Kin Cafe’s Roasted Vegetables with Feta Sandwich

Roasted vegetables with feta sandwich from Kin, Fitzrovia

I really should rename this blog ‘half a square mile’ as a lot of my sandwich hunting seems to be concentrated to the little patch of Fitzrovia around Great Portland Street and Great Titchfield Street.  I really need to start branching out a bit further.  This post is not the beginning of this new-found sandwich wanderlust, in fact, it is almost as close to my office as you can get.

Kin Cafe was a treasure I found at a particularly low ebb, unusually on a Friday.  I had been up late the night before, partly due to having a disagreement with a friend, partly due to the disagreement that Scottish voters were having with one another.  Once the referendum results were in, I sloped off for a very short and disturbed sleep.  The next day, understandably, was difficult.  By the time lunchtime rolled around, I was craving not comfort food, which is the way I usually go when tired, but the restorative power of vegetables.  I went for a stroll along Foley Street and found this sign:

It made me laugh so I popped in for a look.  Almost as soon as I was in the door I was invited to play ‘Guess the Bride’.  All of the staff were dressed up as you might on a hen night: all plastic tiaras, veils and glitter.  Only one of them was getting married.  I managed to guess right.  It was so fun in there it cheered me up immediately.

Kin Cafe has been open since June and seems to be thriving despite the huge concentration of cafes in this area vying for the money of local office workers.  It has the classic Fitzrovia set-up of good coffee, home-baked treats, bright salads and a couple of sandwiches, enough space to sit in and quick enough to take out.  There were two sandwiches on offer that day, thankfully one that was heavy on the vegetables – a combination of aubergine, red peppers and spinach with a little feta.  They quickly whipped it into a panini press before I took it back to my desk.

The trouble with roasted vegetables is that they can lack flavour if not properly seasoned – not the case here.  The aubergine had a little smokiness, like it had been cooked over a flame, and the red peppers were sweet.  The salty creaminess of the feta brought everything together well and the bread was good and robust.  If I had one small complaint, it was that it was on the small side, but that might just be an example of my greediness.  £5 – obvs (Fitzrovia).

Kin Cafe, 22 Foley Street, London W1W 6DT.

Recipe: Goats Cheese, Grilled Courgette and Sundried Tomato on Focaccia

Goats cheese, grilled courgette and sundried tomato on focaccia. Eaten at my desk

This was a bit of a fridge raid, actually.  This often happens as the end of the week approaches – the odds and ends of the ingredients for earlier meals loiter around the fridge, gently threatening to go to waste.  Half a tub of soft goats cheese, a couple of baby courgettes and a few sundried tomatoes and I almost had a sandwich.

I find vegetarian sandwiches to be somewhat restorative during times when I am eating a lot of meat.  I used focaccia rolls for this sandwich simply because I like it.  Waitrose sell a pack of two rosemary and sea salt focaccia rolls for £1.66 that are big enough for a substantial lunchtime sandwich.  They are from their Essential range.  Really.  You can use slices of ordinary focaccia if you wish.  Or make your own.

Goats Cheese, Grilled Courgette and Sundried Tomato on Focaccia
Makes two

Two large focaccia rolls, I used Waitrose sea salt and rosemary (see above)
About 100g soft goats cheese, or cream cheese
8 sundried tomatoes
3 baby courgettes, thinly sliced vertically
Black pepper

Split the focaccia rolls and spead the bottom half liberally with the goats cheese.  You will not need butter as there is a lot of oil in the bread.

Place the sundried tomatoes between two slices of kitchen paper and wipe to remove any excess oil.

Lightly saute baby courgette slices in a small frying pan, or griddle if you wish.  Transfer to kitchen paper to drain and allow to cool.

Arrange the courgette slices on top of the goats cheese and place the sundried tomatoes on top with a grind of black pepper.  Replace the top half of the focaccia and serve.

Recipe: Halloumi, Sundried Tomato and Mint Sandwich

Halloumi, sundried tomato and mint sandwich

One of my biggest bete noires of sandwich making is raw halloumi.  I’m not quite sure why people use it as everybody in the world knows that halloumi is at its best when griddled or fried in a smidge of oil until it chars a little.  Despite this, I can think of at least three places that don’t grill their halloumi, including the place that does the best falafel in town – what is up with that?

I often make these (grilled) halloumi, sundried tomato and mint sandwiches for a packed lunch.  Some might see cold halloumi as a big a sin as raw halloumi, but as long as it is kept at room temperature and not chilled, it works really well.  It is adapted from a recipe I found online about ten years ago called the ‘hallelujah’ sandwich.  The sweetness of the sundried tomatoes and freshness of the mint works really well with the salted halloumi.  The best bread to use is a white bloomer or a baguette.

Halloumi, Sundried Tomato and Mint Sandwich
Serves one

Two slices of white bloomer (or a baguette – see above)
Mayonnaise
Salad leaves
5 slices halloumi
4 sundried tomatoes
1 tsp chopped fresh mint
Black pepper

Spread the two slices of bread thinly with butter and one of these thinly with mayonnaise.  Pile some salad leaves on top of the mayonnaise.

Griddle the halloumi over a high heat until well charred but not burnt.  Place on a plate lined with kitchen paper and allow to cool.

Dry the sundried tomatoes with kitchen paper to remove most of the oil and cut in half lengthways.

Place the cooled halloumi on top of th salad leaves, followed by the sundried tomatoes, mint and black pepper.  Place the other slice of bread on top and slice in half.

Recipe: Red Pepper, Mushroom and Black-Eyed Beans Quesadilla

Red pepper, mushroom and black-eye beans quesadillas

I had a conversation with a friend the other day where they claimed that the quesadilla I had cooked for dinner the night before was not a sandwich.  So it’s not really, in the traditional sense, but the formula still applies:  bread + filling = sandwich.  No?

I was taught to make quesadillas whilst staying in Los Angeles with a girl called Katie.  She worked for the California Farmers Market Association, so always had a huge amount of fresh produce to hand.  I quickly realised that quesadillas were a wonderful and quick way to make a meal out of whatever you had at home.

Katie is a vegetarian, so hers always consisted of just vegetables, beans and cheese, along with the usual spices.  I have carried this tradition on and hardly ever make mine with meat or fish.

I also make my quesadillas by placing one tortilla in the pan, followed by the filling, and then another tortilla on top, but it takes a lot of practice, and a very large spatula to flip these.  It is far easier to put the filling on one side of the tortilla, then flip the other half over to make a semi-circular folded tortilla.

Red Pepper, Mushroom and Black Eye Beans Quesadilla
Serves two

Olive oil
1 red onion, finely diced
2 red peppers, diced
250g mushrooms, halved and sliced
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried oregano
Salt and pepper
400g tin black-eyed beans
4 flour tortillas
100g cheddar cheese, grated
Handful chopped coriander

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan and saute the red onion, red peppers and mushrooms until soft, about five minutes.  Stir in the spices, salt and pepper and the black-eyed beans and cook for an additional couple of minutes to heat through.

Heat a separate large frying pan over a medium heat.  Brush a tortilla with olive oil and place, oiled side down, in the frying pan.  Spoon a generous amount of the vegetable and beans mixture on to the tortilla and spread out, leaving a 3cm border around the edges.  Sprinkle over the cheese and coriander, place another tortilla on top and press down (or use the fold-over method, see above).

Cook for a couple of minutes then gently lift one side of the quesadilla to check the underside has browned.  When ready, flip the quesadilla and cook on the other side for a further few minutes until browned.  Transfer to a plate, cut in half and serve with sour cream, salsa and avocado.

Workshop Coffee’s Hummus, Harissa and Roasted Red Peppers Baguette

The hummus, harissa and roasted red peppers baguette from Workshop Coffee, Fitzrovia

There’s a lot of good coffee in Fitzrovia right now.  Gone are the days of the terrible freeze-dried stuff they provide at my office, or the overpriced chains where they burn the beans and scorch the milk (shudder).  With baristas flocking to W1 and new cafes opening up all the time, it is very difficult to remain monogamous to one.  The caffeine-hungry, it seems, are spoiled for choice.

On my return to work from a long summer holiday, I was pleasantly surprised to find a new branch of Workshop Coffee on Mortimer Street, conveniently placed at the very end of my commute.  I had schlepped over to their Marylebone branch a few times to pick up coffee for my home machine, but it was a little too far for a mid-morning sneak-out-of-the-office coffee.

I could talk about the coffee all day, but this is a sandwich blog, so I will leave it at this: it’s blinding.

The new Fitzrovia cafe is characteristically sparse in design, but has a comfortable seating area at the back, should you wish to stay a while.  My favourite feature of the place was the rows of bright peacock blue espresso cups lined up on top of the coffee machine.  If I hadn’t espresso cups enough, I would have bought one there and then.

There were only a few varieties of sandwich on offer, in a glass case by the window.  There was no menu in the shop, nor is there one on the website, so I imagine the selection changes daily.  I opted for the vegan option: hummus, harissa and roasted red peppers, with a bit of salad, on a malted wholemeal baguette.  It can be quite difficult to make vegan sandwiches filling and exciting, especially without the usual stalwarts of falafel or tofu, but this worked really well.

I often approach harissa with a bit of caution as it can be blisteringly hot (my brother-in-law makes a particularly ferocious one), but Workshop blended it with the hummus, which cooled it down whilst retaining the chilli tang.  The hummus was slightly chunky, which gave a good amount of texture, especially against the slipperiness of the roasted peppers.  If I’m being particularly fussy, I would have preferred the peppers to be chopped more finely to make the sandwich easier to eat.  Aside from that, it was perfect.

Best eaten with a cappuccino.

Workshop Coffee, 80 Mortimer Street, London W1U 1QD.