We have been once before for our anniversary last July. On that night I had scallops so good I can’t remember the rest of the meal. The best scallops I have ever had, maybe even the best dish I have ever had. It is next door to Vanilla Black, another rather special restaurant which does formal vegetarian food, creating an agony of indecision for Alan as he is faced with an entire menu to choose from rather than just one or two dishes. He didn’t have that much choice last night, but that doesn’t matter when the options are so wonderful.

The Chancery is pretty small, crammed with white-clothed tables in two halves divided by a wall with two arches cut out of it. There are a few more tables underground by the bar but they were all empty while upstairs had a lovely buzz. The staff were friendly and welcoming, and very knowledgeable about the dishes.

We started with an amuse bouche of borscht in an espresso cup, which came with a couple of very good bread rolls and creamy butter (salted, which was good – if you are wondering why I mention such a small detail, read Jay Rayner’s article in last week’s Observer Food Monthly). Alan’s starter was Roast Butternut Squash Soup with pain d’espice (listed on the menu with foie gras but suggested by the waitress as they had run out of goats cheese for the wonderful-sounding crottin with honey caviar). Most intriguing, as I thought pain d’espice would be bread (a quick Google suggests similar), but this was just a bowl of soup, a delicious soup, with a dark swirl of spices on the surface, but no bread. My starter was called ‘Textures of Carrot’, an exceptionally beautiful plate of 2 carrot agnolotti, 2 steamed baby carrots, 3 balls of sharp pickled carrot, a few dabs of rich carrot purée, a couple of carrot ribbons, some carrot crisps and ‘cardamom air’ – a foam which tasted of lemony cardamom and hinted at the carroty flavours nearby.

Roast Butternut Squash Soup

Textures of Carrot

For Alan’s main course, he had Truffled Potato and Celeriac Gratin, which was served with almond and cauliflower cous cous and a cauliflower pakora. Also beautifully presented, with cauliflower puree dotted around the gratin stack.

Truffled Potato and Celeriac Gratin

The dish I chose was called ‘Wester Ross Salmon, celeriac and vanilla risotto, razor clam, lemon emulsion’. The way that is phrased hints at the separateness of all those components – each one was delicious but I’m not sure they worked perfectly together. The salmon, with perfectly salty and crispy skin, sat on a pile of dark leaves and each mouthful was wonderful. At the other end of the long plate, a razor clam sat on top of a little heap of risotto with another lemony cloud of foam. This one actually reminded me more of cider vinegar than lemon, but was a lovely complement to the razor clam. The risotto on its own was lovely, a soft and gentle sweet flavour of vanilla with a nutty undertone, but when I had a mouthful with the salmon it was completely overpowered and just felt like porridge. So I ate one and then the other and it was fine (more than fine – that salmon was great!)

Wester Ross Salmon with Vanila and Celeriac Risotto

Before dessert, the waitress brought us a tiny bowl of palate-cleansing grapefruit sorbet sitting on candied roast hazelnut crumbs. I had difficulty choosing pudding… quince tarte tatin with gingerbread icecream and pistachio soil, or the chocolate cornet I saw at the next table (finale to a very impressive-looking tasting menu)? Or the most fun-sounding thing on there, an ‘Assiette of Apple’? I’m not sure why the apple dish was an assiette and carrot dish ‘textures’, as they were both a similar idea, but we both went for it – how could you resist a dish described as ‘toffee apple, popping strudel sphere, apple sorbet, samosa and Calvados air’?

Assiette of Apple

Completely amazing, great fun to eat. The ‘strudel’ is actually on that spoon on the right hand side of the plate, a large ball of spherified apple juice and popping candy. But the samosa was the tastiest, dredged in sugar and cinnamon, crunchy and warm and a perfect way to end a meal before going out into a chilly February night.

My mum is coming over on Shrove Tuesday itself, so I need to think up another exciting savoury filling for her… any suggestions? I’ve also been looking for sarrazin flour, or buckwheat, so I can have a go at making proper French galettes. I’ve found it online, but if anyone knows of a supplier in South London, please let me know in the comments or on Twitter @doublehelpings.

Dessert is already sorted – sweet crepes with chestnut jam and chocolate sauce… yum.

Happy pancake-making!

E sent me this the next day, and I thought I would put it up here for posterity.

Recipe… as I remember it

1. Get a selection of nibbles to graze on whilst creating your raviolis.
2. Dice an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic very small.
3. Fry the onion in a pan with the garlic for a couple of minutes.
4. Add a little nutmeg and a generous sprinkling of oregano and some fresh black pepper.
5. Add some finely chopped pancetta to the pan and fry until tender.
6. Meanwhile wilt a few handfuls of spinach and finely chop.
7. Once the onion and pancetta mix is cooked add the spinach, fry for a further minute or two.
8. Take the pan off the heat, and stir through a couple of tablespoons of ricotta.
9. Stuff pasta.
10. Cook pasta.
11. Serve with olive oil and parmesan.

In Fez we took a cookery course at the Clock Cafe, learning to make lamb tagine, caramelised onions and raisins, handrolled couscous, bessara soup and a dessert of pomegranates, honey and yoghurt infused with orangeflower water sandwiched between triangles of toasted filo pastry. The whole day was fantastic and we enjoyed the course and the food so much that we wanted to have another go.

For ten people, we cooked two different tagines. From the Cafe Clock course notes, I chose a spicy vegetable tagine of peas, potatoes, carrots and onion, flavoured with chilli, saffron and ginger. For the meat eaters, I decided to combine the Cafe Clock version (salt lemon, chicken, not much else) with a recipe from the Leon cookbook so that I could stretch the meat a bit further – the Leon version adds swede, carrot, leek and some other veg to make a really tasty casserole. I combined both recipes’ marinades and seasoning too, so it was really fragrant and rich. We also made caramelised onions and raisins, trying to decipher my scrawl at the back of the travel guide from the day in the Clock Kitchen, and served it all up with plain couscous, green olives and diced preserved lemons (which I salted and packed into a jar the weekend after we got back). It must have been pretty good, because someone had a third helping…

Hunting through almost every cookbook we own, Alan couldn’t find any bread similar to the ones we ate in Morocco, so he went back on the Clock Kitchen site and found their recipe for Khobz, the plain wheat loaf which everyone uses to scoop up their food. These sell for about 10p each from barrows on the street, and taste almost sweet. He had to use fine-ground polenta rather than semolina, but the result was remarkably similar except it was golden yellow instead of pale brown.

Pudding was decidedly un-Moroccan… but more suited to a cold and wet London night before trekking up to the South Bank for the firework display. We had meringues and hot chocolate fudge sauce (after a scramble to remember where the exact recipe I wanted came from… Waitrose supplied the perfect one), then filled up Thermos flasks with mulled wine ready for the walk.

Despite most of the bridges and viewing areas being closed by the time we all reached the river, perseverance paid off and eventually the police opened up a route to allow people under the bridge, so we ended up behind the London Eye just in time for the fireworks. A wonderful end to 2011.

Happy New Year.

There was more of a consensus than I expected. Still plenty of debate about specific points, but thankfully a recognition from almost everyone present about how much the role of publishers is changing. The afternoon’s international session was a good reminder that the changes are not globally consistent though, with countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands still some way behind the US and UK. Digital changes are likely to be even more disruptive in these countries too, bringing a large volume of English language ebooks and potentially wiping out the viability of translations from English to Swedish or Dutch.

Many delegates have started to talk less about book publishing, referring to it instead as just publishing. The emphasis has now truly shifted from specifically books to content, however that is packaged. Faber’s Stephen Page referring to licensing copyrights rather than buying books is particularly illustrative of this. If everyone from the conference takes this attitude, 2012 will really be the year when digital publishing takes off and frees itself from the old ways of thinking about ‘books’.

It was also heartening to hear so many people talking about a focus on readers. Many publishers are now starting to see consumers as their customer, rather than bookshops and retailers like Amazon. From the new focus on “meaningful content” on the new Canongate website, to the crowd funded model of Unbound, this has got to be good news for readers, providing more opportunities for engagement and greater innovation.

Authors will hopefully also benefit from the changes of attitude, as publishers face greater competition in the number of potential outlets for ‘content’. With discussion at the end of the day suggesting that publishers should be ‘creating’ authors, building them up and investing much more long-term marketing support, and greater respect for their role as the originators of content, digital developments could lead to much more fundamental improvements.

There was so much more discussed of course, including a glimpse at exciting new developments like Small Demons, but I think the general feeling of consensus and the clear attitudinal shifts in publishing were the most positive overall. It’s even clearer that there are more opportunities for publishers – however they define themselves – than ever before, and that this will benefit everyone in the long term, including authors and readers. Publishers will be forced to show the value that they add in the space between authors and readers, and this should lead to a more exciting dialogue overall. I just hope that A Squared can be part of those. Thanks to everyone who made the conference such an exciting place to be – I’m looking forward to seeing all the developments coming up in the next couple of years.

For the 2010 event E did an amazing spotty themed menu, including meatballs (meat spots) braised in a lovely rich sauce in her slow cooker, and cookies dotted with smarties, from dough made in advance and frozen – domestic goddess of preparedness or what? This time around, we were not so prepared. The aim all along was to have time to chat while we cooked, to have fun making nice food together and then serve it to all our friends in the evening. This did happen, broadly, but it was something of a rush to finalise recipes, buy all the ingredients and then cook three courses plus nibbles for 17 guests in 7 hours. Not sure I would cope very well with the timed challenge on the Great British Bake Off!

We had two nods to the spotty idea: the return of the awesome meatballs (the slow cooker making a special trip to London for the event) and a delicious cake dotted with raisins which arrived in splendour with S&B (thank you!). Alan made focaccia, as is now traditional, one seasoned with rosemary and the other with fresh sage, inspired by the bread we ate at Mennula recently (more on that in another post, hopefully).

We then went off topic, the rest of the menu being essentially Indian-flavoured. The Observer Food Monthly magazine held its annual awards quite recently, and they had a reader recipe competition which was won by a recipe for pistachio chicken curry which we decided to try. And so for starters we did cauliflower pakoras, potato and pea samosas, and mint raita. The samosa dough was seasoned with nigella seeds so that was a bit spotty in the end.

The winning recipe is available here, but as we were also making (up) a vegetarian version I thought I would share the vegification of it here. We scaled up the chicken one to serve 12, which worked pretty well, and made a 4-person butternut squash one at the same time. There was enough left of each for Alan and me to have dinner the following night, and both tasted even better then.

• Butternut squash, peeled and diced
• 50g pistachios, shelled
• 2 birds eye chillies
• 1 Spanish onion, finely chopped
• 2tbsp vegetable oil
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1inch piece of root ginger, crushed
• 1tsp turmeric
• 1tsp fennel seeds
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• 275ml vegetable stock
• 3tbsp double cream
• 2 cardamom pods
• Juice of half a lemon
• Coriander, finely chopped
• 1tsp garam masala

Boil the nuts in plenty of water, drain and rub to remove the skin. Grind to a paste with the chillies in a food processor.

Fry the onion in oil, then add garlic, ginger, turmeric and fennel seeds and cook for 3 minutes on medium flame. Add the pistachio mixture and cook for another couple of minutes. Add the tomatoes, stock, cream, cardamom and squash, bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes to half an hour – if it is ready to early, just turn the heat right down or off and reheat when needed.

Before serving, taste then add salt, lemon juice and garam masala, then stir through most of the coriander.

Serve on a bed of rice (pilaf might be nice) with more coriander sprinkled on top, and greek yoghurt or raita on the side to combat the heat.

The nuts give a lovely creaminess, and the flavours work beautifully with the squash. Could also work well with waxy potatoes, carrot or swede.

We fed the sourdough before going out yesterday and forgot to put it on a plate… Came back to this… Oops!

There were 15 of us this time, which makes for a lot of bacon and egg sarnies of a morning. It also makes for a challenging (recipe free) paella – two, in fact (paellae?), as one had to be vegetarian. E and I curled up in my tent with 2 stoves (4 burners, with 2 more outside when required – better than my kitchen!), a lot of seafood from the fishmonger and vegetables from the greengrocer in the village, and a bottle of wine, to cook and chat for a couple of hours. We eventually emerged into the night air to run the Massive Wok and a casserole pan across to The Palace where everyone else was playing games and listening to the radio, and had a wonderful warm evening with clean plates all round. And that, to me, is a better luxury than any glamping trip with beds and baths and meals provided.

We’ve spent much of the weekend getting things going with Critiqua, a project we’ve been planning for a while – ever since our Publishing MAs at Oxford Brookes in fact, where I put the plan together as my major project. It’s a tricky and ambitious project and its aims have changed over the last couple of years, but the goal has always been to open up the publishing process and allow everyone to be able to write, edit, design and publish books online: to take all the functions of a traditional book publisher and outsource them to, well, everyone. Broadly, we’re aiming to create an online, open-sourced book publisher.

Book publishing is changing, and has changed dramatically already. The internet has revealed the enormous potential of large numbers of people working together to pool ideas, creativity and enthusiasm. And the enthusiasm for reading, writing, and creating books out there is huge, with a large amount of talent that the traditional publishing industry is unable to tap. So, Critiqua aims to open things up a bit. To take what we know about the publishing industry and help involve everyone we can in writing, editing, designing, typesetting, illustrating and publishing books – print books, ebooks, and other forms yet to emerge. No matter how much the economy of book publishing is changed, the quality of writing and the way it’s presented will still be crucial. Writers won’t have all the skills needed to make their books as good as they can be, so they will need help from editors, designers, and those with production and marketing skills. This is where Critiqua should be able to help.

This is obviously quite ambitious and we don’t have all the technical expertise we need to make Critiqua happen in its final form quite yet. At the moment, we’re just testing out ideas and trying to attract interest in the project. We’ve started a basic site, that will allow writers to list their projects and attract help from others with skills in publishing – proofreaders, copy-editors, typesetters, designers and even marketers. It isn’t hugely sophisticated, but it will allow writers to advertise for skills that they might be lacking, and which are hugely important to the quality and readability of books. Once we’re sure that there’s interest in the project and the idea is viable, we will start building extra features to make the experience easier, more accessible, and more powerful. We’ll need some help with this though – so if you’re interested in the project and think you could help, please do get in touch!

You can find out more, create an account, and explore the site here: www.critiqua.com.