Sushi making – is it really that difficult?

Do you love sushi? Me too. But do you think it looks like the sort of complicated thing you’d never be able to make at home without several years of Tokyo-based culinary training? So did I, until I went to a sushi-making class in west London and discovered it’s not so difficult after all.

The class was booked via a Groupon offer as a birthday present for my housemate Alicia, a foodie if ever there was one. The four of us went along to Suzu, a Japanese restaurant in Hammersmith and joined a class of about 15 people, lead by chef Makiko Matthews. Everything was laid out on the tables for us: a sushi mat (which we got to keep), plastic gloves, oil to lube up the gloves, the sushi ingredients and some Japanese snacks and plum wine.

First, we made a classic cucumber maki roll – that’s where the seaweed is on the outside. Using the right amount of rice is key, so Makiko came round and checked our egg-sized balls, before we spread them over the seaweed sheet, placed the cucumber in the middle and rolled them up tightly using the mat. It actually wasn’t so difficult – I was expecting at least a couple of disaster students in the class but no such luck. The rice is so sticky that it dampens the seaweed and holds everything together nicely.

We were then taught how to use the terrifyingly sharp sushi knife to cut our rolls into bite size chunks. After Makiko told the story of one guy who knocked the knife off the table and caught it by the blade we were all VERY careful with it. That was probably the toughest bit actually. Makiko made the cutting look so easy, but getting even sushi pieces was difficult because the knife got caught on the sticky rice a lot.

Next up, we made ngiri sushi, which is the kind with a piece of fish on top of a ball of rice. We used salmon, pre-cut by Makiko. Again, getting the right amount of rice is important. We were told to take a ball of rice the size of a cherry tomato and bend our fingers round it to fashion it into a neat rectangle, before laying the salmon on top and gently squeezing it into place.

Finally, chef Makiko showed us how to make uramaki, the sushi rolls where the rice is on the outside, which were apparently invented in America rather than Japan. I’ve always wondered how they get the rice to stay on the outside, but it turns out it just like maki rolls, except you turn the seaweed sheet over once you’ve spread the rice on it.

We all struggled a little bit more with this one, finding that the big slices of avocado that went inside along with the salmon made it harder to roll evenly. None of us won the coveted ‘best uramaki’ prize that Makiko awarded, not that we were enraged or devastated by this, no way, not us.

So all in all, the class was really fun, and proved that sushi making isn’t as difficult as it looks. With a bit of practice I think anyone could do it. The only thing is that making sushi rice sounds like quite a time consuming process involved several different stages of washing, soaking, boiling, cooling etc. But we were given a sheet with all the instructions, so we’re thinking in my house that sometime soon we’re going to get in all the right ingredients, make a big batch and have a sushi making party.

The Groupon deal that we booked can be found here, although isn’t available right now. Or visit the Suzu website to contact them directly about sushi making classes.

This is MADD|Bringing the Thai dessert house concept to London

Have you ever been to a café that specialises in just one type of fruit? Well I hadn’t, until last week. Helen and I went to sample some of the sweet treats on offer at MADD in London’s Soho. It stands for ‘mango addiction’ – because the fruit in question is that juicy tropical delight, the mango.

MADD was opened in December 2011 by Ralph Monthienvichienchai, who originally moved toLondon from Thailand to study at UCL. In Thailand, Ralph told me, ‘dessert houses’ are really popular. They’re like the coffee shops of Europe, where friends meet to socialise and share traditional Thai sweets. He wanted to bring the concept to the UK and so MADD was born. He wants the café to ‘feel like a second home’ so it’s got a bright but cosy feel to it. With the main seating area set away from the entrance you could easily forget you’re in the middle of bustling Soho, and be distracted for hours playing Jenga or Scrabble or Uno or one of the other games that are laid out on the tables. I really like this idea – it’s better than in other places where there are a bunch of games on a shelf somewhere but you daren’t get them down. At MADD, a bit of friendly competitiveness is positively encouraged.

What about the food? Helen and I tried a sharing platter of three desserts – mango cream, which was shot through with a mango sauce; warm sticky rice topped with mango pieces (Ralph’s mum’s recipe no less); and MADD’s take on the classic English fool, you guessed it, mango fool. Clearly, if you’re not a fan of mango, you’re not really going to be a fan of MADD (although there are cupcakes and other non-mango-based desserts on the menu) but we loved everything we tried. You can also get cocktails (mango flavoured, obviously) and it’s open until 11pm weekdays and midnight on weekends so you can enjoy a bit of late night dessert and gaming action too.

MADD is located at 53 Rupert Street, Soho, London W1D 7PH. Visit the MADD website.

RECIPE | The cheat’s guide to homemade mince pies

Isn’t it so much more impressive when someone makes mince pies from scratch? When they’re straight-from-the-oven hot and don’t come in those shiny supermarket silver foil cups? But on the other hand, isn’t making pastry are bit of a chore? And who even knows how to make mincemeat at home? (Well, actually, Sophie Caldecott probably does, but she is exceptional in the kitchen.) With this conundrum in mind, last week I came up with a method that’s a bit of a cheat because it uses ready-rolled pastry and jars of mincemeat. It’s dead easy and they come out looking decidedly authentic. Whether you choose to tell your guests the truth is entirely up to you.

You will need:

1 packet ready-rolled sweet shortcrust pastry

1 jar mincemeat

Flour for rolling

Milk for glazing

2 biscuit cutters – 1 large and 1 medium

1 muffin/cup cake tin

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Work out which size of biscuit cutter to use for the bases and tops of the pies, and cut out an equal number of each out of the pastry. Re-roll the leftovers and keep cutting – I managed to get 11 mince pies in total out of one packet of pasty.

2. Grease the baking tin and gently push the pastry circles into the individual cases.

3. Spoon about a tablespoon of mincemeat into each pastry case.

4. Brush a little milk around the edge of each pastry case. This will help the base and top to stick together.

5. Place a pastry top onto each case, push down gently and press the edges together firmly by using a fork all the way round. This is important otherwise the mixture can escape when baking. Stab the tops with a fork to let the steam escape. I also added personalised letters on top for my housemates and I using leftover scraps of pastry.

6. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 15-20 mins, until they’re nicely browned on top. Et voila, quasi-homemade mince pies.

Guest post | A lesson in sloe gin making

A Sloe Gin Cobbler

Last Monday, Style & Then Some sent Katherine Gledhill to the Bombay Sapphire Blue Room at Vinopolis to learn about the art of sloe gin. She wrote this guest post to tell us all about it.

What could be better, on a freezing December evening, than a lesson in how to make sloe gin – and how to create beautiful, warming and delicious sloe gin cocktails too? Even long autumn walks in crackling orange leaves whilst picking sloes can’t beat the excitement of learning how to create beautiful flavours with the product of those dark, juicy berries.

In case you haven’t heard of this traditional winter beverage, sloe gin is gin flavoured with sloes, the berries of the blackthorn bush. Usually, it takes weeks and weeks of sugaring, shaking and stirring to allow the sloes to steep in the gin, but last week I learned a much faster way.

My tour of the azure-glowing underground wonderland of Bombay Sapphire began with a refreshing Sloeberry Fizz cockail, a fruity, spicy and delightfully fizzy little number, perfect for party-starting over the festive season.

A Sloeberry Fizz cocktail

We were led down one of the maze of passages to an underground bar for our sloe gin lesson. This method is  much faster than the traditional method of three months in a Kilner jar and it produces a bit of a lighter texture and flavour – you will need a dishwasher though.

So here’s how to make sloe gin the quick way:

1. Wait for the first frost then pick your sloes.
2. Prick with a silver fork or a spike from the bush and freeze.
3. Drink your litre bottle of Bombay Sapphire down to the level of Queen Victoria’s head.
4. Add 450g of sloes (thaw them if frozen) and 200g caster sugar.
5. Screw the cap on very tightly
6. Put the whole thing in the dishwasher for a couple of cycles (about 3 hours in total)
7. Sieve and return to the bottle
8. Make cocktails!

Then came the cocktail demonstration which was quite spectacular, with seven different sloe gin cocktails for us to taste. Tomorrow I’ll share with you a recipe for a Sapphire Sloe Berry Flip.

A Bombay Sapphire Quibble cocktail

RECIPE | Leek and potato pie

It started to actually feel like winter for me for the first time this week, weatherwise that is, and subsequently I had a craving for a big heart pie on Monday.

What’s more hearty than the double-carb bonanza of a pie with potatoes in the filling, I thought to myself, as I pooled a bunch of ingredients I had in my fridge to invent this recipe, which technically should really be called leek, potato, red onion, mature cheddar and sage pie.

Here’s the recipe and a gallery of step by step photos.

You will need:

1 packet of ready to roll puff pastry
5 tbspns plain flour
1 very large (or 2 medium) baking potatoes, chopped into 1cm cubed
2 knobs of butter
1 leek, finely sliced
1 large red onion, chopped
1 large clove of garlic, chopped
1 pint milk
Small handful fresh sage, shredded
100g mature cheddar, grated

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C and grease a deep ovenproof baking dish or pie dish with line.

1. Take a large nonstick saucepan and heat a drizzle of oil in it. Add the onions and garlic and fry for a few mins until they start to soften.

2. Add the cubed potatoes and cook on a medium heat, stirring constantly to make sure the potatoes don’t stick to the bottom of the pan (that’s why a non stick pan is important). I like to leave the potatoes unpeeled because I think it gives better texture and flavour, plus that’s where all the nutrients are apparently, right under the skin.

3. Make sure you leave the potatoes on the hear until they have started to cook through, because you don’t want to end up with any crunch raw bits when the pie comes out of the oven. Add the leeks too and keep stirring until they have softened.

4. Add a large knob of butter to the vegetables and allow it to melt, followed by a couple of tablespoons of flour and stir for a minute so the raw flour taste is cooked out. Just in case you don’t know, this flour and butter mix is called a ‘roux’ and forms the base of a roux sauce.

5. Turn down the heat and pour in about 3/4 pint of milk and stir until it thickens. Add the sage then leave the sauce on a very low heat while you prepare the pastry.

6. Roll out the pastry to a large rectangle and place it in the dish with the excess spastry hanging over the sides – this will form the top of the pie. Brush the inside edges with milk to help then stick together.

7. When the heat is turned off, stir the grated cheddar into the vegetable mixture until it is gooey and melted. Tip the filling into the pie case, fold the remaining pastry into the middle and press the edges together to form a parcel. I ended up cutting some of the excess from the top ends and patching up the middle, which I’m going to pretend is an intentional ‘rustic effect’.

8. Brush the top with more milk (this will give it a lovely texture on top) and bake for about 25 mins in the middle of the oven or until it’s golden brown and crispy.

Serve a big slab of pie with a huge dollop of Branston pickle and your choice of green veg.

Topshop-inspired rhubarb cake

Who says skinny fashion girls don’t eat? Heck, we even bake. Here’s a cake recipe I made last week which was actually inspired by fashion giant Topshop. Well, sort of.

The Topshop show space was a favourite venue of many attendees at London Fashion Week in February, and not just because it played host to standout shows from the likes of Mary Katrantzou and Michael van der Ham. The other attraction was the Topshop Cafe – located in the foyer – which doled out countless flutes of champagne and lots of sweet treats to the audience before each show. At the Fashion East show (you can read my review here) I had a piece of cake which had a gorgeous tangy rhubarb topping and a dollop of sour cream on the side.

I’d been on the lookout for rhubarb cake ever since, so when I was allocated the dessert course for my housemate Alicia’s birthday dinner last week I had a go at something similar. I adapted an American recipe I found online called Mom’s raw rhubarb cake by adding few raspberries, and judging from the dinner guests’ reactions (empty plates; murmurs of approval) it was pretty successful. So here it is, handily translated into British measurements, Katie’s raw rhubarb and raspberry cake.

You will need:

300g brown sugar
115g butter
1 egg
1/2 tsp. salt
240ml sour cream
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla extract
225g flour
200g cut rhubarb
100g raspberries

Topping:
55g cup sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg

Method:

Cream the sugar, butter, egg, and salt. Stir in sourcream, baking soda, vanilla, and flour. Add rhubarb and raspberries and beat well – don’t worry about the rhubarb being raw, it cooks through in the oven.  Pour into well-greased 9 x 13″ cake pan.  Sprinkle with topping.  Bake at 190 degrees C for 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. The mixture is quite wet because of the raw fruit so it may take a little longer.

Serve with whipped cream and a few extra raspberries and it should look something like this…