Brixton Village market visit - Federation Coffee and Kaosarn

The last time I ventured to Brixton was for a Fugees concert......and they are no longer so you imagine how long ago that was!!! I had read about Brixton Village Market a while back on the Timeout website so finally got my arse in gear and headed saf of the river to have a goo. Its a covered marketplace hidden away behind the regular Brixton street market full of little food stores and cafes/restaurants. I arrived mid-morning and had a good wander around; not all the restaurants were open so I popped into Federation Coffee for a cup of coffee and cake (my choice in this case was banana bread). The cafe had a nice cosy feel but I was disappointed with what I ordered; I am not a coffee connoisseur but my flat white lacked flavour and depth. The banana bread looked alright but tasted awful; it didn't have enough banana and whoever baked it had an idiotic idea that adding banana essence (???) would make it taste better......IT DOES NOT!! Despite paying an exorbitant £2 for a tiny "bread", it was so bad that I stopped eating after 2 bites. I might sound harsh in my review but it pisses me off so much when you get ripped off like this when I know full well that its not hard to make a better tasting product. 

Traces of banana but sadly, not enough

Brooks saddles mounted onto bits of frame - look cool but not entirely sure who's going to opt to sit on them?!

Lunchtime beckoned so I headed back out to the market and headed to Kaosarn for a steaming bowl of noodles and a comforting mug of hot lemongrass tea. Before ordering, I did ask how spicy the Kuay Tiew Tom Yum was going to be. My waitress said spicy but did ask how spicy I wanted it so I plumped for medium. It tasted delicious but because the weather was so cold, my nose started running when I tucked in. The staff thought they had made the noodles too spicy for me and immediately rushed over with a glass of water! It was that good that I'd been tempted to make the trip back for another meal :)

 

Blankets for the peeps sitting outside, it was chilly alright :)

 

Inside dining area not very big - 6-7 tables at the most, not much warmer either but then again, it wasn't full when I visited.

Kuay tiew tom yum - bowl of rice noodles in spicy broth. Think the broth is flavoured with lime, chillies, dried shrimp and coriander amongst other stuff. Not too spicy but just a little kick right at the end of each mouthful. The dish also had tasty pork mince, fishballs and deep fried prawns, yum! :)

Muffin experiments

So this week, I decided to have a bash at making some muffins - very easy and straightforward to make but too often given a bad name by the shoddy stodgy ones that you find around.

I came across a recipe for orange and blueberry muffins which took my fancy so decided to start off with those. My kitchen was immediately filled with the scent of freshly grated orange zest and all was going well. Towards the end of prepping, I was thinking it was a little strange that there was no leavening agent in the recipe. I then realised that I had written the recipe wrong onto a post-it and sadly, my unleavened buns were already in the oven and could not be saved. Result = eggy solid mess :(

After grabbing a few more ingredients from the shop, I was undeterred and had a another go. This time, I wiped the slate clean and plumped for another recipe which was originally  raspberry and rhubarb muffins but I tweaked it slightly and substituted rhubarb for blueberries instead. Success the second time and kitchen was filled with lovely wafts of buttery, sugary, raspberry goodness :)

These raspberry and blueberry muffins are best eaten whilst still warm - they are OK the day after but not optimum.

Buoyed by those yummy bad boys, I returned to my dodgy post-it attempt, made sure I used the right recipe for a fault free batch of orange and blueberry muffins, yay! Strangely enough, they were a little underwhelming and lacked the fragrance of the other batch when they came out of the oven. Even stranger still was that they actually tasted better the day after when the flavour of the orange really came through......the experiments continue....

  

Fruit tartlets

Upon landing back in the big smoke, I received a phone call from my friend (La Chilanga) asking if I could help out her sister who wanted some fruit tartlets for a children's birthday party. Of course, I was happy to oblige! On the whole, I was happy enough with the way they turned but maybe next time, need to up the fruit quotient for some of the tartlets :)

Vanilla essence

Happy New Year all!

After spending the latter part of last year shelling out a fortune for vanilla essence, I decided to follow in the footsteps of Tamami and try and make my own for 2012. It was a lot more straightforward than I was expecting, the most tricky part was tracking down a suitable bottle to hold the stuff in (I laid my hands on a bottle from Lakeland). Here's all I had to do:

1. Put bottle in pan of water and boil for 10 minutes to sterilise.
2. Split and scrape vanilla pods and place in bottle (pod and paste). I also cut my pods in half so they fit into the bottle. 
3. Add vodka to bottle (Quantities are 30g vanilla pods to 250g alcohol).
4. Place top on bottle and shake vigorously.
5. Leave in a dark corner, shake the bottle occasionally and after 5 weeks......hey presto!!

Looking forward to trying my own brew :)

My only quandry now is what to do with my remaining 220g of vanilla pods?!!

 Scummy water from the big smoke is giving my bottle that frosted look, char!!

Last desserts of 2011

 
Plaisirs Gourmandes - indulgent choux puffs with crème pâtissière, fresh fruit and crème Chantilly

Roasted pineapple and coconut cream tart

Merry Christmas everyone, 聖誕節快樂! :)

 

2011 - last day trading

Things were not looking good for my last day of trading - all week, the weather forecast had been predicting heavy rain and wind which sounded ominous. I also tried to chat to the market manager last week because deep down, I just wanted to get a clear answer on why I was dumped out of the farmer's market a few weeks ago, as well as wanting to enquire on the possibility of going back perhaps in the New Year. He had promised that we could chat about it on the last day and even suggested that we stay trading for later since he said that he would be bringing outdoor lights so it would be possible to stay out in the dark. Because of this, I turned up to set up around lunchtime - when I asked about the light situation, he just fobbed me off with the fact that he only had enough lights for his own stall (which wasn't the tone the previous week when he mentioned that I could share). 

No matter, I figured......the weather was looking pretty grim so it might just be better to have a shorter trading day. As I feared, it was a quiet day, partly because it was a Friday as opposed to a Saturday and most folk were still at work. Having said that, there were a few highlights including "banana bread" man who popped along and bought my large Christmas cake from me. I have to say that he is not my favourite customer because he is always trying to get a bargain off me and I'm pretty shit at not backing down. As you guessed, he bought the cake at a cheaper price than I intended but seeing as it was Christmas, I figured why not? Aside from this minor gripe, he is a nice guy and always pops along with his bike and pet dog. We always have a little chat and I found out this time that he's a bus driver and doesn't get a huge break over Chrimbo. The funny thing was he had a slice of cake from my sample Xmas cake only after he had bought the large one AND after telling me that he didn't like marzipan, a bit of a problem since my Christmas cake is covered with toasted almond paste, aka. marzipan (albeit homemade with a dash of whiskey)!! Despite all this, he loved the cake after tasting it (toasted home-made whiskey spiked almond paste is guaranteed to convert those who hate commercial marzipan!!) and was genuinely happy that he had bagged the large one :)

The couple who had come back to get a large chocolate salt caramel pecan tart from a few weeks back wandered past and the guy ended up buying another one! I am confident that my product looks and tastes good but it's still a nice (no, it's actually a great) feeling to see folk coming back and buying your cakes again :)

Despite a few rain showers during the course of the day, I felt pretty lucky that the prospect of heavy rain and high winds didn't surface.......well, I spoke too soon cos the weather turned into a shitstorm come around 4pm. I guess I was lucky that I had already started to pack up but that still didn't prevent me from getting generally soaked and battered! The stall next to me only held for a bit longer than me - there were 2 of them and they were literally clinging on to the tent for dear life in case, the whole thing decided to blow away!! 

I never did manage to pin down the market manager for the chat I wanted and was promised. It's just become increasingly clear that he is not good at making decisions and more importantly, dealing with uncomfortable situations head on. I did wish him a Happy Christmas and said that I would try and chat to him in the New Year but hand on heart, this is unlikely to happen. A bit of a duff end to the year but as JD keeps telling me, it's all experience. I'm looking forward to heading home and seeing family and friends and putting the ol feet up for a while :)

Looking grim!

 Nothing like a bit of sparkly stuff to get in the mood for Chrimbo!!