Taqueria El Turix: The Best Tacos in Mexico City (and possibly the world)

Ok, so the best tacos in the world is probably too big a shout. Admittedly, I’ve only tried a very small proportion of the tacos available and therefore I wouldn’t blame you for questioning such a bold statement. However, I am firmly standing by my claim that these are the best in Mexico City, certainly the best cochinita pibil.

These little flavour bombs might not look pretty but do not be fooled. Only 2 hours after my first encounter, I found myself walking 25 minutes out of my way and standing in line for another 25 minutes just to get another hit.

I’ve eaten tacos pretty much every day since I arrived in Mexico 2 weeks ago and El Turix unquestionably whooped the behinds of everything else I’ve tried; including the many I ate in the Yucatán Península, which is the area famed for cochinita pibil. They blew my mind!

Cochinita pibil is the name of the pork filling. It’s created by marinating a whole suckling pig in seville oranges and annatto seeds and then wrapping it in banana leaves and slowly roasting. It’s served in a small corn tortilla with pickled red onions, a squeeze of lime and at El Turix, with the most wonderfully spicy habanero chilli salsa. Just a small drizzle of this amazing salsa left me with that lovely warm feeling in my throat for a good ten minutes. Amazing!

It wasn’t just the pork or the salsa, every single component was perfect and Ronaldo (who has been behind the counter for 14 years) added the final touch by placing the tortilla into the pork mixture before filling it, making it wet and juicy on the outside. This filled me will horror at first, what with the impracticalities of eating it with my fingers, but one taste and I lost all inhibitions. This was far superior to the dry tortillas I had been eating up to that point.

My mouth is literally watering at the thought of another taste. I beg you, if you find yourself in Mexico City, do not leave without a visit to Taqueria El Turix at 212 Emilio Castelar in Polanco.

This is a place loved by the locals so go early or prepare to stand in line whilst they order kilos of the stuff to take away in the plastic cartons they have brought from home and from 2pm, whilst hundreds of office workers go to get their daily taco fix. At 65p a taco you really can’t blame them.

Street Kitchen @ The Miller

Recently I’ve been very excited to find that invitations to various restaurants and openings have been flooding into my inbox. Well, when I say flooding, I mean about one a week, but in comparison to the drought that came before it certainly feels like a flood. I’ve now been treated to quite a few freebies and it has been really fun to be able to take friends along for a free meal out or to try something new.

Despite the slight guilt that comes with getting something for nothing (I am British after all), there hasn’t yet been an opportunity to tell you all about it because, although I’ve had some very nice meals, I’m sticking to my guns and only blogging about places that I want to shout to the rooftops about.

Last Wednesday I went to a preview of the new Street Kitchen residency at The Miller in Bermondsey, which promises a Street Kitchen approach to the classic hotdog. I hadn’t anticipated writing about it as it was just a chance to sample the menu and provide feedback before the launch, so apologies for the lack of photos. However, on the night I was really impressed by the standard of the hotdogs and looking back at the pictures now I feel that familiar craving that ends up drawing me back to the same places over and over again.

Street Kitchen has been on the go for a while but as far as I know, this is the first time they have decided to focus on hotdogs. There were 3 options available and I tried 2 of them (sadly they had run out by the time I went to try the third!). They were creatively called American Pitbull, Boston Hound and Basque Terrier.

The first thing that I noticed about these hotdogs was the quality of the sausages. Unlike the traditional frankfurter, these were hearty sausages with an amazing smoky flavour that actually gave them a bit of a spice. All ingredients used by Street Kitchen come from the UK and the pork for the sausages was rare breed, free-range and sourced by The Butchery Ltd just down the road in Bermondsey. What more could you want?! I was told that beef and veggie sausages are also in the works.

The buns were also pretty special. We were very impressed by the fact that the middle had actually been cut out in order to make room for the sausage and filling. Sometimes it’s the small things that make the difference! The buns are also local, developed by Rinkoff Bakeries.

Then there was the fillings. The American Pitbull was topped with chapel down red wine onions, ketchup, sweet mustard dressing and pickled cucumber. Unfortunately we didn’t get to try this, but it certainly sounds good.

We did try the Boston Hound which included a precision sliced portion of tender slow braised belly pork, red cabbage slaw, celeriac remoulade and barbeque sauce. It was a great combo and we loved the addition of broken pork crackling on the top.

My favourite was the Basque Terrier, this came with a chorizo salsa, avocado, jalapeno and pickled red onions. The combo was fantastic and I love strong flavours so the pickled red onions and the chorizo salsa were a dream for me.

Street Kitchen at The Miller officially launches on 17 May and I would thoroughly recommend that you go down, especially if you find yourself hungry near London Bridge, just come out by the Shard, walk past Guy’s Hospital you will find it on your left hand side. The hot dogs I tried were a 9/10 and they were only the prototypes! I can’t wait to try the real deal.

One Leicester Street : Sharing Plates & Bulgarian Wines

One Leicester Street officially opened today. Hurrah!

The name may not be familiar but the location will be. It’s literally footsteps away from Leicester Square and is the restaurant formerly owned by Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver, known at St John Chinatown. I had a fabulous meal there in 2012, when David Chang was guest chef for the evening and I’d intended to go back to try the normal menu. Unfortunately before I got a chance, the hotel and restaurant went into administration and were sold to Unlimited Collection, which owns a number of hotels and restaurants. Although the restaurant is no longer part of the St John Group, Tom Harris stayed on as head chef and given he earned a Michelin Star in his short time at St John Chinatown, I was delighted to finally get a chance to try his cooking at the soft launch a couple of weeks ago.

I went on a Friday night with some colleagues, one of whom (a vegetarian) we literally kidnapped and bundled into a taxi at the last minute. I’d been looking for somewhere central that we could sit all night, relatively undisturbed, and have a good old chinwag whilst tucking into some interesting food and drink. One Leicester Street fitted the bill exactly.

The menu is a mixture of small plates and large plates, split into shellfish/fish, meat/offal, vegetables, cheese and puddings. Everything comes when it’s ready and we were encouraged to share. This was ideal for the type of evening that we had in mind as everything just kept flowing; the food, the drink and the conversation. The restaurant itself is also conducive to this. It’s quite simple and smart, with dark wood and muted tones. The tables are close enough together to give the feel of a busy room but not so close that you feel like your neighbours are listening in on your conversation.

The best thing about a soft launch is that you get a discount on the food and in this instance it was a healthy 50%. We therefore did the honorable thing and ordered almost the entire menu, 17 of the 22 items on there.

I thoroughly enjoyed all of the dishes. The theme was simple but creative. A limited number of ingredients were used and each dish was delicate yet full of flavour. My particular favourites were the scallop, the snails, the broad beans and the honeycomb dessert but I really did love it all. It was wonderful to be able to try so many different things.

The options were perhaps a little too limited for our vegetarian friend, who selflessly let us all tuck into the vegetarian dishes, despite not being able to eat any of the meat or fish options. However, despite his initial reservations, quality triumphed over quantity and he gave it a thumbs up at the end of the night.

Here are a few pics of our delicious meal, which was accompanied by a couple of bottles of Bulgarian wine, recommended by our lovely waitress, Iona. In normal circumstances we would never have chosen Bulgarian wines and they were a very pleasant surprise indeed!

I loved the beautiful illustration on the front of the menu

olives

crab, fennel and monks beard

scallop, backfat and hazelnut

razor clams, salt lemon and white beans

snails, duck hearts and lovage

smoked dexter, beetroot and horseradish

braised broad beans, wild garlic and berkswell 

grilled onion, goats curd and wild fennel

grilled middlewhite and rape greens

chicory and mustard salad

shaved ice, earl grey and pear

warm chocolate, puffed barley and malt

brown butter and honey tart

salt caramel, apple and hazelnut

kirkhams lancashire, honeycomb and water biscuit

harbourne blue, pickled quince and oat biscuit

Can’t beat a nice glass of dessert wine

This silly photo, taken at the end of the night, pretty much sums up what a wonderful time we had. I would most certainly recommend it for a meal with friends, an evening out with parents or for a date. Fabulous food, great service and a great central location. Leicester Square could do with a few more options like this and a few less Bella Italias!

8/10

Easter Egg Desserts : Tiramisu in a Homemade Easter Egg

I had intended to post this recipe last weekend. It’s the second part of the “Italian Eggstravaganza” dessert that I did for my Comic Relief Supper Club and I’d decided that Easter was perfect time to share the recipes, but you know what they say about best laid plans ….

I uploaded the photos on Easter Sunday and then set about baking bread, making a pie and constructing a huge chocolate cake for lunch with friends. The lunch went on well into the evening and before I knew it, the bank holiday weekend had whizzed by and I was back at work.

So a week on, here it is. Better late than never.

It may not be quite so apt now but it’s definitely a recipe worth having, although not one for the faint hearted I’m afraid. The tiramisu is easy but making your own chocolate eggs, now that is a different story.

It wasn’t really the eggs themselves that caused me difficulty. It was gluing the two halves together. I tempered the chocolate so that it was all shiny and beautiful when it came out of the moulds but then, by the time I’d had my sticky paws all over it trying to glue them together with more chocolate, I couldn’t help but be disappointed by the slightly unprofessional finish.

It is also a rather time consuming exercise (especially if you need to make two eggs but only have two moulds), so I would definitely recommend doing this a day or two before your dinner party, remembering that the tiramisu will also need at least 8 hours to set.

To make one egg, which will serve 2 – 4, you will need:

125g 70% chocolate
1 double espresso
1 tablespoon spiced rum
50g caster sugar
2 medium eggs
25ml Marsala
150g mascarpone
6 Savoiardi sponge fingers
Cocoa powder

First you need to temper the chocolate. I did this the cheats way, by melting 2/3 of the chocolate in a basin over hot water and then removing the bowl and adding the final 1/3. You will need to stir the chocolate until it reaches 32°C. This will take about 20 minutes or so, a job best done in front of the TV!

Once the chocolate is at the right temperature, you need to spread a layer evenly into your moulds, making sure that you don’t go right to the top as you need an open-topped egg. There are many ways to do this but I found that using the back of a spoon worked best for me.

Put the moulds into the fridge, until the chocolate is set and then repeat until you have used almost all of the chocolate. This should be about 4 layers.

You then need to do the very delicate job of removing the eggs from the moulds. Strictly this should be easy, as the chocolate will shrink as it sets. However, I found that getting my edges thick was tricky and therefore easing the eggs out required a gentle touch and lots of patience, as I pulled at the sides and encouraged the air to slip between the chocolate and the plastic.

When it comes out it should look shiny and generally magnificent!

Then comes the job of sticking the two halves together. I am certainly no expert at this, so you might have a better method, but I found that the best way was to place them into a martini glass and then use the back of a teaspoon to spread melted chocolate over the seam, on the inside. I then chilled the eggs and repeated.

Once you have a sturdy chocolate egg, it’s time to make the filling.

You first need to separate the eggs and whisk the whites until stiff. Next mix the yolks, marsala and sugar (reserving a heaped teaspoon) and then whisk in the mascarpone. Once this is combined, carefully fold in the egg whites.

In a wide bowl combine the warm espresso with the rum and the reserved sugar. Then dip in a sponger finger, making sure you don’t let it get too soggy, and place this in the bottom of the egg. Repeat, snapping the fingers into parts where necessary, until you have a layer. Spoon 1/3 of the egg mixture over the top and then repeat. Keep going until you have 3 layers of each, ending on an egg layer.

Once you reach the top, chill in the fridge for a minimum of 8 hours and then dust with cocoa before serving.

Ta da!! Don’t they look pretty.

I served mine on a bed of Mini Eggs (because you can’t ever have too much chocolate) but I found these glasses were very handy for keeping them upright in the fridge.

I appreciate that this may all sound like a bit too much hard work, so you could assemble the tiramisu in a more traditional way and it would work just fine. In fact, if you have time to chill it overnight, it would then be a very easy pud indeed. However, I can tell you from experience that snapping off a chunk of chocolate and then scooping up the tiramisu into your mouth is really rather pleasant.

Easter Egg Desserts : Panna Cotta with Mango Yolk

Happy Easter! What a fabulous time of year it is. Not only do us office workers get a nice long 4 day weekend but we are encouraged to spend it eating chocolate eggs, hot cross buns and roast lamb dinners. Heaven!

At my recent supper club I did some rather lovely Easter appropriate desserts that I wanted to give you the recipes for, so I have temporarily dragged myself away from munching on chocolate in bed to do so. If you’re having a dinner party tomorrow (or even tonight) it’s not too late to whip these up and I can promise that your guests will be mightily impressed.

I got the idea from Glynn Purnell’s burnt English cream eggs that featured on Great British Menu in 2008. At first I thought I might try to recreate those but then I decided it would be even better if I could make them look like eggs.

Cheesecake or panna cotta both seemed like a good idea and in the end I went with the panna cotta.

My first challenge was to work out how you take the tops off the eggs. I tweeted Glynn to ask how he did it. He replied, which was very lovely of him. His reply was that he did it was a light sabre, which was less lovely of him. Although, I suppose he is far too important to be doing that sort of thing for himself and no doubt had an army of people doing it for him.

Some internet research led me to this little instrument of torture. I bought mine from the most wonderful cook shop on Marylebone High Street, called Divertimenti. I would highly recommend that you check it out if you are ever in the area.

It is intended to take the tops off soft boiled eggs but with a bit of patience and practice, it works on raw eggs too. You just place the metal dome on top of an egg, hold the egg firmly in your hand and then pull the plunger and release. As it comes down on the egg, it will either (1) shatter the egg entirely because you have done it too hard *starts again* (2) take the top off in one nice neat piece *runs round the room whooping with arms in the air* or (3) create a fine hairline crack around the egg *gets sharp knife out and tries to gently prize the top off without cracking the egg*.

I would say that 15% were total disasters, 5% came off perfectly and the other 80% required some knife action. The moral of the story is to make sure that you have extra eggs to hand and plenty of time to get this done.

The next step is to remove the membranes from the eggs. This is a fiddly little job and one that I achieved by poking in a finger in and gently peeling it off the side. Again, there may have been one or two breakages at this stage and it certainly required a lot of patience.

Once you have removed the membrane, rinse and dry your eggshells and you are ready to start on the filling – an absolute breeze after all that!

I will give you the recipe for 2 eggs and then you can just multiply it by however many you need:

1 sheet of leaf gelatine;
65 ml whole milk
65 ml double cream
1 vanilla pod
10g caster sugar
1 teaspoon grappa
1/4 fresh mango
1 teaspoon of lemon curd

First off you need to heat the cream and milk with the sugar and vanilla seeds until almost boiling and then pour into a measuring jug.

Add the grappa and the gelatine (soaked as per the packet instructions) to the measuring jug, then place the jug in a bowl of ice to cool.

Stir from time to time and make sure you keep an eye on it. You want to wait until it is close to setting and then pour into your eggshells. If you leave it too long it will be difficult to pour in with precision but if you do it too soon the vanilla seeds wont be evenly disbursed.

Once you have filled your eggshells, making sure the mixture is right to the top, leave them in the fridge to set. This should take about 3-4 hours.

To make the mango coulis, just whizz up the mango in a food processor then cook it in a small pan with the lemon curd on a very low heat until everything has broken down. Once this is done you just need to strain it through a sieve and you will have a nice little bowl of yolk coloured filling.

The final step is to fill the eggs. I wish I had done a neater job, but it is quite fiddly. I used an apple corer to remove a round from the middle of the panna cotta and then filled the hole with the coulis, placing the eggs back in the fridge for another hour or so to set.

It’s nice to serve them in egg boxes, so that there is intrigue when you bring the boxes to the table and you can enjoy the reaction when your guests open the boxes.

To add a bit of fun at the supper club, I also handed round shots of grappa in advance and then the shot glasses were used as egg cups.

Although it might seem like a lot of work, this dessert is well worth the effort, both for flavour and effect. Perfect for an Easter dinner party or at any other time of the year when you want to do something that looks a bit fancy.

A Perfect Lunch at The River Cafe

When I think of my lunch at The River Cafe, I recall booking a sneaky afternoon off work, strolling along the river on a sunny March day, sitting in a bright, modern restaurant and sailing through four fantastic courses with good wine and great chat. In a nutshell, I was as happy as an Easter bunny on an egg hunt.

Although I’d always longed to go, the rather pricey menu and the fact that it’s on the other side of London meant it had always been always pipped to the post. Until I noticed the Winter lunch menu that is; I’m a sucker for a good deal and at £39 for 4 courses how could I resist?

The restaurant was exactly as I’d hoped; a bright open space with a relaxed chirpy feel, whilst still retaining that element of formality that you need in order to feel like you’re out for a treat.

Things got off to an excellent start with a blood orange prosecco. It was wondrous. I have every intention of refusing to let any other drink pass my lips when the sunshine finally arrives in England. The perfect aperitif.

The dishes were a mixture of careful, solid cooking and creative combinations and textures. The mozzarella was a wonderful surprise. I expected a cold fresh dish yet my mouth was filled with warm creamy flavours and a well placed crunch. The agretti was a marvellous touch as it is only in season for a couple of weeks each year. Lucky me!

The pasta dishes were another highlight. Perfectly cooked, firm, light pasta with flavours that didn’t overpower. When I ordered the rabbit, I imagined a rich ragu but in fact it was a light, spring dish. Ideal as one of four courses.

By the time we got to pudding, I wasn’t sure I could manage one but no sooner had I taken a spoonful of the pear and almond tart than the whole thing had disappeared. Light, crisp, sweet, delicious.

There is not a single thing that I would change about our meal. Each course was delicious and the service was fantastic. I can’t wait to go back and I’m sure it won’t be long before I do, deal or no deal. A very solid 9/10.

Prosecco with fresh Blood Orange

Calamari ai ferri 

chargrilled squid with fresh chilli and rocket

Mozzarella di Bufala

with agretti, slow cooked tomato and pangrattato

Farfalle con Coniglio

rabbit slow cooked in Frinlano with pancetta, rosemary and sage

Panzotti ai Funghi

handmade pasta stuffed with dried porcini, italian spinach, mascarpone and parmesan

Capesante in padella

Scottish scallops seared with sage, chilli  & red wine vinegar with cicoria and polenta

Coscia d’Agnello ai ferri

chargrilled marinated leg of lamb with salsa Rosa Piccante, chickpeas and cima di rape

Stracciatella Ice Cream

Pear & Almond Tart

Comic Relief Supper Club 2013

Six weeks ago I made a slightly crazy decision to host a supper club for Comic Relief. I mentioned it on Twitter and before I knew it 7 people had signed up and made a £25 donation. Only one more space to fill and I hadn’t even decided on a menu yet!

I had lots of ideas but in the end I went for an Italian theme, with at least one thing from each course in the middle of the table for people to share. The menu was:

Bellini

Pizzette Bianca

Red Pepper & Goat’s Cheese Risotto

Daube of Pork Cheeks with Homemade Tagliatelle

Italian Eggstravaganza

The most daunting part, apart from cooking for eight strangers, was the tagliatelle. I had never made pasta before but I really wanted everything to be homemade and how hard could it be ?!?

As it turned out, I absolutely love making pasta. It’s so therapeutic and definitely something that I will be doing a lot more of. I will do a post on it soon so that you can see how simple it really is. However, please learn from my mistakes and don’t try for the first time an hour before your guests arrive and without understanding the recipe first!!

About a month before the big night I decided that it might be a good idea to do a practice run for friends and family, which turned out to be a brilliant idea. In addition to sending Mr E out for tagliatelle 10 minutes before people were due to arrive, there were many hiccups on the night; people were an hour late, the risotto over cooked, I didn’t give the tiramisu enough time to set, the coat hook fell off the wall with about 30 coats on it, the pizzette stuck to the peel. In short, it was a bit of a shambles and I WAS STRESSED. Most certainly not the serene and carefree host that I usually pride myself on.

In comparison, the real deal could not have gone better. I had a delightful day preparing all the food, having done some prep the night before. A friend from Dubai arrived at about 5pm to help with the serving and we had a great catch up and a few small glasses of wine as I made the pasta and we set the table. My guests were absolutely lovely and extremely generous with their compliments about the evening and the food. They spent the whole evening laughing and chatting with each other and were keen for us to join them after dessert. It was a total blast! The last guests didn’t leave until 1:45am and by then they felt like old friends.

My advice if you have ever thought about doing a supper club, especially one for charity,  is to go for it. You never know, you might just pull it off.

I will do some more posts with the recipes but for now, here is my supper club experience in a few pictures …

Thursday Evening

Marinating the pork cheeks, fresh from Smithfield Market.

Tempering chocolate to make hollow eggs.

Nice and shiny!

Friday Morning

Once the egg halves were firmly welded together (not an easy task I can promise you) I set to work making the tiramisu and filling the egg shells.

Then into the fridge for a good 8 hours chill time.

Next was the panna cotta. Taking the tops off raw eggs and removing the membrane is a rather fiddly task but the end result is definitely worth it.

Cooling off the mixture before pouring into the egg shells and then leaving to set in the fridge.

Friday Lunchtime

Time to make some vegetable stock.

Then prep the veg for the pork cheeks.

Next I made the red pepper stock.

Friday Afternoon

I dried off the pork cheeks, seasoned with salt and pepper, then dusted with flour and browned in batches. Then into the oven with a bottle of wine and the veg for the next 3 hours.

At at about 4:30pm I started to make my pasta.

There is no need to dry it, I just tossed it in some semolina and cover with cling film until it was time.

Then I quickly whipped up the mango & lemon coulis for the yolks of my eggs.

The dough for my pizzette was the last bit of prep. If I have one regret from the night it is that I left this to prove for just a little too long.

We set the table at about 6:30, with an hour to go until everyone arrived and then nipped upstairs to make ourselves presentable.

Then time to get the risotto on the go.

The Meal

A few pizzettes for people to share.

Red pepper and goat’s cheese risotto.

Daube of pork cheeks.

Italian eggstravanza part 1.

Italian eggstravaganza part 2.

Happy customers

I am absolutely delighted to have raised so much money for Comic Relief. As I type this, the total is £1016, I’m ecstatic to have reached my £1000 target. Thank you so much to everyone who has donated, you are all amazing!

https://my.rednoseday.com/sponsor/everymealmatters