One of the magic potions I bought from La Boȋte in New York was No. 11 Cancale, a blend of fleur de sel, fennel seed and orange, and I used it to create this stunning but simple carpaccio, using a piece of the humble gurnard – but you could use cod, whiting or any sustainably caught white fish.

On a large plate, sprinkle a teaspoon of cancale and drizzle a little of the best olive oil you have. Slice the fish into very thin small slices, leaving behind any bones or skin. Arrange the slices on the plate. Squeeze over the juice of half a lemon, maybe a little more. Top with grated lemon zest, a scant half a teaspoon more of cancale, and top with leafy fennel fronds. Leave in a cool place for an hour for the fish to cure. I think one of the worst things about carpaccio is when it is ice cold from the fridge, so serving this just below room temperature is ideal.

This is such a quick, stunning dish to serve as a starter or centrepiece of a summer lunch.

New York’s spice master Lior Lev Sercarz not only makes the most wonderful spice blends, he’s written a book which features a recipe and ideas on how to use each blend. No. 20 Dali contains saffron, lemon, cayenne and seafood extract, and he suggests a mayonnaise flavoured with roasted garlic and the blend. (The book is available for your iPad.)

For four people I made a mayonnaise with one egg yolk and a mix of three parts sunflower oil to one part extra virgin olive oil, with the juice of half a lemon and the lovely puree from a roasted head of oak smoked garlic, and finally two heaped teaspoons of the spice blend.

The scallops were seasoned with yuzu salt and fried in a heavy non-stick pan in just a tiny bit of olive oil. After you turn them, when the second side is nearly done, add a knob of butter to the pan and swirl all around the scallops. Turn once more so the first side sees the butter, and serve, accompanied by the mayonnaise.

This was a really knock-your-socks-off dish – being full of flavour, but subtle, complex flavour. 

Alerted by an article in the New York Times a few months ago, I put a spice shop in the city on my list of “must visit” places, and last week had the chance to tick it off. The article was headlines “The Transformational Power of the Right Spice”. The visit has already proved nothing short of transformational for my cooking – and combined with my visit to Mission Chinese, those few days in Manhattan have had quite an impact.

The spices at La Boȋte are all blended by Lior Lev Sercarz, and to walk in the shop is almost overwhelming as different fragrances hit you. Lior himself was there, his overalls dusted with spice. There are too many blends to describe, and truth be told, after a few minutes of sampling, my palate was so alive that I’m not sure I was even able to take in the final few jars I opened.

The first recipe I have tried introduced my to another wonderful food hero – London’s Marky Market. Mark gets up before the crack of dawn twice a week to head to Billingsgate and Smithfield for fish and meat, which he then delivers in central London. It’s quality produce at really great prices. I called up and asked for a kilo of raw prawns.

Back home, I pulled off the heads, put them in a pan and just covered them with water. A gentle simmer produced quite the most intense shellfish stock you can possibly imagine.

The tails were stir-fried with Lior’s No. 7 Pierre Poivre – a blend of seven different peppercorns that’s impossible to describe in words. A good couple of tablespoons were thrown into a hot wok with a dash of groundnut oil. The prawns were stir-fried until they had almost turned pink, and at the last minute a cup of the stock was added to sizzle down and reduce, and finally a handful of coriander was added.

They were juicy and delicious, with the kind of addictive more-ishness that great pepper brings to a dish. They were so fragrant coming out of the hot wok that we tucked in straightaway and I forgot to take a photo of them!

Lior has had enquiries to bring his spice range to the UK. For now, you’ll have to wait until you or a friend is heading to New York, unless we can persuade Marky Market to head over there for us…

Traveling in England is becoming such a joy because of the constant signs that food culture here is flourishing. Regional food networks are linking up like minded producers, shops and restaurants, helping pass their customers from one to the other. There’s a wonderful sense of collaboration rather than competition. 

Suffolk (American readers: it’s the bit that sticks out of the middle of England to the east, jutting into the North Sea) has a great foodie scene, and Food Safari was set up by Polly Robinson to offer food experiences based around its great producers. Each of the food safaris offers a mix of learning about your food, meeting producers, maybe picking up a skill or two, and of course eating and drinking.

Our ‘Seafood in a Day’ course began in the lovely village of Orford on the Suffolk coast, with a boat trip on the Regardless. In an hour on the water we got as close to the source of our seafood as you could possibly get, pulling up some lobster pots and finding some crabs.

Back on dry land, we headed to the oyster beds of the Butley Orford creek, where Bill Pinney talked us through the cultivation and harvesting of oysters, and showed us round Pinney’s smokehouse, filled with sides of salmon, mackerel and kippers.

We ended up at the Butley Orford Oysterage restaurant for a lunch of oysters, smoked salmon, smoked prawns, smoked mackerel, and smoked trout, before trying our hand at opening oysters and carving a side of smoked salmon.

Food Safari is a great idea, helping producers show off the care and skill they invest in our food, and allowing us gourmands to better appreciate where our food comes from. The courses run in Suffolk and London currently, and are highly recommended.

This is one-up on the last, simple mango fool recipe posted here, but it’s oh so good.

Make the fool by taking the flesh from a large alphonso mango and blending with dairy-free Co Yo coconut yoghurt (it’s vegan and dairy free). Separately, make a syrup by infusing three shredded kaffir lime leaves in a half cup of hot sugar syrup. The brittle is made by melting 100g of sugar, and as it turns liquid adding the same amount of sesame seeds. Pour out onto very lightly greased baking parchment to set, and then break into pieces).

When ready to serve, add a teaspoonful of syrup onto the top of each fool and spear in a couple of pieces of sesame brittle.

Another dish inspired by Danny Bowien’s Mission Chinese food. A piece of Chinese bacon about six inches long was sliced into small lardons. (You could use smoked streaky bacon for this, but if you do, add a little honey and soy sauce to the dish once you’ve crisped up the bacon, as this will have something like the same effect as the sticky cure on the Chinese bacon.) A bunch of radishes were cut into quarters, and about 12 shiso leaves were finely sliced. Get everything ready first, as it only takes seconds to cook.

Stir-fry the lardons in hot wok. Drain off all but a tablespoon of oil, and add the radishes and cook for a few minutes, before adding a dash of soy sauce, and finally the shiso leaf. You want to only cook it for another thirty seconds at this point before serving. 

I’ve loved the fresh minty-cucumber taste of shiso in Japanese cuisine for a while, but this was the first time actually cooking with it, and the dish was really quite something.

Seeing Danny Bowien demo a dish at Taste’s The Lab event in London, and then eating at his restaurant Mission Chinese in New York four days later inspired a trip into London’s Chinatown to stock up for a big dinner with friends.

The first dish was noodles, with a version of the sauce which Danny Bowien had cooked at The Lab. During his demo, he had talked about fresh noodles, barely cooked, and a little searching led me to discover there’s a noodle factory in Soho churning out bags of ho fun noodles at £1 each. Well worth a visit if you always wonder why your home-cooked noodle dishes are never quite as good as the ones you get when you eat out. Don’t put these noodles in the fridge, instead keep them in the bag, and then separate them out (they’re perforated) into a pile just before you use them.

For the sauce I stir-fried the following: a handful of dried shrimp, shredded finely; three Chinese sausages, finely minced (you could use any pork sausage, preferably a semi cured one); four cloves of garlic; one tablespoon of pickled crunchy radish; one tablespoon of smoked chilli; half a glass of mirin. This made a rich, spicy, fragrant sauce. You can do this bit in advance and leave to cool.

When you’re ready, stir-fry the noodles in hot groundnut oil for just a minute (fresh noodles are already cooked, and these needed no soaking or blanching). Add in the sauce, stir until the noodles are coated, and add in a little stock – maybe half a cupful – to loosen it all. I had a delicious shellfish stock from a dish of prawns I’d made, but you could use meat or vegetable stock.

For the morning glory, shred the stalks and leaves into smallish pieces. In a hot wok, fry some roasted, crushed peanuts for just a second or two, and then add in the morning glory and cook for a couple of minutes, and then you’re ready to serve.

Once in a while you have a food experience that blows your socks off. In the case of Ba Shan, that was almost literally true. Danny Bowien’s food at Mission Chinese in New York is also at times fiery hot, but it’s so much more than that – it’s Asian food remixed and redefined, and it’s incredibly good.

I saw Danny Bowien a few days before heading to New York at Taste’s The Lab event in London (pictured above). He cooked a demonstration dish which layered dried shrimp and dried squid with Chinese sausage, Chinese bacon, and several types of chilli. We got no more than half a teaspoonful to taste, but it was enough to get me intrigued and wanting more (I also have since tried to re-create it: that post is coming soon).

Bowien is Korean-American, was in a rock band before moving into food, and made his mark at a popup in San Francisco. His New York restaurant, in the city’s Lower East Side, has quickly become a site of pilgrimage for the world’s chefs. The reviews have been glowing, and Bowien’s star is in the ascendant (how many chefs opening their first regular restaurant get a full article about them in GQ?). 

From the outside, it looks like a fairly ordinary takeout joint, apart from the queue of people waiting. There’s a convoluted policy on reservations, but mainly it’s a walk-up restaurant. They’ll take your number and call you – be prepared to wait an hour or two. Once you’re in, you make your way up a long corridor with a window into the tiny kitchen, and emerge into the dining room with a paper Chinese dragon hanging over you. 

Five years ago New York was filled with big box Asian restaurants like Buddakan and Spice Market. They would mix and match across Asian flavours and techniques, but the food was always pretty uninteresting – mostly toned-down, accessible crowd pleasers.

Mission’s food is anything but toned-down – pig ear, beef heart and lamb tongue all feature before you even get to the big plates. Going with a vegetarian who doesn’t like food too spicy meant we had to pick carefully, but our meal was still highly memorable.

Red cabbage leaves with ground sesame, anchovy, crisp barley and sea kelp was an amazing plate: two types of crunch (from the lettuce and the barley) and a whole host of flavours. My dinner companion thought is so delicious he returned the next day and got it for takeout.

Stir-fried pork jowl with radishes, fermented black bean, shiso and mint was savoury and fresh and I couldn’t stop eating it (I was inspired to make a version, which will appear here shortly).

Braised pea greens in a pumpkin broth with adzuki beans and peanuts was warming, spicy and really satisfying. 

Our final dish was Egg Egg Noodles – a dish of fresh noodles with ginger, scallions and a soft, barely-boiled hens egg that you break and stir into the noodles. I write as someone who doesn’t really like an egg-y flavour, but it was quite delicious – basically noodles in a light, ginger-flavoured emulsion.

The food really is incredible – and the prices are very reasonable: $7-11 for most small plates and $11-13 for each but a few of the large plates. The restaurant also donates money from each large plate sold to a local food bank. 

Danny Bowien is making big waves in the restaurant world, and his food certainly impacted me in a big way – you’ll see its influence in some forthcoming posts, and I’m already plotting my way back to New York for second helpings.

What to write about a restaurant whose only flaw is that its popularity precludes me from going as often as I’d like to?

Barrafina’s role in the new wave of great Spanish food in London has been written about by many, and the format – itself a copy of Barcelona’s Cal Pep – has been imitated by several of the London restaurants which have followed it. For me, though, none quite comes close to matching it and I think there are four reasons why.

First, the space itself. More so than any other counter restaurant, you feel like you’re right in the middle of the cooking here. Every stool, not just those near the plancha, is a front row seat on the action. It also means you get your food in perfect condition – unlike some places where a spell under the heatlamps of the pass results in your tapas arriving on a bed of wilting, shrivelled rocket.

Secondly, the food beats many of its rivals in being not only brilliant, but consistently brilliant. There never seems to be a say when the chipirones (the tiniest of baby squid, pictured above) are not crunchy or the croquetas not perfect.

Thirdly, it’s because Barrafina’s food has always had an intensity of flavour – from the simplest gambas al ajillo to dishes of chicken with romesco or a red mullet with baby potatoes: it’s like tasting in high definition. These are not complicated dishes, and there are no extraneous garnishes.

And lastly, the place has never rested on its laurels. The menu is built around a small core of dishes that don’t change, but the specials keep on getting better and more inventive. The standout dish on our recent visit was roast kid, which was meltingly soft and incredibly savoury. There’s scarcely a day goes by when their tweet of the day’s specials doesn’t make me want to drop everything and go get in the queue.

Its deserved reputation means that there are many occasions now when it’s so full you can’t even get in to join the back of the queue. Crowd management has always been excellent – once inside you can snack and drink as you shuffle down the standing area waiting to be seated. Drinking a glass of La Gitana mazanilla en rama and eating some croquetas is not the worst way in the world to spend half an hour, and it truly is worth the wait.

Simple and quick: while the couscous is soaking, wash the flower sprouts and whilst still wet, throw them into a pan with olive oil and three cloves of crushed garlic. Cover the pan and shake it a few times. When they’ve wilted (it will only take a few minutes), throw in some diced tomato. Stir for just long enough to warm, but not cook the tomato, then add the couscous. Top with toasted pine nuts and serve.