New Year, New Nails

Happy New Year everyone. 

If you're already mourning the glitzy season, take a bit of it with you on your finger tips like we did for NYE. All you need is two different nail colours and some cellotape to keep smooth edges. Be good.

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Merry Christmas from Flo and Elle

We've been bad and haven't shared our recipes, but it was good! We will be better next year, we promise. What would be the point of New Years resolutions otherwise?

Only the best goose from Peach Croft Farm, check them out here

Flo's goose, goose fat potatoes, Elle's stuffing, dad's bread sauce, mum's cranberry sauce, chipolatas and our sprouts (steamed then fried with bacon snippings)

Mum's amazing pudding and photography (recipe to come next year!)

If you can't wait a year, we posted our bread sauce and potatoes earlier this year (see here).Flo and Elle Christmas, Flo and Elle goose, Flo and Elle London Food blog, peachcroft farm goose, peachcroft farm butchers, Flo and Elle Christmas, Flo and Elle goose, Flo and Elle London Food blog, peachcroft farm goose, peachcroft farm butchers, Flo and Elle Christmas, Flo and Elle goose, Flo and Elle London Food blog, peachcroft farm goose, peachcroft farm butchers, Food blog, food blog recipes, foodie, foodie blog recipes, London food blog, best London food blogs, best London based food blogs, London based food blogs, food blog recipes, foodie, foodie blog recipes, London food blog, best London food blogs, best London based food blogs, London based food blogs,  recipe, flo and elle recipe, flo recipe, elle recipe, flo blog recipe, elle blog recipe, dinner party recipe, elleandflo, elle and flo, elle and flo sisters, elleandflo blog, elle and flo blog, elleandflo.blogspot.co.uk, elleandflo.blogspot.com, elleandflo, elle and flo, elle and flo sisters, elleandflo blog, elle and flo blog, elleandflo.blogspot.co.uk, elleandflo.blogspot.com, flo and elle, flo and elle blog, floandelle blog, flo and elle blogspot, floandelle.blogspot.com, floandelle.blogspot.co.uk flo and elle sisters, sisters blog, flo and elle, flo and elle blog, floandelle blog, flo and elle blogspot, 

Blitzing vintage

It's the weekend before pay day, It's freezing, I spent the week in towering work heels and last year I threw away my best winter flat boots (they had finally had it). So what to do? Heading down to Brick Lane to play dress-up and eat bagels seemed wise.

This wasn't a deliberate solution at all, but I was so excited at my serendiptous encounter with Blitz - London's biggest vintage warehouse, complete with its own coffee shop and all that I feel obliged to tell you all about it.

Blitz is the sister warehouse to the Brick Lane 'Vintage Store' - as in the one actually called that. It's further down Bricklane towards curryville and off on a little side street to the left. It's heaven in there.

Vintage burberry macs at £95, Vintage and newish Barbours for between £100-£200, Chanellesque quilted leather handbags at £18, 50s diva sunnies for £30, varsity felt jackets... you name it, they've got it.

They also had everything I was looking for for Winter at vast expense on Net-a-porter. I'd managed to persuade myself that when I finally got paid, it would be time to invest in the black leather riding boots that I've lusted after for ages and some high waisted smart leather shorts. I chanced upon both at Blitz, whilst cooing over brown leather loafers and arctic fox stoles.

The boots:

Reduced from £55 to £15 (this is admittedly because they had been sized wrong at 3, whereas they were actually a 5 so they had sat pretty waiting for me to notice the mistake and steadily reducing in price all the while).

The shorts:

£25 and in all shapes colours and sizes. This was the first pair I saw and I immediately fell in love. They fit like a (leather) glove and will go with everything this season. I could not be any more pleased.

Next time you're in Brick Lane, vintage shopping forget the over-priced Vintage stores and head straight here. I won't be wasting my time rifling through dusty rails anywhere else in the vicinity.

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Thrifty Fifties

It's autumn, every instinct says to put your dresses into an early hibernation and live in last year's ski leggings... After all, other people can't tell they're ski-wear, can they?

The item that can save us now is the perfect '50s dress. How better to channel a little optimism than with a piece of post war fashion?

I recently overheard a friend of mine talking about how much the '50s trend pisses her off: 'Why look back to an era of sexism, little housewives with cinched waists and no lives?' Well on the '50s, things may not have been at their best, but they were certainly changing faster than they had before thanks to womens' involvement in the war effort and their reluctance to go back. The 50s was also an era of renewed creativity, fashion DIY, Vogue pattern books, knitting and altering, stretching every last penny. 

It wasn't until Coco Chanel started pioneering comfort and elegance combined for womenswear that the nipped in waists gave way to the cacophony of garments now available to us (disclaimer: this is a massive over simplification of fashion history). 

A/W 2012 Lanvin, Pucci, Dior

However, the cinched waists of 50s style kept and keeps coming back. Why? Not as a reminder of women's subordination, but because they follow a woman's natural shape, fit, flatter, are practical for walking in or even running for the bus and can work in all kinds of fabrics.

In keeping with the thrifty spirit of the 50s, these dresses are often to be found at bargain prices since they have lived once already and are not so old as to have earned the title 'antique'. We have bought a few 50's gems over the years ranging from £20 to £50, including what we hope was once a wedding dress from The Stables Market in Camden, this gorgeous evening number with a dropped back from Brick Lane, and a recent purchase from Margate (see review here). This has to be the perfect trans seasonal trend. 

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Flo's DIY Lobster

Lobster and Le Creuset

After our trawl through a good few lobsters in London I developed a bit of a craving but didn’t really want to spend another £20 or so, as good value as that is… I was staying with a friend who regularly frequents food markets and is a bit of a chef herself so she kindly brought us a whole one, live.

If like me you find the idea of boiling it alive a little disturbing, there are many other ways to do it, just search youtube.

Morbidity aside, for our DIY recipe there really isn’t much too it. You boil it in salted water for 15 minutes if, like ours, it is pretty big, and more like 12 minutes for a smaller one. You can always ask the person selling it to you for advice on this – they tend to know their stuff. 

At around £12 for a pretty big, sharing-sized lobster, this really is the best value, and not too much of a hassle at all.

Once it is cooked, you should turn it so it is lying on its back and neatly slice it down the middle, I like to do this by bashing the tip of the knife in at one point and then gently sawing through, some people use scissors but mine aren't sharp/strong enough. 

The only cheffy parts of doing a great lobster, aside from the boiling (do NOT over boil or it will be rubber) , are the sides and the sauce. 

For sides we had some whelks from the market, a fresh tomato salad and some spinach with courgette. We felt like being virtuous but I also love it with a good big bowl of chips with it. Heston’s triple cooked ones are pretty good, but I usually only bother to cook them twice. 

For lobster sauces, the French like to drench it in butter, but I am more Mediterranean when it comes to crustaceans. 

I once had it with truffle mayonnaise at Loch Fyne but they seem to have stopped doing that. It really was delicious and I will research a recipe soon. Harvey Nichols has one that I haven't tried but will do ASAP (see here) and do truffle infused olive oil that you could definitely add to the mayonnaise recipe below without the lemon rind...

In the meantime, I like to serve mine with a lemon mayonnaise or aioli. Here is my fool proof recipe for both, and I mean fool proof, I have done this maybe 50 times or more and it has only split once when the eggs were too old and I thought I would try anyway. (To test how young your eggs are you can place them in a bowl of water and if they float they are too old for mayonnaise but probably still ok to boil, fry, or scramble):

Lemon Mayonnaise Ingredients: 

2 Eggs,

Light olive oil/other tasteless oil (500ml)

Extra virgin olive oil (I put around 100ml)

Salt (to taste, but a lot, 3 big pinches, Maldon is tastier)

Dijon Mustard (a small teaspoon / to taste)

Juiced lemon

Zest of half a lemon

And an electric whisk…

Aoili Ingredients

2 Eggs

2 small cloves of garlic or 1 large, crushed very well

Extra virgin olive oil (I put around 400ml)

Light olive oil/other tasteless oil (200ml)

Salt (to taste, but a lot, 3 big pinches, Maldon is tastier)

Juiced lemon

And an electric whisk…

Method for Both

Get out your ingredients. Pour boiling water into a sauce pan (not over a hob) and leave a big glass/ceramic bowl above the water for a few (2-3) minutes. This is just to warm the bowl - don't let any water get into it. 

While the bowl is beating heated, carefully separate 2 eggs and place the yolks in the bowl – whisk for at 1 minute (definitely with an electric whisk) until airy. For the aioli, add the garlic at this point, for the lemon mayonnaise, add the lemon zest at this point.

Then, slowly drip the olive oils in whilst whisking. If you add too much at once and it could curdle. It should start to get thick and glossy.

After you have added about 300ml oil you can add it more quickly. It doesn't matter what order you add the extra-virgin or normal olive oil.  

After you have added around 400ml of oil you can add half a tablespoon of lemon juice (and the mustard if making lemon mayonnaise) and the rest of the oil, whilst whisking.

Once this is done, add the salt and another half tablespoon of lemon juice. At this point you should really taste it and make sure it is salty and lemony enough for your taste. 

If you like it thinner then you can add very small amounts of cold water at the end too until you reach your desired consistency. 

we ended the meal with a lovely mint tea infusion made from fresh mint leaves and Fortnum and Mason's Moroccan Mint Tea

Cheap Date: The £9 Finborough Wine Tasting

UPDATE: I AM VERY SORRY TO ANNOUNCE THAT THE FINBOROUGH WINE CAFE AND THE SUMMERTOWN WINE CAFE CLOSED ON SEPTEMBER 21ST

Our French cousins moved to London a while ago. A catch up was embarrassingly overdue, so we decided to make it up to them by planning a fun and slightly more unusual evening… 

The bulk of the evening was centred around the Finborough wine café, a pretty, tall-ceilinged, pub-type establishment, tucked away in West Brompton (one stop from Earls Court). 

Why would two North London girls venture South of the river, you ask, when there are plenty of wine cafés in Soho? Well, this place not only has some impressive accolades from the likes of Raymond Blanc and Sotheby’s wine aficionado, it also has a great atmosphere, wonderful staff and … most importantly… an amazing deal…

They offer bespoke wine tasting where you and your group choose 10 wines to taste, from an extensive menu. There is no spitting at this tasting and you get around a shot or two of wine for just 90p each. Yup, the whole evening, with a charmingly anecdotal, conversational break down of each wine, comes to £9 per head.

Our charming expert

But no spittoon? I hear you cry, but really, the informality of it works. Conversation flits in and off the wines at hand, fuelled by a pleasant, gentle tipsiness. It is a great way to catch up with friends, bring a boyfriend/girlfriend, or go alone to find the wines that tickle your taste buds. The tone is approachable and detailed/customised enough that people in the know will still learn something new. Totally unpretentious, this place is built on a pure and simple love of wine.

There is no obligation to buy at the end, but if you do, its great to know that you definitely like it and even have a good idea of what food to serve it with. What is even better is their best price guarantee - lower than supermarkets, Majestic, Oddbins, any London merchant - and on top of that, there is a £2 discount per bottle if you buy six or more.

We also indulged in half a metre of pizza and some salads to share for £35 split 6 ways. Its proper wood fired pizza from the take out place next door – we went for the buffalina and the capricciosa, mmm…

Once the tasting was finished the night was still young so we staggered (because of the weight of the bottles we’d bought) down to Earls Court to Ping (see Elle’s review here). We danced, wiffed, waffed, and drank till our stomachs lead us to Balans in Soho (there is actually one in Earl’s court but we were heading Northwards anyway) where Elle and I shared our favourite post-clubbing treat, eggs benedict (sorry no photo).

P.S. I first came across the sister establishment to Finborough, the Summertown Wine Café in Oxford, which offers pretty much the same deal and an equally lovely atmosphere. Both also do great happy hours and wines by the glass if you plan on making it a regular haunt and the Finborough has a theatre upstairs. 

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