Everyone is familiar with Mexican food in some guise but usually what we get in the English speaking world and Europe is actually Tex-Mex - an Americanised version of Mexican food. I’m told that nachos, for example, is not traditional in Mexico, that the burritos are usually smaller and skimpier on the fillings, and that tacos have soft shells.

In Sydney, nachos were ubiquitous on café menus throughout most of the 1990s, though the trend seems to have died off now. They might not be traditional but they were very good - a rich spicy red kidney bean stew, crunchy corn chips, melted cheese and spicy homemade guacamole. Imagine my disappointment when I went to the United States for the first time and encountered the liquid cheese horror of Taco Bell!

That is not fair, of course. The US has some fabulous Mexican - or Tex-Mex - food. I encountered it in Brooklyn, in Mexican Town in Detroit, and of course, in California where the cuisine really comes into its own.

In London, one of my favourite places for a burrito is the Daddy Donkey cart on the Leather Lane street market in Clerkenwell. It’s not cheap - it costs around £5 - but they keep the quality of their ingredients very high. You can get either a wrap or a salad bowl and they have chicken, beef, pork or vegetarian options. The meat is always tender, the salad crisp, the guacamole fresh and tangy, and the black beans and rice marvellously satisfying. Buy it to take back to your desk or grab a seat on one of the picnic tables beside the van.

Restaurant Review: Taqueria

Sometimes you want to sit down for a meal and the sad truth is that London is starved of good Mexican restaurants. Enter Taqueria in Notting Hill.

I have never been to Mexico but I’m pretty sure that the food here is as authentic as you’ll get outside Mexico. It’s quite unlike any Mexican food I’ve had anywhere else, with homemade tacos and light, fresh toppings.

The website says the restaurant makes everything from scratch, from Mexican chorizo to the hot chocolate, which is ground in house. They go to great length to source Mexican ingredients - the parent company, Cool Chile Co imports dried chiles and herbs, masa harina (tortilla corn flour), corn husks and pozole (a stew made from hominy - a type of dried maize) directly from Mexico, while the Mexican chiles are from Dorset-based Peppers by Post. They use organic chickens, British meats and cheeses to supplement the Mexican ingredients.

The food is very good indeed. The best thing to get are the tacos, which come in pairs. If you have a group of people you can order an assortment of tacos and try a few different flavours. The portions are not huge so you will need 2-4 tacos per person, depending on whether you have appetisers or dessert as well. Flavours include “carnitas” (shredded slow-cooked pork, green salsa, diced onion, coriander), “spinacas y queso” (browned cheese with spinach and red salsa on large tortillas) and “camaron” beer-battered prawns, avocado mash, chipotle mayonnaise, Mexican salsa, limey shredded cabbage, doubled tortillas. Vegetarians are catered for but the selection is not overly large.

For the drinks, I recommend the Horchata, a rice milk drink flavoured with almond and cinnamon. It’s sweet and smooth and quite delicious. The Flor de Jamaica, or hibiscus juice, is quite nice as well, tasting, not surprisingly, quite like hibiscus tea.

It will be difficult to leave without doing dessert as well. My favourite is the “plátanos con cajeta”. A banana split by another name, it features fried plantain (cooking banana), coconut ice cream, cajeta (goats milk toffee) and toasted almonds. It is simply perfect. There is also a hibiscus pudding, ice cream or sorbet, and the classic option of churros (doughnut sticks) with Mexican hot chocolate.

The service is occasionally patchy but generally good and it’s always friendly. Aside from a slightly overdone taco on my last visit, the quality of the food is exceptional.

Taqueria
Address: 139-143 Westbourne Grove, London W11 2RS
Tel: +44 (0)20 7229 4734
Web: www.coolchiletaqueria.co.uk

Mexico is my third country to feature on my UN food challenge, after Ghana and New Zealand. There are 189 countries to go…

Who can resist these beautiful macaroons from Yauatcha? See how pretty they are in their box with all the different colours lined up. Even the packaging - a hard box with a ribbon and a frosted stiff plastic bag - is gorgeous.

After reading about the macaroons in Time Out and blogging about them yesterday, our fate was sealed. We had to try them out. It’s an enormously decadent treat - one box of 18 macaroons cost about £25 - but oh boy, are they good. So far we’ve tried a blue one with a blackcurrant filling, a white speckled one with a sesame paste, and a green tea-flavoured one.

At those prices, I can’t see us bringing them home terribly often, but they would make a lovely gift for someone. Meanwhile, I’m definitely going to try making them.

Yauatcha
Address: 15-17 Broadwick St, W1F 0DL
Tel: +44 (0)20 7494 8888
Tube: Oxford Circus or Piccadilly Circus

It didn’t take us long to return to Marylebone Crêperie, which I first wrote about in my Pancake Day post. We went for breakfast with a friend from out of town yesterday morning and this time we opted for the sweet crêpes.

My crêpe (pictured left) was from the list of Chef’s Specials and the filling was summer fruits - mainly black currants and red currants - with Belgian chocolate. I had a choice of dark, milk or white chocolate and opted for milk. The sweetness of the chocolate and the tartness of the fruit blended beautifully, though it was unbelievably rich and I was not able to finish it.

The other two crêpes were equally good and not quite as rich. One friend had a crêpe with a banana, caramel and walnut filling (pictured below), which was delicious. The other friend had a crêpe with a chestnut filling, which he told us was a standard dessert ingredient in Eastern European cooking. It was sweet and nutty but not overpowering.

They also made a decent cappuccino, which is essential for any breakfast establishment in my book.

Marylebone Crêperie is also open for lunch and dinner and it does a nice line in savoury crêpes and also galettes - a style of crêpe from Brittany made from buckwheat flour, with a darker look and almost a sourdough taste. There is a wide range of fillings including an extensive list of vegetarian options. The seafood with white wine sauce and the mushroom with tarragon were both tasty and filling. I also enjoyed a Breton cider to go with my galette.

The crêperie is a cosy, corner shop, opposite Caldesi Cafe, not far from Marylebone High Road. Marylebone is a lovely part of town and I always forget how central it is - I associate it with Marylebone Station, which is miles away, but it’s actually closer to the Selfridges end of Oxford Street. The service is friendly and prompt, though you might wait slightly longer than you expect, simply because the crêpes are made fresh to order. In a lot of places they are pre-prepared, which means the quality can suffer and it’s more of a fast food experience where you are in and out as quickly as possible.

A main course, dessert and a cider would set you back £18 - but portions are generous and only those with large appetites would be able to manage such a large meal. I would recommend going for either main course or dessert, or sharing with a friend.

Marylebone Crêperie
Address: 71A Marylebone Lane, London W1U 2PJ
Tel: (020) 7935 2993
Nearest Tube: Bond Street

Today is Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day. Traditionally making pancakes served the practical purpose of using up all the eggs and fat in the house before the austerity of Lent, the 40 days of fasting before Easter. Not being of a religious persuasion, I don’t keep Lent but I find Pancake Day a charming tradition. Will you be celebrating Pancake Day in your house?

Are you looking for a recipe? Try this recipe for buttermilk pancakes - if you don’t have buttermilk, just use normal milk instead for thick American-style pancakes. Or my personal favourite is Scandinavian pancake, which is baked not fried and is lovely and puffy with a crisp topping. Or you could make crepes instead - there is even a helpful video on the All Recipes site.

If you are in London, you might want to check out Marylebone Creperie, a new crepe house near Bond Street Tube station (71a Marylebone Lane). It was recommended in last week’s Time Out and I visited on the weekend. As well as white crepes, they also serve traditional Breton ‘galettes’ - buckwheat pancakes - and you can have a Breton cider as an accompaniment. They make the crepes and galettes fresh to order, which sounds obvious but a lot of crepe establishments have them pre-prepared and simply reheat to order, which lessens the quality. At the Marylebone Creperie savoury fillings range from mushroom, cheese and tarragon to seafood and white wine. The dessert list was mouthwatering but I didn’t have the appetite for it after my enormous main course so I shall have to return for a sweet crepe another time.

When you think of New Zealand and food, pizza does not automatically spring to mind. The great Kiwi culinary exports are lamb, cheese and butter, kumera (sweet potato), and of course, kiwi fruit. (They also claim to have invented pavlova but so do the Aussies and I’m not willing to enter into that debate). Yet, a New Zealand pizza franchise has opened up in a corner of West London and is planning an assault on the British capital.

Hell Pizza opened in Fulham less than a year ago and the Kiwi manager tells me that the restaurant is intended to be the blueprint for an entire chain. That will be great news for homesick Kiwis all over London, as Hell Pizza is one of the most popular pizza chains back in New Zealand. I was introduced to the chain when I recently attended a birthday dinner for London-based, New Zealand-born author Natasha Judd.

The style of pizza was familiar to me from Australia - it is like a much more upmarket version of Pizza Hut, a bit like the Sydney chain Gourmet Pizza Kitchen. It’s different to Italian pizza in two main ways. The base is not quite so thin and crusty but is a bit thicker and softer. Also, the toppings, which can be very untraditional, are piled on much more lavishly than the Italian style.

At Hell Pizza, the names of the pizzas are thematic - you have a range named after the Seven Deadly Sins, while other names include Brimstone and Damned. There is a standard range, which has things equivalent to Meatlovers and Supreme, and a gourmet menu where anything from refried beans to blue cheese might make an appearance. For example, the Cursed has chicken, smoked cheddar, bacon, gherkins, ham, honey mustard. The Purgatory, one of the vegetarian options, has fresh spinach, sun-dried tomato, black pepper, feta, garlic, mushrooms and onion. There are also dessert pizzas - the Forbidden with marscapone cheese, sliced banana and caramel toffee was quite a hit.

The food was tasty and since we had more than 10 people we could go for the £5 all-you-can-eat option, so it was a bargain as well. They bring it out to you so you don’t have the same temptation as you would if it were sitting in front of you or at a buffet table, but we still packed away quite a few slices. I had forgotten how much more filling that style of pizza is compared with Italian pizza. I can eat a whole Italian pizza myself, though I try not to, but there’s no way I could get through one of these babies on my own. The pan is bigger, the base is thicker, the toppings more plentiful - I had four or five pieces including dessert and I was stuffed.

Hell Pizza is definitely worth checking out if you are in the area, and they do home delivery as well. Personally I prefer the simple flavours of Italian pizza, but I know plenty of people who love this stuff and with a big population of Aussies and Kiwis in West London, this joint should do well once word gets around.

Two down, 190 to go…

Right now, London is having a jelly moment. The wobbly dessert we all knew and loved as children is turning up on all the best menus, but it’s suddenly become terribly sophisticated. Jelly with green tea, anyone?

At the Taste of London in Regent’s Park, a litmus test for the capital’s restaurant scene, every fifth dessert was a variation on jelly. Greenhouse coupled strawberries with water chestnut jelly and something called momosa espuma (see below), while the National Dining Room had strawberry and basil jelly with ice cream, and Umu offered green tea and grapefruit jelly. As well as all this, there were no less than two versions of strawberry and Champagne jelly - and they were completely different.

Inn the Park combined Champagne jelly with strawberries and Jersey cream on a meringue base. The jelly was translucent gold with a subtle hint of tartness, partnered with thick cream, in a modern incarnation of trifle. It was mid June and the English strawberries sang with seasonal sweetness. By contrast, the Champagne jelly made by Pearl was so potent, it conjured up memories of downing jelly vodka shots at my 21st birthday. The sharpness was barely softened with custard and almond crumble and as if to underscore the point, the dessert came served in a shot glass.

I have a soft spot for jelly the old-fashioned way, which to me means 1980s packet jelly made in a ridged mould. I can’t say I enjoy the flavour any more but it always brings back happy memories. When I was a child jelly came in traffic-light flavours - red, orange and green and we all knew the words to the Aeroplane jelly TV jingle (the link is to the 1940s version of the ad). We kids were adamant that red jelly had the best flavour, the same as red jelly beans and red snakes. Our mothers thought the red food colouring made us misbehave but we knew it was just a good excuse. Later we graduated to blackcurrant jelly, just like red, but dark and a bit more grown up. Orange was okay, but we hated the lurid lime green variety. Anything green was a bit suspect and it tasted like grass cuttings. We still ate it though - jelly was jelly, after all. It was a double score if it came with vanilla ice cream, which we’d mash it up so the cream would coat the jelly.

I love trying new flavour combinations when I’m out but if I’m cooking at home I enjoy recreating the classics. I do like a good trifle made old style with jelly and that most retro of drinks, sherry. My grandmother made lovely fluffy sponge cake but if I’m pressed for time, a good quality shop-bought cake will do the trick. If I have to choose, I would rather spend the extra time making creamy, eggy custard, infused with vanilla. I layer the cake, jelly and custard with berries and a good quality whipped cream.

NB It’s taken a bit of sleuthing to figure out what ‘momosa espuma’ is. It’s not in the 1,350-page cookery encyclopaedia Larousse Gastronomique and I couldn’t find a complete explanation on Google. ‘Momosa’ could either be this drink or perhaps a typo for ‘mimosa’, which is either edible yellow flowers or sieved hard-boiled egg yolk, according to Larousse Gastronomique. ‘Espuma’ is apparently Spanish for foam, though prepared slightly differently to the French method.

Orange Flummerie

(Serves 4-6)

If you are feeling adventurous, but don’t want to replicate some of the more exotic jelly dishes on restaurant menus, try this fantastic creamy orange jelly invented by my aunt Frances, who runs organic gardening supplies business Green Harvest. Use lemon jelly crystals as orange jelly can be too sweet or if you are confident you can substitute gelatine or, for a vegetarian option, use agar agar.

Frances has been making this dessert since I was in primary school and we kids christened it ‘orange flummerie’. A crowd pleaser for all generations, the citrus flavours are cut with cream, while yogurt adds a slight sour note to stop the dessert becoming cloyingly sweet. You have to keep a watchful eye on the jelly to make sure you add the cream before it fully sets.

Ingredients

Lemon jelly crystals, 2 packets
Boiling water
Two oranges
Cointreau, 1 tbs (optional)
Natural yogurt, small tub (200g)
Cream, small tub (200g)
To serve: Dark chocolate (optional)
Coconut strands (optional)

Method

Prepare the jelly according to the instructions but substitute half the boiling water for freshly squeezed orange juice. You can add more juice and less water if you like but you do need some boiling water to dissolve the jelly crystals. If you are making the dessert for adults, you can also add a tablespoon of cointreau. Orange zest is also a great idea for more flavour but Frances warns that you should do this only if you are using organic fruit. (Apparently withholding periods for using pesticides on citrus fruit tend to be shorter because they assume people do not eat the skin).

When cool, poor the jelly liquid into a serving bowl and refrigerate. Meanwhile, whip the cream until soft peaks form.

After about 45 minutes, when the jelly is half set, remove it from the fridge, stir in the natural yogurt and gently fold in the whipped cream. Return to the fridge to set firmly; this will take two to three hours.

Serving

My suggested topping is a round of orange and shavings of dark chocolate. Alternatively, Frances suggests toasted coconut strands.