Jamie Oliver Recipease

I am a big fan of cooking, I'm a huge fan of improving my cooking. A fun way to do this? With a group of friends on a Saturday afternoon at Jamie Oliver's cookery school (with wine...) otherwise known as Recipease.

On arrival we were presented with said wine and waited for the previous class to finish up, they were at one of the actual dining tables tucking into their own made meal. The preparation station was looking ready for action. There are a number of different classes, we didn't get a choice based on when we wanted to do and the size of our group so we were making pasta and our own sauces. Luckily this wasn't to just be boiling some water but actually making the stuff from scratch, something I've never done before.

A serious wedge of Parmesan

Pans an tomatoes at the ready

The 'flavouring' begins

Our chef  takes us through the ingredients

We paired up and took to our places. In front of us was a nice mix of fresh looking tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic (very important), chilli (very important) and some slightly wilted looking herbs.First things first, we had to watch the expert making the pasta and then we would copy.

'Jamie' for the evening

You've got to be aggressive with it...

Starting to roll (on a number 6 if that means anything to you)

He started with his pre measured bowl of 100g double 0 grade flour and a medium free range egg. This to me did not look like it would make pasta, I would be proved wrong of course. After 'being aggressive' with the dough and working it until it was silky smooth (this took forever, at least 5 minutes) before starting to feed it through the pasta machine. This for me was what made it fun, getting to use one of these machines. It is also the reason you wouldn't make this yourself at home - the lack of one of these machines.

The contraption made it able to make a few different shapes, as well as the nifty little pizza cutter type knife that made a crinkled edge, all professional stylee. We of course opted to make all the shapes...

My pasta shapes in their air tight container

The two sauces we made were quick and simple, as ever a lot of the work is in the prep. The tomatoes were all cut to size and the mushrooms were cleaned peeled and chopped. The garlic and chili were the same. This is the thing I find with programmes like Jamie's 30 minute meals, everything looks so quick and easy because his team of minions have already prepped, peeled, washed and chopped everything and laid it into little bowls right in front of him...never mind the tip to Sainsbury's beforehand...

Getting the sauce on the go

The hard work has been done

MM MM Good

We opted to make both sauces. We didn't use as much butter or oil as our illustrious chef, I find it pointless when restaurants and alike make things taste no nice because they're just slathered in butter, sugar, pepper, oil...delete as appropriate. I also don't see the point in all the extra calories. If you are using deliciously fresh flavours there shouldn't be the need to use TWO massive hunks of butter.

With the tomato we added thyme, chilli and garlic with some oil and basil to dress and that was that. The second dish was a creamy mushroom dish to which we had the same ingredients to play with. Our pasta was a little clumped together and didn't really separate in the water. This is apparently because air is the enemy. Once we had rolled our pasta it was supposed to be done quick, not easy on your first time. We had small seal-able boxes to put it in before it went to the boil.

Et Voila

Seriously, check out all that butter at the back!

Adding the cooked pasta to our mushroom sauce

Shave of Parmesan

Done and delish

Banana muffins to finish, we did not make these

Overall the food tasted really nice, I was really proud of what we had done especially as it was pretty simple. I'd like to make it myself at home but realistically with investing in the machine, being bothered to do that rather than use pre-made and the consequent mess that comes with covering your work surfaces and rest of the kitchen in flour I'm just not sure it's feasible.

With Recipease there are a number of other classes they do such as knife skills, steak and sushi. Personally I'd rather do something like sushi somewhere authentic and steak will again depend on things like the amazing pan (which I haven't invested in). As a budding gourmet chef I have a way to go! For a group activity I'd recommend it though. For our £30 we had plenty of wine, of course the meal and I do feel like we learnt something.

Our chef kept reassuring us this would be the best pasta we'd tasted much better than anything dried, having gone through my Italian pasta I beg to disagree, but there is obviously the fun in doing it yourself.

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Street Feast London

Friday night's this summer are all about stuffing your face. The fact I can do this at London's best pop up market 5 minutes from my house / crash sofa makes it all the better. Street Feast London has moved from Shoreditch up to it's current pitch near Dalston Junction.

Some of the best street vendors in London pitch up each Friday with a different selection every week. Top of my piggy little list is The Ribman and their famous Holy F*ck sauce. After seeing the tray of half a rack of ribs i was feeling like I wanted to pork in my mouth faster than having to pick it off the bone, so I opted for the rib meat roll. I was NOT expecting this mammoth feast. It is practically obscene.

Vat of pork ribs

Stuffing it in

Holy F*ck

What a beast

Pork me

Signature sauce

I have placed it near the Kopparberg to try and gauge the scale, this beast was enormous and absolutely stuffed with juicy pork rib with some of the signature sauce. Not knowing how f*****ck it was going to be, I opted for a small amount. This was a wise move as it sure did have a kick to it. I wish I'd opted for half this and half the BBQ as this was apparently delicious.

How do you top a ribman? How about a Kimchi burger? Kimchi is like a spiced cabbage topping that goes onto a beef patty with a topping of cheese, served between a toasted bun, amazing.

The 'world famous' kimchi cult burger

The Kimchi, a spiced cabbage mix apparently

OOF

Pure filth

Next up, Molly Bakes. Serious cake porn. Cupcake or brownie? Today I was feeling brownie and my favourite thing...cheesecake. The cakes here look amazing, most of them are spiced with booze. But my brownie was laced with cheesecake.

You're all mine

Unfortunately it is not as good as it looked. I would even go as far to say I can make better ones. In fact it has made me want to whip out my mixing spoon and make a batch, but I digress. They weren't moist as you would hope from a high class brownie. Disappointed.

The cool kids

PS I've taken the date stamp from my photos, I mean it wasn't showing the right time anyway. Do I prefer it this way? Hmmm time will tell. If you have had your appetite whetted you can find out which vendors will be popping over to Dalston next Friday here. There is no end date as such yet, but I would recommend making the most of it while it's here. From 5pm-late. Postcode for you Google Mappers E8 3DU

Full disclosure...I did not eat this entire feast myself!

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Lazy Brunch

Summer is finally here (she types with half squinted eyes and fingers crossed in the vein hope if we don't say it too loudly it won't hear and bugger off again) so what is to be done about it? Brunch atop Shoreditch House of course.

We have come to the conclusion we prefer Shoreditch House to it's big brother Soho House, it's just cooler and the lazy lawn is smoking hot. It also is home to my favourite cinema, but on this occasion we were here for the eggs.

On the 6th floor there is the pool where, being summer holidays lots of very privileged children were splashing about and making merriment while their parents tapped away on Macbooks. We settled in to some freshly squeezed orange juice and took in the ambiance.

View to the pool from the restaurant

Shoreditch House Breakfast/Brunch Menu

After much deliberation I opted for Eggs Benedict. It is my go-to brunch dish so I had to try it here, knowing it would score highly on the scale of Benedict's I've tried in my time. M opted for the avocado on toast which I would later have massive food envy. It seemed like the healthier option as mine was slathered in hollandaise sauce, but there must have been 5 avocado's making up this bad boy! Perhaps the eggs weren't so bad after all  especially after the Honest Burger's we had devoured the night before.

Here it is again, in case you missed it! Benedict and Avocado

After brunch we dragged ourselves to the Box Park opposite for some Fro-Yo before heading to work, thoroughly sorry we couldn't spend the day on the Lazy Lawn sipping smoothies and making the most of the sun while it is deciding to make an appearance.

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Restaurant Review: Honest Burgers

Following a very successful Brixton venture, founder Tom Barton has whipped up a small frenzy by opening Honest Burgers in the heart of Soho, interestingly pretty much opposite the also newly opened Burger Lobster.

Having only opened on the weekend and with no advertising word of mouth had this place packed out on Wednesday night with queues forming from around 7pm. We were lucky enough to get a seat right in the window.

The view from our window seat

Packed house

Good crowd

The queue when we left

The menu is straight forward with 90% of the clientele (including ourselves) opting for the signature beef burgers. there are also a choice of chicken and specials, which tonight included black pudding instantly making it untouchable for us.

The burgers come from between £7-£9 depending on how much topping you want on them. I went for everything (the Honest burger). My date opted for the cheese with mature cheddar, as there is a choice of three cheeses. Tom, the mastermind behind Honest is in the kitchen lovingly preparing each burger. Very reassuring to have someone so hands on.

All burgers come with a side of triple cooked fries and house slaw was as optional extra, which of course I went for. I still haven't tasted one as good as Pitt Cue...As for the drinks, the wine is served as it should be in short tumblers, the G&T's as well as homemade lemonade come come in these amazingly charming little jars.

On arrival the burgers are served in chic enamel dishes with mismatched cutlery. The interior of the whole place has a charming rustic feel and these small touches really make all the difference. Not as big as some of the other contenders in London's best burger eat off, but the filling is vast. The meat is reassuringly thick and there are such amazing combinations of flavours every bite tastes slightly different...corny, but true. These burgers aren't just good for the first couple of bites and then become a bit samey - these are amazing until every last bit has been mopped off the plate with your final rosemary salted, triple cooked chips.

The Cheeseburger with mature cheddar

The Honest Burger, ding dong

The huge vat of Slaw

Hand for scale

All the meaty goodness with a seriously good filling and bun

Spent

The gorgeous little touch where the bill is hidden

Overall this was a really great evening, a buzzy restaurant with great food that really is what it says on the tin. Good, Honest food, with a great crowd in a fabulous location.

Atmosphere: 4/5
Food: 4/5
Drink: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

Find them here and on twitter @honestburgers

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