, but then curd has to be one of the things you must make with eggs. You just have to remember that it will take a long time. And during that long time you have to be prepared to stand, stirring, ever-vigilant to avoid turning your fragrant pan-full into lemon (or lime, or orange, or whatever flavoured)scrambled eggs, rather than a deliciously rich and smooth custard. And it simply isn't worth turning the heat up either, for the same reason.

If you're used to sharp lemon or lime curds, this is quite a different animal. Sweet, but not overly so and with a hint of those delicious seasonal flavours, it's almost almondy. In fact it would be delicious with a frangipan topping in a tart (thinking out loud, note to self etc etc) 

Christmas Curd

Makes one delicious jarful

75g butter
50g caster sugar
125 ml sweet, freshly squeezed orange juice
3 large eggs
a couple of pinches of ground cloves and of ground cinammon

Melt the butter in a heavy bottomed pan over a gentle heat, then turn the heat down as low as you can and add in the rest of the ingredients.


Stir continuously with a wooden spoon until a smooth custard forms which will coat the back of a spoon and allow you to draw a line through it with your finger.

Allow to cool slightly then decant into a 350ml sterilised jam jar.

Hide at the back of the fridge and don't tell anyone else you made it.

*This post is sponsored by British Lion Eggs

Stollen

What a difference a day - and a trip to the shops makes. Presents have been purchased, the tree is up and there is food in the fridge.  The Husband is returned from his last week away of the year. And lo! Christmas can begin.

I'm not a huge Christmas fiend in the way that some people are - seeing Christmas adverts in September makes me groan, and I can't get worked really up about it  - piling too many expectations into one day is a sure fire recipe for disaster. But I do like having time to be with family, to catch up with friends, to switch off. I love a good carol, a 'Christmas film' - either one that's themed around Christmas, or failing that, the Sound of Music. As the kids have grown older, we're developing our own traditions - different from those of the Husband & my own childhoods (the Husband was never going to let me maintain the tradition of not opening 'main' presents till AFTER the Queen's speech, which is what happened in our house when I was a child...) 

But I don't think of myself as a Christmas purist - more a bit of a Christmas pirate, and I'll pick and choose from new ideas, mostly happy to go with the flow, and frankly, when the traditions of other Christmases are so tasty why wouldn't you? In the interests of making sure we have the means for a bit of a party next weekend, I have been trying out various drink options of the mulled variety (hic), and I made a stollen.

Stollen is, I think German/Austrian in origin but for the opportunities it presents for Marzipan, it's a winner for me. I've never made one before, and only occasionally eaten it (there's lots of other things to eat at Christmas, aren't there?), but having had a go, I can see this becoming a bit of a fixture. I mean what is not to like? Enriched bread dough, all those Christmassy spices and of course, marzipan... I ate it unadorned for breakfast this morning in a quiet house (the Husband took the kids off kayaking) with a cup of coffee. The marzipan melted into the dough, a sugary hit from the icing sugar drenched over the rop, plenty of dried fruit, turning it immediately into a health food...Bliss.




I wouldn't begin to suggest this is an authentic recipe - I started off with a Paul Hollywood version and went from there - but I think in terms of flavour and sheer Christmassy food joy, it hits the spot.

Stollen

250 semi-skimmed milk
150g unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into cubes

500g strong white flour
100g caster sugar
10g dried easy blend yeast
10g salt

400g dried fruit (I used a bag of luxury dried fruit mix left over from the Christmas cake)
130g marzipan, grated
2 good shakes of ground all spice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract

To finish
25g unsalted butter
1 tbsp icing sugar
a good handful of flaked almonds

You'll need a lined baking sheet and a seive to sift the final icing sugar over the hot loaf.

Warm the milk in a small pan then remove from the heat and add the butter and allow it to melt in to the milk.

Combine the stong white flour, sugar, yeast and salt in a bowl, then gradually incorporate the milk/butter mixture. Once combined into a rough dough, knead until you have a smooth dough (I did this in a food processor with the dough hook)

Combine the dried fruit, marzipan, all spice and vanilla & almond extracts in a bowl.

Flour the work surface (again if you kneaded by hand and it's necessary) and pat the dough into a rough rectangle, then carefully tip the fruit mixture onto it and knead it all together. You may think the fruit will never incorporate into the dough, but it will - just go steadily!

Once the fruit is incorporated into the dough, place the dough in a bowl, cover with cling film and leave to rise for 1-2 hours or until doubled in size.

Pre-heat the oven to 190C (170C Fan). Tip the dough onto a floured work surface, form into a rectangle, about 30 cm by 20 cm, then roll tightly into a sausage shape, and place on the lined baking sheet. Cover with a tea towel and leave for 30 mins-1 hour. 

Remove the tea towel, put the loaf in the oven and bake for 50 mins-1 hour. Keep an eye on it and cover with foil if it looks like it's catching.

Just before you take the stollen out of the oven, melt the final 25g of butter. Remove the stollen from the oven, brush it with the melted butter then chuck the flaked almonds over it, then sift the icing sugar over the top and leave to cool completely.

Christmas? Bring it on.

Potato Surprise Pie

Just as surely as things that go up have to come down, it is also the case that, unless they are incredibly organised and have a bigger freezer capacity than I, people who go out and enjoy themselves 2 weekends on the trot end up with nothing in the fridge and a bit of a crisis - especially given that it's now officially 'Christmas' (having got the Husband's birthday out of the way) and my organisational skills have had to be turned to that rather than the day to day food regime.

I do have a meal plan for December. It's filled in with the many Christmas related events the children are involved with, the Husband's not inconsiderable absences through work-related travel, some parties (more! hooray!) and  a couple of food-related scrawls. I see "salmon?"  against tomorrow. And (rather obviously) "turkey" against 25th. But for the rest of the time? We are doing a lot, and not, apparently eating much.

Actually that's not quite true - closer inspection reveals "leftovers" written in for Monday with an arrow wiggling across the rest of the week (until tomorrow when we are supposed to be having salmon...).

Leftovers on Monday and Tuesday consisted of a rather luscious cauliflower and bacon cheese using up the remnants of various cheese from the weekend, and a sausage and sweet potato casserole, again using up sausages we didn't cook on the beach. The same was on offer on Tuesday, and by Wednesday we had Sausage Casserole left. Left overs from the leftovers, you could say. (I'd over achieved when I bought the sausages). 

Throw into the mix the fact that I've had to scrape together packed lunches and the fridge painted a rather grim picture this afternoon.

But a pot of cream, although a day out of date, was unopened and passed my 'does it taste off' test, and - hallelujiah! 4 slices of bacon. Potatoes an onion and some tired looking tomatoes, and dinner was born. A kind of take on a dauphinoise, I suppose, or a bacon hotpot.

I hesitate to offer a recipe - my dish is, shallow approx 20cm by 20cm, and I thinkly sliced 3-4 maris piper potatoes and an onion, then layered with the bacon and tomatoes plus a grated clove of garlic, salt and pepper and a mixture of 300ml of veg stock and about 100ml of cream, cooked for 40 mins in a hottish oven.

Coupled with some peas (from the freezer) and bingo.

Dinner. 

As I haven't done so for ages, I'm linking this up with Dom's Random Recipes challenge #46 for December. He challenged us to take a photo of our Christmas fridge and post it. Granted this is more the pre=Christmas fridge than the Christmas fridge, but still...Thanks, Dom.

Chocolate Orange Campfire Cakes

While the rest of the western world is putting up their Christmas trees and decking their halls, I have had my mind on camp fire cooking this last week. Not an obvious train of thought for early December, and the kids have done their best to distract me, warbling away the Welsh Christmas carols that they have been practising what seems like all day, every day, for the last couple of weeks, but today was the Husband's birthday, and as with most years since we've been together, Christmas has to wait until the birthday is done. 

I always feel for people who have their birthdays close to Christmas - or even on Christmas Day itself. My birthday falls at the end of April, and once when I was probably 8 or 9, it coincided with Easter Sunday, and all I got was chocolate eggs. Admittedly they were bigger than normal, but it always seemed to me like a bit of a cop out, like I'd lost out. Not that I'm harbouring any grudges some 34 years later or anything... 

BUT I do feel that if a birthday and another special festival or holiday coincide, you should make a fuss of the birthday person for their birthday as well as doing whatever you do for the festival and not try to wrap the 2 up together. It's hard - and the Husband's birthday is still a few weeks off Christmas - but for example, there's no tree up here (won't be till next weekend at least) and the Christmas cards that have started to trickle in won't get put up on the mantlepiece for a week at least, so that the birthday cards can take centre stage. 

If there was one thing less likely to be Christmassy to celebrate the Husband's birthday, it was a cook out on the beach in early December, but that's what we decided to do. The weather was kind enough, we had good friends to stay and Saturday lunchtime saw us heading off to Penbryn armed with a shelter, waterproofs, blankets, wood, various buckets, spades, boomerangs, sausages, bacon, marshmallows, a vat of soup and the wherewithal to make chocolate orange campfire cakes.

While the fire got going, we explored caves and because the tide was low enough, the beach beyond the one we were settled on, one of the adults got the kids playing minefield - kind of like human battleships - so simple, so much fun - running around in the fresh air on a huge expanse of empty beach.

Fire glowing, and with the light of the day disappearing, we settled in to cook sausages and cowboy meals, and to make these cakes which I'd seen on the internet and decided had to be tried. Part of me couldn't believe they'd work but they did - and some. Essentially you use hollowed out orange skins as the receptacle for cake batter. And yes, you could make your own, but for the purposes of making this up at the beach, I used a box of mix, and took the additional ingredients required - water, oil and eggs - pre-measured in a plastic container ready for mixing up. We did hollow out the oranges before heading beachwards too.

Wrapped in foil, and cooked in the embers of a fire, you get a brilliant moist cake delicately flavoured with orange, more or less depending on how fastidiously you hollow out your oranges.

We will definitely do these again. We whizzed up the orange flesh into juice for breakfast, but you could increase the orange-iness of the cakes by using some orange juice in the place of the water you need to mix up the packet of batter.

Chocolate Orange Campfire Cakes

Makes around 12

12 large, thick skinned oranges
2 packets of Betty Croker Chocolate Chunk Muffin Mix - or whatever takes your fancy
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 large eggs
Lots of strong tin foil

Slice the tops off the oranges about 1/4-1/3 down and scoop the flesh out of both pieces taking care not to split the skin. Trial and error showed us that it's better to have the stalk end as the bottom of the larger piece, because you get a little hole in the other end when you scoop out the flesh, but it's not fatal - just use more tin foil when you wrap the oranges.

Empty the muffin mix into a bowl and whisk together your wet ingredients - we needed 2 tbsp vegetable oil, 2 large eggs and 260 ml water - then stir the wet ingredients into the dry mix.

Spoon the batter into the larger parts of the oranges - don't fill more than about half the cavity you've got. 

Top with the smaller piece of orange, double wrap in foil and chuck into the embers of the fire for 25 minutes. You can carry on cooking your sausages at the same time.

After 25 minutes, remove the foil wrapped packages carefully from the fire and unwrap to find a moist delicious chocolatey orangey cake. Probably best eaten al fresco, with a spoon, but fingers will do.

Cardiff - puddings and pumpkin seeds

So where was I? Ah yes, skipping out of Wahaca in Cardiff last Saturday evening, admiring the pretty lights, replete with tacos and tequila, but not actually full to busting, having decided we didn’t fancy their puds and willing to try our luck elsewhere. 

Obviously the cocktails had gone to our head as we recalled the heady days BC (Before Children) when we lived in a flat in south London and on the rare occasions that we had any money to speak of, we would skip (figuratively of course, for we were young and hip... er actually no, we weren't but we didn't actually skip. It's figurative, OK?) off into the centre of Soho for late night cake, coffee and a walk along the river… 

Eager to repeat the experience, we were sadly brought up short by a distinct lack of comparable establishments in central Cardiff providing what we actually had in mind. The pie shop was closed up too, and most of the other places we found were heaving boozers, music thumping, pavements outside slick with beer (well, Wales had just beaten South Africa) so Carluccios had to do. Oh how times have changed. 

*insert nostalgic sigh for the days when a heaving boozer with beer-slickened pavements and thumping music would have been my idea of a top night out*

The waitress in Carluccios looked at us slightly askance when we declared our desire only for pudding and coffee, but she installed us at a table and produced a couple of the finest espressos I've had recently. There was nearly a major crisis when it transpired that they had (gasp) RUN OUT of lemon tart, but we managed to make do with 2 of their rather delicious chocolate offerings - a warm chocolate pudding for me, baked with ground almonds and served with ice cream, and a rich chocolate torte with raspberry coulis for the  Husband. I also managed a heady Amaretto - I love the stuff but hardly ever drink liqueurs so it was a real treat. I could actually just sit and sniff it and then drink it by dipping my tongue in the glass. But that's not for polite company, so I managed to restrain myself.

Of course, a cracking night out requires a decent breakfast the following morning, and while neither of us felt too shabby, despite tequilas and digestifs, a certain gravitas was required when it came to the contents of breakfast. We were staying on a room only basis in our hotel, so headed out to Bill's to enjoy their breakfasts and their industrial shabby chic restaurant.

I'd never heard of Bill's before and I was a bit disappointed to find out it was part of a chain, because on first glance it didn't feel very chain-like -nestled as it is in a lovely arcade, with a very independent feel too it, even down to the fleece blankets thoughtfully provided for those wishing to enjoy one of the outside tables. Then I spotted the blackboard hanging from the ceiling indicating that it had first started in a greengrocer's in Lewes, which is pretty far from Cardiff, and I was also a bit embarrassed because they seem to be EVERYWHERE. How have I not found out about this before?

Anyway, I can't vouch for the lunches or evening meals, but they do a cracking breakfast at Bill's. I had the eggs royale - smoked salmon and poached eggs on sourdough toast with hollandaise, scattered with pumpkin seeds which was a bit of a surprise addition, but I liked it. The Husband pondered out loud the fact that if he had a big breakfast, he'd feel full and have to moan about it, which lead me to believe he'd go for something else, but in fact he plumped for the full monty - the 'Bill's Breakfast' and enjoyed it hugely. And yes, he did moan about feeling full afterwards, but only in a half-hearted way. Lovely coffee too, although a couple of our drinks orders were missed or arrived very slowly - and in fact the Husband's second Americano just didn't arrive which meant we had to top up on caffeine in Cardiff Bay. But with the sun shining, that was no bad thing...

Cardiff - Cocktails and Quesadillas

The Husband and I escaped to Cardiff for a night this weekend. Too late to book ourselves into any of the great places to eat that had been recommended to us, we decided to embrace some of the ‘chain’ restaurants present in this fantastic city – and we weren’t disappointed.

I visited Cardiff once before, quite a long time ago. With the Husband (although he’s been back since). In fact, we went to see the last England v Wales international at the much loved and now obsolete Arms Park. As I remember, Keiran Bracken’s thighs featured quite heavily (for me at least), as did a man dressed as a leek. Actually, there were quite a lot of men dressed as leeks, and I was quite disappointed not to see even one man-sized leek when we returned to our adopted homeland’s capital on Saturday. What was noticeably prevalent was the rampant goodwill amongst Welsh & Springbok supporters, a general atmosphere of happiness and optimism. Not surprising really, because Cardiff is a lovely city – wide streets, a mixture of old fashioned department stores and arcades and ultra-modern architecture.

When I say we embraced chain restaurants, we did have an initial foray into the independent food scene, visiting the New York Deli, as recommended. Situated in one of the gorgeous little arcades, as well as enjoying the food, if you sit in the window you can also be intrigued by the barbers/tattoo parlour opposite...

Bagels, hoagies, sandwiches heavy on the salt beef and swiss, I enjoyed a delicious Cardiff Devil’s Hoagy – cream cheese, salt beef and gherkins, smothered in a pungent horseradish and tabasco sauce.

I’d specified heat of 4-5 (out of a scale of 1-10) and it was just fine, and set me up perfectly for an afternoon at the Laguna Spa that the Husband had booked me in for (yes, while he watched the rugby, but you know what – each to his or her own, and I was pretty happy with my part of the bargain).

Emerging into the early evening, jubilant Welsh crowds fresh from their win over the ‘boks, we decided we were in the mood for cocktails, and found ourselves initially in 10 Feet Tall. 

Packed to the gunnels we pushed on through, found a table and settled down to a mojito and a long island iced tea. Very good they were too, but “…very young and hip…” as Twitter advised me. We didn’t feel like it was overly young & hip, but it was quite noisy, and the crowd was definitely drunker at 6.30 than we were ever going to be getting lively, so by definition we were probably too old to be there, and took the advice of Twitter to hightail it over to the newly opened Wahaca, and their cocktail bar.

Now I’ve long wanted to eat at Wahaca, Thomasina Miers’ Mexican streetfood chain, and the fact that there was a cocktail bar where we could wait for our table made it a no brainer. The more I eat Mexican food, the more I love it: fresh flavours of lime and coriander, beans and tomatoes, avocados, smoky spices. It’s the smoky spices that I really love – chipotle and all that.

We were duly assigned a mobile phone-like pager and an estimated table time of 8, and headed upstairs for a tamarind margarita. Wahaca in Cardiff is in a big modern unit, spread over 3 floors and from the top you can see all the way down. There’s plenty of plate glass giving views of John Lewis opposite, and a relaxed but ‘buzzy’ vibe to the bar. It wasn’t heaving either, so we got served pretty quickly and settled down to enjoy our cocktails and the snacks – tortillas and delicious guacamole. I loved the tamarind margarita – the lemony flavours combined well with the lime and the high grade tequila they profess to use. In fact it slipped down far too easily, as did the Husband’s Wahaca Mule, after which I had a Mojito DF and the Husband had something with hibiscus in which was too flowery for me, but he enjoyed it…

I could have stayed there all evening, quaffing delicious cocktails and nibbling tortilla and guacamole, but perhaps fortunately, we were called to our table, where ‘Jack’ welcomed us. Now, Wahaca operates a little like Wagamamma, whereby the menu is printed out on a table mat/piece of paper, and the waiter or waitress will scribble over it as you give your order. ‘Jack’ was clearly following his script which was a little irritating, explaining how we should order, writing his name on the menu - in case we forgot? But we managed to let that go, ordered mainly from the street food and sides menu, and pretty quickly had some totally delicious morsels in front of us. And another cocktail.

The first morsels were the fennel pork scratchings with more guacamole. You can take the girl out of the North of England, but you'll never rid me of my love of pork scratchings, and this were divine morsels of fennell-y saltiness. Perfect with the guacamole. Even more so than the tortillas we'd eaten earlier.

After that, it wasn't long before we were presented with: pork pibil tacos, black bean tostados, chicken taquitos and chorizo & potato quesadilla. And spicy slaw, 'greens' (lush lush lush - tenderstem brocoli  drizzled with chilli garlic oil and lime - I could have eaten kilos of it), and the sauteed sprout special. It is nearly Christmas after all...

If you ask me, Mexican served this way is pretty much the perfect food to eat when you’re happily tipsy and feeling full of goodwill: cheerful food, bright and vibrant, and really fresh tasting. Wahaca may be a chain, and I haven’t eaten in any of the other Wahacas, but it was lovely. I also liked the way that they used British ingredients like Lancashire cheese where appropriate. Wahaca has won a sustainable food award a couple of times, and I wondered if they might be able to use Welsh cheese in the Cardiff Wahaca – but that’s being really petty because the food was fantastic and, deprived country girl that I am, the view was pretty good too.

To be utterly honest after the lovely ‘main courses’ we didn’t really fancy any of the puddings on offer, churros and hot chocolate and various ice creams, so we decided to do some ‘urban foraging’ for a fix of lemon tart. But that’s for another post…