Bird of Smithfield

Last night I went to Bird of Smithfield, the new restaurant just a stone's throw from the famous meat market, started by Alan Bird, veteran of The Ivy. On my visit, it was still almost a building site in parts, but despite the odd wire dangling like tentacles from the ceiling, the restaurant was already looking stylish, with armchairs surrounding the bar and interesting paintings around the dining tables on the cosy restaurant floor.

Everything on the menu sounded delicious, and although I was tempted by the treacle cured salmon or a fresh salad with goat's cheese, I couldn't resist the Dorset crab which came with fantastic crispy thin slices of bread. The rich mayonnaisey dressing covered delicate crab meat and fresh avocado - I found myself asking for more bread to enjoy every last morsel of this creamy delight! My mum's asparagus were cooked to perfection, with a superb hollandaise.

Mains was a tough decision too, although I was very happy with my slip sole, served with brown shrimp and samphire. The texture of the fish was great, and the intense flavours brought about in combination with the almost earthy shrimp and salty samphire transported me to the coast. With such a rich dish, I struggled to finish the extremely generous portion - one fillet would have sufficed for me! I would have preferred the triple-cooked chips to be much more crispy (admittedly my standards based on Heston's Hind's Head are high), but they were wonderfully fluffy inside.

The chocolate pot, made with Original Beans' Cru Virunga, was a hit, topped with a powerful salted caramel cream, and hiding a little surprise of popping candy.

Having not had trifle for a long time, I was mightily impressed by the rhubarb trifle with 'Bird's Custard': decadent, but refined - I'll be returning to Bird of Smithfield, if just for some more scrumptious desserts!

Damian Allsop Chocolate Workshop

I had a fantastically fun, educational, and tasty morning at a chocolate workshop this morning, run by Damian Allsop, the producer of CH₂OCOLATES. He specialises in chocolates made with a water-based ganache, which he discovered helps to bring out and retain the flavours of the chocolate - and his creations really are superb. I'm snacking delightfully on my going-home-present, a bag full of a selection of different chocs, despite greedily stuffing my face with the stuff earlier!

But, of course I didn't just spend the whole time eating, I also learnt a lot, as did the other amateurs (chocolate-lovers) at the workshop (perhaps apart from my omniscient mum!). First, Damian gave an enticing introduction to the production of chocolate, from the picking of the fruit pod (which surprisingly grows on the trunk of the tree since it's too heavy to be hanging off the sides), to the extremely important but often overlooked fermentation, to drying, roasting, and finally manufacturing. As well as the scientific side, we saw some beautiful pictures of the cacao beans, still with their multicoloured hard outer skin, and then the smaller inside beans covered in a white pulp, followed by examples of the processes involved in refining the bean.

After the food-history lesson, it was time for the taste test. We started off with a fairly average supermarket-quality dark chocolate which we decided was a bit too bitter, had no fruity notes, and the different flavours weren't smoothly connected which made it unpleasant to eat. We moved up the scale, starting to get hints of fruits like tangerines, and arrived at Original Beans Cru Virunga, which was full of cherry flavours and a mouth-watering acidity, which lingered in the mouth.

Suitably warmed up, we watched Damian give a demo of making a chocolate mousse, before having a go ourselves. To get the consistency that would normally come from cream, we thickened the water with xanthan gum (a thickening agent), before combining this with our melted Cru Virunga, and folding this into a meringue mixture. Of course, being true professions, we didn't opt for the super-fast and easy electric whisk to transform liquid egg white into fluffy meringue. Nope, instead we used the good ol'fashioned hand one -  which I have to admit I slightly regretted after my arm almost fell off from exhaustion (despite whisking tips from the expert, Damian). We then left this to set in the fridge for a few hours, after a quick taster! Another group also added in a raspberry sauce to the milk-chocolate recipe, which gave it a great extra kick.

Damian showed us how to make liquorice financiers (cake), and fruit jellies (no gelatin, just a vegetable gelling agent and xanthan) as well, which were a great accompaniment to our mousses, and were fantastic topped off with spicy ginger crisps, and served immaculately in the shape of a cacao pod!

Finally, we tried everything, all in different combinations, to find which we enjoyed the most. I particularly liked the little liquorice cakes, topped with my chocolate mousse, and the apricot sauce! The whole session was thoroughly enjoyable, most definitely worth the 7 O'clock Saturday morning start, and 2 hour journey each way! Thank you Damian!

Chocolate Festival and Meza

I had a fun day yesterday, starting at the Chocolate Festival at the Southbank. It's on until Sunday in the square behind the Royal Festival Hall, and there's some great chocolate to taste and buy along with some interesting talks from the people behind the chocolate.

I popped along to do a quick shift behind Original Beans' stall, explaining what I knew about the origins of the bars, the rare Porcelena cocoa beans (named after its white appearance similar to that of porcelain), and the inspiring ethos - a bar plants a tree! It was great fun, and I enjoyed meeting people who knew and were interested in finding out about chocolate. Just before the event started to wind down for the evening, I popped round to have a peek at the other stalls and tried Damien Allsop's mini egg which had a delicious salty caramel filling. He's a great chocolatier who's speciality is water-based ganache, and I love his raspberry chocopop with crackling space dust!

Then, in the evening we visited The Modern Pantry Pop-up at Meza, where I enjoyed the fresh and exciting cooking of Anna Hansen. The menu was really interesting, and everything sounded sensational. I opted for the salmon sashimi to start. The organic fish was so fresh and had a lovely clean taste, and the dressing made from truffled umeboshi, which is a sour fruit, wonderfully complimented and accented the citrus yuzu (a Japanese fruit) and the texture of the crunchy flying fish roe (or tobiko) was great.

For mains I tried the roast butternut squash, tofu and leek filled inari (pouches made from an omelette-like mixture), with crispy walnuts and wild rice, and a salty miso broth. It was a very earthy dish, quite different from my starter, and it had a great rustic sense, but was also highly voluptuous, with a deep aroma and soft-hard textures.

Finally to finish I had the salted coconut tapioca with a green tea and chocolate mouse, with mango, passion fruit and a coconut wafer. I'm not completely sure why I chose this, because I'm not a great fan of green tea, but I liked the crunchy passion fruit with the sweet coconut, and the crispy wafer.

All in all a delightful day, and a delicious meal!