Yup, Thornton Heath. Look it up.

While the rest of the food world had their eyes on which restaurants would make it into the World’s 50 Best last night, I was schlepping down to a crumbling takeaway in Zone 4 to get me some jerk chicken. I spend much of my time schlepping around London to taste jerk pork or chicken, come to think of it; either that, or I’m sitting in the corner of a darkened room, rocking and weeping gently, mourning the loss of some of London’s greats. The Jerk Cookout  for example (RIP) was one of the best food events ever created, in my eyes, but it stopped a couple of years ago when they (apparently) couldn’t get any sponsorship; to be honest the event was getting too big by that point anyway and thus the quality of stalls diluted until it ended up as just a representation of the state of jerk in London in one place (loads of shit places, very few good ones), rather than a gathering of the very best. The other great loss was Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre next to Peckham Rye station (RIP). That place got taken over by new management who clearly couldn’t care less; when I walked past last night the place was empty. I cry.

And so the search continues. Now I knew Tasty Jerk was going to be good because they won the Jerk Cookout two (or was it three?) times in a row, before they were told they couldn’t win any more because it wasn’t fair to the other contestants. I say: if you’re the best, you’re the best, end of. Anyway, they have branches in spectacularly inconvenient places, those places being: Thornton Heath, Croydon and er, Ghana. So Thornton Heath it was.

We could smell the food cooking from a significant distance. I’d been warned that the place was ‘grotty’ which of course meant that when I entered I immediately fell in love with it. The back wall is basically lined with jerk drums and a massive extractor fan which does try to suck up some of the smoke but fails for the most part, leaving our clothes and hair infused. I’m not wearing the same coat I wore last night. Cooking good jerk is very much about getting a lot of smoke going on, you see. Of course the spicing is important, but a lot of places fall down on the cooking method. Tasty Jerk have it nailed. Here’s a really crap photo that’s out of focus but nevertheless gives an idea of the smoke levels…

A jerk meal will typically come with your chosen meat, plus rice and peas and hot sauce (you should always add the hot sauce). The meal is all about balance; this might sound obvious but the components should not be judged separately. It’s also very much about the build. I want a steady increase of heat and allspice, not a punch in the mouth. I want moisture from the rice and peas. Always ask for gravy on those. Tasty Jerk offered gravy without me having to ask which impressed me and in fact, their rice and peas were excellent; good gooey texture hanging on the right side of stodgy, bit of yellow pepper going on in there for sweetness. Generous with the beans. Their hot sauce deserves special mention too as it was pure searing bonnet fruit balanced with a shedload of sugar that made for a terribly addictive cycle of consumption which ended up with me in tears. The method of dealing with this by the way is, in case you don’t know, Guinness punch.

Tasty Jerk are making some of the best jerk in London right now, along with Smokey Jerkey in New Cross. It’s always the glamorous locations, see? Okay so perhaps none of you care enough about a good jerk pork meal to rattle down to Thornton Heath on an empty train for which you actually have to buy a special ticket. I can understand. For me, that’s what I’m calling a good Monday night. While chefs and food glitterati were sipping champagne and waiting to hear whether or not Noma had won the title of world’s best restaurant yet again (it did), I was drinking warm gin and tonic from a can, on a train. I was uncomfortably full, I stank of jerk smoke and I was in the middle of effing nowhere. I also couldn’t have been happier.

Tasty Jerk Centre (for other locations website here)
88 Whitehorse Lane
London
SE25 6RG
Tel: 0208 653 3222

You’re scared, aren’t you? I can tell. You’re scared because you’ve read the title of this post and you know I’m going to have another bash at writing about wine. What’s the worst that could happen? Well, I’ve spent some time thinking about the answer to that question and I’ve come up with several possibilities:

1. I will look like a total idiot.

2. You’re not interested because you come here for the food stuff and you don’t know that much about wine.

3. I will look like a total idiot.

Putting options 1 and 3 aside for a moment, let’s deal with number 2. You’re into food, so you’re probably into drinking wine. If you’re anything like me, you drink the stuff like a fish but you find the world of wine frankly terrifying. Why so scary, wine world? Hmm? There are lots of reasons why I personally find it scary, which include but are not limited to: the fact that there is so much to know and I know so little of it but, mainly, the fact that many people I have met in the wine world are terribly pompous, condescending snobs who use their chosen subject area as a passport to twatsville. Apparently, not knowing everything there is to know about wine makes you a total LOSER. Who knew? These people are the equivalent of school bullies; they use their advantage (be it strength, popularity or in this case, wine knowledge) to make other people feel stupid because they are ultimately insecure about their own self-worth. Deep breaths, deeeep breaths.

Anyway my point is that it is coming into contact with those sorts of people that destroyed my confidence from the very beginning and I therefore just gave up. There’s too much to learn! I can’t possibly taste anything properly! What if I say the wrong thing? FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE WHICH WORD ON THIS BOTTLE IS THE NAME OF THE GRAPE?!

I’ve since taken 3 ‘school of wine’ courses at my local (amazing) wine shop, Green and Blue in East Dulwich which, quite honestly, brought me back from the brink. Kate Thal (the joint owner) runs them and she is the most down to Earth, non-snobby wine person one could hope to meet. She saved me, man. So, I know a lot more about wine than I did before. I’m still scared, though. Nothing puts the shivers up my spine like the thud of an enormous list on white linen. That’s the point where I start frantically looking for the sommelier then beg him/her not to rob me blind.

So, as I wrote before, I got invited on a wine trip to Georgia recently. They invited two food bloggers amongst the (very lovely and brilliant and the opposite of those above) wine people, I imagine because they understand the divide too and they want to bridge it. I actually know quite a lot of wine people nowadays and they are the complete polar opposite of those crusty old men (I’m sorry, but it always seems to be men); the people I know now just tell me things like, ‘it’s all down to personal taste’, ‘you can’t get it wrong’ (slight lie, that one, trust me), and ‘just because someone else gets fear and insecurity on the nose, it doesn’t mean you have to’.

Anyway, the wine. So the wine in Georgia is natural, right. Do you know what that means? Natural wine sends the wine world a bit loopy, basically. They get well wound up about it. The idea with natural wine is to intervene as little as possible during the wine making process, with the ultimate aim of producing something that is much more representative of the place in which it was grown (there’s a word for that last bit which escapes me…cheeky grin). It’s supposed to be more, um, expressive.

Apparently, Georgia was the first country to start making wine; they’ve been doing it for 8000 years. The way they do it is really interesting, though. No barrels for them. They get these massive clay pots called qvevri, and they bury them in the ground. Then they whack everything (juice, skins, stems) in there, seal it up with clay and let it all separate out. The wine is then drawn off the top very carefully using a special jug on a stick. They use a really old grape variety called Rkatsiteli which comes out freakin’ orange! Then there’s another one, which is red and called Saperavi. They’re both native to Georgia. The first time I tasted the orange wine, I was quite taken aback; that stuff is just totally unlike any wine I’ve ever tasted; kinda funky but, you know what? I got into it. By the end of that trip I think we were all a bit Georgian.

Georgia is a post-Soviet state and its people are trying to re-build their country. Part of this means re-discovering traditional methods of producing wine. I found it fascinating, even despite my insecurity telling me I couldn’t possibly be as interested in the wine as I was in the food. I urge you to seek out some Georgian wine, because that stuff will make you have a good old think about natural wine and wine making, if you’re at all interested. The RAW natural wine fair is happening on May 20th and 21st in London (buy tickets here). I’m going to be there. If you see me, come and say hi. Just don’t ask me anything too technical…

It is common knowledge that I am serious about sandwiches. I am sandwich loving lady. It is with much excitement in my belly then that I announce a forthcoming competition, which aims to discover the very best sandwich to be found in London town.

I will be teaming up with legendary Wandsworth pub, The Ship, and together we’re throwing down the gauntlet to the capital’s pubs, restaurants, cafes and street food stalls, inviting them to submit their best work, the pinnacle of their sandwich-making careers, their bready magnum opi.

The competition will take place on 18th September and will be open to, well, not just anyone actually. See the rules for entry below:

1. The sandwich must be on the current menu of a pub, restaurant, cafe or street food stall in London.

2. The sandwich should be entered exactly as it appears on the menu.

3. Only ‘traditional’ sandwiches will be accepted. That means no burgers, no wraps, no open sandwiches, no stretching the concept. It’s filling between two slices of bread or a roll (we have to limit entries somehow).

4. A maximum of 18 different sandwiches will be selected to take part because, well, that’s a manageable number for a Tuesday evening.

5. Entrants must submit one sandwich to the judges, but 10 additional, identical sandwiches will be required on the night.

5. The final 18 will be judged on the evening according to the following criteria: appearance, taste and price.

6. Entries should be sent to [drink@theship.co.uk] Please describe the bread and filling of your sandwich and state the price. Photo = optional.

Them’s the rules! The sandwiches will be judged by a panel of sandwich fanatics including me, Jonathan Brown of the marvellous Sandwichist and a celebrity judge to be confirmed nearer the time.

It’s going to be an amazing evening; there will be drinks, there will be laughs and there will be some of the best damn sandwiches in London on the table. It’s an open invite so come on down and chow on down as we bestow the title of London’s Best Sandwich upon one deserving creation. Let the battle commence!

Have you ever considered visiting Georgia? I’m talking the country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia here, not the American state.

Nope, I hadn’t either. I barely had any idea where to stab my finger on a map, let alone any knowledge of the food, the people, the wine; all of which, I found out last week, are very loveable indeed.

The Georgians are remarkable characters, famous for their hospitality; warm, open and generous, their eyes sparkle and their laughter flows. My first real encounter with the locals was in the food market we visited in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital. The Georgians are not yet so used to tourists that they have become jaded; they welcome you to their stalls to taste food, without any expectations that you will buy. In fact when we did want to buy something, we occasionally had a hard time getting them to take our money. They willingly pose for photographs, tapping their friends on the shoulders to turn around and join in with cheesy grins. Can you imagine that happening in Borough Market?

The market in Tbilisi made me tingle with excitement. You can really feel the distance from Western Europe. I stumbled through each ramshackle pathway, ducking through doorways and underneath swinging bulbs, eager as a kid in a sweetshop to see what new discoveries lurked in every nook and cranny. There were many:

The Georgians are into pickles, which of course endeared me to their cuisine immediately. My favourite and fortuitously the most ubiquitous was this tall tangle of what seemed to be pickled flower stems; the comparison with capers (being pickled flower buds) was a natural one and the flavour was quite similar.

Walnuts are grown in Georgia and therefore appear frequently in sauces, soups, salads and most famously, in churchkhela (above); strings of walnuts (and sometimes hazelnuts) are dipped repeatedly in grape must, which is thickened with flour so that it coats the nuts in a slightly sweet, chewy casing.

We stumble across a ‘cheese room’ in the market, stacked with sheep’s and goat’s cheeses, both similar in flavour with an additional, heavily smoked variety. The texture is crumbly like feta, and the flavour, incredibly salty – more so even than halloumi. It is addictive, just as anything very salty always is.

We later visit a cheese maker who tells us that the saltiness is for preservation purposes. We have some fun trying to translate the technicalities of cheese production from Georgian to English but the gist is that they use rennet from the stomachs of their 500 sheep, mixed with milk and nettles, the latter helping to clean the mixture by catching impurities. The cheese was once stored in shaved sheep skins but is now kept in plastic bags (for obvious practical reasons), where it spends a year before reaching maturity.

In typical Georgian fashion we are greeted with refreshments – a plate of the cheese, plus bread and plenty of wine to wash it down. The wine is most definitely what one would describe as rustic, the kind of wine that a teenager would love; very sweet indeed but somehow absolutely perfect in that time and place, the sweetness perfectly balancing the super salty cheese. We glug down several glasses.

Back in the market, carrier bags bulge with heady spices and seeds. Cumin and coriander seem prevalent and I spot nigella seeds, too; unmistakeable black studs nestled amongst the fiery reds of a dozen different chilli powders. The chilli flakes look Turkish so I buy some of those – they come wrapped in a small newspaper cone like fish and chips – plus I take some of the Georgian spice blend which graces the table as a seasoning and tastes like a turbo charged celery salt.

Chickens are bright yellow and clearly corn-fed. The other meat we see hangs in a remote market; every stall holder equipped with the kind of axe one would expect to see furnishing the arm of Gimli in Lord of The Rings. The Georgians seem rather partial to offal, too; brains, tripe, snouts, the lot. In my delicate state (read: disgracefully hungover having spent 8 hours the previous day necking wine and grappa-like spirits), I find my usual ox-like constitution compromised and scurry away.

Honey is scooped from buckets in huge amber globs, then smeared into old jam jars. Pots of honeycomb are also available, which marked the first but not the last time I cursed my decision to bring a tiny suitcase.

Empty soft drink bottles are filled with Georgian table sauce, made from mirabelle plums. The green sauce is sour, while the red sauce, made from riper plums, is more sweet. Both are made by boiling then pureeing the fruit, before adding garlic, coriander, dill and chilli amongst other ingredients. Both are quite delicious, appearing at several meals we enjoy over the course of our stay; the flavour is unique and I’m rather excited at the prospect of attempting to re-create it.

Everywhere we look there are buckets, platters and boxes of ingredients:

Baby leek-like strands of wild garlic…

Platters of tiny fish are metallic flashes in the corner of the eye…

Sugar dusted dried fruits yield squidgy and soft within; dates, figs and persimmons (sharon fruit)

This is a picture of a Georgian cat because it is very pretty. No other reason. Not for eating.

We later visit the flea market in Tbilisi, which proves just as exciting for the cook; silver cutlery, crystal glasses, china and all manner of curious kitchenalia are laid out on the pavements. I once again curse the suitcase, passing up many opportunities to feed my obsession with plates and cutlery. At almost 3 lari to the pound, there were some bargains to be had.

I fell in love with the markets of Georgia. Well, I fell in love with a lot of things about Georgia. I’ll write next about the Georgian supra (feast), how the market ingredients are used in the kitchen and how the hospitality of the Georgian people is legendary. I’m even going to have a go at writing about the wine. Brace yourselves…

My visit to Georgia was led by ‘that crazy French woman’, Isabelle Legeron who organises the RAW artisan wine fair in May. Tickets available here.

Many of you will know about my love for Khan’s Bargain Ltd. It’s one of the best shops in Peckham; so good in fact that I felt moved to write a whole post about it. Recently, a reader left a comment on that post saying that Mr. Khan has sadly passed away. I went down myself to verify this and sure enough, there was a sign behind the counter. The man who gave his name to such an endearingly chaotic shop is no longer with us.

I considered ways to pay tribute to Mr. K and his Emporium of Random and it seemed fitting to create a sandwich à la Khan’s because there have been oh so many over the past few years. I’ve stuffed them with various bits of cheese or vegetables depending on my mood; creamy labneh with slender crisp slices of baby cucumber perhaps, a slick of muhammara or a dollop of baba ganoush. Always a big handful of fresh herbs.

The sesame speckled flat breads they sell are incredible, so soft and moist. I split one and layered it with aleppo pepper paste (a spicy blend made almost entirely from aleppo pepper and chillies), silky fried aubergine slices, pan scorched halloumi and plenty of coriander. It was a cracking sandwich; base chilli heat, juicy aubergines and salty cheese is a winning combo. Some of the best Khan’s ingredients all together. I didn’t know Mr. Khan personally, but I know his shop inside out; it’s one of the reasons I fell head over heels for Peckham 5 years ago and it’s one of the reasons I continue to relish shopping here. Rest in peace, Mr. Khan, your customers remain loyal and your shop, the most charming ramshackle arrangement of groceries, home wares and plastic animals on Rye Lane.

Sandwich à la Khan’s Bargain Ltd. (makes 2)

2 round soft flat breads
Aleppo paste (if you can’t get this, use another spicy paste, such as harissa or make a paste with red peppers, chilli and oil)
1 packet halloumi cheese
1 large aubergine, sliced into 2cm sliced
Very finely sliced red onion
Plain flour
Oil, for frying
A handful of fresh coriander leaves

Heat some oil to a depth of about 1cm in a heavy based frying pan. Spread some flour out on a plate and dust each aubergine slice in it, then drop into the hot oil. You will need to do this in batches so as not to crowd the pan. Keep the cooked aubergine slices on a plate covered with kitchen paper in a low oven while you finish cooking the rest. When all the aubergines are cooked, keep them all in the oven while you fry the halloumi.

To fry the halloumi, slice it thickly then drop into a dry pan until golden on both sides.

Warm the flatbreads briefly, then split them in half and spread with pepper paste. Layer on the halloumi, aubergines, onion and fresh coriander. Serve immediately.

Last weekend I decided on a whim that it was, without a doubt, the official start of BBQ season. It was a beautiful day and we flung open the doors on to the balcony, letting sun stream into the flat, fired up the grill and had a bunch of mates over to devour what I rather modestly titled a ‘Mexican Feast’. We ripped through a mountain of tacos, piled with slow-cooked pork with blood orange and chipotle plus about seven different salsas, guac and sour cream (got carried away) followed by chocolate mousse sprinkled with honeycomb. To start, it was a big pile of these wings, which we set upon like a bunch of feral animals.

When cooking wings on the BBQ, there’s always the question of how to get the skin nice and crisp (i.e you’re not deep-frying them). I spent a lot of time last year cooking chicken wings, a LOT of time, and I found that even 40 minutes over indirect heat can sometimes leave them a little flabby of skin. Recently however, I discovered a new method via Serious Eats. A new method! Joy! The meat is treated in a mixture of salt and baking powder, then suspended on a wire rack over a dish in the fridge. This needs to happen for at least 8 hours, preferably overnight. I also added dried oregano (on the Mexican vibe) and some Old Bay Seasoning.

The wings don’t really look that different in the morning, but when they’re cooked over indirect heat on the BBQ for about 45 minutes, they go all sort of dry and weird looking. I was a little worried at that point.

They’re then doused in the sauce and flashed over direct heat to caramelise and char. It turned out I needn’t have worried, as the result was the crispest skin I’ve ever achieved on a BBQ and some juicy meat within; the wings are so fatty that they can be cooked for ages without ever drying out inside. The sauce is a mixture of smoky spiced chipotles in adobo (that’s smoked jalapeño chillies in a sweet sauce) which I was kindly sent by the Cool Chilli Co. but have also made at home with much success. They’re incredible and will add smoky intensity to many dishes. I used quite a lot in this recipe which gave the wings a good kick of heat. Balanced with plenty of honey they were super sticky too, cut with the tropical astringency of lime juice.

They’re so good I just made another batch yesterday and I’m making a third next week for a mate’s birthday. The buzzing heat of the chipotles builds with every wing, yet is numbed by the sweet honey, making for an addictive cycle which makes you go back for another and another and another. Have plenty of kitchen roll handy.

Smoked Chicken Wings with Honey & Chipotle

Makes enough for 15-20 wings (depends on their size really)

For the rub

1 heaped teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon chilli powder
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon Old Bay Seasoning

For the sauce

3 heaped tablespoons canned chipotles in adobo (the ones I had were from Cool Chilli Co. and were chopped up in the sauce, in contrast to the ones I’ve made at home/bought before)
1 tablespoon chipotle ketchup (optional)
50g melted butter
Juice 2 limes
5 tablespoons honey

You will also need a handful of hickory wood chips, for smoking.

Start this the day before you want to eat. Mix all the ingredients for the rub together. Pat the wings dry then cover them with the rub, making sure to massage it in to each wing. Spread the wings out on a rack (I used a cake cooling rack) and suspend this over a baking dish or other large flat dish, so that the dish can catch any drips and the air can circulate around the wings. Refrigerate the wings but don’t cling film them, as they need exposure to air.

The next day, make the sauce. Melt the butter then add it to a blender with all the other ingredients and whizz until well combined.

Fire up your BBQ and set up the coals for indirect cooking (by which I mean wait for them to turn white then move them across to one side of the BBQ). Place the wings skin side down on the side of the grill that is NOT over the coals, throw your soaked chips into the coals, then put the lid on and cook for 20 minutes. After this time, turn the wings and cook for another 20 minutes or so (with the lid on).

After this time, douse each wing in sauce then return to the grill, this time OVER the coals; this is to get some char on each wing and caramelise that sauce. This takes about 15-20 minutes.

Once the wings are good and caramelised, you may want to douse them in any remaining sauce.

Apologies for more crappy iphone photos; I was caught off guard again at Duke’s Brew and Que, a new brew pub and BBQ joint in Haggerston. They’ve not been open too long and although some of the food wasn’t quite there yet, I’d say this is definitely one to watch over the next couple of months.

Duke’s is a pub which has been recently renovated, as is evident from the previous clientele still present in a small area reserved for drinking around the bar; the rest is given over to the consumption of que, and there’s an impressive kitchen area at the back, within which resides a serious smoker. These guys mean business.

The hot wings were billed as ‘hot legs’ on the menu (£8.50) – a main course rather than a pile of wings to share which disappointed our party somewhat. They’d run out of legs though so we received three gargantuan wings in their place. The first thing that struck me about Duke’s was that the quality of the meat is really excellent; those were some meaty ass wings goddamit. The skin was incredibly crisp, almost bark-like and the flesh inside super juicy. They differed from the standard buffalo wings that are popping up around London right now in that they had a background rub flavour that was like KFC, but a seriously good version. An intense, salty flavour crust that had us fighting over the third wing. Then there’s the more expected twang of vinegary hot sauce, but it’s like they’ve been doused then flashed on the grill, rather than doused right before serving as is usual. The blue cheese dip alongside was one of the best I’ve ever eaten, with lovely chunks of cheese still present. I missed the traditional celery sticks  though, and I wish they’d serve some alongside, with a bigger pot of that dip.

Those long brown things above are actually pork ribs, I’ll have you know (£10.50). After the high of the wings, these were a little disappointing, despite having a strong smoke flavour. The bark was good (that’s the crust on the outside of the meat – a bit of BBQ lingo for ya) and the flavour of the succulent meat shone through but I felt a little underwhelmed nonetheless. A good squirt of the two que sauces ever present in the table condiments bucket did help somewhat – there’s a molasses and cayenne ‘Kentucky kicker’ sauce and vinegar and mustard based ‘Memphis’ variety, the latter being my favourite packed as it was with sweet American mustard.

The accompaniments need some work: slaw was a bit on the bland side, a pickled cuke ditto, and the pink pickled onions were way too mushy. We also ordered pulled pork sliders (top photo, £9.50), which were filled with a good mix of soft pork and crunchy outer bark bits but were let down by hard and dry buns. Our mac and cheese (below, £3.90) was nice, but just not anywhere near ‘sick’ enough for me, by which I mean it needed more salt, more cheese, more filth factor. I didn’t have room for pudding but two mates made good noises about the ‘Hackney Mess’ which came topped with toasted marshmallow.

So, some real promise to be found at Duke’s and I for one really hope they settle in and find their stride. It’s clear they’re using excellent meat and taking their que seriously, I just feel they need a little more time to lock those recipes down. They brew their own beer too, if that’s your thang (I quite liked it but was distracted by draught Punk IPA) and the atmosphere is buzzing. I’m going to give it a couple more months before I make the schlep up to Haggerston once more (oh East London line, HURRY UP with extending to Peckham) and I have a good feeling that when I do, I’m going to be very pleased indeed with what I find.

Duke’s Brew and Que [map]
33 Downham Road
Haggerston
London
N1 5AA