TRAVEL | Is VizEat the future of authentic local dining experiences in people's homes?

Camille's Delicious Sunday Brunch, one of the London experiences on VizEat
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It will be no surprise to regular readers of this blog, and followers of my social accounts, that my biggest motivation to travel is getting a good feed. I select my next destination based mostly on what exotic delicacies I can scoff once I get there. Closely followed by natural beauty and wildlife, enthralling cities, and how friendly the natives are. 

When I am eating on my travels, my main agenda is to experience food as authentic and local as I can find. Restaurants with tourists are generally avoided, whereas bustling tin shacks with not an English word spoken often equate to fantastic feasting. Especially if they have strip lighting. I do a lot of research beforehand, and will often try to get in touch with someone who lives there and is willing to show me round one evening, in exchange for a few beers and good chat. This worked supremely well in Mumbai, where I met up with a few people from Food Bloggers Association India. We ate well together.

The ultimate travel dining experience for me, is being invited into someone's home to eat. I've alas, never quite managed this. I was probably closest quite recently in Catania in Sicily. The host of the apartment we were staying in told us of an artist friend she had, who was currently running an exhibition in Catania, and who we should get in touch with if we fancied visiting it. The artist ended up inviting us to join her for Sunday lunch in her home, cooked by her mother (real Italian mama's pasta), which we were all damn excited about. But schedules didn't quite work out, and it alas never came to be.

the different stages of making host Camille's suggested mega brunch tower stack
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Well, I've now recently discovered VizEat, thanks to them finding me online and getting in touch. These guys connect travellers looking to share a meal or food experience with locals. Anything from cooking classes and market tours, to supper clubs and wine tastings, in over 250 cities, in a whopping 110 countries. These locals make up around 20,000 hosts around the world, who are a combination of home cooks and trained chefs, all from different backgrounds. But what everyone has in common is the love for cooking, eating, and meeting new people. My kind of crew.

I'm not entirely sure how I hadn't heard of VizEat before; I think they're well known across the continent, but less so in the UK. But now I have, I think it's such a great idea. They're all about allowing people visiting a new part of the world to make meaningful connections with those who live there. Whilst so many transactions and encounters take place online these days, maintaining the human element of travelling is mighty attractive. And I think many would agree that some of the strongest connections made between people are forged over the breaking of bread. These guys use technology to connect travellers with locals, to facilitate the simple desire of enjoying a meal with others.

brunch scenes with Sally and host Camille
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VizEat got in touch, told me about what they do, and asked if I'd like to try out an experience in my home town of London. And so, a couple of Sundays ago, myself and my good friend Sally (aka The Cafe Cat), popped over to Camille's house in West London to enjoy her 'Delicious Sunday Brunch'. Buttermilk pancakes, creamed spinach, smashed avo, mushrooms, crispy maple bacon, baked beans, wonderful Jing tea, coffee, sausages, fried eggs, homemade jams, black pudding, roasted cherry tomatoes, freshly made juices, cheese, and fruit salad - phew! It was a serious feast, and a pleasure to meet and chat with Camille, and attempt to make friends with her cat (who was less keen).

They also allowed me to run an Instagram competition for one of my readers to win a VizEat experience, in the city of their choice, for two people worth up to 150 Euros or equivalent. Which was very generous of them. Congrats again to the winner, Roxii!

It turns out that VizEat is now the world’s most popular meal sharing platform, and has been called the future of dining by travel and tech commentators (Apple CEO Tim Cook recently joining an event on his latest trip to Paris). Now that I know it exists, I will, without question, be checking out what's on offer next time I'm in a new city. Which is in fact next week.. Best get on it.

the finished mega brunch tower stack - buttermilk pancakes topped with truffle pesto, avocado, creamed spinach, mushrooms, cheese, bacon; topped with a fried egg; furnished with sausage, black pudding, roasted tomatoes and baked beans 

Note: This is a sponsored post in partnership with VizEat. I'm thrilled they found me and that I now know about them. It's been great fun and a pleasure to collaborate on. All views remain my own, as always.

RECIPE | Pasta with chestnuts, mushrooms and a parsley pesto

pasta with chestnuts, mushrooms and a parsley pesto, paired with Veuve Clicquot's Extra Brut Extra Old

Here's a pasta recipe I think you might all want to try. Assuming you like mushrooms, that is. Fun fact: I really used to dislike mushrooms as a child; now they are one of my all time favourite ingredients. I always gravitate towards a mushroom dish when choosing from a menu, or mushrooms in my kitchen. Hooray for acquired tastes!

cooking up the feast - note that amazing
hunk of Parmigiano Reggiano

The nice folk over at champagne maison Veuve Clicquot challenged me to pair a dish with their latest bottle of bubbles, their Extra Brut Extra Old. This new cuvée is drawn from the maison’s famous collection of reserve wines, which is in fact one of the largest in Champagne. 

Whereas Veuve Clicquot's famous Yellow Label bottles are made up of 35-40% of reserve wines, 100% of Extra Brut Extra Old is made from reserve wines, from six different vintages –  1988, 1996, 2006, 2008 and 2010. All the wines have been aged for a minimum of three years in stainless-steel vats, then matured for at least a further three years in bottle in Veuve Clicquot’s cellars. 

The tasting notes go well with mushrooms and nuts, so I honed in on those two ingredients to make a very tasty pasta dish: linguine with chestnuts, mushrooms and a parsley pesto. It's in fact a much loved and used (by me) recipe from Delicious Magazine, and as I'd hoped, pairs fantastically well with the Extra Brut Extra Old bubbles.

You can find the recipe below if anyone fancies giving it a go; it's supremely easy, and a nice alternative to standard pesto. I bought those stellar mushrooms from Borough Market, but feel free to use chestnut mushrooms if they're easier to find. Please note from my pictures: the fabulously sweaty hunk of 36 month old Parmigiano Reggiano I brought back from Bologna and used with wild abandon in the pesto. Oh yes.

Pasta with chestnuts, mushrooms and a parsley pesto

Serves 4

stunning 'shrooms
from Borough Market

Ingredients
35g pack peeled and cooked chestnuts (I use Merchant Gourmet)
2 garlic cloves
4 tbsp chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
1 tsp lemon juice
125ml extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for frying
20g Parmesan, finely grated, plus extra for serving
Large knob of butter
250g mushrooms, sliced
350g pasta (I used linguine)

In a food processor, blitz the chestnuts, garlic, parsley, lemon juice and some seasoning to a course paste. Slowly add the oil as it continues blitzing, then stir through the cheese.

Heat a splash of oil and a knob of butter in a frying pan over a medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and fry for around five minutes until golden.

In the meantime, cook the pasta in a pan of boiling water until al dente. Drain and add to the pan the mushrooms are in, including a splash of the cooking water. Add the pesto to the pan too, and toss everything together whilst still on a low heat. Serve, and top with more Parmesan.

Tip: if you're enjoying this with Veuve Clicquot's Extra Brut Extra Old, I'd recommend keeping your champagne glasses in the freezer to frost up a little first, before pouring the bubbles. What a fab dinner - enjoy!

definitely had at least one cheeky glass while cooking this

Note: This is a sponsored post in partnership with Veuve Clicquot. It's been great fun and a pleasure to collaborate on - not to mention all the lovely bottles of bubbly they sent over. All views remain my own, as always.

How to be a part of the global voice of opinion with YouGov

getting opinionated on
YouGov over breakfast

What do Londoners like most and least about living in London? Would people support raising National Insurance to fund the NHS? How many hours of box sets are Brits happy to watch in any one setting? What do people across Europe and Asia think of America for electing Donald Trump?

All interesting questions, right? And likely ones you have opinions on too. These are just a handful of examples of the types of surveys you can find on YouGov, the global community of over 5 million people across 38 countries, who share their opinions on... well, everything.

The nice people over at YouGov got in touch with me to let me know what they're about, and why it's a good idea to sign up and participate in their online surveys. Great if you are, like me, of the opinionated persuasion. Or you like the idea of helping shape public opinion - anything from favourite brands, to government policy. And YouGov are the most quoted research company in the UK, so your opinions will help make the headlines too. Plus, you can redeem points for real cash and prize draws for the surveys you fill in. 

YouGov members share their opinions all day every day, all around the country. YouGov then analyse that information and publish select findings on their website on a daily basis. They call their database the YouGov Cube, and they're pretty certain it's the largest daily updated record of people's habits and opinions in existence.That's quite impressive.

Joining is free and quick and you can do so here. I did, and shared some thoughts on the state of global politics over this epic breakfast spread ✌️ 

my favourite thing about
London are the views 💙

Here are the answers to those first few questions: history comes out on top when Londoners were asked what they liked most about living in London, with cost of housing and living coming out on the bottom; the majority of people would support a raise in National Insurance to fund the NHS, Brits are happy to watch four hours or more of box sets; and people across Europe and Asia now have a lower opinion of America and Americans because of Trump. Quelle surprise (!)

Note: This is a sponsored post in partnership with YouGov, as part of their campaign to encourage people to register on their website, and take part in some surveys! 

RECIPE: Mumbai vada pav with chutneys, and a fried egg

vada pav, with a fried egg!

I LOVE EGGS. The world loves eggs. Instagram especially loves eggs - how can anyone resist a bit of golden #yolkporn? It's hard, so most of us can't. 

If you were to ask my favourite standalone ingredient ever, I may well say the humble egg; possibly the single most versatile food item that has ever existed. All hail its simplicity and mighty existence, and just how well it goes with tapenade.

To celebrate British Egg Week taking place from 10th - 17th October, the lovely people from British Lion Eggs have collaborated with Farang London chef Seb Holmes, to come up with some tasty Thai street food-inspired recipes, all celebrating this year's theme of #putaneggonit. Think of Beyonce's 'if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it', but replace ring, with egg. It's not a bad culinary motto by which to live.

The idea is to encourage people to eat eggs in more unusual ways, by putting an egg on dishes they wouldn't normally think to try. It if was up to me, I'd put an egg on almost everything. Maybe even my cereal.

They've then asked me to take inspiration from Seb's collection of egg recipes, and come up with my own street food-inspired concoction that would work great with eggs. Now, I've eaten a heck of a lot of street food on my travels, and when I was presented with this challenge, one immediately popped into my head - Mumbai's world-famous vada pav. 

I'd arrived in Mumbai having already heard about vada pav (here's more about my first visit to Mumbai, and then another visit about a week later). They're sometimes referred to as the city's take on a vegetarian burger; seeing as it's fast food, cheap, and a filling betwixt two buns, that's sort of accurate. But let me tell you, I'd have these over a burger most days.

the vada pav I had in Mumbai - so very excellent

They are spicy potato balls deep fried in gram flour (vada), with a lick of hot garlic green chutney, all between two halves of a soft bun (pav). 

They involve bread, they're salty and they're spicy - all perfect pairings for a lovely fried egg. In fact, when I first ate these in their home city, my immediate thought was 'these are fabulous, but they could do with a little lubrication'. 

Allow me to introduce that lubrication via the medium of a runny yolk.

And so, I present to you, my recipe for vada pav with the glorious addition of a fried egg. Let me tell you, this is truly a thing of beauty. Please everyone, make it.

Mumbai's vada pav sandwich, with chutneys and a fried egg

Makes six vada pavs

For the green chutney

Mint leaves, small bunch
Coriander, small bunch (including stalks)
1-2 green chillies, roughly chopped
1 tbsp ground almonds
Juice from 1/2 lemon
Salt

For the red chutney

3 tbsp desiccated coconut, dry roasted
1 garlic clove, finely sliced
1-2 tsp chilli powder
Salt

For the vada fillings

3 potatoes, boiled and mashed until smooth
2 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
4 garlic cloves
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp turmeric
3 green chillies, finely chopped
1/2 tsp asafoetida
Handful of fresh coriander, finely chopped (including stalks)
Salt

For the batter and frying

150g gram (chickpea) flour
1/4 tsp turmeric
80ml warm water
Salt
Sunflower oil

To serve

Six small and soft white rolls
Butter (optional)
Six green finger chillies, deep-fried
Six eggs, fried

First make your chutneys. For the green, combine the mint, coriander, chillies and ground almonds, add some of the lemon juice, and blitz. Keep adding lemon juice until you have a consistency that is spreadable - you don't want it too wet. You might not end up using all the lemon juice. Add salt to taste.

For the red chutney, ensure the coconut gets a nice colour from the dry toasting, then combine with the garlic, chilli powder, and a pinch of salt, and pound using a pestle and mortar. Add a splash of water if needed to loosen the mixture slightly. You should end up with a dry and crumbly chutney. Set both the chutneys aside. 

making the green and red chutney

To make the vada fillings, grate the garlic and ginger. Heat the oil in a frying pan on a medium to high heat. When it's hot enough for a mustard seed to sizzle in it, add the rest of the mustard seeds and asafoetida. When the mustard seeds start popping vigorously, reduce the heat to low to medium, and add the ginger, garlic and chillies. Cook for one minute, then add the turmeric and cook for another minute.

Now add the mashed potato and fresh coriander, fully combine, and cook for another minute. Add salt to taste. Remove the mashed potato from the pan and set aside to cool.

flavouring the vada mashed potato

Weigh the total amount of potato you have, and divide this number by six so you know how much each portion should weigh - mine were about 75g each. Measure out one portion and roll into a ball with your hands. Do this for all six portions, and set aside.

To create the batter for frying the balls, combine the gram flour with the turmeric and a pinch of salt. Add the water a little at a time, continually mixing with a whisk, until you have a smooth and fairly thick batter. Set aside.

Fill a heavy-bottomed saucepan with enough sunflower oil to reach half way up the vada balls. Heat on medium to high. To test if the oil is hot enough to fry the vada balls, add a little batter and if it sizzles and cooks to a golden colour, then it's ready.

First drop in the six finger chillies for serving. When they've cooked and blistered, remove and let them rest on kitchen paper.

Coat each ball in the batter, and gently drop into the hot oil. Turn the ball around in the oil until the whole thing is cooked and golden in colour. Remove with a slotted spoon and allow to drain on kitchen paper. Repeat for all the vada balls.

To serve, slice each soft roll in half and butter, if desired. Smear on some green chutney, and add a vada ball. In the meantime, fry an egg how you like it (runny yolk all the way), and add on top of the vada ball. Sprinkle on some of the dry red chutney, serve with a deep-fried chilli, and devour!

making and frying the vada balls

This is a sponsored post in partnership with British Egg Week, as part of their #PutAnEggOnIt campaign, to encourage people to eat eggs in more unusual ways. I hope you get to try this recipe - it's GOOD. 

Related posts

Week 1: INDIA - Mumbai → Goa

Week 4: INDIA - Pondicherry → Chennai → Mumbai

Recipe: Chicken saag with coriander chapatis

SPAIN: the farm to fork journey of a Knorr tomato

Knorr and sustanability - what part are they playing?

We all know, and many of us love Knorr. Their stock cubes remind me of the childhood meals my parents used to cook - it's the only stock brand they would ever use. Today, they're in the top three chosen food brands in Europe. Globally, we're talking 320 million people in 87 countries using their products every day. That's big business. And with big business comes big responsibility. And keeping with the big theme, Knorr have big goals: to source all their raw agricultural ingredients sustainably by 2020.

Sustainability, what does that even mean? "It's a blob term," says Dr. Sally Uren, Chief Executive at Forum for the Future. These guys are a global non-profit NGO working with leading global businesses, including Unilever (Knorr is one of their brands), to address system-wide challenges, particularly in food and energy, with a mission to create a sustainable future.

There's that word again. What Sally means by 'blob term', is that it's a big and somewhat intimidating word, that can in fact be broken down into smaller and more specific conversations, which is a lot easier to digest. I like the sound of that. 

Here are some scary stats: agriculture is responsible for using 70% of the planet's fresh water, and destroying 40% of the planet's ecosystems. Anyone can see that's not sustainable. There it is again; the word is starting to make a bit more sense.

What Unilever did 16 years ago was set up their Sustainable Agriculture Programme. It's purpose was to set a code by which farmers working with Knorr had to comply with, and continually improve upon. The handout I was given below nicely breaks down the blob term into its constituent parts, when it comes to farming:
 

Unilever's 11 sustainability indicators for agriculture

So what's been the result? As it stands, no less than 20,000 farmers are part of Knorr's sustainable agriculture code. There are even 30 Knorr farms around the world, that have been award Landmark Farm status. This means they demonstrate the best possible standards in all this commendable stuff; they basically get a big fat gold star. And what's particularly cool, is they open up their doors to those interested in popping by and learning about how they do it so well. The farm we visited in Badajoz - La Pinuela - is one of these. All in, 92% of the top 13 vegetables and herbs used in Knorr products today are sustainably sourced. 

Knorr also estimate that operating at the current rate, in line with the holy-grail code above, around 8,258 kg of pesticides - that's about the weight of a blue whale - will be saved from being used by 2017. Not to mention the 4,500 Olympic sized swimming pools of fresh water. And doesn't that just make you all warm and fuzzy inside.

But it's all very well Knorr telling people about this; the proof is in the pudding. Or the tomato. Tomato pudding? Either way, they invited me - along with a load of other journalists and bloggers from around Europe - out to Spain to see it for ourselves. We visited La Pinuela farm, the Agraz tomato factory around the corner, and ate a lot of tomatoes and great Spanish food in general.

It was a fab and informative trip, and pandered nicely to the food geek within me. Plus, I got to climb a tomato harvester. You can read about the best bits I learnt and experienced below.

scenes from one of Knorr's Landmark Farms, La Pinuela in Badajoz

From the farm

I love a farm, me. I visited a commercial one in Andalucia a couple of years ago, growing broccoli. These parts of Spain are affectionately known as 'Europe's vegetable gardens', because they produce a significant amount of the continent's fresh produce.

Along with brocolli and tomatoes, corn is another common crop found around here. And crop rotation is key in being a sustainable farmer - it's the best way to maintain soil fertility. Different plants suck up different nutrients; by rotating, you're giving the ground a chance to replenish what the previous crop depleted. It makes sense, and you should apply the same principle to your veg patch.

In terms of pests, the fields were littered with traps to track their numbers, meaning pesticides are only applied when there's a significant enough problem, rather than using it as a prevention tool from the get go.

scenes from one of Knorr's Landmark Farms, La Pinuela in Badajoz
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In high season, La Pinuela harvests 20,000 tonnes of tomatoes every day, or 150 fully loaded trucks. That's a lot of tomatoes, from a lot of tomato plants, which need a lot of water. Right? Not necessarily. These farmers use a drip irrigation system, which gives plants just the right amount of water they need to be healthy and tasty, and nothing more. It saves 30% of water compared to just flooding the place.

And then there's the harvester, which I scaled to get some cool tomato shots and a silly tomato selfie. The farmers thankfully turned the thing off first. Or I could have ended up as a paste myself. The machine uses a colour sorter to determine what to pick up off the ground; colours that are unlikely to ripen approaching the end of the season (so still too green), are left to be ploughed back into the field as fertiliser. Clever.
 

To the factory

The main ingredient in a lot of Knorr's final products is tomato powder. You can see it in the collage below. Looks pretty unnatrual, doesn't it. About as far from a fresh tomato as you could possibly get. Must be full of nasties to end up looking like that.

But actually, it is completely natural. Made from 100% tomato, and nothing else. This was probably the biggest revelation for me on the trip. How do they do that? It's actually pretty obvious, by using one of the oldest preservation techniques known to man - drying.
 

Agraz factory where tomatoes from La Pinuela are turned into paste and powder - it's very close by

 
In other words, the water is removed. The process is simple: the tomatoes are washed, peeled, de-seeded, and crushed. They're heated up, where they're reduced to a tomato paste. This is an end product in itself, but some of it is dried further to create tomato powder. The powder is the result of removing 96% of water from tomatoes. 

Within five hours from them being picked, the tomatoes become a paste. Within six hours, they're powder. In a similar way to freezing vegetables in the field, these lovely freshly picked fruit are frozen in time, with all the nutrients and flavour being retained by drying.

Because there is no moisture, microbes can't grow. Which means there's no need to add any preservatives to prolong life. It has been preserved naturally, with nothing else added. 

Around 21kg of fruit is needed to make 1kg of powder, which results in the most tomato-y thing that will ever pass your lips. Check out the video below of freshly dehydrated tomato powder - cool right?

All the unwanted pulp is loaded into trucks and sent back to local farms to feed livestock, so there's no waste. And 85% of the water used to wash the tomatoes is recycled. Even the water extracted from the juice is sent to the water station to be reused.

To the fork

All this tomato-learning and harvester-climbing is hungry work, and Knorr rewarded us duly with consistently fantastic meals. All sixty-ish of us were hosted in local restaurants, cooking us bespoke menus showcasing local produce, created by the top Knorr chefs. 

There were copious amounts of cured meats, excellent cheeses, lovely salads and soups, beautiful bread, casseroles and cod, pork tenderloin and carved ox-loin, pickled pumpkin and cumin carrots, roasted vegetables and fettucini, tomatoes in every which way possible, and quite a lot of wine.

getting creative in the kitchen with Knorr chefs
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On our final day, we were invited to try our hand at coming up with our own creations, using some Knorr products such as their tomato powder and dried spices. We were put into teams and presented with a huge table, creaking under its own weight of glorious local produce, from meat and fish to fruit and veg, and we had an hour and a half to rustle something up the rest of us might want to actually eat. That's no mean feat. 

I went straight for the morcilla, pancetta and chorizo, and decided on a simple tomato-based chickpea stew, with these flavoursome meats, and the help of a friend. There were prizes to be won, and whilst I received no trophies for flavour (sob), the picture below did win me a whole leg of Spanish jamon in the food photography category. So I was pretty pleased with that.

my chickpea stew with a Knorr tomato powder base, morcilla, chorizo and pancetta
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I learnt loads from this trip, both about sustainability, and Knorr as a brand. I had no idea being good to the planet and their farmers was such a big deal to them. It seems to me, when it comes to huge brands and big business, Knorr are one of the good guys. 

This was a sponsored trip and blog post in partnership with Knorr, in order for me to experience, learn about, and share the sustainable agricultural techniques they are pioneering, as part of their #KnorrFarmtoFork campaign. All views remain my own, as always.

Related links
10 Of the best dishes from the regions of Murcia and Andalusia

RECIPE: Almond and thyme-crusted macaroni cheese muffins

A recipe for macaroni cheese muffins with an almond and thyme crust

I don't need much of an excuse to eat cheddar, a cheese that's most definitely in my top five favourites. So when the nice folk over at Danish cheese brand Castello asked me to come up with a simple recipe that 'breaks the rules', using one of their three Tickler cheddars, I needed little persuading.

macaroni cheese muffins
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I've taken inspiration from a classic Cypriot dish called firin makarna (oven-baked macaroni cheese), where grated halloumi is used to make a cheese sauce, it's layered with lamb mince, baked in the oven, allowed to cool and harden, and served at room temperature portioned up into cubes. It's a different baked take on what is one of my favourite plates of food in the world: halloumi pasta with lemon and mint. 

Instead, I've stuck with a classic cheese sauce using Tickler Extra Mature Cheddar, omitted the lamb so it's good for veggies, added some spinach to help with the fibre quota, and jazzed them up with a thyme, almond and breadcrumb crust for extra flavour. I've also made them into individual muffin portions, so they're perfect picnic and party finger food. They're really very good. But then I guess it's hard to go too wrong with pasta and quality cheese.

RECIPE: Almond and thyme-crusted macaroni cheese muffins 

Makes around 18 muffins

For the cheese sauce
600ml whole milk, room temperature
50g unsalted butter
50g plain flour
350g block of Castello Extra Mature Tickler Cheddar, grated (keep 30g aside) (pic 2)
Fresh nutmeg
Black pepper

For the muffin crusts
2 garlic cloves
2 tbsp olive oil
1tsp butter
1//2 tbsp of thyme leaves
50g panko breadcrumbs
30g of grated Castello Extra Mature Tickler Cheddar (what you kept aside from above)
20g toasted almond flakes

For the muffins
400g elbow macaroni

70g baby spinach, roughly chopped

Here's the link to the step-by-step recipe for these macaroni cheese muffins with almond and thyme crusts on the Castello website for you to try at home. If you do, we'd love to know how it went! You can share your cheesy pasta muffins on Instagram and Twitter tagging @CastelloUK, or using the #DiscoverTickler hashtag. And tag me as well please - I'd love to see too. 

This is a sponsored post, in partnership with Castello, as part of their #DiscoverTickler campaign. I hope you get to try this recipe - it's GOOD. 

ingredients for almond and thyme-crusted macaroni cheese muffins

making the macaroni cheese muffins

making the macaroni cheese muffins

Related links
RECIPE: Halloumi pasta with lemon and mint