Delicious ideas from a pop up restaurant

Mike and Ollie are a favourite in my area - they can be found at the excellent Brockley Market and there is also a pop up restaurant.   Wonderfully seasonal (though mackerel, beetroot and pork belly seem to have featured every time I'e been!) and often featuring foraged finds, this was my third visit to the pop up restaurant. The venues vary - once in Deptford Project's train cafe, once in live work units in New Cross Gate and this time in the badlands of Camberwell, my old stomping ground.

You know the drill, 20 or so people are entertained with amazing food (4 courses and a cocktail) supplemented by copious wine all for the price of a blow out meal at La Strada. What's not to like?

The food was great and I will definitely be trying to recreate the sweet pickled heritage beetroot (white, golden, chioggia and 'normal'). I was also really impressed with the delicious and almost portable scallop served in its shell with roast new potatoes, peas, wild garlic, butter and hollandaise sauce.

It is by reaching out and trying new things that you discover better or different ways of doing things. A volunteering stint at the Telegraph Hill Festival introduced me to someone who does French speaking evenings, a great jewellery designer which uses old books (trainstopjewellery.etsy.com), made a felted soap (something I had no idea I wanted to make until I saw how much fun it was!) and discovered a simple recipe for a citrus gluten free cake.

Instead of just using the juice of the citrus, you boil the whole fruit up for 2 hours and then take the pips out and blitz the rest (pulp and all). The house smells divine and it adds extra moistness. Perfect.  I adapted the recipe which is for a Clementine Cake on Smitten Kitchen (which in turn is an adaptation of Nigella's recipe) to use lemons and limes instead of the Clementines and added a touch more sugar to balance the added tartness.  Delicious. Even if I do say so myself.