Breakfast at Mrs Marengo’s, Soho

A couple of weeks ago Leonard and I startled the staff of Mrs Marengo’s on Lexington Street by walking through the door at 8am. We were the only two women wandering the streets (unusual for Soho) and at that time of day it feels clean and optimistic. It’s that moment when you wake up and say to yourself: ‘I will not drink today’ and briefly believe it turned into sparkling streets and lampposts and kerbstones.

When you’re skipping along the streets, celebrating your sobriety and wondering if you could add ‘not eating biscuits’ to your list of things to achieve, Mrs Marengo’s vegetarian delights will catch your pious eye. It’s done up in a knowing vintage style. Tiled walls, high counters and stools so you can dangle your legs (or, at least, Leonard and I could dangle our legs). In the windows are tiers of lusciously iced cakes, even at 8am, which tell you that, although this is a vegetarian cafe, it is a Fun Vegetarian Cafe and they know all about Sensual Pleasure, just in a Nice, Non-Murdery Way.

The staff are, I expect, bright and chipper. At 8am they are smiley and attentive in a way that suggests they have a lot of oranges to juice and coffee machines to heat and really, no one normally comes in till 8.30am. I think they were a touch thrown by our super early arrival.

Luckily for them, we did not want poached eggs, omelettes or vegetarian sausages. I ordered Bircher muesli (£3.25) and a pot of breakfast tea (£1.60), Leonard wanted a slice of toasted banana bread (£1.70) and a cappuccino (£2.35). The tea was, naturally, organic and came in a metal pot that looks cute and old-fashioned but can burn several layers of skin off your hand if you’re not adept at using them.

The first thing to say about the muesli is that it was enormous. Absolutely huge. If I am making Bircher muesli at home, I use about 30g of oats. I think I had half a bagful in my bowl and probably consumed most of my day’s calories in under 15 minutes, because the second thing to say about the muesli is that it was delicious.

I love the creaminess of soaked Bircher and this was as rich and indulgent as any I’ve tried. The addition of orange juice gave it a bit of citrussy zip and there was also plenty of dried fruit, pecans and grated apple to add fibrous interest. The enormous mint bush that decorated the top, however, was a completely unnecessary garnish.

Leonard’s banana bread was a doorstop thick wedge of the lightest, fluffiest banana bread I have ever had a bite of. The shame of uneaten, overripe bananas tends to drag banana bread down and it often sits like a stone in your stomach, mocking you for not managing to eat the fruit in its natural state. But this was an airy, fragrant celebration of the banana, crusted in the toaster and topped off with a generous spreading of butter.

Mrs Marengo’s offers takeaway as well as eat in and if I was one of the media bots working unsociable hours in Soho, I’d often dash in to Mrs Marengo’s to pick up breakfast and enjoy a little moment of pleasure before sitting at my desk and getting lost in my screen.

Hot Buuz, Peace Avenue, Ulaanbaatur

When DJ, Leonard and I arrived in Ulaanbaatur at the start of October, there was only one thing on our minds: buuz. We had declared our train trip the Holiday of the Steamed Dumpling and we were determined to eat as many of them as possible wherever we went. In Russia, the buttery pelemni had met our greed and shown it a good time. Expectations were running high for the Mongolian dumplings (buuz), possibly because we knew nothing about Mongolian cuisine.

My first buuz encounter did not go well. ‘Repelled’ is probably the best way to describe my reaction. The wobbly dumplings squelched greasy meat juices and the filling tasted of bland 1950s steak and onion pie. I took against buuz and although we ate in buuz cafes every day, I stayed away from the steamed balls of meat.

But it was our last day and I was feeling bold. What sort of galloping gourmand would I be if I only tried buuz once? We’d spent the morning running around the Winter Palace and needed to fill up quickly before facing the insane taxidermy of the Natural History Museum. We flung ourselves inside Hot Buuz and found a crowd.

The sight of a crowd is always reassuring, so we tried to form a queue. This was a stupid idea and a gang of old women easily outpaced us to the first free table. We learnt that hovering politely gets you nowhere, so we hovered aggressively and got ourselves a small table in the back room.

Our eyes were drawn to the Vegetable Soup with Meat Filled Dumplings (T2300/97p). We should have known by then that when vegetables are mentioned on a menu in Mongolia, that doesn’t actually mean they will have a significant presence in the dish. But the wonderful thing about DJ, Leonard and I is that we flat out refuse to learn from the past, so we were thrilled to see vegetable soup on the menu. We ordered 3 bowlfuls, some steamed bread (T200/8p) and bottles of Voyage (T350/15p), my favourite mineral water in Mongolia (Much Freshest Deep).

The waiter brought us 3 of the meatiest bowls of soup I have ever seen. The vegetables amounted to a handful of potatoes and 2 slices of carrot each. Great hunks of tender, flaking beef bobbed in a meaty stock and the little buuz were filled with more beef (or, at least, meat that tasted like beef. All the other tourists we met seemed to be eating mutton at every meal but we never caught a morsel of it, unless mutton tastes like beef in Mongolia, which it may do).

The mini buuz restored my faith in dumplings. They were juicy rather than greasy and tasted richly of meat rather than depressingly of gristle. The atmosphere was warm and cosy, the waiters quick and kind and eating the steamed bread was like dropping a carbohydrate stone into my stomach. Without question, the best meal I ate in Mongolia.

Apple and mincemeat pie

Yesterday I posted the fruitalicious Apple and lemon mincemeat recipe and an enormous jar of it is maturing in my utility room for this Christmas’ mince pie orgy. However, I only have the one enormous preserving jar and my urge to go to Peckham and root around the pound shops for another one is small.

This meant the last spoonfuls of 2009’s mincemeat had to be scraped out of the jar and used up before I could start stirring up the dried fruit and spices for this year’s batch. I turned it into an Apple and mincemeat pie (can you tell that I think apple and mincemeat go well together?). Serve it warm with custard, ice cream or clotted cream.

Apple and mincemeat pie
Serves 6–8

150g plain flour plus extra for dusting
75g cold butter, chopped, plus 10g
600g Bramley apples
50g soft light brown sugar
150g mincemeat
Milk, for glazing
Pinch caster sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 Stick some ice cubes in a small jug of cold water and set aside. Sift the flour into a large bowl and rub in 75g cold butter between your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in some iced water, 1 tbsp at a time, until the mixture starts to come together to form a soft pastry. Pat into a round and wrap in clingfilm. Chill for at least 30 minutes to overnight.

2 Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C/fan 160°C. Peel, core and slice the apples into finger wide wedges. Stir the sugar into the apples and toss to coat. Tip the apples and sugar into a 24cm pie plate and spoon the mincemeat over the top. Don’t worry about it being a massive pile, it will collapse down as it cooks. Dot the fruit with the remaining butter.

3 Dust your work surface and rolling pin with flour. Roll out the pastry to make a round slightly larger than the pie plate, turning it anti-clockwise to get a round shape as you roll (don’t flip it; the more you fling it around, the tougher it gets).

4 Brush the edges of the pie plate with milk. Roll the pastry up around the rolling pin and then unroll over the pie plate. Press down at the edges to seal and then trim off  any spare pastry. You can use the trimmings to make fancy little decorations if you have time/the inclination. Slash a small cross in the top of the pie to let the steam escape and brush the pastry with milk to glaze it. Sprinkle over a pinch of caster sugar and dust over the cinnamon. Place on a baking and tray to catch ay juices and bake for 50 minutes, or until golden and crisp. Serve warm.

Apple and lemon mincemeat

How smug am I? Not only have I made my Christmas cakes and wrapped them in paper and foil and a regular drizzle of booze, I’ve made my mincemeat, too. Admittedly, in order to make the mincemeat I did have to finish up the last, large spoonfuls of last year’s mincemeat, which implies that every year I make too much mincemeat, but I still feel the warm glow of achievement that only brandy and a Kilner jar can deliver.

I’m going to make a mincemeat that uses beef closer to Christmas (I’m not convinced that a centrally heated house is a good place to mature a raw meat and fruit mix), so I’ve used vegetable suet in this mincemeat. It seems unChristmassy to go out of my way to make all my minces pies unsuitable for vegetarians, but vegetable suet is probably an evil mix of hydrogenated palm oil and babies’ tears. So if you prefer something more natural, swap it for shredded beef or lamb suet.

Apple and lemon mincemeat
Makes approximately 2kg

2 unwaxed lemons
500g raisins
500g sultanas
500–600g Bramley apples
250g shredded vegetable suet
200g caster sugar
200ml brandy
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 Sterilise your jar(s). Pare the zest from the lemons, leaving as much of the white pith on the lemon as possible. Place the zest in a heatproof bowl and pour over enough boiling water to cover. Leave to soak for 30 minutes.

2 Tip the raisins and sultanas into a large bowl and pick over to get rid of any little woody stalks or stems still attached to them. Drain the lemon peel and finely chop. Stir into the raisins and sultanas. Juice the lemons and stir in the juice.

3 Peel, core and coarsely grate the apples and stir them in with the suet, sugar, brandy and spices. Stir to mix thoroughly. Spoon into your sterilised jar(s) and leave somewhere cool and dark to mature. It will keep for at least a year.

Back to Baylag Buuz, Peace Avenue, Ulaanbaatur

There is nothing like being denied something to make you want it. In Mongolia, it was vegetables. I don’t normally really fancy vegetables, I’m a carb girl. But there is something about being offered meat and dough or meat and rice all the time, sometimes with a little side of mayonnaised carrot, that made me think: “Wouldn’t a salad be nice?”

It was our second day in Ulaanbaatur and we’d spent it revolting our guide with a terrible picnic. Our contrary desire for vegetables had been partially sated by a jar of pickled onions, but we wanted more. For dinner, we  went to the second branch of Baylag Buuz, which looks less like a minicab firm that it’s sister cafe and has big windows looking out onto the traffic carnage of Peace Avenue. There, we appalled our second Mongolian of the day with our eating habits.

We went through the menu and found all the vegetarian dishes. There was 5 of them. In a 4 page, double-sided menu. So we ordered a vegetarian feast and 2 meat buuz for good luck. As we pointed to our choices, our waiter’s face became more and more visibly disgusted. I suspect the first words out of his mouth when he went back to the kitchen was: “You will not believe what this bunch of crazy foreign women have ordered.” As the food came, I was prepared to admit that the meal was a little unbalanced. In fact, it was almost entirely the same thing: dough with a shredded vegetable garnish.

The main dish we shared was Vegetable Tsuvia (T1200/50p). It was shredded dough masquerading as noodles stir fried with shredded cabbage, carrot and chillies (but not much). It was fantastic – the first Mongolian dish I’d tried and could love straight away, with no need to get to know each other better or work hard to appreciate the differences that make us compatible.

The soft, fried dough that bulked out the Tsuvia was the mainstay of our meal. It had a go at being noodles in the Tsuvia; not entirely convincingly – it tasted a little too much like bread. And we ate it as bread: Fried Steamed Bread (T250/11p), which is just like a savoury doughnut. We ate it as Vegetable Khuushur (T460/20p), a pancake folded around a tiny amount of shredded carrot and cabbage and then fried. We also had a Yeasty Pancake (T250/11p), which was the Khuushur but without the distraction of the carrot and cabbage filling. Our vegetarian feast had turned out to be a bread feast and as a carb girl, I wasn’t unhappy.

Breaking away briefly from the bread, we had Fried Potatoes Topped with Onions (T800/34p). I’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again: chips topped with onions are brilliant. Potatoes and onions are a great combination and I want to see more of it. Next time you are at the kebab/hot dog van/chip shop, ask for fried onions with your chips. Together, we can start a revolution. It might not help end climate change or bring justice to the masses, but it will make eating chips an even more enjoyable experience and that’s something worth striving for.

The 2 meat buuz (T300/13p each) didn’t change my opinion of them. They were as squelchy and primal as before and I gave them a wide berth, concentrating hard on the dough.

With 2 bottles of Fanta Orange, a bottle of orange juice and a bottle of water, the bill came to about £3 and it was a pleasure to eat. A first for me in Mongolia, where the food had mostly been relegated to something to eat rather than something to enjoy.

Port and orange Christmas cake

This Sunday is Stir Up Sunday, when the Lord stirs up the wills of the faithful and the English stir up a lot of future indigestion in the form of Christmas puddings. This year Ma G&C is stirring up a flammable fruit pudding, so I won’t be shredding suet and steaming great basins of batter on Sunday. If there is anything a household needs just one of in a year, it’s Christmas pudding.

But the arrival of Stir Up Sunday has reminded me that there are just 5 more weekends till Christmas. If I make my Christmas cake now, that means feeding it with just 6 tablespoons of Port before the big day (1 today and 1 on each weekend), which is nothing. I am going to have to double spoon it – I like to set my fruit cakes to stun. And by stun, I don’t mean amaze. I mean incapacitate.

You can use your preferred mix of dried fruit in this cake. I use sultanas, raisins, dried cherries and dried apricots; the apricots roughly chopped. I normally make up the mix with 2/3 sultanas and raisins and then the rest is cherries and apricots. It smells like mulled wine when you bake it. Bring on the Glad Tidings and Joy.

Port and orange Christmas cake
Makes 1 20cm round cake or 2 450g loaf cakes

675g mixed dried fruit (see notes above)
100g whole glacé cherries
Zest and juice of 1 orange
150ml Port plus extra for feeding
225g butter plus extra for greasing
255g soft light brown sugar
1 tbsp black treacle
4 eggs
255g plain flour
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp mixed spice
75g whole hazelnuts

1 Place the dried fruit, chopped if necessary, and glacé cherries in a large bowl and stir in the orange zest and juice and the Port. Cover and leave overnight to soak. You can put the fruit, orange and Port into a sealable tub and leave for up to 5 days if you like, or if you keep intending to make the cake but running out of time, which is what I normally do.

2 Preheat the oven to gas mark 3/160°C/fan oven 180°C. Grease the base and sides of a 20cm round cake tin or 2 450g loaf  tins with butter. Line the base with baking parchment and line the sides with parchment so it comes 2 inches above the tin. Set aside.

3 Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy and combined, then beat in the teacle. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Sift in the flour and spices and stir to make a smooth batter. Stir in the fruit, any Port left in the bowl and the hazelnuts.

4 Scrape the batter into the cake tin(s) and level off the top with the back of your spoon or spatula. The cake won’t rise much, so if it’s lumpy and uneven when it goes into the oven, it’ll be lumpy and uneven when it comes out. Bake the cake(s) for 1–11/2 hours until firm to the touch and golden. A skewer inserted should come out relatively clean, depending on how much fruit you hit when you stick it in. If it begins to burn while it’s baking, cover the top of the cake with greaseproof paper.

5 Poke a few small holes in the top of the cake(s) with a skewer and pour 1 tbsp port over the top (I’d also use 1 tbsp Port per loaf cake rather than 1/2 tbsp). Cool in tin(s). Once cold, remove from the tin(s) and wrap the baking parchment around the cake, or peel off the old parchment and wrap in a fresh layer, if preferred. Wrap in a layer of foil and store in an airtight tin. Feed the cake(s) once a week with 1–2 tbsp Port. The cake(s) will keep for up to a year, although if you’re going to keep it that long you may want to ease up on the weekly feedings or you’ll have to drink it.

The Hidden Tearoom, Secret Location, London

One of the prizes that attracted fevered, martini-fuelled bidding at the Blaggers’ Banquet auction was afternoon tea at The Hidden Tearoom. The gracious proprietress of The Hidden Tearoom, Lady Gray, was at the Banquet and her descriptions of the cake feast that awaited the lucky winner clearly sent the crowd into a carb frenzy. I can’t remember the exact amount but tea for two definitely went for more than £150.

As it happened, I went to The Hidden Tearoom the day before the Banquet with Leonard, DJ and Leonard’s boyfriend The Enigmatic Mr S. The Tearoom is in Lady Gray’s flat in East London, which is easy to get to but a complete labyrinth inside. When she says: “Wait in the lobby and someone will come and get you,” she isn’t just keen on you enjoying some quality lobby time.

Her Squire found us and led us around identical corridors and past non-sequentially numbered flats. One twosome ignored Lady Gray’s advice and disappeared into the building for 20 minutes before reappearing at the front door and shame-facedly requesting a guide.

The tea kicked off with a glass of champagne. Champagne is brilliant. I don’t often get lifestyle envy but champagne always has me reaching for the lottery tickets. I did my best not to guzzle it and took my seat at the table with 11 other afternoon tea fans.

The one unescapable rule of life is that you have to eat your sandwiches before you eat your cake. At The Hidden Tearoom you also have to eat an American Cheddar biscuit, which contains considerably more Cheddar than biscuit. It was delicious. Then we moved onto finger sandwiches: Wiltshire honey ham with Jarlsberg, Turkey breast with cranberry, Smoked salmon with cream cheese and Marinated cucumber with cream cheese. Sandwiches are sandwiches. You have to be pretty cantankerous to take against them.

There was one more hurdle to leap before we could bury our faces in warm, fluffy scones, jam and cream. We each had a big spoonful of mango and pineapple sorbet as a palate cleanser. It was very fresh, smooth and not too sweet, although it had that faint acidic tang fresh pineapple often has. The kind that makes your tongue go furry after a couple of slices as the enzymes kick in and the pineapple tries to get in first and digest you.

We could smell the scones baking while we spooned up our sorbet. Lady Gray’s Squire brought out pots of clotted cream, blueberry jam and strawberry jam. Knives were poised. Everyone got a plain scone and a fruit scone and we were all very polite in a ruthless kind of way about ensuring we got our fair share. When Lady Gray asked if anyone would like more scones, my hand was first in the air. I may have even shouted: “Meeeeeeeeeee!”

After the scones came tiers of cakes. Squidgy wodges of chocolate brownie, zappy slices of lemon cake and squares of shortbread that I couldn’t touch because I had reached the stage in afternoon tea that aficionados will recognise: carb sweats. It didn’t mean I was going to stop eating, but I had to do some mental lunges and push-ups to make room in my mind and therefore my stomach.

Not eating the shortbread was the surest way to fool myself into thinking I had enough room for the carrot cake and vanilla cupcake with cream cheese frosting. I didn’t, but I ate a carrot cake anyway and risked rupturing my stomach. If anything is worth exploding for, it’s cream cheese frosting.

We’d all had our own pot of tea – I had a delicate white tea – but the arrival of the jasmine tea was treated as the answer to all our digestive prayers. We were rigid with cake and the belief took hold that the jasmine tea would somehow flush it all through and leave us svelte and ready to start again.

But there is only one liquid in the world that can do that and that’s grappa. The jasmine tea was good, however I still looked 4 months pregnant with a wheat baby when I got up to leave. And even though I really, really wasn’t hungry, I still ate the Lady Grey Tea Trufle that came with the tea. I am that greedy.

The whole tea was £25 a head and it is worth every penny. The Hidden Tearoom gets booked up pretty quickly, so if you want to go, sign up for the mailing list and book a slot as soon as one comes free.

The Blaggers’ Banquet – on the night

On the 15th November Hawksmoor opened their doors, apparently without fear, and welcomed in a bunch of food bloggers so they could cook and serve a feast of entirely blagged food to raise money for Action Against Hunger. Madness on their part, cheerful hyperbole on ours. Could a bunch of bloggers really dish up a five course meal for 50 people? Of course we could; we’re brilliant.

We kicked the evening off with pretty canapés and Chapel Down sparkling wine. The best canapé was obviously the nibble that a very unusual chinaman and I made: Peter’s Yard crispbreads topped with a dollop of Brock Hall Farm fresh goats’ cheese, pomegranate seeds, a sprinkling of Halen Môn vanilla salt and some chives. These were genius. From the reaction of the crowd you would think that the Cheddar and herb gougères were the most popular canapé – they barely touched the platters before being hoovered up. But looking into the guests’ eyes, I knew that what their souls truly loved was the fruity goaty things.

In the kitchen Scandilicious, eatmynels and the war on cookbooks were showing food the meaning of being cooked. Or, in the case of the starter, the meaning of being marinaded. Fish For Thought had driven a monkfish tail up from Cornwall (and donated a voucher to the auction) and it had been turned into a super fresh monfish and beetroot tartare with added tomato salsa.

For the main course there was beef stew and lamb hotpot, courtesy of Donald Russell, and beautiful Laverstoke Park Farm buffalo steaks. I had swapped my prep hat for a waitress t-shirt and being a completely professional waitress, I went and stood by the table fellow-choppers-turned-guests Hollowlegs and a very unusual chinaman were sat at, opened my mouth and waited for them to stuff food in. They kindly obliged. I also generously agreed to drink a martini.

Scandilicious had made the dessert the day before: chocolate fondant with a spoonful of crème fraîche and a dusting of edible gold and silver. I helped apply the gold and silver, which meant the pudding was lightly glazed and the kitchen team were completely gilded. Bompass and Parr also supplied some humorous boob shaped jellies with gilded nipples – how we laughed and threw jelly about. To follow that, Msmarmitelover and Scandilicious plated up great big wodges of cheese from Pong, Trethowan’s Dairy and Brock Hall Farm. Fruit from Abel and Cole (Riverford supplied all the vegetables) and more Peter’s Yard crispbreads completed the platters.

The night was a roaring success, helped along by the bar team, who mixed up mean martinis and cocktails and poured out wine and beer to match the courses. The final auction was led by Tim Hayward and some great lots were won, including St John cookbooks signed by Fergus Henderson, a cookery lesson at Konstam and a holiday to Barcelona.

If you’re thinking: ‘How I wish I could have been there,’ I don’t blame you. But there is a way you can join the party, even at this late stage. First you’ll need a martini. Then you’ll need your computer, and possibly a second martini. There is going to be an online auction of blagged goodies that will totally take care of all your Christmas shopping and raise money for Action Against Hunger at the same time. Keep your eye on this ebay link and when the lots go up, you go into a bidding frenzy.

I have barely mentioned a quarter of the people and companies who donated time and goods to the Blaggers’ Banquet. For a significantly more thorough write-up of the evening, click here and for photos of the event, click here. And keep an eye on our Head Blaggerteer eatlikeagirl’s blog for more write-ups and links of the evenings.

Parsnip and apple coleslaw

You’d think that being a blogger would mean that I am a self-obsessed narcissist who loves to stand out from the crowd. This is true, but like normal people I also enjoy being part of a crowd now and then. Preferably a crowd who will say nice things about me, admire my hair and agree with my opinions. Online blogging events are an excellent way to join a like-minded mob and this month I am knocking on the door of No Croutons Required and asking if they’ll let me join their internet party.

It’s a monthly vegetarian food blogging event run by Tinned Tomatoes and Lisa Kitchen’s. I stumbled upon it on the UK Food Blogger’s Association site, on which I have an extremely inadequate profile that I regularly forget to update. This month’s challenge was to make a soup or salad from root vegetables. It being winter and me being a Briton, there is only one root vegetable on my mind at the moment: parsnips.

I decided to turn them into a coleslaw as part of my ongoing campaign to ban mayonnaise from salads. Mayonnaise is OK for dipping chips in if there really is no ketchup available, but that’s it. And salads are hard enough to love without people smearing great gobs of emulsified eggs all over them.

I could say many more eye-meltingly explicit things about how mayonnaise looks and tastes and why no vegetable should suffer the indignity of it (apart from fried potatoes, which can stand the indignity of most things and still taste lovely), but I am a discreet lady. So instead I shall say: look at this nice coleslaw recipe. It contains no mayonnaise and yet it is a tasty coleslaw. Try it and throw off the shackles of mayonnaise.

Parsnip and apple coleslaw
Serves 2 as a main meal, 4 as a small side dish

2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp good olive oil
1 tsp clear honey
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
175g parsnips
100g carrots
100g red cabbage
1 Cox’s apple, or your preferred eating apple, weighing approximately 150g
Handful of fresh parsley leaves, roughly chopped
25g walnuts, roughly chopped

1 Place the vinegar, oil, honey and mustard in a small jar and season with a small pinch of salt and a good grinding of black pepper. Screw on the lid and give it a shake until it’s pale and combined. Taste, adjust the seasoning if necessary, and set aside.

2 Peel the parsnip(s) and slice out the woody core – you’ll end up with about 100g parsnip. Coarsely grate and place in a large bowl. Peel and coarsely grate the carrot(s) and add to the parsnip. Very finely slice the red cabbage and add to the bowl.

3 Quarter the apple and slice out the core. Coarsely grate the apple, discarding any large pieces of skin. Add to the vegetables with the parsley leaves and half the walnuts.

4 If the dressing has started to separate, give it a shake again, then pour over the coleslaw. Toss the salad to coat in the dressing and then divide between two plates. Scatter over the remaining walnuts and serve. For a more filling meal, serve it with a chunk of blue cheese and warm crusty bread (it’s also good with a greasy pork chop and apple sauce if you’re not vegetarian).

A picnic in Terelj National Park

DJ, Leonard and I had had quite a day. We’d rode truculent, semi-wild horses at fences and down ditches. We’d crossed the Swinging Suspension Bridge of Death so we could wander around a Buddhist monastery in our socks. We’d gone off-road in a bright yellow Hyundai Accent, in spite of it not really having any suspension or gears. We’d stared at yaks. And we’d provided our Mongolian guide with the worst picnic of his entire life.

The picnic was an insult to its location: a pin-drop silent clearing amid golden pine trees overlooking Terelj’s valley floor. Behind us, giant Buddhist symbols had been painted on the mountain sides and above us a watery October sun kept us warm and softly lit. To make our comfort complete, Mr S, our guide, had pulled the orange nylon seats out of his Hyundai so we could sit on them around the blanket picnic table.

DJ and Leonard had bought the picnic the night before at The State Department Store. And to be fair to them, it was only the 2nd worst picnic of the holiday (DJ and I bought the worst picnic of the holiday in a 7-eleven in Beijing).

They’d come up against the problem that bedevils picnicking tourists around the world: you don’t know what anything in the shop is, so you can’t tell what would be nice cold for a picnic and what will ruin your bowels if you don’t cook it. The best course of action in these circumstances is to buy things you roughly recognise. Thus, we were trying to open a jar of pickled onions in the middle of a Mongolian wilderness.

And also thus the sliced white bread (OK); the sweet croissanty things (very good); the half moon shaped biscuits (like eating compacted sand); the pear and chocolate chewy biscuits (wrong and addictive. Biscuit crystal meth); an unidentified orange cheese (it’s cheese, we forgive it); the spreadable Brie (this wasn’t cheese and we do not forgive it under any circumstances); a tin of sardines (a wild card there from DJ, who was forced to eat the lot because no one else would touch them and there’s no closing a tin of sardines once you’ve opened them); and a jar of apricot halves in syrup (untouched till China). Leftover from our Russian picnics were two cornichons, which we fought over with stabby plastic forks, some manky satsumas and preserved citrus fruits.

We learnt later from one of the other guests in our hostel, who’d been living with reindeer herders for 3 months, that a meal isn’t a meal in Mongolia unless it features meat. ‘You should, at least, have bought a tin of meat.’ Our picnic had failed the deliciousness test because it lacked Spam.