Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Cookshops and Bookshops

I'll be attending a lecture this week on Jellies.  It's the inaugural talk by The Experimental Food Society featuring Bompas and Parr and it will be at The Cookbook Café in Hyde Park Corner.

"...the event celebrates the launch of their eagerly anticipated book ‘Jelly’ published by Anova.
 Operating in the space between food and architecture, Bompas & Parr’s works include Jelly Banquet for the London Festival of Architecture, Barajas Airport for Lord Richard Rogers and Funeral Jellies for San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to name a few. Exploring how the taste of food is altered through synaesthesia, performance and setting, they have made jelly de rigueur again. Find out what makes these incredible culinary creatives tick at the Experimental Food Society Talk, as Bompas & Parr take you through the history of jelly from BC to today, demonstrating how to make some of the world’s best loved jellies such as the Jelly Hippocras, a favourite of Henry V111. Covering topics such as jelly and seduction, Bompas & Parr will show you how to touch someone’s most sensitive organ, their belly, whilst offering a tasting of a variety of jellies whose recipes have been taken from their book."

All this talk of cookbooks and shops twirled up with preparations for the Salt Tasting dinner next week have lit me into a fervor of finding interesting London shops that I haven't yet tried.  In my internet travels I've now come across Gill Winn shops in Islington, who seem to carry not only items that the chef in all of us would moon over but a healthy display of shoes, jewelery and gifts in other storefronts and they also have a 140 acre organic farm just south of Tunbridge Wells.  They'll likely stay on my radar for a while!

Another vendor I have had on my list for quite some time and need to research in person is Divertimenti. In addition to the usual selling-things-people-like-to-buy, they also offer a score of cooking classes catering to the novice as well as the expert.  An impressive list of CVs on these instructors as well!

And finally, tomorrow I shall track down to Notting Hill to check out The Spice Shop and see what exotic salts and other things they have to offer.  I know one thing I'll be investing in is "American French Fry Salt".  And I'm intrigue by the Rose Vanilla Chilli Salt, although it may end up making my palate feel like it's on a trip on a busy roundabout with no exits!

Time permitting I'll also visit a few other Notting Hill spots:
Books for Cooks
The Hummingbird Bakery (still never been!)
The Grocer on Elgin

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