Not sure what to do this weekend, Londoners? Get yourselves down to The Mayor’s Thames Festival, because the food is going to be special. The eat.st Collective will be there, hawking their wares all along the banks. In fact, I’d suggest skipping breakfast because there’s a ridiculous amount of amazing street food to be had, all in one stretch. So, the details from eat.st founder Petra Barran:

“The eat.st collective will be occupying two areas – one by Tate Modern and a smaller ‘splinter group’ by the Lord Mayor’s Office (More London).

eat.st has been recognised by the Festival organisers for its wide array of amazing food, as well as its dedication to the collective spirit of street food trading in the city. We aim to help transform the outside dining experience of London by promoting more interesting and personality-driven food on its streets.

Traders representing for eat.st will be:

Tate Modern
Luardos – Mexican burritos
Jamon Jamon – Spanish paella
Anna Mae’s – Deep South pulled pork and pimped up mac ‘n cheese
Churros Bros – churros
Buen Provecho – Mexican street food
Big Apple Hot Dogs – gourmet hot dogs
Bean and Gone Coffee – Monmouth coffee
Hardcore Prawn – new kid on the block doing amazing crab bisque, tom yum, char-grilled skewers

More London
Bhangra Burger – Indian spiced burgers with homemade pickles
Creperie Nicholas – Breton gallettes
Tongue ‘n Cheek – Italian street food using ‘under-rated’ cuts of meat (with salsa verde/mostarda in Wild Caper sourdough rolls)
YumBun – soft, pillowy steamed Chinese buns with Blythburgh pork”

The festival takes place on Saturday 10th and Sunday 11th September, 11am-11pm. Map of locations HERE.

Eat. st on Twitter and Facebook

Firstly, a little tooting on my own trumpet as I point you in the direction of The Independent’s ’50 Best Food Websites’ article. They said nice things about Food Stories and 49 other sites, including blogs, online suppliers and all-round giants like Chowhound. I’m flattered to be included.

And while we’re talking about ME, I’ll take a moment to point you once again, this time in the direction of my recipe column at AoL Lifestyle. The latest recipe is a very easy smoked mackerel ‘pâté’.

I’ve been out on the town too, as per. Sometimes a woman has to step outside of Peckham you know. Last weekend I made what was frankly a humongous schlep up to the wild wilderness of Seven Sisters to the Akhaya Cookery School, for a Nigerian cookery class. What with Peckham being ‘little Africa’ and all, I wanted to find out more about the ingredients I see in local shops every day. During the 3 hour class we made egusi (a soup thickened with melon seeds), jollof rice (rice cooked in a spicy tomato stew) and akara (black eye bean fritters). The akara were my favourite; very light, savoury fritters, which are incredibly easy to make. I’ll be experimenting with those so expect a recipe soon. The classes cost £75 per person, you cook 3 dishes per class and take home more than enough food for 2 people. Here are some pics:

The bright and airy classroom.

 Very familiar ingredients for the Peckhamite; dried shrimp; chilli flakes; black eye beans; palm oil.

Egusi soup. The white stuff is the egusi (ground melon seeds), mixed to a paste with water then added to the soup. The green dried stuff is afang (a dried leaf which is a little like Spinach). 

Fried plantain chips. You can’t hear a thing when you’re eating them – that crunchy.

I’ve been eating out too. Last night I perched very happily for several hours around the bar of the Maille Mustard Pop-Up in Spitalfields Market. They kindly invited me down to try the ‘mustard menu’ cooked by Kerstin Marmite Loving Rodgers. I had rather too much fun; the market was buzzing, the wine was flowing and the food was great. It’s on tonight and Sunday too. Here’s the lowdown in pics:

If it’s mustard you’re after…

A ‘Mustardy Mary’  = the best ever bloody Mary. I can’t ever drink one again unless it has wholegrain mustard in it. A brilliant idea.

Steamed artichoke with mustard mayonnaise.

Smoked haddock with mustard and cheese and Asian mustard greens. The fish was umami-packed and delicious. The name of the yellow flower in the middle escapes me but Kerstin picked them from her garden; they surprised everyone by tasting incredibly sweet and delicious. A flower actually worth eating.

Amazing cheese board featuring Langres, Moustardier, Charollais and Comté surrounded by palmiers.

Mostarda tutti frutti ice cream with berries, mint sugar and mustard candy floss. Kerstin and I are both of the opinion that tutti frutti ice cream should be BROUGHT BACK IMMEDIATELY.

And in between all that, I’ve been rapidly expanding outwards due to my extremely close proximity to The Rye pub, which is serving Meatwagon food for the summer. In addition to my favourite chilli burger I’ve been packing away the following, at least 3 times a week.

Smoked pork sandwich

Pulled pork sandwich

Baby back ribs with slaw and deep fried okra. I will be deep frying okra very, very soon.

Smoked buffalo wings with blue cheese dip.

What can I say, get yourself down there.

The Rye
31 Peckham Rye
SE15 3NX

So there we go. Ooof. I think I need to go and exercise now.

There is some really cool shiz going on around Brixtonish way this Sunday. Angus Denoon is bringing the sights, sounds, smells and most importantly, tastes of Kolkata to the mean streets of Sarf Londinium.

The event is taking place at an incredible location: The Whirled Cinema, which looks like one of those places you can’t believe you didn’t know about. Angus will be showing his award-winning documentary, which winds through the whirlwind streets of Kolkata. It promises to be raw, unconventional and inspiring.

“The film is of the mighty city of Kolkata as seen from dawn to dusk through the constant kitchens of the pavements that provide fuel for millions on the move. An extreme and intense situation that spawns some of the most delicious, nutritious and cheapest food anywhere.”

You can try the street food for yourself. Stalls will include jhal muri, pulchas, ghugni, channa masala, mango lassi and Bengali chai, which as Angus says is, “food you generally can’t get over here.” My friend Petra, describes the jhal muri as, “a kind of wet Bombay mix – puffed rice, tamarind, dried chickpeas, mustard oil, lime, coriander, toms, cucumbers, ginger, coconut, onion, garlic…sorts you right out!”

Sounds flippin brilliant, I think you’ll agree. What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than immersing yourself in this 3D sensory blowout. There will also be a bar and smoking deck for you rebellious types.

Street Food Kolkata at The Whirled Cinema, 259 Hardess St, Brixtonish, SE24 0HN.
2.30 – 6.30 on Sunday and 7.30 – 10.30 on Monday evening “same deal but more of a Monday feel”.

Cost is a measly £15 for everything except drinks at the bar. Cancel your plans.
For more information and a taster, here’s the website.
Facebook page, here.

Angus is also a member of Eat.St – driving British street food forward.

On Saturday Rosie and I set up a mezze stall at local Peckham shindig, The Warwick Wingding. We’d spent all of Friday shopping, solving various mini-crises and grafting away in the kitchen. Pulling off a food stall is a lot of hard work and there are all sorts of issues to consider: what will you serve? Is it realistic? How much will it cost? How many will you feed? How much should you charge? How should you present it? How will you get it there? It goes on and on and on.

We originally wanted to serve jerk chicken but apparently there was some kind of problem with having a BBQ (even though the ribs man had one, so your guess is as good as mine); in the end we decided on mezze, and the organisers were keen to have another vegetarian stall along with Ganapati. We served hummus; baba ganoush; muhammara; fennel, pomegranate and feta salad; lentils with caramelised onions; jewelled cous cous and tabbouleh. Customers picked 5 of these to go with toasted pitta and grilled harissa-marinated halloumi for a fiver. A pretty good deal we thought.

We’d made big batches of everything and just kept re-filling the bowls; by the end of the day we’d sold out of everything bar bread and halloumi so we started flogging halloumi sandwiches for £3, which also flew out fast. A massive relief. That, and the fact it didn’t rain.

One of the hardest things about doing a food stall is making sure you come up with something you can really be proud of. If you’re not confident in what you’re selling then it’s game over. The best parts of the day were when people came to say how much they’d enjoyed the food or that they had come on someone else’s recommendation. People genuinely enjoyed it and thought we offered good value for money. The banter with customers was brilliant and thanks to all the blog readers who came over to introduce themselves – it was lovely to meet you all.

We didn’t cut any corners with ingredients or effort and it paid off. We left with beaming smiles, high on the satisfaction of having fed people well. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

A massive thank you to my partner Rosie, to all the people who bought our food, to our boyfriends and mates who got roped in at various stages and to Terry, Lyndsay and any other organisers I don’t know of who had a really hard time of it at one point, but pulled through and made the event a success.

The Warwick Wingding
Sat 25th September 2010 (the festival is held annually – it started in 2009)
12-7.30pm (then after-party at The Ivy House)
Warwick Gardens
Lyndhurst Way
SE15

This Saturday I will be doing a food stall with Rosie Birkett at the Warwick Wingding in Peckham. It’s a free music and arts festival and runs from 12-7.30pm.

On the entertainment side of things there will be the likes of the Dulwich Ukelele Club (can’t beat a bit of Uke action); a ‘Beer and Talent Tent’; craft stalls from the huge creative community that resides in Peckham; bands; shows and even Chas Hodges from Chas ‘n Dave. Seriously.

Of course I know it’s the food you’re most interested in and the pick of the local crop will be there – Petra with her Chocstar van, Yianni with his Meatwagon, a man called Simon who I’ve yet to meet who’s selling BBQ ribs and Ganapati restaurant serving their beautiful South Indian vegetarian food. Now I hope you’re sitting down because I’m about to drop a bombshell: our stall will also be veggie. We’ll be serving an Ottolenghi-style salad spread including fennel, pomegranate and feta salad; tabbouleh; baba ganoush; muhammara; harissa marinated halloumi and more. Come over and say hello.

If the prospect of stuffing yourself on that lot isn’t enough, there’s an after-party for you hardcore revellers. The Ivy House pub will host an evening of comedy and performance art.

For a lovely little vid of last year’s Wingding, follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AjsJZnxtps

The Warwick Wingding
Sat 25th September
12-7.30pm (then after-party at The Ivy House)
Warwick Gardens
Lyndhurst Way
SE15

FREE ENTRY

We did it! Yesterday afternoon the people of Rye Apartments came together along with a bunch of my mates for a good old nosh up in the car park. Today I feel totally exhausted but so happy that we managed to pull it off. I’ll be honest, there were moments during our 13 hour cook-off the day before when I was apprehensive. What if there isn’t enough food? What if people don’t turn up? We started at 9am and before we knew it, we were slumped on cardboard boxes in the middle of my flat, dishevelled and slightly sweaty, trying to keep our eyes open to finish rolling vine leaves; it was 11pm. A long hard day and a huge amount of work.

It was important to do justice though, to the stellar ingredients that people donated and I must say a heartfelt thank you to all of them.

On the food front, Riverford Organics donated fruit, vegetables and herbs; Barber’s donated some of their delicious cheddar (which went into a cheese and onion tart, biscuits, scones and pretty much anything else) and Maryland Farmhouse butter. Rachel’s Organic sent milk, yoghurt (a whole lot of yoghurt), crème fraiche and cream, and Pong Cheese a selection of their cheeses including a Camembert, a goat’s cheese, a cheddar and a Bath Soft Cheese. They went into quiches and tarts.

Green and Blacks sent their organic chocolate for our super squidgy brownies and marbled chocolate meringues, and for the cake making, we had flour kindly donated by Kate Thal at Green and Blue Wines and unrefined sugar from Billington’s. The eggs were really special; old breed Burford Browns, Old Cotswold Legbar and duck eggs from Clarence Court. The colour of the yolks was intensely amber. Sally Butcher from Persepolis stepped in on the nuts and honey side of things – we had coffee and walnut cake, sunflower seeded biscuits and cherry and ground almond cake, plus some stuffed vine leaves with raisins. In our cakes and on our scones we spread clotted cream from Rodda’s and Fraser Doherty’s fruity Super Jam and I must mention that they were speedily and expertly mixed by my new pride and joy, which Kitchenaid sent to ease the burden on my puny arm muscles. She is the newest sparkliest shade of grape; I’ve named her Gilberta.

The ever brilliant Paganum kindly donated 3 amazing topsides of Malhamdale Belted Galloway beef, which we used in roast beef and horseradish sandwiches, plus a Thai-style salad dressed with chilli, fish sauce, coriander and the like. Yianni of Meatwagon fame sorted me out with chicken drumsticks from his butcher and of course I had to jerk some, although I managed to rein myself in slightly and Tikka the rest for variety.

On the drinks side of things, I was overwhelmed by the generosity of people who wanted to get involved. We had loose leaf tea from Lahloo, plus a lot of booze for those feeling fruity. Russian Standard Vodka donated 3 bottles for vodka iced teas; The Ship, a brilliant pub in Wandsworth run by a great bunch of people sent over Pimm’s plus all the trimmings – very summery. On the beer and fizzy front we had Moritz and Rothaus beer from The Beer Merchants, there was sweet, fruity cider from Sweden (Rekorderlig) plus Young’s London Gold, Adnams bitter, Red Stripe lager and Crabbie’s alcoholic ginger beer which everyone loved. It’s available in quite a few pubs around London now – I urge you to give it a try.

For those who avoid the bubbles, there was vino from my new local, The Victoria Inn, the owner of which helped out in more ways than one throughout the whole event, even ferrying over another Kitchenaid in his car. His motto is “the pub is hub”. Bloody nice bloke. Casillero del Diablo provided more wine and there was stonking chilled sherry from Tio Pepe. I think we can agree that there was something for everyone!

To round off the feast, some Bompas and Parr iris jellies with ambergris (that’s whale vomit to you and me) and candied orange from their Complete History of Food event. We wibbled them around and giggled. Hic! They were seriously boozy with Courvoisier. I love everything Bompas and Parr do and you should too.

And last, but by no means least, I’d like to say a really huge thank you to my mate Lizzie. She worked like a dog during that 13 hour cook off and basically kept me going throughout. I could not have done it without her so thank you Mabs, for being a damn good friend. We make a brilliant team.

So that’s it! We used 40 eggs, 3kg flour, 4kg sugar, an absolute shedload of cheese and a whole bottle of washing up liquid (not in the cakes you understand). My friend Rachel made that amazing bunting from my dodgy old clothes which is, quite frankly, nothing short of a miracle. The only slight disappointment was that more of the neighbours didn’t turn up but hey, what can I do; we put on an amazing spread and all they had to do is walk outside – if that doesn’t encourage them then nothing will. The ones that did turn up were absolutely lovely though and I invited a load of my mates anyway so the whole thing went off Peckham stylee. Today is a bit of a come down but I’ll get over it; I’ve already started thinking about a new project to sink my teeth into.

Of course the whole idea was to raise money for Maggie’s and that we did. The donations are still trickling in and we’ve already reached the £200 mark so I think that makes the event a success. Thanks so much to everyone who donated money. You did good. I’ll leave you with a little vid of the cook-off and the lunch itself. Cheers!

Here’s a little vid featuring some of the other locals who’ve kindly donated their wares. At this rate, with such cool people involved, we’re going to raise a good whack for Maggie’s. Big Up Peckham!

If I’m not stressed out of my mind that is. I was going to show you what I’ve been doing the past few days, including a little demo, if you could call it that, of how to make the feta and spinach spanakopita thingies you see below but seriously, I am cursed in the ‘vlogging’ department. Somehow, between us, Chris and I managed to repeatedly fail to press the record button properly and I’ve wound up with four very short clips of footage which bear pretty much no relation to each other. I’ve stuck them together into one big fail. I do hope you didn’t expect any improvement in the quality of this video compared to the last one. You did? Oh.

Yep. Sorry.

So here’s the recipe I was talking about. Warning: very addictive. It’s hard enough to stop yourself eating the filling while making them, let alone once you’ve crammed all that healthy spinach up against some cheese and wrapped it in pastry.

Mini Spanakopita (makes about 20)

1 pack filo pastry or 1 ‘samosa pad’, which you can buy in Asian grocers. They usually come frozen and are exactly the right width.
Olive oil
3 large bunches of spinach (see vid)
1 pack feta cheese (200g)
1 large onion, finely chopped
Seeds for the edges (optional). I’ve used sesame seeds, poppy seeds or sometimes I add some onion seeds inside the parcels themselves.

Preheat your oven to 200C

Gently soften the onion in a little olive oil until translucent (sometimes I add a few onion seeds). Set aside in a bowl.

Meanwhile, trim any tough stalks from the spinach and wash in several changes of cold water. Plunge the spinach into boiling water for 3 minutes, then drain and refresh under cold water until it is cool. Pick up the spinach in your hands and squeeze as much water as possible out of it, then chop it roughly and add to the onion. Crumble the feta into the bowl too and season with black pepper. Taste the mixture – it may not need any salt because of the cheese.

Take either your filo or your samosa pad and lay on a flat surface. If you are using filo, trim the sheets lengthways into 3 then begin each samosa with 1 sheet, brush it with oil and lay another sheet on top, then brush again and add another. If you are using a samosa pad, the sheets are generally thick enough already and you will only need to brush once around the edges.

Take a tablespoon of the spinach feta mix and put it on one corner of the pastry, then carefully fold over into a triangle, pressing down the seams and brushing as you go. Keep folding over into triangles until there is no pastry left. Brush the outside with olive oil. You can now dip the edges into seeds if you wish. Just scatter them on a plate and dip the edges in.

Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden brown.

Thanks to everyone who left a little food story in the comments and also all those who sent entries via e-mail. I’ve chosen the winners and they are:

Krista, with the tale of her 6th form years spent living with a family in Paris and how the “scary, dominant” “witch” matriarch used to feed her broken dog biscuits as a “treat”, passing them off as regular biscuits. Krista manages to see the positive side of things though as she advises, “they are not overly disgusting and go well with hot chocolate.” Good to know.

The second winner is an e-mail entry, and I will assume therefore that she wishes to remain anonymous. I will tell you though that her story begins thus, “my late grandfather was a diabetic, compulsive gambling, Russian-Jewish diamond dealer.” She had me from the off.

Tyelperion is the third winner, for giving me three stories involving a salty meringue, a champagne cork to the face and a pea lodged between a cheek and a nostril.

And last but not least is Danielle, who touched me with the tale of her struggle with an eating disorder and how she is re-discovering the pleasure of food. Good for you girl. Free tickets coming your way.

Let’s not forget the runner up prize of a 2 for 1 ticket deal though; that goes to Gav, who offered to give me a glass of wine and some bacon. He also complimented me on my curry goat. I’m easily bought, what can I say.

I’ll e-mail all the winners. Thanks to everyone who entered.

So I’m doing a Big Lunch this year. The people behind it saw me banging on about food and community for The Observer and asked me to put my money where my mouth is. Fair enough. The idea is that you get all your neighbours together and have lunch in the street. I’ve never even met most of the neighbours in my block so the idea of a get together is really exciting and a bit scary at the same time. What if no-one wants to do it? Think of all the things that could go wrong!

The set up process and actual lunch itself will be documented on the slightly scary medium that is video, thanks to the Big Lunch people who are sending me a ‘flipcam’ for the purpose. You can therefore actually watch me tearing my hair out rather than just reading about it. Lucky you.

It seemed like an excellent opportunity to raise some money for charidee and it took me all of two seconds to decide that I’ll be raising money for Maggie’s – it’s a Scottish cancer charity I used to work for. I have never felt so inspired, humbled, scared, elated, sad and generally in awe of others as I did when I worked in that place. Maggie’s are experts in supporting  people when they are truly vulnerable and I was honoured to work with some very unique and experienced people. Since I no longer work there, this is another way to give them something.

So, watch this space. Oh and if any lovely helpful generous folks want to get in touch to help out on the ingredients front then that would be much appreciated. I’ll be making cakes, scones, sandwiches – basically anything English tea themed (with a Peckham twist, of course) because it’s simple and most of it can be cooked in advance. I think that trying to cook hot food on the day would be complete self sabotage and therefore utterly insane.

So, wish me luck! I dare say I’m going to need it. First update will follow shortly and the actual lunch is happening on Sunday 18th July. In the meantime, I need to contact Southwark council, and my neighbours. Over and out!