I made this fondant using the recipe from Felicity Cloake´s great series in the Guardian, and it´s the best I´ve ever made. It´s super easy to whip up, and cooks well in my little toaster oven. I just bang the heat up to ”max” and it takes about 8 minutes per fondant  Although the recipe says “Makes 2″, it makes 3 in my little silicon molds -which is just perfect: 2 for dessert and one for breakfast.

She´s doesn´t know how to play. Not with toys, people or dogs.

When I take her to the dog park she prefers lying down and having a nap to playing with other dogs. And when she does try to play with them she does this weirdo jumpy dance. The other dogs look at her like “WTF???” and walk away. Kind of reminds me of myself in a nightclub.

But. To be honest. It just wasn´t me. DiverXO has been blessed by Anthony Bourdain, and Chef David Muñoz may sport a mohawk. But that couldn´t detract from the 1980s nightclub decor and that the table next to us was loaded with high-powered corporate lawyers braying loudly and obnoxiously over their latest mega deal.

And worst of all, they don´t let you take photos

Maybe I´m just not cut out for Michelin dining, but I wish we´d gone to Insitu instead. Just around the corner from my apartment, it´s the kind of neighborhood restaurant that everyone deserves. The prices won´t break the bank and the cooking is consistently well executed, with the kind of twist that makes eating out an occasion. They have a good bread basket, which is rare in Madrid. Starters include kangaroo sushi and Iberian pork carpaccio with a blue cheese foam;  the main course of tuna served with smoke is quite the event and I refuse to share my loin of Iberian pork with anyone. If you don´t feel like fancy food then they do a mean hamburger and great risottos and lasagne. I just wish they´d bring back that pistachio cake they used to have….

The Iberian pork loin, served with sweet potato mash, tomato jam and banana chips.
Caramel crusted smoky tuna served with a sesame spinach and wonton stack and ginger foam is in the main photo.

Restaurante DiverX

Calle Pensamiento, 28

Metro: Tetuan

+34 915 700 766

Tuesday to Saturday 1pm to 3:30pm & 9pm to 11:30pm

Restaurante Insitu

Valverde 40,

Metro: Tribunal

+34 915 226 845

Monday to Thursday 13:30 – 16:30 & 21:00  onwards

He was a friend of mine, A.´s best friend since high school in Tangiers. He´s in Tunis right now, bringing him back to Paris. Lucas spoke 6 languages and was blacklisted by the Canadians for absentmindedly crossing the border with a tiny lump of hash in his pocket.  He was extremely charming , occasionally arrogant and always terribly well dressed.

I will miss him.

When I am sad I cook; always chilli con carne. It´s the perfect thing to stir bitter and salty emotions into. The last time my heart was broken all my friends, and even my physiotherapist, ended up with freezers full of chilli. But this time I couldn´t. I took my camera out for a walk instead. I took this photo because I liked the pattern, it was only this morning that I read what was written on the window.

It says “La vida nos es dada” (life is given to us).

It helped me make sense of the loss of such a hard partying friend, a compassionate human and a great photographer.

So, if you´d like to do me a favor then celebrate my friend Lucas´ life by having a drink, by telling your loved ones how much they mean to you or by taking a photo.

There is only one thing that can be done in such circumstances, I´m going to go home and make my Mum´s chicken. It´s the closest I can get to home today.

When she was a young doctor pulling night shifts with an 8 year old old fussy eater at home this is what she would make. You can usually find an odd carrot at the back of your cupboards, and spices keep forever. So the only thing she´d have to pick up on the way home was chicken thighs.

Now that I´m 34 I reduce the sauce and serve it with mash, but when I was a kid the sauce was a golden broth and it was served with cheap white sliced bread. You know, wonder bread? Or as it´s called here “Bimbo” bread? The preservative laden factory loaf that can be squished to the size of a postage stamp? Well the sweetness of the bread complements the broth perfectly, but you could serve this with pretty much any carb -rice, orzo, cous cous.

The quantities of spices I´ve specified are pretty elastic, but there is one golden rule. You must use a thick slice of real butter to make this. No, not margarine, not soja substitute, REAL BUTTER.

Serves 1

Chicken: 2 leg or thigh pieces, bone in skin off

Onion: About a quarter of a small one, or a large shallot

Ginger: About an inch, keep it in the freezer, it grates really well from frozen

Garlic: 3-5 cloves, depending on the size

Cardamom: about 7

Cloves: about 4

Cinammon: an inch

Whole peppercorns: 10

Bay leaf: a small one

Carrot: half

A thick slice of butter, about an ounce

Potato : one (this is optional)

In essence my Mum took the holy trinity of the Bengali garam masala: cardamom, cinnamon and clove and rather than roasting, grinding and frying the spices to concentrate them she uses them whole. Onion, garlic and ginger, the base of any Indian curry, play their role but rather than being fried into a sticky brown mess you cut down on time and effort by simply sweating till translucent.

First, grate your onion (use the smallest hole on your grater)  and gently fry in 2/3 of the  butter. While the onions are sweating  grate your garlic and ginger, you’ll need about equal quantities of both, roughly a tablespoon. Add to the pan.  Allow to fry until translucent, not brown. Meanwhile slice your carrot into thick rings and quarter your potato. Throw the veg into the pan with the spices and fry for another minute or two. Arrange your chicken on top of the veg and season. Add water, coming up to about 1/3 of the chicken, bring to the boil, cover, turn down the heat until just bubbling and simmer until the chicken is done (check after 30 minutes).

If you are using them, your potatoes may need a little longer, in which case fish out the carrots and chicken and keep warm while you give the potatoes a hard boil in the remaining liquid. I like to turn the potatoes into mash with a half cup of milk and a knob of butter.

Crawford market, a Norman-Gothic edifice completed in 1869 and purpotedly the first building in India to be lit by electricity is THE place in Bombay to get hard to find ingredients like figs, thai basil and the odd sheep. After showing my sister and I around the market, Shaheen hustled us off to Badshah*, to eat Falooda and Kulfi. For breakfast.

That was when I knew that this was someone I could be friends with.

How can you not like a person who feeds you ice-cream for breakfast?

An iced parfait of reduced milk and cardamom, often flavoured with saffron and pistachios Kulfi is just about the only Indian dessert that famed food writer Jeffrey Steingarten can stomach:

“Eight Indian dinners taught me that not every Indian dessert has the texture and taste of face cream. Far from it. Some have the texture and taste of tennis balls. These are named gulab jamun, which the menu described as a “light pastry made with dry milk and honey.” Rasmalai have the texture of day-old bubble gum and refuse to yield to the action of the teeth. On the brighter side, I often finished my kulfi, the traditional Indian ice cream…”

After a brief shopping tour we had lunch at Brittania & Co. It´s a somewhat dilapidated place, open since 1923 (but only for lunch), and having no website, or e-mail address. But Brittania & Co. (motto: there is no love greater than the love of eating) has been featured extensively in the international media; Saveur, Food & Wine , NYT , CNN and Frommers. To name just a few.

It´s renowned for its wallet friendly Parsee cuisine as well as its history and friendly proprieters. Bombay has a sizeable Parsee community, descendents of Zoroastrian refugees who fled persecution in Iran and settled in India. A tight knit community, they maintain their customs and traditions, such as taking their deceased to a “Tower of Silence” to be consumed by vultures, and, more luckily for us, their culinary heritage. Brittania is famous for such traditional Parsee dishes as Patra ni machchi (fish with a coriander coconut sauce), Berry Pulao (an Indian interpretation of the Iranian clasic) and Sali Chicken (chicken curry topped topped with potato matchsticks – Genius!). For dessert, I HIGHLY recommend the creme caramel.

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around Bombay in a food induced stupor, stopping for some pre-dinner snacks at Phoenix Mills (Bombay street food made to foreigner friendly hygiene standards!)…

…. and finishing with a fantastic South Indian dinner at Banana Leaf.

Shaheen, thank you so much for showing me around your city!

Brittania & Co.

Wakefield House, 11 Sprott Road,

16 Ballard Estate,

Colaba, Mumbai

Tel: 22615264

* Here is some random trivia that I found on the blog Only Mumbai. It may or may not be true, but that really doesn´t matter because it´s such a cute story:

“Badshah store is named after B. A. Badshah. He operated seven fruit juice shops in Mumbai during the early 1900s. He was a kind man and a wonderful employer. He died at a young age of 38 without any kids. In his will he left each of his seven shops with once of his loyal servants. Badshah at Crawford Market was inherited by Merwan Jehangir Irani – then manager of the place. He has employed a 12 year Iranian immigrant for cleaning help. Mr. Irani was impressed with the boy’s ethics. When the boy grew up, he married his daughter Yasmin with the boy and handed the shop over to the couple. Aspi passed away in 1996, and Yasimin ran the should with her daughter Behnaz’s husband. They also have opened a shop in Pune.”

Pizza al taglio (Calle Barco 45) is a tiny hole in the wall place,  and is probably more a foccacceria than a pizzeria. They’ll cut you a slice as big or small as you like and their crisp yet chewy thin crust bases are topped with all manner of things.

Try the pumpkin and smoked cheese, anything that has artichokes on it, and my all time favourite, the truffle pizza. They’re also one of the few places in Madrid that will go the extra mile for vegans.

The one thing they don’t have is seating. Instead they have a deal with El 13, a funky bar a few doors down that will happily allow you to enjoy your pizza with a few drinks.

ps. they also have an exceedingly cute pizza chef!