My Meal at Bocca di Lupo

Arriving at Bocca di Lupo

We went to London last Friday to see Postman Pat. We also went on a speed boat. But best of all we went to Bocca di Lupo.

It means the Wolf's Mouth! (but also means Good Luck in Italian too). We got there 15 minutes early but weren't allowed in. When we went to Noma we got there 30 minutes early and they insisted we go in. So to start with I wasn't sure if I was going to like it.

But when we went in they brought me some HUGE olives. They were called Cerignola Olives from the Cerignola region in Italy. I normally only like black olives but these were really big shiny green olives and they tasted great. And when I finished them, they brought me some more because I loved them so much.

The waitress was really nice because she helped us choose what we wanted to eat from the menu. Some of it was written with Italian words so we weren't sure what everything was. She was great at explaining it all.

Me and my brother at Bocca di Lupo

We chose some small dishes to share and a few big dishes of our favourite things. Here's what we chose:
Radish, Celeriac, pomegranate, and Pecorino salad with truffle dressing
Beef agnolotti with walnut sauce 
Grilled wild boar sausage with roast red onion
Warm potato salad with garlic, parsely and vinegar
Caponata - aubergines, celery and tomato (we had it without the anchovies)

I really like it when I get to taste lots of different foods. My favourite was the wild boar sausage. My brothers favourite was the pasta (the Beef agnolotti) and my mum and dad loved everything.

Grilled wild boar sausage

Radish, celeriac, pomegranate and pecorino salad

Caponata - Aubergines, Celery and tomato

My little sister liked the desserts best!

We chose three really great desserts:
Bacio gelato - frozen kiss: hazelnut, hazelnut & bacio gelati, chocolate
Semifreddo of Zabaione with chocolate, hazelnuts and torrone
Le palle del nonno - 'grandpa's balls' of deep-fried ricotta and chocolate.

The 'grandpa's balls' tasted really great as we imagined that it would be really greasy because it was fried but they weren't.

We didn't do very well at getting photos of our desserts as we started eating them quickly and then remembered to take pictures!

Bacio gelato

Le palle del nonno - 'grandpa's balls'

I took some photos myself around the restaurant. There were tables at the very far end of the restaurant which is where we sat.

There was a long bar along the restaurant from almost at the entrance all the way down to near where the tables were.

On the other side of the bar you could see the busy chefs.

The waitress was really kind and got the chef's autograph for me to add to my collection. I think it looks like I got a photo of Jacob Kennedy, the head chef, by accident too. Do you think this looks like him? (Update: Bocca di Lupo told me on twitter that this is the sous-chef Jake Simpson so mystery solved!) It reminded me of when I was taking photos at Noma and I got a photo of Rene Redzepi when he was busy in the development kitchen.

Night-time at Trafalgar Square

Then it was home time but I really hope I get to go there again!

Written up by Daniel and Mum

Choccy walnut brownies

I wasn't going to cook anything this weekend but then I decided to cook so I didn't have to do any of my music homework (but I still had to do it later.)

So I decided to cook this chocolate brownie because it tastes really nice. We discovered that even if it doesn't end up looking nice, it can still taste really nice. 

Ingredients:

50g self-raising flour

25g plain flour

125g butter or margarine 

100g chocolate chips

2 eggs

275g caster sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

100g chopped walnuts (or other nuts or raisins, dried cranberries etc). 

You will also need a 20cm square cake tin so this will be like a traybake.

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 c. Prepare your tin by greasing it (I use a cooking spray as that uses less oil) and line it with a piece of baking paper cut to the right size.

2. Melt the chocolate chips in a glass or metal bowl over a pan of hot water on the hob. Make sure the water is not touching the bottom of the bowl. Be careful not to burn yourself as the bowl will get hot so you will need oven gloves to hold it still while you stir the chocolate. 

3. In a mixer, mix together butter or margarine, the sugar and the vanilla extract. You can mix this on quite a high speed using the beater attachment of the mixer. Gently beat the eggs in a bowl and then add in the eggs to the mixer bowl. You can add a teeny bit of the flour if the mixture looks too runny. 

4. Weigh the right amount of flour (50g of self raising and 25g plain flour). Stop the mixer while you sift in the flour into the cake mixture you are making. Also sift in the cocoa powder. 

5. Then add the melted chocolate chips. Slowly fold the flour, cocoa powder and melted chocolate in. I mixed it by hand but you could use the low setting of the mixer.

6. Finally stir in the chopped nuts. 

7. Pour the mixture into the tin trying to make it level.

8. Bake for 30-35 minutes until cooked through.

9. Then leave them to cool in the tin for at least 20 minutes. 

10. When the tray bake was cool, I used icing sugar and a stencil to make some shapes on them. 

You can make a stencil by cutting out a shape from greaseproof paper

Then sprinkle on some icing sugar through the hole you have cut using a sieve

Voila - Star shapes from icing sugar!

You are supposed to be able to cut the brownies in the tin into pieces to take out. But that's when disaster struck! They were not coming out of the tin, so mummy lifted the whole traybake out of the tin, then we scraped off chunks. 

Even though it looked a mess, it tasted really really nice. So we had the broken up pieces of brownie with Ice cream for dessert. 

We don't know why it got stuck. Maybe the tin wasn't greased enough even though nowadays we always use the spray oil for greasing and it is fine. Maybe the recipe is too sticky. Maybe lots of other reasons but the main thing is even if it doesn't look perfect it can still taste good. 

My little sister loved it!

I think this recipe would taste nice with chopped dried apricots in it so that is what I am going to try next time I make it! 

Linking up with Raisie Bay's Kids in the kitchen linky.