So, we have a very special guest on Cam’s Kitchen this week. Jamie Brittain – creator of Skins, fellow greedy bitch and dear friend has written a post about beginning his love affair with food. Enjoy…

“A couple of years ago, I battled a night of insomnia by reading Jay Rayner’s book ‘The Man Who Ate The World’ in one go. It’s a great, fun, funny book, where Jay travels the world eating at the most fabulous, expensive restaurants around the globe. His wonderful, alternately damning and praising descriptions of the food he encounters are hilarious and evocative, but more than anything, they inspire great hunger. Terrible hunger. A very special kind of hunger, only experienced when you’ve been up all night reading a book full of amazing food you have never eaten, and all you’ve had to eat in the last eight hours is a scotch egg you found under your bed.

I’ve always liked food (we always say this, but who, exactly, doesn’t like food?). But my relationship with it has been rather dull. My mother is not what you’d call the best cook in the world, my dad is pretty good but wasn’t around much. Trips to restaurants and take-outs were frequent, but as we lived in the Lake District, there wasn’t exactly a dearth of sumptuous cuisine on offer (not true anymore – take a bow l’Enclume et al). Even if there was we couldn’t afford. Mostly we ate at Italian places, and McDonalds for a special treat.

I was pretty happy with this, not knowing any better, until at about age 7 or 8, I was taken to the Chinese restaurant in Windermere for a birthday – The Magic Wok (I just googled it, it’s still there). I had never had Chinese food before. The meal I had there was so astounding, so wonderfully amazing I have never forgotten it. I did not know food could taste like that. Tiny bowls of soup in which little parcels of something that might be meat or might be fish floated like scientific curiosities in formaldehyde. Plates of chicken covered in brightly coloured sauce that was sweet and spicy at the same time. Something green, crispy and shredded, dusted with a mysterious musky brown powder, which I was told was seaweed (you can eat seaweed?). Rice that was fried, and came alive in your mouth when you dribbled an alien, black salty liquid on it. Something like spaghetti but better, greasy and delicious. Pancakes with duck in them, rather than lemon and sugar. And there was so much of it, plates and plates and plates of it. Far more than anyone could eat. Far more than the whole family could eat. And yet I ate and ate and ate.

If the best meal of your life is defined by being something life-changing, revelatory, then that meal at The Magic Wok after watching Beethoven’s 2nd, was the best meal of my life. Nothing since has been so affecting. Getting home, stomach bloated with MSG, I realized some shit was going to have to change. First of all, what the fuck? Why has this been kept from me? Do my parents hate me? Why have I been eating fish fingers and under-seasoned spag bol all this time, when there’s stuff like that?

From then on, every chance I got, I went to The Magic Wok. There weren’t that many chances – in fact there was one a year, my birthday. The rest of the time, not being able to go to The Magic Wok every night was torturous. Occasionally, after what I imagine was a lot of begging from me, we got takeout from another Chinese in Kendal (which was nearer), but it wasn’t as good. You didn’t get as much, and we never had any soy sauce in the house – by now, I was seriously addicted to soy sauce – in fact, I still am. Very occasionally, on holiday, or trip to a city, we’d have a meal at a mid-range restaurant. I would always, and I mean always, order the most expensive thing on the menu, something which still annoys my mother even though, these days, I’m usually paying. But that expensive dish would never be good enough. As far as I was concerned, there were two types of meal.

1) The Magic Wok. The absolute pinnacle of all gastronomy, to which everything else is a lesser derivation…

and

2) …Everything else.

Over the years, whilst growing up, moving home a couple of times, I’ve had good meals. A wonderful fruit de mers platter in St Tropez, which was, to be honest, pretty hair raising, but I loved the spicy langoustine. Another in Barcelona, in a little place in a back alley that, we were told, was Gary Lineker’s favourite place in the city (one wonders quite how many restaurants in Barcelona make this claim). There I tasted deep fried whitebait and baby octopus. A totally rock and roll foie gras soup in a restaurant in Paris which totally owned. More recently, I dined at St John for my stepmothers birthday, which was, to be honest, absolutely extraordinary – whole roast suckling pig, maybe at that point the single best meat eating experience I’d had. I made a mental note to come back for their roast bone marrow, which I did (it’s excellent, though the bone marrow served with the ox cheek at the Bull and Last is even better – mainly because they stuff it with foie gras).

Those flashpoints were all great, but nothing was as earth shaking, world changing, as that Chinese. I’d eaten stuff that had made me go ‘wow’, but had never had another transformative experience in a foodery.

So there I was closing Jay Rayner’s book as the sun came up. The first thing I did was think ‘I have got to have some of this food’. The second thing I did was to go online and book a table at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay for my approaching birthday. Jay barely mentions Ramsay in his book, though acknowledges his importance, but I reckoned Ramsay wouldn’t let me down. I’d seen him on telly and seemed to know his shit, though his constant reference to middle-aged restraunteurs testicles was slightly disconcerting.

A couple of months later, I’m in a cab with my friend Camilla (for it is she) driving through Chelsea. I am in my best shirt and shoes, looking like a fat web-designer paedophile who has been dressed by his sister who he keeps locked in the cellar.  Cam is wearing something utterly fabulous and sexy, as requested by me (to mark the occasion, you see, not because I like looking at her tits. Much). We spend quite a long time driving up and down Royal Hospital Road trying to find it, my first experience of the discreteness of the 3 star world. Eventually finding it, we pay the cabbie slightly more than expected, hop out into the warm summer air and are let in by the doorman. So begins the second life changing meal of my life.

Inside it’s very tasteful. Very very tasteful. Surprisingly small, furnished in cream pretty much exclusively. I don’t usually have an opinion on interior design, but I’m sure if you got me drunk I’d rave on about modernism and stuff like that. I was surprised to find myself liking it. Liking it very much. It was so calming, relaxing. The noise levels were low-ish, but not quiet. It was a nice place to be in. It seemed like a perfect place to spend an hour or threee.
The staff, bastions of good service, politeness and friendliness, showed us to our table and we sat down.

Jean Claude Breton, the maitre-de, comes over and asks who is ‘hosting’ the table. What the fuck does that mean? I say me, which is a mistake – I should have delegated to Cam, the confirmed and experienced foodie. But I am paying – and only my menu has the prices listed on it, so Cam can order whatever she wants safe in the knowledge that she retains plausible deniability. We barely look at the menu – we’re here for the tasting menu, and so order the Menu Prestige – with me having pigeon for my main, she having pork (or lamb or something. To be honest we didn’t pay each other that much attention in the hours that followed).

The wine list, which looks like something you could fly to Narnia on, is handed to me. Scanning the pages, I almost immediately have a panic attack. So when the sommelier comes over and asks what wine we’re having, I just tell him to bring whatever he thinks is best with each course. This is a tactic I’ve used many times since, and one I don’t recommend. It means the price of your meal is increased by about a third, all because I’m too much of a pussy to choose one myself. Nowadays I just order a mid-range Sancerre, which is always pretty damn good. Saying that, I drank some damn fine wines that night.

Anyway, then the food starts arriving. It starts off pretty damn good with a sort of ice cream cone of something avacado-ey and gets better and better. It’s like really good sex – a cliche I know, but that’s the only way I can describe. So there’s the caviar and the foie gras and some beautifully buttery brioche that me and Cam keep returning to throughout the meal. It’s all pretty stunning, but it’s foreplay. My first orgasm comes with the grilled scallop in pea sauce, which Jean Claude spoons onto my plate. I’m a bit meh about scallops, but this is perfectly cooked, tender and juicy. What makes it come alive, however, is the pea sauce. I never knew something could taste so much like a pea, sweet and earthy and gorgeous. Mixed with the scallop, it is utterly amazing. At that point it became the single greatest plate of food I have ever eaten, a accolade that lasts ten minutes, because then they bring out the pigeon.

Up until that point, I had no opinion on pigeons. If you’d asked me my opinion on pigeons before that night I would have told you that they hoot outside my window every morning until I scare them off, and it’s pretty annoying. Nowadays, if you ask me, I will tell you, that, if cooked by Clare Smyth under Gordon Ramsay, they are the single most delicious animal in the world.

Other stuff came with it, but I can’t remember what they were, apart from the fact they were fabulous. But the pigeon itself…jesus. Gamey and tender, cooked perfectly, with salty skin and slightly pink meat. Multiple, multiple orgasms. For the second time in my life, I couldn’t quite believe food could taste this good. It was, and I do realize I’m going a little over the top with the hyperbole, fucking cunting mothershitting good.

The meal continued with a seemingly endless parade of deserts, all lovely, the best being a sort of chocolate ginger tower that made me groan to look at with my full-to-busting belly, but was actually surprisingly light. And the chocolates, and some ‘strawberry champagne’, sucked through a straw. Also my first taste of desert wine, which I have now become seriously addicted to. Then coffee. Then the bill, which was enormous. But I didn’t care. The meal I had just eaten was the best meal I’d ever had my about a magnitude of ten. It had shaken my world. Shit was going to have to change, again.

Shit did change. In the year since Gordon Ramsay I have eaten at Nobu, The Fat Duck, The Ledbury, St John again, Marcus Wareing, a three star in Bruges called Die Karmelite, a two star Indian which name escapes me, Ippudo and Blue Smoke in New York and various other places. All have been at least good, some have been bloody excellent. None have been as good as my first time with Gordon, or in fact my second, earlier this year, exactly a year after my first visit. They remembered me. Isn’t that nice?

People are down on Gordon Ramsay, which isn’t surprising. No one needs another blog post on that subject. I don’t really know what to think. But I do know that the meal I had was amazing, and Clare Smyth, the chef at RGF can put food together like no-one else I’ve ever encountered.”

 - Jamie F. Brittain – October 2011

Basically, it’s like the Parent Trap, but the Lindsay Lohan version. Ok, so it’s like the Celebrity Rehab Lindsay Lohan version of The Parent Trap.

So given the circumstances –  we had to cover a lot of ground in a short space of time –and in a lot of ways, we are very different people. For example –  I’m impulsive and my sister likes a plan. I like my cocktails and she isn’t a big drinker. She loves contentment and being settled –  I itch at the feeling of routine.  She makes her boundaries known –  I bend to whatever makes things easiest for everyone. She takes a while to warm up – and I wear my heart on my sleeve –  and occasionally make out with strangers.

But we do share a lot of things – aside from our father and a beautiful baby-sister –  we were both raised by the strongest most awesomest of women, thanklessly slave away in the arts,  love to run, cannot live without our music, our dancing, our fashion and our food. Oh my lord do we love food…

The very first time we met was over a fraught lunch at Yautchua – totally awkward, a complete surprise (thanks Dad) and so very terrifying. But there were venison-puffs – and there’s a limit to how fraught one can still be over venison puffs. 6 years on from that first meal, I feel like we’ve moved to a brand new place  - so much so that every time I feel like our relationship is in a good place, it gets a little better.  And whilst I still feel like I’m finding new stuff out about her every time we see each other – I also feel like we’ve finally figured out how to be around each other, and like we have each other’s backs. That every fight, every snipe, every confused, hurt feeling in the early years – feels worth it, and a million years behind us. I feel strong together, and that’s priceless to me.

So, as a fellow lover of the foods – I had to take her for a day of roaming around Borough Market. I knew she’d love it and hold it in her hungry heart just like I do. And if there’s one thing I like to do, is try to make that girl smile.

Now, we do love most of the same stuff –but there are a few things we disagree on – for instance –  she loves liquorice – which makes me retch, and whilst she was not completely repulsed by her first try, I am unsure as to whether she will obsess over a white-truffle in the way that I do. Luckily –we agree on the important things – like brownies that have no flour in them, so that they are just chocolate and dense sugary crunch at the edges. And Olives – big fat juicy briney olives. Man, I could go for an olive right now…

But we ate, and we talked, and we laughed and screamed when we saw peanut-butter-white-chocolate-brownies (Google it, bitch!) and whilst the heart of my relationship with my sister could easily be food, the The Brindisa Chorizo Sandwich – as I am sure many of you will agree is the heart of Borough Market and have been served there for 10 years this winter.

For those of you that have never been to Borough Market, who have not seen the 50 deep queue to the stand (or seen someone like me, in the queue, still eating my first one…whilst queuing for my second – don’t frigging judge me) I will do my best to describe its simplicity and complexity without Smell-O-Vision.

To describe that hot juicy smoky, spicy paprika sausage tempered by the sweet smoothness of the pickled piquillo pepper just kicked up by the herbiness of rocket on that bbq toasted ciabatta, doused in extra, stinkingly potent virgin olive oil. To explain to you that it’s a two-hand job as you try to wrap your mouth around it and how, as the intense heat from the Chorizo sausage hits your tongue, the combined juices of the olive oil, pepper and sausage will gently roll down your chin and onto the brand new t-shirt you just bought.  And you just won’t care.

Those who know this sandwich well, know what I’m talking about – and for those of you that don’t – fire up a grill, and get to cooking. Like a worked on friendship with a sibling come home to roost – It’ll be worth it.

The Brindisa Chorizo Burger

• Thick Spicy Chorizo Sausages – split down the middle.
• Ciabatta buns
• Piquillo peppers (you can get these in a jar from any deli)
• Rocket (Arugula)
• The strongest Olive Oil you can find.

1. Fire up a grill.
2. Grill those sausages until the edges are just a little burnt.
3. Slap an open bun on the grill and toast gently.
4. Drizzle a little olive oil on the inside of the bun
5. Put the sausage in.
6. Top it with a pepper
7. Shove a handful of rocket in there.
8. Wrap both hands around it and ruin your favourite shirt.

So I had 2 choices – I could embrace that self-loathing girl-diet of low-fat, skinless grilled chicken-breasts, dry-toast and rice-cakes, OR I could just ditch the carbs whilst eating all the eggs, cheese, pork-crackling, bacon, steak, hollandaise sauce and butter I wanted.

It was no contest really…

However, quitting sugar is a bitch. There’s no two ways around it – whether it’s just because you eat too much of it, or if like me – you’re just on Atkins – quitting that white-power is diabolical, and as many substitutes as there are out there – there’s just no replacing a bowl of ice-cream – there’s just NO readily available sugar-free equivalent.

Until now…

So I give to you –  a sugar-free ice-cream for all you atkins-dieting, Zone-diet, dukan-diet, lo-sugar, low-carb dieters out there – and most importantly  for those of you who are diabetic.

This recipe is SO simple – takes 5 mins prep and 2hrs freezing. Also, all the ingredients you can pick up from your local corner-shop or bodega – and you don’t even need an ice-cream machine.

Enjoy, irresponsibly.

Here are your ingredients;

• 600 ml Single-cream
• 2 tbsp Instant Coffee
• 2 tbsp 100% Cocoa Powder
• 1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
• 4 tbsp Splenda
• 3 Tablespoons of boiling water
• 5 tbsp 100% raw chocolate flakes (that’s if you want them)

You can also use a tablespoon of orange-extract, or vanilla, add some chopped hazelnuts, whatever takes your fancy.

Step 1: You’re gonna make your ‘starter’. Add your dry ingredients to the boiling water. Mix.

Step 2: Pour in your cream.

Step 3: Whisk together. (You don’t have to use an electric whisk, I’m just lazy.)

Step 4: In about 5 minutes, it should get nice and stiff. (Easy!)

Step 5: Dollop the mixture into a plastic container that you can put a lid on. Put in the freezer.

Step 6: Take out and stir with a fork – scraping in the frozen edges into the middle and breaking down ice-crystals. Do this once every 30 mins until you have what looks like ice-cream.

Step 7: Now eat your guilt-free ice-cream! All dairy, calcium, antioxidants and less than 1 carb a scoop!

You kinda wanna kiss me right now,  admit it.

These commandments are imperative, and if you don’t follow them, you will end up with grey-steak, rubbery steak or worse – dry steak.

The 7 Steak Commandments 

1.Thou shall not cook steak right out of the fridge.

2. Thou shall not cook more than 2 steaks in the pan at a time.

3. Thou shall not use anything but a searingly hot pan.

4. Thou shall not forget to let it rest for 3 minutes after cooking.

5. If thou want marination, thou shall not use citrus-based marinades.

6. Thou shalt oil the pan, not the steak.

7. Thou shalt only turn the steak over in the pan once.

Ok – first of all, we should determine which kind of steak you are;

Sirloin - medium thickness – bit of fat running through it. The Starter-Steak.

Fillet - lean, soft, melt in the mouth & in delicate portions. The Ladies – Steak.

Rib-eye - juicy, fatty, very flavourful. The Man’s Steak.

Rib of Beef/Porterhouse - huge with parts varying from soft, lean fillet, to glistening juiciness. A Real-Man’s Steak.

Strip - lean, basic – good for salads. – The Bitch-Steak.

Personally I’m a fan of all – although strip steak in the UK tends to taste like rubbery crap no matter how you ask to have them cook it for you -  whereas in NY a strip steak can be tender as you like- though still ultimately boring and relies heavily on seasoning to taste of anything.

A good tip when ordering steak in a restaurant and the way to get the best possibly tasting steak -is not to ask for rare/medium-rare etc – just ask for ‘whatever the chef thinks is best’. (That is unless you’re very squeamish and can’t abide the possible sight of animal blood – in which case you shouldn’t really be eating meat at all.) The chef knows the meat he bought that day better than you do. He knows whether it’s a bit on the marbly-side so could benefit from a bit more heat – or if it’s so lean and red that a quick dash on either side will do it up right.

Trust me – you will end up with the best possible version of your steak this way.

But here’s how to do a steak at home;

1. Coarse/kosher salt & black pepper on both sides.
2. Make sure that pan is so hot that you can barely hold your hand over the top of it.
3. Put in that steak. Sear once on one side turn on 2.5 minutes on each side – then finish in the oven @ 250 degrees c / 350 f / Gas Mark 5

We’re going to work on the assumption that your steaks are about 3cm thick here.  If they’re thicker/thinner – take a minute off or add a minute to each 1cm of thickness;

• Rare – no need for the oven
• Medium Rare – 2 mins in the oven
• Medium – 4 mins in the oven
• Done – 5 mins in the oven
• Well-Done – 6 mins in the oven

If you’re unsure about how to test the doneness of your steak – this thumb-test is invaluable;

• Pinch your thumb and index finger together like you’re making an O.K sign, and now prod the fleshy pad below the thumb with your other hand – the same amount of give in the meat indicates a rare steak.
• Now touch your thumb to your middle finger – prod it with your other thumb -this is the equivalent of medium rare.
• Pressing your thumb on your ring finger is medium.
• And with almost no give at all, your thumb on little finger = well done.

Now you MUST let it rest for at least 3 minutes before you cut into it. Otherwise – no matter how nice a steak you bought, you’re gonna end up with a tough rubbery mess.

Sauce that steak up – using any of the steak-sauces I talked about yesterday.

Now – don’t just look at it. Eat it.

You should eat steak. A lot. Why am I telling you this? Because I’m the newly appointed  Steak Ambassador for Great Britain.

Yeah, I am.

So here’s how you should eat some steak;

You should eat it with Bearnaise Sauce

• 1 small shallot, finely chopped
• 1 tsp chopped fresh tarragon
• 4 tbsp vermouth
• 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 175g unsalted butter
• 3 egg yolks, at room temperature (very important)

1. Put the shallot, tarragon, 4 tbsp water, vermouth and white wine vinegar in a small pan. Boil for 2–3 minutes to reduce by a third. Once strained, you should have about 3 tbsp. Cool slightly.
2. Melt the butter in a pan over a slow heat, until foaming. Continue to cook for 1 minute, or until the foam turns whiteish; skim the white gunk and discard. Allow the butter to cool a tiny bit– you should just be able to dip your little finger in.
3. Whiz the egg yolks and reduction in a blender, or use a hand-held blender. Slowly add the butter in a thin, steady stream, whisking until a light sauce forms. When I say slowly – I mean with a GLACIER’S EFFING PATIENCE – if you’re unsure, just drip, drip, drip the butter in. If you rush it or get impatient and do it too quickly your sauce will split and it will be ruined. True story. When it’s looking like a nice, thick gloopy sauce. Stop.
4. Season with salt and white pepper. Add a little more chopped tarragon. Serve warm.
5. When re-heating, reheat gently over a hob – not in the microwave – bad things will happen. Ask @VikkiChowney. Seriously that sucked so much we had to drink an entire bottle of tequila. It’s true. That happened. <———-

You should also eat it with some Basil Butter

• 5 tbsp chopped fresh Basil
• 150g Salted Butter

1. Chop basil finely.
2. Chop some butter at room temperature into small cubes.
3. With a fork, mash the basil into the butter until it’s well mixed through – try not to overwork it though.
4. Roll into a roll.
5. Place in the fridge to re-set for about 20 mins.
6. To serve – slice a circle off the roll to melt over your steak

You should *definitely* eat it with Creamed Spinach.

• 4 blocks Spinach
• 300ml Double Cream
• 1 tsp Celery Salt
• 1 tsp Nutmeg
• Grated Parmesan

1. Boil some spinach – in this case, frozen spinach is actually preferred to fresh.
2. Once it’s cooked – drain this throughly. and return the spinach to the pan over a very, very low heat.
3. Now you add the cream. Stirring constantly.
4. Now add celery salt
5. Then the nutmeg and now continue to cook for another 2 minutes stirring constantly.
6. Now, take it off the heat and grate the parmesan into the mixture. Add a little pepper.
7. Now don’t just look at it. Eat it!

Also, it just dawned on me that some of you may not know how to cook a steak. If this is the case -  come back here tomorrow and we’l talk about how to do that.

Seriously.

• I love granola with cold semi-skimmed milk in bed watching Entourage.
• I love granola sprinkled over berries with dollops of tart greek-yogurt next to the pool.
• I love granola in handfuls, dry, out of the packet sitting on my yoga-mat where I should be doing stomach-crunches instead of watching Project Runway.
• I love granola so much I wanna play it a Marvin Gaye album, cook it a nice steak dinner, pour it a glass of red-wine, gently blow in its ear and whisper it all the dirty things I want to do to it*.

Too far…?

The thing with granola though – is that mess’ll make you gain weight faster than a Man Vs. Food tour! I know it’s marketed as a healthy hand-clappy breakfast, but it’s basically dessert. Don’t believe me? Read the back of a granola packet next time you’re in the supermarket; ‘ Raw Cane Sugar, Vegetable oil, molasses, high-fructose corn syrup (!) sugar, treacle, 68g’s of carbs per serving, 400 cals a bowl and 2g of fibre’ Yeah – sounds like dessert to me. It’s sugar, more sugar and some more carbs. That’s dessert!  But don’t worry – everybody just be cool – I got you.

Combining about…3 different recipes, I figured out a way to replace all that bloody sugar and oil that you need to bind it – with egg-whites and agave nectar which is low-GI and oh so good for you.

Here’s my recipe for granola which won’t make you fat and is full of things that give you gorgeous skin and shiny hair, just like that bitch-of-lies on the Special-K commercials…

*Other things I love so much I want to get them pregnant. Brindisa’s chorizo burger, the Grassfed burger at Diner, Aubrey Plaza, White-truffle butter on toast, Gap 100% cotton briefs, Dr Perricone cold-plasma eye-cream.

Sexy Granola Recipe

• 5 cups rolled oats
• 2 cups raw almonds, brazil nuts, pecans, walnuts.
• 1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds
  
• 1/3 cup flaxseed meal (ground flaxseed)
• 1/3 cup linseeds
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3 large egg whites
• 3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 3/4 cup agave nectar
• 1/3 cup olive oil or other neutral oil
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 150 C.
2. Combine the oats, nuts, seeds, flaxseed meal, and spice in a large bowl.
3. Whisk the egg whites and the salt in a medium bowl until frothy.
4. Whisk in the agave, vanilla extract & oil until blended.
5. Add egg white mixture to the oat mixture; stir until to dry ingredients, and stir until the oats are evenly coated.
6. Spoon and spread the mixture onto two baking sheets.
7. Bake 20 minutes, then gently flip with a spatula, moving granola from the outer edges to the center of the sheet.
8. Bake 8-10 minutes longer until golden. (If the granola starts to brown too much at the edges, gently stir those parts into the middle.)
9. Cool completely on pan.
10. Put on a Marvin Gaye record, make it a nice steak dinner and get it pregnant.* Or – have it with yogurt in front of X-Factor like I did above.

Also, I have mostly just been going out to a lot of really nice restaurants instead of cooking.
Highlights have been Prime Meats in Carroll Gardens, Blue Hill in the West Village, Bozu in Williamsburg, Hix at Browns Hotel, and Lord Almightly…Gordon Ramsay at Hospital Road. <Insert Food-Sex-Noise Here>

However, I’m back in the game now – literally, it being game-season, and will be bringing all kindsa meat all up in your face. Speaking of game -Hix at Browns was a real treat, not only due to the great, gamey menu, but the company. Ok. Confession time. Usher style:  I have one of those really weird, rare and odd things – one of those things that should be on a shelf behind glass in the Wellcome museum. Studied and regarded with curiosity and suspicion – I have a best-friend who is my ex-boyfriend. I know right?

Funnily enough, the demise of our relationship can quite literally be documented in dishes- reading my old kitchen-diary, I can tell you that it started with 3AM shots of Campari and cheese-crusted oysters, started downhill from a lemon-risotto and finally ended with salt-cod fritters and home-made aioli.

What can I tell ya? Food formed a very big part of our relationship – like anyone’s I suppose. In those heady early days when you’re trying to impress your lover with your culinary prowess – (I recall a lot of ‘towers-of-things’), meals in bed (because food=shagging), comely meals when he returns home from weeks away whilst you languish bored at home being a 21 year old house-wife (Yeah, that was dull. Shocker.), and the plates of paella that you want to throw at his cocking head because for the 4th night running he has eaten something you had spent ages making for him because he asked you, to have him not say thank-you and simply pass out hungover snoring on the sofa whilst you watch the stupid movie that he picked out (Flash Gordon, ahem.) alone, again!

However, somehow…through the wreckage of our break-up something miraculous happened – we ended up being best-friends again.

Partly, I think we were just very lucky – but dammit – we worked at it too. And it wasn’t easy – At first you have the obligatory snide-comments (both), anger and remorse about giving up so much of your career (me), followed by a stint in rehab (him). Then wanting to punch his face when he ‘gifts’ you ‘The God Delusion’ in response to you telling him that you’ve started going to a Synagogue again. Succeeded by the boyfriend that he h.a.t.e.s. BUT! But, still very kindly tries to hang out with. And then even more kindly, when said boyfriend inevitably turns ass-head, never once says ‘I told you so’.

It was at that point that I could safely say that we’d done running the gauntlet – that we were finally just the friends we’d been right from the start.

Now we meet up as often as we can, ALWAYS over food, we gas endlessly about our lives, our enormous group of friends, our jobs, the world and I am guaranteed to walk away with the warmest heart and tears rolling down my face from laughing so hysterically. The other month at Quo Vadis I literally shot merlot out of my nose remembering a story about a party we had at our old house. I’d share the story but I suspect you’d be about as amused as the sommellier was at the time.

We’ve now been broken up as many years we’d been together, and it’s weird – I don’t actually remember us as a couple. I remember living with my best-mate, drinking a lot of really nice booze, eating wonderfully every day and laughing, laughing, laughing.

But mostly, mostly – I remember these chips;

Matt’s  (quite-possibly-the-best-in-the-world-modified-slightly-by-me-because-I-can’t-leave-well-enough-alone-and-undermine-at-every-goddamn-turn-and-you-wonder-why-I-say-I-feel-completely-immasculated) Chips. 

•  Maris Piper potatoes
• Groundnut / Peanut Oil  

1. Preheat oven to 100
2. Cut some chips. Chunky chips are best here, not ‘frites’.
3.  Bring to the boil in salted water and leave them there for maybe 5 minutes- they should still be firm when you take them ouy.
4. Drain chips, scuffing them together a little as you go to make them fluffy- again, it’s important that they’re still relatively firm or they’ll just fall apart.
5.  Stick them in the oven until they’ve dried out a bit on the outside.
6.  Take them out of the oven to cool down some.
7.  Fry those suckers- in small batches to make sure the oil stays very hot.
8.  Store batches in the oven as you go.
9.  Leave the first couple of batches slightly undercooked so they don’t over-cook in the oven before the last batch comes out.
10.  Salt liberally.

These should be eaten in white-bread with real salted butter and ketchup. In front of a movie you didn’t pick and hate, with a friend you really couldn’t do without and thankfully don’t have to.

POW! Here are a few of my all-time favouite Barbeque recipes!

They’re all mega-easy and less than 5 steps. Come now – you’ve got more important things to do at a BBQ than cook. Hey – cold Corona’s need drinking and that Easy Star All Stars album isn’t gonna find itself!

Idi Amin Chicken

Before you say anything…I can’t remember why this is called Idi Amin Chicken. I think I may have come up with it after watching Last King of Scotland, but that’s what it has always been referred to in my cook-book. I do however, believe this may be the first dish inspired by genocide.  (Schindler’s Brisket anyone?)

• Spatchcocked Chickens
• marinade
• Soy Sauce 1/3 Cup
• Juice of 1 Lemon
• Worcester Sauce 1/3 Cup
• Chilli 1 Chopped Finely
• Garlic 4 cloves minced
• Sesame Seeds 2 tbsp
• Corriander fresh chopped 1 handful

1. Quanities are per-large-chicken, so adjust accordingly.
2. Mix all the marinade ingredients in a bowl.
3. Pour over the chicken and rub in, pushing as much as you can of the ingredients into the nooks, crannies and under the skin.
4. Leave for about an hour.
5. Cook it.
6. You can either do this on a BBQ, or you can slow-cook this whereby it becomes beautifully fall off the bones succulent but with perfect crispy skin. 2hrs on 80 degrees. Also when you slow-cook it it makes the house smell unbelieveably delicious. Kind of sweet, caramelly and spicy.

Fish Parcels

• White-Fish – Cod, Monkfish, Sea bass, Halibut, etc.
• Wafer thin slices of Lemon
• Chilli
• Basil
• Rosemary
• Drop of Olive Oil
• Tin-Foil

1. Cut a few squares of tin-foil big enough to make parcels with
2. Line the bottoms with finely sliced lemons
3. In a separate bowl mix the chopped white-fish,chopped basil, peppercorns, chopped chilli and olive-oil.
4. Put fish on top of the lemons and season with a little salt.
5. Close up the parcels and place on the bbq with a few teeny tiny holes in the bottom to let the smoke in and the moisture out.
6. You can also do this with sardines, mackerel.

Lamb Chops

• Mini Lamb-Chops
• Basil
• Garlic
• Olive-Oil
• Juice of 1/2 a lime
• Salt
• Pepper

1. Very, very finely chop the basil
2. Add it to the minced garlic and freshly cracked pepper
3. Add a 1/2 cup of Olive-Oil and the lime-juice.
4. Mix well and leave to sit at room-temp for an hr to stew
5. Cover the lamb-chops in it Cook ‘em!

Now, I know none of you would be stupid enough to invite a vegetarian to a BBQ (I jest, I jest, I love you veggies…and your cold dead hollow eyes…) so here’s some salad recipes for you too.  I can’t ever be chuffed with really complicated dressings, I always think you can’t go wrong with vinegar/citrus a bit of oil and some herbs.

Lentil Feta Rocket

This salad is amazers – and my Tanya Lacey’s favourite. As she’s in LA recording her stuff I wanted to send her some Kitchen-Love.  (Although I might secretly go and visit her next week, but shhhhh… don’t tell her interwebz!)

• Puy Lentils
• Feta
• Peas
• Rocket
• Parsley
• Oilive Oil
• Lemon Juice
• Balsamic Vinegar

1. Bring the lentils to the boil and then down to medium for about 15 mins or until tender. DO NOT add salt to the water as this makes the skins stay hard.
2. Drain and rinse in cold water – set aside.
3. In a bowl add chopped feta cheese, rocket and parsley.
4. Now add the lentils and mix together.
5. Now add a healthy glub of Olive Oil and squeeze half a lemon and 2 tbsp’s of balsamic.
6. Mix together and you’re done.

Chickpea King Prawn

• Chick-Peas
• Oilive Oil
• Lemon Juice
• Red Onion
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Corriander
• King Prawns

1. Halve the cherry tomatoes, thinly slice the red-onion into half- crescents, finely chop the corriander.
2. Put everything together in a bowl.
3. Squeeze the lemon over the top with a drizzleof Olive Oil
4. Season with a bit of salt & lots of black pepper

Chocolate Fondue

You will need a PYREX Glass bowl here or something equally oven-proof – cleaning broken glass and melted chocolate off the patio is a No Bueno!

• Milk-chocolate – dark-ish though
• Cream
• Chopped hazelnuts
• Amaretto

Put all ingredients in a bowl, stir it around as it melts. It’s not rocket-science, yeah.

What to dip in it;

• Banana’s grilled on the bbq in a bit of tin-foil
• Sponge-Fingers
• Meringues
• Strawberries
• Orange segments

Or, if you’re just super-baked at this point (What? You thought I didn’t know that stoners account for around 50% of my readership? I see you Gunter/Josh/Pierre…) bits of crusty white-bread that you grill on the bbq, with an ice-cold glass of milk. Scratch that – a White Russian. Trust me, ‘The Dude’ would want it that way.

Nana’s Jerk Chicken

….Hah! Puhleeease. She wouldn’t give that recipe up to the Gestapo, so it SURE as hell isn’t making it on my poxy little blog.

Although, saying that –  if you are an In Real Life chum of mine –  Nana Joy will make you your very own jar if you ask nicely.

As you know, she accepts wine, champagne and general compliments about her hair and/or outfit as payment.

Really, I honestly think the only reason I get invited to BBQ’s is because I’m guaranteed to bring some of her seasoned goodies with me. And I’m ok with that.

Oh, and by reading this post you hereby agree to invite me to your BBQ if you cook any of these dishes.  Sincerely Cam. x

Nope, not Christmas, It’s the 2010 Salon des Vingerons Independents!!!

• 1000 Independant Vineyards.
• 10 wines per vineyard
• 2 girls
• 2 wine-glasses

If you like wine -  even just a little bit – it truly is the most fun 5 days in the world! Lemme break it down for you; For 6 Euros, it’s all the wine you can taste, and then you can buy whatever you fancy – if you fancy – direct from the growers, at a heavily reduced price.

Fantastic crusty warm baguettes rammed full of thick marbled wedges of foie-gras, Jamon et fromage for 6Euros. Ooh! Freshly popped and warmed tins of cassoulet -  Trust me, you need this animal fat to galvanise your liver whilst you’re in the midst of this epic wine-gauntlet.

Meet Steve ———> 

If you are not – it is awesome-sauce. This isn’t your regular grocery store, nor is it a fancy-pants over-priced Whole-Foods or Citarella situation. First of all – it’s has two floors -the top one is the Organic stuff, and downstairs has everything else. Hot counter, deli-counter, lox-counter, cheeses, grind your own coffee, in-house pasta-sauces, a fish counter and more obscure cuts of meat than you can shake a vegan at. And when I say that they have everything you could want – I mean it – from edible flowers, black-truffle flecked chevre, 3 kinds of in-house garlic-butter, 2 kinds of pastrami-smoked salmon,  and their soups. Oh Em Gee…Fairway’s soups… Completely the opposite to the terminally rubbish Zabars soups, which somehow manage to make both the lobster-bisque AND the carrot-soup taste exactly the same (I imagine not in part to do with putting gallons of tofu-cream in everything).

Now, there’s this glorious Hot Cucumber concoction, which with yoghurt and a touch of chilli basically tastes like hot tzatziki – and oh man I miss it like the clappers.

I miss Fairway in general – I mean, what’s not to love about a store where you can rock up at 1am 4-mohijto’s tipsy and fill up a basket that contains Truffle-butter, Marmite, an armful of Samphire, some instore made spelt cereal or vodka-sauce, freshly squeezed pomegranate juice and some guilty-pleasure frozen corn-dogs (and a tin of Heinz Spaghetti Soup for the home-sick).

I honestly don’t know why Fairway doesn’t dominate over the landscape of discerning grocery-stores in New York. Reasonably priced, specific, specialist ingredients, excellent in-house cooks, and well sourced produce.

I’ll just say it – Zabars can suck it. Dean & Deluca can suck it. And Whole-Foods…ok – so you have the ‘good’ guacamole however, at £6 ($13) a tub and the fact that the epic queue’s at Columbus Circle could quite feasibly make Nelson Mandela think wistfully think of his days on Robben Island as calm sweet relief – You can go suck it too.

Anyway – in homage to Fairway -here’s some Cucumber, Pea & Coconut soup which I invented the other night for Miss Nadia (@herrdirector) – a fellow disciple of the holy church of Fairway and general UWS food face.

Hot Cucumber Soup

• 1/2 a White Onion, diced                                              
• 3 sticks celery, finely chopped
• 2 tbs Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1/2 bag of frozen peas
• 1/2 a cucumber, diced
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1/2 green chilli

1. Sweat the onion and celery in the olive-oil until soft and golden.
2. Add the cucumber, the chopped chilli and then sweat some more.
3. Add the peas until ‘just’ defrosted, and then cover in 1/2 a pint of hot water. Boil for 5 mins.
4. Add the coconut milk. Simmer for 5 mins.
5. Add the rest of the peas and turn off the heat.
6. Get your hand-blender out and pulverise that hot- mess.
7. Garnish with a couple of slices of cucumber and a swirl of olive-oil if you can be chuffed.