Cooking with Olives II: Olive Hash Browns

Olive Hash Browns

This is the second of our olive-based recipes, and this time I've gone with a combination with potato as again I thought the starchy, creamy potato flavours would go well with the salty, anise-tinged black olives. I've seen recipes for olive mash before, so I thought I'd take a slightly different spin and go for a hash brown.

This recipe was created using black olives from Fragata, which they kindly provided for me along with some other great ingredients. Fragata are currently running a promotion in order to win a chance to cook with the one and only Jose Pizarro! If you're interested in entering the competition, please click here. The second recipe contains piri piri peppers, which were also kindly provided by Fragata!

Cinnamon Club with Eric Chavot

Cinnamon Club

30-32 Great Smith Street

Yet again, I've managed to be the lucky beneficiary of a free meal courtesy of some promotion or another on twitter. Yes, I'm a jammy ****, but you gotta be in it to win it, heed my advice and keep your eyes on the prize, especially during a time like London restaurant festival. 

This was a Amex LRF event called 'Kitchen influentials' with Vivek Singh, of the Cinnamon Club, and Eric Chavot, who was head chef at the Capital hotel restaurant when it claimed it's 2 michelin stars (and subsequently lost, when he left). So with this pedigree I was eagerly anticipating their preset menu, what french influences would Chavot add to these . However, 12.30pm on a sunday is quite early for me, and would normally only just about be contemplating breakfast, so wasn't sure how awake my stomach would be to handle a full indian!

Cucumber and mint soup with lamb seekh kebab and duck samosas

This 'Gull makes me clam up

Bonnie Gull @Bonnie Gull
21A Foley Street

Yet another pop-up to go permanent, this time in the guise of Bonnie Gull, who previously were seen as the Seafood Shack in hackney, and after a couple of projects they are now in this set up in Fitzrovia. All their seafood is British, and responsibly sourced. It will change every day depending on what's fresh, I suppose we'll wait and see if some things will be more regular than others. Reasonably priced, great seafood restaurants are hard to come by in London, but this place certainly fits the bill. 

You make me wanna breakout

Burger Breakout @ The Old Crown 

33  New Oxford Street, WC1A 1BH

3 months after his successful Pop-up at Chad's Place (see here), Dave Ahern is back with a permanent, and even more adventurous, venture in the heart of London, a stone's throw from the British Museum. The foundation of the menu is built on those burgers at the pop up, so the whiskey beast, swine time, the Bambi Bought it, and the baa-baa baby. In addition to these are the OC burger (with Devon Long Horn patty), the camilla burger (chicken burger), and the 'I don't need your bull' veggie option. Each comes with it's own bespoke sauce befitting it's own meat. The choices don't stop there though with steak, chicken wings (10 different sauces!),... each dish has it's own unique twist, with undoubtably a lot of labour (and love) required to go into each of them