Food – Page 14 – slightly weird

20th April 2018

A visit to Haggerston

Friday, 20 April 2018

Summer heat has hit London. Temperatures are hitting as high as 28C for several days.

The difference this has made to the tree outside in the window in just a few days is remarkable!

The tree on Monday... — **The tree on Monday….**

...and on Thursday — **…and on Thursday**

Yesterday was an eventful day for me – unintentionally. Here follows a rambling account.

First I went to the doctor only to find out that my test results (expected two weeks ago) have still not arrived. sigh. But I had other things to do. I had to complete a sleepiness study to get back into the sleep clinic at St Barts hospital. and I asked about anxiety meds. Briefly – the doctors here have been refusing to give me Clonazepam despite my very good history with it. Every now and again I restate my case to get them. so I gave it another shot. He asked me questions and then said he was convinced that I should have it but needed to bring it up at the doctor meeting they had later that day. (He called me back to say the doctors said they also agreed but he had to now run it past the psychiatric arm of their practice. progress!)

Also I asked about the shingles shot and risks and benefits and they booked me in to see the practice nurse. she was one i’d seen before and really liked. so we chatted a bit and I got my shot, which instantly hurt like crazy – normal, she said. so far so good! feel OK. Arm a bit sore, was a bit tired but that’s not unusual these days.I then had to jump on a bus to get to my appointment at the volunteer office.

Chapter of accidents follows:

got in the bus
realised I was on the wrong one when it took the ‘wrong’ turn – got about three stops into the wrong route
walked the half mile to the road where I could get the right bus
knees hurt so waited ten minutes for a connecting bus
arrived 45 mins late!
told that I was in the wrong location for my appointment
walked with the receptionist another 1/4 mile to the right location
arrived an hour late!

Stupid thing is that if i’d realised where I should have been, there would have been no need for that connecting bus or the wait for it. Duh.

Anyway, Jane (the woman I had to see) told me that Shahanaz was already there. Shahanaz is the Muslim woman I’ve become friends with – one of those things where you are in a new group of people and somehow you end up becoming friends with the one you would least have expected! And the three of us had a great chat, most of which arose from Jane seeing my birth certificate and being fascinated with all the details. (it was an ID checking session). Jane mentioned that she had been to the Princelet synagogue one year and fell in love with it. Shahanaz was really intrigued by Jane’s story and asked me if I could take her. then Jane said we *must* include her. this whole thing felt really warm and inclusive – and curious in that there we were, one Jew, one Muslim, and one (Irish) Catholic – and I felt like we were a new circle of friends. that would be really nice actually. Anyway, the next open house is 10 September so I may not be in London but…

After the ID session, Shahanaz asked if we could go next door to the Waterhouse cafe – the place that catered our volunteer training sessions. This turned out to be a lovely space with a patio overlooking the canal.

I really enjoyed the brunch (poached egg with smoked salmon and asparagus) and Shahanaz asked if we could try a new coffee – she is discovering the world of coffee (sheltered!) through me. We chatted about our lives and then left to get home. When we got to Dalston Shahanaz remembered she had left her bag (with passport etc) in the cafe so she had to turn back. I came home and had a restful day.

My cheese is a week or two away from being ready to eat and my new dollies are enjoying the sun!

**Hoping the blue is the left one because that’s the one I pierced to encourage the blue veins**

18th April 201820th April 2018

Dim Sum adventures

Wednesday, 18 April, 2018

A return visit for dim sum at Shikumen was in store. We did a fair amount of walking and it was hot! Shikumen is having a four for £10 lunch. We’ll go back and try four different ones before the promotion ends.

**A beautifully crafted vegetable dumpling**

The foru for £10 dim sum lunch. Missing are the chicken gyoza — **The four for £10 dim sum lunch. Missing are the chicken gyoza**

I wanted to check out the new bar that overlooks the city so we took the lift up to the fourteenth floor but were foiled. It goes as far as floor 13 and then you see a notice: You have to come up from the ground floor and be escorted. Are they keeping the riffraff out? I’m coming back at night when it’s open, to have a silly cocktail and take photos before the light fades.

A bit more walking in the heat followed. I wished I had on my summer clothes, which are packed away from last year.

**At the south side of Bethnal Green Road time stands still**

Home to a nice cool shower!

9th April 20189th April 2018

Cheese! A new friend, Mare Street Market, Aunt Kay, and another doll

Monday, 29 April, 2018

The cheeses I made are coming along. I had a terrible time trying to work out which cheese was the blue one since they both have blue mould. I don’t want to think that they are both blue now but I did in the end pierce the bluest looking one (at the bottom) and will hope for the best. The French cheese meanwhile is ready I suppose and I need to leave it at room temperature, perhaps on Thursday. It looks a bit crispy to me but who knows! It may end up to have a soft oozy heart!

**The white and the blue cheese at three weeks**

I may have made a good new friend, Shahanaz from my Bump Buddies course. I’m quite fascinated by how different she is. It’s the first time I’ve had an intimate conversation with a Muslim woman, at least one who wears a scarf and conforms somewhat to her culture. And yet she speaks very openly, swears more than I’d expect, and has very quirky and non conformist ideas. She wanted to try ‘real coffee’ so our first venture – one of many, I hope – was to Pacific Culture Club. We each ordered a brownie and she insisted we also share an almond croisant. The brownies were the fudgiest I’ve had in London but the croissant was nowhere near as good as the ones I’ve had in Toronto.

I was explaining to Shahanaz that I had bad hair days almost all the time and that I sometimes just wanted to cover my hair like she does. She admitted that it was good she could cover her hair and not worry what it looked like but then smiled and said ‘but I have bad scarf days!’ I laughed! Apparently, sometimes she can’t tie her scarf properly and just can’t get it right. She told me that on special occasions Muslim women ‘bling up’ their scarves and she had trouble doing that herself. Also a story of how one friend got a tan that was in the distinct shape the scarf framed her face with and how they had all laughed. She’s a strong and funny woman.

Speaking of coffee, I was very pleased to see that the E8 coffee van is doing OK despite Black Sheep Coffee opening just opposite his pitch.

I popped into Mare Street Market for a coffee. It was less busy than on the weekend. A good coffee but the price of cake to go with it was over the top so I stuck with just a drink and taking some photos. The menu from the Open Kitchen looks really nice, though. Intrigued by the burrata and the sundaes.

On the weekend I went to see my aunt Kay. The journey was horrific. I left the house at 9:15am in the rain and wasn’t sure I could make it to Stratford for the 10am train I had spotted going to Westcliff. I made it just fine but the platform wasn’t one I was familiar with and the board didn’t know a train to that stop. There was a platform announcement about Southend and it went so fast, I didn’t hear it properly but I did know I had to get on the train to Shenfield and change there.

When I was safely on the train I looked online, as the announcement suggested, and saw nothing about this change so I called – twice. And got nowhere. The first person was completely clueless about the names of the stations and what to do and kept insisting on giving me train info for trains that had left Stratford two hours earlier – as if I could travel in the past. I decided that the best bet was to ask at the station. I was sent over to a rail replacement bus and off we went. And went and went It was a very long journey to Southend Victoria. I started to feel quite travel sick and almost despaired of ever arriving. But we did, almost three and a half hours after I’d left my house. Only then to be told that the taxi would be a 25 minute wait.

My aunt and I went to a Chinese buffet for lunch. It wasn’t bad. We chatted and later talked quite a bit about our mutual family. My aunt is also my cousin – my first cousin once removed, or my mother’s cousin. That confuses people and sometimes make them gasp since it sounds illicit. It’s not. Simply put, Kay (my mum’s cousin) married my dad’s older brother, Eddie. It was at that wedding that my mum and dad met properly and began a courtship.

I absolutely hate going up in the lift to her place but once up there it’s a great view over the Thames estuary, where it flows into the North Sea. It fascinates me that this sea narrows down to the great River Thames and when I’m standing on the banks in London, it’s part of that body of water that I’m seeing. I suppose I’ve never thought of the rivers and seas flowing into each other, like great veins of water around the earth.

My newest doll is a bit shy despite her bright colours.

1st April 2018

Passover Shopping, Mare Street Market, and the first Seder Night

Saturday, 31 March, 2018

On Wednesday I went with Lisa to do her Passover (Pesach) shopping. We drove into North London through the back streets that she drives with great confidence. I know I will never know London like that! That morning I’d decided to wear regular shoes and set aside the boots. And I wore a sweater and a jacket. I felt free until I went out. The rain began to pour down and the wind blew and I wasn’t dressed anywhere near to appropriately. In fact, I was freezing and my day had hardly begun.

Close to where we were going we got stopped by some cops and had to park at least a five-minute cold and wet walk from where we needed to go. There had been an accident – a car had ploughed into a shop window and the whole frame was taken out. Lisa heard later that two pedestrians had been hit. I did feel like a ghoul taking a photo but anyway, I did!

In the end, we got falafels from a little place Lisa likes. I did enjoy the experience. Hot falafels were poured into bowls at the end of a long salad bar with all the usual (and unusual) falafal fixings and you helped yourself. We ate them on the go. Delicious!

But we turned back from that area. It was pointless shopping when we would have had to carry the groceries so far. We drove instead to an area Lisa had taken me before. It has the unlikely name of Temple Fortune. (This conjures up a small town in Thailand and not North London!) We shopped in one little grocery store where we bought mostly matzo. Then stopped by the bagel bakery where I got 8 little cookies and some cheesecake. They turned out to not taste very special for the price.

A cold, wet adventure! Oh, and I fell on the wet sidewalk. A lesson in not swapping boots for shoes too early in the year.

Last week I had two aborted attempts to go to Mare Street Market. The first because Instagram had led me to believe it was opening on Monday – I was greeted by a notice saying ‘Open on Wednesday.’ Then Krish and I walked over on Thursday in the rain but didn’t really stay since he couldn’t deal with the crowd and the noise. So I took a few photos and will go back between now and Tuesday, when they will still have the 50% soft launch prices. I can’t resist a bargain. Maybe I’ll even go twice!

**Some views inside Mare Street Market**

The Mare Street Market is occupying a building that used to be the housing benefit office. It was a depressing, shabby building at best. The renovations to turn it into what’s described as ‘a curated space in Hackney for eating, drinking, and shopping.’ If you click on the link above there are some photos that do this space justice but I took just a few of my own.

At 50% off, I do think I might go twice. The menus all sound fantastic and will probably seem too expensive once the soft launch ends, I assume Wednesday.

Passover was approaching and Lisa had plans to go to family this year. No invitation pending, my brother John suggested I look into a community seder. It took me a while to decide but in the end I said yes to going to the one I contacted. Continue reading

17th March 201812th April 2018

Wildes Cheesemaking workshop

Thursday, 15 March, 2018

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 Lane**

**This 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!

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 resting**

Xavier, who's from Spain and apprenticing at Wildes — **Xavier, 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 stage — **Cheeses sitting – not sure at what stage**

**Here you can see the whey separating from the curds of the soft cheese mix**

Continue reading “Wildes Cheesemaking workshop”