Restaurant review: Meatliquor, Islington

Several years ago I found myself queuing on the stairs of a disused east London pub, waiting for two hours to get inside a pop-up burger joint – and once inside, waiting two hours for my food. This was the last days of #Meateasy, a burger joint that started as a van called the Meatwagon. Moving around locations in London – largely in Peckham car parks as this was before the days of the streetfood markets – the Meatwagon’s reputation grew until it was almost legendary.

Sadly, the burger van was stolen, but without this turn of events we probably wouldn’t have the restaurant chain that we have today. The owner, Yianni Papoutsis, moved instead in early 2011 to the upstairs room of a pub in New Cross Gate that was closed for refurbishment. If memory serves, it was there for a few months, then had to close when the pub re-opened. At that point, nobody knew what was happening next – was this the end of Meateasy? So their final night – advertised on social media as the last hurrah as even the owners themselves didn’t seem to know if they would be able to reopen – was busy, and I mean busy.

Dead Hippie and fries

My friend Geoff was a huge fan and loyal customer, and as I still hadn’t visited Meateasy by the time it announced it was closing, he took me on one of the last nights. He knew his way around which was a relief – and as we spent literally hours queuing, kept persuading me it would be worth it.

Once inside, I took in the dive bar décor, the menu scrawled on the wall behind the bar, the food that was served on paper plates and the music so loud you could hardly hear yourself speak. I ordered the Dead Hippie burger- which I’d heard had become something of a cult – and it was messy, juicy, artery-clogging, delicious. It’s a double cheeseburger with a secret sauce – so secret that in their cookery book-cum-autobiography, the recipe is blacked out so you can’t read it.

Yes, that’s right – it’s gone from the Meatwagon burger van to a pop-up dive (Meateasy) to a chain with its own cookery book which you can buy on Amazon.

Dead Hippie up close

Meatliquor opened in 2012 in a permanent location in the west end. By then, there were other ‘dirty burger’ chains opening in London, making me wonder if Meatliquor was still all that special. I took my boyfriend as he hadn’t been before; we went early after work and managed to get in without waiting, but when we came out there was a queue. The restaurant was grungy, noisy, and a good representation of the restaurant’s roots. I can’t remember all that much more about it as several years have since elapsed; it was the last time I ate there as I don’t like restaurants where you can’t either book or walk straight in, and there were plenty of other burger places I wanted to try (Patty and Bun, Shake Shack and Five Guys, to name just a few).

Fast forward four years and I was working late at a supplier’s office in Islington. As it was gone 8pm by the time that I left and it takes me nearly two hours to get home from there (welcome to London) I always grab something to eat before I leave. I was really excited to find a Five Guys on nearby Upper Street (I was introduced to the chain by an American boss and love it) so have eaten there a couple of times over the past six months or so, and have also tried a couple of other places. This time, I’d gotten off the bus on my way there in the morning a stop late – as the bus stop I wanted was closed – so I was further up the street than I’d normally go. As I walked back down, I did a double take – a branch of Meatliquor!

Looking at the website, I see the chain now has branches by slightly different names – I’m not sure what the difference is: a Meatmarket in Covent Garden, a Meatmission in Brixton and also a Chickenliquor in Brixton – which only serves chicken or chicken burgers, and surprisingly has a vegetarian option of a halloumi burger. I say surprising, because when I first went to Meateasy I’m sure I remember a fairly derogatory sign implying that vegetarians were in the wrong place! Even now, in the west end Meatliquor restaurant, the (small) vegetarian section of the menu is referred to as rabbit food.

Inside the restaurant

              

But I’m not a vegetarian and by the end of my long day at work I was ready for a burger. The Islington outpost is set back from Upper Street in an old garage; you have to walk down a small alley to get there which starts to build the atmosphere. Inside is even more grungy than I remember, with red graffiti on the walls – and the passageway to the toilets has to be seen to be believed. It was actually quite creepy!

I also spotted a photo booth against one wall, and on the menu tickets to operate the photo booth were listed at £3 each – so if you love your burger that much you can commemorate the moment perhaps!

With the graffiti, the loud music, the messy food (complete with rolls of kitchen paper on each table) this isn’t somewhere I would come for a date – but that’s because I’m a 30-something City worker who prefers slightly more refined dining! The place was busy with people of all ages (including a small girl of about three, which was a bit random). I only wanted a quick meal and didn’t want to spend too much, so nice as the cocktails and milkshakes sounded, I decided to stick with a coke – this didn’t seem the sort of place you would order a diet coke! I also decided to have a Dead Hippie burger as I couldn’t even remember what they were like.

The burger was described as two ‘mustard-fried beef patties’ with minced onions, cheese, pickles and lettuce with their mysterious Dead Hippie sauce. It’s not quite so big that I can’t finish the burger but not far off. The bun surprisingly didn’t go soggy either given how much the burger was practically dripping. I couldn’t decide if I actually enjoy the Dead Hippie more than I would just a normal cheeseburger – the sauce didn’t make my tastebuds explode, and wasn’t as tangy as something like burger sauce, but it definitely added something to the meal.

the corridor to the toilets!

The staff were surprisingly polite – I saw surprising, because the décor makes me think they would be deliberately rude or at least a bit rough and ready – but they were very friendly and when I asked about the cookery book advertised at the back of the menu, they brought me a copy to read while I waited for my food. I decided that since my fiancé hadn’t been able to come to Meatliquor with me, I would bring Meatliquor to him so bought him the book to take home.

If you’ve never been to Meatliquor or one of their outposts, you must try it once. Whether you go back again for the grungy atmosphere, the extensive booze list or the Dead Hippie is up to you.

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Cherry and Almond Cakes

Recently I met up with a very artistic, talented lady who was passing on to me a piece of craft equipment and didn’t want any money for it (I didn’t realise at the time how expensive it was, or I might have insisted!) so I wanted to at least bake her something as a thank you.

It had to be something that would transport easily in a box as I was going to see her straight after work and knew I wouldn’t be able to carry a big cake box (as I would also have the craft equipment to take home) so decided to make some simple muffins or unfrosted cupcakes that wouldn’t get damaged in transit. I also wasn’t sure how she would be feeling about cake as she had been ill recently, and I didn’t want to make anything too sickly-sweet. I had some glace cherries in the cupboard and wondered about a recipe for a simple cherry cake, and came across this recipe for cherry and almond cake on the Macmillan website.

 

 

The recipe is for one large cake but I used a pretty silicon muffin mould instead. There seems to be a typo in the recipe though as it says 1 5 g/4oz of flour and the same of almonds; clearly it wasn’t 15g so I checked and found that 4oz is the same as 113g so that’s how much I used. So to clarify, my ingredients were:

 

170g margarine

170g caster sugar

3 eggs

115g self-raising flour

115g ground almonds

85g glace cherries, halved

 

Preheat the oven to 180C. Cream the margarine and sugar together and then beat in the eggs.

 

 

Fold in the flour and then the almonds and cherries.

 

 

 

Spoon into the muffin moulds – as mine was silicon I didn’t use cake cases but sprayed the mould with Cake Release. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

  

 

 

I think these are technically cupcakes but look more like muffins as they don’t have any frosting, so I’m not quite sure what to call them!

 

 

 

These were really quick to make; I did taste one when it came out of the oven and it was light and fluffy – and particularly good served hot, you might want to try these with custard!

 

I'm entering these in Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter she has chosen this month is C.

 

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Meal Planning Monday week 11

Monday - leftover butternut squash enchiladas for me, gammon for him

Tuesday -  Spiralized butternut squash with mascarpone sauce from Ros' recipe.

Wednesday
out at my last cake decorating class

Thursday
chicken stuffed with pesto and cream cheese

Friday
out for dinner with a friend

Saturday
Lunch: crumpet pizzas
Dinner: homemade burger inspired by Meateasy

Sunday
Lunch: bacon sandwich (his favourite)
 Dinner: beef and potato pie with cow pastry crust

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Lemon and Mascarpone Mothers' Day Cake with Painted Flowers

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about painting flowers using food colouring, which we did in my cake decorating class - though we did it on a covered cake board, not on an actual cake. I'd seen a few pictures of wedding cakes online - when I was researching what to do for my own - that were covered in painted flowers or designs and thought it looked really nice, so when it came to making a cake for my mum for Mother's Day today my starting point was that I wanted to paint flowers on it!

Since the cake was going to look floral and spring-like I wanted a lighter flavoured cake. I found a recipe for a Finnish lemon Mothers' Day cake that used mascarpone cheese and looked really tasty. The cake is covered with a piped mascarpone buttercream but in order to paint on mine I needed to cover it with sugarpaste. I also decided the cake would benefit from the addition of some cloudy lemonade to the mixture! In fact I changed the recipe quite a lot in the end as it also called for 4 tbsp. potato flour which I didn't have, and after I added the lemonade I decided it needed a bit more flour. And I used self-raising flour rather than plain flour and baking powder! So here's what I did:

5 eggs
200g caster sugar
200g self-raising flour
150ml no-added sugar cloudy lemonade

for the syrup:
juice of 2 lemons
150g icing sugar

for the filling:
200ml double cream
200g mascarpone cheese
2 tbsp. icing sugar
6 tbsp. lemon curd

Preheat oven to 180C and grease a deep 8-inch cake tin - if your tins aren't deep enough you could use two as I did.

Whisk the eggs with the caster sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in the lemonade then fold in the flour.

Pour into your cake tin(s) and bake for 35-45 minutes (more like 45 if you have a deeper cake in one tin, less if you are splitting the mixture across two tins).

Meanwhile make the syrup - heat the lemon juice and icing sugar in a small pan, stirring until the icing sugar has dissolved. Leave to cool.

Remove the cake(s) from the oven and allow to cool. If you have made one large cake, cut into two or even three layers. Soak the cakes with the lemon syrup.

To make the filling, whisk the cream until thick, then add the mascarpone and icing sugar and whip again. Spread a layer of lemon curd then a layer of cream over the bottom layer of your cake and place the other layer on top. Repeat if you have three layers.

This looks really nice and I'd have been happy just to serve it like this!

Spread a thin layer of the cream over the top and around the sides of the cake.

Roll out about 500g of fondant on a surface dusted with icing sugar until it is in a large enough sheet to cover your cake - an easy way to check is to measure both sides and the top of your cake against your rolling pin, so I know for instance my fondant needs to be as wide as 3/4 of my rolling pin.

Lift the fondant using the rolling pin and drape over the cake. Pat down the sides and cut off the excess, then smooth the top and sides using a smoother or the side of your hand and trim off any more excess.

To do the painting, it's best to leave the fondant to dry but it doesn't need to be completely hard to do this. See this post for full painting instructions. Essentially all you do is mix one or two drops of clear alcohol (the little bottles you get on planes are perfect for this) with some gel food colour. The best way I found to do this is to get some colour on a toothpick or cocktail stick, place the cocktail stick in a bowl or in an artist's palette, and pour a drop or two of alcohol onto it. Use your paintbrush to scrap the colour into the liquid, mixing until you have a liquid colour that isn't too runny. You can tell when you start to paint on the cake if it's too runny or pale, in both cases just add a bit more colour in the same way.

I decided to do different types of flowers in different colours and painted them on the top of the cake and around the sides, then mixed up some green and added stems connecting similar flowers and added leaves. I left some white space but I think with the green giving a connecting detail it looks quite nice - sort of chintzy but that was the look I was going for!

I'm sharing this cake (not literally...) with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, my co-host for Alphabakes as the letter she has chosen this month is C and I've used cream in this cake as well as mascarpone cheese.

I'm also sending this to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Jane at the Hedgecombers and Karen at Lavender and Lovage, as their theme is Easter and spring.

Finally I'm sending it to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen, as it's Mothers' Day this month (in the UK anyway!).

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Spiralizer Saturday Round-up and March challenge

Welcome to Spiralizer Saturday - once again I'm inviting you all to link up your spiralizer recipes (which could also be made using a julienne cutter or similar) - recipes of all types as there is no theme.
');
I don't have a recipe to share with you today as I haven't used my spiralizer for a couple of weeks, so I will go straight into the round-up from last month.

I made this rather unusual sweet potato 'pizza' which uses spiralized sweet potato as a base, topped with tomato puree and mozzarella - it made a delicious lunch!

Ros, who you might know from the More Than Occasional Baker, has a new blog at A Twirly Whirly Blog which is all about spiralizer recipes. She made a chicken and mushroom black bean stir-fry using spiralized carrot and courgette.

I used a similar approach in this spiralized Pad Thai, making one with chicken and a vegetarian one with tofu. Both had spiralized butternut squash, mooli and carrot.

 

And here's another one from Ros at Twirly Whirly Blog: spiralized butternut squash with pancetta, prawn and spinach in a creamy mascarpone sauce which sounds amazing! In fact I think I might have to cook this myself!

 

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Pistachio Chicken with Pomegranate

I'm always looking for different things to do with chicken and as I had half a pomegranate I took to the internet to search for recipes. I came across this one on All Recipes for pistachio chicken with pomegranate sauce which was perfect as I already had a bag of pistachios in the cupboard. It was really tasty, seemed quite unusual and indulgent but was actually really quick to make!

To serve 4, you need:
4 chicken breasts
the original recipe said to use 6 eggs but this is only to coat the chicken so 2 is probably enough
50ml milk
90g plain flour
130g finely chopped pistachios

For the sauce:
2 tbsp. minced shallots
120ml dry white wine
120ml chicken stock
120ml double cream
50g butter
1.5 tbsp. pomegranate juice - I didn't have any at the time so used pomegranate molasses, but I recommend POM Wonderful Pomegranate juice.

Preheat oven to 180C.

 

Beat the eggs with the milk and pour into a shallow bowl. Put the flour into another bowl and the chopped nuts into a third. Dip each chicken breast in flour then egg and then in the chopped nuts. I found it easiest to chop the nuts in a food processor.

Bake the chicken in the oven for 30 minutes.

Ten minutes before it is ready, fry the shallots and add the cream, wine, stock and pomegranate juice.

 Simmer for a few minutes and pour over the chicken to serve.

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A Friend is a Gift card

 

A long time ago I bought a book of stickers which had phrases or sentiments about friendship on clear backgrounds. I used some of them in scrapbooking but had found it difficult to use the rest in card making.

 

I came across this one which said “a friend is a gift” and knew I had some present (gift) shaped die cuts somewhere, and found them quite quickly. I wanted to brighten the card up a bit with a coloured background so chose a piece of stripey backing paper, then mounted the sentiment on a plain piece of card as the background of the sticker was see through.

 

I chose a present die cut in the same pink colour scheme and positioned it at an angle next to the words. I decided the bottom corner needed something so added some butterfly stickers on a clear background; I think in retrospect I would have been better off leaving them out but I do quite like this card. It’s also useful that it doesn’t specifically say birthday, so can be used for multiple occasions.

 

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Butterscotch Cow Cookies with an engraved rolling pin

Browsing Etsy before Christmas I came across this awesome rolling pin:

 There’s a shop on Etsy selling rolling pins with all kinds of patterns; you can also ask for a custom design to be made for you. As regular readers might know, when I get married in June I will be Mrs Cowe – and I am already embracing my inner cow!

 

This rolling pin lets you make very simple cookies and then imprint the design on them which is so cute. I decided to make sugar cookies flavoured with butterscotch to try the rolling pin out.

 

The basic sugar cookie recipe is:

225g butter, softened

110g caster sugar

275g plain flour

And I added 1 tsp of butterscotch flavouring

 

Preheat oven to 180C. Cream the butter and sugar, fold in the flour and add the flavouring. You should have a pliable dough – roll out on a lightly floured surface.

 

You can’t use the textured rolling pin for the initial rolling as you can’t go backwards and forwards over the dough or the pattern won’t work. So instead I used a regular rolling pin – but remember to roll out the dough to slightly thicker than you actually want it, as you are going to roll it again with the textured rolling pin.

 

I found I needed to press quite hard with the textured rolling pin to get enough of an indent that would still show up properly when the cookies were in the oven.

 

I then cut out circles with a cutter, and re-rolled the remaining dough until it was all used.

 

Line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper. The easiest way to move the cookies onto your baking sheet is with a palette knife which is a handy tool to have for decorating cakes as well.

 

Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until golden brown and leave to cool. It’s a little hard to see the cow pattern on the cookies from certain angles but it is very visible – I gave these to my fiancé and he didn’t spot the pattern straight away but when he did, he thought it was really cool!

 

 

I’m considering giving these out at my wedding which we have nicknamed Cowefest!

 

I'm sending these to Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker. She has chosen the letter C this month.

 

 

 

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