Salted Chili Chocolate Truffles

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Holy crap, it’s 2012! Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a fun New Years Eve involving lots of good food and champagne, like I did.

I’m starting this year’s blogging with a Victorian moral tale. Yes, there is a Rash Person who makes foolish choices. The consequences are severe and immediate. Yet, humbled by her thoughtless hubris, she sees the error of her ways. She does not give up. No. Through hard work and perseverance she is able to overcome the obstacles her actions have placed in her path, even though at first they seemed insurmountable. Our story concludes with our heroine in a Methodist church, basking in the warm cheer of good friends and celebrating her newfound piety. (Okay, maybe the church part didn’t happen.) Our story concludes with our heroine, slightly tipsy, sitting at a dinner table in Camberwell happily watching her friends enjoy her salted chili chocolate truffles. Later there was a bonfire and more champagne. Continue reading →

2011 – The Roundup

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It’s odd to think that I only started writing this blog in August. I began blogging to stop moping and feeling sorry for myself when I didn’t make the final cut to be a contestant on Masterchef UK. (I’ll tell that whole sorry story eventually.) I also did it to prove to myself that I can be serious about food, about food writing, and to BE serious, if that makes sense.

Susan Eats London now occupies a substantial chunk of my thoughts most of the time. Continue reading →

Red Lentil and Chorizo Stew with Saffron and Roasted Garlic Chimichurri

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When I moved to London, I had to familiarize myself with a whole new vocabulary. There are the obvious words, like “lorry” and “lift” and “loo.” There are the naughty words and swear words, which I won’t list here since this is a family-friendly blog. Then there are the words and phrases which totally mystified me, because there is no clear analogue in American English. One of my favourite of these Continue reading →

Eating in Seattle – Il Corvo

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I liked everything about Il Corvo before I ever ate there. The story: a fastidious craft-oriented pasta geek leaves his slick exec chef position at a trendy restaurant to set up what is, essentially, a pop-up in a gelateria. The concept: a few dishes prepared fresh daily by hand, using lovingly-accumulated antique collectible pasta-making equipment, priced within easy reach of budget-constrained diners like me. The principles: Il Corvo’s only open for lunch, Monday through Friday, so that chef Mike Easton can spend time with his family. This singleness of purpose bespeaks a degree of confidence Continue reading →

The Delhi Grill

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Although I’ve eaten at the Delhi Grill several times (months ago!), the fact that I have not yet reviewed it has been been niggling at the back of my brain like a guilty conscience. I’m not sure what the hold-up has been. Maybe that ‘everyone’ had already written up the Delhi Grill. Certainly the fact that I felt that, in order to be thorough, I needed to come not only for dinner but in the daytime, when the Delhi Grill sells delicious roti wraps at the Chapel Market. A few weeks ago, however, I had a friendly conversation with @delhigrill on Twitter about visiting one of my other must-try London-on-a-budget restaurants Continue reading →

Cleaning Squid

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Yes, even an old humbug like me can get into the holiday spirit. I’m about to go cook glorious food with the marvelously talented Simon from ferdiesfoodlab, I had a spectacularly successful day yesterday buying holiday gifts for my family, and I’m leaving in just FOUR SHORT DAYS for a Caribbean vacation. So as you can imagine I’m feeling pretty all right today. Because I’ve been sick for much of this week (cue sympathetic murmurs and get well wishes) I haven’t done much (read, any) cooking. But buzzing away in the back of my brain is a promise I made and have not yet fulfilled. A few weeks ago I blogged a Malaysian Squid Curry, and David from The Clean Platter (a genuinely funny, beautifully-written blog by a fearless Midwestern cook) asked me to write a post on how to clean squid. Continue reading →

Gougères

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Okay world, first I have to apologise. I’m really bad at holidays. I forget birthdays. I buy Christmas cards only to discover them in my drawer, untouched, in February. Most of the time I don’t even buy them. I’m okay at Thanksgiving, but that’s mainly because it doesn’t involve quite the same type of advance planning as The Big Winter Holidays. So I’m afraid that I am not going to be your ready source for attractively iced and sprinkled holiday cookies, nor will I be telling you how to make your terrine look like a Christmas tree. (Or a dreidel.)

I do, however, love to throw parties, particularly parties involving lots and lots of food. And alcohol. Continue reading →

Duck Confit

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For something that is so delicious, making confit de canard is remarkably easy. The rich fatty duck legs are first cured in salt and then cooked very slowly in rendered fat, so that some of the moisture and natural juices from the meat are extracted and replaced by the fat. The legs preserved in this way can then be stored in your refrigerator in the fat, where they literally will keep for months. Continue reading →

Eating in Seattle – Brunch at Skillet Diner

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Four years ago, when Skillet Street Food’s shiny silver airstream trailer first appeared, in Seattle’s Lake Union neighborhood in a parking lot near a construction site (if I remember correctly), I went the first week they opened. Delicious food that’s bad for you, cooked with heart. I was smitten. Poutine! My god! French fries with cheese curds and brown gravy! And bacon jam! It was a sunny day and I took the afternoon off from work and played Cornhole with Skillet’s genius co-founders. (Never heard of Cornhole? Nor had I. It’s seriously fun.) So perhaps you can understand my level of excitement when friend Z reported that Skillet was opening a diner (a diner!) a mere THREE BLOCKS from where I used to live in Seattle. Continue reading →

Braised Pheasant with Lentils

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The great revelation for me when I moved to London was the availability of affordable game. In the United States, unless you hunt or know someone who does, it is very difficult to find anything more exotic than duck without paying through the nose for it. (Even duck is prohibitively expensive.) This is particularly true in New York City, where I grew up. Wild game? Forget about it. So it was with great excitement (seriously) that I realized in London, not only could I find game, I could actually afford it and get really good at cooking it. Continue reading →