Voracious Advent Calendar: Dec 5

Dec 5: Cool Yule Chocolate Slab


A visit from Santa is in order, and begging to be unearthed from a Christmas day stocking is this chocolate slab - a glorious mix of milk chocolate, caramel and white chocolate. I used to work near the King’s Road near Hotel Chocolat, and would amble a few too many times past to try whatever they had out that day. I'd love a nibble of this cute thing.

For more info, go to Hotel Chocolat: Cool Yule Chocolate Slab

It's £13.50 which may seem steep but it's a big slab of a lotta choca.

Their tasting kits are also fantastic. I’ve been giving them as gifts for the last seven years, they’re a treat and a half for anyone. Prices start from £49 for a subscription for three months.
Tasting Kits

Voracious Advent Calendar: Dec 3 and 4

Dec 3: St John Doughnut


Behold the St John doughnut. Defiantly cricket-ball shaped (none of that ring-with-a-hole business), deep-fried, rolled in sugar, overstuffed with cream. I was given a box for my birthday last week by our very own wine-botherer Ruth Ford. She had hurried down to the bakery in Bermondsey that morning, and, that evening, secretly hunched over the box, we wolfed them down there and then in the bar of fifty guests, guilty only because we couldn't quite bring ourselves to share.

Any host would love you if you brought a box. I know I would.

St John Bakery
Open from 9am - 4pm, Saturdays only

Dec 4: Alessi Parrot Sommelier Corkscrew

With bread must come wine. Well, something to get to it anyway. Here is a delightful corkscrew that looks like a parrot. Nice, eh? Alessi have done it again, a cheeky and useful present for the gamely sum of £27.


Alessi Parrot Sommelier Corkscrew in 'Proust'



You can buy them from A White Room

Voracious Advent Calendar: Dec 1 and 2

I can be rather Scrooge at Christmas, but when I trudged home in the snow yesterday, someone had clearly risked frostbite to erect hundreds of glittery Christmas trees all along the road. I actually had to stop in the road for a rare heartstopping moment. It was all very Miracle on 34th Street.

Anyway, to get you in the mood, if you're not already, I'm launching the Voracious advent calendar - nothing dodgy, just culinary present ideas every day up until Christmas. And as I missed out on Dec 1, here are two present ideas. Enjoy.

Dec 1

I've been guilty of losing my notes in the ridiculous number of Moleskines I have on the go, but with this little beauty, at least you have your recipes all in one place.

Moleskine recipe journal

Dec 2

Irresistible Beano flask from John Lewis for those snowy days. Nostalgia, guffaws and hot sweet tea all in one go.


Beano Flask

Or if alcohol is more your thing (and for me, it very often is) Charlotte's drinks advent calendar is definitely worth a visit:
Concerning Cocktails blog

Recipe: Angry Flapjacks

Outrage drove me to make flapjacks. It’s a strange irony that affects all parts of life - that a whole chicken will cost less than two sad slabs of breast, teeny tampons more than big... and thongs? Well, you could buy a pack of three-pack big pants for a thong. And yet I was still shocked when I saw the price of five cereal bars almost twice of a big pack of Sultana Bran.

So I thought - hold on. I’ll make my own cereal bars. That’ll show them.

And actually my flapjacks were so easy to make and so deliciously rewarding that I urge everyone who is a flapjack virgin (as I was until yesterday) to follow this recipe and donate that 15 minutes of toil to yield a week or two’s break-time pleasure.

Okay, so I haven't really shown them. But I do have a certain sense of so there. And more to the point I do have amazing bejewelled flapjacks. So there.

Angry flapjacks

Preheat an oven to 170 degrees (fan oven). Gently heat 100g butter, 4 tablespoons of golden syrup and 50g golden caster sugar together until all melted.

Mix with 225g of rolled oats, 50g mixed nuts (chopped pecans, cashews, walnuts are good) and dried berries (anything like raisins, cranberries, blueberries are gorgeous).

Spread into lined and buttered baking tin. Stick into the oven for 20 minutes until the oats have a satisfying golden sheen, and the berries glisten and take out. It should be smelling ridiculously homely. Slice into 10 portions.

Leave to cool for 10 minutes, then slice through again. They are crispy yet yielding with surprising bursts of dried fruit. Delicious over yogurt.

Note: Use baking parchment not foil to line the baking tin as in the picture above.

Café Boheme - the Friday Night Steak Frites

There’s a dizzying flurry of incredible restaurant openings in London this year. Providores’ Gopapa and Hawksmoor in Covent Garden, St John Hotel in Chinatown, Bar Boulud, Les Deux Salons, Polpetto...

Quite frankly, I can’t keep up.

You know if you want to eat at these places (and I do) there will be months of ‘fully booked’ or two-hour-long waits amidst the hype. And now that it’s pretty much winter and the temperature has plunged to an unsociable degree, most nights I’m happy to nurse a bottle of red wine and sit staunchly in front of the X Factor/Downton Abbey/The Apprentice.

But it’s reassuring to know when you are out post-pub you can still stumble into the depths of Soho on a Friday night and get a no-frills humble dinner without the pressure of knowing what you should order, how you should order it, snaking queues, and above all, waiting.

Seeing the pulsing bar of Café Boheme in Soho is like catching sight of the golden arches. Yes it’s busy, crammed and London Underground-esque; but push through the bottleneck of Old Compton street crowds and you reach the oasis of a familiar faux French brasserie. You tentatively ask if there’s a table on the busiest night of the week, you begin to wince as you expect that no. And then... and then... relief! They say yes.

Perhaps it’s the relief that makes the food so good. I only ever order the steak frites with a simple side salad here. The steak is a good ol’ ribeye marbled with a wonderfully unfashionable amount of fat. It’s meaty and beefy and begging to be ordered rare. The frites are almost matchstick - crispy and even better with a coat of béarnaise. It’s not the best I’ve ever had. But it’s pretty damn good.

You can tell Café Boheme is the same stock as the Shoreditch and Soho Houses, same banquettes and French tiling, impeccable service, amazing drinks. The place is reminiscent of the upmarket Cafe Rouge feel of Pastis and Balthazar in New York, but with that London crowd piling in from GAY and the throb of Bar Soho, this is something unique. The lack of pints is an oddity (only halfs, two pint jugs or bottles sold here), but it’s just an excuse to down a G&T instead.

Boheme shouldn’t be your destination. It should be the place to go when you don’t want to end the night. It should be your golden arches because it is there, just when you need it most.

Café Boheme
13 Old Compton Street

London W1D 5J
020 7734 0623

The Wolseley: The Art of Breakfasting

Mr Random has breakfasting at The Wolseley in Piccadilly down to a fine art.

The staff have his direct line. He skips through the door confidently as he exhibits the mutual love and respect between them. A breakfast without at least three unplanned fortuitous meetings would be unthinkable; The Wolseley is his office and his playground.

I had previously eaten at The Wolseley approximately two and a half times. The half because I had been taken for dinner with a good friend, a vegetarian, who unreasonably banned me from eating fois gras and meat. The other two times had been forgettable, not because The Wolseley had underperformed, but because I had - by suffering from drinks-related ailments.

So when Mr Random, a stalwart of the advertising industry (who coined his own name on account of bumping into me randomly three times), invited me to The Wolseley, I knew this was going to be the real thing; the Pixie to my Katie Waissel, the Coke to my Pepsi.

There are a few things to the art of breakfasting:

Sitting at the right table
"It used to be a car showroom, now it's a people showroom,” my companion says. “You can have that one," he adds mischievously. And indeed it is. We sit in a banquette intimate enough for good conversation, but open to see and be seen. Normally I would object to this sort of behaviour, but his working of the room as streams of people who knew him came to our table, made fascinating viewing.

Wearing statement attire
My companion was encased in top-to-toe purple. A peacock designed to be looked at, with the fabulous addition of striking cufflinks fashioned from Viagra pills. If you’re a girl, Louboutins help.


Ordering unembarrassing food
Think carefully before ordering the fully stuffed bacon roll. This is akin to ordering spaghetti on a first date. Don’t do it. The expectation is that you eat as you talk. Be ready to jump up and greet. To say I have been caught out on occasion is a huge understatement. AA Gill once wrote an ode to porridge for his first review of The Wolseley. Now I know why.

And so to the food.

My companion ordered classic eggs benedict with coffee.


I had scrambled eggs on white toast with slats of bacon.

The scrambled eggs were perfectly set, with that slight creamy wibble (and you know how I like wibble). The bacon had edges of crispness. If I wasn't in a people showroom, I would have shovelled the clouds of scrambled eggs with a rasher in my mouth. But I didn't want to embarrass my companion, so I resisted.


Some English Breakfast tea, fresh orange juice and fruity chat washed the breakfast down - a breakfast elegant but hearty helped by the impeccable service.

I could write a whole other post on the art of conversation, but shall leave that for another time when the artist, Mr Random, next decides to exhibit.

The Wolseley
160 Piccadilly, London, W1J 9EB
020 7449 6996

The lemon, ginger and honey effect

My half drunk steeper

So, with a wave of coughing and sniffing and spluttering striking down my fellow postgraduates (and, it seems half of twitter), this post is for all those who have suffered this week.

Last Monday I was sandwiched between two coldy sniffers for four hours, and lo and behold, by the evening I was a wreck, gibbering and crabby, and from then on unceremoniously adorned permanently with tissues.

I have a steeper to share with you - a most heartening tonic to drink day or night - that makes you feel that little bit better. It beats hot Ribena, it beats Berocca and it beats feeling crap all day.

Take a loved mug and stick the kettle on. Drop in 2 tablespoons of runny honey, 2 slices of unpeeled ginger, preferably bashed once with the handle of the knife. Pour the boiling water over and stir in. Leave for a minute to steep before adding a satisfying squeeze of lemon.

And for a frisky Lemsip which really greets your sinuses, I like to add a slug of whisky. A gentleman's measure, if you please.