Czech shopping

The Czech shop I wrote about in my last post - Halusky, in East Sheen (or Mortlake - not too sure about southwest London geography) - was small, and rather sparsely stocked due to the snowy weather when we arrived. In spite of that, we still managed to stock up on everything we wanted: a load of Czech dried goods (ie. beer and dumpling flour), frozen knedlicky dumplings and Slovakian chocolate bars. It was quite impressive: from the outside, Halusky looked like a regular newsagent's, but inside everything, even the shelf-edge labels, were in Czech or Slovak.

It got me thinking about the trip I made to Prague and Bohemia in the summer. Prague has an amazing cafe life, and my favourite one was Slavia, for its deco perfection - see below! -closely followed by the Cubist Cafe.

Supper club

I never realised how true the cliche about going to the gym in January is until I, er, went to the gym in January. The place was packed out. There was an actual queue to use the treadmills. At every turn, there was a new recruit being shown around.
It had been quite a while since my last gym effort, confirmed by the fact that I fell off the cross trainer when I attempted to get on it. But this story does have a point. Going to the gym is great because there are TVs there and my favourite thing to watch while struggling away on some hideous machine is Channel 4's so-wrong-it's-right Come Dine With Me.
Last October, my friend suggested a group of us should start a Supper Club, each hosting a dinner party with a different theme. She sold it to me by describing it as 'like Come Dine With Me, only without the voting at the end'. She and her boyfriend hosted an amazing first instalment: they served delicious homemade gyoza dumplings, fried duck breast and garlic rice for their Japanese-themed supper.
This weekend it's my turn to host. We're going for an eastern European-inspired theme with goulash as the main dish, and various meats and Czech-style potato salad for starters.
I'm also really excited because we're planning an expedition (which may or may not actually take place, depending on laziness) to a Czech food store in East Sheen to pick up some other essentials: slizovitch, Czech beer, klobasa sausages and gherkins, and no doubt a bunch of other stuff. I love going to delis and foreign food stores to wander along the aisles and among the unfamiliar labels, and this Czech shop is meant to be one of the best in London...

You know it's Christmas when...

... you're standing in the middle of St Pancras station among crowds of stressed travellers eating a Pret Christmas Lunch sandwich.

Last minute marzipan

As I was gearing up for the big Christmas shop on Oxford Street last week, I decided that maybe this was the year to make gifts that would, for once, be received with a bit of festive glee rather than 'oh, great... you made this yourself!'
We had a party at the weekend I wasn't sure that marzipan chocolates would be a winner among a group of hungover/boozy twenty somethings, but I was wrong. They all got snaffled up, including my dodgy-looking handmade marzipan fruits.
The recipe is so easy it doesn't really deserve to be called a recipe. We used some plain and brandy marzipan from Waitrose, and a few packets of dark Menier chocolat patissier.

Roll the marzipan into Malteser-sized rounds, and get the chocolate melting. For two standard-sized blocks of marzipan, you'll need about a bar and a half of the chocolate and it's definitely worth getting the good stuff, because it doesn't separate or get all gunky like confectionery chocolate sometimes does. Melt it in a bain-marie and roll the rounds in the chocolate, then fish them out carefully using a fork to make sure the excess chocolate drips back into the bowl.

Pop them on a sheet of greaseproof paper and leave them in the fridge for a few hours. If you want you can also melt some white chocolate and use it to create decorative swirls and stripes on top. The chocolates can then be packaged up in all their gorgeous sugariness as little extra gifts. Sweet!

Sugar rush in Soho

My pal Saz and I went to try out the newly-opened Hummingbird Bakery in Soho this week. The decor: very cute. The cakes: very, very cute.

Hummingbird's most famous confection is the red velvet cake, which I had in cupcake form. The sponge was sweet, rich and moist, coloured an incredibly lairy crimson shade and topped with white cream cheese icing. Black-bottomed chocolate cake was also a serious sugar hit packed with chunks of chocolate. Of course, all the cupcakes looked calorifically beautiful lined up under the glass in all different colours, including the special Christmas ones with Santas and reindeers on top. It may not be grown-up, but sometimes you just need a big pink cupcake with glittery sprinkles on top after a hard day in the office.

The Shepherdess

At the risk of making this blog sound like I'm a total calorie-fiend, I'm going to describe a true gem of a greasy spoon where I had lunch today.

The Shepherdess Cafe on City Road/Shepherdess Walk is the real deal, an authentically retro caff that made me feel all warm and smiley. It's got a slightly chalet feel to it, and I really loved the painted-on curtains in the windows. I mean, how often do you actually see painted-on furnishings? 

Inside, the cafe has a really lively, cheerful, busy vibe. As you go in the door (which ain't that easy if there's a queue at the sweetie counter), you realise this is the genuine article: the faded-looking photos in the frames, the red table tops, the amazing green roofing decorating the servery area... It's a proper caff, with old-school, slightly mad decor and real character because of it.

Ok, so what about the food? I asked for mugs of tea as we sat down, and they arrived before I'd even got my coat off. I hadn't had any breakfast so went for a full-on fry up - even though it included chips, which I've always thought is a slightly strange and unnecessary addition to a fried breakfast - while my not-so-hungry companion had an avocado and bacon bap. He used to come to the Shepherdess all the time for lunch and this sarnie was his favourite thing to order. When it arrived, I could see why: the wholemeal bun was huge, for a start; the bacon was freshly cooked, and the sliced avocado ripe and generous, like it had literally just been scooped out of its shell and plonked in. The plate was garnished with three chips.

My breakfast was epic, a crammed plateful of the kind that keeps you full all day. I like baked beans to be soft and slightly mushy, a consistency that can only really be got from excessive cooking. Tick. Surprisingly good quality bacon, not too salty either. Tick. Crunchy, light, gorgeous chips. Tick. (So maybe they are a good addition after all.)

The Shepherdess - I say yes. I can't wait to go back.

Chinatown

My favourite restaurants in Chinatown are, without doubt, Chuen Cheng Ku (CCK) and HK Diner. The former, because I love its dim sum trolleys, and the latter, because it's open late and it's the best place for a post-club pile of noodles with friends. This week I've been to both, although only eaten in one (the queue at HK was just too long for us after a night out in Soho). 

CCK didn't disappoint. It was quiet - I guess that's Tuesday lunchtime for you - which meant we had a pretty much continuous stream of waitresses asking if we'd like any of the dishes on their trolleys. 

I hit the dumplings hard, as I always do, plus there were yam rolls, exceptionally sweet char siu buns and a very salty bowl of duck and noodle broth. The big dining hall with its chandeliers was as Chinatown-glam as ever, and this time we had a table right next to the dragon with the red light-bulb eyes.