The tree is growing more leaves from the stumps daily. I’m taking a Monday photo each week to show its progress.
11 June18 June25 June
On Wednesday we walked to Shikumen in Aldgate. It was a long, meandering walk and sometimes it felt like we looped too much and came back not so far from our last point. I should try to map it. Just behind Broadway Market there are some interesting art pieces. I know I’ve seen this area before but not sure if the art is new. Probably not.
Repurposed phone booth
When we reached the top end of Brick Lane, we bumped into Rosie from Krish’s volunteering. We had a brief chat and then moved on.
The walk was a bit of a struggle and, at the end, our favourite dish at Shikumen the crispy prawn with garlic, chili and cashew.
Friday after the Falls Prevention exercise class, Lisa and I went to Palm Vaults, which is a vegetarian/vegan coffee shop. It’s so girly in there! I had an iced coffee and sweet-talked my way to getting half a salad. At Palm Vaults, which also has a Soho branch, there are absolutely no dairy milks for coffee and it’s card only. This is becoming more common – shops that don’t take cash. And the drinks are inventive and trendy – beetroot, lavender, rose, turmeric, teas I’ve never heard of….at a steep price!
When I was a teenager, my parents were in a supper club. In those days it meant that a group of friends, and friends of friends, got together in one person’s home once a month or so and that person would cook the meal. It seemed a great idea at the time. In London the concept of supper club is somewhat different. Continue reading “Shoreditch walks and Supper Clubs”
Today was the day I took my cheesemaking workshop. it seemed so far away when I got it as a gift from Krish over Christmas but suddenly it was time.
Lisa’s husband, Richard, had taken a cheesemaking workshop before and even showed me how he made goat’s cheese one day. So I had a bit of a clue. I knew I would be on my feet, working, in a cold environment so I was somewhat prepared.
Wildes Cheese is a small artisan cheesemaking business in Tottenham, North London – not so many miles from here. It was founded by two men, who I assumed were a couple – Philip (the kooky, extrovert one) and Keith (the quieter, gentle one). Keith was the original hobby cheesemaker and now they have a small business, operating out of a little space on an industrial estate in what’s basically a residential area.
That morning I travelled by train to White Hart Lane and began my journey to cheese.
Leaving the station at White Hart LaneThis area of Tottenham is stiflingly (for me!) suburban and residential
I’d say it was uneventful but first the station had lost power for the Oyster machine so I have to call Transport for London to claim a refund – they charge the maximum when you can’t ‘tap out’ on the Oyster machine. The second thing was taking a wrong turning (or not taking the turning) to go up to the dairy. Smooth journey, not so much.
The industrial estate was just a yard, not the sprawling expanse I expected from my Canadian experience. The space was small. An ante room where we had talks and food, Two larger rooms used for making cheese, and two small rooms that were cold rooms for cheese storage. It amazed me that they were producing such quantities of cheese from there but produce it they do!
Philip is hysterical, ribald, warmer than he likes to pretend (I’m dead inside, he said, more than once.) After tea, biscuits and an overview of the day, we went into the cheesemaking room and were put into pairs. My partner was a quiet man, whose name I didn’t know. We barely spoke a word but it worked out OK. In front of each work station were three basins, a collander, a J-cloth, a wooden spoon, a thermometer and a blue straining cloth. It looked practical and basic!
We separated out the basins and waited for our milk. The milk used here is delivered from the cow to the farmer to Wildes each morning. It’s pasteurised but unhomogenised. We got to taste the milk alongside some supermarket milk and you can bet there’s a difference!
Fresh milk! Only hours old
We ended up with three buckets of milk each, placed into its own basin of warm water to raise the temperature. The first two buckets had ten litres of milk, the third only three or four.
The buckets here have the culture added to the milk and are now restingXavier, who’s from Spain and apprenticing at Wildes
The apprentice, Xavier, was weighing and packing cheese over in the corner. The little jars you see contain the bacterial culture (‘the mother’) that determines the type of cheese that will be produced. The granulated cultures we used were for a hard white cheese, a blue cheese, and a French-type cheese. These granules were added into the milk and much stirring and checking milk temperature followed – it can’t go below 30C.
In the other room we looked at a soft cheese that was developing for us to use later. And we saw some of the harder cheeses sitting for us to check out. There was also a large heated vat where Philip told me they stored the milk that was delivered. No need for other storage.
Cheeses sitting – not sure at what stageHere you can see the whey separating from the curds of the soft cheese mix
There are two kinds of people – those who eat to live (I was one of these until I was perhaps 19) and those who live to eat (this is me now).
My mother was a good-enough cook. There was nothing fancy in her repertoire. She made an amazing roast beef and yorkshire pudding, although looking back I imagine the beef would be too well-done for me now. There were old British favourites, such as pease pudding cooked with boiled gammon, meat pies, sausages (usually with liver and bacon) in a tomato onion gravy…and the Jewish favourites of chicken soup with lokshen (noodles) and cold things like pickled or salted herring.
When I was 14 I went with my sister on a holiday experience with a French family. Only French was spoken. I wasn’t keen on the food, which came in courses and was ridiculously formal. In my later teens I travelled alone a bit, in London and in Liverpool, and tried a bunch of things, now familiar but then exotic – pasta and pizza come to mind. Then when I was 19 I went back to France – to visit my cousin in Paris – at 19 she was already married with a baby – and really discovered food. I no longer remember what we ate but it intrigued me. There was such a mix of simple flavours but nothing was accidental.
That’s when I learned to cook.
Food we ate at home last week – Vietnamese grilled chicken, a simple lunch plate for 2, West Indian chicken curry with raita
In Toronto I found cooking classes that fulfilled everything on my wishlist. Each person with their own cooking station, each person preparing their own food, enough to taste, enough to take home for at least one amazing meal, a great chef-teacher, great back up and help from their assistant, a stool for when my legs got tired, interesting and varied menus… This was the Calphalon brand. I attended as many as I could afford. While the quality changed over the years, I kept going back. And then they closed. No class since has been as good.
In London I haven’t found the same but Atelier des Chefs isn’t bad. The main differences are: No individual cooking stations, much of the preparation done as a team, no guarantee you can eat your own food. All minuses in my opinion but I’m trying to enjoy this experience on its own merits.
I had the slowest bus in the East going to the class and thought I’d be extremely late. Just getting out of my neighbourhood took half an hour, whereas it usually takes five to ten minutes. We crept along but got there in the end.
One of my favourite views in The City – from the Royal ExchangeCreeping along behind another bus, finally The Gherkin ahead
